351: The Virgin Earth Challenge & the Early Days of Carbon Removal: Lessons of Curiosity, Discipline, & Grace—w/ Dave Addison, Founder of Planetary Practitioners

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey everyone, thank you for listening.
This is Ross Kenny, and I'm yourhost.
I have two sponsors that I'd like to tell you about today.
They're both organizations doingvaluable work within Carbon
Removal. One of them is a new sponsor of
the show and the other one has been with us from the start, so
I'm going to start with a new one.
I'm going to give them a chance to go first.
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(00:20):
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(00:41):
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(01:22):
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(02:05):
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about Climify. And of course, I'm also very
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(02:29):
They're very data-driven. They're trying to turn degraded
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Outside of carbon removal, it's a good thing to do but is also
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(02:51):
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(03:12):
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Also, Lizette Louie, one of the founders and COO of our bionics,
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(03:32):
Go check that out because we diginto a lot of the role of
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It's a fascinating big topic andLizette brings her a game to it,
so I hope you enjoy. Link to both sponsors are in the
show notes. If you'd like to be a sponsor of
the show too and hear more aboutwhat that might look like, you
can e-mail me. The e-mail is in the show notes.

(03:55):
And then also, if you're podcasting and you want to use
Riverside for recording or D Script for editing and
transcription services, I have affiliate links in the notes
too. And that also helps drive the
show's financial solvency. So thanks so much for listening.
Here is the intro to your show. Hello, thanks for listening to

(04:19):
Reversing Climate Change. This is a podcast about
reversing climate change. It would be weird if it wasn't I
suppose. I'm the host, Ross Kenyon.
I'm a long time carbon removal and climate tech entrepreneur.
Been involved in this space for the better part of a decade,
seeing some stuff. Happy to keep talking about it.
It has not gotten less interesting to me as time has

(04:41):
gone on, and there are not that many people more senior in terms
of sheer longevity than myself. They are out there.
They are the luminaries of the space.
If you've been in carbon removalfor that long, it tipped my hat.
Thanks for helping pave the way for the rest of us who followed
in your footsteps. One of those people is my old

(05:04):
friend Dave Addison. Dave was an advisor of Nori from
the very early days. Pretty sure we got connected
with him because he knew Christophe Jespe, 1 of Nori's Co
founders with me and Dave has always been very involved.
He's someone that has become a close friend, a confidant,

(05:27):
someone who strikes me as a verygrounded person, as you will
hear in this show. I like how reflective he is.
He's a very careful person. Sometimes he ends up.
Very conservative in ways that are.
Charmingly British. We've been speaking quite a lot
lately because his time at Virgin came to an end about a

(05:51):
year ago and like Dave, I haven't found a full time
position as of yet. Everything short of a full time
position has been terrific. I've learned a huge amount, had
a lot of room to reflect upon myexperience, figure out what I
like to do, the kinds of people that I like to work with, and

(06:13):
how I plug into the carbon removal and climate tech
ecosystem. And Dave's been on a similar
journey, so we've been supporting each other on that.
Dave recently launched A consultancy called Planetary
Practitioners. I'm proud of him for doing so.
Dave is an amazing systems levelthinker, someone with a lot of

(06:34):
wisdom and if you're looking forsome help, particularly if
you're in the UK and care about environmental goals, circular
economy, carbon removal, any of those things, Dave is someone
that you should know. You can go to a link in the show
now to get in touch with Dave ifyou'd like to hire him for
anything. So Dave's been writing and and
reflecting a lot recently and we've been wanting to do another

(06:57):
show together because he's Co hosted the show previously.
I wanted him to reflect upon hisexperiences at the Virgin Earth
Challenge and having been in carbon removal for about 15
years, that's nearly double my experience or pretty much is
double my experience. Reflect on what it was like in

(07:19):
the. Super early days of carbon.
Removal and what he learned fromthe experience and as someone
that is as wise as Dave is, it will not surprise you to know
that the lessons that he drew are primarily emotional.
The three lessons that David shared with me is 1.

(07:39):
Curiosity goes a long way, 2 Discipline 2.
Or discipline as well. It's weird with homophones like
that. And three, Grace will help you
stay the course. I think we expect advice to come
in much more instrumental terms,and it might be a process of

(08:02):
maturation to realize how much of the good advice that one
needs is about how one carries oneself in the world.
I asked recently in a poll on Spotify how people feel about
shows that have more emotional content to them.
And people seem to like them, which is nice.

(08:23):
I know some of you listening prefer hardcore shows about tech
and business news and policy, and I respect that too.
If I didn't like doing shows on those things, I would not be
doing them. But I don't want the show to
only be on those topics because there's so much more to say and

(08:43):
there's a lot more to building an ecosystem than merely
succeeding in those very straightforward kinds of ways.
Dave's experience here and his reflections are a good example
of why and how that way of beingmight be useful.
It's less instrumental. That's less right over the plate

(09:06):
then maybe other shows that we do.
But sometimes you got to get a little weird with it.
That's all that I can say. It is necessary to sometimes get
a little weird with it. So thank you for listening.
I'm going to get to the show, but real quick pitch in case you
haven't heard yet, for $5 you can become a paid subscriber of
Reversing Climate Change. It gets you ad free listening,

(09:28):
so no Spotify injected ads. You'll still hear the
sponsorships from show sponsors that I read myself, but no
programmatic ads. There's bonus content, stuff
that doesn't make it into the main episode, but still good
enough to publish. I think I'm going to do an
entire second show with Dave because we had a false start
where we recorded I think about 90 minutes.
That's really good, but it endedup much too elliptical to just

(09:52):
be a straightforward show. And that was before I made Dave
narrow his list down to three core insights.
So there's a lot more to say, and a lot of that content is
really good, so I'm going to publish that too.
You will get access to that as apaid subscriber.
It's $5 a month. It's a market signal that makes
me know that there are people out there who are super fans who
really care about this show. And by the way, if you are a

(10:15):
super fan of the show, feel freeto send me a note if there's
things that you like about this show that you want me to do more
of. If you have feedback, feel free
to e-mail me. That is listed in the show notes
too. And there's a bunch of other
ways you can support the show, like giving Reversing climate
change a great rating review on Apple Podcast or Spotify if you
want to podcast yourself using Riverside and D Script.

(10:35):
I have affiliate links in the show notes as well.
If you're looking for office space and you'd like to be at 90
in San Francisco or Seattle, andI imagine other cities too
before too long, there's a link in there too.
Thanks so much for listening. Here is your show with Dave
Addison. That's that's fine.

(10:57):
We are. We are here in the pursuit of
truth, so you should feel cleared to say whatever you like
within the realms of physics andthe laws of our respective fine
nations. I will not abide by those rules.
I will not respect Euclidean geometry or real numbers.

(11:17):
I'm not here in pursuit of truth.
I'm here for an audience, Dave, bringing in that sweet, sweet
podcast revenue. So speak for yourself, that's
what I'm saying. Fair it off.
Fair it off. Dave, you're one of my oldest
friends in carbon removal and you've been here pretty much as
long as as anyone else has, withthe exception of the Super old

(11:39):
school scientists like David Keith and Claus Lachner and
Julio Friedman. They they've got you beat, but
there's not that many people whohave been in and around carbon
removal for as long as you have.I thought it would be really fun
to talk about the early days of carbon removal, how you've seen
it changed, what you learn from an industry that was even more

(12:00):
nascent than it is now. People still say carbon removal
is a nascent industry. That's seemingly the most common
adjective for it. What was it like working in
carbon removal when it was pre nascent?
Yeah, they're happy to talk about that for the audience's
benefit. I actually wrote down initially
12 lessons and then I pruned them down to what I thought was

(12:22):
a very economical 7. And then Ross made me cut them
even further, everybody into just three.
So I will go through those. This is the most This is one of
the best lessons I've I've heard.
I think I got this from my former colleague Heidi at Nori.
She passes along for copywriting.
One of the key lessons is that more reasons is dilutive and it

(12:45):
brings the average down and whatever you feel like you have
to say and 12 or 7 or however many things do you have.
I find I haven't felt things were missing when I've cut out,
I've often felt lighter on my feet.
I've been like, oh, this is actually the most important
things here. And those other things were
unnecessary adornments that, forthe ease of reading, listening,

(13:11):
wasn't necessary. I don't know, maybe it's useful
color. In any case, there's a bonus
episode related to this where the musings get obscure.
All errata will end up in there.So if you want extra Dave
lessons beyond the core three, they exist.
We're just like the kind of people that I think if you turn

(13:33):
the recording on or even withoutit, we will just go until our
spouses are yelling at us to getoff the damn phone or there's a
meeting that we're late for. I think that's just kind of how
we operate. Yeah, yeah, I can confirm.
And yeah, it's fair enough. I think especially with this
audience, you know, I think if someone's already got, you know,
got into the reverse of climate Change podcast, you'd hope that

(13:55):
that their interest is already slightly peaked.
So keep it tight. Yeah, well, you give me
confusing feedback where someoneelse's feedback, whom I greatly
trust. And another good friend of mine,
he's often on me to make shorterepisodes.
He likes to digest them on the go.
He doesn't necessarily need 90 minutes of of blather.

(14:19):
But you're the opposite. I almost feel like, like, how
long can this go? Can I make a day of this?
Right. Yeah, No, I.
Think I think you're unusual in that way though.
Yeah, well, well, maybe, you know, we can kind of get into
the we're already talking about it, aren't we?
We all get into the practicalities.
Dear listener. I'm not sure I was always like

(14:39):
this because I feel like in the really early days of for me
carbon removal, which is spring 2010, I kind of, maybe I was
wrong, maybe maybe this is not correct, but I've kind of feel
like I would come into it and go, you know, this thing is
important. Here's what we need to do next.

(15:00):
Can we go do it? And I feel like sometimes at
least I found when you're sort of quite, when it, when a
conversation was quite early andit was quite technical and you
had to sort of argue the case. I often just found it getting
more drawn out And I before I do, I sort of turn around and be

(15:21):
speaking in the highly caveated paragraphs rather than the sense
that this is, and I'm not entirely sure how it happened.
I'm not entirely sure, I always used to speak that way.
Yeah, when your speech contains asterisks and people know that
there are asterisks involved, yes, you're you're in danger.
But also that's just how it goes.

(15:42):
I saw Robert Hoagland published a piece recently that's talking
about the various purposes to which carbon removal should be
used and how people often mix them without realizing them.
I think being able to give enough space to explore rather
than there's only one story. It turns out there's several
stories that have some amount ofoverlap.

(16:04):
As someone who is a semi professional communicator,
pretty hard to tell stories likethat that the audience wants to
hear and will retain. I think you're someone that you
probably want that level of of detail.
Most people are just looking forthe quick and dirty get on to
the next thing too. Well, we probably are all alike.
They're probably parts in your life where you're just like, I

(16:25):
don't care. Tell me the simple story.
Yeah, like, you know, if you're looking how to do a particular
bit of DIY and the person's giving some context about the
the place of the world they're in your life.
I mean, it sounds cool, but yeah, I get all that.
I think especially on the more practical side of carbon
removal. Fair enough.
So if you like. Recipes online.
That's in the place where it exists.

(16:46):
And, you know, so, yeah, fair enough.
And you know, I think when I wason the learning curve as well, I
think I was definitely just trying to make sense of
everything. So that that's very fair.
If you like, I could summarize the three main themes and then
we can go into each of them. Back leading, but it's OK.
So #1 was curiosity goes a long way #2 was discipline 2 goes a

(17:12):
long way. And the third one was grace will
help you just keep moving forward and stay the course.
And then I just put down some notes that we can have like AI
think they call it in the the academic world, a semi
structured conversation around like around those themes.
If that sounds all right. Sounds great.
I was talking about this with you before the show started that

(17:34):
what I liked about your presentation of these lessons is
that it's very much you. I could pull this out of a line
up for sure know this is Dave Addison wrote this.
I think a lot of other people I could ask about this would stay
say something focused on the nonemotional components of the
work. It would and and less about the

(17:56):
way in which we approach things,understand them, how open or
unopened our hearts are to new information into learning.
I think it'd be much more like focus on unit economics, you
know, tailor your project to getthe big off take.
And that would be a good show too.
That's actually really valuable information as well.

(18:16):
That's not to disparage that, but it's also just not at
Estonian. And so I like the rule that I
know is that whatever you do should be unapologetically
yourself. And this is absolutely
Adisonian. It's Dave Addison, distilled
into three key lessons. Better off or worse.
And apologies if you hear a squeaking chair as I recoil in

(18:38):
reaction to your comments, by the way.
So, yeah, so, so for me, I thinkthe reason why I I landed on
these themes is I often found that not all the time, but just
a bit of time and headspace thinking about if you like the
sort of superstructures behind the more practical questions

(18:58):
around everything from techno economics and product market fit
and where you're positioning your your brand as a carbon
removal venture in the current ecosystem etcetera, etcetera.
I just often found on my own journey that at least a little
bit of time getting into the slightly like attempt attempted
philosophical side, like where is your head going?

(19:20):
Where is your heart going? What bigger visions and purposes
are you at least trying to reachtowards, however poorly would
then like cascade out into what kind of questions you are
asking, what kind of analysis you were doing, what kind of
things you would be moving forward in the real world.
And maybe we, we can't hopefullymaybe bridge a bit of some of

(19:40):
the, the divide between those two with some specific examples,
but we'll see how we go. I guess.
Feedback welcome, beloved listener as well.
And we do have some questions. I did get some questions because
I posted on LinkedIn before. So I've got some brief answers
to those that we can do at the end.
Interesting. OK, how much do you know not to

(20:00):
kind of hijack the the directionof the conversation?
I'm a long term listener and fanof the Reversing Climate Change
podcast as well, so I maybe feela bit more comfortable than I
really should. I'm in your living room like.
How much do you know about the Earth Challenge?
And obviously we kind of met quite early on in your journey,
but had you kind of heard of it before?
Did you know much of the story? Not really.

(20:22):
And even to this point now, it didn't have an influence on
Nori's work. If it was active while we were
active, we wouldn't have qualified for it.
So I don't remember thinking a lot about it.
And I always knew it was one of those things that was on the
back burner perhaps, but I don'tremember paying a huge amount of
attention to it. And maybe it just took place

(20:45):
before I got into it because I don't think I really was
thinking about carbon removal before.
I think I first started hearing about it.
I think Paul started telling me about it in maybe summer of
2016. I think it's probably when I
first, you know, got carbon removal pilled and went from
there. So it depends on the timeline,
but that probably isn't a very encouraging answer.
In any case, you should start from the beginning, because I

(21:07):
assume listeners maybe don't know.
Yeah, and fair enough. All fair enough.
So I was the same, you know, I stumbled into carbon removal,
but that's that's a story for either later or another time.
So the basic story of the Earth Challenge was Back in February
2007, Richard Branson and several other judges with

(21:29):
experience and perspective in the climate and sustainability
arena laid down a $25 million innovation prize for ways of
removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to help address
climate change. It was launched at a press
conference in the middle of London.
I imagine most of the world's media agencies would still have

(21:52):
footage of the whole thing somewhere.
And it's quite an interesting watch, actually.
I remember seeing footage from it back in the day and just
seeing how it was talked about even then in quite just a
thoughtful way, in the way that many of the carbon rural leaders
today also talk about it in a similar spirit, right?
We still need to reduce emissions first.
This is stuff that's complex butnecessary to start exploring and

(22:14):
so on and so on. And it was modelled, I believe,
after some fairly well wellish known innovation prizes
throughout history in particular, and I think this was
mentioned during the launch, theLongitude Prize, which was
launched by the British government quite a long time

(22:36):
ago, like hundreds of years ago,I think.
I forget the specific date. There's quite a good book
written about it and that was a prize at the time for trying to
figure out how you would figure out how far around around the
world you were whilst on a ship.Because back then you didn't
have GPS. And like pendulum clocks don't

(22:57):
work on a ship. And one of the ways that you
would figure out longitude is tolike have a clock linked to the
time where you left and then synchronized that based on where
the sun was to try and work out how far away around the world
you were. And it was, at the time, a huge
prize. And there's a whole long,
complicated story behind how different people tried to win

(23:19):
it. It was ultimately, I think, just
about one by a guy called John Harrison who came up with this
very precise clock called the Marine Chronometer.
You can actually see one in the Science Museum in London, which
is pretty cool. And there's another one I think,
over in Greenwich, memory servesme correctly.
And so the Earth Challenge when it was launched was really set
up as a, hey, no, we need to remove greenhouse gases from the

(23:41):
atmosphere. This is a thing because back
then, in my opinion, it was maybe overlooked in a fair
amount of the mainstream climatediscourse.
And, and here's a big prize to encourage people to do it.
And, and yeah, that was what we now like 20/20/25.
That was like 18 years ago, 18 plus years ago now that was that

(24:03):
was announced and launched to the world.
You can still find the news articles about it out there,
that kind of BBC News article, and many of us about it as well.
And were you involved with it from the start?
Did you join the project after it launched?
I started working on the Earth Challenge in 2010.
I remember watching the launch during my geography degree,

(24:23):
which I loved at the time. It was for me the sort of
closest degree you could get to studying like planetology, like
how the planet works and how people interact with it.
And I remember being launched, Iremember going to the cinema and
in the first term with all my course mates and watching An
Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's climate film and coming out with

(24:46):
a oh good gracious. To me, this seems a bit worse
than the mainstream media narrative at the time.
And I think, I think Richard actually got got a personal
inconvenient truth briefing fromformer Vice President Gore in
2006 as well. I think that's sort of that was
known and talked about. He talked about that in a few of
his books. Richard did.

(25:07):
And but yeah, I started in 2010,basically after the geography
degree, I went and did the master's in environmental
technology at Imperial up in London near the near the
museums. And Virgin put out an advert to
that course saying we, we're looking for someone to come in
and just help with some of the very early sort of staged

(25:29):
assessment of the entries as theprize ultimately got over 10,000
applications and 2600 entries. And as you can imagine, some
were very sincere, some were done by like like kids with
through their schools and that sort of thing.
And everyone obviously still needed at least a kind of
fundamental robust assessment onwhether or not it was actually a

(25:52):
potentially viable, scalable, sustainable carbon removal
methods. And so back to the curiosity
point, I knew enough about the, you know, Earth system and
carbon cycle and climatology to know that Oh yeah, we probably
do need to do some removal as well in the long run, don't we?
You know, interesting. I didn't, I was not carbon

(26:13):
removal pill, just you describedit at that time.
And frankly, I'm not sure how many people actually applied for
the touch. But in that one month in 2010,
as they say, I just went down the rabbit hole.
And I've told you the story before.
I kind of, I had a perfectly good master's thesis lined up
that was then modeling energy and carbon payback for lots of

(26:33):
different forms of renewables and that sort of thing.
The kind of thing that I think in, on paper, you could just
walk this into a nice energy consultancy job for.
And I'm not sure whether or not this is ultimately a good idea,
but I kind of threw that out thewindow because I, I just, I
remember going to some of my supervisors and, and, you know,
professors and saying like, there's too much carbon in the

(26:56):
air and, and we need to do lots of mitigation, but we're
probably going to need to take some out as well.
And there's this whole like 350 PPM paper that, that NASA
climate scientist Jim Hadson wrote with the ME people.
And, and there's this whole academic conversation around
geoengineering and the wider climate movement doesn't really
seem to be engaging with the area or maybe even treats it
like a taboo. And there are all these people

(27:17):
just working on it. There are all these people just
trying to very, very early on just figure out ways of actually
doing it, however technological or ecological.
I'm kind of thinking maybe I should just try and do a
master's thesis that gives me anexcuse to get my head around it
all and at least try and vaguelyask the questions around how
might you actually sustainably scale this in a way that is

(27:39):
aligned with the sustainable development of humankind and
responsible collective looking after various planetary systems
and so on and so on. Yeah.
But that was that was the springof 2010, after the Copenhagen
climate meeting. It kind of not gone the way that
people thought it would and whenI think CO2 was already

(28:00):
considerably above 350 parts permillion.
You see this phase of your career as being one where
curiosity was the most importantlesson for you or important
principle to keep in mind, Yeah.And we might as well start
quoting Carl Sagan now, Ross. There's no point like big
beating around the Bush. Oh, don't put it off, It's time.
You know, you know, Carl Sagan had a line to the effect of, I

(28:23):
think I'm paraphrasing, you should always be open minded,
but not so open minded. All your common sense falls out.
And actually even just sat therehelping screen a lot of the
entries to the Earth challenge. Obviously, there was there was
some in the different categoriesof carbon removal that we all
know and love today. There would be others that were
again, like written by like kidssomewhere and sent in by their

(28:45):
parents. And it wasn't like a very
credible, you know, carbon removal venture, but it was
still just so awesome to see, you know, and, and there were
quite a lot of those. And we I'm not sure if we
ultimately got all of them, but there was a real effort to even
give those ones like a nice constructive reply and point
them in the right direction. And, you know, wish everyone all

(29:06):
the best, you know, And so it was just, it was really cool to
have an excuse to look at different early proposals for
ways of striving to do sustainable and scalable carbon
removal and being able to bring that curiosity into either

(29:26):
assessing them directly or seeing the more detailed, robust
assessments of them that would subsequently happen in in in the
process. Can't believe it took 20
something minutes to get to CarlSagan, but I guess that's fine,
David. Well, yeah, I think, I think we
went to venture. This was when we spoke
previously, maybe there are others.

(29:47):
When I had to look around again recently, one of Karl Sagan's
papers about Venus was the earliest thing I could find in
the literature talking about hey, maybe you can actually also
remove greenhouse gases from a planetary system to help more
consciously intervene with the climate system.
So been very influenced by that way of thinking.

(30:09):
Kim Stanley Robinson Mars books were a big influence on early
Nori. Not for me, but that's part of
our intellectual heritage. You turned me on to.
I was too young for the originalCosmo, so I missed that when it
was actually a thing. But I remember you sent the DVDs
over as an advisor and taking your advice, watch them and

(30:31):
found them to be delightful, very charming.
And then moving on to David Grinspoon, podcast alumnus
several times Doctor Funky Spoonas he might adorn himself.
And I found your nudging me to think about climate change
through a planetary science paradigm to be very useful.

(30:55):
And to this day, I've said this so many times in the podcast.
So maybe it's been a minute severely underrepresented.
I find it to be such a useful third way of seeing because the
common ways of seeing things arevery much wizard and profit
oriented. Charles Man.
Yeah. Charles C Man.
Charles Man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(31:17):
I should go back and listen to that one because I I was so
happy that I was able to get himon the podcast because he's a
legendary person, a legendary non fiction writer.
Yeah. Wizard and profit.
So people who think tech's goingto save us and that we can bet
on growth and human ingenuity, that's the wizard profits, are
those who think we need to cut back and, you know, go back to

(31:37):
the land lives, much simpler lives.
And what I love about Charles C Man's work is that he honors
both of those perspectives, isn't just that one is right and
the other one is wrong. It's like wisdom is knowing when
to apply those and when to know that we're out of balance
between Wizards and profits. But then the Grinspoonian,
Seguinian perspective, the the seemingly doesn't fit into it

(32:01):
neatly at all. It's both about living in in
balance and harmony with Earth, but also so that we could become
a transplanetary civilization that has earned the right
possibly to grow to become a transplanetary civilization that
is permanent, that is not going to boom and bust and and wipe
ourselves out by accident or by malintent.

(32:24):
I find that to be such a humbling but also encouraging
way of seeing things. I am indebted to you for nudging
me that direction. I know.
Well, one, it was awesome to be a Nori advisor and if nothing
else, I mean like long term listeners of reversing climate
change, especially in the early days.
It was just so awesome to be able to listen to the kind of

(32:46):
conversations you were having, admittedly on the others at a
very different longitude at the time, obviously in the UK and,
and I'll be eternally grateful for that.
I found it just a helpful headspace to be in for many
practical tasks that you would then have to do.
Whether it's briefing people, having stakeholder dialogues and
facilitating technical evaluation, putting together

(33:10):
like blog posts, you know, goingand speaking in places.
Just all the different things one would try to do to humbly
but sincerely try and nurture the carbon removal innovation
ecosystem before it was really the thing today.
I often just found trying to come at it from that, that that
scientific yet planetary perspective was just a helpful

(33:32):
headspace to be in for how to talk about it and think about it
and try and build some bridges rather than drive further
polarization and that sort of thing.
And yeah, there was, there was many like heavy ish nights where
I put on an episode of Cosmos. I've told you the story before
and it would sort of say to my soul, it's OK to sleep now, but

(33:54):
also keep going because people throughout human history, again,
in that spirit of curiosity, anda lot of these stories are told
beautifully in the Cosmos seriesin particular, just carried that
spirit through through into exploring and discovering new
things, many of which we now take for granted, you know?

(34:15):
There are so many different avenues into that calming way of
seeing that I'll encountered them recently.
The most recent one I I heard there's a podcast series.
I might cut this out I don't even know.
Did you listen to the The Telepathy tapes?
No, no. It's a pretty well regarded,

(34:38):
very popular podcast series right now about how non verbal
autistic people have fairly welldocumented telepathic abilities
and. Really.
Well, consciousness exists. I, I listened to something
credible that said it exists probably in the quantity, you
know, so Roger Penrose's whole thing that it's probably from
the quantum realm rather than the Unsteinian realm.

(34:59):
So who knows, man? Again, curiosity.
Yeah, yeah. I've gone through a process
where, OK, that or the sort of view from space grin, Spoonian
way of seeing things. Or if you're feeling spiritual
and whatever tradition that you have access to, I'll have this

(35:22):
strong embodied sense of like, why are we spending any time
fighting in any way? Or do you know the Great
Dictator speech at the end of Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That also does it to me too,
where I'm like, it makes me do the oh, I sent this to you, the
darn mind doggy door. But what did they do to us?

(35:43):
We're on this beautiful planet. It's a a magical mystical
experience. And yet we spend our time
arguing over like bullshit basically, and hurting each
other for very little gain, scrapping for like the smallest
amount of money possible. It's like it's like a pretty
miserable experience for what could otherwise be a free and

(36:04):
beautiful one. I think being able to zoom out
in any of those ways, any of those ways that you can get into
that snap you out of the like, why am I engaging on this with
like primate brain and how do I go Galaxy brain on this?
I think it's just like a really useful, OK, say the line, then
be like, now another meme for you, the Bart Simpson.

(36:26):
Say the line, Bart. Non theor, non non robotic
environment, say the line name. How do you get to that place
where you're like, oh, there's oneness and we can access this
and it can actually dissolve a lot of these conflicts that
we're wasting our time with thatultimately don't make us happier

(36:47):
or safer. Yeah, man, yeah, yeah.
And, and I think I, I saw it andI felt it a lot interacting with
people who were working on carbon removal, meeting the
leading entrance to things like the Earth challenge and spending
time with them and listening to their stories and seeing the

(37:07):
work they were doing, going to and supporting the early
academic conferences even. And you know, this is very hard
to do. And I for one, certainly didn't
do it perfectly, but just tryingto press into having dialogue
with stakeholders of any kind. If there's actually just
interest in talking things through, you know, even if if it
get, if the dialogue starts witha right now, what you've got to

(37:29):
understand is here's why thermodynamics doesn't actually
work. If you're like, OK, this
probably isn't going to be, but you know, you hear the person
out fine. But you know, just actually like
just because especially back then, I think people forget now
like carbon removal was firmly under the umbrella term of
geoengineering, which a friend of the Royal Society at the

(37:49):
time, I remember saying, you know, that they said it's very
hard to say anything under that rubric.
That's both true and useful, youknow, and, you know, even like,
like if would would a very, you know, some of the, the, the
heaviest bits of the 20th century totalitarian regimes,
would that be social geoengineering, like a large

(38:11):
deliberate intervention in a physical, a human system?
It's just, it's just, it's hard to, you know, it's hard to
grapple with. Yeah, there's lots of very
important things underneath it, obviously.
And even back then, just really trying to say, hey, yeah, but
also like trees are really greatand this living earth system
through everything and this is well covered terrain on

(38:32):
reversing climate change, obviously.
But you know, through like everything from mountains to to
the little Cocker lithophores that make up the chalk cliffs in
the UK. Like there's so many historic
examples, even whales. Well, carbon.
You've done episodes on like thewhale.
Well carbon, have you? Whales were awesome, you know,
You know, like there's all this precedent for it.

(38:53):
And and it really just again presses into these these
questions of well, like, what does it mean to be a living
planet? And what this is?
I think David Greenstein said this on this broadcast.
Yeah. What does it mean to try and
think about how we interact withthis world and each other more
gracefully? And then whatever decision
you're making at the time, practically in a carbon removal
venture or initiative or programor whatever, Like what does it

(39:16):
look like to try and express that through whatever strategic
or tactical decision you have tomake at the time?
And, and again, I, I don't kind of want to kind of maybe perhaps
dwell on that too heavily. But again, on that point of
curiosity, I just, I often find it quite a helpful space
headspace to be in. You know, like Jim Lovelock, the

(39:36):
planet the Earth scientist passed away on his 103rd
birthday. He said, you know, science is
iterating towards the truth. You know, it's not just suddenly
getting there. And I just, I often found myself
prompted to think about that sort of thing and not a lot,
excuse me, getting to know and being inspired by a lot of the

(39:58):
early people working on different elements of the carbon
removal landscape, if that makessense.
It does make sense. It represents the curiosity
angle here so strongly. It's funny that a lot of the
things being referenced right now, both by you and I, at least
for me, confirm or disconfirm this.
From your perspective, the references that I'm making grow

(40:19):
out of my college dorm room experience, basically.
Like, I'm really close to referencing Bill Hicks.
Do you know him by the way? Philosophy of a comedian?
Yeah, philosophy. I'm sure you.
Love being called a philosopher,but he just sort of like he's
sort of like the next generationof George Carlin style anti

(40:39):
authoritarian left of center comedy vicious unrepentant
smoker long after it was discovered to be bad
unfortunately died of cancer. But all of these things are are,
or I've been reading a lot of Victor Hugo recently and just,
you know, capital R romanticism,this sort of feelings of

(41:01):
oneness, of mercy, of this ability to plug into something
bigger than yourself, to get away from these empirical
pecuniary concerns and be like, what are we?
What, what does it all mean? Like, why do we kill each other
and do these terrible things to one another?

(41:22):
And what I'm leading to here is that you need discipline too.
And I imagine you can't you counter poise these because
discipline and curiosity, it's sort of wiggly brain versus
linear brain is kind of how I understood your intent here.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it.
You can correct. Me good segue as well.
Yeah, yeah, I was, I was in the same same spirit for sure.

(41:44):
So that's the second of the three points was discipline will
also help. And that's really because just
like any, any journey, some bitswill be really hard, some bits
will be really hard. There'll be misunderstandings,
there'll be, there'll be things that you get wrong.
You know, there will be, there'll be honest mistakes.

(42:05):
There will be times when we fallshort.
And again, on my own journey, I would see examples where people
took ownership of those, stayed humble, even if they were
clearly going through something just emotionally or
psychologically quite heavy. We're still able to lead and
explain what the immediate objective was in that context

(42:26):
and move forward towards it. You know, choosing the path of,
of peace building rather than just fanning the flames.
If there's a highly spirited conversation, you know, not
simple, not easy. Again, Carl Sagan, we've
accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage.
You know, like, and, and, and I,I saw both in my own journey and

(42:50):
journeying with others that we've wrote some notes on this
like leadership strategy and tactics are trainable skills.
Just how you can train to be a commercial pilot or a surgeon or
a medical practitioner or whatever.
You can train in leadership. And there are certain, I think
kind of again, back to the game theoretically, like

(43:11):
evolutionarily, socially, ways of just helping others and
serving and bearing that responsibility.
And, and, and I think often the thing that if I could have a
billboard, not that anyone wouldcare about sound, is just like
you have the vision, have the curiosity, but also just have
the discipline, you know, like even little things such as just

(43:34):
take time, if you can do whatever you can based on your,
your own, you know, physical abilities from an inclusive
perspective, but just take time to have it, take exercise, you
know, just just have time to, to, to focus on that side of
physical Wellness. Because for me, I always found
it helped with the mental clarity and, and, and patience

(43:55):
and, and that sort of thing. I think it also applies a lot
from a, from a inclusion perspective, you know, and just
again, having conversations, having conversations with
different stakeholders, being able to, to stay focused on
building bridges and building understanding and really hearing
what the person is saying. Even if naming no names,

(44:15):
pointing at myself, they might go on in a couple of different
tangents and caveats. Just just listen, Matt, just
listen like write some notes like, you know, just, so even on
those fronts, I think it's just really just really important to,
to focus on cultivating that self-discipline rather than, for

(44:37):
example, relying maybe too much on, on motivation because that
can kind of ebb and flow, especially in, in heavier
moments. You've been a good encouragement
for me on that. I'm prone to periods of
dissolution where I'm like, I'm feeling depressed and grumpy and
my first instinct is not, well, you know, pull your socks on.

(45:01):
I wouldn't say that anyways because I'm an American, but
you? Know we're not all in Mary
Poppins anymore. Sorry, do not say a mean word
about Julie Andrews. It's a great film.
It is a great film, but sorry I interrupted.
No, that's OK. My instinct is is less Julie

(45:21):
Andrews and more like becoming aminor character in a Tom Waits
song who's just sort of like a barfly at the bottom of society
who's just like rotting in public sight.
And I always appreciate that because we're talking about
different kinds of discipline here too.
It's it's not just discipline inyour thinking to counter poise

(45:42):
against the sort of open-ended view from space.
What if consciousness is a fieldrather than something that
emerges from individual brains, blah, blah, blah, stuff that,
you know, it's easy to make wrong turns there and end up
like way out to sea in places where you're like, I don't know
what reality even is. It's good to go there.

(46:04):
Sometimes you have to. If you don't, I think you get
too linear and you lose out on alot of what makes this state
world so far. So it's like, but discipline of
being able to rein that in some too, but also just personal
discipline. I think this field is so hard.
There are various fields that I've interviewed for for jobs in

(46:24):
recently where I've heard it's like, oh, we have a product
customers like and your job would be to help other customers
find it and then make them buy it.
You're like, wow, that sounds soremarkably easy relative to
carbon removal or you have to know policy science, be halfway
decent at business. Bunch of other weird skills

(46:44):
translating science into commercial applications.
Super hard. I just like to focus though on,
you know, as Reddit likes to say, you know, lawyer up and hit
the gym. That's what you got to do
that's. Yes, well, you know, be legally
disciplined as far as, you know,being squared away against like
policy and and, you know, rule of law and everything.

(47:05):
Like there's a line in ministry for the future, isn't there?
Where I think Kim is Kim StanleyRobinson says these are the
tools we have. You know, like we need to work
with those and fair enough. I also think a kind of sub
category of sustainable development goal should be
everyone should have the same access of legal support that you
tend to have in like large corporations and stuff.
Just because that world. I didn't get taught any of that

(47:26):
school, but it's we have a wholelot of conversation about that
whole kind of I. Mean this joke is just like it's
advice for people getting divorced.
Basically like relationship not going well.
Well, my one contribution to theworld maybe is I don't mind
showing this story. Maybe put this in the bonus
episode. I I don't think my better half

(47:46):
would might be saying this. I developed a a divorce
prevention system modelled afterthe defcon nuclear war
prevention thing called Divcon. General general readiness.
You know, do the dishwasher, be kind, don't be too much of an
idiot. And then you can like depending
on if you screw up, you can escalate like, hey man, I can't
come out today. I'm on like a divcom 3.
Sorry, I need to like take some corrective measures to de

(48:07):
escalate. It's worked for me so far.
Love you, dear. If you're listening anyway.
So basically, so I don't know, it's just again, I'm 15 years
into carbon removal now. A lot of the current
difficulties that I see people facing and actually leaning into
and doing awesome work through like echo with some of the ones

(48:27):
that we faced in different ways back in the 20 tens.
And I actually wrote something again, very cliche talking about
the podcast. Yes, I have got a sub stack
going. Look how original I am.
But I literally just wrote one which he very kindly commented
on the type of which was just keep going.
And there would be nights where,you know, with with small kids,

(48:48):
you'd be up in the middle of thenight cleaning vomit off the
stairs or something. And it would feel like all these
these solutions that you were seeing that could really be
helpful for the future just weren't getting the traction
that they deserved. And Virgin was quite early in
climate and clean tech in general, not just carbon removal
in different ways. And again, back to the

(49:09):
discipline, discipline point. There would be moments where
where my thought process would then be, hey, man, it's all
good. I'm in a peaceful part of the
world. I have running water, I have
healthcare. There's many things to genuinely
feel blessed about. Keep going, you know, get a grip
and just just just get up the next day and do the next.

(49:34):
To quote the frozen song, which a friend shares with me, right?
A good friend shares with me regularly to do the next right
thing, you know, just just keep going.
And in particular, maybe it's different today, but if you're
listening to this and you're working in carbon removal and
just sometimes it feels really heavy and like you can't keep
going like you can, you can like, if I can, you can.

(49:57):
Like there are people out there that even if they don't know
you, they appreciate what you'redoing.
Don't underestimate the the things that you're trying to
bring into the world. We can get on to the final point
of grace a little bit, but just like just like keep going like
the world is better with you in it, like just and if you need to

(50:18):
see help, seek help. But just don't don't be too hard
on yourself. You know you're doing a good
job. Nobody's perfect, at least it
will me, but just keep going. Yeah, I really like that post.
It was straightforward but felt honest to me and was
encouraging. I think that advice is really

(50:38):
powerful. I met someone randomly recently.
It was kind of one of those things where like sitting on a
on a bus bench and someone just starts talking to you basically.
And this person was telling me about how he had been to prison.
I didn't explain why. I think it was, it was something
driving related. I imagine it was maybe a DUI or

(50:58):
something got into an accident and ended up in jail.
And sort of out of nowhere, he'slike, don't kill yourself if you
go to prison. It's it's not so bad.
And I learned a lot and grew from it.
And it's OK. And it's good to remember that
things are going to just be OK. And I was really taken aback and

(51:18):
moved by it because it was said apropos almost nothing.
And it was such a beautiful sentiment where I imagine people
just think when bad things happen, their life is over and
it's not worth continuing. And sometimes that simple
message of keep going can be deceptively powerful and and
just a genuinely moving thing tosay to someone.

(51:40):
Yeah. And, you know, again, my, I can
only stick directly to my own journey, of course, but carbon
removal in the early 20 tens wasoften a much more like hostile
space to be in. There were people that got death
threats by virtue of it sort of being packaged as this sort of
like, you know, dystopian RidleyScott, Alien film, kind of

(52:04):
nightmarish, you know, grotesquesort of Black Mirror thing.
And, and any technology, you know, use this analogy is Carl
Sagan as well all the time. You can use a rocket motor to
launch a space probe or a weaponof mass destruction.
And actually, if you go to the Science Museum, you can see the
V2 rocket motor next to some of the stages from the Apollo

(52:26):
project, for example, right, to very vividly portray that.
Are they? Are they next to each other?
Hoping you will make that connection.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.
And, and that's true for most, most forms of engineered systems
and technology, broadly defined,whoever social or physical or
whatever, hardware, software, and so on and so on.

(52:50):
Just like even back then, you had to have a bit of courage,
you know, even if you you had tojust accept that you might be
someone that was on a harder path rather than an easier one.
And for me, there would be moments that were quite like
psychologically painful. No small violins.

(53:12):
I had like several years as wellwhere after some kind of
impromptu health scares that turned out to be OK, I just kept
getting like different forms of chronic pain that wouldn't go
away and having a bunch of testswhich get us very grateful for.
I kept having different types ofrecurring nightmares about
catastrophic climate related things, both planetary level and
kind of individual. I won't share specifics because

(53:34):
I don't want to kind of transmitthem if you like, but I would
often like wake up sweating or screaming and stuff.
And for me, not just thinking about all the awesome people I
got to know who are working on actual just really cool things,
you know, however imperfectly. And also thinking about just how
many like, awesome human beings I got to know across so many

(53:56):
different places. Like you said, I've met people
who've served time, I've met people who've been in just
desperate poverty, just so many different backgrounds.
And I took such inspiration fromthat.
And at the moment, not to kind of jump ahead a little bit, but
for me right now, especially having off the left Virgin last
year, it seems there's so much potential to press into the

(54:18):
areas of like social sustainability, innovation
broadly defined and change that just help feed in just as like
carbon removal once felt like this sort of impossible, You
know, why would you even do it kind of way that might actually
in the long term be able to bring some healing to bits of
the climate system that can be healed.

(54:38):
Obviously, various consequences are irreversible, right?
I fully acknowledge that, right.But you know, like there are
other bits in from a wider planetary perspective where you
maybe do want to try and bring some restoration, you know,
mitigation, adaptation, restoration.
I kind of feel the same way about.
So you put efforts for a safe and just future broadly defined

(54:59):
into climate, nature and people.The people side.
I met so many people. I thought if you could have a
role as like a person working ina awesome, like just imagine,
you know what you say away from magic wand like awesomely
designed and run collectively like air capture plant or
regenerative agricultural systemor or work as a tradesperson

(55:23):
using carbon negative cement or whatever.
Like I could just imagine this person is having the most
awesome time doing that and finding a bit more peace and
finding a bit more purpose. And that's something that was
quite front of mine with me at the moment, although a very,
very early stage. Yeah, just just just keep going.
Even if it sucks and you're miserable and it feels like

(55:45):
there's no hope at all in your little storm and corner of the
world right now. If nothing else, just keep, just
keep going. Just just just keep going.
Even if it sucks, just keep going.
There's a car that I pass sometimes on my bike and I
actually spoke with the owner ofit recently.
And this car has a couple stickers on it.

(56:09):
And they're also dictums that are a little bit mockable.
They're very 12 steppy. I imagine this person has a chip
on him. And the two bumper stickers say
relax, God's in charge and gratitude is the attitude.

(56:31):
And I saw him messing around with it when I was riding by
recently and I stopped. And like, I love your bumper
stickers. I find them so encouraging.
I love how earnest they are. If I put on a bumper sticker,
I'd be trying to make it witty or perfectly beautiful.
I love that these stock phrases that I imagine come from the 12

(56:51):
step program, are they just, youknow, it works, you know, like
there's, there's no artifice to it.
And I, I find things like that, if you can allow yourself to be
earnest and vulnerable in a way where even, you know,
unremarkable sayings like this can become remarkable, I find to
be an amazing use of poetic language.

(57:14):
Hey, bud. Yeah.
And you know, fair enough. If you're like grinding through
an LCA or MRV or Grot application, fair enough, man.
Just, you know, just keep on keeping up.
But yeah, yeah, for sure. So we may be at this point kind
of slightly clumsily segue into the third and final well.
I thought we were already here. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Yes. Are we not?
Basically, yeah. So, Grace, OK.

(57:37):
Well, carry on then. I thought we were already.
Talking about grace to others and yourself.
Again for me some bits noting a huge amount of blessings and
privileges. Some bits especially in the
early days felt incredibly morally heavy.
And I think maybe lots of different people working on
purpose driven stuff big and small.
We're just trying to help something else and you feel like

(57:59):
you wish you could do more but can't for various reasons,
including like 1's own falling short thinking, Oh, could I've
said that better? Was that the right decision?
And so on and so on. It can just feel very morally
heavy. And I, I, I still just again,
strongly feel through different frames and rubrics that graze is
very important. As a more practical example, I

(58:20):
mean, I've told you this that wetalked about this before.
Why Mr. Ross Kenyon is flying sosafe.
You're in a. Tink because it's so dangerous.
Well, maybe a little bit. There's obviously a very long
story there as one of my extended family worked in
aviation safety throughout theircareer and I, I remember on a
Christmas get together kind of grabbing them almost kind of and

(58:43):
slightly metaphorically kind of shake them going.
Why? Again, like I said, you're an
aluminium tin can. You're flying faster than
speeding bullet through the upper atmosphere.
Yes. Why do environmental things to
be internalized? Don't even get me started on the
whole chemtrail conspiracy theory back in the day.
The best line I heard about thatfor anyone watching is they're
not necessarily wrong there, just early.
If you have a particularly dystopian view of how which

(59:06):
pathway we're on, read Ministry for the Future.
I saw no evidence of it. Let's move on.
Please don't reach out to me if you're not feel.
Just go watch Cosmos anyway. Anyway, sorry, but like so, but
for the actual like, like flying, it's one of the safest
ways to travel, yet you're just hurtling through the upper
atmosphere. And there's obviously many
different reasons. Obviously when it goes wrong, it

(59:28):
goes wrong very tragically and vividly and OK.
But ultimately what my, my, my extended relative said to me
was, well, there's obviously a very long story there.
But one of the short ones is there was a deliberate effort in
the 20th century to nurture whatthey called a no blame culture
when it came to aviation safety.So, and again, I think this is a

(59:52):
I'll give a kind of a rough illustrative example.
Please go like look at people that have actually worked on it.
But like, say you find a issue with a bit of a plane that might
actually cause a safety risk andmaybe even it's your fault,
right? You're in an environment ideally
and generally, obviously not always, but where you can flag
the risk and the reaction isn't to the previous point.

(01:00:14):
Well, off to jail you go. You, you Sinner.
Right, right. It's cool.
Awesome. Let's internalize that feedback
loop and make this whole wider complex system better.
Imagine that. Oh look, that's what your immune
system kind of does, right? And there's many other things in
nature that actually gain from disorder and actually do what

(01:00:36):
life does, which is evolve, right?
And I think, I think the reason why things like that, I think,
sorry, I've said I think a lot in that sentence.
I'm, I'm, I'm my, my, my bet half as an English teacher.
I will be tuned up for this later on listeners if if they
ever listen to it anyway, like it matters because like you
said, these are complex systems,right?

(01:00:59):
These are most, most carbon removal approaches and pathways
to scale are ultimately a seriesof multi scale and multi vector
complex adaptive sociotechnical political systems of systems, as
I heard someone, I think actually a Royal Society
conference described it back in the day.
And you've got to work through the complexity and I think just
being graceful and striving for grace, both to yourself and

(01:01:20):
others can really help. And again, like, I'm not on
Commission, but I think if you see the examples of the
different people in even the Cosmos series who went through
different discoveries and breakthroughs, you often see
that that kind of that, that, that again, form of a better
word, grace coming through, you know, And again, for me that you

(01:01:41):
mentioned the bumper sticker, I don't mind sharing, actually, I
had a journey into faith. I've been in common removal for
a while. Great art mysteries of faith,
freedom of religion and belief. I fully support.
And I know I joined the podcast before where we talked about
like black holes, like climate and Christianity, I think.
And for me, I'm really grateful for the church that I go to.

(01:02:07):
It welcomes everybody. It just, it's just, I can't say
anything else that it's just such a lovely group of human
beings from so many different backgrounds and perspectives
and, and journeys. And I was actually there
yesterday and that, that, that grace, that collective grace of
different human beings felt justreally palpable.

(01:02:30):
And I think like figures like Christ, for example, like for
me, you see as a very strong, vivid cosmic reflection of that
grace, you know, and again, not here to convert anybody and even
you Ross's as we different denominations that could be an

(01:02:50):
ecumenical matter for any any Father Ted fans in the UK.
Anyway, basic point is like, I think that grace really matters.
And even if you're the sort of, you know, like odd and atheist,
consider what people like Andreaand write in Cosmos about
science being like the pursuit of love and tenderness and just
a love for the cosmos and each other.

(01:03:11):
And, and like she writes like, like, like the scientific
approach to nature from my understanding of love are the
same like never stop daring to go deeper and reach higher and
so on and so on, you know, so. Beautiful thoughts, Dave.
Several different things to to say about it as we come near the

(01:03:32):
conclusion. One thing I might say on Grace's
reaction to your sentiments on it is I've seen much of my
development up to this point in my life is that of acquiring
knowledge, trying to read a lot,read very widely.
And as I've gone on, I've I've changed from a goal of acquiring

(01:03:54):
knowledge to wisdom. I'd like to be someone that
others look at and say that person looks like someone who is
at home on earth. They are happy to be here and
they are naturally here. And I don't think I'm there.
I don't even know that I'm superclose to that.

(01:04:14):
But you know, when you meet someone and they give you that
feeling, you're like they've gotit figured out.
I can't exactly tell you why, but they're not full of struggle
or acquisitiveness for knowledgeor for status or something else.
They're just contentedly placed here upon the earth.
They walk lightly upon it and with grace.

(01:04:36):
And I think that's a goal to strive for.
Unfortunately, seems like life is always nipping at your heels
to go and do something to give more.
And it's hard to maintain grace when we're also harried.
I can't tell if that's a result of our political economy and,
and the time in which we live orif even if you talk to a

(01:04:57):
peasant, they might feel like, oh, I got to plow the fields
and, and, and my wife's I'm trying to go medieval peasant
here. I was just skipped that move
off. Yeah, just too stupid you.
Keep it, I don't mind if you keep it in.

(01:05:17):
You have the aircraft on that front, so I interrupted.
I have the controls, that's whatI'm saying.
You should watch By the way, Season 2 of The Rehearsal.
Yeah, Oh goodness. Good gracious to me.
Yeah. So, so, so all this sort of
these kind of big mess physical reflections for me, I always

(01:05:39):
tried to carry them into actually doing the work that was
in front of me and our team at the time, right.
And so for me, again, I think that there are, there are
important bridges for one of a better phrase between these
worlds. And, and I hope that just if
you're working in carbon rule today, you know, and it feels

(01:06:00):
harder, it feels scary or it feels uncertain.
At least. I found the kind of resources
and framings that I've shared here to be helpful in just
navigating through it at that time.
I think basically, you know, thehopefully in time, maybe even I
was talking to someone recently,a mutual friend.
I won't name them as a not sure how public they are, but hi, if
they're listening, who's thinking about even just like

(01:06:22):
what it writing a history of carbon removal would look like?
I think there, there is room to go into a lot of detail.
You know how like when you listen to Moby Dick, he just
goes into a lot of detail about whales and stuff.
You know, like there's a room, there's a room for the
unabridged version. But for now, the point is, you
know, just try. And for me, I found that things

(01:06:43):
that spoke to that curiosity, that discipline and that grace
were then helpful to go and do whatever work was needed at that
time to either help try and makecarbon removal become a
sustainable thing in the right direction.
And the general work I did in the head office of Virgin, just
trying to start new businesses, help existing businesses evolve,
generally try and change things.Sincerely and humble, humbly but

(01:07:06):
sincerely for the better. You know, I just found it a very
like helpful set of inspiring bits of headspaces to be in
maybe, you know, just to sort oflike, well, yeah, the controls
from you like round up. I think it's just a really
interesting time to be thinking about what it means to start and

(01:07:27):
grow and change new things that might occupy other bits of these
innovation ecosystems as well. For example, Again, easy for me
to say, I've had various bits ofinteraction recently with kind
of companies in the services or outsourcing or these sort of
like more sort of like hard industries, you might say.

(01:07:49):
And I think if anyone's listening is thinking, yeah,
what would it look like to try and like launch a sort of
disruptive net positive competitor there that treats
people decently, you know, really presses into nurturing
and supporting biodiversity and is also just going to be a
happy, happy evolving procure ofdirect and indirect carbon
removal services as appropriate for that industry sector and

(01:08:13):
policy regime, etcetera, etcetera.
I think that's a sort of interesting area with everything
going on in the world at the moment.
Insert comment on AI here and how that all shakes out.
That's just quite an emerging area of interest that I hope to
write about and not use too muchAI augmentation to do so maybe a

(01:08:34):
little bit of like, does this make, does this sound completely
daft or you know, So I think that that's quite an interesting
emerging area. And another thing I'd say maybe
on that point is for me, again, any long term listeners or
former Nori Knots listening? I have, I'm very grateful to
have been an advisor and I'm very grateful for this podcast.

(01:08:56):
Like for me, when it started you, I was already like 7 years
in, you know, and, and it was soawesome listening to you all and
your guests just go on all thesedifferent adventures and
journeys and cover so many different bits of ground.
It was just, yeah, I'm really grateful for it.

(01:09:17):
Like I'm just, I can't, I can't emphasize that enough.
And I think you've always got tohave like, you know, the kind of
big counter, you know, like Marvel style multiverse sort of
counter reality thing. Other brands are available.
I just wonder, think about how many seeds you will help plant,

(01:09:39):
however directly or indirectly, you know, And I for 1:00 AM
grateful for that. And again, not that it matters
or anyone cares, but there was never any other podcast I was
going to speak on, you know, first having not done any
podcasts for ages than this one man, you know?
But yeah, I'm happy to just chatto people, try and be a good

(01:10:02):
guest and just keep moving forward on those other areas.
And I think it's quite a difficult time for many people
at the moment. Like I got, I left Virgin during
a restructuring last year. I think the certain bits of the
job search market at the moment are just plainly absurd.
And there's a lot of innovation needed there as well, man, for

(01:10:23):
people around the world to just help so many folks get decent
jobs. And, and, and just, there's such
an interesting area to be pressing into there.
And I'll be trying to write more, more coherently about that
and collaborate and link up withothers on that front in time as
well. But yeah, any final questions I
could answer? The I've got a few questions I
posted on LinkedIn before. If I don't have any questions, I

(01:10:44):
can give some quick answers to those from a, you know, tidy,
tidy up perspective. Yeah, I have them pulled up
here. So they say there's three of
them. Yeah, me too.
There are more notes to yourselfthan than what?
I know. The first one just says when
out. So what?
That was what was sorry, this was someone someone asked when

(01:11:06):
will the episode be out? And the answer is now, if you're
listening to it. So there you go.
There's that one. One was on how should people
think about scope 4, which is essentially, I believe, a broad
term for, you know, how do you document other bits of kind of
proactive good that you're trying to do From an
environmental perspective, I think it should be included, but

(01:11:28):
it depends on the context, you know, if you would include any
reporting for some initial good,you're doing great.
I think from a carbon accountingperspective, it gets a bit more
complicated. And the final one was someone
working on a sort of innovative approach and how to get support.
I think these days just just find some support near you,
right? If you're working on a
particular, if you're actually working on some hardware or even
some software, all the differentaccelerators and support

(01:11:52):
programs and investors and communities and movements,
There's so much awesome stuff out there.
If it's carbon removal and non commissioned.
But I'm a long term Air Miners fan.
I've got my hat and my bracelet and my planter downstairs and my
T-shirt. You know, I love I love Air
Miners. Just how how help would be

(01:12:12):
available. Keep looking for it again, keep
moving forward and and yeah. Dave, thanks for being here.
So honored to be your first official host Virgin podcast
experience. Something like that.
I don't know how we want to say it.
Thanks for being on. Yeah, it was a pleasure, but I

(01:12:33):
was like long term listener, first time actual guest,
extremely honoured to be in verygood company with a lot of your
previous guests and intervieweesand keep on keeping on as well,
man, like I love this podcast. I'm a happy subscriber and I

(01:12:54):
hope to be for the rest of my days.
Until you decide to maybe do something else because you know,
you should never feel you have to do more than you have to.
But I think you should keep going for now.
But again, low pressure got, youknow, live your life now.
Thank you. I'll put a link to your sub
stack and if you want to hear Dave's thoughts that you

(01:13:14):
absolutely should. Thanks for getting real with me,
Dave Slash David. Thank you, brother.
A little, yeah. Yeah, it's emotional.

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