Reversing Climate Change

A $50M Series A?! In this economy?

Aircapture recently raised a big round at a time when big raises in climatetech are hard to come by. Their secret? Producing a valuable product better for their customers than what currently exists, and not being dependent upon policy or carbon credits.

They're doing modular direct air capture in places that otherwise need to buy merchant carbon dioxide from companies that sell gases. Shipping m...

Writing fiction about climate change is notoriously difficult. Some authors have gone for massive ensemble casts to defeat the hyperobject. But what if one zoomed in to smaller, quieter, interpersonal stories?

Jon Raymond is a screenwriter and novelist whose work I very much enjoy. He is a frequent collaborator of Kelly Reichardt's, on films such as Old Joy, First Cow, Night Moves, and Showing Up. He also adapted James M. Cain's nov...

Many hardtech entrepreneurs develop a technology and then figure out how to commercialize it. What happens if you find an industry with potential and then engineer a solution to open an entirely new market to them?

Today's show is with two of the cofounders of CO280: Natalie Khtikian, the Chief Commercial Officer, and Jonathan Rhone, the Chief Executive Officer.

Natalie and John explain what it's like working with an industry...

When you finish painting the Golden Gate Bridge, it is time to paint the Golden Gate Bridge. With a subject as interdisciplinary as carbon dioxide removal, a beginner's mind can also be a great asset!

Marian Krueger is the co-author of Race to Zero: How Companies Can Lead the Way to Climate Neutrality, an intoductory text to CDR that lucidly explains what carbon removal is, why it's necessary, and how to support its continue...

We primarily talk about pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and ocean and storing it. But there are some places where we should actually be using it productively. Is graphite for lithium-ion batteries one of those places?

Makoto Eyre is the Founder and CEO of Homeostasis, a Tacoma-based company making graphite from carbon dioxide. In the future they aim to colocate their reactors with carbon capture and/or removal to create...

When you think of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, you probably aren't thinking about carbon removal. But should you be?

Today's guest is Victoria Harvey, CDR Strategy Lead at ClimeFi. ClimeFi just structured the world's first Article 6.2 international transfer of durable carbon removal credits between Norway and Switzerland, and there's a lot to discuss!

What is the relationship between corporate climate action and national obligat...

Many a business was launched in carbon credits trying to fix a conflict of interest problem. Has Absolute Climate cracked the code? Should registries get out of the methodology development business?

Peter Minor, CEO and Co-Founder of Absolute Climate, is on the show today to talk about the many issues of trying to create an ultimate standard in carbon removal (hence the amazing xkcd meme), and how he thinks the current system is set...

Salary is touchy. It's tied up with shame on all sides: are we being underpaid? Did we overpay for someone that is unfair? Is it too late to fix it?!

Today, host Ross Kenyon monologues about the 2025 Salary Survey from the folks at CDRjobs (which you should go fill out right now!), and shares some lessons he learned about designing HR policies the hard way and from experienced colleagues.

The main lesson is: you're never designing a ...

The Carbon Removal XPRIZE has been a major focal point of the CDR industry for years. And Mati Carbon just won the $50M Grand Prize. How did they do it, and how did their surprising and counterintuitive approach to enhanced rock weathering win over so many other contestants?

Shantanu Agarwal is the Founder and CEO of Mati Carbon, and he's on the show today to discuss how the various novel ways they went to market against the advice ...

Everyone thinks of national and international governments leading or failing on climate change. But what about cities and smaller political entities? How can they lead on climate and carbon removal when larger entities may be focused elsewhere? Since carbon removal infrastructure is likely to end up at least partially within urban or periurban environments, how can we prepare ourselves and our policies for such a near-term future?

T...

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

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

Last year, Dave started Planetary Practitioners, a consultancy ...

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

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

Robert endures a barrage of questions about ...

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

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

We discuss why private traders like his company can help pri...

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

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

On this episode, Freya C...

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

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

Jim shares his lessons from exiting 1PointFive...

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

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

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

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

This ascendancy of the antihero is a trend I've been watching (and often enjoying) since my teen years. Sho...

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

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

Today is a bonus monologue episode where I am going to unpack this phrase (and its nastier cousin) and explain what it has to te...

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

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

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

We get real in this show, talking about the difficult and sometimes unsung work of climate...