This week Radhika is joined by Dr. Jane Zelikova and Dr. Sarah Myhre, Program Director, Climate Advocacy & Democracy Reform, at the Glaser Progress Foundation.
For decades, the climate science community has examined the problems with climate pledges and carbon markets. But the ascendancy of carbon removal has prompted researchers to take a fresh look at the topic.
Recently Carton, Lund, and Dooley’s commentary piece looked at assumptions often made in climate pledges and net-zero plans. They highlighted three ways government and corporate climate plans gloss over important nuances when planning their path to decarbonization.
The hosts also discuss a recent article in which David Wallace-Wells examined the confusing and competing narratives about our climate future. This piece warns against looking for a convenient climate story as both the best- and worst-case scenarios imagined in the past now appear unlikely.
The excitement, investment, and research into carbon removal have percolated into international diplomacy and big business. This week Radhika, Jane, and Sarah discuss how CDR fits into the confusing and rapidly evolving global climate conversation.
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: Hello, everybody, and welcome to our July 7th edition of the Science episode of Carbon Removal Newsroom. I am happy to welcome back Dr. Jane Zelikova, Executive Director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center and Joint Faculty in Crop and Soil Science at Colorado State University and recent TED Talk giver. So welcome, Jane.
Jane Zelikova: Thanks. It’s really nice to be back.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, we’re happy to have you. And also Dr. Sarah Myrie, Program Director at the Climate Advocacy and Democracy Reform at the Glazer Progress Foundation. Hi Sarah, nice to have you.
Sarah Myhre: Hi, thank you for having me.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And then finally, as always, I’m Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. Today we’re going to be talking like I said about science and for decades, the climate science community has thought about the potential role of carbon markets and climate neutrality commitments may play in addressing climate change. Carton, Lund, and Dooley’s commentary piece was recently published in Frontiers in Climate and it examines the assumptions often made in climate pledges and net zero plans. It also addresses concerns about the completion of emission reductions and carbon removal, as well as the reliance on the full implementation of largely untested CDR approaches.
The authors talk about three ways that government and corporate climate plans gloss over important nuances when planning their path decarbonization. So we’ve talked a lot about the excitement, the investment, the research into carbon removal, but let’s also hit on some of maybe the moral hazard and the confusion that CDR brings while also trying to reach net zero. So I’ll start with you, Jane. And can you kind of describe the three equivalences the authors talked about?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, happy to. So this paper by Carton, London, Dooley is... Really awesome kind of thought piece, social science thought piece about addressing net zero goals and equating across different approaches. So the first kind of equivalence they describe is the equivalence in carbon. Then there’s geographic equivalence and temporal equivalence. And so the carbon equivalence issue is related to the fact that emissions from burning fossil fuels are coming from a carbon pool that is geologically stored, so stored for millions of years, while carbon that’s coming from the land sector is largely stored in pools that have shorter cycling times.
So for example, when you have deforestation and carbon emissions from deforestation are coming from carbon pools that have much shorter residence time. And so when both are included, On carbon balance sheets and in decarbonization and zero plans and included in the tools that are used to sort of address them or decarbonize, they’re not differentiated in terms of the pools that are coming from. So the tools being applied are the same when the pools that are being addressed are fundamentally different in terms of residence time. The second large kind of equivalence that they authors address is geographic equivalence and that just refers to the locations where greenhouse gases are being emitted and where carbon drawdown is expected to take place and those are often really different.
Both in terms of the amount of emissions coming from the northern latitudes relative to the southern latitudes. And in their capacity to draw down carbon and store it with any kind of permanence. They also differ in their socioeconomic and political capacity to address the climate change challenge. So while CO2 may be a relatively well mixed gas in the atmosphere, the impacts are not equivalent. They are not felt the same way in the northern and southern latitudes. And they’re really large sort of Disparities between the resources and the ability to deal with climate impacts that are made to be the same when you’re addressing in a decarbonization plan, when you’re addressing carbon as if it’s well-mixed gas.
So the physics of carbon being well-mixed gas in the atmosphere and the reality of impacts don’t match. And then the third equivalence is temporal, and that’s just the idea that There’s an expected delay in carbon removal relative to when we’re emitting carbon into the atmosphere. And that just means that we’re burdening future generations with cleanup while we’re emitting carbon into the atmosphere today. And that means we’re relegating today’s impacts on already vulnerable communities and also on future generations. So while models may not care when mitigation happens, people certainly do.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Thank you, Jane, for that overview. A really interesting way to think about the CDR and the different equivalences. I certainly appreciate it, particularly talking about the carbon equivalence issue that you first highlighted. So, Sarah, how do these three equivalences sort of play out on the ground? And do you think that when corporate investments are being happened and government decisions are being made and policy Are they even thinking about it like this? Or is this just too sophisticated right now for where we are with the CDR markets?
Sarah Myhre: That is a good question. First, before I answer that question, I just want to say hi, Jane. Jane and I have known each other for a long time. And as everyone knows, I love Jane. And getting the chance to talk about carbon science with Jane is just a delight.
Jane Zelikova: That feeling is just so deeply mutual.
Sarah Myhre: I feel like we’ve had a lot of like just conversations in line with this for a long time. And I’m glad that this paper was chosen because I do think it’s a really, I think it’s a really timely and thoughtful thought piece. Like there’s no figures, there’s no data really. It’s more of an exploration and an analysis of kind of the Existing narratives that undergird the carbon removal spaces. And one of the things that’s happening, I think, a lot in the carbon removal spaces is a lot of magical thinking, a lot of unspecific magical thinking.
That is really emotionally motivated, but we don’t talk about those emotions because they are personal and they’re motivated by our individual narratives. And a lot of people are experiencing a deterrence around the solutions to climate change. Because they have aversions to the solutions themselves. They have a narrative that it is going to take things away from them and undermine their quality of life and such. And so that solution aversion ends up, I think, really strengthening the interest in carbon removal as a magical solution, a technical solution, a technocratic solution. And so I think that this paper does a good job in unpacking some of the thinking behind this and really getting out in front of exactly what they say in the abstract, which is, How carbon removal contributes to mitigation deterrence.
So we, instead of focusing on the need to stop fossil fuel infrastructure, keep it in the ground, stop the pipelines, electrify everything and ensure that everything is as efficient as possible. Instead of that, those pathways People turn towards carbon removal as this magical thinking, and it deters the centering of mitigation, which I have seen like many, many times in individuals behaviors. So yeah, I think that this is a tool, this framework that they’ve proposed is a tool for everyone in the carbon removal spaces to kind of gut check and really get specific about what they’re referencing when they’re thinking about carbon removal in the larger scheme of mitigation and removal and adaptation pathways.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I want to follow up a little bit with you, Sarah, on this. I’m kind of curious, how would you imagine a corporation or a government approaching it if the CDR, if they use this framework? And do you agree with maybe the premise that I start with is that zero emissions are necessary, but not enough. So we have to do that plus. And is that the way corporations should be using that and then applying this framework on top to the plus part?
Sarah Myhre: Yeah, I think, you know, zero emissions are necessary and we need carbon removal. And that’s not an opinion, that’s a, you know, a statement of fact based on consensus science. And so we do need carbon removal, but we need it to be profoundly like place-based, thoughtful, contextual, and just. It’s not just installing vacuum cleaners. The concept of carbon removal in the suite of mitigation, adaptation, removal, and accountability processes that are at the table right now are really at the core of what I think corporate actors have to square themselves to.
And I do think that there are really, really hard conversations that corporations have to have with themselves and their shareholders about the emissions, the historic emissions that they have contributed to, getting clean with those historic emissions, the ongoing emissions that are happening, and the pathways that they are committing to and acting upon to decarbonize and remove carbon from the atmosphere. If this paper, if this framework helps folks to get more specific, great. Like, let’s do that. And I think there are some really deeply political ramifications of a framework like this.
And oftentimes in the carbon removal spaces, the technocratic narratives of climate solutions are deeply apolitical. And ultimately, the climate crisis is a political crisis. And I think it’s really necessary to look at that directly and look at the forms of obstruction that are preventing wholesale movement on this agenda.
Radhika Moolgavkar: OK. So much there. So freaking brilliant. I love it. I will keep going in the interest of getting through some more questions and thoughts. The authors talked about, you know, carbon being taken out of the geological storage is difficult to permanently sequester in the biotic carbon cycle, kind of what was most interesting to me when I read this piece. So how should natural solutions be thought about in the broader climate plans?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, that’s a really good question. And we’ve been grappling with that as folks that work on the shorter timescale solutions, which is carbon drawdown and storage in soils. And I think one way to think about the durability of nature based carbon is to think about within sector action. So if you have emissions that are being dealt with from the agricultural sector, then the action to remove that carbon should also take place in the agricultural sector because the carbon durability And the pools that the carbon is coming from and going into are better matched in terms of timescale.
And it doesn’t really make sense to sort of address geologic carbon loss with putting back carbon that’s only going to stick around for 10 years. The other way maybe to think about it is that everybody should be moving rapidly towards full decarbonization and just reducing emissions and eliminating emissions and addressing legacy. So as that’s happening, I think one thing we can think about is that the ability of the biotic carbon cycle to temporarily bridges towards permanent geologic storage, which is ultimately a solution that is much more expensive. And so we can’t think about sort of like, okay, I’ve offset my emissions in a forestry project in Indonesia.
I’m done. You’re not done. You’re going to be doing that every year. Until you’ve addressed all the emissions you’re putting into the atmosphere. And then you’re thinking about geologic scale removals to address the legacy emissions and anything left over. So just like the sector within sector and setting and thinking about bridging towards and always moving towards permanent removal is a way to address the difference.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And just to take it one step further, how would you address Claims when somebody says, I have a soil carbon credit and I promise you 100 years of permanence, or I have a forestry credit and I promise you 100 years of permanence. Like, what is the correct response to that from a scientific perspective, not like a, you know, moral or other type of perspective?
Jane Zelikova: Oh, sorry, you saw me roll my eyes. Yeah, so, I mean, I think from a soil carbon perspective, I ask the next, my follow up question is, how are you measuring that carbon? Are you doing carbon fractionation and measuring particulate organic matter and mineral associated organic matter separately? And then if you’re going to talk about 100 year time scale for storage, then hopefully you’re just talking about the mineral associated carbon because that’s the carbon that’s more likely to stick around. In forestry projects, I would think a lot about where those forests are, whether the forests are biodiverse or if they’re monoculture sort of plantations.
And think about other climate risks and other hazards. So are these areas prone to fire? What does the climate model say about sort of future regional climate change, drought, et cetera? How likely are these forests to continue to be able to grow? Is the growth going to change in response to climate change? And are these forests going to burn? And those are the questions that anyone should be asking. When there’s any kind of a durability claim being made beyond 10 or 20 year timescales.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Thank you. I think that’s really important for all of our, I think most of our listeners are sophisticated enough to know it, but I just like to always reiterate it that always asking about the permanence and how it relates is an important question. So Sarah, I’m going to go back to the piece and it talks, there’s a quote from it that says, Focusing on cost effectiveness as the driving criterion for the location of carbon removal efforts will tend to reproduce climate injustices. So how does a future market for carbon removal avoid this dynamic?
And how do you prevent past harms to these communities?
Sarah Myhre: I like this question a lot, and it makes me think about some of the listening I’ve been doing recently to Adrienne Marie Brown. And her, who is like this incredible social justice facilitator, Jane just held up one of her books and really just like kind of profit and savant, just brilliant person. And she, one of the things that she has said recently is like, So much of what we are doing in this world is like living inside of the dreams of a very narrow and specific group of people that have constrained the economic and social systems around us through oppression and extraction and injustice.
And when you feel that oppression in your individual lives, and of course, we feel that intensely right now in the United States with the loss of reproductive rights. For everyone. But when you feel that injustice, right, and you start to realize the constraints of living inside someone else’s dream, then you get a little bit more contact with what’s happening around you. And that contact helps me think about the real, this war of imagination that’s happening at a profound level, at a cultural level. And that We have to have imaginations that are are big enough and brave enough to see us through the transition time that is in front of us to guide generations behind us and to be accountable.
And so one of those things is at hand is understanding the way That land use is a form of oppression, because as we treat each other, so we treat the land. We are not separate from the land. We are the land. And we are inseparable from that. And the history of land use has been one that is characterized by places that are Expendable and places that are important. People that are expendable and people that are important. And those lines have been drawn by whiteness and by gender and by wealth and access.
And so these same patterns of disposability are going to be enacted inside of the carbon removal markets that are thinking transnationally, thinking about, quote unquote, assets in the global south. Because if we do not interrogate that imagination, that constraint that we live in, where we think about disposability as a necessary externality of moving fast and fixing things, we will repeat all of the same problems that have characterized land use in North America in the last 350 years. We’re either going to repeat the same patterns or we’re going to learn from the past and be accountable to it and change those patterns.
And I really hope we do the latter because we know what is wrong about what has happened previously. We listen in to people who have the lived experience, the cultural knowledge about the consequences of colonization. We can listen in. As people who are the inheritors of colonization, which is myself. I’m a fifth generation Washingtonian. I’m a direct product of the genocide and violence of the American colonization of the West. So I think that these positionalities are really complex. And they are not just technical or scientific. They are questions about our role in history and our ethical and moral responsibilities.
And so when you open this Pandora’s box around what imaginations are we living in, I think that it really calls us in to account as whole people for these kinds of problems at this time.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So I wanna push you a little bit on this because this is a question I ask everyone who comes on the show and talks about the equity and social justice piece, because I agree, but it takes a long time to heal and hear about these wounds, right? And move through it. So how in your mind, do you balance the urgency of the climate crisis and the need for this with the time that it rightfully needs For these communities to want to come to the table and want to engage and want to be part of the dialogue.
Sarah Myhre: Well, there’s this kind of dichotomy of thinking here where if you have to go, if you want to go fast, you go alone. But if you want to go far, you go together. And in the climate crisis, we need to go far together. And I think that this is exactly about this crisis of imagination is that we can’t imagine a process that is equitable That can meet the needs of the moment. And if that is the crucible we’re in, then the rules need to be broken. And the complexity of building a table that is robust enough and wide enough, a table that can listen, a table that’s accountable, a table that can repair, that is the cultural moment that we’re living in.
That is exactly what the time is calling us to do. I feel like deterred by the idea that justice takes time because it actually takes no time to break something. It is easy to shatter something and it takes lifetimes to build. And what we were talking about is building. And so I think it requires, again, this just wholehearted recommitment to a process that is new and different. And I’m not necessarily the arbiter of what that process is. My voice is one of many. And I want to ensure that the conversations that I’m a part of at this table continue to center the political reality of the moment.
And that we can’t have a table that is big enough and robust enough to listen the voices of communities from the global south of indigenous voices that are are communicating a real reparative and restorative to the right of nature itself. We don’t have a table big enough to listen to children activists that are saying we have a right, a constitutional right to a livable planet. We don’t have a table built enough big enough to sustain the voices of people who can get pregnant and say, I need control over my own destiny to even participate at this table.
So all of these problems, it seems like a lot, but the nice thing about it is that all of our problems are the same problem. Problems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonization. And if we can look at all that as a prism to look through this central problem, then it allows a simplicity to occur that I think is really transformative. I really understand what you’re saying, and I think that it calls us into a deeper relationship with each other and with the moment at hand.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right. Well, I have one more question about this article. And Sarah, I could go down the rabbit hole much longer about those issues. There’s just never enough time, but I’m happy that we constantly are bringing it up and discussing it. But my final question about this article in particular is, do you think that the research community has been able to keep up with the rise of CDR and is climate science ready to keep up with the rapid uptake of CDR into the mainstream climate agendas? And that’s a question for both of you.
I’ll start with Jane and then move over to Sarah.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah. You know, we often talk about how CDR is blowing up and I feel like that’s been Exponentially the case. And I, and so with that there’s kind of an uptick in research funding, which means there’s an uptick in quote unquote knowledge generation around the topic. And so I think the bigger issues is there are a lot of fundamental science questions to be answered about these approaches. And those science questions include some of the topics Sarah was talking about, which is, yes, we can understand how a molecule works, but we have to place it in a broader context of how these solutions are implemented in the real world.
So there’s kind of a rise in CDR science with fundamental and applied. There’s a rise in social science that’s thinking about how these solutions are implemented in the real world, but the pace of science doesn’t match the pace of kind of the public’s attention and the social media cycle. And so, no, I don’t think a lot of the CDR science is currently being implemented in the mainstream conversation around CDR or even the climate agenda outside of sort of the topics that the IPCC addresses. And it’s certainly not being incorporated quickly enough for us to do the course corrections that we need to be doing, including based on some of the social science of how solutions are implemented in the real world.
So, yeah, I want the science to be at the table and lead the conversation, but that’s often not what’s happening, especially as these solutions are hitting market. Investors are putting so much money into these things instead of sort of like really interrogating what any individual solution is doing and whether it’s actually delivering us towards the ultimate goal of addressing climate change, which many of them are not yet because the science isn’t there yet. I don’t know what Sarah thinks.
Unknown speaker: Sarah, yeah.
Sarah Myhre: Well, I mean, the pace of basic science, the pace of applied science is at hand here. That’s an important question. The private versus public monies, that’s an important question. I’m not sure it’s the right question, though. And the reason why is because I think we have to look at the fossil fuel companies and the accountability that they have to continue to build infrastructure, to control the political ecosystem, to lie in public, and to harm people in place. And just like the tobacco companies in the late 90s, they are selling a very dangerous and damaging product.
And they’ve known for a long time that it is dangerous and it is damaging. They’ve made choices to protect their own assets. And so I really think that at the core of this is a really important legal battle that’s in front of States, municipalities, state attorney generals that are ongoing right now to understand how fossil fuel companies are liable for the damages and deaths and deception that they’ve perpetuated, not only in the US, but around the world and also to hold them account to stop polluting our political environment and discourse with lies and disinformation that are making it impossible for the everyday citizen to understand what is at stake, what they knew, and how everyday citizens lives are being damaged by the fossil fuel industry right now.
So ultimately, I think, again, we need to advance the science. But climate change is a political problem and it requires a political and legal solution at this time. And so I do think that the investment in those spaces is really, really important.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Class action, public health lawsuits. Here we come. I’m going to turn Jane’s dancing to that idea. I am going to turn to my second article of the day. It’s a recent article or Opinion piece written by David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times, and he was examining, just sort of to Sarah’s point, the confusing and competing narratives about our climate future and what it means, right? And so I’m curious, what did you make of his claims that leaders are now talking the talk on climate, but not taking the sufficient action?
Jane Zelikova: I mean, maybe I’ll go first. I mean, he’s not wrong. That’s like factually correct. Right. So there was kind of this Vogue moment a few years ago where all of a sudden everyone became woke to climate and climate denial became sort of a non-fashionable stance. And it became fashionable to one, talk about climate change, to care about climate change, three, make Commitments to address climate change. And that moment has passed, as Sarah has mentioned, as political realities have shifted. And the moment didn’t carry with it accountability. So people all of a sudden could make comments and promises and bold statements that didn’t have to be followed with real action.
So while the rhetoric is like a shifting sea that’s ebbing and flowing, the climate map Doesn’t change. We still have to remove carbon from the atmosphere. We still have to stop polluting. We still have to do all these things and address the rotting systems that underpin everything. But there’s no accountability. And because no one’s being held to account for any promises they make, and there’s no transparency in how they’re going to actually address the claims that they’re making, It’s now become clear that everyone can look really good and they don’t have to do anything.
So I’m not surprised that there’s this big gap between what companies and leaders are sort of saying and what they’re doing, because there’s no enforcement on their words today. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be the case, but certainly today there isn’t.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So following up on that a little bit, Jane, how How do you create a worldwide enforcement mechanism? I mean, this is something I think about a lot, even if the US gets it perfect there or other European and Western nations, which is a big lift, they’re always bad actors in the world. So how it feels like, how do you go about doing that?
Jane Zelikova: You know, I don’t have a magical solution to that. I think Sarah does. So maybe Sarah, you should answer that.
Sarah Myhre: Well, you know, how did how do we get the tobacco companies to stop lying about their product? Right. We the state of journey generals across us across the United States sued them. And of course, the US political and economic system and legal system is not global, but we are I’m calling from the US and we’re talking about the US legal system right now. So for what it’s worth, when We went through what was called the Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco companies. They came to the table. They paid out the largest fund and settlement in the history of law.
The lawyers that litigated these cases received the largest amount of legal funds in the history of law. Those tobacco companies had to commit to binding settlements that required them to not lie about their products. And to not dissuade the public about the danger of their products and to warn the public about their products to hand over and disclose documents and to create public archives of their industry documents. So there was a lot of outcomes that people don’t really remember from that settlement agreement that was very, very key. Most of what David Wallace Welles is discussing in this piece are PR tactics that have been used as obstruction mechanisms and disinformation mechanisms by corporations to appear woke and to greenwash their activities and to dissuade the public from really being curious.
And so These are the same tactics that the tobacco industry used. These are the same tactics that the paint industry and the opioid industry have used to obscure and dissuade the public from really being curious and to allow the public to lull the public back into a place where they are fine with status quo. Of course, we’re not fine with status quo. And so we have to start thinking about, you know, what would that binding settlement agreement look like? You know, thinking about the end game for litigation that binds these tobacco corporations or these, excuse me, big oil, fossil fuel corporations to commitments to prevent them from lying about their products.
Those same binding commitments will apply to other corporations. And it takes a regulatory framework At a state and national level to do so. And that’s one of the reasons why we are seeing the Supreme Court right now addressing the regulatory state because the Supreme Court has swung in such a right wing and fascist direction that we now have a Supreme Court that is interested in the deregulation of the regulatory state and undoing fundamental environmental regulations like the Clean Air and Clean Water Act. So I think that the conversation like what Davis Wallace-Wells is talking about here is really at the core of how corporations behave around climate change if they can get away with it.
So it’s not surprising behavior, but it is deeply problematic.
Jane Zelikova: I was just going to add one more thing, which is like if I think about it as a member of the public, what does it mean to have enough information at your Fingertips to be like curious or to interrogate critically what’s happening like I ordered diapers and like I’m making I think a good choice because I’m getting these biodegradable diapers and biodegradable compostable wipes or whatever so. I put them into a biodegradable compostable bag. I put them outside and they get picked up and supposedly taken to a compost facility. And I get an email from the company that says that the emissions associated with shipping me these diapers and some of the emissions associated with composting, which there are some, have been offset.
And I’m supposed to feel really good about that and move on, right? But as a person who works on offsets, all of a sudden, I have a lot of questions. But most people don’t and they feel really good. About the choice that they’ve made. And I’m not begrudging anyone the feeling of goodness. Those feelings are rare in this world right now. So anything that makes you feel good is fine. But I think what I’m interested in is providing the tools for the public to interrogate with more criticism what is being presented to them as climate action and asking questions.
It’s not to say corporations no longer have license to operate at all. But that is to say the public will ask critical questions of your actions and you’ll have to back them up with real information about climate action.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I don’t know where to go with all of that. I’ll be totally honest. I was going to ask Sarah as a follow up to that. You know, I am I’m an attorney by training. I totally have understand the tobacco litigation and the administrative state, maybe the rise of Lochner again, all all conversations we could go down. But one thing I do think I understood that was a result of what happened in the US and the tobacco industries, they push their interest to other parts of the world that are less regulated, you know, have maybe Bigger other things to worry about, like feeding their populations versus cigarettes.
And so my question is really about that broader context. I see paths forward in the US. What are the paths forward for other countries when the corporations just shift their interest and look for other revenue opportunities in less regulated areas of the world?
Sarah Myhre: Well, honestly, the kinds of litigation that’s happening internationally are much more promising and uniquely situated to address big oil and gas than here in the United States because there are successful international litigation cases that are addressing rights of nature. Corporations accountability in extreme weather events and the damages and costs associated with those events, and they are advancing legal theories that are simply not on the table right now in the United States. And those legal theories are more holistic. They have to do with thinking about systems and thinking about interdependency. And so I get what you’re saying.
I know exactly what you’re talking about. The tobacco corporations, they lost their footing in the United States because of litigation and they turned to more vulnerable and accessible populations in the global south, definitely. So knowing that will be likely a position that oil and gas takes is important. And yet there are very significant outcomes globally from what happens in the US As well, other nations are beginning to sue US corporations for their damages and deception. So there’s a whole complex mess of consequences in this. And I think that it’s not necessarily analogous directly to tobacco, but it is really, really important to look at what happened with tobacco.
And I think big plastic And big cola, like the way that corporations foreclose on markets in the global south and predate upon economically vulnerable people is exactly what we’re talking about in terms of this extractive colonization behavior. So knowing that those are patterns that have existed in the past, I think, gives us as organizers and scientists and public leaders, the tools to anticipate and communicate the pathways that may may follow from here.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right, well, my last question for you both is. So we’ve just been talking about the convenient climate narrative as both the best and the worst case scenario. I mean, he talks about it being both the West and the worst case scenario. We’ve kind of highlighted more the worst case scenarios. So what do you think about carbon removal in this broader context of his description of these best and worst case scenarios and What is the role that it plays in our ugly muddle towards a safe shore, quote, ugly muddle towards a, quote, safe shore?
I’ll start with you, Jane, and with you, Sarah.
Jane Zelikova: I think right now, carbon removal is playing that role of a convenient, positive climate narrative. And in some cases, maybe taking attention away from real meaningful action that could be taking place today. So as Sarah was alluding to earlier, you know, it’s the meaningful work in energy efficiency and, you know, emission reductions and doing some of the like boring but important things. It’s easy to not want to do that. And I totally get it. Like, it’s like basically you’re cleaning up your house versus going and Building a new one. Sometimes I just want to be in a different house and not have to clean my house.
I get it. But so it can be a distraction and it can be a convenient, positive climate narrative. And lots of people sort of focus on that because there’s kind of a need for hope. But hope is kind of meaningless without a really good plan. And I don’t necessarily see a really good plan with scaling CDR, especially because of this idea that a lot of the Solutions that people are hopeful about are currently unproven and untested technology. I do think there’s lots of opportunity to develop solutions and have the brightest, brightest minds across the world thinking about those topics.
I don’t think we should stop working on CDR at all. But I can also kind of understand like it’s it can be a distraction from things that we can do today, and at least in terms of resource and attention investment that I see that kind of happening. I guess my answer is CDR obviously has a role to play and we have to scale it and develop it. And that does have to happen today. It doesn’t mean like delayed by 10 years, but I wish that there would be kind of a both and approach to this that isn’t just in words, but really in action.
Like people say like, yes, we need both, but then they invest all their money in CDR.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Sarah, anything you want to add?
Sarah Myhre: Yeah, I think one of the ways I think about it is like, You know, there are really brilliant scientists that are studying solutions to prevent and treat cancer. And though the scientific discoveries that are happening to address and treat cancer are in these like decadal scales of advancement. You know, a scientist working today on treating cancer may be able to treat a cancer patient in 2050 with the technology that they’re working on today, maybe 2040, but it’s in the future, it’s in the horizon. But you can die from cancer between now and 2040, now and 2050.
And so instead of engaging in this magical thinking of like, there’s a solution that’s coming down the line, maybe what you should do is stop smoking. So thinking about it in a very practical way, in a way that says, what are the tools at hand that we know work? Let’s use those tools, just like Jane said, like, let’s clean up our own messes right now. And yes, we want, we want those cancer scientists to continue working on the tools that may or may not come online 2050 and down, you know, in the future.
But those are not the tools that we have at hand right now. And we have a lot of energy to solve this problem right now, today. So let’s use what we have at hand. And that is really about preventing fossil fuel infrastructure expansion, energy efficiency, decarbonization at all scales from our households to our transportation to our education and infrastructure systems, all of it, the whole gamut. We can transform those systems right now in a just and equitable way with the technologies that we do have at hand. And that to me, that is what hope is actually.
It shows us that what stands in front of us is not the development of novel technologies. We don’t have to have a life raft to the moon or to Mars to get this done. What we have to do is solve a political problem. And there’s more of us Wanting to solve this political problem than there are those that are obstructing us. And I think remembering the power that we have to be in solidarity, to work together, that’s where I have hope on a daily basis because we are actually very, very powerful in our small actions and the way they add up to very large change.
So that’s what I would say about CDR.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, thank you. I like ending on something so hopeful. And I haven’t done good news for a while, but today this article just caught my eye and I wanted to highlight it because, I don’t know, it’s nice to think about something good happening in the environmental space. And there was an article today in the New York Times about the fin whales, which were nearly extinct before they put in regulations stopping hunting of them. And now apparently, by mistake almost, They were found a feeding frenzy of fin whales were found off the tip of Antarctica and they think that it could be kind of like what was described before hunting existed for whales.
And that at least this one species really benefited from the regulation that was put forth and looks to be recovering. So it warmed my heart. I have children who love whales and I just wanted to end on something. That’s a success story as a way to say we can bridge these gaps. We can’t figure this out. We just have to figure out how to work together on it. And with that, I want to thank both Jane and Sarah for coming on the show today.
Unknown speaker: Thank you so much. Yeah, it was really fun. I learned a lot today.
Sarah Myhre: You’re so welcome. Thanks for having me.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And, uh, you know, to our listeners, we hope you listen today, obviously, and in the future.
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