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Are we going to figure out how to get along on a highly stressed planet? Or are we unable to break the patterns that have gotten us here in the first place? Are we too hard-nosed or too woo? A secret third thing?!
Today's show features Eugene Kirpichov, founder of Work on Climate, a very popular climate community built to help people transition into climate work. But the longer Eugene stared at the nested set of problems humanity is facing, it no longer seemed like a simple issue of employment and greenhouse gases. In fact, it's kind of everything.
Daniel Schmachtenberger's work on risk and game theory led Eugene to regenerative economics and an attempt to create a world where economic activity gives more than it takes, and where we aren't constantly lurching from one crisis to the next.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
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
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Eugene's LinkedIn post which inspired the show
Daniel Schmachtenberger
Work on Climate
Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows
"364: Lowering the Onion into Hell: Strategic Realism vs. Christian Pacifism" on Reversing Climate Change
"Peter Thiel and the Antichrist" by Ross Douthat at The New York Times
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
So many people think they need to dream up wild new tech to be successful at carbon removal. But one of CDR's most ascendent companies is relentlessly simple. They're so linear that I scrambled to make sure I wasn't missing something... In fact, if you've ever received coaching from me about simplicity, this is where I'm sending you from now on.
I recently completed Noah Deich and Dr. Jen Wilcox's UPenn continuing education course, CDR Executive Education Program/Purchasing Carbon Removal Credits. It was wonderful and I highly recommend it.
It did require a few homework assignments and a group project based upon a project developer. I chose Graphyte and their work putting waste biomass into bricks, wrapping them in polymer, and burying them underground. This is part of the class of projects called BiCRS (pronounced "bikers"), or Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage.
Today's show has Dr. Hannah Murnen, Graphyte's CTO, and Barclay Rogers, Graphyte's Co-Founder and CEO, on to correct my homework from the course. I've never had a show quite like this.
My sincere respect to each of them for digging into this with me and sharing their numbers. Not everyone in CDR is willing or able to do that, and I'm so happy we got to do that together.
This show also inspired me to make an episode about linearity vs. holistic thinking in CDR. If one focuses on carbon efficiency, Graphyte makes so much sense. But are we optimizing only for solving climate change, or is this a polycrisis that requires a much deeper and interconnected approach? What you choose may say just as much about your values and how you perceive the problem. Stay tuned...
This Episode's Sponsor
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
"381: Carbon Removal's False Peak as Mapped by Noah Deich"
S2E25: The DAC-up plan for climate change—w/ Dr. Jen Wilcox of Worcester Polytechnic Institute"
Graphyte
Graphyte's page on its registry, Isometric
The 2024 Project Design Document (PDD) for Graphyte's Loblolly project
UPenn's Purchasing Carbon Removal Credits course
CDR Executive Education Program
Carbon efficiency is how much of the carbon remains after the source material has been converted into a form of carbon removal, e.g. Graphyte loses very little carbon back to the atmosphere between waste biomass, processing, and burial. Biochar has a lower carbon efficiency because more carbon is released during pyrolysis. It isn't the only factor that matters, but has major repercussions for calculating net removals and which project types are suitable for which goals.
Polycrisis
I had to dig to figure out where I got the Nintendo insight from, but it originates from Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters.
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
Are we thinking about biochar financial strategy all wrong? It's not often a good fit for venture capital, but is it actually a great fit for private equity? It might be, at least if you can get the ticket size big enough...
Today's guest is Alastair Collier, Chief R&D Officer at A Healthier Earth, a biochar project developer that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pure DC, a data center project developer, who is supported by Oaktree Capital Management, a private equity firm (which in my understanding, does several other things beyond private equity.)
Alastair explains how A Healthier Earth went down this road, why he's okay with giving up ownership of his company and accepting a management compensation plan rather than looking to a venture-backed exit, and why more biochar project developers should obsess over conventional business metrics rather than why biochar is going to save the world.
Whether one wants to chart the same course or not, it's important for all those who work in carbon removal to know what kinds of deals are possible in what may prove to be a challenging 2026.
Listen up, as Alastair has a lot of valuable advice to share in this one.
This Episode's Sponsor
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
A Healthier Earth
Pure DC
Oatkree Capital Management
Wholly-owned subsidiary (I said "fully" in the intro, which is a synonym but "wholly" is technically more correct)
Private equity
Eddington (the newest Ari Aster film that features some of the politics of building data centers, albeit less urban...)
Deus ex machina
"The Biochar Blueprint: A developers guide to scale"
Philip Lee LLP
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
Some decisions we don't expect to have big consequences. And yet, sometimes you wake up thirty years later in a world deeply altered by that little moment. Today's show is about when that happens in science.
Dr. Tyler Kukla is a Research Scientist at CarbonPlan, one of carbon removal's preeminent watchdog nonprofits. He returns to the show to explore how a conservative estimation of how much carbon returns to the atmosphere after agliming with carbonate rock (all of it) in the 1996 IPCC report has led us into a commercial carbon removal future that focuses almost entirely on silicate rock.
This isn't a story about whether silicates or carbonates are better for enhanced weathering (it really depends upon a number of geographic factors and design decisions around system boundaries and additionality), but about how some good faith placeholders can reify to such an extent that they do so much more than they were ever expected to.
This Episode's Sponsor
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories
"Scaling enhanced weathering in limed fields" by Tyler Kukla
"Evidence for carbon sequestration by agricultural liming" by Dr. Stephen K. Hamilton, et al
"The contribution of agricultural lime to carbon dioxide emissions in the United States: dissolution, transport, and net emissions" by Drs. Tristam O. West & Allen C. McBride
"Contribution of agricultural liming to riverine bicarbonate export and CO2 sequestration in the Ohio River basin" by Drs. Neung-Hwan Oh & Peter A. Raymond
"Farming with crops and rocks to address global climate, food and soil security" by Dr. David J. Beerling, et al
Silicates
Carbonates
Agricultural lime (aglime)
Path dependence
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
Life gotten harder recently? You must have just leveled up. We all thought we were doing the very hard work necessary to scale carbon removal, but was this ultimately a false peak? When you climb to what you think is the top of the mountain only to find a lot more mountain lurking behind it?
Today's show is with Noah Deich, a carbon removal mover and shaker with his thumbprint on many of the biggest organizations and policies in the world. He recently completed a year in the prestigious Stripe Climate Fellows program, which selected a cohort of some of the sharpest people in CDR to develop new approaches to grow demand for carbon removal. Noah's effort was an attempt to create an Advance Market Commitment structure like Frontier but for governments rather than corporations. You'll hear how that went in this episode...
Noah and host Ross Kenyon also laugh about the old days of commercial carbon removal, their mistaken beliefs (and maybe mostly Ross's), and try to chart a course forward for our crucial but incredibly trying work.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Here's an article about some of the aftermath of the International Maritime Organization decarbonization plan failure
Stripe Climate Fellows
Frontier
Advance market commitment
Carbon180
"17: Noah Deich and Giana Amador of the Center for Carbon Removal"
Free trade
Protectionism
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
The perennial fight returns... In one corner, there are the wizards: optimists who are betting that technology and economic growth can solve our problems faster than it can create them? In the other corner, prophets: who believe we have deeply lost in our way in ignoring limits and that we need to get ourselves back to the garden.
How much wizard and how much prophet do you have contained in your own heart?
Today's monologue episode has host Ross Kenyon exploring two recent books: Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson's Abundance, and Paul Kingsnorth's Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, regarding how they continue the oldest and deepest fight in environmentalism.
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
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth
Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
"S2E53: Paul Kingsnorth on the shared roots of climate crisis, transhumanism, & immortality"
Teleology
Yin and yang
"S2E15: Are you a wizard or a prophet?—w/ Charles C. Mann"
The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World by Charles C. Mann
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Joseph Schumpeter & creative destruction
John Zerzan
Dunbar's Number
Primitivism
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond (do note the disputing of a claim I echoed from the book, that violence can be endemic in hunter-gatherer societies; take my words with a grain of salt here)
YIMBY
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
Zapatistas
Battle of Seattle
"Anyway, Here's Wonderwall" meme
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
Enabled Emissions Campaign
Amory Lovins
Wendell Berry
Ray Kurzweil
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares
A brief interpretation of some of Peter Thiel's Greta Thunberg antichrist comments
A House of Dynamite (film)
"The mountains are calling and I must go."
- John Muir
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
- Albert Einstein (attributed)
"The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
- Audre Lorde
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
With a matchup like that, who would win?
I love this chapter from Moby-Dick. It so perfectly contrasts sublime beauty of the world and the raw horror of life. I was thinking of it often while on my recent sailing trip aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl from Seattle to San Francisco.
Sit back and let me read the chapter for you, and may it inspire you to crack open some Herman Melville.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Chapter 58: Brit, from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or The Whale
"377: One Week Before the Mast—A Climate Sailing Travelogue from Seattle to San Francisco"
"ASMR: Your one-hundred year-old Norwegian tall ship is sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean"
"The Beauty and Terror of the World", the Substack piece which has the full chapter text and me reading it
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
It's that special time of year to put away worldly cares and focus on family, giving, and... carbon removal? Did I read that right?
Come hang with Ross and CDR force of nature Sebastian Manhart to discuss family, parenthood, hope for the future, the quest to expand the moral sphere, and why we should be focusing on trendlines and not headlines.
Happy Holidays, however you choose to spend it!
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
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Sebastian Manhart's website
Carbonfuture
Gigaten newsletter
Leila Conner's video podcast of Gigaten with Sebastian Manhart
"368: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: Carbon Removal's Feature Film Debut, LEGION 44—w/ Leila Conners, filmmaker"
Tree Media
Legion 44
CDRJobs
Deutscher Verband für negative Emissionen e.V. (DVNE): one of the many trade organizations for CDR Sebastian has been a major part of
CDR Policy Scoop
Sebastian Manhart's LinkedIn post about the 5% max of international credits that may potentially be used for European carbon compliance
"The Monkey's Paw" article on TvTropes
Pet Sematary
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
Is the voluntary carbon market a club for saints? Or is it a hospital for sinners? Are we meant to understand all and then to forgive all? How much time are we meant to devote to idealistic abstinence-esque policies for change, and how much of our professional lives should go to harm reduction?
Today's show deals with some of the biggest questions in carbon removal and carbon markets, and does it in just the kind of literary-philosophical ways that make this shows its own... whatever it is that it is.
Trust me and I'll guide you through the history of the Soviet Union and at least one Warsaw Pact country, David Simon, critical theory, German nuclear policy, the Bill Gates piece that ruffled all feathers one way or another, the Enabled Emissions Campaign, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, I Heart Huckabees, and Bicycle Thieves.
Some days you hit record and you never quite know what you're going to discover...
N.B. The image today is Vaclav Havel's greengrocer from "The Power of the Powerless" as illustrated by his Czech compatriot, Josef Lada, who did the original illustrations for Jaroslav Hašek's incredibly funny,The Good Soldier Švejk, who is a sort of antiwar/pacifistic Amelia Bedelia who messes things up in the Army by being a bit too literal and a bit too eager to follow orders.
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
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek
Khrushchev Thaw
The Death of Stalin film
Vaclav Havel
"The Power of the Powerless" by Vaclav Havel; it's abridged here but you can click through to the full thing if you'd like
Deirdre McCloskey
"The Clash of Aristocratic and Bourgeois Virtues in 'The Wire'" by Dr. Bart Wilson
The Wire
Great Purge
Holodomor (the Ukrainian Famine)
Katyn Massacre (NSFW: death pit image is first thing on Wikipedia)
"The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord
Jean Baudrillard
"Three tough truths about climate" by Bill Gates
Germany closing nuclear power plants
Enabled Emissions Campaign
Alexander Solzhinitsyn
Vasily Grossman
Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
I Heart Huckabees
Bicycle Thieves
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
Gentle wind, sail, and ocean sounds with looped video taken during a trip from Seattle to San Francisco aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl for the One Ocean Expedition.
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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