Reversing Climate Change

Carbon removal isn't that old. So for someone who's been involved in it for almost fifteen years... that's an elder. And today he's bringing the wisdom he earned the hard way.

Dave Addison is formerly the Virgin Earth Challenge Manager, an effort he began working on in 2010. That's about six years before I had even heard of CDR, so a long time indeed!

Should every dollar spent in carbon removal be maximally catalytic? Or is it okay to try to get a really good deal for your net-zero target? What even is this industry for?!

Joining the show today—somehow for the first time ever—is Robert Höglund, a long-time CDR-watcher and writer; Co-Founder of the carbon removal's data repository-of-record, CDR.fyi, and the Head of CDR at Milkywire.

Robert endures a barrage of questions about how his thinking on carbon removal has changed over the years, and him and host Ross Kenyon try to ferret out what it actually means to be catalytic. Is carbon accounting just for knuckleheads? The truth... may surprise you.

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Everyone's focused on carbon credit offtakes and Voluntary Carbon Market purchases, but the compliance markets represent the vast majority of carbon assets in circulation. How do these markets work, and how might carbon removal interact with them in the future?

Mike Azlen is the CEO and CIO of Carbon Cap Management LLP, a firm which trades within various compliance markets.

We discuss why private traders like his company can help price discovery in compliance markets, and address some common criticisms of market-based approaches to climate change (both VCM and compliance markets.)

Carbon removal is going to figure into various compliance markets in the future, but how exactly will that work? Might that be the demand boost that carbon removal needs to scale?

Seemingly everyone in carbon removal says they want more data transparency and the sharing of scientific results. Why isn't open science more present, and how can we get more of it? Could a pre-print server for CDR be part of the solution?

Today is the official launch of CDRXIV ("cee-dee-archive"), a new initiative from CarbonPlan that aims to spur scientific conversations within the carbon removal community.

On this episode, Freya Chay (the CDR Program Lead at CarbonPlan and a Member of the Advisory Board to CDRXIV) and Tyler Kukla (a CDR Research Scientist at CarbonPlan and the Content Manager for CDRXIV) are on the show to explain how pre-print servers drive progress in other scientific fields, why CDR needs one, and how it may change our industry.

Carbon removal only has a few exits. Today’s guest was involved in two of them, and he’s bringing his lessons.

Jim McDermott is the founder and CEO of Rusheen Capital Management, LLC, an investment firm that makes a few early-stage bets and works with companies much more closely than most investors do. He's had a long and storied career in energy and as the founder and CEO of Stamps.com.

Jim shares his lessons from exiting 1PointFive and Carbon Engineering to Occidental Petroleum (who also just bought Holocene, another direct air capture company). He lays out his case for alternatives to the classical venture approach, and proposes a new philanthropic model he believes has a chance of filling in carbon removal’s (in)famous demand gap.

Listen in to lessons for entrepreneurs during tough times and Jim's predictions for direct air capture and the carbon removal sector as a whole.

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In carbon removal, landing a major offtake agreement—like Microsoft’s purchase of 44,000 credits from Carba—is often seen as the holy grail. But what happens next? How does the money flow, and can debt financing bridge the gap between signature and scale?

In this episode of Reversing Climate Change, host Ross Kenyon unpacks the deal between Microsoft and Carba, a waste-to-value biochar company turning landfill-bound biomass in Minnesota into durable carbon removal.

With credits to be delivered over five years, Carba needed capital to ramp up production. Enter Structure Climate, which is financing the deal to help Carba meet its commitments—showcasing a compelling model for how debt finance can unlock climate impact.

Guests Andrew Jones, CEO and Cofounder of Carba, and Matt Schmitt, Founder and CEO of Structure Climate (where Ross serves as an advisor), walk us through the mechanics of the deal, the role of debt vs. equity, and what this means for the future of carbon removal finance.

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Fair warning: this episode spoils a lot of (older) media.

Antiheroes make for great television. But why are we obsessed with them? Why are they in nearly all prestige dramas? Is this a result of our cultural beliefs, or is it (re)producing a culture of cynical realism? What impacts might it have for politics and climate change?

This ascendancy of the antihero is a trend I've been watching (and often enjoying) since my teen years. Shows like The Sopranos helped bring television to its lofty artistic status, but it did so by confusing the natural empathy that good storytelling generates. The longer one watches shows like The Sopranos, the more one ends up rooting for bad guys to be successful. In a world that is ever more mediated by media, could a similar trend be happening in politics?

Today's show is an attempt to make sense of the antihero through a number of prestige dramas, and look for some ways of telling stories that don't lead us into the abyss of constant moral ambiguity.

Today we're going to talk about hope, reclaiming moral authority, and why it's cool to believe in things. I hope you'll join me in that ambition.

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It's a jarring phrase. There's an even more jarring version of it in this episode. You've been warned.

Economists are well-known for gnomic sentences that can sound cruel. For some, that's one of the job's many perks. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some truth in representing decisions as trade-offs.

Today is a bonus monologue episode where I am going to unpack this phrase (and its nastier cousin) and explain what it has to teach the carbon removal industry as it grapples with the tension between scale and quality.

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You should know about my friend Heidi Lim. She's a leading voice of carbon removal on TikTok.

She's been making short-form content for ages but today's show is her first foray into long-form. I have the honor of being her first guest and co-releasing the episode.

It is my sincere honor to help Heidi launch her new content on YouTube!

We get real in this show, talking about the difficult and sometimes unsung work of climate communications, why our world feels so screwed up, and the black hole of tech jobs that suck so much talent into its brain drain.

Best wishes, Heidi! So glad you're now doing this. Count me as a big fan!

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If only there were a podcast that broke down all of the ways climate professionals broke into their industry...

Sometimes, we skip right over the life stories of guests. Othertimes, it's everything. Today, it's everything.

Returning to the show after several years is Carbon180's Executive Director, Erin Burns.

Erin grew up in a coal mining family in West Virginia, got her start in Joe Manchin's Senate office, and has had a long and impactful career in carbon removal.

Today, Erin (re)explains how the budgeting process works in the United States federal government and how the appropriations process intersects with it. What is the difference, and where can voters get involved?

This is truly an improvised masterclass in civics education. Listen up for what you missed in high school, and how it will impact the future of carbon removal.

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The clean energy transition sure needs a heck of a lot of mining. What do we do when there are environmental or spiritual costs to getting the materials we need for EVs and batteries?

Ernest Scheyder is a Reuters reporter covering critical minerals, and the author of The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives.

His reporting strives to let audiences draw their own conclusions about where the line should be on environmental extraction, which is a rarer approach than maybe meets the eye.

Tune in to also learn where the political battles of the second Trump Administration over critical minerals in Ukraine and clean energy politics at home may lead, and what we should keep our eyes on in the future.

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Nearly a decade ago, I was introduced to the concept of the Keynesian Beauty Contest. It is one of those concepts that I keep coming back to time and time again.

I recently participated in a two-month Product-Market Fit workshop led by Peter Nocchiero of Alternate Future and Koray Parmaks of Carbon Zero Capital. So I've been living and breathing PMF.

Here is a short monologue bonus video episode where I talk about the Product-Market Fit issues of climatetech and carbon removal, a now-outdated reference to how TSLA bears kept getting crushed, and relate them to my experiences as a founder of the Nori carbon removal marketplace.

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I first heard the idiom "worse things happen at sea" in Monty Python's Life of Brian, and it's true.

Ian Urbina has made a career of telling stories of the ocean. From piracy, illegal fishing, and sea slavery to seasteading and rogue carbon removal experiments, he's covered the gamut.

How does one continuously report on topics of concern to relatively intimidating people? As the old line goes, "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations."

In today's episode, Ian and host Ross Kenyon discuss these topics, but also broader questions of what is happening to journalism in a political environment where retaliation feels very possible.

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For fans ages 21 and up!

It's often hard to know how sustainable or ethical an alcoholic drink is. Very little disclosure is required on most labels, and many of the recipes are proprietary. What is a conscientious drinker to do?

Shanna Farrell wrote A Good Drink: In Search of Sustainable Spirits in order to answer this exact question.

She and host Ross Kenyon discuss the strange world of amaros (or "amari" if you're really going for it!), whiskey, agave, and gin, and try to figure out how to even begin approaching this difficult consumptive choice.

N.B. If you really want to nerd out on amaro taxonomy, Brad Thomas Parsons's books on amaro and bitters are both quite useful; linked below.

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What is geopolitics, and has it returned? Did it ever really leave? And how will this affect the future prospects of carbon removal?

Today's guest is Sarah Godek, a Washington DC-based international relations researcher. She and Grant Faber co-wrote an article on Carbon-Based Commentary called, "Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal".

We discuss the tension between strategic liberalism and realism, how the world is changing under the second Trump Administration, as well as if and how the Great Game is currently being played and what implications that has for climate change and CDR.

When you take a major pay cut to work in government, you don't expect unceremoniously fired by the Department of Government Efficiency with a change in administration. But it happened to friend of the show, Grant Faber.

Grant Faber was the United States Department of Energy's Direct Air Capture Hubs Program Manager until he was let go as part of the recent firing of probationary federal employees.

In today's episode, Grant explains what he was working on, what it was like being at the DoE during this turbulent time of Trump 2 & DOGE, and what it means for carbon removal, the climate, and the United States moving forward.

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There are a lot of companies that want to buy carbon removal and don't have the budget to participate in Frontier or Symbiosis. What are they to do?

Until now, they either had to pay expensive consultants or vet projects and contracts themselves and stand by their choices alone. No longer!

The new AirMiners Buyers Club could not be arriving at a better time. Federal policy for carbon removal is in an extremely turbulent moment. Buying momentum is not growing to the degree that we need to see. The AirMiners Buyers Club aims to solve for the missing middle of carbon removal buyers.

Do you work at (or know someone who works at) a company that could be passionate about supporting cutting-edge carbon removal companies? Are you a high-net-worth individual? Involved in philanthropy? If so, please reach out to Tito Jankowski directly (tito[at]airminers.com) and see how you can work together to grow CDR during its Dark Night of the Soul.

Seemingly nothing generates hotter passions in carbon credits than forestry. Can credits count against fossil emissions? Is there enough of it to make a difference? What is the appropriate way of funding it?

Today's guest is Lisett Luik, Co-Founder and COO of Arbonics, an innovative forestry company in the Baltic that straddles the line between carbon removal and other services forests can provide.

We discuss if and how forestry can fit into carbon removal, help the planet avoid tipping points, and adequately motivate land managers to employ better practices.

We also play a quick game of bioenergy: friend or foe!

Always more to discuss on forestry, and I doubt this show will be the final word.

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How do registries create carbon removal methodologies? Who should be involved in the process, and to what degree? How does one balance all of the competing attributes and stakeholders?

Today's episode is a show in three parts:

First, Nori co-founder and host ofReversing Climate Changeintroduces the context for the main segment which was recorded the better part of a year before its airing. He explores whether or not the quasi-regulatory requirement for registries not to also be marketplaces leads to proprietary methodologies.

Secondly, as Nori has closed down since the recording of this episode, Ross chats with Anu Khan, the Founder and Executive Director of the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative to discuss her work of building an ark for carbon removal methodologies and how that work informs policy and the growth of carbon removal.

Thirdly, is the original body of the podcast where Ross speaks with Radhika Moolgavkar, formerly the VP of Supply & Methodology at Nori, and Rick Berg, formerly Nori’s Director of Methodology, about the development of Nori’s Direct Air Capture + Storage methodology.

They discuss the importance of open methodology development for transparency and trust, and ungating their work so that others can use it and adapt it under the right Creative Commons licensure.

The nuts and bolts of how the expert advisory panel and public comment period work, as well as how that feedback filters back into the methodology, is explained.

The podcast also covers the decision behind selecting DAC amongst all of the other CDR methodologies, the challenges in methodology harmonization across registries and geographies, and how to handle the future of methodological updates as the industry evolves and more is learned.

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Dear listener,

Thank you so much for being a fan of the show. You could be listening to anything with your one wild and precious life and I do not take that for granted. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

Now that the show is independent, I am working to make it financially viable. Can I count on you to help support Reversing Climate Change by doing any of the following?

It is sometimes claimed that adoption could be a climate solution. After all, if there are kids needing parents and parents wanting kids, adopting might replace the desire to create more children. Is adoption something we should encourage to reduce environmental risk?

Today we have four(!) parents of adopted children on the podcast. Each of them tells their story at the start of the show, including:

Additionality is typically considered a major marker of quality in carbon removal. But what do we do when carbon removal suppliers are producing other types of products and services that make them less dependent upon voluntary carbon market revenue?

Perhaps even more importantly, how do we have a productive disagreement on this topic? Bringing up some concerns can open one to criticism. But we also depend upon people thinking differently in order to advance our understanding of the world and the types of value we create. How do we make sure we aren't encouraging crackpot analysis while also not hewing so closely to orthodoxy that we might be missing important insights? How can we set the stage to understand the true landscape of disagreement so that we can come to better decisions and not be driven by ideology in improper ways?

Today's podcast features Reversing Climate Change alumnus, Grant Faber, returning to the show. Grant is sui generis in our sector for his deep involvement in life-cycle and techno-economic assessment. He is the Direct Air Capture Hubs Program Manager at the U.S. Department of Energy. Prior to DOE, he ran a consultancy focused on life cycle and techno-economic assessment where he worked with many different startups, accelerators, and investors working on carbon removal and carbon conversion. Before that, he worked with Twelve, Heirloom, and the Global CO2 Initiative.

Importantly, we invite you to engage with this material and come to your own conclusions. Part of what makes carbon removal such an intellectual adventure is just how much room there is for creativity and deep thought!

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Of all of the world's climate podcasts, here is why you should, with your one wild and precious life, listen to Reversing Climate Change.

The tl;dr is I am a long-time carbon removal and climate tech entrepreneur who comes from the humanities (rather than science) and I am programming shows on climate unlike what you're likely to hear elsewhere. Shows with legendary travel writers to worlds that are disappearing? A Vietnam veteran discussing what Jungian archetypes can teach those thinking of their climate activism as a type of warfare? Survivalism in the age of climate change? What might Dante make of our current predicament?! This show's got it!

When we think of climate change, we might think of droughts, floods, wildfires, emigration and climate refugees: but what if the call is coming from inside the house? What if it impacts the way we think and act?

Today's show is with Clayton Aldern, Senior Data Reporter at Grist and author of The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains.

Clayton explains where additional climate risks will be coming from, and much of it is how much even small changes in heat can increase impulsivity and crime, decrease test scores, and generally make things more difficult.

If human bodies are so susceptible to environmental conditions, what does that say for justice? How are we meant to understand agency and determinism? How do we hold one another accountable while also practicing forgiveness for human frailty?

There are no shortage of big questions today! Enjoy.

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The wildfires in Los Angeles have gripped the country this past week. How could so much valuable real estate in prestigious zip codes populated at least in part by the rich and famous burn without recourse?

Today's Reversing Climate Change podcast sees alumna of the show, Allison Wolff, return to discuss Vibrant Planet and the LA wildfires. We were originally scheduled just to catch up because it had been too long, but it turned out to be a serendipitous podcast.

Allison has been working on understanding and managing fire risk for years and has built a data platform at Vibrant Planet that helps various entities like state agencies, utilities, and insurers understand and mitigate fire risk in areas under their responsibility.

Content warning: This episode discusses a scene in a video game that involves sexual assault during war. If you'd like to skip that section, it is from 7:57-8:35. There is a response that discusses the ethical choices in the game beyond that point, but it is more abstract and general about choices.

In discussions about technology, and maybe especially within climatetech, the concept of the "Faustian bargain" is common. But what does it actually mean, and is it as simple as concept as it is typically considered?

The Grounded podcast takes over Reversing Climate Change! Tom Previte of The Carbon Removal Show, founded a new biochar company in the United Kingdom called Restord. And like any good podcaster, he decided to make a show about it!

Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey, just wrapped its five-episode first season documenting Tom's attempts to start a new biochar company. He walks listeners through so many of the basic questions of starting a business, and specifically a business in a new category like carbon removal. What standard should one try to work within? Which parts of the life-cycle assessment matter? Who actually wants this product?!

What's especially novel about this episode is that Tom and his producer Ben Weaver-Hincks produced it in the style of Grounded, with voiceover segments and various other effects!

Tom and Ross talk about how to make podcasts about carbon removal interesting, how various design decisions impact quality and frequency of publishing, and what we can do to get more people into CDR and climate action through creative media work.

How do we conduct science when there isn't a single isolated variable? What does that mean for carbon removal not taking place in a controlled environment? How does science even work?!

Today's show originated from a question of how open-system carbon removal research can be conducted given that in a less-controlled environment, isolating for a single variable with replicability is less obviously possible. Does the scientific method really demand that, or is that some sort of pop culture understanding of science that needs to be challegned?

To answer that question, host and co-founder of the Nori carbon removal marketplace, Ross Kenyon, asked Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo and Anu Khan of Carbon180, to read two books and come on Reversing Climate Change to discuss them.

The two texts are some of the foundational works of modern philosophy of science: Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Paul Feyerabend's Against Method.

Kuhn argued that paradigms are the collection of foundational beliefs we have about how science and knowledge production is conducted, and that they are quite hard to see outside of since most people work so deeply within them. It can often be a generational effort, as older scientists die and new ones take their places.

Feyerabend goes further, arguing that we shouldn't just look for where one paradigm supersedes another, but be protective of competing systems of knowledge and the valuable ways of seeing that they unlock.

The show applies their learnings to the state of the CDR industry, and attempts to ferret out carbon removal's existing paradigm, whether the world is ready for credits that are not tonne-denominated, and how much time we can afford in retooling and letting "normal science" work within an imperfect paradigm vs. trying to create an entirely new paradigm ex nihilo.

N.B. At the 8:55 mark, I contrast Ptolemaic with geocentric and I meant to say heliocentric. Feyerabend said that the quality of predictions between Ptolemaic/geocentric and heliocentric models was similar.

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What is it like to go to war? What does the experience have to teach us, and could it in any way be a spiritual endeavor? What does the Temple of Mars have to teach us in a climate-changing world?

Karl Marlantes is a Rhodes Scholar who put aside graduate studies at Oxford University to lead a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam in 1968. He is featured extensively in the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary series, The Vietnam War. His memoir, What It Is Like to Go to War, and novel, Matterhorn, address what we ask our nation’s young warriors to do from within a cultural environment that denies the multifaceted truth of what it means to be a warrior. His recent novels Deep River and Cold Victory address big questions of agency and what it means to recognize oneself as a historical actor.

Is combat terrifying? Exhilarating? Mystical? Carnal? Is it everything all at once? If we only acknowledge the experience as negative, how might that cause repression and misunderstanding in a world unlikely to leave war behind permanently?

If climate change is not successfully addressed as soon as possible, the geopolitical situation may become more rivalrous and difficult. We need to understand the nature of war, of our relationship to our shadow, in order to chart an honest course to a better future.

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If you're going to write about the Oregon Trail or the Mississippi flatboat era, why not go gonzo? Does it make for better history or just better bar stories? What can you really learn about change by recreating epic journeys in contemporary times, and what can that teach us about how we live upon this planet?

Today, adventurer and author Rinker Buck is on the show to discuss his odysseys. In particular, his flatboat ride from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, and his mulecart passage of the entire Oregon Trail. If you're gasping reading that last sentence, you need to read his books.

Obviously, these landscapes have massively changed over the centuries, and their environmental history reflects human wants and desires, some good and others less so. How are they shadows of their former selves, which could you not tell which century you're currently in, and which are making beautiful comebacks? What does it teach us about the country so many of our listeners call home? How does the American experience prepare or fail to prepare us for a climate-changed world?

Rinker discusses his particular approach to participatory history, why he doesn't like reenactment as a paradigm, and why he bothers with the Heraclean effort for which some might deem him a "conquistador of the useless."

Tune in and learn from Rinker's hard-earned experience and observations!

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When the world feels increasingly tame, what does it mean to reclaim our wildness? Can we appreciate the benefits of industrial civilization while connecting with our evolutionary roots? Can we get ourselves back to the garden?

In this poignant conversation, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Craig Foster shares insights from his experiences diving in the Great African Sea Forest and the inspiration behind his new book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World.

Host and Nori Co-Founder Ross Kenyon asks Craig some unanswered questions he has about My Octopus Teacher, the experience of fame from winning the 2021 Best Documentary Feature Oscar, whether evolution has prepared us for fame, and Craig's adjustment back to civilian life.

Craig discusses the profound lessons learned from marine life, emphasizing the importance of a deep connection with nature and the critical role biodiversity plays in the survival of our planet.

Ross and Craig discuss their various stories of interspecies communication and what it means to build a thread to a species and learn their language. They explore themes of kinship with nature, the significance of tracking as an ancient fundamental language, and the transformative power of cold water immersion. Plunge for the planet!

The discussion also touches on Craig's marine conservation efforts through the Sea Change Project and introduces a unique multimedia aspect of his book that aims to enhance readers' connection to nature.

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The world is becoming wealthier. Is that a good thing? Or should we be looking to simpler and less material lives? How does a middle class global population affect climate change, for good or ill?

On today's show, Dr. Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and author of The Rise of the Global Middle Class: How the Search for the Good Life Can Change the World, elaborates on what it means to be middle class, emphasizing the relevance of choice as a defining characteristic. People drop the concept all the time, but it isn't really clear what is meant by it. Is it about per capita earnings? Security? The type of labor done? Something else?

He explores how the middle class's values and choices intersect with issues like climate change and government policy. Dr. Kharas sheds light on the evolution of capitalism, arguing that it has always adapted to societal changes, and suggests that this continued evolution is optimism-inspiring.

He counters the narrative of a trade-off between material prosperity and carbon emissions, asserting that technology can and should allow for both!

Tune in today to get a dose of history and economics!

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You are condemned to be free, and yet how much responsibility do you bear for the structures you inhabit? Do your individual consumer choices matter, or is it some distant political economy? Should we enjoy our time in nature on snowmobiles, or is that just one more bootprint on the road to hypocritical perdition? Do you need to be perfect in order to be an activist?

In this episode, Nori cofounder Ross Kenyon, and Thanks-A-Ton cofounder Siobhan Montoya Lavender, discuss the new short film from Protect Our Winters and professional skier Amy Engerbretson, The Hypocrite.

In this wide-ranging discussion, Amy discusses why she made The Hypocrite, which deals with how she went from climate ignorance, through the guilt of her carbon footprint and that of skiing, and became an imperfect climate advocate.

She emphasizes the importance of systemic solutions over individual perfectionism, revealing the often-paralyzing effects of aiming for personal purity in environmental activism. The film aims to inspire action by showcasing the power of collective efforts in outdoor communities, urging listeners to engage civically beyond mere personal adjustments, while also discussing whether duty must be done for its own sakes, regardless of how big of an impact it might have.

The session concludes with Amy's thoughts on political will as the paramount force for climate change mitigation, encouragement for involvement with organizations like Protect Our Winters, and the value of messy, imperfect advocacy.

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