PODCAST · society
Reversing Climate Change
by Carbon Removal Strategies LLC
Reversing Climate Change is a podcast that bridges science, technology, and policy with the richness of the humanities. From the forefront of carbon removal and climatetech to explorations of literature, history, philosophy, theology, and geopolitics, we dive deep into the people, ideas, and innovations shaping a better future for the planet and its inhabitants.If you love the show, please become a paid subscriber on Spotify.
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407: Charles C. Mann on the wizards & prophets of climate change
I interviewed Charles C. Mann in 2020 about his book, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World. This episode is a personal favorite of mine.Somehow, I don't believe I've ever rereleased any old episodes. But there are many great ones buried in the archives. I am going to start bringing more of them out that remain relevant.If you aren't familiar with Charles C. Mann, he's written a bunch of great books including 1491 and 1493, both of which I'd recommend.This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon marketsListen to the RCC episode I made with David LaGreca from EcoEngineers about how to choose, hire, and fire carbon market contractors.2026 EcoForums Training Series: Navigating Global Carbon and Fuel Regulations, Market Mechanisms, and Life-Cycle Analysis FundamentalsResourcesCheck out my new show, Climate Workers AnonymousBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackSubscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous SubstackCharles C. Mann on WikipediaThe Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
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Climate Workers Anonymous, introducing a new podcast + collective art project I am curating
Working in climate is hard. We all have things we wish we could say. What if we could actually say them?If you love the Reversing Climate Change podcast, you should check out the new show I'm working on, Climate Workers Anonymous.It came about as my work has become more emotional in nature. Working with so many founders has led me to see that many business problems are less about GTM motions or product-market fit. They're often about identity, attachment, and shame. Being able to speak openly about those feelings, even if anonymously, can be an enormous relief.Moreover, many people in climate have strong feelings about who they do business with, how their companies are structured and make decisions, and maybe think the entire space has deeply lost its way. Can they say that in public? Sure, but that could have career repercussions beyond what many are able and willing to tolerate.And yet, are those feelings any less true? No. They are not. And thus, Climate Workers Anonymous was born. People fill out a Tally survey with their unattributed takes and send it to me to publish in written form on Substack and as audio in your podcast feed—it's the old Carbon Removal Newsroom feed if you're still subscribed to that.Please go check out Climate Workers Anonymous, give it a great rating and review in your podcast apps, subscribe on Substack, become a paying supporter of the show if you believe in what it's doing, and thanks so much for supporting creative media in climate and carbon dioxide removal! And thank you to the legendary PostSecret, which I suspect all elder millennials reading this will know, for showing us the way.Sincerely,Ross KenyonResourcesCheck out my new show, Climate Workers AnonymousSubscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous SubstackSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackAn amazing rating and review on the podcast apps does a world of good. Would you please do that for me now? Here’s Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Subscribe as well while you're there!If you’d like submit your anonymous hopes, fears, or experiences to Climate Workers Anonymous, you can use this Tally survey or email climateworkersanonymous[at]protonmail.com, though I believe the Tally survey is more secure. Do not communicate anything you wouldn’t want a hacker to have access to, including an email address that could be linked to you if you email the account on Protonmail.
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406: Hyperstition, Dialectic, & Carbon Dioxide Removal
What happens when you care about climate and also want to explore space? What if you love technology but worry we've deeply misunderstood how to relate to it appropriately? What happens when we take the religious claims of others seriously, even when they aren't seen as legitimate as the major faiths? How can philosophy, literary criticism, film, and media studies help solve some of the biggest questions in climate, and maybe even give us all a little bit of extra solace in a time when we sure could use it?Today's a biggie. We talk about some huge concepts, but don't be scared. They're simple enough. You'll get the hang of it while walking your dog and listening to this and soon you'll be able to wow your friends and family with some fancy new $5 words.In all seriousness though, I think these concepts are genuinely useful, and have helped me make sense of my own feelings, how my brain works, and how to understand what it means as a little person to relate to ideality, materiality, and the Antropocene.This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon marketsListen to the RCC episode I made with David LaGreca from EcoEngineers about how to choose, hire, and fire carbon market contractors.2026 EcoForums Training Series: Navigating Global Carbon and Fuel Regulations, Market Mechanisms, and Life-Cycle Analysis FundamentalsResourcesCheck out my new show, Climate Workers AnonymousBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackSubscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous SubstackRead the full transcript and show notes on Substack (soon!)Oh my goodness. There are so many references in this show. I will come back and add them, but if I could only choose one..."Immanuel Kant song"
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405: Does Managed MRV imply the existence of Unmanaged MRV?!—w/ Varsha Ramesh Walsh, Offstream
What even is MRV, let alone dMRV?! Or Managed MRV?! Doesn't that imply the existence of Unmanaged MRV? If everything is pretty much digital now, do we still need that pesky 'd' letter?! Are there still dudes with clipboards hanging around?In this episode of Reversing Climate Change, host Ross Kenyon sits down with the cofounder and CEO of Offstream, Varsha Ramesh Walsh, to untangle the complicated web of carbon credit data collection.Offstream has evolved significantly after realizing that carbon project developers don't just want another software tool to manage... they want someone to simply get the job done for them. Varsha introduces us to the concept of "Managed MRV," explaining why handing off the heavy lifting of Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification can sometimes be cheaper and far more effective than trying to handle it all in-house.But this show also gets big. Varsha argues that practically every piece of modern infrastructure has the potential to become a carbon dioxide removal or environmental asset. For that to be true, we would likely enter a world where we are all much more persistently observed and quantified, and with rewards and punishments to match. Is the future of carbon crediting one of surveillance capitalism with the social contracts of data sharing to match? Would that solve more problems than it creates? How are we even meant to live?!Varsha also shares her incredibly disciplined approach to information consumption as a founder, offering a highly focused counter-narrative to being "well-informed".Turns out nothing is truly small when you start to poke at it just a little bit.This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon marketsListen to the RCC episode I made with David LaGreca from EcoEngineers about how to choose, hire, and fire carbon market contractors.Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesCheck out my new show, Climate Workers AnonymousBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackSubscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous SubstackRead the full transcript and show notes on Substack (soon!)Varsha Ramesh Walsh on LinkedInOffstreamThe Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
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And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?—"Jerusalem" by William Blake
In the last Reversing Climate Change podcast episode, Tom Mills and I started talking about "Jerusalem ["And did those feet in ancient time"]" by William Blake (1810), and the 1916 hymn by Sir Hubert Parry that seemingly all Brits know in their souls.I only knew about it due to a childhood obsession with the dvd boxset of Monty Python's Flying Circus, where in the S1E4 episode, "Owl-Stretching Time", Eric Idle sings this song while being seduced. Unfortunately, I cannot find a good link to this sketch... I can't say I ever fully understood what was happening beyond just the earnestness and absurdity of the situation, but somehow Tom helped me unlock it.In any case, this is a very very quick dip into Romantic poetry (industrialism bad, nature good; analysis bad, intuition good; simple good, complex bad), William Blake's prominence in films like Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man and HBO's tv series Westworld by way of his poem, "Auguries of Innocence", and how sometimes a work can actually be this simple and stand the test of time.ResourcesCheck out my new show, Climate Workers AnonymousBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackSubscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous SubstackSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack"And did those feet in ancient time" on Wikipedia
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404: When will insetting work for carbon dioxide removal?—w/ Tom Mills, Stripe Climate Fellow (former)
Everyone knows about offsetting. But what about insetting? Surely, that's easier. If only we could define it...In this episode of Reversing Climate Change, host Ross Kenyon sits down with Tom Mills to dig into the physical reality of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and its intersection with heavy industry, mining, and global agricultural supply chains.Drawing from his experience working in mining governance across Africa and South Asia, Tom shares how the physical, logistical, and geopolitical challenges of heavy industry perfectly parallel the hurdles facing the scaling of CDR today. The conversation explores Tom's journey into carbon removal while living in India, where he realized how the region's unique geology and agricultural needs make it an ideal landscape for scalable climate solutions like biochar and enhanced rock weathering (ERW). Tom was a Stripe Climate Fellow, where he focused on embedding CDR directly into global agricultural supply chains. Tom breaks down why certain premium commodity value chains—specifically coffee—are leading the charge in adopting these practices due to strict European regulations and high consumer engagement. From there, the conversation tackles the messy realities of corporate carbon accounting, untangling the nuances of "insetting" versus "offsetting," and exploring how project developers can monetize non-carbon benefits like yield optimization, nutritional density, and watershed protection. This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon marketsListen to the RCC episode I made with David LaGreca from EcoEngineers about how to choose, hire, and fire carbon market contractors.Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesCheck out my new show, Climate Workers AnonymousBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackSubscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous SubstackBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackRead the full transcript and show notes on SubstackStripe Climate FellowsMati Carbon"Jerusalem ["And did those feet in ancient time"]" by William Blake. In fact, the episode art for this episode is from the piece that we discuss. Jerusalem, Plate 1, Frontispiece, 1804 to 1820, Bentley Copy E, © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
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403: How to get max value from carbon market consultants—w/ David LaGreca, EcoEngineers
How do you actually work with a consultant without lighting money on fire? That's the question I've been wanting to tackle for a while, because I've seen both sides of this—companies that get incredible leverage from a good consulting engagement, and companies that spend six figures and walk away with a PDF that's out of date by the time they receive it.David LaGreca is a friend of mine and a managing director at EcoEngineers, which is one of the most active advisory firms in the carbon market and energy transition space.Full disclosure: EcoEngineers is a sponsor of this show, but that's actually part of the story here. David and I keep ending up on the same projects from different angles, and we joke about the "Oh, you're already here?" moment that happens constantly in this tiny industry. We've both watched founders navigate the hire-vs.-contract decision badly enough times that I wanted to sit down and actually map it out.David walks through the real math on when a contractor saves you money versus a full-time hire, and it's not the answer most people assume. He talks about how to evaluate whether a consultant actually knows what they're claiming. We get into when you should fire a consultant, why the personality fit matters almost as much as the technical fit, and why refusing to do a feasibility study on your own project is basically the consulting equivalent of being your own foreman/project manager on Grand Designs. If you've seen that show, you know how that ends.When the mods are asleep by the end, I have to ask David about El Greco, the LaGreca family's alleged history of being Italian smugglers, and whether David is the El Greco of carbon consulting. He accepted the title. I'm not sure he should have.This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon marketsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackRead the full transcript and show notes on SubstackEcoEngineersListen to the RCC episode with Taylor Insley from Terraset on how to sell in carbon removal: which was the model for this episodeListen to the RCC episode with Martin Freimuller from Octavia: David references this episode on playing nicely in a small marketEl Greco (Wikipedia)David LaGreca's LinkedIn profileRudy Krehbiel's LinkedIn profile
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402: Reform vs. Revolution from Microsoft to the Salvage Yard—w/ Drew Wilkinson, Climate Leadership Collective
What do you do when you spent 20 years fighting climate change from every angle you could find: community organizing, Sea Shepherd, AmeriCorps, corporate sustainability at Microsoft... and you realize the prevention phase might be ending? Do you keep keynoting conferences about employee engagement while the Amazon CSO brags about marginal improvements to delivery vans the same week they platform the Melania documentary?Or do you get a job at a salvage yard, start building your own shipping container house, and shift your energy from prevention to adaptation?My friend Drew Wilkinson chose the second thing. Drew grew up in Phoenix, got into punk rock at 13, never stopped playing in bands, and somehow that trajectory carried him from DIY shows in Arizona to corporate sustainability at Microsoft, where he helped organize employees into one of the most effective internal climate movements a Fortune 500 has ever seen. His work there helped pressure Microsoft into its 2020 sustainability commitments. He knows what it feels like to make a real difference inside the belly of the beast.But this episode isn't really about that success. It's about what comes after. Drew left Microsoft three years ago and started consulting independently through the Climate Leadership Collective, and the financial instability of that choice has been brutal. He's honest about it in a way that most people in this space aren't: he doesn't know where his next paycheck is coming from, some days he's crippled on the couch with grief and anger, and he knows that the spicy contrarian stuff he posts on LinkedIn (AKA the stuff that makes him uniquely valuable) also sabotages his ability to get hired by the companies he's criticizing.We got into reform versus revolution, whether the system can be sufficiently reformed or needs to be tossed out entirely, the Austrian Catholic farmer who refused to swear the oath to Hitler (A Hidden Life, go watch it!), and whether Anthropic refusing to work with the Department of Defense matters when Sam Altman is waiting in line behind them. Drew brought up the GreenBiz conference panel that was literally three hours on "how to do sustainability without saying sustainability." I brought up the Amazon CSO posting about minor improvements to delivery van emissions the same week they gave the Melania documentary a platform. We both felt sick about it.But we escaped that grim discourse when Drew started talking about his shift from prevention to adaptation. He's building a shipping container house on five acres in the forest outside Seattle, sourcing materials from the architectural salvage yard where he now works a couple days a week. Yesterday he moved several thousand pounds of doors. He came home covered in dirt. And for the first time in a long time, he could touch the problem and touch the solution. Three thousand pounds of doors didn't go to a landfill. That felt better than any spreadsheet ever did, and even though he may not have predicted this is where he'd be... isn't that life? Can we not be amazed and grateful for every surprise?This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a carbon dioxide removal and carbon market consultancyPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackClimate Leadership CollectiveEarthwise Architectural Salvage
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401: Emotional startup lessons from Nori cofounders—w/ Alexsandra Guerra of Calming Chaos
What happens when you ask a startup founder how a decision made them feel and their eyes start to water? What happens when you realize the person who drove you the craziest at your company was right about all the things you dismissed as too woo? What happens when you look at the wreckage of a seven-year startup and realize the business model failed but the mission didn't?Today I'm talking with Alexsandra Guerra, "Alé", one of my former cofounders at Nori. Her voice used to be the intro to this very podcast. She's now a coach for purpose-driven founders through her business Calming Chaos, and we're doing something I've wanted to do for a while: an honest, no-bs conversation about what went wrong between us, what we've learned since, and why the emotional stuff that I used to dismiss is actually what's holding back so much innovation in climate and beyond.Alé shared her story in a way I wasn't expecting. The perfectionism, the imposter syndrome, the hero complex that made her volunteer for work she couldn't sustain, the sensitivity to feedback that followed, the burnout that was inevitable. She traced all of it back to childhood—a father who didn't show up, a mother who told her to stop crying, and a lifetime of performing for love that was supposed to just be there. And then she connected it to how she showed up at Nori, and I have to admit: it explained a lot of things I didn't understand at the time.I did my version too. The compulsive reading that everyone compliments but that's actually a way of never having a quiet moment. The diminishing returns of knowledge versus the increasing returns of wisdom. The times I should have listened to my gut and didn't because I couldn't articulate it analytically.We got into patriarchy, the spiritual emptiness of power-seeking, why my most common piece of advice to founders is to go to therapy, and why Alé believes entrepreneurship is fundamentally a spiritual process. I didn't want that to be true when we were running Nori together. I'm pretty sure she was right the whole time. It just took me awhile to open up to it. This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a carbon dioxide removal and carbon market consultancyPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackCalming Chaos: Ale's coaching practiceGabor Maté
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400: What kind of leader does my CDR company need me to be?—w/ Julia Reichelstein, Vaulted Deep
What do you do when you're a venture capitalist who can't stop talking about carbon removal at every meeting? You quit and start a carbon removal company, obviously. Three days later you meet the person who's been quietly running one of the largest carbon removal operations nobody's ever heard of. And then you build a company that just signed a nearly 5 million ton deal with Microsoft. That's... a lot of tons.Today's guest is Julia Reichelstein, the co-founder and CEO of Vaulted Deep. They take contaminated organic waste—the stuff nobody else wants, the sludgy, PFAS-laden, moisture-intensive material that's going to landfills or getting spread on land—and they pump it thousands of feet underground where it stays forever. They don't compete for nice clean biomass. They take the actual waste, and they get paid to take it. That's a business model I can get behind.I wanted to talk to Julia because her origin story is unusual. She didn't start with a technology and try to commercialize it. She came from venture capital, from international development in Kenya and Ethiopia, from a place of asking "what actually scales?" And when she found deep well disposal through her now co-founder Omar, she recognized immediately that this was both great waste management and great carbon removal—and that the combination was the thing.But this episode went somewhere I didn't expect. We got into intuition and gut decisions, into what it means to lead a company from a spiritual place without losing business rigor, into "front of brain" versus "back of brain" and why Julia's trail runs keep getting longer the more successful Vaulted gets. I brought up the question of whether CEOs who founded their companies can survive the transition to scaling them, and Julia gave one of the best answers I've heard: "What does the company need me to be?" Not "how do I shape the company around my strengths"—the other direction entirely.We also talked about the mechanics of spinning a company out of an existing one, why there aren't many venture-backed spinoffs (and why that should have told her something), and what it actually looks like to go from two trucks a week to fifty trucks a day.This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a carbon dioxide removal and carbon market consultancyPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackVaulted Deep
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399: How to Pitch Terraset (and other carbon removal buyers)—w/ Taylor Insley, Terraset
What do you think of a developer who pitches a carbon dioxide removal buyer as they are coming out of the restroom? Or can't even enjoy some friendly scones while we all get caffeinated? Or interrupt conversations with business cards?! Forgetting that buyers are people with names and feelings and limited social energy is a tough look to beat.At a recent Carbon Unbound in Vancouver, today's guest—Taylor Insley, the Director of Strategic Planning for Terraset—was on a panel that made a splash: she was telling developers, basically, that the way many of them approach buyers is counterproductive. I wanted to talk to Taylor because she sits in an unusual position. She spent most of her career as a fundraiser, soliciting donors for causes she cares about. Now at Terraset, the turntables have turned. She's the recipient of pitches for tax-deductible and highly catalytic CDR and other climate interventions. And that perspective shift has taught her something about what works and what doesn't that I think is genuinely useful for anyone trying to raise money in this space.But this episode also goes somewhere uncomfortable. We talk about fairness. About whether it should matter that you're charming and diplomatic, or whether the science and economics should be all that counts. About status and in-groups and the fundamental hypocrisy of caring about relationships when you're on one side of the table and resenting them when you're on the other. I brought in the Chinese Imperial Exam, The Godfather, Love on the Spectrum, whether dogs are communists or private property lovers depending upon who has food... It was a lot, but I think we successfully got to the core of this topic.Taylor's single best piece of advice: "Tell me how to do my job better." If you understand what Terraset is trying to accomplish and can help them get there, you're gold. If you're running up with a video of your kiln in a pyrolysis cycle... maybe don't?This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a carbon dioxide removal and carbon market consultancyPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackTerrasetCarbon UnboundAirMinersThe opening scene from The Godfather (TW: SA)Chinese Imperial ExamLove on the Spectrum
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398: Scientists vs. Engineers, & the Commercial Pressure on Carbon Dioxide Removal—w/ Erica Dorr & Samara Vantil, Rainbow
I wrote two pieces for Rainbow earlier this year. The first argued that carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists. Erica Dorr, Rainbow's head of science, read it and pushed back: the binary was too clean, the caricatures too neat. I wrote a response piece about her work as a scientist applying her knowledge in carbon dioxide removal. Today I brought both subjects of those essays onto the show to hash it out together.What is science and what is engineering? It sounds like a question from your first week of college, but in carbon removal it maps directly onto how registries set requirements, how projects get certified, how you balance rigor with feasibility, and ultimately whether the whole system holds together or collapses under its own weight. Erica and Samara Vantil, one of Rainbow's environmental engineers on the certification team, walked me through how these two disciplines actually interact on a daily basis at a working carbon registry.The conversation went somewhere I didn't expect. The real tension isn't between science and engineering at all. Those two are closer to each other than either is to the commercial side. The actual friction lives between the technical teams (science and engineering alike) and the commercial pressures of needing to ship credits, sign projects, and keep the lights on. And every decision about where to set a requirement, how many samples to demand, whether to accept a conservative discount or reject a project outright, sits right in that tension.We talked about Charm's decision to reduce sampling, about whether quality discourse has become meaningless repetition, about the optimal number of travel deaths being non-zero, and about how you know whether you're cutting scope for the right reasons or because you're about to lose a deal. These are the questions that everyone in carbon markets faces and almost no one talks about publicly.My sincere thanks to Samara and Erica for engaging with this so openly. These are, as Erica put it, the ultimate questions.This Episode's SponsorsEcoEngineers: a carbon dioxide removal and carbon market consultancyPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackRainbow"Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" (Rainbow blog)"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" (Rainbow blog)Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"327: Carbon Removal & the Philosophy of Science: Kuhn's Paradigms & Feyerabend's Anarchism—w/ Anu Khan & Holly Jean Buck""Learnings from the Field: Reducing MRV Costs by 97% Through Ops Consistency" by Charm's Max Levine & Tim Thomson"The Uncomfortable Truth About Carbon Removal Quality" (this is where the line, "the optimal number of traffic deaths is nonzero" comes from.
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397: Should Carbon Dioxide Removal Rejoin the Mainstream Carbon Market?—w/ Martin Freimüller of Octavia Carbon
Martin Freimüller is the co-founder and CEO of Octavia Carbon, a direct air capture company in Kenya. He's been listening to this show since 2020 and credits it, generously, with pulling him into carbon removal in the first place.He's also someone who thought I'd taken a wrong turn lately with grim prognostications, and he had an idea he wanted to talk through.His pitch: carbon dioxide removal is the prodigal son, and it's time to come home. We've spent the last few years building CDR as a separate category, defining ourselves against the "legacy" voluntary carbon market, trashing clean cooking credits and REDD+ and Verra and basically everyone who came before us.Martin thinks that was a mistake, and he includes himself in the indictment. He was on stage a year ago telling investors about DAC's explosive growth. Now he's calling clean cooking founders and asking who their buyers are.He shared some numbers that caught my attention: there are roughly 200 corporates that have ever bought carbon removal. There are about 35,000 buying carbon credits more broadly, and about 3 million individuals. Article 6.2 bilateral deals and 6.4-based transactions are quietly channeling tens of millions of tons of demand per year. The broader VCM is growing. CDR is not, at least not in real revenue recognized terms. Martin's argument is that instead of fighting over the tiny pot of dedicated CDR buyers, we should be figuring out how to sell into the market that actually exists and is expanding.I found this conversation genuinely moving. Martin is doing something rare in this industry: admitting in public that he was wrong about how he positioned his company and his sector, and sharing an idea that benefits everyone, not just Octavia. That's leadership, and I told him so.If you're a carbon removal founder who's tired of hearing that bad startups blame their customers, this one's for you.This Episode's SponsorPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"Octavia CarbonOxford Offsetting Principles
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396: Why We All Keep Going to Carbon Unbound—w/ Oli Katz, Unbound Summits
Every industry needs a Schelling point. For carbon dioxide removal, it's Carbon Unbound.Unbound Summits' CEO and Founder Oliver Katz joins host Ross Kenyon to chat about building the CDR industry's flagship in-person events, the economics of conference organizing, why the adaptation event series didn't work, the pay-to-play dynamics of industry speaking slots, and whether carbon removal professionals need to take themselves less seriously.Listeners can get themselves 10% off of Carbon Unbound East Coast in New York City on May 19th-20th by using the discount count: "ReversingClimateChange".This Episode's SponsorPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackCarbon UnboundConnect with Oli on LinkedInListeners can get themselves 10% off of Carbon Unbound East Coast in New York City on May 19th-20th by using the discount count: "ReversingClimateChange".
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Meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same: "If—" by Rudyard Kipling
Sometimes you read a poem on a carbon removal podcast and it's goofy. Sometimes you read a poem and people start writing you wanting to share their own favorites... Matt Schmitt, CEO and co-founder of Structure Climate (a company I formally advise), was inspired by the recent Emily Swaddle episode where we spoke about poems that mean a lot to us. He wrote me immediately to read a poem of his own and share what it means to him and his labor in carbon dioxide removal.The poem is "If—" by Rudyard Kipling, from circa 1895.Matt zooms in on two lines that have stayed with him: the bit about meeting with triumph and disaster and treating those two impostors just the same, and the closing image of filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run.Listen in to hear more about why Matt loves that triumph and disaster are both capitalized; why "treat" is the perfect verb—carrying both the everyday sense and the older sense of negotiating a treaty; why the unforgiving minute is unforgiving (it doesn't care whether you think it is sixty seconds or not, the minute is sixty seconds); why the map is always wrong when the map and the ground disagree, and what that has to do with how we navigate physical, social, and spiritual terrain; and why sharing poetry on a carbon removal podcast feels right even when it's hard to articulate exactly how it ties in...As Matt puts it, we often think what we measure is important not because it's important but because we can measure it. And that doesn't always leave a lot of room for the beauty and spirit we need to do the things we can measure.If you have a poem you'd like to read on the show, drop me a line.ResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackStructure Climate"If—" by Rudyard KiplingThe Wikipedia article about the poem393: Emily's Language Chat: Storytelling, Silliness, & Surviving the Climate Space—w/ Emily Swaddle, The Carbon Removal ShowVexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle—The 2026 Horror of W.B. Yeats' "The Second Coming"The beautiful uncut hair of graves—Walt Whitman on the Equality of DeathThe universal cannibalism of the sea vs. one insular Tahiti—My favorite chapter of Moby-Dick
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395: Bright Spots in US Federal Policy? Carbon removal as essential American infrastructure—w/ Eli Cain, Carbon Removal Alliance
US federal carbon dioxide removal policy is a fragment of its former self. But are rumors of its death greatly exaggerated? (Sorry, Mark Twain.) Eli Cain, Deputy Director of Policy at the Carbon Removal Alliance, comes on the show to give a reality check on US federal policy for carbon removal. Where is the action still happening, and what do we have to look forward to?Despite a political environment that looks grim from the outside, Eli makes the case that real progress is happening:$125 million in FY26 appropriationsBipartisan congressional support that tripled year over yearFY26 appropriations: $80 million for DOE R&D and $45 million for the CDR purchase pilot prizeCRA's fly-in day: from 5 Republican congressional meetings last year to 17 this yeara messaging strategy built around industrial integration that is opening doors across the aisle.When enhanced rock weathering can save farmers money, or carbon mineralization can reduce mining waste liabilities, there is a path forward. We also dig into why 45Q survived the reconciliation process, and what it takes to build durable policy in a volatile political moment."Every single carbon removal company in our membership is deploying in partnership with industrial players."- Eli Cain, Carbon Removal AllianceThis Episode's SponsorPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIAResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"Carbon Removal AllianceCarbon180EMRTAI program for mineralization
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394: Will China Stand Up for Climate Policy & Carbon Dioxide Removal?—w/ Sarah Godek
If the US pulls out of climate action, is there room for China or another country to fill the leadership void? Or without the US, does climate multilateralism fall apart entirely?This episode is a direct response to my recent monologue episode, "How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"", which walked through the political risks to climate and carbon removal policy in a world where the US pulls back. I looked at Canada, the EU, its various member states, and Japan as possible safe havens. One country I left out was China. So I invited Sarah Godek back on as my "sinologist on call" to help set the record straight.Sarah Godek is a returning guest and very knowledgeable about China. Our previous episode—a conversation about realism and liberalism in geopolitics, born out of a piece she co-wrote with Grant Faber on carbon security—is linked in the resources section and is a useful first step before diving into this one.In this episode, Sarah walks me through China's energy security priorities, the difficult role coal plays in Chinese strategy, Tencent's CarbonX Prize, the absence of a clear institutional home for carbon removal inside the Chinese government, and the much harder question of whether climate multilateralism can survive without American leadership.Listen in to hear more about what the "intangible third thing" of world leadership actually is (Sarah argues it's capability — the ability to make other actors stop) and why the war in Iran is a very different status hit for the US than the war in Iraq was; why a peaceful reunification with Taiwan is still the preferred outcome in Beijing, and what that says about the value of legitimacy; how China's environmentalist movement today more closely resembles the US in the 1960s, and how the principle that "green mountains are gold mountains" shapes Chinese carbon removal policy (heavy on sinks and reforestation, light on engineered CDR); what the 15th Five-Year Plan might or might not change; why China frames historical emissions as a Western problem—"if we didn't break it, why must we buy it?"—and what that means for whether China will ever take the mantle on CDR specifically; and Sarah's closing framing... it isn't that the US leaves a gaping hole the world flounders in. It's that the world will continue on without us, and the risk isn't punishment for not being at the table—it's being on the menu.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project financeListen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIARainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack338: Carbon Security & the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek"Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal" by Sarah Godek & Grant Faber391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"Tencent's CarbonX ProgramChina's 15th Five-Year Plan and carbon—"Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality China's Plans and Solutions"
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Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle—The 2026 Horror of W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming"
I've had a poem stuck in my head, and it isn't one of biophilia and whimsy. It's about liminality, death, and interregna. Let me read for you one of my favorites and one of the all-time classics of Enlighs literature, William Butler Yeats's "The Second Coming". While beautiful for its own sake, I'll also make a case for the defense of useless things, an argument for the horror genre as a serious art form, and a close reading of a poem that has become a kind of shared vocabulary for moments when the center will not hold.I work through the imagery line by line, and connect it to everything from Frankenstein and Genesis's exile from Eden, to Tig Notaro's stage presence, to theriantropic madness from The Office's Michael Scott, to H.P. Lovecraft, to Slavoj Žižek on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and more.The trigger wasn't climate policy rollback or the war in Iran, as you might guess—it was actually thinking about artificial general intelligence, and that the falcon that can no longer hear the falconer.Listen in to hear more about why "The Second Coming" reads as present-progressive horror rather than past-tense lament, why "troubles my sight" is a master class in economy of language, what monsters are actually for (the etymology connects to the Spanish mostrar—to show; which I minorly mispronounce in my freestyling—forgive me!), how Hereditary, The Babadook, and Jordan Peele's films use horror to talk about grief, depression, and race, and why this liminal moment between world orders feels so monstrous: not because the new world has arrived, but because the rough beast is only now slouching toward Bethlehem."The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters."- Antonio GramsciResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack"The Second Coming" by William Butler YeatsPaul Muldoon's reading of "The Second Coming"In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk's Memoir by Paul Quenon (referenced via Thomas Merton)Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan DidionEschatology on WikipediaThings Fall Apart by Chinua AchebeParis 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillanParis 1919 (album) by John CalePervert's Guide to Cinema — Slavoj Žižek on Hitchcock's The BirdsSegment on The BirdsTreaty of VersaillesTreaty of Trianon (I didn't mention this by name, but I've been thinking a lot about how it shaped/shapes Central Europe.)HereditaryThe BabadookJordan PeeleHP LovecraftId, ego, superego in Freudian psychoanalysisMichael Scott's theriantrope fantasy/nightmare/prophecy from The Office
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393: Emily's Language Chat: Storytelling, Silliness, & Surviving the Climate Space—w/ Emily Swaddle, The Carbon Removal Show
This is the kind of episode you put on and laugh along with us. This isn't the one where you'll get super quick tech takeaways within 30 minutes that you can drop at your next meeting. It's something else entirely.Emily Swaddle, co-host of The Carbon Removal Show and one of the funniest people in carbon removal, joins Ross for a wide-ranging conversation about life, art, language, climate communications, and the absurdity of having a career in all of the above. A good chunk of the reason The Carbon Removal Show is so fun is because Emily is so fun, and this episode is basically an extended version of her (in)famous segment on TCRS, "Emily's Language Chat".Emily Swaddle is a storyteller, communicator, and co-host of The Carbon Removal Show alongside Ben Weaver-Hincks and Tom Previte. She's been making the show since 2020, producing deeply researched, highly produced seasons that have become a go-to educational resource for the carbon removal community. Emily brings a unique perspective shaped by her background in the arts, her love of language, and her instinct that the climate conversation needs more humanity, more humor, and far less jargon.Listen in to hear more about why Emily thinks silliness and vulnerability are underrated tools in climate communication, and why we even bother doing this climate work when it isn't the glamorous, high-paying energy executive type work.You'll also hear about the Carbon Removal Show Coalition funding model, the tension between monetizing the natural world and actually caring about it, how British class dynamics show up in language and accent, why being a generalist in a specialist world is both a gift and a curse, and what happens when two podcast hosts stop talking about carbon removal policy and start talking about Disney villain queer coding, Mary Poppins, and whether "rabbit tube" should be a phrase.Special thanks to the team at The Carbon Removal Show for loaning us the perfection that is the "Emily's Language Chat" reggae jingle."Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."- Ludwig WittgensteinThis Episode's SponsorPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackThe Carbon Removal Show podcast"Wild Geese" by Mary OliverThe Carbon Removal Show CoalitionWhy Would You Say Something So Controversial Yet So Brave?Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David MitchellWhat Makes Disney Villains so Gay?Money can be exchanged for goods and services from The Simpsons"The Darmine Doggy Door" from I Think You Should LeaveRange: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David EpsteinSumptuary Law
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392: What Will Happen to CORSIA & Carbon Dioxide Removal?—w/ Lev Gantly, partner at Philip Lee LLP
Right now, the world's climate policy architecture is under siege. The US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Right-wing populism is rising across Europe. And Europe itself is torn between defending against geopolitical threats and sustaining the climate policies it has spent years building.What happens to carbon removal in this environment? And what happens to CORSIA—The Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation from within the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)—when a key moment of judgment arrives this June?Lev Gantly is a partner at Philip Lee LLP, a law firm specializing in carbon markets and climate law, and one of Reversing Climate Change's sponsors. He advises a broad range of clients on emissions reduction and carbon dioxide removal projects, both through natural solutions like biochar and engineered technologies.His deep understanding of international carbon markets, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, and the evolving regulatory landscape makes him a critical voice on where climate policy is actually heading—and where it can actually survive political pressure.Listen in to hear more about how CORSIA works and why it matters (or doesn't matter so much?) for carbon removal. You'll also learn about the specific moment this June when the EU must decide whether to keep the scheme or revert to its original plan to impose its own emissions trading system on international aviation.Plus, where Lev is actually seeing durable policy support for carbon removal right now—and what it takes to make climate policy sticky enough to outlast a change in government.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPRainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackLev GantlyPhilip Lee LLPLinear reduction factorEuropean Union Emissions Trading SystemICAOCORSIANDCs"How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance""
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391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"
The foundational assumption of carbon removal has been the "pre-compliance" story—that the voluntary carbon market and early corporate offtakes are necessary but not sufficient, and that we're all waiting for compliance to automate demand. That story depends on Japan, Canada, the EU, and the UK carrying the torch while the US sits on the sidelines heckling.In this monologue episode, I walk through why I no longer think that story holds. Right-wing populism is surging across every country the pre-compliance story depends on. Energy prices are climbing. Growth is stalling. And voters facing rising costs and security threats don't prioritize abstract, probabilistic, future-oriented problems no matter how catastrophic those problems actually are.This isn't a doom episode. It's a planning episode. If you work on anything strategic in carbon removal or climate tech, you need a clear-eyed view of what the world is actually doing—and a plan for what your company looks like if the world doesn't regress to the mean."If you want to make an omelette, you've got to break a few eggs."- Joseph Stalin"Where's the omelette?"- George OrwellThis Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPRainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack338: Carbon Security and the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek364: Lowering the Onion into Hell: Strategic Realism vs. Christian PacifismSanae TakaichiPierre PoilievreMark CarneyAlbertan secessionismNational RallyGilets Jaunes (yellow jackets)Friedrich MerzWillam F. Buckley Jr.Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland) partyNigel FarageReform UK
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390: The Endless Pursuit of Alkalinity—w/ Omar Sadoon, Planetary Technologies
Is all of carbon removal really just about alkalinity? There's a case to be made for quite a lot of it. Weathering, ocean alkalinity enhancement, even parts of direct air capture—they all come back to manipulating pH and moving basic materials to where they can cancel out excess acid in the atmosphere and ocean.Omar Sadoon is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Planetary Technologies, an ocean alkalinity enhancement company working to remove carbon by adding carefully-sourced alkaline materials to the ocean.Listen in to hear about the enormous logistical and scientific puzzle of finding the right alkalinity sources, getting them to the right ocean sites without breaking the LCA, and the lessons learned from Planetary's Cornwall and Tufts Cove projects. It's a show about community engagement, the surprising value of relationships in carbon removal sales, humor, and how Omar's background as a mental health nurse shaped his approach to partnership building.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPRainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackPlanetary Technologies"Planetary Technologies Cancels Its mCDR Project In Cornwall" in Carbon HeraldGuano and imperialism
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389: How to Grow Regen Ag without Carbon Credits—w/ Emma Fuller, Cofounder of Fractal Agriculture
Sometimes when people think they are coming at an issue from first principles, they're already pretty far downstream. What if rethinking an issue means really blowing past the current framework entirely and figuring out how to get the result in an entirely new way?Emma Fuller is the Cofounder of Fractal Agriculture, a firm which takes minority equity stakes in farmland to help farmers switch to more regenerative practices.Listen in to hear more about how to do business in an extremely creative way that blends customer insights and clever design to reduce friction, correct misaligned incentives, and the bypass the pathologies of the old way of doing things.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPRainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackFractal AgricultureFractal Ag on LinkedIn
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388: The Quest to Engineer the Best Carbon Removal Credits—One Year of Residual Carbon w/ Ted Christie-Miller
Carbon removal used to have technology developers who were also project developers. But oh, the times they are a-changin'...What happens when grizzled CDR veterans pluck technology off the shelf and focus on developing projects that produce highly insurable, investable, and offtakeable carbon removal credits?You get something like Residual Carbon.Ted Christie-Miller is the cofounder of Residual and is on the show to discuss the lessons he learned from one year as the carbon partner of numerous projects he has under development, as well as his process of raising funds from family offices.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPRainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackResidual CarbonPeep Show
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The beautiful uncut hair of graves—Walt Whitman on the equality of death
Sometimes we talk carbon removal. Sometimes we talk poetry. Come let me read you one of my favorite Walt Whitman poems from "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass. We'll also explore why it's okay to love only some elements of a work of art, and why Whitman's kaleidoscopic view of grass is so remarkable.A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,Growing among black folks as among white,Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.Tenderly will I use you curling grass,It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken,It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, soon out of their mothers' laps,And here you are the mothers' laps.This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,Darker than the colorless beards of old men,Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.What do you think has become of the young and old men?And what do you think has become of the women and children?They are alive and well somewhere,The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.—From Leaves of Grass (David McKay, Publisher, 1891) by Walt Whitman.ResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackSong of Myself, 6 [A child said, What is the grass?] from Leaves of GrassWalt WhitmanLeave of GrassFreemasonry
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387: Carbon Efficiency vs. Everything Else—Are We Solving for the Polycrisis or Climate Change?
Are we trying to get parts per million of greenhouse gases down as quickly as possible? Or are also trying to solve the nested problems of fertility, toxicity, and resilience as well as the systems that got us here in the first place?In this episode, I contrast high carbon-efficiency biomass burial approaches (Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage/BiCRS) with biochar and other methods that sacrifice some carbon efficiency but generate wide-ranging cobenefits.We explore commodification, fungibility, and the dream of a “ton is a ton” carbon market—alongside the discomfort some feel when complex ecological realities get flattened into a single tradeable metric. Is that clarity necessary for scale, or does it repeat the same abstractions that helped create the crisis?Ultimately, this isn’t a fight between good and bad actors. It’s a productive friction between two worldviews: the PPM-obsessed technocrats and the polycrisis systems thinkers each have their own blindspots and their own superpowers. My hope is not to settle the debate, but to help you notice where your intuitions land—and why." we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we use when we created them."- Albert Einstein" The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."- Audre Lorde" If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it."- Dwight D. EisenhowerThis Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPRainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack"385: Polycrisis, Collapse, Rebirth: Is Regenerative Economics Inevitable?—w/ Eugene Kirpichov, Work on Climate""384: Graphyte's Strategy is a Masterpiece of Simplicity—w/ Barclay Rogers & Hannah Murnen"
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386: Why Do We Labor in Carbon Removal?
Content Warning: this episode discusses suicide in literature, specifically Judas Iscariot from the Gospel and Javert from Les Misérables.Why do this work? You could be doing so many different things. What calls you to it, and what (or who?!) is doing the calling?In today's monologue show, host Ross Kenyon reflects upon the nature of vocation, aesthetics, and what it means to labor at something as hard as carbon dioxide removal, climate tech, and so many things adjacent.After a first attempt years ago at J. R. R. Tolkien's short story, "Leaf by Niggle," Ross listened to a podcast about it that had been sitting on his phone for years. After revisiting the short story, he was again reminded that art often finds you when the time is ripe."Leaf by Niggle" is a deceptively deep story, which is unsurprising given how strongly Tolkien disliked allegory, and how mythologically dense Lord of the Rings is. In fact, Lord of the Rings has so much symbolic power that many parts of it defy an easy mapping to theology or mythology.This show dives into some of what Ross has learned now that he's in the middle of my career about what kinds of work to do, how to accept unexpected work with grace, and why creativity might be so much weirder than we usually imagine.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPRainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackVocative case"Leaf by Niggle" by J. R. R. TolkienJ. R. R. TolkienC. S. Lewis"222: Leaf by Niggle by Tolkien" from the podcast Classical Things You Should KnowThe Lord of the RingsJudas IscariotJavertLes MisérablesThe Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
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385: Polycrisis, Collapse, Rebirth: Is Regenerative Economics Inevitable? —w/ Eugene Kirpichov, Work on Climate
Are we going to figure out how to get along on a highly stressed planet? Or are we unable to break the patterns that have gotten us here in the first place? Are we too hard-nosed or too woo? A secret third thing?!Today's show features Eugene Kirpichov, founder of Work on Climate, a very popular climate community built to help people transition into climate work. But the longer Eugene stared at the nested set of problems humanity is facing, it no longer seemed like a simple issue of employment and greenhouse gases. In fact, it's kind of everything.Daniel Schmachtenberger's work on risk and game theory led Eugene to regenerative economics and an attempt to create a world where economic activity gives more than it takes, and where we aren't constantly lurching from one crisis to the next.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPRainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry "Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.comResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackEugene's LinkedIn post which inspired the showDaniel SchmachtenbergerWork on ClimateThinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows"364: Lowering the Onion into Hell: Strategic Realism vs. Christian Pacifism" on Reversing Climate Change"Peter Thiel and the Antichrist" by Ross Douthat at The New York Times
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384: Graphyte's Strategy Is a Masterpiece of Simplicity—w/ Barclay Rogers & Hannah Murnen
So many people think they need to dream up wild new tech to be successful at carbon removal. But one of CDR's most ascendent companies is relentlessly simple. They're so linear that I scrambled to make sure I wasn't missing something... In fact, if you've ever received coaching from me about simplicity, this is where I'm sending you from now on.I recently completed Noah Deich and Dr. Jen Wilcox's UPenn continuing education course, CDR Executive Education Program/Purchasing Carbon Removal Credits. It was wonderful and I highly recommend it.It did require a few homework assignments and a group project based upon a project developer. I chose Graphyte and their work putting waste biomass into bricks, wrapping them in polymer, and burying them underground. This is part of the class of projects called BiCRS (pronounced "bikers"), or Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage.Today's show has Dr. Hannah Murnen, Graphyte's CTO, and Barclay Rogers, Graphyte's Co-Founder and CEO, on to correct my homework from the course. I've never had a show quite like this.My sincere respect to each of them for digging into this with me and sharing their numbers. Not everyone in CDR is willing or able to do that, and I'm so happy we got to do that together.This show also inspired me to make an episode about linearity vs. holistic thinking in CDR. If one focuses on carbon efficiency, Graphyte makes so much sense. But are we optimizing only for solving climate change, or is this a polycrisis that requires a much deeper and interconnected approach? What you choose may say just as much about your values and how you perceive the problem. Stay tuned...This Episode's SponsorPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack"381: Carbon Removal's False Peak as Mapped by Noah Deich"S2E25: The DAC-up plan for climate change—w/ Dr. Jen Wilcox of Worcester Polytechnic Institute"GraphyteGraphyte's page on its registry, IsometricThe 2024 Project Design Document (PDD) for Graphyte's Loblolly projectUPenn's Purchasing Carbon Removal Credits courseCDR Executive Education ProgramCarbon efficiency is how much of the carbon remains after the source material has been converted into a form of carbon removal, e.g. Graphyte loses very little carbon back to the atmosphere between waste biomass, processing, and burial. Biochar has a lower carbon efficiency because more carbon is released during pyrolysis. It isn't the only factor that matters, but has major repercussions for calculating net removals and which project types are suitable for which goals.PolycrisisI had to dig to figure out where I got the Nintendo insight from, but it originates from Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters.
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383: The Biochar Company Owned by a Data Center Company Owned by Private Equity—w/ Alastair Collier, A Healthier Earth
Are we thinking about biochar financial strategy all wrong? It's not often a good fit for venture capital, but is it actually a great fit for private equity? It might be, at least if you can get the ticket size big enough...Today's guest is Alastair Collier, Chief R&D Officer at A Healthier Earth, a biochar project developer that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pure DC, a data center project developer, who is supported by Oaktree Capital Management, a private equity firm (which in my understanding, does several other things beyond private equity.)Alastair explains how A Healthier Earth went down this road, why he's okay with giving up ownership of his company and accepting a management compensation plan rather than looking to a venture-backed exit, and why more biochar project developers should obsess over conventional business metrics rather than why biochar is going to save the world.Whether one wants to chart the same course or not, it's important for all those who work in carbon removal to know what kinds of deals are possible in what may prove to be a challenging 2026.Listen up, as Alastair has a lot of valuable advice to share in this one.This Episode's SponsorPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackA Healthier EarthPure DCOatkree Capital ManagementWholly-owned subsidiary (I said "fully" in the intro, which is a synonym but "wholly" is technically more correct)Private equityEddington (the newest Ari Aster film that features some of the politics of building data centers, albeit less urban...)Deus ex machina"The Biochar Blueprint: A developers guide to scale"Philip Lee LLP
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382: Silicates vs. Carbonates: How the 1996 IPCC Report Created Enhanced Rock Weathering Path Dependency—w/ Dr. Tyler Kukla, CarbonPlan
Some decisions we don't expect to have big consequences. And yet, sometimes you wake up thirty years later in a world deeply altered by that little moment. Today's show is about when that happens in science.Dr. Tyler Kukla is a Research Scientist at CarbonPlan, one of carbon removal's preeminent watchdog nonprofits. He returns to the show to explore how a conservative estimation of how much carbon returns to the atmosphere after agliming with carbonate rock (all of it) in the 1996 IPCC report has led us into a commercial carbon removal future that focuses almost entirely on silicate rock.This isn't a story about whether silicates or carbonates are better for enhanced weathering (it really depends upon a number of geographic factors and design decisions around system boundaries and additionality), but about how some good faith placeholders can reify to such an extent that they do so much more than they were ever expected to.This Episode's SponsorPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackRevised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories"Scaling enhanced weathering in limed fields" by Tyler Kukla"Evidence for carbon sequestration by agricultural liming" by Dr. Stephen K. Hamilton, et al"The contribution of agricultural lime to carbon dioxide emissions in the United States: dissolution, transport, and net emissions" by Drs. Tristam O. West & Allen C. McBride"Contribution of agricultural liming to riverine bicarbonate export and CO2 sequestration in the Ohio River basin" by Drs. Neung-Hwan Oh & Peter A. Raymond"Farming with crops and rocks to address global climate, food and soil security" by Dr. David J. Beerling, et alSilicatesCarbonatesAgricultural lime (aglime)Path dependence
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381: Carbon Removal's False Peak as mapped by Noah Deich
Life gotten harder recently? You must have just leveled up. We all thought we were doing the very hard work necessary to scale carbon removal, but was this ultimately a false peak? When you climb to what you think is the top of the mountain only to find a lot more mountain lurking behind it?Today's show is with Noah Deich, a carbon removal mover and shaker with his thumbprint on many of the biggest organizations and policies in the world. He recently completed a year in the prestigious Stripe Climate Fellows program, which selected a cohort of some of the sharpest people in CDR to develop new approaches to grow demand for carbon removal. Noah's effort was an attempt to create an Advance Market Commitment structure like Frontier but for governments rather than corporations. You'll hear how that went in this episode...Noah and host Ross Kenyon also laugh about the old days of commercial carbon removal, their mistaken beliefs (and maybe mostly Ross's), and try to chart a course forward for our crucial but incredibly trying work.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackHere's an article about some of the aftermath of the International Maritime Organization decarbonization plan failureStripe Climate FellowsFrontierAdvance market commitmentCarbon180"17: Noah Deich and Giana Amador of the Center for Carbon Removal"Free tradeProtectionism
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380: Ezra Klein's Abundance vs. Paul Kingsnorth's Machine—Wizards & Prophets All the Way Down...
The perennial fight returns... In one corner, there are the wizards: optimists who are betting that technology and economic growth can solve our problems faster than it can create them? In the other corner, prophets: who believe we have deeply lost in our way in ignoring limits and that we need to get ourselves back to the garden.How much wizard and how much prophet do you have contained in your own heart?Today's monologue episode has host Ross Kenyon exploring two recent books: Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson's Abundance, and Paul Kingsnorth's Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, regarding how they continue the oldest and deepest fight in environmentalism.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackAgainst the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul KingsnorthAbundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson"S2E53: Paul Kingsnorth on the shared roots of climate crisis, transhumanism, & immortality"TeleologyYin and yang"S2E15: Are you a wizard or a prophet?—w/ Charles C. Mann"The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World by Charles C. Mann1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. MannJoseph Schumpeter & creative destructionJohn ZerzanDunbar's NumberPrimitivismThe World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond (do note the disputing of a claim I echoed from the book, that violence can be endemic in hunter-gatherer societies; take my words with a grain of salt here)YIMBYNational Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)ZapatistasBattle of Seattle"Anyway, Here's Wonderwall" memeThe Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation SocietyEnabled Emissions CampaignAmory LovinsWendell BerryRay KurzweilWhat Technology Wants by Kevin KellyIf Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate SoaresA brief interpretation of some of Peter Thiel's Greta Thunberg antichrist commentsA House of Dynamite (film)"The mountains are calling and I must go."- John Muir“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”- Albert Einstein (attributed)"The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."- Audre Lorde
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The universal cannibalism of the sea vs. one insular Tahiti—My favorite chapter of Moby-Dick
With a matchup like that, who would win?I love this chapter from Moby-Dick. It so perfectly contrasts sublime beauty of the world and the raw horror of life. I was thinking of it often while on my recent sailing trip aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl from Seattle to San Francisco.Sit back and let me read the chapter for you, and may it inspire you to crack open some Herman Melville.ResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackChapter 58: Brit, from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or The Whale"377: One Week Before the Mast—A Climate Sailing Travelogue from Seattle to San Francisco""ASMR: Your one-hundred year-old Norwegian tall ship is sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean""The Beauty and Terror of the World", the Substack piece which has the full chapter text and me reading it
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379: Another Side of Sebastian Manhart...
It's that special time of year to put away worldly cares and focus on family, giving, and... carbon removal? Did I read that right?Come hang with Ross and CDR force of nature Sebastian Manhart to discuss family, parenthood, hope for the future, the quest to expand the moral sphere, and why we should be focusing on trendlines and not headlines.Happy Holidays, however you choose to spend it!This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackSebastian Manhart's websiteCarbonfutureGigaten newsletterLeila Conner's video podcast of Gigaten with Sebastian Manhart"368: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: Carbon Removal's Feature Film Debut, LEGION 44—w/ Leila Conners, filmmaker"Tree MediaLegion 44CDRJobsDeutscher Verband für negative Emissionen e.V. (DVNE): one of the many trade organizations for CDR Sebastian has been a major part ofCDR Policy ScoopSebastian Manhart's LinkedIn post about the 5% max of international credits that may potentially be used for European carbon compliance"The Monkey's Paw" article on TvTropesPet Sematary
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378: When Bad Companies Buy Good Carbon Removal
Is the voluntary carbon market a club for saints? Or is it a hospital for sinners? Are we meant to understand all and then to forgive all? How much time are we meant to devote to idealistic abstinence-esque policies for change, and how much of our professional lives should go to harm reduction?Today's show deals with some of the biggest questions in carbon removal and carbon markets, and does it in just the kind of literary-philosophical ways that make this shows its own... whatever it is that it is.Trust me and I'll guide you through the history of the Soviet Union and at least one Warsaw Pact country, David Simon, critical theory, German nuclear policy, the Bill Gates piece that ruffled all feathers one way or another, the Enabled Emissions Campaign, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, I Heart Huckabees, and Bicycle Thieves.Some days you hit record and you never quite know what you're going to discover...N.B. The image today is Vaclav Havel's greengrocer from "The Power of the Powerless" as illustrated by his Czech compatriot, Josef Lada, who did the original illustrations for Jaroslav Hašek's incredibly funny,The Good Soldier Švejk, who is a sort of antiwar/pacifistic Amelia Bedelia who messes things up in the Army by being a bit too literal and a bit too eager to follow orders.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackThe Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav HašekKhrushchev ThawThe Death of Stalin filmVaclav Havel"The Power of the Powerless" by Vaclav Havel; it's abridged here but you can click through to the full thing if you'd likeDeirdre McCloskey"The Clash of Aristocratic and Bourgeois Virtues in 'The Wire'" by Dr. Bart WilsonThe WireGreat PurgeHolodomor (the Ukrainian Famine)Katyn Massacre (NSFW: death pit image is first thing on Wikipedia)"The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy DebordJean Baudrillard"Three tough truths about climate" by Bill GatesGermany closing nuclear power plantsEnabled Emissions CampaignAlexander SolzhinitsynVasily GrossmanEverything Flows by Vasily GrossmanI Heart HuckabeesBicycle Thieves
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ASMR: Your one-hundred year-old Norwegian tall ship is sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean
Gentle wind, sail, and ocean sounds with looped video taken during a trip from Seattle to San Francisco aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl for the One Ocean Expedition.
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377: One Week Before the Mast—A Climate Sailing Travelogue from Seattle to San Francisco
One could fly to the Bay Area in about ninety minutes, but what if it took a week, enormous amounts of teamwork on a 111-year-old Norwegian sailing barque, and caused a near-universal seasickness in thirty-foot seas?Today's show is a monologue about my experience sailing from Seattle to San Francisco on the Statsraad Lehmkuhl for the One Ocean Expedition. I'm an Executive in Residence at Maritime Blue, which sponsored this leg of the trip to raise awareness of the challenges facing the world ocean, its many inhabitants, and ourselves.The show is about many of the practicalities of living and working among one hundred other scientists and sailors, but it's also about so much more. It's about anxiety, proximity to nature, and a reminder that humans aren't always in charge. And that also, sometimes you don't have to do the thing you really don't want to do, and why that might just be okay.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change"ASMR: Your one-hundred year-old Norwegian tall ship is sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean" "The universal cannibalism of the sea vs. one insular Tahiti—My favorite chapter of Moby-Dick", bonus episode related to this episode"The Beauty and Terror of the World": a Substack post about the Moby-Dick chapterStatsraad LehmkuhlOne Ocean ExpeditionMaritime BlueThe Essentials Of Living Aboard A Boat: The definitive Guide for Liveaboards by Mark NicholasJohn Kretschmer Sailing"S2E33: Sailing in the age of climate change—w/ John Kretschmer, author and sailor"Zorba the Greek by Nikos KazantzakisHomerThe Annapolis Book of Seamanship by John RousmaniereUniversity of Washington School of OceanographyKarl Ove KnausgårdBrunost: the brown cheese of NorwaySailing La Vagabonde
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376: The Tragedy of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection—w/ Dr. Shuchi Talati of The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering
Long a pariah climate solution, Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is having its mainstream moment. As the climate movement ponders the planet's deep overshoot, more conversations about geoengineering, solar radiation management, global cooling, etc. are taking place in the open. Moreover, for-profit entities are raising venture rounds, with Stardust recently announcing a $60M Series A to commercialize their approach to SAI. This moment is feeling genuinely new, and it feels this way to today's guest Dr. Shuchi Talati of The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering too.While I believe we should do the research and have the governance ready for possible future deployment lest it be done in a much less responsible way (I do not enjoy writing these words one single bit), I am finding it hard to accept its use as anything less than tragedy. Some felt this way about carbon removal, and I have greater sympathy for that feeling now too. The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk...Is SAI an instance of brave humans deploying life-saving technology? Or Promethean hubris for which we should keep our livers guarded? How much should the profit motive influence SAI deployment, if at all? I don't have all of the answers—nor pretend to–but I can point you to the emotional and spiritual core of it that helps me make sense of being a historical actor with agency at this moment in time.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeThe Alliance for a Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering"S3E56: Could there be a just solar geoengineering?—w/ Shuchi Talati, Founder of The Alliance for a Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering""I See a Darkness—The Climate Movement Expects Deep Overshoot"Stratospheric aerosol injection on WikipediaStardust Solutions, a Geoengineering Startup, Raises $60 Million to Build a Solar-Reflecting System by 2030 on HeatmapLichen VenturesMan's Search for Meaning by Viktor FranklTragic triadDwight D. Eisenhower's Chance for Peace speech"There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."- Fyodor Dostoyevsky“Let us first ask ourselves what should be understood by “a tragic optimism.” In brief it means that one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad,” … a triad which consists of … (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death. This … raises the question, How is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all that? How … can life retain its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects? After all, “saying yes to life in spite of everything,” …presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation. … hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism … an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action."- Viktor Frankl in the postscript to Man's Search for Meaning"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."- Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Chance for Peace speech
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375: This CDR Marketplace Bought a Biochar Company. Now What?!—w/ Josiah Hunt of Pacific Biochar & Sophie Westover of Wren
Wren recently purchased a majority stake in Pacific Biochar, one of carbon removal's most prolific credit deliverers. What led to this deal, and will this model be emulated in a 2026 that might find carbon removal companies interested in (or maybe desperate for) deals that prolong runway and keep their companies alive?Wren is one of the oldest marketplaces (and so much more) in carbon removal with a record of doing things differently. Sophie Westover is their Head of Climate and is on the show representing their thinking on this deal.Josiah Hunt is the Founder and CEO of Pacific Biochar. He's been making biochar since before most of us knew it was a thing. He shares a lot of realness about the difficulties of being a project developer—even a successful one—in carbon removal.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackWrenPacific Biochar"Wren proudly invests in Pacific Biochar to scale carbon removal"In case you want to see Pacific Biochar on the cdr.fyi supplier leaderboard.Benefit corporationKita"313: Can carbon removal be insured?—w/ Racheal Notto & James Kench, Kita"
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374: Mining with Microbes: Biomimicry in Copper Extraction—w/ Liz Dennett, PhD, CEO & Founder of Endolith
What if microbes could help us mine responsibly? What if astrobiology—the study of life beyond Earth—held clues for how to fix the way we extract resources on Earth?Today’s guest is Liz Dennett, CEO and founder of Endolith, a biotech startup using microbes to boost copper recovery from mining waste. With a PhD in astrobiology, experience at NASA, and a career spanning oil, gas, and data science, Dennett is one of the most fascinating polymaths in climate tech.This episode dives into how microbes mine metals, why copper is civilization’s next constraint, and what it means to clean up an industry everyone loves to hate. Ross and Liz also explore the moral contradictions of “ethical extraction,” the realities of startup life, and how humor—and humility—might be the best renewable resources of all.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackEndolith's websiteEarth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future by Dr. David Grinspoon47: David Grinspoon, AstrobiologistGeology Cage Match: The Sapiezoic vs. the AnthropoceneBill NyeEukaryogenesisAbiogenesisEntropyCobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth KaraThe War BelowLithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest ScheyderDeus ex machina“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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We are the Dead—Why I Love Armistice Day
World War I profoundly changed the world. Nation-states replaced empires. Russia went communist. Fascism arrived. The West's claim to being the most civilized peoples on Earth was supremely undermined. And out of so much suffering, we received a holiday prioritizing grief and mercy.This bonus episode is me speed-running World War I and sharing some reflections on Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veterans Day, or however you might call it.If you carry any of this grief with you personally, I hope you are able to forgive yourself and others. The choices of this world are not always easy, and we make mistakes.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPResources"In Flanders Fields" by John McCraeThere are a lot of references in this show. Normally I'd link, but for now, maybe just look some of them up if you feel so inclined.
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373: Crucial Questions We Must Answer about Adapting to Climate Change—w/ Dr. Susannah Fisher, author of Sink or Swim
Adaptation begins at home. But it doesn't end there. What do you plan on doing with your family as climate change gets worse? Are you already making plans whether to stay or go? How should states respond as people flee disaster? Who should get access to fish stocks as they migrate to new regions? Once one starts asking these questions, they really don't stop...Today's guest is Susannah Fisher, author of the new book, Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate. It's a wonderful catalogue of questions that asks and frames so many crucial discussions around people, nature, and politics.Much of the first half of the show is about how it feels to start thinking about adaptation and resilience rather than more optimistic mitigation work, and why adaptation can bring its own solace. We might not need to panic just yet... and I enjoyed getting some emotional centering from Susannah's deep experience in A&R research and policy work.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackSusannah Fisher's Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing ClimateLichen VenturesChristina FigueresOutrage + Optimism podcastAdverse selection, which is the economics term for the problems of insurance and public schooling that I reference"332: If Climate Change Can Impact Behavior, How Much Agency Do We Actually Have?—w/ Clayton Aldern, author of The Weight of Nature"Thames River BarrierThere are various services where you can enter your address and view statistical flood and fire risk. Unfortunately since I last used it the one I used to use has been taken down...""372: Climate Change on the Battlefield: New Missions, New Kit, New Theaters—w/ Erin Sikorsky, Director of The Center for Climate and Security""S2E50: Under a White Sky: Elizabeth Kolbert's new book on humanity's ecological & climate interventions"Earthshot PrizeYellow Jackets in France protestsKatrina: Come Hell and High Water by Spike Lee
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372: Climate Change on the Battlefield: New Missions, New Kit, New Theaters—w/ Erin Sikorsky, Director of The Center for Climate and Security
Is climate change a fringe and woke distraction in military planning that inhibits lethality? Or is it invaluable strategic context for this century's power projection? What kinds of missions will soldiers be asked to perform in a world that is getting hotter and more complex?Today's guest is Erin Sikorsky, Director of The Center for Climate and Security and author of the new book, Climate Change on the Battlefield: International Military Responses to the Climate Crisis.Though this show is not merely about warfighting and lethality. It's about what it means to have an apolitical military (if that term isn't too contestable). It's also about the military increasingly adapting its own facilities to climate change, and being tasked with many more disaster response missions than it has been previously. What does it mean to have an armed force that is spending more time fighting forest fires than preparing for amphibious assaults? Is this even the correct service to be addressing disasters?I'd like to do many more episodes on this topic in the future. It's one that I find endlessly fascinating.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackErin Sikorsky's bio at The Center for Climate and SecurityErin's book, Climate Change on the Battlefield: International Military Responses to the Climate CrisisIan W. Toll's Pacific War Trilogy deals with interwar Japan, especially Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942. Listen also to the episode of the podcast I did with him here, "S3E34: The Environmental Impact of WW2 in the Pacific Theatre—w/ Ian W. Toll, author of The Pacific War Trilogy".Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episode "Supernova in the East 1" deals with this extensively too.Lucius Quinctius CincinnatusI started reading Pete Hegseth's The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, and would like to keep reading more criticism of the conflict between military preparedness and climate change.Listen in to the episode I did with Jeff Goodell where we discuss how the military thinks about climate change, "S3E51: The Heat Will Kill You First—w/ Jeff Goodell, author and contributing editor of Rolling Stone"Also, read his book The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized WorldGreat Green FleetGreat White FleetDiscounting/time preferenceCobra problemArctic Council“Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state.”― Voltaire
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371: Can Carbon Removal Grow with Sports? Why Athletic Media Goes Up and to the Right—w/ Aidan Preston of Milkywire
Much of legacy media is dying. You know what isn't? Live sports. Where the outcome is uncertain, people want to watch.That means bringing together large numbers of fans and athletes. And what does that all add up to? Emissions. And emissions that could potentially be detached from profitability, leading to budgets large enough to support meaningful carbon removal.But will sports leagues move in this direction? Or is it better that it stay at the level of individual teams jockeying for brand value from climate action?Today's guest is Dr. Aidan Preston, Senior Impact Manager of Milkywire and former Advisor to the United States Department of Energy.Aidan is a sports fanatic and the author of Milkywire's latest report, "The Climate Cost of Growth in Sport: An Opportunity for Sports to Win on Climate".We discuss the evolving media landscape around sports, the creation and surprising rise of new sports, the omnipresence of sports betting, and how all of this might play out for carbon removal and climate action.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack"The Climate Cost of Growth in Sport: An Opportunity for Sports to Win on Climate", a Milkywire report by Dr. Aidan Preston350: Robert Höglund Presents: The Many Perils of Being Catalytic in a Carbon Accounting WorldFIFA"Mohammad Ali — Amazing Speed"; watch this video for the out-of-this-world dodges aloneAmerica's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders; you can see the F1 and golf series on Netflix too30 for 30KayfabeAidan recommended this Michael Lewis podcast on sports bettingAidan sent me the link to this study on how talking to strangers brings satisfactionAcquired episode about Indian Premier League Crickethttps://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-everything-became-televisionCUR8Taylor Swift and the Chiefs/NFLJason Isbell on being the subject of the documentary, Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed: "Yet Isbell admits there were times during the filming process when he needed a moment to himself. “I would leave the room, or unplug my microphone and get away from the camera. Sometimes it was too much,” he says. “But once the footage was all there and edited together, I didn’t use any sort of veto power or take anything out.”"The Gulf of Aden (sorry, Aidan; I couldn't help it...)
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370: This CDR Legend Just Catalogued (Nearly) All Carbon Removal Companies—w/ Grant Faber
What happens when you build a list of very nearly every carbon dioxide removal company in existence? You get access to intriguing data and the pride of a very laborious job done well. Presumably you also get to take a nap.Grant Faber is a long-time carbon removal community fixture working on Life Cycle Analysis and Techno-Economic Assessment. Formerly of the Department of Energy, he now works with Absolute Climate (coincidentally, a sponsor of this episode!)Listen is as Grant shares what he has learned about looking at so many technology and project developers, whether it is better to be one-of-a-kind or in a community of methodological fellow travelers, and where he would go if he were ready to found his own company.He also avoids the risk of creating an alphabetical list of French cinema only to have it be called "seminal" in a cloak room. (Sorry, obligatory Peep Show reference...)This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack337: Fired from the Department of Energy: Carbon Removal's DOGE Night of the Soul—w/ Grant Faber, Carbon-Based Consulting333: Coproduction & Additionality: How Do We Draw the Line for Carbon Removal?—w/ Grant Faber, Carbon-Based Consulting359: Why Is the Pulp and Paper Industry So Great for CDR?—w/ Natalie Khtikian & Jon Rhone, Cofounders of CO280363: Carbon Markets and The Art of Not Being Governed: Legibility vs. Complexity in James C. Scott—w/ Grant FaberGrant's blog, Carbon-Based CommentaryAquarryCarbonRunSinkco LabsGrant's list (link to come)Notes from Alkali Earth on SubstackNoya winddown post on LinkedInRyan Anderson's MegaDAC DatabaseBob Woodward on WikipediaResidualCO280Deep Sky
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369: I See a Darkness—The Climate Movement Expects Deep Overshoot
I came back from New York Climate Week energized. I loved seeing everyone. But many of the conversations I had profoundly scared me. We're staring into the abyss of deep overshoot, and it's staring back into us.What would it mean for us to make peace with a world that doesn't decarbonize fast enough? That doesn't scale carbon removal before tipping points are reached? That is forced into more radical geoengineering approaches that may just be one more layer of intervention that we will likely manage just as badly?This is an emotional show. It's about war. It's about the Holocaust. It's about what it means to fail, and to fail gracefully, and how imagining how you would feel if you lost everything can potentially offer an unexpected lightness.This Episode's SponsorsAbsolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registriesPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersListen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute ClimateListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackThis episode title is a reference to Bonnie "Prince" Billy's excellent song, "I See a Darkness." I enjoy the slow version, but I adore the jauntier one's sense of irony, hope, and despair.The art is William Blake's work on Job.The riding the bomb scene from Dr. StrangeloveThucydides TrapDestined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap by Graham Allison338: Carbon Security and the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah GodekThe Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China by Kevin Rudd (here's his correct name!)Guns and butter"Ukraine's Zelenskyy issues a stark warning about a global arms race and AI war", NPRCassandraJobEternal returnLiberum Veto330: Frostpunk 2: Climate Video Games and Humane Storytelling at 11 bit studios—w/ Maciej Sulecki of This War of Mine, Frostpunk 1 & 2Ken Krimstein's When I Grow UpBloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy SnyderHasidic JudaismVilna GaonPartitions of PolandMolotov-Ribbentrop PactHolodomorThe RoadThe Bridge on the River Kwai"Life unworthy of life"The unfinished business of ghostsDante's Divine Comedy—both Cantos VI & XVI have this feel"In man's life his time is a mere instant, his existence a flux, his perception fogged, his whole bodily composition rotting, his mind a whirligig, his fortune unpredictable, his fame unclear. To put it shortly: all things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit in a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.What then can escort us on our way? One thing, and one thing only: philosophy. This consists in keeping the divinity within us inviolate and free from harm, master of pleasure and pain, doing nothing without aim, truth, or integrity, and independent of others' action or failure to act. Further, accepting all that happens and is allotted to it as coming from that other source which is its own origin: and at all times awaiting death with the glad confidence that it is nothing more than the dissolution of the elements of which every living creature is composed. Now if there is nothing fearful for the elements themselves in their constant changing of each into another, why should one look anxiously in prospect at the change and dissolution of them all? This is in accordance with nature: and nothing harmful is in accordance with nature."— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Two, 17
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368: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: Carbon Removal's Feature Film Debut, LEGION 44—w/ Leila Conners, filmmaker
We all want to make sure carbon removal works. But who is working to make it beautiful? And could creating beauty be one of the most important jobs in all of climate?Leila Conners is a filmmaker who has been making environmental films for decades, including legendary ones like The 11th Hour with Leonardo DiCaprio. Her latest opus is Legion 44, which is a wonderful documentary highlighting so many alumni from this podcast and the CDR industry.We also discuss why the antihero is such a popular archetype, how you should construct your media diet, and the role of the feature film when long-form and short-form content are polarizing media duration.Legion 44 is now available for viewing on its own website and several other places, as well as on Tree+: Leila's new tv channel that you can download right to your smart tv. Please support her work spotlighting climate solutions and the delightful world of carbon removers."The world will be saved by beauty."- Fyodor Dostoyevsky-- Dorothy Day--- Michael Scott (jk... unless?)This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersArbonics: forestry project developer in the EUListen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from ArbonicsListen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLPBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackLeila Conners IMDbLegion 44Tree MediaTree+ tv channelThe 11th HourKoyaanisqatsiPhilip Glass's theme from KoyaanisqatsiDorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother is also a lovely book by Kate Hennessy, and also probably what highlighted this beautiful sentiment for me.Ari AsterHereditaryGraham HancockDavid Attenborough
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367: Is CDR Even Using "Bankability" Correctly?—w/ Ryan Covington, Attorney at Philip Lee LLP
Or "project finance", for that matter? Or are these just the current words we say at happy hours?Today, we attempt to nail down some of these definitions so we might have a chance of achieving either of these concepts.Ryan Covington is an attorney and partner in the Climate Projects team of Philip Lee (US) LLP, focused on the development and financing of engineered and nature-based carbon projects. Ryan shares his experience in structuring large financial deals in the carbon removal and climate tech space.Can carbon removal ever achieve scale without sufficient commercial finesse? Likely not, but isn't it pretty to think so?This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersArbonics: forestry project developer in the EUListen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from ArbonicsBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceUse this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcastsSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackJ'Accuse...!Ryan Covington's profile at Philip Lee LLPPhilip Lee LLP's Climate Projects pageThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest HemingwayMidnight in Paris scene with Ernest Hemingway"359: Why Is the Pulp and Paper Industry So Great for CDR?—w/ Natalie Khtikian & Jon Rhone, Co-Founders of CO280"
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I'm sailing from Seattle to San Francisco. Want to tag along?
Are you interested in sailing from Seattle to San Francisco on a sailing vessel older than World War 1?! Well, you can at the end of October 2025. Moreover, you'll be crewing alongside me.I recently joined the team of Maritime Blue as an Executive in Residence, working with ocean tech startups on commercial strategy, storytelling, and go-to-market. They're putting on a fabulous ocean conference in Seattle October 20th-26th.Right after that and until November 3rd is a passage they've chartered onboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl that you can join as working crew.Check out the links to Maritime Blue, One Ocean Week, and the One Ocean Expedition below!ResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackMaritime BlueOne Ocean WeekOne Ocean Expedition (book your passage here!)Statsraad Lehmkuhl on WikipediaS2E33: Sailing in the age of climate change—w/ John Kretschmer, author and sailorI found the image on Wikipedia and it is is: By Ronnie Robertson - Statsraad IMG_5206, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56179943I take no responsibility for the success or failure of the trip. Participation is at your own discretion. I have personally accepted the risk for myself, but every person must choose for themselves.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Reversing Climate Change is a podcast that bridges science, technology, and policy with the richness of the humanities. From the forefront of carbon removal and climatetech to explorations of literature, history, philosophy, theology, and geopolitics, we dive deep into the people, ideas, and innovations shaping a better future for the planet and its inhabitants.If you love the show, please become a paid subscriber on Spotify.
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Carbon Removal Strategies LLC
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