To kick off our season three premiere(!), yesterday was the big AirMiners conference, which the host platform shows 637 people attended! To discuss their takeaways from the event's diverse discussions are panelists: Dr. Holly Jean Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo; Christopher Barnard, Policy Director of the American Conservation Coalition; Ross Kenyon, Creative Editor at Nori; and the show's new anchor and Nori's Supply and Methodology Program Manager, Radhika Moolgavkar. We discuss the buckshot vs. silver bullet paradigms within carbon removal, the latest takes on policy and environmental justice, and why we need carbon removal memes and await the arrival of a coming carbon removal TikTok superstar.
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal, from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, welcome everyone to season three of Carbon Removal Newsroom, our first episode. And I am Radhika Moolgavkar. I am at Nori. I’m the supply program manager. With me today, I have Holly Jean Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo in New York and author of Ending Fossil Fuels to be published this fall. Welcome, Holly.
Holly Jean Buck: Hey, Radhika. Great to be here.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Thanks for coming. And then I also have Chris Barnard, Policy Director at the American Conservation Coalition and co-editor of Green Market. Hey, Chris. Thanks for joining.
Chris Barnard: My pleasure.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And a special guest today is Ross Kenyon, creative editor at Nori. So Ross, thanks for joining.
Ross Kenyon: No problem. That’s special. What are you trying to imply?
Radhika Moolgavkar: I’m trying to imply that you’re not a regular panel member and only here for our first episode.
Ross Kenyon: That’s true. Well, maybe that’s a good place to start then is explain kind of the vision for the season or what’s new about it. How are you thinking about it, Radhika?
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. So we are thinking about, we’re excited to bring it back and we’re going to do a policy focused half an hour podcast every week. It’ll be focused around carbon removal, but we want to be broader than that. Think about sustainability, think about equity and social justice in the environmental space. And just generally talk about things that are going well, not going well, and the trends we’re seeing in the world, hopefully broader than North America, because one of our panelists, Chris, has a tie to Europe, so we want to make sure we get the whole world included in our conversations.
With that, today we’re going to talk about the Air Miners Conference, and for those of you who don’t know, Air Miners is one of the primary online carbon removal communities. They’re kind of mainly focused in the entrepreneurial space, but also have lots of conversations about policy and other things. Today they had a three hour conference or four hour conference, I guess, where we had a few different breakout sessions and we’re just going to talk about it and our opinions on it and what we heard and learned. And we’ll kind of start with the keynote at the beginning of the conference and Ross, you had some thoughts, I know.
So what were you thinking?
Ross Kenyon: Indeed. Yeah. The conference was kicked off by Marcus Extravore from XPRIZE gave an excellent keynote that set the tone for the entire day. The thing that I most gravitated toward And maybe I’m a bit of a broken record on this one, but he had this phrase I really liked. It was don’t fight over zero. So many of these carbon removal approaches or projects or companies are, but the wee glimmer of an idea in the ideator’s mind. And some people are already fighting over which of these technologies or approaches will reign supreme.
And I often find myself a bit uncomfortable with declaring that ahead of time. I know there are people who say that direct air capture and more synthetic or industrial approaches will never scale. The math of it will never make sense. And then I’ve seen people counter that the ecosphere will lose its ability to retain carbon inside of it in the next couple of decades. So we shouldn’t be going in on carbon removal in soil or trees or other ecosystems. And I think those are very fine things to talk about, but I’m also really cautious about taking sides in those things.
There is a corresponding risk here, right? The corresponding risk is that I am not as critical as I should be, and I’m a bit too trusting sometimes. I’m just like, oh, that sounds good. When really, so sometimes things get a free pass from me when they really should have someone a bit stricter. It’s not to say that my attitude cannot be vicious in the sense that it is based on vice, but that’s my bias at least. So I really like the way that he set up that framework of trying to be ecumenical and broad.
And there’s a lot of other good things in that talk too, but that’s where I started with and sort of carried with me.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Ross, I gotta, you know, ask you though, if you’re too broad, can you achieve anything? You know, I think that’s right. One of the, one of the criticisms of that kind of perspective is you have to be focused to be, to be successful.
Ross Kenyon: Now, one of the cliches, and it’s not cliche because it’s, it’s bad. It’s just that people say it a lot is that there’s no silver bullets, but I had a conversation with someone recently from air miners. I’m not sure if I should or should not name this person, but they said something like, I’m working for the silver bullet. I’m trying to find it. And I actually found it really refreshing. I’m like, oh, you’re really going big, huh? And it had a bunch of ideas nested inside of each other, all of which required serious engineering advances and material sciences advances.
I’m like, I kind of root for that. I find that really refreshing given that everyone is like portfolio based and broad. So, but yeah, I agree. There is a risk of being too broad, you know, too much of a buckshot and you need the silver bullet sometimes. Yeah.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Or at least a few silver bullets. How about you, Holly? Any thoughts on the opening speech?
Holly Jean Buck: Well, I thought it was compelling to have this, you know, CDR is having a moment and there’s this kind of framing of, you know, at first below, back in the days of 350, carbon removal was very far away, 350 parts per million, you know. Maybe one day we’d consider this. And then there was a next phase that he called carbon removal 1. 0 between 400 and 415 parts per million, which is, it’s definitely possible. The climate math says we need to do it. And now this is this new carbon removal 2.
0 phase where the market is asking for it and removing from push to pull. And I mean, if it’s right, that is a very exciting time. Would you guys characterize it that way as well?
Radhika Moolgavkar: I found that framing quite compelling in my mind. And I’m probably the newest entry into the carbon removal space in this group. And it has been fascinating to watch just in my few months at Nori the explosion of ideas and people and talk around this space. And when I hear the founders go back to 2017 when nobody was thinking about it, It really seemed, yeah, that framing really resonated with me. And I do feel like we’re in this new world order around carbon removal where people embrace it and accept it and realize it’s a kind of a necessity to get where we need to go.
What about you, Chris?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the keynote, but that theme that you were talking about of kind of not hedging your bets on just the one Silver Bullet or the need to have a bunch of different ideas being tried across the board was repeated in one of the later panels, which is really interesting by Erin Burns from Carbon 180. And she was talking about that we just need Just everyone needs to try what they’re best at and to give their all. And the problem with silver bullets is that sometimes they turn out not to be a silver bullet and then you’re left in an even worse position than you were before.
And then going back to what Holly was saying is We’re reaching a stage where so many people are interested in this and so many different people with different skill sets from different backgrounds are approaching this idea of carbon removal and bringing their skill sets to this to find a solution that they can work on. The more and more people we’re seeing enter this space, the more likely we’re going to see a broad variety of potential solutions that can leverage different things, such as nature-based solutions, which are entirely different from technological solutions, such as direct air capture, but they’re not mutually exclusive.
And I think that having this kind of market incentive to remove Carbon from the air is really what’s going to drive a variety of solutions. And we shouldn’t be putting all our eggs in one basket, but really trying to get as broad of an array of possible solutions, obviously without being absurd. But I do definitely think that there’s an importance in making sure that we have an all of the above approach here.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So yeah, pivoting a little bit to that conversation in the panel with the policy folks, which I think at least three of us attended. Chris was wondering, as our resident European, what you thought of that conversation around the hesitancy in Europe to embrace carbon removal and that the US was actually ahead of Europe on that, which, you know, I’m always as a US citizen glad to hear we’re doing something a little faster than Europe in this space, but what did you think of that framing and that observation?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, sure. I mean, you’re totally right about the fact that the U. S. has been leading on this issue and that’s something that was repeated in the panel. And that’s something they also said that the U. S. tends to lead on these kinds of innovations and kind of going all the way back to the Second World War and then from the Internet and the space race and all these different innovations tend to come from from the U. S. and part of that is there is this kind of unique Inventive culture in America that really pursues that.
And so America has been leading on many things, but also now also carbon capture solutions. But the reason why I think Europe Tends to fall behind on these types of things is there’s a pretty strong mindset of the precautionary principle in Europe and for people that aren’t necessarily familiar with what the precautionary principle is it essentially. It means that any innovation or policy should not be implemented if there is even a potential small risk to public health. And for example, in the EU, that’s been used to ban things such as biotechnology and GMOs.
It’s what they’re using now to severely regulate artificial intelligence. It’s been used a lot really around the world to limit the advance of nuclear energy. And I wouldn’t be surprised that They have a similar mindset when it comes to carbon removal technologies that we’re not sure what the exact impacts are. We’re not sure what the scientific consensus is on this, et cetera, et cetera. But the reality is that we’re in a situation where we need to be experimenting with things, even if we don’t know what the consequences are fully. Obviously, we need to make educated guesses and try and minimize any potential damage.
But we don’t know exactly what is going to happen, both positively and negatively. This kind of inventive spirit in America tends to be more willing to take those risks and to kind of have an entrepreneur risk their career on trying to come up with an amazing solution. They might fail, but they might also succeed, and that would be good for the rest of the world. So I think there’s just a slight difference in attitude between Europe and the US.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And so that one of the things I heard, and Holly or Ross, jump in please, but There’s also this idea that there’s a lot of the fear that somehow by advocating for carbon removal, you are saying people don’t need to reduce emissions and that Europe in particular was concerned about that. And by maybe creating two different types of goals, one around separating or emission reduction and one around carbon removal helps Europe move forward in this space. Did that resonate with you at all, Chris?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s probably certainly an important aspect to it. And there, especially recently, there’s been this tendency in Europe, like with the EU and kind of the centralization that’s happening there to want to all be have to, we have to all be on the same page, we have to all pursue the one solution and all has to be Directing all our efforts in one particular way. And so there is probably this a little bit more of an attitude of it has to be centralized and focused, whereas in the US it’s a little bit more all of the above, haphazard, kind of wild west of the best solutions will emerge from the top and it’s really kind of a libertarian streak there as well.
So I definitely think that’s a part of what we’re talking about here.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so Holly, I think you were in that panel too. You listened in. What were your kind of thoughts about the policy discussion that they were having? Anything jump out at you?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I had quite a different take on this U. S. versus Europe matter because to me, the reason the U. S. is in the position it’s in is there’s been this well-organized coalition of fossil fuel interests lobbying for Carbon capture use and storage, CCUS. I mean, going back a few decades now and the work that’s been going on at DOE has reflected that around carbon capture and storage. And they saw an opportunity with carbon removal and kind of grafted that into their agenda. And so I think that’s the clearest reason why the US has some leadership in this space is because those relationships were already formed and well existing to Grease some of the policies.
And so we have a lot of legislation addressing carbon capture use and storage. And you’ll have these hearings where somebody from the coal industry will come up and say, now we’re going to rebrand coal as carbon ore. I mean, that’s there, right? And this is one of the central tensions, I think, in this conference is that you have a community of really creative innovators doing amazing things. And the things that they’re doing are going to be associated with the fossil fuel industry in the public mind if they don’t really push out and articulate a different vision of what all of this is about.
Yeah.
Radhika Moolgavkar: They did touch on that a little bit, and that was, I thought, an astute point. I thought, you know, what I did appreciate, though, is I think the wheels of government sometimes take a long time to get moving. And so the ability to leverage, like the 45Q, which in my perfect world would be even broader than industrial and be able to be used for nature-based solutions, but the ability to use 45Q... More broadly, was a win. And I think it was kind of because it was already in there for the industry.
So it is an interesting tension of how you manage that, how you take advantage of that without being sucked into the narrative of their poor performance in the past. Ross, you’ve been kind of quiet. Anything you want to add?
Ross Kenyon: I talk too much generally, so I’m happy to take a little break. No, I don’t have a lot to add. I think those insights are astute as well.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So the other thing that struck me from the policy panel was the talk about state and municipal and the power of the state and the municipal governments and to push forward change and What I was thinking a lot about is pollution and carbon removal and all that, it spans state borders. So how you get what if one state does what’s right and another state doesn’t do what’s right, what does that mean? And so I don’t know if either one of you were thinking about that or any of you were thinking about that, but that was my thought.
It was like, okay, so Washington state can create a perfect system, but if Idaho does not, How beneficial is it really for the states to do that? And does it really need to be more of a top down rather than bottom up kind of process? So you guys have any thoughts on that or?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I do.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Go for it, Holly.
Holly Jean Buck: This is one of my two favorite points in that session because the influence with the local and the state levels, those can be horizontal. So states can learn from each other and they can also give Clues and lessons to the federal government too. So I think it’s really promising.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. The laboratory of democracy, right? The states are the laboratory of democracy. What about you, Chris? I was thinking you probably liked it being from the conservative world.
Chris Barnard: Yeah. I mean, you kind of stole the words out of my mouth with the laboratory of democracy and the way I refer to it is often the laboratory of change. And I’ll give you a cool story about Four or five months ago, my organization, the American Conservation Coalition, we were on a road trip around the US in a Tesla. And this was called the Electric Election Road Trip. And the idea was to travel across the US. We went to 35 states in 45 days to show the local innovations and solutions and ways of tackling climate change that are being developed.
Letter popping up all over the country, even when there is gridlock in Congress. And in particular, we what struck me was when I joined part of the road trip in Utah, and we went to a coal facility in aptly named Carbon County. And they were working there on a carbon capture machine to capture the emissions from the coal plant. And we were talking to these people and asked them, why are you doing this? Why do you care? And it’s clear that it wasn’t because they care so much about climate change and obviously they want to do the right thing for society, but climate change can be such an abstract thing.
But they see that the reality is that the market is pushing out coal, and they’re very worried about their future and coal is their culture and their economy and their livelihood. And so they wanted to be able to pursue that livelihood. And so they’re working on a carbon capture machine with the local university and with scientists and experts and all that, with some support from the DOE to come up with a carbon capture machine that’s capable of allowing the coal plant to become cleaner. And so that really struck me as, The incentive really was there for them to be a part of this because they didn’t want to have to learn a code or whatever.
This is part of not just their livelihood, but it’s also their culture. Their father and grandfather and going back generations went to the coal mines and they want their future generations to be able to be a part of that. There might be a discussion about whether that’s sensible or possible or whatever, but the fact is that they’re trying. And you see all different types of projects like this around the country. And so I am really encouraged by the fact that at the local level, you can really have people that care a lot come up with these solutions.
And really the best solutions can then compete. And also there might be solutions that work in Utah that might not work somewhere else. So I’m really a big fan of the kind of bottom-up model there.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I mean, that is a nice story, and I don’t disagree with anything that either one of you said, because I tend to be bullish on the states and like the idea of creativity, but I do feel like there’s a place for the federal government to make sure these different experiments do get then transferred across the country, much like other initiatives throughout the history of the United States that You try something in a state, but then it needs to be pushed out across the country for it to really be a successful implementation of a policy like around emission reduction or something.
But I don’t want to spend our whole time on the policy panel because I know there were some other panels. So I wanted to pivot to the first panels of the morning. There was the nature-based and manufacturing science-based panel that I attended. And then what about you, Holly?
Holly Jean Buck: I didn’t go to that one, but having worked at a university in this space for, I don’t know, five or six years now, I wouldn’t say I heard new stuff, but I was just glad to see that exchange happening in this sort of a space. I mean, it’s really cool anytime you see innovators and academic scientists talking to each other, I think it’s a good sign.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I would say, what I was struck by in maybe all of the pan, or the first two panels I went to, the last panel I went to was more on the equity piece, but I was a little disappointed, frankly, that there was so much discussion around DAC and industrial solutions. And I felt like maybe nature-based solutions, particularly in the policy conversation, were a little bit given short shrift. And while I... I’m a firm believer where we need to get DAC going. I also don’t want it to get lost in the excitement of the billionaire class, as they said, and their excitement around technology.
So in both of those panels, that’s something that I noticed and was a little wanting to get more in-depth on and felt like they didn’t quite do that, my own opinion. I don’t know, Holly, if you felt differently or?
Holly Jean Buck: Well, one thing I did from that session was Pete Smith Mentioning that nature-based solutions should be geared towards thinking about co-benefits and done for that reason, which is something I appreciate.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I agree with that. And it’s something that we talk about at Nori a lot too, like the different co-benefits that these nature-based solutions provide to different parts of the population. And it’s important not to lose sight of that.
Chris Barnard: I would completely agree with that. I actually just finished a report about this topic, and according to the Natural Academy of the Sciences, nature-based solutions can alone account for 37% of carbon emissions reductions needed by 2030. And I mean, when talking to entrepreneurs and kind of those creative minds, you’re always going to get people that are really excited about the technology and stuff like that, and that’s totally important. The cool thing about nature-based solutions is that so many people across America can be a part of that from farmers to ranchers to foresters to ocean conservationists.
So many people that don’t necessarily have to have a PhD in computer technology or physics or whatever it is. They just live on the land and work on the land can be a part of a natural solution. And so that’s why I’m really excited about the potential there to reduce carbon emissions.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I agree with that, Chris, and I think there’s something so tangible about nature-based solutions that the whole, you know, many people who even aren’t in, who aren’t well versed in carbon removal can understand because they’re outside in it every single day and it just makes kind of intuitive sense to them from their interactions. Ross, anything from the first panel that you attended you want to highlight or you found interesting?
Ross Kenyon: No, in fact, I’ll probably have to edit out you’re even asking me about it just because I was not really present for it. Sorry.
Radhika Moolgavkar: It’s hard. I’m just trying to make sure everybody gets a voice in, you know, in all of us in different panels. So, all right, well, then we’ll get to the last question. Hour of the day, which I went to the one kind of on equity, or what from my old world we used to call equity and social justice, but has a different catchphrase in the environmental space. I think, Holly, you were in on that one too, weren’t you?
Holly Jean Buck: Yes, I was.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so what were your thoughts on that?
Holly Jean Buck: I mean... I almost felt like there were two different conferences going on. Here, I mean, there was great discussion of, for example, a project that an indigenous group is doing. It’s a regenerative buffalo range project, which is going to be the world’s largest Native American owned and managed herd. And that actually led into a discussion of Land return and land ownership that I thought was really interesting and important. Yeah, so I was excited about that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So when you say two different conferences, it felt like most of the conferences was sort of like about entrepreneurial stuff and facilitating that. And then this piece was more about like actual people on the land and the impacts and the long term Long-term land distribution policies that this country has had and how you kind of reverse them. Because we also talked about the Black farmers and how they’ve been impacted by, there was conversation around that. So that was kind of the dichotomy I was thinking about as we were sitting in that meeting is like the future looking and the backward looking kind of in the same space of time, it felt like.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, well, for me, it was like this panel really had a transformative vision animating it that went far beyond tracking carbon flows, right?
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah.
Holly Jean Buck: But coming from the policy panel and thinking about how so much of the policy has been shaped and animated by the fossil fuel industry and enhanced oil recovery and other things like that, there’s just this kind of disconnect where... I fear that we’ll trip up with it.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I really appreciated how the gentleman from that tribe that’s developing the buffalo herd talked about in the 70s and 80s when the folks came, environmental groups came to talk to his tribe. And basically the answer of the elders were, you know, Figure out how to take care of one another and feed everybody equitably. And then that framework will lead to solutions around and the earth will kind of heal itself. And I found that reframing really compelling and interesting and a nice broadening of what we need to do in the environmental space.
And I think it resonated with me quite a bit. I don’t really have much more to say about that panel, except that it was very different and it was very interesting and I was happy that they included it and gave voice. There was also two other folks on the panel. I don’t want to not kind of discuss them. There was an African-American gentleman who has developed a new type of crop, if I was understanding it correctly, that’s much more robust. His name was Joe and can sequester carbon, but he’s doing a lot of work in the inner cities and That was also an interesting application of carbon removal and how you can do it maybe at a more micro scale along with the other panelists who’s working with Vietnamese, no, sorry, Cambodian rice farmers to basically create biochar.
And again, it’s being done at a micro scale. At a micro level, but could have significant obviously impacts if you have lots of projects at that level going. And so I think it was also a nice comparison between these vast sort of carbon capture ideas and these more on the ground, smaller projects that in aggregate can have huge impacts. So that was another thing that I was thinking about as we were listening in that panel. Holly, anything else you want to note about that?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, thinking about your observation there, I do wish there had been somebody who was working on industrial carbon capture because I don’t I don’t want to leave people with the impression that the things that are oriented towards social justice are all land based. Yeah. Industrial stuff is like the, you know, we’re just going to build it thing. I mean, we need to break apart that binary.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, that’s an important observation. And I think it was touched upon by one person that the most basic thing in the first panel, right? The most basic thing of any of these CDR technologies is they can do no harm. And so, which I don’t think has always been the viewpoint of Technological innovation, right? But we all have to start from that very, very basic understanding that what you do does no harm. And maybe this goes to Chris’s concerns about why Europe isn’t as innovative because they maybe take that to the point of not being able to be creative.
And what about you, Chris? Were you in the other panel or did you only go to the policy one?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I was in the other panel and that was definitely the forward-looking high-techy panel. And I mean, in particular talking about how accelerator programs can foster creating a new wave of carbon removal companies. And so it was just kind of interesting to hear from people in this space emphasize to what extent there is a huge economic opportunity and that investors are more and more flocking to this. And I mean, just looking at the XPRIZE set up and how they’re Kind of going to be incentivizing this whole new generation of companies and ideas for carbon removal.
I think the entrepreneurship that’s been coming out of this space and will continue to come out of this space is definitely really cool.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Who was on that panel? Like, what did they highlight? Or what groups did they highlight, Chris?
Chris Barnard: So there was Chris Coleridge, Tito Jankowski, Hannah Davis, and Alex Coleridge. I’m not sure if I butchered his last name. I can’t remember any specific companies that they were talking about, but they were mainly talking about the kind of way to set it up and how these accelerated programs work. And one of the interesting things actually was That especially Alex was talking about is the fact that you want to be able to also connect your average investor, like someone on Robinhood or whatever, to companies like this to be able to be part of that.
And sometimes it’s not as easy, like startups tend to go for like private fundraising and things like that. But it’d be cool to find ways to connect more with the broader public, like Kind of like a GoFundMe crowdfunding type campaign, which would be really interesting. And then they also talked about how the media, how media relations and communication is also a really important part of this, that companies should not only be focusing purely on kind of the science and the technology, but also communicate with with the broader public and kind of raise awareness about these issues and that links into the way of trying to get more public support financially, but also otherwise and politically for these types of projects.
So it was interesting looking at it from just beyond just the technology aspect to how does this fit in with the wider kind of ecosystem of trying to come up with a solution to a problem.
Radhika Moolgavkar: It’s funny, just this morning, I was talking to a startup who’s in this space, and they were just mentioning how one part of their business model is thinking about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding for different aspects of what they’re trying to do. So I think there are people out there thinking creatively like that. And, you know, Ross, I’d actually be interested to get your perspective on this being one of the co-founders of Nori and having gone through a fundraising round or multiple in- You know, this more creative aspect, like moving outside of the traditional sources.
Ross Kenyon: Sure. And Hannah Davis, who’s one of the panelists there, we went through her accelerator at Nori, actually. And she was talking a little bit about us and Regen Network, which was another cohort member of ours from that same time, 2017 in Denver. It’s a great program. We got a lot out of it. We’re all pretty grateful that we were able to do it. But yeah, we did a Republic Reg CF round and Reg CF is open to unaccredited investors so it’s pretty hard to invest in early stage companies if you’re not already wealthy, but there are various Provisions under the JOBS Act that happened during the Obama presidency that make it much more accessible to regular people to participate in offerings like that.
So I think in general, that’s a good thing to do. They actually just raised the limits too. It used to be, you could only raise, I think a million from a reg CF round. I think it’s been up to 5 million under certain circumstances. And that just happened a few months ago, but I think things like that are pretty exciting and pretty good.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Um, There’s always, I guess, the balance of the risk that it provides and the reward. The limitations on income, I would imagine, are based on they don’t want somebody to lose their shirt if they can’t really afford to. And these are risky propositions, but you still want to give everybody the opportunity. Another tension point.
Ross Kenyon: It’s the same as when you were talking earlier about federalism, where my bias is definitely towards decentralization. But there are a number of cases you could bring to my attention where I’d say, oh, that sounds like a great case for a centralized authority to set a nice baseline, because that makes me really uncomfortable when people are able to do something like that. And the same happens with this too, where my bias is certainly in favor of You should give people as much autonomy as you really can. You should trust them to make decisions.
And sometimes those decisions are going to be bad. But there are also people I’ve met who, I don’t know if I’ll keep this in the show, but I met one guy who was telling me about BitConnect. I’m like, all right. And then lo and behold, a couple of months later, I don’t know how much money he lost.
Radhika Moolgavkar: It is funny for Holly and Chris. Like to me, there’s so many overlaps right now between what we’re doing, the crypto space and the space space. And this free market dynamic, as I’m reading that book, we’re making us all read Ross, but all to be edited out. Okay, well, so that kind of covers the topics at the conference. And that brings us kind of to the keynote, or I guess that was called the keynote, the last speaker of the day who threw out all sorts of stats and stuff. And I’ve got to admit, I couldn’t keep them all straight, but I think What did resonate with me from her speech or her talk was that things are moving in the right direction in terms of funding, that there have been multiple factors, more money poured into the space, but it’s still only a tiny fraction of what is available in the venture capital space.
The possibilities are endless for funding and innovation and that, what was her catchphrase, like climate change is the best job creator we have or something to that effect.
Ross Kenyon: We hung out on Clubhouse too, that was pretty fun.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Oh yeah, well tell us about that because I don’t know, did Holly or Chris join on Clubhouse? I was not on it, so how was that?
Ross Kenyon: Holly was there. We mostly did what we just did now, albeit times it by 12 or 13, because that’s how many people were there. But it was a lot of fun.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, they really wanted to talk about the TikTok generation and carbon removal influencers.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Who are carbon removal influencers?
Holly Jean Buck: I don’t know, but we need them, right? That was the takeaway.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m such a big proponent of memes, and that’s the best part of air miners, or one of the best in my humble estimation. But I love humor. I love art and funny things. And memes are really important and undervalued, I would say, in general. So if you’re looking for a way to contribute to a carbon removal future and you know your way around Photoshop, it’s memery for you. That’s what we need. Or a TikTok dance. I don’t know. I’m not the person to ask for that one, though. Holly, is that more you?
Holly Jean Buck: No, that’s not me.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Maybe her daughter, like, you know, it’s the next generation who are doing those TikToks. And I just sounded so old. Anyway, with that, I am, well, you know, I think we will say thank you for The first episode of season three of carbon removal newsroom. We look forward to a great season moving forward and being in your feed on a regular basis. Thanks. And thank you, Holly, Chris and Ross for joining me today. It was a fun conversation.
Ross Kenyon: Pleasure for having us. Yeah.
Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to carbon removal newsroom. If you like the show, the best way you can help us is by giving us a great rating and review an Apple podcast, following the show on Spotify, and by sharing the show on social media. Tell your friends and help us spread the word about what’s happening in the world of carbon reduction.
