Does culture eat strategy for breakfast? What does a successful carbon removal community look like? Who ordered the veal cutlet? Join us in this episode of Reversing Climate Change featuring Jason Grillo, Director of Partnerships and Operations at AirMiners. Discover how culture takes center stage at AirMiners, one of the major communities empowering carbon removal startups. Explore the Kiloton Fund, the Bootup program, and Launchpad, which has already graduated 95 teams in two years. Deadline f...
Aug 10, 2023•57 min•Season 3Ep. 50
When you’re born into a winemaking dynasty, there’s a lot of momentum to carry on the family business. But also a lot of pressure to make your own mark. Carlo Mondavi is the co-founder and Chief Farming Officer at Monarch, creators of the Monarch Tractor, an electric smart tractor that may offer a better and safer product than conventional diesel tractors. Today he joins Siobhan Montoya Lavender and Ross Kenyon to discuss. The conversation begins with Carlo's heartfelt motivation behind creating...
Aug 03, 2023•46 min•Season 3Ep. 49
How does it work to buy carbon removal credits from early stage startups and resell them later for profit? What does it mean to support carbon removal startups without equity financing? Are alternatives available beyond conventional venture funding? Enter: the AirMiners Kiloton Fund. Tune in this week as the great Tito Jankowski , CEO and cofounder of AirMiners , returns to the show to talk about all of those questions, the general state of carbon removal, and how two goofballs like us ended up ...
Jul 27, 2023•42 min•Season 3Ep. 48
Reversing Climate Change presents an enlightening conversation with Kevin Whilden, the co-founder and co-director of Sustainable Surf, where they delve into the captivating world of ocean restoration, the power of storytelling, and the remarkable phenomenon of blue carbon. Join Ross and Siobhan as they navigate the complexities of carbon offsetting, funding pathways for coastal and land-based restoration, and the profound impact of storytelling on driving environmental action. The spotlight of t...
Jun 29, 2023•51 min•Season 3Ep. 47
In this episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast, cohosts Ross Kenyon and Siobhan Montoya Lavender are joined by Erika Reinhardt, Co-founder and Executive Director of Spark Climate Solutions. Together, they delve into the pressing issue of methane and its increasing significance in the climate zeitgeist, and when can we expect methane removal to appear? The conversation kicks off with a discussion on why methane deserves our attention. Erika explains that methane is a potent greenhouse ga...
Jun 22, 2023•49 min•Season 3Ep. 46
The carbon removal industry and science have evolved greatly since Nori was founded in 2017. In this special Reversing Climate Change episode , Nori's Head of Supply and Methodology Radhika Moolgavkar, joins host Ross Kenyon to talk through what’s changed, what’s still the same, and how Nori is evolving with a new net-zero-friendly ‘blended tonne’ that they just published a new whitepaper on this week . What is this ‘blended tonne’ Nori is developing? What did the carbon removal industry look li...
Jun 15, 2023•34 min
What does a utopian second-generation Direct Air Capture (DAC) system look like, and how does it differ from what we have now? In this engaging episode of Reversing Climate Change , Ross and Siobhan have a very frank and honest discussion with Sampo Tukiainen, a farmer, apiarist, meditator, rifleman and the CEO of C-Fix, a second-generation #directaircapture company that wants to do it all. After a brief intro to #DAC, they discuss the energy consumption of current facilities, and how second-gen...
Jun 08, 2023•55 min•Season 3Ep. 44
Making decisions for your garden and yard is often a yearly exercise. But for long-lived perennials, you need to start thinking about how climate change is going to impact your region. But don't start loading up on olive trees just yet... Today on the Reversing Climate Change podcast, Sally Morgan, coauthor of The Climate Change Garden: Down to Earth Advice for Growing a Resilient Garden , teaches host Ross Kenyon about how to cope with a simultaneously drier and wetter world. What happens when ...
Jun 01, 2023•46 min•Season 3Ep. 43
In this episode, Ross and Siobhan are joined by Ongeleigh Underwood and Nikki Batchelor to delve into the newly released report from the Circular Carbon Network, an initiative of XPRIZE. The report provides valuable insights into the state of the Circular Carbon Market, addressing crucial questions such as who is building Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) projects and who is funding them. The conversation explores the role of XPRIZE in fostering market growth and collaboration, and examines how compa...
May 25, 2023•44 min•Season 3Ep. 42
Beast and Cleaver, a butcher shop and charcuterie in Seattle, is on a mission to elevate the craft of butchery to true artistry. They want you to eat meat of higher quality, and yes, less of it. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , the founder of Beast and Cleaver , Kevin Smith, joins Ross to discuss his butcher shop’s unique approach to localized meat production in a carbon heavy industry. Have you heard the expression “it’s the how, not the cow”? That very much reflects Beast and Clea...
May 18, 2023•41 min•Season 3Ep. 41
PlantVillage won the Carbon XPRIZE milestone award in 2022, and was awarded one million dollars. It aims to lift 200 million African farming families out of poverty. They are working to capture and sell a billion tonnes of carbon per year using biochar sequestration by integrating trees with crops on farms and using lumber for biochar. So what exactly is happening on the ground with biochar? And can we solve today's problems with the mindset that helped create them? In today's Reversing Climate ...
May 02, 2023•43 min•Season 3Ep. 40
What goes into the making of a carbon removal meme? How many pitches does it take before magic comes out? Why do some many captions end up as emojis?!Nori's Memelab: Ross Kenyon, Siobhan Montoya Lavender, and Asa Kamer film their writer's room meeting on a lark to show how we go from a notion to something we think worthy of sharing with our community. Listen in to learn more, and also, respond to the survey in this episode to let us know if you like video podcasts, meme shows, etc. It is an expe...
Apr 25, 2023•36 min
CarbonCapture is looking to build a large-scale direct air capture facility in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a town with deep roots in the coal industry. And last fall, the company invited the community to a town hall event to learn more about the initiative, known as Project Bison , and its aim to remove five million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2030. How did the people react to CarbonCapture’s plans? And what can the carbon removal industry learn from events like this? Nicholas Kusnetz is an award-winni...
Apr 18, 2023•42 min•Season 3Ep. 39
A massive amount of seaweed known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is growing as a response to climate change. To date, it has expanded to a width twice that of the United States. When sargassum reaches the coast, it causes human health problems, destroys ecosystems, and wipes out tourism, usually in communities that don’t have the resources to combat the issue. So, what can we do to prevent these destructive seaweed blobs from reaching coastal regions and remove carbon dioxide from the atmo...
Apr 06, 2023•43 min
A lot of sci-fi writing focused on climate is high literary fiction, which means it’s filled with allusion and often difficult to understand. So, why don’t authors take on climate fiction as a serialized genre like detective novels, zombie books or erotica? Is there a way to make climate fiction more playful without making light of climate change as a global issue? Daniel Backer is the novelist and literature educator behind Off the Wall Novels and the author of Abraham and Lionel Lancet and the...
Mar 28, 2023•50 min•Season 3Ep. 38
For people living in affluent parts of the world in the 21st century, we are used to preserving food by way of refrigeration. But this technique is quite new when you consider that people have been preserving food through fermentation for at least 10,000 years. Our ancestors experimented with fermenting to make food more delicious, more easily digestible, and more stable for storage. And there are many reasons why you might want to learn the process yourself. Sandor Ellix Katz is a well-known fo...
Mar 21, 2023•51 min•Season 3Ep. 37
In the last five years, an enormous amount of effort has been put into technical and scientific innovation around carbon removal. But what about financial innovation? How can we create more opportunities to finance carbon removal at scale? And what does innovation look like in carbon removal markets? Peter Olivier is Head of New Markets at UNDO , a company that uses enhanced rock weathering to achieve carbon removal at scale. On this bonus episode of Reversing Climate Change , Peter joins Ross a...
Mar 07, 2023•49 min
Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, involves sequestering carbon dioxide emissions from a point source, whereas carbon removal takes existing emissions out of ambient air. And there are a lot of people in the climate community who are for carbon removal and against CCS, arguing that we should shut down these point sources and focus on renewable energy. But is choosing sides the right thing to do? Gagan Porrwal is Global Head of Partnerships for GE Gas Power's Carbon Solutions , where he is build...
Feb 07, 2023•46 min
You can judge the progress of an industry by its number of sh*tty first drafts. And if we have any hope of getting to gigatonne-scale carbon removal by 2030, we need a greater diversity of ideas in the CDR space. We need entrepreneurs who dare to think differently. We need more sh*tty first drafts. So, what can we do to encourage this kind of radical risk-taking in carbon removal? Where can entrepreneurs, investors, and carbon removal buyers go to generate their sh*tty first drafts and then iter...
Jan 31, 2023•42 min•Season 3Ep. 36
Startups in the CDR space need to succeed quickly if we want to reverse climate change before time runs out. But the current system requires that climatetech founders often devote time to pitching VCs and filling out multiple grant applications. Time that would be better spent developing their solutions. So, what can we do to connect emerging carbon removal companies with the funding they need to move forward? Neesha Mirchandani is Founder and CEO of Impact Stars , a consultancy that helps plane...
Jan 24, 2023•48 min
While large, industrial cheesemakers are known for consistency and scale, small operations like Uplands Cheese make boutique cheeses unique to the land where they’re produced. And these small, pasture-based dairy farms have their own unique concerns when it comes to climate change. So, how is extreme weather already affecting operations like Uplands Cheese? How does climate factor into future planning for a 300-acre dairy farm? Cheesemaker Andy Hatch is Co-Owner at Uplands, a dairy farm and chee...
Jan 17, 2023•57 min•Season 3Ep. 35
Much has been written about the European Theater in World War II. But the war in the Pacific Theater was the largest naval war ever fought. It covered the entire breadth of the Pacific Ocean, and much of the fighting took place in remote, wild environments. How did the conflict impact those environments heretofore untouched by the outside world? And what about the Indigenous peoples who lived there? Ian W. Toll is the author of Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the US Navy and th...
Jan 03, 2023•51 min•Season 3Ep. 34
With a problem as monumental as the climate crisis, we have a tendency toward proportionality bias. We often believe that the issue has a single cause and can only be solved with a few large-scale solutions. But in the case of climate change, a diversity of solutions may be faster and more effective than putting all our eggs in a few big baskets. And that’s why Todd Myers focuses on what individuals can do to solve climate change—while the politicians slug it out over broad policy measures. Todd...
Dec 13, 2022•51 min•Season 3Ep. 33
Of all philanthropy globally, only a couple percentage points go to climate in general. And of that couple percentage points, only something like 2% of climate giving is dedicated to carbon removal. The problem is, we need to fund several gigatonnes of carbon removal per year by 2050 to combat climate change. And that’s going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. So, how do we encourage governments, corporations and philanthropists to support carbon removal? How might the average person make ...
Nov 29, 2022•32 min•Season 3Ep. 32
Cheese can be both rarified and common. It is also an industry that impacts and is impacted by climate change. Today’s guest is author and cheese expert, Liz Thorpe. Liz is known for working her way up at New York City’s Murray’s Cheese shop, and taking it from a specialty shop to kiosks in Kroger stores across America, making cheese accessible and available to the American general public. Today, Liz serves as Founder of The People’s Cheese , a platform designed to teach a broader market why che...
Nov 22, 2022•52 min•Season 3Ep. 31
The first cleantech bubble burst in the oughts, but the industry didn’t go away. And now, we’ve entered a second big wave of "climatetech" investment. So, is this wave more promising than the first? Are we moving into a golden age for climatetech? Or is it too dissimilar to make comparisons? Joel Makower is Cofounder and Chairman of GreenBiz , a leading media and events company at the intersection of business, sustainability, and innovation. He also serves as cohost of the GreenBiz 350 Podcast ....
Nov 19, 2022•35 min•Season 3Ep. 30
To tackle the climate change problem, we need to move traditional industries closer to net-zero and create new industries from scratch. But how do you build a new carbon removal industry, for example? What is the best way to nurture startups in the climatetech space? Jennifer Wagner is a Breakthrough Energy Business Fellow where she helps early-stage climatetech startups advance the groundbreaking technologies we need to reach net-zero by 2050. Prior to joining Breakthrough, Jennifer served as V...
Nov 17, 2022•40 min•Season 3Ep. 30
Progressives generally support regulations that protect the environment. But the permitting process has become so complex that it can take five years and 500 pages of documentation to get a project off the ground. And that red tape is holding up the clean energy projects we need to reverse climate change. Chris Barnard is Policy Director at the American Conservation Coalition and a regular guest on our sister podcast, Carbon Removal Newsroom . On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , Chris ...
Nov 10, 2022•49 min
As the number of blockchain-enabled climate solutions multiplies, founders need funding to get their projects off the ground. Ben West is Head of Causes at Gitcoin , a company that helps early-stage crypto projects get funding. In his role, Ben supports Gitcoin’s climate solutions, DE&I, decentralized science, and advocacy rounds. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , Ben joins Ross and cohosts Alexsandra Guerra, Head of Demand, and Daren McKelvey, Head of Crypto Partnerships at Nori...
Nov 08, 2022•52 min•Season 3Ep. 29
To facilitate carbon removal at gigaton scale, we need investors to put their money in climate solutions. But VCs are often used to investing in in bits, not atoms. Climatetech hardware is more expensive and more challenging to replicate than software in many cases. And it’s more challenging to achieve orders of magnitude growth in a physical environment than a digital one. So, what is the best way to finance climate solutions? Dr. Marcius Extavour, PhD, is Chief Scientist and EVP of Energy and ...
Nov 03, 2022•51 min
