Additionality is typically considered a major marker of quality in carbon removal. But what do we do when carbon removal suppliers are producing other types of products and services that make them less dependent upon voluntary carbon market revenue?

Perhaps even more importantly, how do we have a productive disagreement on this topic? Bringing up some concerns can open one to criticism. But we also depend upon people thinking differently in order to advance our understanding of the world and the types of value we create. How do we make sure we aren't encouraging crackpot analysis while also not hewing so closely to orthodoxy that we might be missing important insights? How can we set the stage to understand the true landscape of disagreement so that we can come to better decisions and not be driven by ideology in improper ways?

Today's podcast features Reversing Climate Change alumnus, Grant Faber, returning to the show. Grant is sui generis in our sector for his deep involvement in life-cycle and techno-economic assessment. He is the Direct Air Capture Hubs Program Manager at the U.S. Department of Energy. Prior to DOE, he ran a consultancy focused on life cycle and techno-economic assessment where he worked with many different startups, accelerators, and investors working on carbon removal and carbon conversion. Before that, he worked with Twelve, Heirloom, and the Global CO2 Initiative.

Importantly, we invite you to engage with this material and come to your own conclusions. Part of what makes carbon removal such an intellectual adventure is just how much room there is for creativity and deep thought!

Resources

Grant's website

Grant's previous RCC appearance

Eric Matzner from Metalplant's RCC appearance

"Crediting challenges when carbon removal comes with avoided emissions" by CarbonPlan

The trope of the monkey paw

A few Robert Höglund pieces on temporary carbon removal: #1, #2, and #3

Here's the quote from Gandalf from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return of the King:

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

Of all of the world's climate podcasts, here is why you should, with your one wild and precious life, listen to Reversing Climate Change.

The tl;dr is I am a long-time carbon removal and climate tech entrepreneur who comes from the humanities (rather than science) and I am programming shows on climate unlike what you're likely to hear elsewhere. Shows with legendary travel writers to worlds that are disappearing? A Vietnam veteran discussing what Jungian archetypes can teach those thinking of their climate activism as a type of warfare? Survivalism in the age of climate change? What might Dante make of our current predicament?! This show's got it!

If you like the show, would you please become a subscriber here? It makes a huge difference to the show's sustainability. And if you aren't able to do that, would you please give the show a great rating and/or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever podcast app you use that has that ability?

Thank you so much for listening! Please let me know in the comments if you would like anything in particular.

This is a video excerpt from episode 332 with Clayton Aldern, Senior Data Reporter at Grist and author of The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains.

In this video clip, we discuss how we hold people accountable when the heat has a statistically relevant negative impact on decision-making, impulsivity, etc. If we are so embodied as to predictably make worse conditions under stress, what does that mean for a world that will likely encounter more stress as a result of climate change? At what point should we focus less on responsibility, blame, and agency and begin to focus more on background conditions and our physical natures? Or is this even the right question?

Tune in now to learn more, and listen to the rest of the show on audio wherever you listen to podcasts.

When we think of climate change, we might think of droughts, floods, wildfires, emigration and climate refugees: but what if the call is coming from inside the house? What if it impacts the way we think and act?

Today's show is with Clayton Aldern, Senior Data Reporter at Grist and author of The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains.

Clayton explains where additional climate risks will be coming from, and much of it is how much even small changes in heat can increase impulsivity and crime, decrease test scores, and generally make things more difficult.

If human bodies are so susceptible to environmental conditions, what does that say for justice? How are we meant to understand agency and determinism? How do we hold one another accountable while also practicing forgiveness for human frailty?

There are no shortage of big questions today! Enjoy.

Resources

Clayton's writing on Grist

Clayton's website

The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains

The wildfires in Los Angeles have gripped the country this past week. How could so much valuable real estate in prestigious zip codes populated at least in part by the rich and famous burn without recourse?

Today's Reversing Climate Change podcast sees alumna of the show, Allison Wolff, return to discuss Vibrant Planet and the LA wildfires. We were originally scheduled just to catch up because it had been too long, but it turned out to be a serendipitous podcast.

Allison has been working on understanding and managing fire risk for years and has built a data platform at Vibrant Planet that helps various entities like state agencies, utilities, and insurers understand and mitigate fire risk in areas under their responsibility.

Content warning: This episode discusses a scene in a video game that involves sexual assault during war. If you'd like to skip that section, it is from 7:57-8:35. There is a response that discusses the ethical choices in the game beyond that point, but it is more abstract and general about choices.

Video games have not historically been amazing at storytelling. Games prioritize mechanics and gameplay while story takes a backseat. But that isn’t the case at 11 bit studios, which have produced some of the finest video games in recent years, including a series that takes place within a climate-changed world.

Today’s Reversing Climate Change guest is Maciej Sułecki. Maciej worked on three games that RCC host Ross Kenyon is a huge fan of: This War of Mine, and Frostpunk 1 & 2.

The conversation starts with The War of Mine, in which the player plays as a group of civilians trying to survive a fictionalized Siego of Sarajevo. Unlike most war games, the objective is not to win a battle (most characters are ill-suited to fighting) but merely to stay alive and not lose your soul in the process by engaging in unethical or traumatic behavior.

The Frostpunk games each deal with a world that has iced over, and humanity is barely hanging on. Due to the extreme circumstances of survival, the decisions are hard and the political choices tend toward the extreme. It puts players in the role of deciding how to rank liberal values that we take for granted about the consent of the governed and the political process against survival. What’s more: it doesn’t do this in a straightforward way meant to teach you a lesson—a very unusual quality in any media, let alone a video game!

Ross and Maciej discuss other games and series that have prioritized story to varying degrees such as Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Papers, Please, and Disco Elysium, and also end up discussing the degree to which Polish history influenced what are otherwise games meant to be universal.

In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the democratic body of the Sejm had a principle called the Liberum Veto, by which any member of the body could veto a policy. While this was a beautiful idea, it made it easy for members to be bribed by outsiders to block policy changes and cease the development of the state. By some accounts, it led to the weakening of the Polish state and therefore its ultimate susceptibility to the Polish Partitions. Did that influence the gamemakers thoughts on democracy? Is there such a thing as a universal game, or does all art spring from our experience, cultural or otherwise?

In discussions about technology, and maybe especially within climatetech, the concept of the "Faustian bargain" is common. But what does it actually mean, and is it as simple as concept as it is typically considered?

In today's special Halloween episode, Reversing Climate Change host, Ross Kenyon, intros the show by giving the necessary historical context to understand Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, and to contrast it against Christophe Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Get ready for a dose of Romanticism.

When the Faustian bargain is invoked, it usually means a bad deal—one with no upside except for a short-sighted one. And that may be true for Marlowe’s Faust, but Goethe’s Faust wins his bet with Mephistopheles and his soul is never damned. What does that mean for how we use the term, when persistent survival if not actual upside is reintroduced into the Faustian bargain? What if, at least according to Goethe, making a deal with the devil isn’t always as straightforwardly bad as one might think?

Today’s guest is frequent podcast alumni and multihyphenate, Daniel Backer. Daniel produces virtuosic music, writes insightful novels, and creates video content about literary fiction on both his YouTube and TikTok channels. Be sure to follow his work!

Daniel and Ross spend much of the show exploring what it does to one’s brain to take claims of high strangeness, the paranormal, and the occult seriously, and why horror films (especially those of Ari Aster) deserve a better reputation.

Happy Halloween!
N.B. Reversing Climate Change is no longer a Nori podcast, but its own show. Outdated assets will be updated if and as possible.

The Grounded podcast takes over Reversing Climate Change! Tom Previte of The Carbon Removal Show, founded a new biochar company in the United Kingdom called Restord. And like any good podcaster, he decided to make a show about it!

Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey, just wrapped its five-episode first season documenting Tom's attempts to start a new biochar company. He walks listeners through so many of the basic questions of starting a business, and specifically a business in a new category like carbon removal. What standard should one try to work within? Which parts of the life-cycle assessment matter? Who actually wants this product?!

What's especially novel about this episode is that Tom and his producer Ben Weaver-Hincks produced it in the style of Grounded, with voiceover segments and various other effects!

Tom and Ross talk about how to make podcasts about carbon removal interesting, how various design decisions impact quality and frequency of publishing, and what we can do to get more people into CDR and climate action through creative media work.

Resources
⁠The Carbon Removal Show
Grounded
Restord
Restord's crowdfunding campaign

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