E132 Shannon Smith: The Truth Behind Offsets

Carbon markets could be the backbone of climate finance.Shannon Smith, Chief Commercial Officer at Chestnut Carbon, joins Rich Stockdale PhD to unpack one of the most controversial tools in climate finance. From planting 30,000 acres of diverse forests to signing a 25-year, 7-million-tonne carbon removal deal with Microsoft, Chestnut Carbon is moving at scale. Backed by JP Morgan, powered by LIDAR and data science, their projects aim to rebuild trust in an industry riddled with scandals.This conversation gets into the big questions: can we value nature without selling it out? What happens when Wall Street meets the wild? And is this the bold new future of climate action — or its biggest gamble yet?