Welcome to Climate Workers Anonymous, where those who work in climate get to share their anonymous and unverified feelings, experiences, and analysis. Today’s episode has two longer pieces that were submitted.
Before I get into those, I wanted to share an additional reflection about the origins of the show’s name. A friend of mine said it and I cottoned onto it right away, and I didn’t quite make the connection that it might also have to do with my admiration for the Catholic Worker Movement and Dorothy Day, in addition to my respect for the various addiction treatment mutual aid organizations that end in “Anonymous”.
What I love about both organizations is that they don’t use a hierarchical charitable orientation. The addiction groups are run by an ethos of equality, and that all are addicts, and it is addicts helping one another. For the Catholic Worker, their focus is on works of mercy that recognize the inherent dignity and equal worth of all people, and that any of us might just as easily be in a position that needs this kind of help.
This recognition of moral luck renders judgment and hierarchy irrelevant, since it simultaneously encourages us to see ourselves as a fallen sinner as equally as those we “help”, and (if not secular, which many participants in Catholic Worker houses are) to recognize Christ in the “least of these.” The dual nature of humans as both entirely equal and plain, as well as being a locus for divinity to break through everyday reality, is a paradox I like to think a lot about.
Here’s the famous verses about the works of mercy if that’s of interest. Even if non-religious, it is a beautiful passage.
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
— Matthew 25:40-45, King James VersionIdeally, that gives some additional context for why I am attracted to this kind of work.
Here are the submissions.
There's a story in carbon removal that everything is getting worse in the near term. Microsoft pausing, not enough buyers, VC pullback and startup consolidation (politely failing), people leaving CDR and climate for greener pastures, some or all pathways are slower and more painful than expected. For the love of God, when will the holy grail of compliance markets bless us with more demand than we know what to do with? (Demand that is actually in line with what the world needs?!)
I feel it. It's real. And I also see the people who've been through it in the space and, this is the crazy part, decide to double down and support the space, start new ventures, pull more money in. Some of them are doing the hardest part of project development with all their lessons learned. Many of them are making big bets on future demand.
I often feel this is crazy. Are they just true believers who can't let go? People who we appreciate because they're trying to do something helpful in the world but also pity because of their upcoming failure? Or are we just short sighted and cynical, and they will actually make a real difference for the world and a shit ton of money in a decade?
They are certainly right that someone needs to keep global capacity alive and maturing to do CDR. Other than that, no one knows anything about how it will go.
But the hope of the people coming back for a second or third round, having learned some things and trying again means something. The hope of people staking their careers on doing something that matters and not always with financial certainty means something. The hope of all these new ventures that will mostly crash and burn but learn something on the way and pass it on to the next set of ventures means something. And what if we've already hit the bottom?
If I can't predict the future, maybe betting on CDR isn't the worst decision. Maybe it's even a good decision that just feels bad right now.Unrealistic targets for how much CDR can be achieved by certain years are delusional and only serve to drive collective hysteria and feed potential or actual moral hazards. We should greatly adjust our 2050 targets downward to just 2–3 gigatons of novel CDR and focus as much as possible on absolute decarbonization. On this thread, it would be even better for the climate to break out of the paradigm of using CDR to compensate for residual emissions and create a paradigm focused on reducing absolute emission as close to zero as possible while simultaneously scaling CDR not to “allow us to keep emitting” but rather to reverse the damage that’s already been done and that will continue to be done until we do hit zero emissions.
Thank you for listening to and reading Climate Workers Anonymous. Subscribe above, and be sure to subscribe in whichever podcast app you use. An amazing rating and review on those podcast apps does a world of good. Would you please do that for me now? Here’s Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
If you’d like submit your anonymous hopes, fears, or experiences to Climate Workers Anonymous, you can use this Tally survey or email climateworkersanonymous[at]protonmail.com, though I believe the Tally survey is more secure. Do not communicate anything you wouldn’t want a hacker to have access to, including an email address that could be linked to you if you email the account on Protonmail.
Sincerely,
Ross Kenyon
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello, this is Ross Kenyon. I am the curator of Climate Workers Anonymous. This is a collective art project modeled off of PostSecret, where those who work in climate can share the things that they feel and have experienced that maybe they don’t want attributed to their own names. That can be hopeful things. That can be despairing things. It can be funny things. It can be tragic things. It can be feelings. It can be analysis. Today, we have a couple that are more on the analysis side, long ones, that I believe will certainly interest those who work in the carbon dioxide removal space.
If this is your first time here, welcome. I would be supremely grateful if you could open up your podcast app right now and give this show a great rating and review if you are so inclined. Sharing it on social media, subscribing to the show on Substack, following the show on LinkedIn—these things are also very valuable and much appreciated.
Before I read today’s submissions, I had an insight about the show that I wanted to share. I had a hard time articulating what exactly it was about the name that attracted me so quickly. I did a show earlier where I discussed that it may have been related to Gabor Maté’s work on addiction, and thinking about how the various anonymous programs have functioned and what the connection is between this name and that name. And that’s definitely a part of it.
For some reason, I’m not even sure how I overlooked this, but I’ve also been a fan and very influenced by Dorothy Day’s work with the Catholic Worker Movement. Recently, I was by one of the remaining Catholic Worker houses that’s active, and I stopped by for their open house dinner, which I like to do whenever I’m in the area. And then I was like, oh, worker. Oh, this is in the title of Climate Workers Anonymous. Okay. And some part of my attraction to this phrase, which I didn’t come up with—the Climate Workers Anonymous phrase, a friend of mine had said it. I’m like, oh, that’s perfect. But I didn’t necessarily know why I liked it so much. And then I was sitting at the Catholic Worker House, and I was—oh, that’s one of the reasons why, too.
If you’re not familiar with the Catholic Worker Movement and Dorothy Day: Dorothy Day was a very, very radical woman. She was sort of a writer and a muckraking journalist and had some hard living in New York City—political radical, anarchist, socialist—and then just got bitten by the bug to go to church and read the Bible, and then I became very fascinated by, as far as I understand it, the Sermon on the Mount, works of mercy, recognizing the universality between humans, and that our job is to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, care for the sick, visit those in prison, but also to do it in a non-hierarchical way, to recognize that it could just as easily be the caregiver in that position as the person receiving care, and vice versa.
Okay. Prologue done. Two submissions today. They’re both longer and more analytical. Submission number one.
Ross reads the first submission in full at this point. It is the text of the post above, from “There’s a story in carbon removal that everything is getting worse in the near term” to “maybe betting on CDR isn’t the worst decision. Maybe it’s even a good decision that just feels bad right now.”
Ross then reads the second submission in full. It is the text of the post above, from the paragraph that begins “… targets for how much CDR can be achieved by certain years are delusional and only serve to drive collective hysteria” to “reverse the damage that’s already been done and that will continue to be done until we do hit zero emissions.”
Thanks so much for the people who submitted. I’m grateful you took the time to communicate this to me and trusted me to share it. That’s meaningful.
If you have a thought or a feeling, criticism, a hope, come share it. There’s a link in the show notes to submit on Tally. You don’t have to reveal who you are. All of these are anonymous and unverified.
If you like this show, tell someone about it. Subscribe on Substack or in your podcast app. Give it a great rating. Help more people find it.
When this type of art project is good, it’s oral history that’s accreting over time and building up the true feelings of what it was like to work in the early days of climate. Maybe the middle days. I don’t even know which days these are half the time. And I suspect many other people would find it worthwhile if they knew about it. Please help me get this out to a wider audience. Thanks so much for listening. I appreciate you. Have a great day.
