Reversing Climate Change

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 to...

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...

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, ...

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 abo...

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 ...

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 collecti...

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 ...

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 Asi...

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...

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 ge...

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 fo...

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 ton deal with Microsoft. That's... a lot of tons.

Today's guest is Julia...

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...

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.

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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 ...

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 se...

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 h...

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 outsid...

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,...