Vote Climate U.S. PAC published a voter's guide for 2020 presidential candidates which includes a section for ranking candidates on carbon dioxide removal. Today, the founder and president of the organization, Karyn Strickler, joins the show to tell us more. We've never seen this as a criterion for evaluating politicians and is probably a reflection of carbon removal's growing prominence.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon, lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Karen Strickler, founder and president of Vote Climate US PAC. Karen, thank you so much for being here.
Karyn Strickler: Hi, Ross. It’s a great pleasure to join you. Thanks for having me.
Ross Kenyon: My pleasure. I was intrigued to find a voter’s guide. For the presidential election, which is ongoing in the primary stage right now, that includes carbon dioxide removal as a criteria by which you are judging candidates for their climate policies, which I don’t know if this is the first time, Karen, but it’s at least the first time that I’ve seen this, which is very cool.
Karyn Strickler: It’s the first time we’ve ever included it as a criteria in our voters guide. And I think that makes us an early adopter of carbon dioxide removal among national environmental organizations.
Ross Kenyon: Which is great. We’re happy that more people are talking about it and they’re talking about it in a really serious way, which Nori’s been around for about two years. And it seems like the conversation around us and around carbon dioxide removal has changed a lot in that time. And it seems like presidential candidates are mentioning it at debates already as something that they’re focused on or they want to bring attention to with their policies, which That is definitely new. I don’t think that we’ve seen that ever before. Can you recall anything else?
Or is this new to you as well?
Karyn Strickler: Right. We’re very new to carbon dioxide removal as an organization. Actually, when we were setting up the criteria for our 2020 Presidential Voters Guide, our lead researcher, Jake Asail, suggested that we use carbon dioxide removal as one of the criteria. In our voters guide, and in our voters guide, we score Democratic and Republican candidates with what we call climate calculation. So that’s a score from zero to 100 for voters to take into the voting booth in the primary or general election to vote climate. And after we researched the issue of carbon removal, we found that keeping average global temperatures from rising beyond the 1.
5 degrees Celsius required by the climate agreement, that we couldn’t just reduce future emissions, but we also had to think about removing some of the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere. So that’s when we made the decision to add carbon dioxide removal to our voters guide for the first time in this election.
Ross Kenyon: That’s terrific. Jake sounds like a good egg. We’ve spoken a little bit. I’m happy to hear that he’s got his ear to the ground and he’s listening for carbon removal coming. I’ll have to chat some more with him.
Karyn Strickler: Jake is fantastic. He’s done a great job for us as our lead researcher.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s a very good nudge that he made. I’m appreciative that this sort of thing is included, which maybe it’s good to walk through a bit of the criteria that are listed. I have it pulled up here. And there’s four main ones by which you’re judging. Yes?
Karyn Strickler: There are four categories in which we score candidates. Should I go over those?
Ross Kenyon: Yes. Although I had meant within the climate action platform issues, of course, maybe it’s best that we zoom out even further and go through all of the categories broadly.
Karyn Strickler: I think to give people an overview helps them to understand what we’re trying to do on a larger scale. So we scored 2020 presidential candidates in four different categories, including position, their climate plan, Leadership and putting a fee on carbon pollution. And then those scores are averaged for what we call a climate calculation. It’s an overall score. How does the candidate fare? And carbon dioxide removal is a subcategory of our climate plan category. And under our climate plan category, then there are four other criteria, one of which is carbon dioxide removal.
And we also support particular types of carbon dioxide removal, others of which we do not support. So I don’t know how much detail you want to get into, but I can talk about the types that we do support.
Ross Kenyon: Sure, I’d be curious about both the ones that you think are relevant for candidates to support and ones that perhaps you aren’t as on board for.
Karyn Strickler: Right, so I think we agree on most of these with Nori, but I’m not positive that we agree. But okay, so we have four types of carbon dioxide removal that we support. Carbon farming, sometimes called sustainable agriculture. Aforestation or reforestation, so aforestation would be planting trees where they don’t already exist. Wetland construction and direct air capture with recycling powered by low to zero carbon energy sources. And if the candidate supports one or more of those methods of carbon dioxide removal, then they get credit for that category on our voter’s guide.
As of now, there is one big area of carbon dioxide removal that we do not support, which is carbon capture and sequestration. Especially for fossil fuel plants. And our feeling about that is it could extend the life of fossil fuel extraction. And we are all for getting off of fossil fuels and keeping them in the ground. So that’s why we don’t support carbon capture and sequestration.
Ross Kenyon: Specifically within that category, the other categories you mentioned, yeah, those are all cool methodologies for practicing carbon removal. For carbon capture and sequestration, are you referring to using direct air capture and then using it in enhanced oil recovery and then leaving the carbon dioxide in the ground from that? Is that what you’re referring to?
Karyn Strickler: Not using it in enhanced oil recovery, but using it just taking the carbon out of the air and using it to create concrete or using it for some other purpose rather than to extend the life of fossil fuels in our economy. Does that make sense?
Ross Kenyon: It does. I guess it sort of depends exactly on how it’s being done. Yeah. We’re sort of, and Christoph on our team is one of the best examples of this is a life cycle assessment obsessor. And he always digs into those. And there are definitely versions of concrete where you’re like, this is trying to be carbon negative, but I’m not sure it actually is in reality. There are also people working on certain types of carbon negative concrete, which may in fact be carbon negative at some point. I’m not sure any are fully there operational yet.
At least at scale. So I think that’s a fine hedge if the concern is mostly that we’re worried about the actual LCA and like how these impacts work and this might not actually be what it says it is. But it sounds like maybe that isn’t your total concern either.
Karyn Strickler: Right. Remember that our mission right now, and we’ve been talking about ways that we may need to update our mission, which may include carbon dioxide removal, but our mission is that we work to elect candidates to get off fossil fuels. Okay. So that’s a huge piece of our mission. We want to transition to clean, renewable energy. And we want to put a fee on carbon so that we can slow climate change and the related weather extremes that are destroying people’s lives and property at this point right now. And so, you know, again, we’re new to the idea of carbon dioxide removal, but see it as a compliment to also for the need to stop putting fossil fuel driven CO2 into the atmosphere.
Yes.
Ross Kenyon: We’re pretty much on board there too. I think carbon removal without decarbonizing is not ideal.
Karyn Strickler: I was trying to think of an analogy and something I came up with was, think about if you’ve been a smoker for 30 years and suddenly you need to have your heart replaced. Well, the first thing You have to stop smoking. You have to stop putting that carbon into the atmosphere, which would be the equivalent of stopping the smoking. And then you need to have a heart replacement operation, which might be the equivalent of carbon dioxide removal. You need the two together, but you do need both of them. And neither of them are, well, especially CDR may not be a magic bullet, but we also can’t deny that it’s necessary.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we have a lot of debates over this, too, because people do worry, and it’s a pretty common concern about CDR, is that people, rather than decarbonizing, they just sort of buy carbon removals in the marketplace, and they don’t make that tough transition, or they keep postponing it, which I don’t think that’s... That in and of itself, there are some industries which are very difficult to decarbonize. So if the airlines wanted to buy carbon removal, rather than trying to switch to electric battery powered flights, I’d say more power to them, they’re definitely not contributing to the problem.
And they could even negate more emissions than they emitted. They’re currently emitting if they wanted to, which would be terrific. But there are also industries that probably do need to focus on decarbonizing. And it may, in fact, be cheaper for them to decarbonize anyways, and maybe more economical that way. But I think everyone is worried that people will just do carbon removal and not decarbonize. And we just pass the buck for another decade or two.
Karyn Strickler: Right. And we also got into the situation that we’re in with climate change because of business as usual. And to the extent that carbon dioxide removal would allow business as usual. So in other words, not slowing down carbon emissions. And just paying to remove them, that’s not acceptable to us. You know, we think it’s a partnership. So, for example, the IPCC has very clearly said that we need to keep average global temperatures below 1. 5 degrees. And in their 2018 report, they said, and this is a quote from their report, all pathways that limit global warming to 1.
5 degrees Celsius with limited or no overshoot project the use of carbon dioxide removal. Okay, so that’s clear. Removal is necessary. But we also have to prioritize the important sources for reducing emissions, which are getting off fossil fuels, putting a fee on carbon pollution, passing legislation like the Green New Deal. And neither one of those by themselves is likely to do the job. So to me, they have to be a pair. And the last thing for us that carbon dioxide removal can do is enable the continued use of fossil fuels.
Another of our, you know, we’re in the subcategory of climate plans. And I said there are four things under that category that we require of candidates in order to get 100% in that category. The first one is supporting the Green New Deal. The second is using 100% renewables by 2030. The third is keeping fossil fuels in the ground. And the fourth is carbon dioxide removal. So we think all of those things are necessary to slow climate change ultimately.
Ross Kenyon: Sure. Well, that’s fair enough. I think that’s a pairing that a lot of people share and Depending on how exactly we get there, there are clearly good ways of doing this and bad ways of doing it, decarbonization. Yeah, that’s reasonable. I don’t know. My mind is still not fully made up on the exact combination, at least personally, not for Nori doesn’t have an official position on these things. Exactly the right set of policies. There’s a lot that goes into it.
Karyn Strickler: Absolutely.
Ross Kenyon: And they interact in unexpected ways, too. And there’s probably unintended consequences from all of them, not least of which from what we do at Nori. The environment, the world, the climate, it’s a tough one to get right.
Karyn Strickler: Indeed so. And again, looking at the resolution or the way to slow climate change, we look at the candidates more broadly. We’ve talked about the categories that we score them in. It’s important to note that there are big differences between Democratic frontrunners for president on climate change in our Voter’s Guide. For example, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders score the highest among any candidates with an overall climate calculation of 93. 75, which to us makes them good bets for president. By contrast, Joe Biden’s overall climate calculation is 68. 75. Now, that’s a weak score.
And so, obviously, based on climate change, we would prefer the candidates with the higher score. Now, of course, those scores compare to Republican incumbent Donald Trump, who is a climate zero. So, anyone would be better than Trump, but, you know, there’s some...
Ross Kenyon: He’s at the very bottom of that list. I see him down there, all lonely, zeros in all categories.
Karyn Strickler: Yeah. Yeah. But the important thing for people to understand is those scores as they see them on Vote Climate US PAC’s Voters Guide could be the difference between meeting the limits of 1. 5 degrees global warming and not. Voters have to make critical choices. These differences matter immensely when we’re choosing a leader. So if our voters guide is used widely to pick the strongest candidates, including carbon dioxide removal, the voters guide could revolutionize climate politics. We hope voters look at the voters guide and choose the candidate with the highest overall score.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s a useful rubric for people to work their way through when they’re evaluating candidates. I think I look at stuff like this. If I mean, sometimes they’ll go on to candidates or their policy position section on their website. And sometimes it’s nice to have it evaluated by a third party. And they can dig through some of that, or at least you can get a good sense of it, especially when there’s as many candidates as there are there. Well, Karen, what’s next for Vote Climate US PAC?
Karyn Strickler: Ross, I want to say one more thing about where we are on carbon dioxide removal with the 2020 presidential candidates that’s interesting that we found, and that is that we gave that credit to all of the Democrats running for president. So all the Democrats got a yes on carbon dioxide removal, and none of the Republicans did. So it’s just an interesting note. But as you asked, what’s ahead? Well, we hope that our Presidential Voters Guide gets used widely by voters, as we said, because we need to vote climate in 2020.
And the other thing that Vote Climate US PAC does is that we score... Republican and Democratic incumbents and challengers for seats in the US House and the US Senate. We give them a climate calculation. So not only can you use our voters guide to vote for president, but you can also use it to vote for your senators and your US representatives. That guide is very different in that we score both incumbents and challengers and we go beyond the ordinary scorecard to include leadership, And putting a fee on carbon and their overall position and their votes in Congress.
So it’s well beyond just a scorecard. It’s a real overall assessment of these candidates. And again, the U. S. House and U. S. Senate Voters Guide can be used, taken into the voting booth and used by voters to pick the candidate with the highest score, thereby doing their civic duty on climate change and voting climate.
Ross Kenyon: Interesting. Actually, before we close out, I want to ask one clarifying question, which is about the level of resolution of these scores. So you might have all these candidates that support, they might support CDR or the Green New Deal broadly, but I know people also disagree about what’s actually in the Green New Deal, which carbon dioxide removal policies they actually support within that. Is there like a level of resolution to determine that type of nuance that’s available? Or is it just that they are supportive of this goal in general?
Karyn Strickler: Well, we looked at the presidential candidates’ climate action plan. So, for example, under, right, remember carbon dioxide removal comes under the climate action plan section, right? And so, for example, if you go to our voters guide at voteclimatepac.org and you click on the 2020 presidential candidates voters guide, you’ll see a list of all the candidates and their scores and As we said, on position, climate plan, leadership, carbon fee, and an overall score, right? But then if you click on the little plus button to the left of the candidate’s name, there’s a lot of detail in there about how exactly we came to the decision.
So, for example, if we go to Elizabeth Warren under carbon dioxide removal, we gave her a yes because she has a plan that she calls a new farm economy plan. And in there, she says she’ll dedicate resources from The $400 billion R&D commitment in her green manufacturing plan toward innovations for decarbonizing the agricultural sector, including a farmer-led innovation fund that farmers can apply towards pioneering methods of sustainable farming like agroforestry. Okay, so what we did in that category was we did a lot of research to say... Do these candidates support carbon dioxide removal?
If so, how is that adequate to give them a yes on carbon dioxide removal? And in the case of Elizabeth Warren and the details that I just read to you, we came to the decision that it was. But I will also add that if listeners go to our voters guide, again, voteclimatepact.org and click on the 2020 presidential election, Candidates Voters Guide, and they scroll down to the bottom of the page, there’s a frequently asked question section and it says, how is each climate score determined? If listeners click on the Voters Guide scoring criteria, they can see a detailed list of exactly what our requirements are to give a score anywhere between zero and 100 in each of the categories.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Well, I’ll put all those links in the show notes if you’d like. And a resource that is available for you as you are thinking about what you are going to do in the ballot box come November. Well, thank you, Karen, for being here with me. I’m happy you’re able to share your process for determining this. I’m happy that more attention is being shown for carbon dioxide removal. Thanks for the leadership sticking your neck out there on behalf of it. We’re grateful.
Karyn Strickler: Well, thank you, Ross. It’s been a real pleasure. And we’re new to the issue of carbon dioxide removal, and I continue to learn fascinating things about it. And I think it will definitely continue to occupy a space on our voter’s guide. And it may increase in its importance over time. We’ll see.
Ross Kenyon: We sure will see. I’m curious how it will play out and what the industry will look like five years, 10 years from now.
Karyn Strickler: Yeah. We’re early. We’re early adopters, right? Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think I will, as a representative of the carbon removal sector, I will grant B the status of early adopter.
Karyn Strickler: Very good. Thank you for having me, Ross. I really appreciate it.
Ross Kenyon: All right. Thank you, Karen. If you like the show, you like what we’re doing here, please rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, tell your friends. Tell a friend about carbon removal today. Try not to be too annoying about it, but just let them know that it’s out there as a cool thing that people are working on. And thank you so much for listening.
