If only there were a podcast that broke down all of the ways climate professionals broke into their industry... Michael Gold is a communications expert and consultant at Word Clouds Consulting and the host of the new podcast, Climate Swings . This show traces guests' stories and explains how they landed a job working on one of humanity's most significant problem sets. Check out the episode of Climate Swings I did with Michael retelling my odyssey into climate work here ! Be sure to subsc...
Apr 02, 2025•3 min
Sometimes, we skip right over the life stories of guests. Othertimes, it's everything. Today, it's everything. Returning to the show after several years is Carbon180's Executive Director, Erin Burns. Erin grew up in a coal mining family in West Virginia, got her start in Joe Manchin's Senate office, and has had a long and impactful career in carbon removal. Today, Erin (re)explains how the budgeting process works in the United States federal government and how the appropriations ...
Apr 01, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 342
The clean energy transition sure needs a heck of a lot of mining. What do we do when there are environmental or spiritual costs to getting the materials we need for EVs and batteries? Ernest Scheyder is a Reuters reporter covering critical minerals, and the author of The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives . His reporting strives to let audiences draw their own conclusions about where the line should be on environmental extraction, which is a rarer approach than ...
Mar 25, 2025•27 min•Season 1Ep. 341
Nearly a decade ago, I was introduced to the concept of the Keynesian Beauty Contest. It is one of those concepts that I keep coming back to time and time again. I recently participated in a two-month Product-Market Fit workshop led by Peter Nocchiero of Alternate Future and Koray Parmaks of Carbon Zero Capital. So I've been living and breathing PMF. Here is a short monologue bonus video episode where I talk about the Product-Market Fit issues of climatetech and carbon removal, a now-outdate...
Mar 21, 2025•14 min
I first heard the idiom "worse things happen at sea" in Monty Python's Life of Brian , and it's true. Ian Urbina has made a career of telling stories of the ocean. From piracy, illegal fishing, and sea slavery to seasteading and rogue carbon removal experiments, he's covered the gamut. How does one continuously report on topics of concern to relatively intimidating people? As the old line goes, "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations."...
Mar 18, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 340
For fans ages 21 and up! It's often hard to know how sustainable or ethical an alcoholic drink is. Very little disclosure is required on most labels, and many of the recipes are proprietary. What is a conscientious drinker to do? Shanna Farrell wrote A Good Drink: In Search of Sustainable Spirits in order to answer this exact question. She and host Ross Kenyon discuss the strange world of amaros (or "amari" if you're really going for it!), whiskey, agave, and gin, and try to figure out how to ev...
Mar 11, 2025•55 min
What is geopolitics, and has it returned? Did it ever really leave? And how will this affect the future prospects of carbon removal? Today's guest is Sarah Godek, a Washington DC-based international relations researcher. She and Grant Faber co-wrote an article on Carbon-Based Commentary called, "Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal". We discuss the tension between strategic liberalism and realism, how the world is changing under the second Trump Administration, as ...
Mar 04, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 338
My podcasting editing platform Descript informed me of a new integration with ChatGPT where it would make me a custom video. I complied in perhaps the most annoying and meta way possible. That video exists at the end of this podcast, but first, I have thoughts I'd like to share on what this process made me feel and think about. I've heard so many takes on artificial intelligence and art, and I have several of my own that I don't often hear reflected. Mine pertain to the sociological purpose of a...
Mar 02, 2025•15 min
When you take a major pay cut to work in government, you don't expect unceremoniously fired by the Department of Government Efficiency with a change in administration. But it happened to friend of the show, Grant Faber. Grant Faber was the United States Department of Energy's Direct Air Capture Hubs Program Manager until he was let go as part of the recent firing of probationary federal employees. In today's episode, Grant explains what he was working on, what it was like being at th...
Feb 24, 2025•55 min•Season 1Ep. 337
There are a lot of companies that want to buy carbon removal and don't have the budget to participate in Frontier or Symbiosis. What are they to do? Until now, they either had to pay expensive consultants or vet projects and contracts themselves and stand by their choices alone. No longer! The new AirMiners Buyers Club could not be arriving at a better time. Federal policy for carbon removal is in an extremely turbulent moment. Buying momentum is not growing to the degree that we need to see. Th...
Feb 20, 2025•28 min
Seemingly nothing generates hotter passions in carbon credits than forestry. Can credits count against fossil emissions? Is there enough of it to make a difference? What is the appropriate way of funding it? Today's guest is Lisett Luik, Co-Founder and COO of Arbonics, an innovative forestry company in the Baltic that straddles the line between carbon removal and other services forests can provide. We discuss if and how forestry can fit into carbon removal, help the planet avoid tipping poin...
Feb 18, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 336
How do registries create carbon removal methodologies? Who should be involved in the process, and to what degree? How does one balance all of the competing attributes and stakeholders? Today's episode is a show in three parts: First, Nori co-founder and host of Reversing Climate Change introduces the context for the main segment which was recorded the better part of a year before its airing. He explores whether or not the quasi-regulatory requirement for registries not to also be marketplace...
Feb 11, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 335
Dear listener, Thank you so much for being a fan of the show. You could be listening to anything with your one wild and precious life and I do not take that for granted. From the bottom of my heart, thank you! Now that the show is independent, I am working to make it financially viable. Can I count on you to help support Reversing Climate Change by doing any of the following? In your podcast app of choice, please give the show a full rating and/or review. The two most impactful are Apple Podcast...
Feb 09, 2025•5 min
It is sometimes claimed that adoption could be a climate solution. After all, if there are kids needing parents and parents wanting kids, adopting might replace the desire to create more children. Is adoption something we should encourage to reduce environmental risk? Today we have four(!) parents of adopted children on the podcast. Each of them tells their story at the start of the show, including: Ross Kenyon, Reversing Climate Change host Lauren Gifford, Associate Director of the Soil Carbon ...
Feb 04, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 334
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...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 2 min
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 th...
Jan 26, 2025•7 min•Season 1Ep. 1
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 impuls...
Jan 22, 2025•49 min•Season 1Ep. 332
This is a (Spotify) 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 ...
Jan 22, 2025•11 min
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 unde...
Jan 14, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 331
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 so...
Nov 12, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 330
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 Ro...
Oct 31, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 329
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 cate...
Jun 13, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 328
How do we conduct science when there isn't a single isolated variable? What does that mean for carbon removal not taking place in a controlled environment? How does science even work?! Today's show originated from a question of how open-system carbon removal research can be conducted given that in a less-controlled environment, isolating for a single variable with replicability is less obviously possible. Does the scientific method really demand that, or is that some sort of pop culture ...
Jun 06, 2024•58 min•Season 1Ep. 327
What is it like to go to war? What does the experience have to teach us, and could it in any way be a spiritual endeavor? What does the Temple of Mars have to teach us in a climate-changing world? Karl Marlantes is a Rhodes Scholar who put aside graduate studies at Oxford University to lead a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam in 1968. He is featured extensively in the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary series, The Vietnam War . His memoir, What It Is Like to Go to War , and novel, Matterhorn , addr...
May 30, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 326
If you're going to write about the Oregon Trail or the Mississippi flatboat era, why not go gonzo? Does it make for better history or just better bar stories? What can you really learn about change by recreating epic journeys in contemporary times, and what can that teach us about how we live upon this planet? Today, adventurer and author Rinker Buck is on the show to discuss his odysseys. In particular, his flatboat ride from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, and his mulecart passage of the entire Ore...
May 23, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 325
When the world feels increasingly tame, what does it mean to reclaim our wildness? Can we appreciate the benefits of industrial civilization while connecting with our evolutionary roots? Can we get ourselves back to the garden? In this poignant conversation, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Craig Foster shares insights from his experiences diving in the Great African Sea Forest and the inspiration behind his new book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World . Host and Nori Co-Founder Ro...
May 09, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 324
The world is becoming wealthier. Is that a good thing? Or should we be looking to simpler and less material lives? How does a middle class global population affect climate change, for good or ill? On today's show, Dr. Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and author of The Rise of the Global Middle Class: How the Search for the Good Life Can Change the World , elaborates on what it means to be middle class, emphasizing the relevance of choice as a defining characteristic. Peo...
May 02, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 323
You are condemned to be free, and yet how much responsibility do you bear for the structures you inhabit? Do your individual consumer choices matter, or is it some distant political economy? Should we enjoy our time in nature on snowmobiles, or is that just one more bootprint on the road to hypocritical perdition? Do you need to be perfect in order to be an activist? In this episode, Nori cofounder Ross Kenyon, and Thanks-A-Ton cofounder Siobhan Montoya Lavender, discuss the new short film from ...
Apr 23, 2024•58 min•Season 1Ep. 322
Carbon removal is often conceived of as only separating greenhouse gases from ambient air. But what if it also creates other valuable products in the process? Should they still be selling carbon credits? Does this competition make it harder for carbon removal companies that can't produce additional value streams? What are the trade-offs here, and is financial additionality the right place to intervene if intervention is even necessary? In this episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast, Nor...
Apr 11, 2024•53 min•Season 1Ep. 321
Why does death exist? Does getting older always mean getting wiser? Should we look to experience or youth for breakthroughs? In today's episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast, Nori Cofounder Ross Kenyon is joined by Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan, a 2009 Nobel Laureate in chemistry and author of the new book, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality . Despite growing lifespans, it isn't clear that we have become less avaricious or kinder as a species, at least to the e...
Apr 04, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 320
