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•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 38•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast Darwin and others theorized that evolution was about the survival of the fittest. But when Peter Kropotkin followed up on Darwin’s research, he discovered the competition was only part of the story of evolution in nature. And Kropotkin argued that cooperation and collaboration among organisms also helps them evolve. So, why is Darwin’s narrative the dominant one? And how can an understanding of mutualism help us protect the ecosystems we depend on and find solutions to climate change? Kristin Oh...
Nov 01, 2022•40 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast When corn is harvested, the remaining corn stover either gets tilled into the soil or left on top. But what if we took a portion of that corn stover, converted it into carbon-rich bio-oil, and pumped it deep underground? Peter Reinhardt is Cofounder and CEO of Charm Industrial , a carbon removal company that is working on a fleet of mobile pyrolyzers that covert ag biomass into bio-oil and sequester it underground. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , Peter joins Ross, Siobhan, and Asa ...
Oct 27, 2022•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lyn Stoler and Sonam Velani have coined the phrase Climate Industrialism to describe the optimistic, action-oriented response to climate change they already see happening in many communities around the world. Lyn and Sonam define Climate Industrialism as ‘a social and economic system built on the creation of climate technologies that yield human and environmental co-benefits.’ What does that mean, exactly? And how does Climate Industrialism create a virtuous cycle for companies building climate ...
Oct 25, 2022•43 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast Does the carbon removal tech you’re developing have a shot at being cost-competitive in the real world? How might you reduce the cost of a given CDR technology? And how do you convince government funders or investors that your carbon removal idea is viable? A techno-economic assessment or TEA answers these questions. So, what is involved in conducting a techno-economic assessment? And how might it help a startup improve the economic performance of its climate tech and maximize its impact? Grant ...
Oct 21, 2022•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast The easier it is to participate in a sustainability program like Nori, the less motivation it requires for farmers to enroll. But the current lack of digitization in the ag space makes it challenging for farmers to get paid for carbon removal. So, is there an easy way to track agricultural data and compensate farmers for regenerative practices? Dane Braun is Vice President of Product at Bushel , an ag software company that is digitizing the infrastructure for grain. On this episode of Reversing ...
Oct 18, 2022•35 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast A lot of good comes from travel. It gives us a chance to disconnect and recharge. It exposes us to new things and helps us connect with nature and other people. Plus, we contribute to the local economies in the places we visit. But travel is not always good for planet. And the climate-conscious among us often feel guilty about the emissions we create when we get on a plane or fill up at the pump for a road trip. So, what can we do to make travel more environmentally friendly? Christina Beckmann ...
Oct 14, 2022•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Local governments are surprisingly powerful levers for carbon removal. While large national governments can be slow and unwieldy, cities and counties can sometimes be much more nimble. They can get carbon removal projects off the ground quickly and share what they learn with other local governments. So, which municipalities are taking the lead in the CDR space? And how do they integrate carbon removal in the local government landscape? Susie Strife is the Boulder County Director of Sustainabilit...
Oct 07, 2022•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are few ways for individuals to participate in carbon removal. Typically, carbon removal is something that someone else does that you pay for. But what if there was a way for you to practice carbon removal in your own backyard with biochar? Connor Lascelles and Lottie Hawkins are the Cofounders of Earthly Biochar , a company that manufactures consumer-accessible biochar kilns. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , Connor and Lottie join Ross and cohost Jada Dormaier, Supply Account...
Oct 04, 2022•54 min•Ep 25•Transcript available on Metacast 
