This week, we’re discussing whether or not carbon removal hype distracts from the need to reduce emissions and looking at the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ climate proposals. Panelist Chris Barnard describes the conservative climate rally put on by the American Conservation Coalition, and panelist Dr. Holly Jean Buck explains that our media ecology often rewards climate fear and doom over climate optimism. Our panelists discuss a recent article by Matthew Yglesias, 'What is the climate left doing?' and Holly Buck explains how her sociological research leads her to agree with Yglesias’s perspective in the article.
Other carbon removal news discussed in this episode: Carbon transformation startup Twelve (formerly Opus 12) raised $57 million in Series A funding. Twelve is pioneering a new market category called carbon transformation with its proprietary catalyst technology that transforms CO2 into critical chemicals, materials and fuels that are conventionally made from fossil fuels.
Carbon Engineering, a firm looking to commercialize nascent "direct air capture" tech, just unveiled a new retail offering for its services in partnership with the firm BeZero Carbon.
A recent cover story in Grist discusses soil and forest carbon and features two of Nori's farmers, Kelly Garrett and Trey Hill. The article describes some of the complications around soil and forestry carbon offsets. If you read it and have any thoughts or questions, Tweet us @nori.
The European Union unveiled ‘Fit for 55’ climate legislation proposals.
Plus, we debate how much power low-propensity environmental voters (LPEV) have in elections.
As always, the episode is concluded with a good news story of the week.
P.S., we are releasing Carbon Removal Newsroom episodes on an every-other-week cadence through the end of August. If there are topics you’d like us to cover, reach out on Twitter or at hello@nori.com.
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: Welcome back listeners. In case you didn’t notice last week, we took a week off and we have decided that during the summer, we’re going to move to an every other week schedule. To enjoy the summer, the news kind of is slowing down. Everybody’s out and about enjoying a COVID free kind of world. So just don’t expect us in your feed every week. And in September, we’ll return weekly. So this week, it’s been kind of a big week for my co-hosts. I mean, Chris might be recovering from the English loss in the Euro Cup.
That was heartbreaking. But Holly Jean Buck, our Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo, was quoted in an interesting article that we will be discussing below. So Holly, how you doing from leafy Columbia?
Holly Jean Buck: I’m doing wonderful. Thank you.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Good. And Chris Barnard, Policy Director for the American Conservation Coalition, His organization was focused in the Washington Post Lifestyle Magazine, so we will be talking about that as well. Chris, nice to see you.
Chris Barnard: Thank you. I’m about halfway recovery from last weekend.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s better than I thought you were going to be, honestly, so I’m glad you’re out of bed. That’s the first step. And I am Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. We’re going to add a little quick just overview of some carbon news. This is after all carbon removal newsroom before I get started with my co-hosts. A couple of interesting things that happened this week. Carbon Startup 12, formerly known as Opus 12, has raised $57 million in Series A funding from a whole bunch of investors, including Capricorn Technology Impact Fund, Carbon Direct Capital Management, And some of their seed round funders will also join them, including the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund.
So really great to hear that different carbon capture and carbon removal technologies are being funded. Additionally, we have Carbon Engineering, which is now looking to further commercialize the nascent direct air capture technology, and they’re offering a new retail service, which will Package multiple types of removal options via B0. So kind of a new way to look at carbon removal. And finally, if any of our listeners are interested, there was a cover story this month on Grisk talking about soil and forest carbon. It features two of Nori’s most successful farmers, Kelly Garrett and Trey Hill.
Trey Hill was our first farmer and he sold through all his credits. Kelly Garrett is currently selling on our marketplace. It describes some of the complications around these offsets. But if you read it and have any thoughts or questions, definitely tweet Nori because it leaves out some really interesting conundrums that we’re facing in the nature-based carbon removal world. With that, I’m going to turn it over actually to an interesting article, the one that Holly was described, was quoted in this week. And maybe Holly, you can describe it and give us a little overview of your thoughts.
Holly Jean Buck: Sure. I mean, this is an article by James Temple at MIT Tech Review, just discussing this issue of, is there hype in the world of carbon removal? And if so, what does it mean? And I’d love to hear both of your takes on that, actually. Chris, what are you thinking?
Chris Barnard: They’re hype. I mean, it’s hard not to have hype when you have people like Elon Musk putting together, what is it, $100 million in prizes for carbon removal. And everyone’s talking about it. It’s a cool technology and innovation that supposedly can go a long way in helping us tackle climate change. So I wouldn’t imagine there not to be any hype. So hype can be good because it does attract investors and attention. And I think that’s a good side of it. Hype can be bad if it’s just hyped up to the detriment of other potential solutions.
So I guess that’s my initial answer to that before we kind of dive a little bit more into the weeds of the actual article and what you think as well, Holly.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I mean, I guess I would say, Holly, I’m obviously in the In the heart of the carbon removal hype on a daily basis. And I agree with Chris and to the extent that hype is good because it generates buzz. We were just talking about some gigantic funding that some of these companies are getting and how do you drive innovation without funding? I think my fear, and I think I asked this question generically, is that if the policymakers and general public will stop paying attention if the hype Doesn’t live up to its promise or it just becomes kind of old news.
And then we stop getting the right type of policy decisions being made because everybody’s confident that the free market will fix everything. And that’s probably a death by a thousand cuts to Chris for me saying that. But government has to be engaged in a way for these policies and carbon removal to really scale. So that’s what I think about.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, and just to be clear, I mean, this article had a pretty clear take. The title is Carbon Removal Hype is a Dangerous Distraction. And so, I mean, this is the classic issue, right, is it is distraction from reducing emissions. But I mean, part of the reason why this article was interesting is some of the people it quoted. So it has a quote by David Keith, who is a climate scientist at Harvard, who also founded Carbon Engineering. And he says, this topic is becoming so visible and so many people are pouring in and a lot of it is just nonsense.
So quotes like that. I mean, he kind of, the journalist kind of captured this kind of moment where even people who have been working in this a long time are a little bit taken aback by the development. And I guess my feeling is that I see the hype in carbon removal in the context of the hype in carbon tech, climate tech really broadly. Some of these huge valuations, all these specs going wild. And so carbon removal is one piece of that and it gets hype, but there’s also hype around EV charging and batteries and a lot of things.
So not to say that, you know, then the question is why is this different? Well, it’s different. Because maybe this uniquely would be a distraction from reducing emissions.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, but I mean, I think we all agree that it’s not an either or situation. And this is, I should point out to our listeners, this is the same author who we’ve discussed before who uncovered a lot of issues in the forest carbon removal marketplace. And so maybe rightly is a little bit cynical about carbon removal after those findings. But I always am confused why these articles or these are presented as all or nothing solutions or either or solutions. Like don’t we need both? And can’t people focus on both at the same time?
Kind of it’s limiting or they seem to have a limited belief in what a human being can think about and absorb. And I don’t think we can get where we need to get without both emission avoidance technology and carbon removal technology.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, you know, I think James Temple is like one of the best writers on this beat. And I think he thinks that too. But, you know, he can write a nuanced piece and then, you know, thousands of people on Twitter will come away with a different message from it. So, I mean, that’s just one challenge. I think that Journalists like this are really doing their job to kind of course correct and help align carbon removal where it needs to go, personally.
Chris Barnard: I think one thing I would like to add, which I find interesting when it comes to these discussions, is people tend to Consider the current scenario we are in and kind of assume that technology progress will remain relatively stagnant from here on out. And one of the things from kind of coming from a more market based, maybe even free market perspective, is that we simply can predict what some of the technologies will look like or how they will unfold or how they will make economic sense or whatever it is. And There’s been plenty of innovations that kind of came out of nowhere that have done incredible things.
And like a lot of people now that were very critical of wind and solar have kind of had to Shut their mouths because they’ve realized, oh, actually the price has come down so much and the innovation has gone up to the extent that it’s actually economically competitive to have renewable energy. Now we’re going to have to wait to see how battery storage evolves as an innovation, but that’s also we can’t just assume that technology stays stagnant or that market forces stay stagnant. And so I do think that there might be Innovations or breakthroughs in carbon removal, technological carbon removal, like direct air capture, that we simply can’t even predict right now, that as we develop more resources and put more money and brainpower into this, that those might develop.
So that’s not really to say that, oh, we should just blindly trust that, but I do think there’s a case for optimism that we should just assume kind of that it will remain stagnant.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, Chris, I totally agree with you. And just to take it, though, back to maybe the little bit of the doom and gloom, because I generally am optimistic that technology will fix this. What I actually found most compelling about this argument or this article was the need to scrutinize the net zero plans, which I think, Holly, you probably would agree with me, that The plans being put forth by all these large companies, some are much more rigorous and much more thoughtful than others. And so I do think there is a place and a need to scrutinize them because if we’re accepting it blindly, we’re probably getting led down a path that’s not realistic.
We know we can’t plant enough trees to get us out of this in the time that the trees will take to grow and store the carbon that they’re being claimed to And so I do think there is an important piece and that needs to continue around an analysis of these net zero plans and accountability to these net zero plans and a feeling that these net zero plans are realistic rather than aspirational and many feel aspirational right now. With that, let’s move on to what the EU is doing and my kind of new favorite slogan, fit for 55.
Like it sounds like senior fitness, but it’s really about Emotions reduction, maybe carbon removal. It’s kind of hard to tell right now. But Chris, as our resident Brit, I’ll let you tell us what the EU is doing and kind of what they’re thinking and why.
Chris Barnard: I feel like having a British background doesn’t really place me well to comment on EU things nowadays, but I’ll give you a go.
Radhika Moolgavkar: You’re closer than we are in the US. And being on the East Coast, you’re definitely closer than I am in Seattle.
Chris Barnard: Geographic and cultural closeness, I’ll take it. So essentially, the EU proposed, as Radhika said, its fit for 55 kind of broad agenda or approach to reducing emissions by 55% by 2030. I guess kind of the important thing to say up front is that this is a proposal, quite literally, just for now, from the European Commission. It still has to kind of go to the Parliament, where the All the delegates from the or the representatives from the 27 member countries of the EU have to actually debate and discuss and see if this is actually something that they want to do so it’s far from certain from actually being something that will be implemented, but it is a significant proposal and it’s kind of.
Probably one of the most sweeping ones that we’ve seen in probably up until now in living history on climate stuff so and some of the things that includes are the EU wants to slap new taxes. It wants to phase out the sale of non-electric cars by 2035. It wants to create a new kind of internal carbon market that would regulate how much certain industries are allowed to emit. And also very controversially, which is probably kind of the most interesting part of it is it would include a carbon border adjustment that would attempt to Put European producers and manufacturers at an equal playing field with non-European ones that would not be subject to similar regulations.
And so the idea is that it would not allow other companies from around the world to simply out-compete the European companies because they have more stringent regulations in the EU to be able to operate. And obviously that would be kind of one of the trickiest things for them to Work out, especially since obviously countries are emerging from the COVID pandemic. And so there’s not that much of an appetite for economy hindering protectionist policies. For example, the US is already not very happy about it. And so I think that’ll be kind of the major sticking point.
I think that some of the other policies are kind of pretty boilerplate. European climate policies, which are being accepted by both the left and the right, kind of on the center left and the center right. That one especially will be interesting to see how that unfolds, especially with international partners like Japan and the US.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so my first question for you, Chris, is, I mean, do you, how do you feel about it? Is it too much governmental overreach or do you think it’s the right kind of mix of policy while allowing for innovation? Because that’s one of their stated goals, right? Spurring innovation the way that the US and China have been.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, so I’ll give two answers to that. The first one is kind of a political practical one. I think that this is going to struggle. Parts of it are going to struggle a lot in kind of a block composed of 27 members that all have to come together to an agreement on this. And I think it is A lot of kind of the Western European nations like Germany and France that are trying to kind of pull the rest of Europe into a climate action plan, whereas you still have countries like Poland that is very reliant on coal and you have other more Eastern European countries that are that very heavily struggled under the pandemic are so kind of really trying to grow their economies to a modern 21st century European economy.
And they probably won’t be as happy about this. So I think politically, there’ll be a big struggle. And I also think that just in general, whenever the EU comes up with these sweeping plans, like when it did its carbon trading mechanisms back like a decade or so ago, it failed simply because of how susceptible the EU is to lobbying and entrenched interests. And I mean, the EU is it’s well known as a pretty protectionist trading bloc. And the reason is because it has kind of Interest within the continent they wants to protect and many of those interests will want to see themselves protected, even with these climate regulations and so.
I’m pretty skeptical that they would be able to do something like this without handing out favors left right and Center to the favorite companies from like the major countries and things like that so that’s kind of my political practical answer my ideological one. First, when it comes to your point about innovation, I think Europe is really kind of one of the worst. So the European Union is one of the worst government approaches to innovation in my perspective. I mean, the regulatory hurdles that they impose are absolutely insane when it comes to, for example, biotechnology, they’ve all but banned it.
They’ve imposed very stringent regulations on technology, on Innovation in nuclear energy, for example. They want to very heavily regulate artificial intelligence, which I think will have significant climate benefits. And so I think the approach of the EU to innovation tends to be a little bit backwards. It thinks just by throwing money at the problem that’s naturally the only way to get innovation, but I think also creating An environment for permissionless innovation is really kind of one of the reasons why the US has has done well on that kind of stuff.
And so I’d like to see them take a lighter touch to that. I’m not against investment in innovation and R&D and stuff like that. But I think you can only In innovate as much as the regulatory regime allows you to innovate and for things like biotechnology and artificial intelligence and nuclear that’s severely hampered in much of the EU. And to kind of finish my my soliloquy here, I do think that you have to take into account the fact that the EU as kind of a single block represents around 9% of global carbon emissions.
So even if the EU were to go to zero, I don’t think that obviously would not make much of a difference if you don’t get countries like the US and China to follow suit and. I think the approach of many of these things will essentially make the lives of everyday Europeans just a little bit more expensive, kind of extra taxes on carbon, extra Taxes on flights, just a lot of these costs will end up going to consumers and I just wonder if that’s the most sustainable way of actually trying to create a international environment for climate action based on technological innovation and so I think if they were to take an approach that would be really very much based in innovation in how can we kind of support through investment in R&D electric cars and Nuclear.
I mean, many of the European countries are getting rid of nuclear, which is going the complete opposite direction of what I perceive to be genuine climate action. And so I think taking a more kind of pro-innovation approach, permissionless innovation, and exporting that to the rest of the world and creating trade agreements with the rest of the world to do that would probably be a more effective way of leveraging international climate action rather than the mere 9% that the EU stands for. So anyway, tirade done.
Radhika Moolgavkar: It was a great tirade, Chris. Holly, she brought up two points that I think I wanted your thoughts on. I mean, one is the fact that the less prosperous EU countries will eventually, you know, take a greater financial burden to if these policies are put in place. And it leads to the second part of my question, both countrywide, but also at the individual level. I think there are some real concerns that People who are least able to afford it will bear the brunt of the costs of these proposals. So kind of wondering what your thoughts are about that, especially when it’s the EU, which is kind of known for doing a better job of taking care of its people than maybe the US is.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, well, there is a proposed social climate fund that would be raised from these new taxes that could provide up to 70 billion euros, so about 83 billion USD. To help governments, help the people who are going to be impacted by these measures. So, I mean, that’s a start. There may be other provisions in there in the details that can be worked out and would probably be part of the negotiation process, I would assume.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Are there things you might want to see them include that you would, if you could advocate for, you would advocate for?
Holly Jean Buck: Well, I was actually thinking about something else with regards to this, and that’s the land sector. So they do have a target of increasing the carbon sink by restoring lands and afforestation. The current carbon sink is 268 million tonnes of CO2. The new target is 310. So that is an increase, but I think there would be even more. Room for for more and I think the science says that we would need more land based carbon removal in Europe, so.
Radhika Moolgavkar: How you do that without displacing people, I guess, is the question. And I’m not expecting an answer, but it ties back to the piece we just discussed before this and that one of his critiques was that the afforestation needed Is something or reforestation needed, I guess, technically is way bigger than the amount of land actually available. So as always, we’re always dealing with these tensions in these conversations, right? The tension between what the environment needs, what people need, and how we keep moving forward. My last question about this EU proposal, and Chris, you kind of talked about this briefly, but if either one of you have any insights, it’s kind of reported that the Biden administration is a bit vexed by maybe what the EU is proposing, particularly around the carbon border tax adjustment tax, since they want to be supportive of, obviously, the EU and the Green Deal that the EU is proposing, but they certainly don’t want to be part of a carbon border adjustment tax So, Chris, I guess it’s more towards you.
Have you heard any scuttlebutt down at the White House or down in Washington, D. C.? And how are both Democrats and Republicans thinking about this proposal, if they’re thinking about it at all?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, the stuff I’ve heard is mostly secondhand. I think a lot of it is obviously coming out of the pandemic, but also coming out of kind of the Trump-European relationship, which was not great. And Biden really won and He’s going to restart the global economy and like rebuild relations with the EU. This is not really an ideal way for him to do it because obviously it will put American exporters from the companies in the US to export to the EU. It will cost more money essentially for them. And so there’s a few questions over what the Biden administration will do.
Potentially, they could slap retaliatory tariffs on Europe, but that would not really be in the spirit of rebuilding the relationship. Alternatively, they could Raise a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization saying that these carbon border dressments fees would be against WTO rules that I think that’s a pretty drastic step and would also probably not be received very well. So honestly, I’m not sure how he’s going to handle this one. My guess is that eventually the EU will kind of back down from it just because the political lift being so huge, but we’ll have to see.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I guess he’s got the benefit of time, right? Because as you said, getting 27 countries to agree to it, he could just kind of wait it out in a way and hope it disappears for a while so he can rebuild relationships and then maybe take a stand. I guess we will see. So then moving to kind of our last big topic was, this is again, Chris here, it’s like the Chris show today, but your organization is The ACC, not to be confused with AOC, which I kind of do in my own head.
Sorry, Chris. The ACC, there’s a focus piece on them in the Washington Post this week. So, Chris, maybe you can give us an overview of it and kind of what your organization is thinking.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, the context for the piece was this conservative climate rally that we hosted, which is the first ever conservative climate rally that was in Miami a few weeks ago. And that was hosted with the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, as well as a bunch of Miami GOP representatives, both at the state and national level. And really it kind of highlighted our message that conservatives don’t have to be the party of no or obstructionism on climate change. And especially in a state like Florida, where there are a lot of Republicans and those are Republicans that tend to be pretty good on this issue because they’re a state that is facing significant climate threats.
And so you see, for example, Carlos Cabello, who was one of the first Republicans in Congress to talk about this issue. And he’s really pushed Republicans and conservatives on this issue. And you even see like Francis Suarez and Maria Salazar and even Ron DeSantis lead into this issue and not kind of toe the old Republican line on climate change. And so that was really the context for that piece. There was there was a few criticisms in the sense of how can we actually leverage this? How can we push the party to be not just accepted, but also do something about it and things like that?
But I mean, ACC is four years old and we’ve already come this far. So we’re hoping that we can do a lot more in the next few years. But I think the fact that The Washington Post is covering that shows that there’s already kind of a pendulum shift of the narrative on conservatives and climate change.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, and Holly, one of the things I, when I read it, thought was kind of funny is Benji, who is the, who’s the founder of this, of ACC, kind of maybe just a little bit panning liberals and how they’re kind of always negative and we need to be more optimistic in our viewpoint and wondering how that resonated with you as my Leftist voice on the show. And also if you thought there was some merit to that comment, I did, but curious what you think.
Holly Jean Buck: I do too, although I do think that there are liberals who are putting forth positive visions. I think of, you know, Daniel and Anna Cohen’s work with and others putting forth like a optimistic vision of a Green New Deal. I think that’s out there, but I think that we’re on these platforms whose algorithms are optimizing for fear and anger. So you might start out with the positive vision, but what takes up all the space in the room is the fear and the anger, which is a problem with our media ecology, not necessarily with the liberals.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. And then, you know, the other thing we read about this week was kind of this idea that there’s a whole bunch of these LPEVs, to use a wonky term, which stands for low propensity environmental voters. And I’m, you know, curious. I think that piece, again, was sort of indicating that those voters would likely break for Democrats and then push sort of state and local voters Elections, which are being narrowly decided towards Democrats. So how do Republicans talk to these voters and make these voters kind of hear your vision, especially when you’re still kind of got an inner party battle going on between maybe the older generation and the new generation?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, for sure. And just for context for listeners, it’s this idea that there are a lot of people that Care about the environment as their top issue, but only come out for presidential elections every four years because those are the elections they think are the only ones that matter for the environment. And the context of this piece was that actually there’s a lot you can do at the local level to help tackle climate change or just work on environmental issues locally. And, you know, interestingly, that’s a very conservative perspective, right, we were very much in favor of local government of local communities standing up.
And so, as much as possible, we try to emphasize the fact that you are probably going to be more effective doing something in your own community that you are at the national level. If you try to plant trees in your neighborhood, or you try and like do a community cleanup or something like that, that’s probably going to be more impactful than tweeting angrily at Joe Biden on Twitter. And so that’s, I think that is a very conservative principle and that’s something we try to lean into. And obviously, there’s a narrative shift that we still need to contribute to that a lot of these people would probably vote democratic and we have to tell them that no, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to be democratic because we want conservatives at the local level to do good things on these issues as well.
So that’s really kind of my general perspective when it comes to that. I was also wondering if you guys had I read this article by Matt Iglesias earlier this week. Matt Iglesias, he worked for the Niskanen Center, and it was a pretty damning indictment of kind of the progressive environmental movement because his entire concept was essentially that they’ve tried to create an artificially large grassroots movement for climate action, whereas for most Americans, Studies show that climate change is about 11th out of 12 major issues. So it doesn’t even rank in the top 10, five or three for many voters.
And there’s been this image that there’s millions of young people marching in the streets all the time, worried about this issue. But in fact, it’s kind of a bit of a facade. And so we have to be probably a little bit better at Messaging this and communicating this rather than just assuming that there’s millions of young people behind us all the time. So I’m curious what your guys’ thoughts were on that piece.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, as unpopular as this might be, I was on board with that piece, in part because I’m a sociologist who does research, like empirical research on what people are concerned about. And in my own work, climate change hasn’t been 11th of 12th, but it hasn’t been number one either. And going back to this idea of environmental voters, what I think is there’s a difference between environmental voters and climate voters, because a lot of people will say clean air and clean water and wildlife are actually pretty far up there, but climate change might be irrelevant.
So those are reading as two different things to people.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, Chris, I am. I considered putting that Matt Iglesias article in too this week. And then I don’t know, I felt like it was just a little too much, but I’m with Ali. Like I completely agree. And actually I’m what Benji said too in your, in the piece in the Washington Post resonated with me. I just don’t think gloom and doom is the way to get people motivated around climate change. I think what Holly is talking about in terms of clean air and clean water and tying that to things like climate change and how these co-benefits of different technologies work together is a much more winning argument.
And to go off on a little bit of a tangent, I think everybody probably knows the Pacific Northwest was under this terrible, terrible, terrible heat wave about Three weeks ago, a lot of people died, a lot of the environment was destroyed, and there are now massive wildfires in the West. But my point is that if you were to read the narrative in the New York Times, it would be like, climate change caused this, climate change caused this, gloom and doom, gloom and doom, gloom and doom. And I just don’t think that when we base policy on the most negative reading of everything, we get the best policy outcomes.
My feeling was the Matt Iglesias piece was right on and we need to do a better job about bringing positive solutions to the front rather than talking about all the terrible things that are happening and figuring mitigation strategies out too.
Chris Barnard: Did you also see that whole thing where people were tweeting about the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico being on fire and somehow linking it to climate change? I’m sorry, but if your argument for climate action depends on self-immolating oceans, I think it’s a pretty bad option. I was shocked that Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, said this means we need climate action. It had nothing to do with climate change. It had to do with, anyway, I won’t even go into it. But that frustrated me.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I think politicians on both sides are definitely guilty of hyperbole and exaggeration in this space. Holly, any last words from you?
Holly Jean Buck: Is this my good news moment?
Radhika Moolgavkar: No, or just anything you wanted to add to this conversation, or you can move on to the good news part.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, well, I’m just, I have to say this one more time. I think that the platforms on which we’re exchanging information, I mean, you have to look at the political economy of them. They are profiting from time on site, you know, the eyeballs we have our attention, right? And they figured out that You know, fear and anger increases time on site. And so we’re basically being manipulated by Twitter and Facebook and other platforms into these very negative emotional states that are constraining our policy options, potentially. That’s what I’m worried about.
Radhika Moolgavkar: You’re here, Holly. But now let’s talk about something good and happy or some good news from your perspective.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, so I had to search a bit this week. It seemed like a particularly apocalyptic week, but on Friday or very shortly, China is launching its carbon market, which has been awaited for many years, and it’s going to be the world’s largest by volume of emissions. It’s only starting out with over 2,000 companies in the power sector, but They’re responsible for a seventh of global carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion. So, you know, there’s people who point out the shortcomings of this particular market or criticize, you know, how much of a difference it will make.
But I think it’s really great to make this first step and it can be improved upon and become more stringent over time. So I’m pleased to see this.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, it’s good to get China involved, right? That’s always a big step forward. Well, with that, it’s the end of our time together, but I thank you both for coming and hanging out with me today. And for everybody listening, the next time Chris is on the show, he will be a married man back from his money honeymoon. So I wish you all the best, Chris. Have a wonderful wedding, a wonderful honeymoon, and can’t wait to hear all about it when you get back.
Chris Barnard: Thank you very much. I’m very excited about it.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s good. I’m glad to hear you’re not stressed out and just excited. And Holly, have a wonderful time in DC, the DC area. And I look forward to talking to you in a couple of weeks. Take care.
Unknown speaker: Thanks.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right. Bye-bye guys.
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