Stay ConnectedReversing Climate Change is a podcast about carbon removal and climatetech that keeps wandering off into literature, history, philosophy, theology, and geopolitics on the theory that the technical and scientific questions stop making much sense without them. Hosted by Ross Kenyon, who did not go past a year of political philosophy PhD coursework and has visibly not let it go.
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Copyright: © Nori
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 Polanyi, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Plato. Who can truly say no to an offer like that?
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
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Here's the essay on Substack if you'd like to read along and check out the endnotes.
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/408-the-impossible-taxonomy-of-carbon-20d
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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, he's written a bunch of great books including 1491 and 1493, both of which I'd recommend.
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/charles-c-mann-on-the-reversing-climate
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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 about identity, attachment, and shame. Being able to speak openly about those feelings, even if anonymously, can be an enormous relief.
Moreover, many people in climate have strong feelings about who they do business with, how their companies are structured and make decisions, and maybe think the entire space has deeply lost its way. Can they say that in public? Sure, but that could have career repercussions beyond what many are able and willing to tolerate.
And yet, are those feelings any less true? No. They are not. And thus, Climate Workers Anonymous was born. People fill out a Tally survey with their unattributed takes and send it to me to publish in written form on Substack and as audio in your podcast feed—it's the old Carbon Removal Newsroom feed if you're still subscribed to that.
Please go check out Climate Workers Anonymous, give it a great rating and review in your podcast apps, subscribe on Substack, become a paying supporter of the show if you believe in what it's doing, and thanks so much for supporting creative media in climate and carbon dioxide removal! And thank you to the legendary PostSecret, which I suspect all elder millennials reading this will know, for showing us the way.
Sincerely,
Ross Kenyon
Resources
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
An amazing rating and review on the podcast apps does a world of good. Would you please do that for me now? Here’s Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Subscribe as well while you're there!
If you’d like submit your anonymous hopes, fears, or experiences to Climate Workers Anonymous, you can use this Tally survey or email climateworkersanonymous[at]protonmail.com, though I believe the Tally survey is more secure. Do not communicate anything you wouldn’t want a hacker to have access to, including an email address that could be linked to you if you email the account on Protonmail.
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/climate-workers-anonymous-introducing-741
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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 give us all a little bit of extra solace in a time when we sure could use it?
Today's a biggie. We talk about some huge concepts, but don't be scared. They're simple enough. You'll get the hang of it while walking your dog and listening to this and soon you'll be able to wow your friends and family with some fancy new $5 words.
In all seriousness though, I think these concepts are genuinely useful, and have helped me make sense of my own feelings, how my brain works, and how to understand what it means as a little person to relate to ideality, materiality, and the Antropocene.
This Episode's Sponsor
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
Read the full transcript and show notes on Substack (soon!)
Oh my goodness. There are so many references in this show. I will come back and add them, but if I could only choose one...
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/a-hyperstition-for-carbon-dioxide
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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 collection.
Offstream has evolved significantly after realizing that carbon project developers don't just want another software tool to manage... they want someone to simply get the job done for them. Varsha introduces us to the concept of "Managed MRV," explaining why handing off the heavy lifting of Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification can sometimes be cheaper and far more effective than trying to handle it all in-house.
But this show also gets big. Varsha argues that practically every piece of modern infrastructure has the potential to become a carbon dioxide removal or environmental asset. For that to be true, we would likely enter a world where we are all much more persistently observed and quantified, and with rewards and punishments to match. Is the future of carbon crediting one of surveillance capitalism with the social contracts of data sharing to match? Would that solve more problems than it creates? How are we even meant to live?!
Varsha also shares her incredibly disciplined approach to information consumption as a founder, offering a highly focused counter-narrative to being "well-informed".
Turns out nothing is truly small when you start to poke at it just a little bit.
This Episode's Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
Read the full transcript and show notes on Substack (soon!)
Varsha Ramesh Walsh on LinkedIn
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/does-carbon-dioxide-removal-have
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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 while being seduced. Unfortunately, I cannot find a good link to this sketch... I can't say I ever fully understood what was happening beyond just the earnestness and absurdity of the situation, but somehow Tom helped me unlock it.
In any case, this is a very very quick dip into Romantic poetry (industrialism bad, nature good; analysis bad, intuition good; simple good, complex bad), William Blake's prominence in films like Jim Jarmusch's Dead Manand HBO's tv series Westworldby way of his poem, "Auguries of Innocence", and how sometimes a work can actually be this simple and stand the test of time.
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Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
"And did those feet in ancient time" on Wikipedia
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/and-was-jerusalem-builded-here-among
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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 Asia, Tom shares how the physical, logistical, and geopolitical challenges of heavy industry perfectly parallel the hurdles facing the scaling of CDR today. The conversation explores Tom's journey into carbon removal while living in India, where he realized how the region's unique geology and agricultural needs make it an ideal landscape for scalable climate solutions like biochar and enhanced rock weathering (ERW).
Tom was a Stripe Climate Fellow, where he focused on embedding CDR directly into global agricultural supply chains. Tom breaks down why certain premium commodity value chains—specifically coffee—are leading the charge in adopting these practices due to strict European regulations and high consumer engagement. From there, the conversation tackles the messy realities of corporate carbon accounting, untangling the nuances of "insetting" versus "offsetting," and exploring how project developers can monetize non-carbon benefits like yield optimization, nutritional density, and watershed protection.
This Episode's Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Read the full transcript and show notes on Substack
"Jerusalem ["And did those feet in ancient time"]" by William Blake. In fact, the episode art for this episode is from the piece that we discuss. Jerusalem, Plate 1, Frontispiece, 1804 to 1820, Bentley Copy E, © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/when-will-insetting-work-for-carbon
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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, which is one of the most active advisory firms in the carbon market and energy transition space.
Full disclosure: EcoEngineers is a sponsor of this show, but that's actually part of the story here. David and I keep ending up on the same projects from different angles, and we joke about the "Oh, you're already here?" moment that happens constantly in this tiny industry. We've both watched founders navigate the hire-vs.-contract decision badly enough times that I wanted to sit down and actually map it out.
David walks through the real math on when a contractor saves you money versus a full-time hire, and it's not the answer most people assume. He talks about how to evaluate whether a consultant actually knows what they're claiming. We get into when you should fire a consultant, why the personality fit matters almost as much as the technical fit, and why refusing to do a feasibility study on your own project is basically the consulting equivalent of being your own foreman/project manager on Grand Designs. If you've seen that show, you know how that ends.
When the mods are asleep by the end, I have to ask David about El Greco, the LaGreca family's alleged history of being Italian smugglers, and whether David is the El Greco of carbon consulting. He accepted the title. I'm not sure he should have.
This Episode's Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Resources
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Read the full transcript and show notes on Substack
Listen to the RCC episode with Taylor Insley from Terraset on how to sell in carbon removal: which was the model for this episode
Listen to the RCC episode with Martin Freimuller from Octavia: David references this episode on playing nicely in a small market
David LaGreca's LinkedIn profile
Rudy Krehbiel's LinkedIn profile
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/how-to-hire-fire-and-get-max-value
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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 get a job at a salvage yard, start building your own shipping container house, and shift your energy from prevention to adaptation?
My friend Drew Wilkinson chose the second thing. Drew grew up in Phoenix, got into punk rock at 13, never stopped playing in bands, and somehow that trajectory carried him from DIY shows in Arizona to corporate sustainability at Microsoft, where he helped organize employees into one of the most effective internal climate movements a Fortune 500 has ever seen.
But this episode isn't really about that success. It's about what comes after. Drew left Microsoft three years ago and started consulting independently through the Climate Leadership Collective, and the financial instability of that choice has been brutal. He's honest about it in a way that most people in this space aren't: he doesn't know where his next paycheck is coming from, some days he's crippled on the couch with grief and anger, and he knows that the spicy contrarian stuff he posts on LinkedIn (AKA the stuff that makes him uniquely valuable) also sabotages his ability to get hired by the companies he's criticizing.
We got into reform versus revolution, whether the system can be sufficiently reformed or needs to be tossed out entirely, the Austrian Catholic farmer who refused to swear the oath to Hitler (A Hidden Life, go watch it!), and whether Anthropic refusing to work with the Department of Defense matters when Sam Altman is waiting in line behind them. Drew brought up the GreenBiz conference panel that was literally three hours on "how to do sustainability without saying sustainability." I brought up the Amazon CSO posting about minor improvements to delivery van emissions the same week they gave the Melania documentary a platform. We both felt sick about it.
But we escaped that grim discourse when Drew started talking about his shift from prevention to adaptation. He's building a shipping container house on five acres in the forest outside Seattle, sourcing materials from the architectural salvage yard where he now works a couple days a week. Yesterday he moved several thousand pounds of doors. He came home covered in dirt. And for the first time in a long time, he could touch the problem and touch the solution. Three thousand pounds of doors didn't go to a landfill.
This Episode's Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project finance
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
Resources
More references from this episode, with links, are in the show notes on Substack.
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/reform-vs-climate-revolution-from
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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 former cofounders at Nori. Her voice used to be the intro to this very podcast. She's now a coach for purpose-driven founders through her business Calming Chaos, and we're doing something I've wanted to do for a while: an honest, no-bs conversation about what went wrong between us, what we've learned since, and why the emotional stuff that I used to dismiss is actually what's holding back so much innovation in climate and beyond.
Alé shared her story in a way I wasn't expecting. The perfectionism, the imposter syndrome, the hero complex that made her volunteer for work she couldn't sustain, the sensitivity to feedback that followed, the burnout that was inevitable. She traced all of it back to childhood—a father who didn't show up, a mother who told her to stop crying, and a lifetime of performing for love that was supposed to just be there. And then she connected it to how she showed up at Nori, and I have to admit: it explained a lot of things I didn't understand at the time.
I did my version too. The compulsive reading that everyone compliments but that's actually a way of never having a quiet moment. The diminishing returns of knowledge versus the increasing returns of wisdom. The times I should have listened to my gut and didn't because I couldn't articulate it analytically.
We got into patriarchy, the spiritual emptiness of power-seeking, why my most common piece of advice to founders is to go to therapy, and why Alé believes entrepreneurship is fundamentally a spiritual process. I didn't want that to be true when we were running Nori together. I'm pretty sure she was right the whole time. It just took me awhile to open up to it.
This Episode's Sponsors
EcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
Resources
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Calming Chaos: Ale's coaching practice
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/emotional-and-spiritual-lessons-learned
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack: https://www.rosskenyon.com/subscribe
Books from the show, at Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/reversing-climate-change
My other show, Climate Workers Anonymous: https://www.climateworkersanonymous.com
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