Why Do We Labor in Carbon Removal?
Shownotes
Content Warning: this episode discusses suicide in literature, specifically Judas Iscariot from the Gospel and Javert from Les Misérables.
Why do this work? You could be doing so many different things. What calls you to it, and what (or who?!) is doing the calling?
In today's monologue show, host Ross Kenyon (also known as "me") reflects upon the nature of vocation, aesthetics, and what it means to labor at something as hard as carbon dioxide removal, climate tech, and so many things adjacent.
After a first attempt years ago at J. R. R. Tolkien's short story, "Leaf by Niggle," I listened to a podcast about it that had been sitting on his phone for years. After revisiting the short story, I was again reminded that art often finds you when the time is ripe.
"Leaf by Niggle" is a deceptively deep story, which is unsurprising given how strongly Tolkien disliked allegory, and how mythologically dense Lord of the Rings is. In fact, Lord of the Rings has so much symbolic power that many parts of it defy an easy mapping to theology or mythology.
This show dives into some of what I have learned now that I'm in the middle of my career about what kinds of work to do, how to accept unexpected work with grace, and why creativity might be so much weirder than we usually imagine.
This Episode's Sponsors
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
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
"Leaf by Niggle" by J. R. R. Tolkien
"222: Leaf by Niggle by Tolkien" from the podcast Classical Things You Should Know
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
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
Correction: at 17:46 it's Frodo, not Sam, who asks Gandalf why Bilbo spared Gollum ("The Shadow of the Past," The Fellowship of the Ring). I've left it in. Memento mori.