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 Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
"In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae
There 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.
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 Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Susannah Fisher's Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate
There 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..."
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 Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Erin Sikorsky's bio at The Center for Climate and Security
Ian 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.
I 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"
“Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state.”
― Voltaire
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 Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
350: Robert Höglund Presents: The Many Perils of Being Catalytic in a Carbon Accounting World
"Mohammad Ali — Amazing Speed"; watch this video for the out-of-this-world dodges alone
America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders; you can see the F1 and golf series on Netflix too
Aidan recommended this Michael Lewis podcast on sports betting
Aidan sent me the link to this study on how talking to strangers brings satisfaction
Acquired episode about Indian Premier League Cricket
https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-everything-became-television
CUR8
Taylor Swift and the Chiefs/NFL
Jason 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...)
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 Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Grant's blog, Carbon-Based Commentary
Notes from Alkali Earth on Substack
Noya winddown post on LinkedIn
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 Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
This 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. Strangelove
Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap by Graham Allison
338: Carbon Security and the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek
"Ukraine's Zelenskyy issues a stark warning about a global arms race and AI war", NPR
Ken Krimstein's When I Grow Up
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
The unfinished business of ghosts
Dante'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
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 Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Philip Glass's theme from Koyaanisqatsi
Dorothy 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.
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 Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Ryan Covington's profile at Philip Lee LLP
Philip Lee LLP's Climate Projects page
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
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.
Check out the links to Maritime Blue, One Ocean Week, and the One Ocean Expedition below!
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
One Ocean Expedition (book your passage here!)
Statsraad Lehmkuhl on Wikipedia
S2E33: Sailing in the age of climate change—w/ John Kretschmer, author and sailor
I 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=56179943
I 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.
Raising kids is hard enough. How do we do it now when existential dread is such a major part of youth experience? And how do we keep ourselves mentally healthy enough to be good at both our professional climate work and parenting?
Today's show is with Ariella Cook-Shonkoff, psychotherapist and author of the new book, Raising Anti-Doomers: How to Bring Up Resilient Kids Through Climate Change and Tumultuous Times.
She answers a bunch of questions I have about how much I should actually be staring into the abyss (but not whether it also stares back into me, weird I know...), agency, how to think about individual vs. collective safety, and how to bring children into a world where the grownups are either asking these enormous questions or pretending we don't need to.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Ariella Cook-Shonkoff's website
Ariella's Psychology Today blog, "The Anti-Doomer Mindset
Cultivating Resilience in an Age of Uncertainty"
Climate Action Venn Diagrams from Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Is that a noble man rejecting modernity and embracing tradition? Or is it a lunatic with a lance trying to disembowel a shepherd?
The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (Saavedra) is the much beloved literary classic—and perhaps the world's first true novel—but its reputation goes far beyond the book itself. The character has spawned his own adjective: "quixotic", which gets levied at anyone who dares to dream a bit too big.
But is this a word kind of like "epicurean", whose true meaning is subverted by modern use? I believe the answer is yes.
This episode goes out to all of the climate people who dare to dream of a better, kinder world, and why I don't think your critics know what being "quixotic" means.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
And also Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces
Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition meme
"Golden Helmet of Mambrino" from Man of La Mancha
I didn't explicitly name cases of left-wing nostalgia, but you can look to the Paris Commune (and earlier revolutionary moments in France), primitive communism, republican Spain, the consensus capitalism nostalgia of Michael Moore, etc.
In The Brothers Karamazov, the character Grushenka tells a story about an old peasant woman who never did a good deed in her entire life and went to Hell when she died. The woman's guardian angel petitioned God to let him search her life for a single good deed and if he found one, God would let her into Heaven. God agreed. It turns out she had once given a beggar an onion! Her single good deed! So God told the guardian angel to lower the onion into Hell to lift her out of the Lake of Fire...
What happens next depends upon the teller of the tale...
Today we venture into theology and the surprisingly radical nature of Christianity. Dorothy Day once quoted in The Long Loneliness, "no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy." I do my best to untangle what is genuinely striking in reading the Gospels with fresh eyes, and contrast that against much of the market-oriented and security competition games that dominate our world.
So much of where that leads us sounds silly in the cold light of day. It's downright maladaptive to worldly success. But as Léon Bloy once said, "the only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint." So, what the hell are we supposed to make of a world that is so at odds with the gentleness commanded by so many of the world's spiritual traditions?
I'll share with you what I've learned about myself in trying to become simpler, and do so with as open a heart as I can muster.
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself,", Leaves of Grass
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Realism (international relations)
Liberalism (international relations)
338: Carbon Security & the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek
Sermon on the Mount on Wikipedia
The Sermon on the Mount starting with Matthew 5, King James Version (for the idioms alone)
The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day
The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
"The Epistle to the Galatians" on Wikipedia
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X & Alex Haley
A Hidden Life (go watch this film right away!)
345: Why Too Many TV Antiheroes May Be Bad for the Climate
It isn't thematically exactly right since I argue against many of its verses, but the chorus to Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" is apt: "Oh, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now!" I prefer the version by The Byrds.
Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
The "no one should die from a preventable illness" meme
One of my biggest podcasting regrets is not having been able to interview the anthropologist Dr. James C. Scott before he died in 2024. We had corresponded by email, but he'll forever be one of the ones who got away... Rest in peace, James. Your scholarship is still making people think.
Today's show serves as an introduction to anthropology, and to some key Scottian concepts like "legibility" that Grant Faber and I apply to the carbon removal and carbon offsetting spaces.
Why do states prefer straight lines? Why do more organic shapes take place seemingly everywhere else? How can creating legibility be simultaneously great for transparency and order but perilous for justice and truth? When complexity is often so much more accurate, what is it within us that yearns to abandon it? What is in us that desires to make everything legible to our gaze even if it creates a wasteland and calls it peace?
If that's a soupy theoretical mess for you, you'll probably enjoy this episode. It's a doozy!
“A language is a dialect with an army and navy."
— Max Weinreich, attributed
"[The Romans] create a desert and call it peace."
— Tacitus
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Grant Faber's Carbon-Based Commentary on Substack
James C. Scott's Wikipedia page
James C. Scott's posthumous In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings
Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance by James C. Scott
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by Jame C. Scott
"On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" by Friedrich Nietzsche
Hauntologies of carbon removal—w/ Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University of Buffalo: RCC S3 bonus
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher
Michael Oakeshott, though I wonder if I have potentially overstated his position...
"A primer on additionality and carbon removal" by Grant Faber
350: Robert Höglund Presents: The Many Perils of Being Catalytic in a Carbon Accounting World
If there are so many inhabitable planets in the universe, why haven't we made contact with other civilizations? One terrifying answer is that very few civilizations are able to create world-altering technology without also killing themselves off in the process.
This monologue episode introduces the concept of Great Filter Events through the work of Dr. David Grinspoon's outstanding book, Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future.
Go read it, and listen to the shows I've done with David Grinspoon in the past! Links below.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
― E. O. Wilson
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future by Dr. David Grinspoon
47: David Grinspoon, Astrobiologist
Geology Cage Match: The Sapiezoic vs. the Anthropocene
S2E15: Are you a wizard or a phophet?—w/ Charles C. Mann
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
Geologic time scaleGreat Filter
A $50M Series A?! In this economy?
Aircapture recently raised a big round at a time when big raises in climatetech are hard to come by. Their secret? Producing a valuable product better for their customers than what currently exists, and not being dependent upon policy or carbon credits.
They're doing modular direct air capture in places that otherwise need to buy merchant carbon dioxide from companies that sell gases. Shipping merchant CO2 to the Canary Islands isn't cheap. If modular DAC can provide cheaper and less carbon-intensive CO2, that's surely a win for the climate, the economy, and the learnings that allow us to scale along the way.
Matt brought his insights about how he built a successful business in carbontech. Folks would be wise to listen up!
N.B. The photos aren't of actual Aircapture facilities.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Aircapture's Series A announcement
Writing fiction about climate change is notoriously difficult. Some authors have gone for massive ensemble casts to defeat the hyperobject. But what if one zoomed in to smaller, quieter, interpersonal stories?
Jon Raymond is a screenwriter and novelist whose work I very much enjoy. He is a frequent collaborator of Kelly Reichardt's, on films such as Old Joy, First Cow, Night Moves, and Showing Up. He also adapted James M. Cain's novel, Mildred Pierce, which became an HBO miniseries starring Kate Winslett.
His novels in particular deal with our place in a world with a changing climate. His previous work, Denial, concerns itself with questions of climate culpability for the individual person with great skill. His new novel, God and Sex, asks poignant questions about the nature of miracles and doubt from within a climate context. We discuss both books at length in this show.
They're both worth reading. Pick a copy of God and Sex while it is fresh off the presses!
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
Go (re)watch The Sixth Sense—it's great.
Many hardtech entrepreneurs develop a technology and then figure out how to commercialize it. What happens if you find an industry with potential and then engineer a solution to open an entirely new market to them?
Today's show is with two of the cofounders of CO280: Natalie Khtikian, the Chief Commercial Officer, and Jonathan Rhone, the Chief Executive Officer.
Natalie and John explain what it's like working with an industry as established as pulp and paper, structuring joint venture deals with them, and showing them the potential upside to opening business lines in carbon removal.
The deal mechanics of joint ventures for carbon removal are discussed (though probably deserve their own full show!), and Natalie shares some reasons why she is optimistic about carbon removal despite some of the headwinds the industry is currently experiencing.
This Episode's Sponsors
Arbonics
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
When you finish painting the Golden Gate Bridge, it is time to paint the Golden Gate Bridge. With a subject as interdisciplinary as carbon dioxide removal, a beginner's mind can also be a great asset!
Marian Krueger is the co-author of Race to Zero: How Companies Can Lead the Way to Climate Neutrality, an intoductory text to CDR that lucidly explains what carbon removal is, why it's necessary, and how to support its continued development.
The book will soon be published (August 4th, 2025), and you should grab a copy for yourself and for the policymaker and/or sustainability professional in your life!
Marian's experience as the Co-Founder and Managing Director of remove, a European nonprofit growing the carbon removal ecosystem through accelerator programming, gives him enormous vantage into the sector.
This conversation goes broad, deep, and discusses some of the biggest questions in CDR.
This Episode's Sponsors
Arbonics
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing service
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Race to Zero: How Companies Can Lead the Way to Climate Neutrality
This scene from Hamlet 2 captures the feeling of long-form writing very well!
We primarily talk about pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and ocean and storing it. But there are some places where we should actually be using it productively. Is graphite for lithium-ion batteries one of those places?
Makoto Eyre is the Founder and CEO of Homeostasis, a Tacoma-based company making graphite from carbon dioxide. In the future they aim to colocate their reactors with carbon capture and/or removal to create a modular and distributed system of graphite production.
Before the Industrial Revolution we had artisanal production and cottage industries. Then we had centralization and automation. What will production look like when centralization is no longer necessary to provide the economies of scale we had always thought it needed?
The conventional ways graphite is produced is also not so ecologically-inclined. What if the future were both simpler on supply chains and ecology?
This Episode's Sponsors
Arbonics
Fill out the 2025 CDRjobs Salary Survey HERE
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
When you think of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, you probably aren't thinking about carbon removal. But should you be?
Today's guest is Victoria Harvey, CDR Strategy Lead at ClimeFi. ClimeFi just structured the world's first Article 6.2 international transfer of durable carbon removal credits between Norway and Switzerland, and there's a lot to discuss!
What is the relationship between corporate climate action and national obligations? Do NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) impact corporate net-zero targets? Can corporate action satisfy national goals? Does that somehow leave us double-counting carbon removal?
This and so many more questions about the mechanics of CDR and climate action get discussed! Tune in to learn more and hear about ClimeFi's important work.
This Episode's Sponsors
Arbonics
Fill out the 2025 CDRjobs Salary Survey HERE
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing service
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change