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.
Paid subscriptions live on Substack @ https://rosskenyon.com.
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Copyright: © Nori
Are we thinking about biochar financial strategy all wrong? It's not often a good fit for venture capital, but is it actually a great fit for private equity? It might be, at least if you can get the ticket size big enough...
Today's guest is Alastair Collier, Chief R&D Officer at A Healthier Earth, a biochar project developer that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pure DC, a data center project developer, who is supported by Oaktree Capital Management, a private equity firm (which in my understanding, does several other things beyond private equity.)
Alastair explains how A Healthier Earth went down this road, why he's okay with giving up ownership of his company and accepting a management compensation plan rather than looking to a venture-backed exit, and why more biochar project developers should obsess over conventional business metrics rather than why biochar is going to save the world.
Whether one wants to chart the same course or not, it's important for all those who work in carbon removal to know what kinds of deals are possible in what may prove to be a challenging 2026.
Listen up, as Alastair has a lot of valuable advice to share in this one.
This Episode's Sponsor
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
"The Biochar Blueprint: A developers guide to scale"
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/carbon-removal-isnt-a-startup
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
Some decisions we don't expect to have big consequences. And yet, sometimes you wake up thirty years later in a world deeply altered by that little moment. Today's show is about when that happens in science.
Dr. Tyler Kukla is a Research Scientist at CarbonPlan, one of carbon removal's preeminent watchdog nonprofits. He returns to the show to explore how a conservative estimation of how much carbon returns to the atmosphere after agliming with carbonate rock (all of it) in the 1996 IPCC report has led us into a commercial carbon removal future that focuses almost entirely on silicate rock.
This isn't a story about whether silicates or carbonates are better for enhanced weathering (it really depends upon a number of geographic factors and design decisions around system boundaries and additionality), but about how some good faith placeholders can reify to such an extent that they do so much more than they were ever expected to.
This Episode's Sponsor
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories
"Scaling enhanced weathering in limed fields" by Tyler Kukla
"Evidence for carbon sequestration by agricultural liming" by Dr. Stephen K. Hamilton, et al
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/carbonates-silicates-and-path-dependency
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
Life gotten harder recently? You must have just leveled up. We all thought we were doing the very hard work necessary to scale carbon removal, but was this ultimately a false peak? When you climb to what you think is the top of the mountain only to find a lot more mountain lurking behind it?
Today's show is with Noah Deich, a carbon removal mover and shaker with his thumbprint on many of the biggest organizations and policies in the world. He recently completed a year in the prestigious Stripe Climate Fellows program, which selected a cohort of some of the sharpest people in CDR to develop new approaches to grow demand for carbon removal. Noah's effort was an attempt to create an Advance Market Commitment structure like Frontier but for governments rather than corporations. You'll hear how that went in this episode...
Noah and host Ross Kenyon also laugh about the old days of commercial carbon removal, their mistaken beliefs (and maybe mostly Ross's), and try to chart a course forward for our crucial but incredibly trying work.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
"17: Noah Deich and Giana Amador of the Center for Carbon Removal"
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/the-false-peak-of-carbon-removal
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
The perennial fight returns... In one corner, there are the wizards: optimists who are betting that technology and economic growth can solve our problems faster than it can create them? In the other corner, prophets: who believe we have deeply lost in our way in ignoring limits and that we need to get ourselves back to the garden.
How much wizard and how much prophet do you have contained in your own heart?
Today's monologue episode has host Ross Kenyon exploring two recent books: Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson's Abundance, and Paul Kingsnorth's Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, regarding how they continue the oldest and deepest fight in environmentalism.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth
Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
"S2E53: Paul Kingsnorth on the shared roots of climate crisis, transhumanism, & immortality"
"S2E15: Are you a wizard or a prophet?—w/ Charles C. Mann"
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Joseph Schumpeter & creative destruction
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
"Anyway, Here's Wonderwall" meme
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares
A brief interpretation of some of Peter Thiel's Greta Thunberg antichrist comments
"The mountains are calling and I must go."
- John Muir
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
- Albert Einstein (attributed)
"The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
- Audre Lorde
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/for-climate-its-wizards-vs-prophets
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
With a matchup like that, who would win?
I love this chapter from Moby-Dick. It so perfectly contrasts sublime beauty of the world and the raw horror of life. I was thinking of it often while on my recent sailing trip aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl from Seattle to San Francisco.
Sit back and let me read the chapter for you, and may it inspire you to crack open some Herman Melville.
Resources
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Chapter 58: Brit, from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or The Whale
"377: One Week Before the Mast—A Climate Sailing Travelogue from Seattle to San Francisco"
"ASMR: Your one-hundred year-old Norwegian tall ship is sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean"
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/the-beauty-and-terror-of-the-world
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
It's that special time of year to put away worldly cares and focus on family, giving, and... carbon removal? Did I read that right?
Come hang with Ross and CDR force of nature Sebastian Manhart to discuss family, parenthood, hope for the future, the quest to expand the moral sphere, and why we should be focusing on trendlines and not headlines.
Happy Holidays, however you choose to spend it!
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Leila Conner's video podcast of Gigaten with Sebastian Manhart
Deutscher Verband für negative Emissionen e.V. (DVNE): one of the many trade organizations for CDR Sebastian has been a major part of
"The Monkey's Paw" article on TvTropes
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/another-side-of-sebastian-manhart
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
Is the voluntary carbon market a club for saints? Or is it a hospital for sinners? Are we meant to understand all and then to forgive all? How much time are we meant to devote to idealistic abstinence-esque policies for change, and how much of our professional lives should go to harm reduction?
Today's show deals with some of the biggest questions in carbon removal and carbon markets, and does it in just the kind of literary-philosophical ways that make this shows its own... whatever it is that it is.
Trust me and I'll guide you through the history of the Soviet Union and at least one Warsaw Pact country, David Simon, critical theory, German nuclear policy, the Bill Gates piece that ruffled all feathers one way or another, the Enabled Emissions Campaign, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman,I Heart Huckabees, and Bicycle Thieves.
Some days you hit record and you never quite know what you're going to discover...
N.B. The image today is Vaclav Havel's greengrocer from "The Power of the Powerless" as illustrated by his Czech compatriot, Josef Lada, who did the original illustrations for Jaroslav Hašek's incredibly funny,The Good Soldier Švejk, who is a sort of antiwar/pacifistic Amelia Bedelia who messes things up in the Army by being a bit too literal and a bit too eager to follow orders.
This Episode's Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek
The Death of Stalin film
"The Power of the Powerless" by Vaclav Havel; it's abridged here but you can click through to the full thing if you'd like
"The Clash of Aristocratic and Bourgeois Virtues in 'The Wire'" by Dr. Bart Wilson
Holodomor (the Ukrainian Famine)
Katyn Massacre (NSFW: death pit image is first thing on Wikipedia)
"The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord
"Three tough truths about climate" by Bill Gates
Germany closing nuclear power plants
Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/when-bad-companies-buy-good-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
Gentle wind, sail, and ocean sounds with looped video taken during a trip from Seattle to San Francisco aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl for the One Ocean Expedition.
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/a-week-at-sea-lessons-from-a-tall
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
One could fly to the Bay Area in about ninety minutes, but what if it took a week, enormous amounts of teamwork on a 111-year-old Norwegian sailing barque, and caused a near-universal seasickness in thirty-foot seas?
Today's show is a monologue about my experience sailing from Seattle to San Francisco on the Statsraad Lehmkuhl for the One Ocean Expedition. I'm an Executive in Residence at Maritime Blue, which sponsored this leg of the trip to raise awareness of the challenges facing the world ocean, its many inhabitants, and ourselves.
The show is about many of the practicalities of living and working among one hundred other scientists and sailors, but it's also about so much more. It's about anxiety, proximity to nature, and a reminder that humans aren't always in charge. And that also, sometimes you don't have to do the thing you really don't want to do, and why that might just be okay.
This Episode's Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
"ASMR: Your one-hundred year-old Norwegian tall ship is sailing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean"
"The Beauty and Terror of the World": a Substack post about the Moby-Dick chapter
The Essentials Of Living Aboard A Boat: The definitive Guide for Liveaboards by Mark Nicholas
"S2E33: Sailing in the age of climate change—w/ John Kretschmer, author and sailor"
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
The Annapolis Book of Seamanship by John Rousmaniere
University of Washington School of Oceanography
Brunost: the brown cheese of Norway
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/377-one-week-before-the-masta-climate-80e
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
Long a pariah climate solution, Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is having its mainstream moment. As the climate movement ponders the planet's deep overshoot, more conversations about geoengineering, solar radiation management, global cooling, etc. are taking place in the open.
Moreover, for-profit entities are raising venture rounds, with Stardust recently announcing a $60M Series A to commercialize their approach to SAI. This moment is feeling genuinely new, and it feels this way to today's guest Dr. Shuchi Talati of The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering too.
While I believe we should do the research and have the governance ready for possible future deployment lest it be done in a much less responsible way (I do not enjoy writing these words one single bit), I am finding it hard to accept its use as anything less than tragedy. Some felt this way about carbon removal, and I have greater sympathy for that feeling now too. The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk...
Is SAI an instance of brave humans deploying life-saving technology? Or Promethean hubris for which we should keep our livers guarded? How much should the profit motive influence SAI deployment, if at all? I don't have all of the answers—nor pretend to–but I can point you to the emotional and spiritual core of it that helps me make sense of being a historical actor with agency at this moment in time.
This Episode's Sponsors
Absolute Climate: the only standard that’s developed independent of registries
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Peter Minor from Absolute Climate
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
"There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Let us first ask ourselves what should be understood by “a tragic optimism.” In brief it means that one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad,” … a triad which consists of … (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death. This … raises the question, How is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all that? How … can life retain its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects? After all, “saying yes to life in spite of everything,” …presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation. … hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism … an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action."
- Viktor Frankl in the postscript to Man's Search for Meaning
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Chance for Peace speech
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/the-tragedy-of-stratospheric-aerosol
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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