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.
© Carbon Removal Strategies LLC
Copyright: © Nori
Are you interested in sailing from Seattle to San Francisco on a sailing vessel older than World War 1?! Well, you can at the end of October 2025. Moreover, you'll be crewing alongside me.
I recently joined the team of Maritime Blue as an Executive in Residence, working with ocean tech startups on commercial strategy, storytelling, and go-to-market. They're putting on a fabulous ocean conference in Seattle October 20th-26th.
Check out the links to Maritime Blue, One Ocean Week, and the One Ocean Expedition below!
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
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One Ocean Expedition (book your passage here!)
Statsraad Lehmkuhl on Wikipedia
S2E33: Sailing in the age of climate change—w/ John Kretschmer, author and sailor
I found the image on Wikipedia and it is is: By Ronnie Robertson - Statsraad IMG_5206, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56179943
I take no responsibility for the success or failure of the trip. Participation is at your own discretion. I have personally accepted the risk for myself, but every person must choose for themselves.
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/im-sailing-from-seattle-to-san-francisco-b7f
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
Raising kids is hard enough. How do we do it now when existential dread is such a major part of youth experience? And how do we keep ourselves mentally healthy enough to be good at both our professional climate work and parenting?
Today's show is with Ariella Cook-Shonkoff, psychotherapist and author of the new book, Raising Anti-Doomers: How to Bring Up Resilient Kids Through Climate Change and Tumultuous Times.
She answers a bunch of questions I have about how much I should actually be staring into the abyss (but not whether it also stares back into me, weird I know...), agency, how to think about individual vs. collective safety, and how to bring children into a world where the grownups are either asking these enormous questions or pretending we don't need to.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Ariella Cook-Shonkoff's website
Ariella's Psychology Today blog, "The Anti-Doomer Mindset
Cultivating Resilience in an Age of Uncertainty"
Climate Action Venn Diagrams from Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/366-raising-anti-doomer-kids-and-34f
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 that a noble man rejecting modernity and embracing tradition? Or is it a lunatic with a lance trying to disembowel a shepherd?
The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Manchaby Miguel de Cervantes (Saavedra) is the much beloved literary classic—and perhaps the world's first true novel—but its reputation goes far beyond the book itself. The character has spawned his own adjective: "quixotic", which gets levied at anyone who dares to dream a bit too big.
But is this a word kind of like "epicurean", whose true meaning is subverted by modern use? I believe the answer is yes.
This episode goes out to all of the climate people who dare to dream of a better, kinder world, and why I don't think your critics know what being "quixotic" means.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
And also Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces
Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition meme
"Golden Helmet of Mambrino" from Man of La Mancha
I didn't explicitly name cases of left-wing nostalgia, but you can look to the Paris Commune (and earlier revolutionary moments in France), primitive communism, republican Spain, the consensus capitalism nostalgia of Michael Moore, etc.
Henry VIII: King and Court by Alison Weir
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/365-is-climate-action-quixotic-don-83f
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 Brothers Karamazov, the character Grushenka tells a story about an old peasant woman who never did a good deed in her entire life and went to Hell when she died. The woman's guardian angel petitioned God to let him search her life for a single good deed and if he found one, God would let her into Heaven. God agreed. It turns out she had once given a beggar an onion! Her single good deed! So God told the guardian angel to lower the onion into Hell to lift her out of the Lake of Fire...
What happens next depends upon the teller of the tale...
Today we venture into theology and the surprisingly radical nature of Christianity. Dorothy Day once quoted in The Long Loneliness, "no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy." I do my best to untangle what is genuinely striking in reading the Gospels with fresh eyes, and contrast that against much of the market-oriented and security competition games that dominate our world.
So much of where that leads us sounds silly in the cold light of day. It's downright maladaptive to worldly success. But as Léon Bloy once said, "the only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint." So, what the hell are we supposed to make of a world that is so at odds with the gentleness commanded by so many of the world's spiritual traditions?
I'll share with you what I've learned about myself in trying to become simpler, and do so with as open a heart as I can muster.
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself,", Leaves of Grass
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
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-onion-of-mercy
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 of my biggest podcasting regrets is not having been able to interview the anthropologist Dr. James C. Scott before he died in 2024. We had corresponded by email, but he'll forever be one of the ones who got away... Rest in peace, James. Your scholarship is still making people think.
Today's show serves as an introduction to anthropology, and to some key Scottian concepts like "legibility" that Grant Faber and I apply to the carbon removal and carbon offsetting spaces.
Why do states prefer straight lines? Why do more organic shapes take place seemingly everywhere else? How can creating legibility be simultaneously great for transparency and order but perilous for justice and truth? When complexity is often so much more accurate, what is it within us that yearns to abandon it? What is in us that desires to make everything legible to our gaze even if it creates a wasteland and calls it peace?
If that's a soupy theoretical mess for you, you'll probably enjoy this episode. It's a doozy!
“A language is a dialect with an army and navy."
— Max Weinreich, attributed
"[The Romans] create a desert and call it peace."
— Tacitus
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Grant Faber's Carbon-Based Commentary on Substack
James C. Scott's Wikipedia page
James C. Scott's posthumous In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings
Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance by James C. Scott
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by Jame C. Scott
"Not 'gay' as in 'happy' but 'queer' as in "f**k you'." is a line I've heard that is maybe informative here.
"On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" by Friedrich Nietzsche
Hauntologies of carbon removal—w/ Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University of Buffalo: RCC S3 bonus
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher
Michael Oakeshott, though I wonder if I have potentially overstated his position...
"A primer on additionality and carbon removal" by Grant Faber
350: Robert Höglund Presents: The Many Perils of Being Catalytic in a Carbon Accounting World
David Graeber's Wikipedia page
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/legibility-resistance-and-the-politics
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
If there are so many inhabitable planets in the universe, why haven't we made contact with other civilizations? One terrifying answer is that very few civilizations are able to create world-altering technology without also killing themselves off in the process.
This monologue episode introduces the concept of Great Filter Events through the work of Dr. David Grinspoon's outstanding book, Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future.
Go read it, and listen to the shows I've done with David Grinspoon in the past! Links below.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
― E. O. Wilson
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future by Dr. David Grinspoon
47: David Grinspoon, Astrobiologist
Geology Cage Match: The Sapiezoic vs. the Anthropocene
S2E15: Are you a wizard or a phophet?—w/ Charles C. Mann
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/can-humans-create-a-good-anthropocene
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
A $50M Series A?! In this economy?
Aircapture recently raised a big round at a time when big raises in climatetech are hard to come by. Their secret? Producing a valuable product better for their customers than what currently exists, and not being dependent upon policy or carbon credits.
They're doing modular direct air capture in places that otherwise need to buy merchant carbon dioxide from companies that sell gases. Shipping merchant CO2 to the Canary Islands isn't cheap. If modular DAC can provide cheaper and less carbon-intensive CO2, that's surely a win for the climate, the economy, and the learnings that allow us to scale along the way.
Matt brought his insights about how he built a successful business in carbontech. Folks would be wise to listen up!
N.B. The photos aren't of actual Aircapture facilities.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Aircapture's Series A announcement
A Mighty Wind scene about being retro vs. now-tro
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/carbon-to-values-triumphant-return
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
Writing fiction about climate change is notoriously difficult. Some authors have gone for massive ensemble casts to defeat the hyperobject. But what if one zoomed in to smaller, quieter, interpersonal stories?
Jon Raymond is a screenwriter and novelist whose work I very much enjoy. He is a frequent collaborator of Kelly Reichardt's, on films such as Old Joy, First Cow, Night Moves, and Showing Up. He also adapted James M. Cain's novel, Mildred Pierce, which became an HBO miniseries starring Kate Winslett.
His novels in particular deal with our place in a world with a changing climate. His previous work, Denial,concerns itself with questions of climate culpability for the individual person with great skill. His new novel, God and Sex, asks poignant questions about the nature of miracles and doubt from within a climate context. We discuss both books at length in this show.
They're both worth reading. Pick a copy of God and Sex while it is fresh off the presses!
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Arbonics: forestry project developer in the EU
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
Go (re)watch The Sixth Sense—it's great.
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/god-and-sex-jon-raymonds-new-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
Many hardtech entrepreneurs develop a technology and then figure out how to commercialize it. What happens if you find an industry with potential and then engineer a solution to open an entirely new market to them?
Today's show is with two of the cofounders of CO280: Natalie Khtikian, the Chief Commercial Officer, and Jonathan Rhone, the Chief Executive Officer.
Natalie and John explain what it's like working with an industry as established as pulp and paper, structuring joint venture deals with them, and showing them the potential upside to opening business lines in carbon removal.
The deal mechanics of joint ventures for carbon removal are discussed (though probably deserve their own full show!), and Natalie shares some reasons why she is optimistic about carbon removal despite some of the headwinds the industry is currently experiencing.
This Episode's Sponsors
Arbonics
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/the-startup-thats-turning-pulp-and
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
When you finish painting the Golden Gate Bridge, it is time to paint the Golden Gate Bridge. With a subject as interdisciplinary as carbon dioxide removal, a beginner's mind can also be a great asset!
Marian Krueger is the co-author of Race to Zero: How Companies Can Lead the Way to Climate Neutrality, an intoductory text to CDR that lucidly explains what carbon removal is, why it's necessary, and how to support its continued development.
The book will soon be published (August 4th, 2025), and you should grab a copy for yourself and for the policymaker and/or sustainability professional in your life!
Marian's experience as the Co-Founder and Managing Director of remove, a European nonprofit growing the carbon removal ecosystem through accelerator programming, gives him enormous vantage into the sector.
This conversation goes broad, deep, and discusses some of the biggest questions in CDR.
This Episode's Sponsors
Arbonics
Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics
Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com
Use this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcasts
Sign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral code
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Race to Zero: How Companies Can Lead the Way to Climate Neutrality
This scene from Hamlet 2 captures the feeling of long-form writing very well!
Resources
This episode's page on the web: https://www.rosskenyon.com/p/carbon-removal-as-ecological-succession
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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