Reversing Climate Change
- Folgen
- 439
- Erscheint
- wöchentlich
- Letzte Folge
- 27. Okt. 2026
Über den Podcast
Reversing Climate Change is a podcast about carbon removal and climatetech that keeps wandering off into literature, history, philosophy, theology, and geopolitics on the theory that the technical and scientific questions stop making much sense without them. Hosted by Ross Kenyon, who did not go past a year of political philosophy PhD coursework and has visibly not let it go. Paid subscriptions live on Substack @ https://rosskenyon.com. © Carbon Removal Strategies LLC
Folgen 439
Climate is pitchfork time! Neurodiversity, anger, & candor—w/ Dimitry Gershenson of Enduring Planet
What happens when you ask Dimitry Gershenson how he's doing? He tells you. This confuses people at parties, and by his account it works surprisingly well on investors.Today's guest is Dimitry Gershenson, the …
Shownotes
What happens when you ask Dimitry Gershenson how he's doing? He tells you. This confuses people at parties, and by his account it works surprisingly well on investors.
Today's guest is Dimitry Gershenson, the co-founder and CEO of Enduring Planet, which provides "founder-friendly working capital and financial advisory services to climate startups and SMBs," often lending against a government grant or contract. They recently closed a second fund more than twice the size of their first.
We get into why so much climate content reads like it went through legal, the op-ed on impact investing in an age of autocracy he held back until his fund closed (a major investor bailed anyway), how much (or how little) of his work runs on anger, and what being on the autism spectrum is like while running a company of almost 120 people.
And Dimitry tells the story of a field trip with his old Berkeley professor John Harte, who gave the bleakest two-word summary of climate change I've heard in a while, followed by a surprisingly useful second answer.
Full disclosure: I have a referral agreement with Enduring Planet, so if you go talk to them, tell them I sent you.
- Enduring Planet
- Courageous Capital: Impact investing in an age of autocracy, Dimitry Gershenson and Jed Emerson, ImpactAlpha
- Take risk, act swiftly and seven other tips for deploying catalytic capital the right way, Dimitry Gershenson, ImpactAlpha
- With $12M second fund, fintech startup aims to pump more cash into climate entrepreneurs, GeekWire
- Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley
- Radical Candor, Kim Scott
This episode's page on the web
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Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousKatharine Wilkinson on Climate Wayfinding & why climate work is (unfortunately) spiritual work
I've known Katharine Wilkinson's work for a long time, but only recently got a monkey wrench far enough around my heart to open it up and engage with it seriously. Her new book is Climate Wayfinding: Healing …
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I've known Katharine Wilkinson's work for a long time, but only recently got a monkey wrench far enough around my heart to open it up and engage with it seriously. Her new book is Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home, and she says plainly what most of climate work treats as a fluffy nice-to-have: the core of this work is spiritual, and she probably knew it at 16.
Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson co-founded and leads The All We Can Save Project and co-edited All We Can Save with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. She was lead writer of Drawdown and co-hosts A Matter of Degrees with Dr. Leah Stokes.
Listen in as she reteaches Ross how to listen to the wisdom centers of his body, and why it is that we have grown so practical that we have lost touch with such a basic skill.
Links
- Climate Wayfinding, at Bookshop
The All We Can Save Project
Human on Earth, Katharine's Substack
A Matter of Degrees
The Carbon Wave by Leah Stokes, at Bookshop
Plum Village
Thinking Little with Mary Berry (episode 422)
Resources
This episode's page on the web
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous- Climate Wayfinding, at Bookshop
The palm nutcracker that became a carbon dioxide removal company—w/ Uzoma Ayogu of Biochar Industrial Group
What do you do when none of the machinery you imported works? If you're Releaf, you build your own nutcracker, name it Kraken, and get it working with about six weeks of runway left in the middle of COVID. And …
Shownotes
What do you do when none of the machinery you imported works? If you're Releaf, you build your own nutcracker, name it Kraken, and get it working with about six weeks of runway left in the middle of COVID. And once you have a huge pile of palm kernel shells sitting around, why not get really into biochar?
Today's guest is Uzoma Ayogu, cofounder and CTO of Releaf and cofounder of Biochar Industrial Group (BIG), which just closed a $1.5 million pre-seed. Releaf cracks palm nuts from smallholder farms in Nigeria, where equipment built for plantations met thick-shelled nuts that arrive wet, dusty and full of rocks. BIG is the carbon dioxide removal side, spun out because Releaf's investors understood agriculture and supply chains and did not understand the voluntary carbon market.
They bought their pyrolyzer from a Ukrainian manufacturer during a war, installed it without the manufacturer's engineer, and Uzo slept in the factory on a yoga mat for two weeks. Uptime went from around a third to 87 percent. We also get into cassava yields, what Y Combinator told them when they got in, and my own YC story, which ends with Nori getting in and saying no.
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Full disclosure: Uzo, Kenna, and I met in the AirMiners Launchpad Accelerator program and I have worked with them in a few programs since.
- Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
- Become a paid subscriber for bonus content and ad-free episodes
- My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous
- Releaf
- Biochar Industrial Group
- BIG raises $1.5m to turn African farm waste into carbon removal, TechCabal
- AirMiners
- How Releaf is scaling Nigerian biochar, my piece for Rainbow
- Books from the show, at Bookshop
Resources
This episode's page on the web
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Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousWhich story is carbon dioxide removal actually in?—w/ Rudy Krehbiel of EcoEngineers
Every industry runs on a mythology, and carbon dioxide removal has several of them available at once. There is the hype cycle, where the trough of disillusionment is a phase you survive on the way to mainstream …
Shownotes
Every industry runs on a mythology, and carbon dioxide removal has several of them available at once. There is the hype cycle, where the trough of disillusionment is a phase you survive on the way to mainstream adoption. There is the solar cost curve, where a technology is expensive and clunky for years and then abruptly cheaper than everything else. There is Moore's Law, and also the one where the world returns to normal after the next election. Each of those carries a promise about the ending that may not deliver.
Rudy Krehbiel thinks some of those stories are misleading us, and this episode is about working out which ones. My introduction runs long because I wanted to talk about Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation first, a film about a man who does not know what genre he is in until the genre changes around him, and which you should watch whether or not you have ever thought about a carbon credit.
Rudy works on strategic development at EcoEngineers, who also sponsor this show, and he came into carbon dioxide removal from startups and venture capital, which is why he keeps reaching for diffusion curves. His read is that we are at the innovator stage and mistaking it for a trough. His figures, and they hold up against CDR.fyi's April 2026 snapshot: fewer than 50 million tonnes contracted, barely over a million delivered, Microsoft alone accounting for 78.5% of the disclosed total, and a median purchase outside Microsoft still under 100 tonnes. Diagnose that as failure and you start prescribing medicine for a disease nobody has.
The harder argument is the one about public goods. Solar panels and EVs deliver something microeconomic you would still buy if climate change did not exist. A tonne of carbon dioxide removed does not. That makes this, in Rudy's words, arguably the hardest public good anyone has tried to fund, and it is why he will not call the ending inevitable. I asked him to name the story we ought to be inside of. What he answered? You'll have to listen to find out.
The Show's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Rudy works at EcoEngineers and EcoEngineers sponsors this show. I would have had him on either way, and you should know the arrangement.
Resources
- Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack for bonus content and ad-free episodes
- Climate Workers Anonymous, the other show I make
- EcoEngineers
- "How Carbon Removal Loses", the episode Rudy and I keep circling
- Belief that makes itself true: a hyperstition for carbon dioxide removal
- Why Don Quixote is so misunderstood
- How non-human intelligence will change us, with D.W. Pasulka, where the Marshall McLuhan scene comes up
- Adaptation (2002), written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike Jonze
- The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
- Story by Robert McKee
- Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers
- Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore
- Gartner hype cycle
- CDR.fyi's demand structure snapshot, April 2026, the source for the Microsoft and Frontier concentration figures
- Public good, non-rivalrous and non-excludable, used correctly for once (my pet peeve)
- Whig historiography
- Alternative für Deutschland
- National Rally
- Hanging a lampshade
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- Liberty ships and Victory gardens
Resources
This episode's page on the web
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Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousThinking Little with Mary Berry, Executive Director of The Berry Center—RERELEASE
Wendell Berry died on August 31st, 2026. A listener once made a Reversing Climate Change bingo card and one of the squares was just "someone mentions Wendell Berry," which turned out to be a rigged square. So …
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Wendell Berry died on August 31st, 2026. A listener once made a Reversing Climate Change bingo card and one of the squares was just "someone mentions Wendell Berry," which turned out to be a rigged square. So rather than write another appreciation, I have pulled the conversation I had with his daughter in 2020 and recorded a new introduction to sit in front of it. The episode I made the week he died is here.
Mary Berry runs The Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, founded in 2011 after a lifetime of farming. She started it because a forty-year local food movement had produced some very good farmers' markets and almost no change to the culture of farming, and because the best agricultural program her state ever had was being forgotten inside that very state.
Listen in to hear more about why the local food movement concentrated on food and skipped land use and the economic lives of farmers, and what you do about any of this if you have no Henry County of your own to go back to.
My new introduction is about that last part, and about whether those of who without such roots are like locusts, but somehow worse? What a grim sentence to pen, and there's a lot more coming on this topic soon...
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
- Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
- Become a paid subscriber for bonus content and ad-free episodes
- Check out my new show, Climate Workers Anonymous
- The original 2020 release of this conversation
- The Berry Center, and Our Home Place Meat, and the shop
- The Berry Center Farm and Forest Institute: the education program Mary describes as the Wendell Berry Farming Program of Sterling College, now run by the Berry Center itself
- The Agrarian Culture Center and the Archive of The Berry Center, which holds her grandfather's and uncle's papers from the Burley Tobacco Program
- The Land Institute, and Wes Jackson's Becoming Native to This Place
- Removals, avoidances, and what Wendell Berry thought of making tonnes fungible
- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow and the Port William novels, and The World-Ending Fire
- The 50-Year Farm Bill
- Organic Valley, founded on what its founder knew about the Burley Tobacco Program
- Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander
- Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam
- Gary Snyder
The episode art is Winslow Homer's The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967, accession number 67.187.131. Public domain, via The Met's Open Access program.
Originally released in September 2020 as season 2, episode 30. Re-released September 2026 with a new introduction.
Resources
This episode's page on the web
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Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousRemovals, avoidances, and what Wendell Berry thought of making tonnes fungible
Rainbow came into carbon dioxide removal from the outside, kept financing avoidances the whole time, and has watched the market arrive at the position it started from. The company I cofounded, Nori, was …
Shownotes
Rainbow came into carbon dioxide removal from the outside, kept financing avoidances the whole time, and has watched the market arrive at the position it started from. The company I cofounded, Nori, was merciless about avoidance for its entire existence, so some of that is on me.
Wendell Berry died on 31 August, at 92. He has more books referenced on this show than any other author. Early in Nori's life I wrote to him twice inviting him onto this very podcast by explaining that we were making tonnes of soil organic carbon fungible with one another, which may be the worst reading of an audience in my career. He said no both times, kindly. I still have the letters.
Listen in to hear more about what it is like to meet someone from Verra and have the first sentence out of your mouth be "I used to think I was better than you", why the hardest parts of carbon market integrity turn out to be structural rather than a failure of anyone's willpower, what the Scouring of the Shire has to do with a methodology list, why I would keep rainforest over carbon removal if someone made me choose, and those ever-present wizards and prophets.
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Rainbow is a client of mine and I say so in the episode. They are not sponsoring this episode. I was just inspired by the work itself.
Resources
- Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
- Become a paid subscriber for bonus content and ad-free episodes
- Removals, avoidances, and the rise of the portfolio mentality, the essay this episode is built on, at Rainbow
- Rainbow, the standard and registry
- Sustained Neutralization of the Warming Response to Emissions through a Portfolio of GHG Mitigation Strategies, Ella Hughes, Zeke Hausfather, Randall Spock and Christopher Van Arsdale, CDRXIV, May 2026. This is the Google paper on stacking and bridging
- The Prodigal Son of Carbon Markets, with Martin Freimüller of Octavia Carbon, on his change of heart about the voluntary carbon market
- Jason Grillo writes Climagination, and was on the show for The Culture of Carbon Removal
- Robert Höglund writes Marginal Carbon
- Rereading The Wizard and the Prophet six years deeper into climate work, with Charles C. Mann, where the wizards and prophets framing comes from
- The impossible taxonomy of carbon dioxide removal, the previous episode about categories that mislead
- Wendell Berry, 1934 to 2026, Kentucky Lantern
Six Wendell Berry books, and most of what this show has argued about for a decade, are on my Bookshop shelf.
Book links go to Bookshop.org. They pay me a commission at no extra cost to you, and the rest goes to independent bookshops.
Cover image: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, 1565, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access.
Resources
This episode's page on the web
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Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousThe scariest current parallel from Hitler's Mein Kampf
CW: this episode discusses genocidePeople reference the Weimar Republic's transition to Nazi Germany often. But I think they're missing perhaps the most relevant and frightening insight from Adolf Hitler's …
Shownotes
CW: this episode discusses genocide
People reference the Weimar Republic's transition to Nazi Germany often. But I think they're missing perhaps the most relevant and frightening insight from Adolf Hitler's memoir, Mein Kampf.
It isn't just that economic uncertainty produces political radicalism. It's that bad things can happen when a group which has dominated a multiethnic empire for a long time is expected to start sharing more political and cultural power with the groups they once ruled.
This Episode's Sponsor
Resources
Resources
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Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousThe way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way—Hitler, Chaplin, & The Great Dictator on climate
CW: this episode discusses genocide and suicide.I swear I didn't mean to make this episode. All I intended to do was to read the wonderfully moving speech at the end of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator …
Shownotes
CW: this episode discusses genocide and suicide.
I swear I didn't mean to make this episode. All I intended to do was to read the wonderfully moving speech at the end of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. But somehow that meant that I had to process so much about World War II, the personality of Adolf Hitler, and why monsters can also be boring and/or extremely goofy.
This monologue episode wends its way through the particular moment in history this film was made and why that is significant (as well as what the film got wrong as a result), Hannah Arendt, Mel Brooks, Louis Theroux's manosphere documentary, the banality of evil, why so many huge leaders of countries and companies feel so adolescent, how weird the History Channel was with Hitler content when I was a kid, and so much more.
There is still so much that didn't make it in, but I think I'll share some more soon, in particular about what I find to be the most terrifying part of Mein Kampf. To be continued...
This Episode's Sponsor
Resources
Watch the full Charlie Chaplin speech here
Resources
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Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousJ. Maarten Troost on Kiribati's atolls, climate change, and what travel writing is for RERELEASE
This podcast has been running for almost a decade. There are some real gems buried in the catalogue that I am happy to have a chance to rerelease. This is one of those episodes. It has a new intro.I recorded it …
Shownotes
This podcast has been running for almost a decade. There are some real gems buried in the catalogue that I am happy to have a chance to rerelease. This is one of those episodes. It has a new intro.
I recorded it with J. Maarten Troost in April 2020 and published it as S2E9, "Travel writing a disappearing Oceania". It remains a personal favorite of mine.
Maarten wrote four travel memoirs: The Sex Lives of Cannibals (2004), about the two years he spent in Kiribati after his partner got a job at an NGO who operated there; Getting Stoned with Savages (2006), about their move to Fiji and Vanuatu; Lost on Planet China (2008) where Maarten ends up wandering around quite a bit of China; and Headhunters on My Doorstep (2013), a Treasure Island retracing written in recovery.
We talk about his time in a huge place that very few have visited to the depths he has, and how the world was changing (or maybe beginning to change) since his time in the region.
Travel writing when it's good, acknowledges both difference and universality. It helps us understand Other, and mocks the way that we are in taking our Otherness for granted. Maarten does a wonderful job at both.
And he hates the f*@!ing Macarena.
This Episode's Sponsor
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change (and get rid of the ads on Spotify)
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J. Maarten Troost at Penguin Random House
J. Maarten Troost at BJ Robbins Literary Agency
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific (2004)
Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu (2006)
Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation (2008)
Headhunters on My Doorstep: A True Treasure Island Ghost Story (2013)
What became of the Kiribati land purchase in Vanua Levu
Kiribati's Office of Te Beretitenti on the Fiji land purchase
Paul Theroux, The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific (1992)
Christina Thompson, Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia (Harper, 2019)
David Foster Wallace, "Shipping Out," Harper's, January 1996, later collected as "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"
John Jeremiah Sullivan, "You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!", The New York Times Magazine, 2011
Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed (Picador, 2015)
407: Charles C. Mann on the wizards & prophets of climate change, the first rerelease
326: Confronting our shadow: Jung, the Vietnam War & climate change, w/ Karl Marlantes, the other author episode Maarten's intro name-checks
Resources
This episode's page on the web
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousWhy I love Poppy Russell of Counteract VC's CDR analysis
There are some people whom you know you just have to read whatever they write next. For me, one of those people is Poppy Russell.Poppy is the Research Manager at Counteract VC, a venture capital firm devoted to …
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There are some people whom you know you just have to read whatever they write next. For me, one of those people is Poppy Russell.
Poppy is the Research Manager at Counteract VC, a venture capital firm devoted to funding carbon dioxide removal companies. Poppy's research of course helps Counteract diligence potential deals, and sometimes she publishes key insights, models, and other things that make me think.
Listen in as Poppy and I discuss the state of carbon removal, what she's bullish and bearish on, whether toxicity could be the next big thing in climate, and which corners she is peaking around next.This Episode's Sponsor
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change (and get rid of the ads on Spotify)
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Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
"Toxicity: The Invisible Tsunami" by Deep Science Ventures
"Between a Rock and a Hard Cost: The Economics of Enhanced Weathering"
"Not All Carbon Removal Projects Are Created Equal""Industry has a central role in CDR's next growth phase"
"Locating the sweet spot for biochar carbon removal"
"Treading Carefully in the Waters of Ocean-based CDR"Resources
This episode's page on the web
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymousremove's new Latin American carbon dioxide removal accelerator program—w/ Hans Westerhof & Marian Krüger
There are many startup accelerators out there. There are fewer focused on climate tech. Fewer still for carbon dioxide removal. Lucky for us, remove runs the absolute heck out of their programs. And it's been a …
Shownotes
There are many startup accelerators out there. There are fewer focused on climate tech. Fewer still for carbon dioxide removal. Lucky for us, remove runs the absolute heck out of their programs. And it's been a true joy of mine coaching startups in them this past year. I can't even believe it, but the time has come for another program... In Latin America!
If you are a Latin American carbon dioxide removal project and/or technology developer, you should apply to remove's LatAm cohort. Applications are out now, and there is a chance we might end up working together.
I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with the team at remove. They offer focused training, a powerful network, and an unmatched peer group in your cohort. Hoping to see you there!
In today's episode, cofounders and managing directors of remove, Marian Krüger and Hans Westerhof, join the show to talk about the program, what it means to be ecosystem builders, and how they aim to grow capacity in the Global South generally and Latin America in particular.
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change (and get rid of the ads)
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
Apply to the LatAm carbon removal accelerator
Resources
This episode's page on the web
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousD.W. Pasulka on AI, the religion of UFOs, & the future of being human
When I have questions about how technology will change human life, our experience of it, and fundamentally what we are as conscious entities... my first port of call is likely someone like Dr. D.W. Pasulka …
Shownotes
When I have questions about how technology will change human life, our experience of it, and fundamentally what we are as conscious entities... my first port of call is likely someone like Dr. D.W. Pasulka. She's labored on some of the biggest questions of the humanities only to find the world racing to catch up with her later on disclosure, on artificial intelligence, and presumably on whatever comes next in this beautiful tale told by an idiot.
I've been reading Diana's books for years. I forgot how American Cosmic found its way into my hands, but I loved the restrained religious studies orientation of treating unidentified flying object (UFO)/unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) experiencers seriously, the intersection with Marshall McLuhan and media studies, and the forcing function of non-human intelligence like AI bursting onto the scene whether we were ready for it or not.
Her new book, The Others: UFOs, AI, and The Hidden Forces Guiding Human Destiny, will be released on July 28th. Grab yourself a copy and dig into some real mind-bending and fun ideas. Even if you think this stuff is far out, as society increasingly takes supernormal/paranormal activity seriously and embeds artificial intelligence in so many places, books like Diana's are going to be key for understanding what is happening to our humanity, our being, and our experience of being.
And yet, somehow I only said "ontology" once in this podcast. I guess that religious studies restraint is rubbing off on me.
Long live the new flesh!
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change (and get rid of the ads)
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
The Others: UFOs, AI, and The Hidden Forces Guiding Human Destiny, will be released on July 28th
"406: Hyperstition, Dialectic, & Carbon Dioxide Removal" on Reversing Climate Change
I have way more links on the Substack article about this episode. Come check it out.
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This episode's page on the web
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Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousI tried to sort carbon credits into boxes and failed
If we created an objectively correct and exhaustive categorization of carbon credits, would it solve everything? Would it solve anything?Listen in as I read an essay I recently wrote about the endless quest to …
Shownotes
If we created an objectively correct and exhaustive categorization of carbon credits, would it solve everything? Would it solve anything?
Listen in as I read an essay I recently wrote about the endless quest to perfectly categorize the world, and while that may be a useful project for some purposes, it isn't anywhere close to the main reasons the world looks the way that it does.
Listen in and you'll get surrealist sculpture, Michael Polanyi, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Plato. Who can truly say no to an offer like that?
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
Here's the essay on Substack if you'd like to read along and check out the endnotes.
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This episode's page on the web
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousCharles 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 …
Shownotes
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 Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
Resources
This episode's page on the web
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousClimate 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 …
Shownotes
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 Kenyon
Resources
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousHyperstition, 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 …
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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.
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EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
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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...
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousDoes 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 …
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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.
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EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
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Varsha Ramesh Walsh on LinkedIn
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousAnd 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 …
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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.
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"And did those feet in ancient time" on Wikipedia
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousWhen 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 …
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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.
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EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
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Read the full transcript and show notes on Substack
"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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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousHow 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 …
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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.
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EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
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Read the full transcript and show notes on Substack
Listen to the RCC episode with Taylor Insley from Terraset on how to sell in carbon removal: which was the model for this episode
Listen to the RCC episode with Martin Freimuller from Octavia: David references this episode on playing nicely in a small market
David LaGreca's LinkedIn profile
Rudy Krehbiel's LinkedIn profile
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousReform 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 …
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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.
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.
This Episode's Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project finance
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousEmotional 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 …
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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 Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
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Calming Chaos: Ale's coaching practice
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousWhat 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 …
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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 tonne deal with Microsoft. That's... a lot of tonnes.
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 Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousHow 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 …
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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 Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
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The opening scene from The Godfather (TW: SA)
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousScientists 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 …
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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.
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 Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
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"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
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousShould 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 …
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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 tonnes 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.
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Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
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391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousWhy 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 …
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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".
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Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
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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".
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousMeet 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 …
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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.
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The Wikipedia article about the poem
Vexed 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 Death
The universal cannibalism of the sea vs. one insular Tahiti—My favorite chapter of Moby-Dick
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My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousBright 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 …
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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 appropriations
- Bipartisan congressional support that tripled year over year
- FY26 appropriations: $80 million for DOE R&D and $45 million for the CDR purchase pilot prize
- CRA's fly-in day: from 5 Republican congressional meetings last year to 17 this year
- a 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 Alliance
This Episode's Sponsor
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
Resources
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"
EMRTAI program for mineralization
Resources
This episode's page on the web
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers AnonymousWill 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 …
Shownotes
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 Sponsors
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
Rainbow: 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.com
Resources
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
338: Carbon Security & the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek
"Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal" by Sarah Godek & Grant Faber
391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"
Resources
This episode's page on the web
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Books from the show, at Bookshop
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous
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