You're listening to the reversing climate change,
podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace.
This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs
developing solutions to climate change.
Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change
podcast. I'm Ross Kenny and I'm the
creative editor at Nori's carbon removal Marketplace.
Today I have with me, John Sanchez, John you re Harvard
student on a gap year, you created the carbon removal
Academy, With are minors, you built up their boot up program
which some Nori knots have been going through.
You also do a thing called Problem packs, you're all over
the place. This is a busy Gap year for you
couldn't you've just gone to Machu Picchu or something.
No, at a lot of this is based on the fact that we're in
quarantine mode. So that's a lot of the Genesis
of these programs is because I was locked down and looking for
stuff to do. Really well.
Yeah. How did you get into the the
climate world and how did this all happen?
Yeah, it's kind of a cool and funny story before the pandemic,
I guess, in my first year of college, I came in as a Computer
Science Guy, picked up an interest in chemistry along the
way, interested in entrepreneurship, but feeling a
little bit directionless, but as my virtual spring semester, once
the koban pandemic it finished off about a year ago.
Now, I was trying to come up with interesting ways to spend a
quarantine socially In summer, you know, something to work on
whatever, but I came up with 50 topics.
That sounded cool to me things that I want to explore further
from, you know, coding projects to literature and reading to
trying out stand-up comedy, just a whole grab bag of things and
put them on scraps of paper in a jar.
And literally each week of this crazy system, I set up for
myself, just pick something out of the jar and try to do it that
week and week 2, for me, was explore the climate Tech startup
ecosystem. Which I literally knew basically
nothing about and yeah, that week, I listen to a lot of
podcasts including this one did a lot of reading was intrigued
and very slowly fell down the rabbit hole, eventually ran into
are minors and the carbon removal world and that sucked me
in further as I sort of became a member of the community and made
a bunch of friends there. And I guess at some point, I
stop the cycle because I realized I was onto something
with climate and wanted to keep building stuff.
There is there, an alternate Reality where you're doing
stand-up right now. So many alternate really I think
about that all the time where like every Monday morning at
like pick something out of the jar and then put it back without
looking at it and pick something else and that would be what I
opened. But like the very specific
sequence of things that came out of that process is very likely
to Define my next year's life. I don't know.
It's just kind of fun to think about.
It's a beautiful and terrifying thing.
I think it multiplies as you get older.
Order to think about how much contingency exist within your
life and how many random things have shaped its outcomes.
What if you had picked a different thing?
What have you gotten into like artificial intelligence?
That one came up first, you know, like oh the world's active
carbon removal would be different John.
I hope. So if I'm doing things that make
an impact. But yeah, a I was in there so it
could have happened. Did you end up doing an open mic
or anything? Now I did but One day maybe when
I go back to campus will be part of their stand-up comedy club.
You should do it this it's sort of like has a Tim Ferriss vibe
to it you're like there's like a little bit of a dilettante
approach but you also were really good and I almost feel
like you're going to put me out of a job sometimes because
you're also really into literature and the creative
something. If you do that and you're better
at the technical stuff than me. John what am I supposed to do?
You have to take take food out of my family's mouths?
How could you do that now? Reversing climate change it.
So unique experience, the people come here for a reason, it was
diplomacy also on one of those little.
Yeah, that's one of the things I could have picked a nice.
Okay, that's a good. Well, we should, I Define all of
these different programs. I don't even know how do you,
how do you describe them? Overall experiences learning
experiences. Is there's a bit of a mooc kind
of quality to them. Yeah, so well for me a lot of
what I've done during the past year sort of revolves around the
question about like, you know what?
It Takes to actually transition into the climate World from the
ground up right now. And there are a bunch of people
working on this but to me the way I see it is like, you know
if someone's beginning with like a vague interest maybe in
climate broadly or maybe with an inkling about a particular space
like CDR and then the end space is now I have a job in climate.
I starting a company, whatever that goal is.
Then for a lot of people I don't think it's as easy as
immediately going to reply to a bunch of seemingly, relevant job
postings to your skill set, like I think.
There's a real exploration process required to find your
specific, Affinity your specific interest, gather knowledge, and
then ultimately choose something, right?
And even within the CDR space, that exploration process is
real. Because the CD, our space is
interesting in that it's like a cool.
Grab bag of a lot of seemingly, unrelated areas that ultimately
come together to all remove carbon from the atmosphere.
But the two projects and initiatives that I've got going
are sort of related to the different ways that that
exploration might look and are also sort of community focused.
And Community-based learning in community based exploration and
we've been interested in the topic of climate communities.
And we'll get into your thinking on how you've been building
these out. But the first one, I think you
started. You came out of nowhere.
One day, I just woke up and there's a thing called carbon
removal Academy that existed and I was like, oh, who is this?
What is this? So what exactly is carbon
removal Academy? Is it still active, or has it
been supplanted by these other efforts?
However, Evil Academy is active. I just recently revamped the
whole curriculum with, you know, the latest news and the latest
policy coming out with the Biden Administration startups that
have weren't around when I first created it.
But essentially it's a curated list of resources that take you
through carbon removal sort of from the ground up starting
with, you know, what is this field?
What scale do we need? And what is it going to require?
And then, you know, module by module, it presents, sort of a
linear sequence of accessible Resources that, you know,
somebody who doesn't have a science background and doesn't
want to go through the 500 page PDF National Academy of Science
report or something that requires a lot of willpower.
But rather you know just trying to ease people in get them
hooked with content. That's already out there and be
that source of exploration where you can go through the modules,
explore the different spaces, and go as deep into that linear
sequence of resources as people want, if someone's listening and
they wanted to go. Through it.
Is it something that they join as a member of a cohort?
Or is it something that they do on their own?
How does it work? Well, the cohort is where are
minors boot-up comes in. The are minors boot-up, is a
learning program to sort of get introduced to the CDR space,
very rapidly. It's a four-week program that
goes through a lot of content, but the goal is there to, you
know, help people understand the basics of each approach and
Technology to learn the common vocabulary that everyone in the
space seems to have like, what the hell additionality There's
something who the major players are the companies and all the
while sort of making a close group of friends in the climate
space, in the process. And what the people do in, there
is go through the carbon removal.
Academy curriculum, sort of module by module.
So we're recording this in early to mid-april how many cohorts
have gone through boot up so far.
There's been two, we did one in March and we're just starting
April 1. The slag has about 200 people in
it right now but it's not like one.
Ass, you know, learning experience where everybody's
joining some, giant Zoom call or something.
The way we have it operating is it's subdivided into eight to
ten person discussion groups that each meet twice a week for
a small more intimate, Zoom call discussion and you know each of
those smaller calls is scheduled to discuss a new CD, our topic
and is pre-assigned resources for it.
Having people be intellectually stimulated and engaged in
important thinking is itself valuable.
I don't mean to diminish that but has has there been anything
of consequence beyond that that you've noticed or any outcomes
that you've been seeing? Yeah, I mean the goal of the
boot up is really just that people find what they want their
next step to be. So like, you know, I am a person
who's interested in CDR and after going through this giant
experience now I have an idea that I actually really like the
Bayou HR space and I'm a True Believer now.
And I want to go do a problem pack on it or go explore the
companies in the space or pursue it further somehow.
So I really like this idea of affinity to a particular topic
that people seem to be developing throughout the
program. And, you know, I think that idea
of these smaller communities that are built into the larger
world are really valuable, because a lot of them, as we
were shutting down the private, slack groups for each of the
mini, the mini discussion groups for the first cohort, They were
desperate to find other ways to stay in touch and it seems like
people really made connections. So for me, that's goal achieved
with the boot up. There been any startups that
have gotten founded out of it yet?
Or are you still waiting desperately for your first one?
Not for the boot up, we're getting there with the problem
pack World, which we can talk about.
But again, I think the boot up is more a learning experience
where the problem packs are like, well, actually, let's get
a team together to come work on a problem that could ultimately
spin out to be something like that.
I love that. They always catch my eye to
whenever you post about them. Like, dang it.
I already working carbon removal.
I have enough problems in front of me at a normal job.
So I'm not looking for extra right now, but they always catch
my eye and they're always very thoughtful.
What exactly is a problem pack and maybe what are some examples
of them? Sure.
Yeah, so the problem pack sort of spun out of after I had done
the first big discussion group, with carbon removal Academy,
I've sort of learned from the people who are going through it.
That lots of people feel like they Know how to learn about
climate change and build up the knowledge that you'd sort of get
coming out of the boot up. But maybe they haven't managed
or figured out quite how they want to turn that learning into
more concrete action, that might stand a chance to remove CO2
from the atmosphere, do something positive for the
climate. So what the problem packs are
sort of rather than taking like a learning and producing a bunch
of content to consume based approach.
The problem packs are a different way of exploring by
being three weeks. Sort of fun.
Of climates prints. Most of them are focused on CD
are right now, but you deep dive with a team of five to six
people into a single tangible climate problem.
And at the end of the three weeks, you're held accountable
to produce a solutions-oriented deliverable, whether that's a
business model or a report or some new tactic to influence the
industry, maybe by the end that you present publicly.
I saw one about handheld spectrometry and little carbon.
I've seen some about carbon markets.
Give me give me an example of one in particular here.
Yeah sure. So one that I think was a lot of
fun that. Okay, this is right now we're in
the second round of problem packs as well.
In April, I ran the first full round in February and for the
February round, there were four problem packs going and I was
actively involved in leading all of the for, so it was quite as
quite a month, but it one of the packs in that first round was
having the goal of figuring out whether it made sense to install
a pyrolyze, ER, at Sawmills to produce biochar.
Are from The Sawmill waste. Hmm.
So that was an interesting topic.
Saw mills are kind of like, you know, just one possible source
of biomass that could produce the biochar.
But the way that that group proceeded was we literally ended
up calling like a dozen Sawmills to talk to them about what
they're currently doing with their waste.
What their revenue streams look like with that whether they've
heard of biochar and could potentially be interested, we
talked to a lot of biochar. Researchers companies,
installing paralyzers in different places and like
ultimately after a bunch of Manning and thinking about well,
how does it make sense to structure all these ideas that
are coming together? The group produced, a really
interesting report, synthesizing all this knowledge and, you
know, thinking about whether actually very what conditions,
it makes sense to actually do this at a sawmill.
So it's an example, I think that stakeholder discussion process
where you like, go all out and really talk to a lot of people
who are working on this right now, has been really effective
and a lot of the problem packs, that sort of distilling, where
the problems are where people's heads.
Our at those who are actually in the field right now and then,
you know, taking that knowledge and doing some interesting
brainstorming with the team having fun while you're doing
it. But coming up with something at
the end, I like that. You sort of split this between
the more passive consumption learning habits and then problem
packs being a different more active approach because I can
imagine there probably is a linear progression, right?
You join our miners, you do the boot up, and that's where you do
carbon removal Academy. And then you graduate, You
problem packs or is that even the right way to see it?
That's definitely in line of how we thought about things,
especially since with the Buddha, people sort of figure
out where their Affinity is and what they want to explore more
and then after getting that breath, the problem tax.
Really provide a source of depth where you can sort of more
actively pursue. This make connections do some
networking but also ultimately come up with an idea that might
become your next thing. But the beauty is that it's also
only three weeks. So like if at the end of the
three weeks you realize, this wasn't for me.
Then you didn't sign up for some really long term commitment.
You didn't get a job that you find out, you're not interested.
You just had an interesting time and you can try something new
the next time. Yeah, I think that's really
valuable. Maybe this is a good place to
talk about your thinking on how these climate communities which
are proliferating wildly right now, there's so many of them.
I just joined work on climate. The other day I saw have another
work on climate. Yeah.
I haven't really stuck my neck
out in there and Hello yet. But I've been poking around and
there's so many different things, my climate journey and
there's a bunch of specialized slack communities.
And there's probably a whole bunch of things.
I'm not even aware of, and of climate base, is trying to do a
lot of work on how you actually do this in a scalable productive
way. How should we be thinking about
climate communities and where their value lay?
Yeah. Well for me, the main takeaway
that I've started to get from running the boot up and the
problem packs and similar ways, is that At a lot of times when
maybe you're in one of these big climate communities, one of the
ones with like a thousand plus people in it that are posting in
specific channels. And there's conversation going
on but I think Ross actually at one point you put it to me is
feeling like a member of mass Society where you're
contributing and you're maybe you can post a link at some
times. But there isn't really some
close friend meeting or it's hard to find Connections in that
scenario. But the way we do things at the
boot up, as I sort of describe is that we These smaller sub
communities that exist within the larger structure.
I think part of the beauty of that is that you sort of get the
best of both worlds, where we do this fun thing in the boot up,
where we have a random Channel and with every meeting we have
each team submit like a fun, you know, a haiku or an image or
something funny to represent their team and sort of establish
some sort of Team Pride among this group of like 8 to 10
people who are meeting twice a week but what we've seen is It's
like there are still interactions that are happening
outside of the smaller group settings.
You can preserve that at scale but there's still needs to be in
order for a community to be valuable, especially for me,
from what I've seen is, you need to have some sort of, like,
human interactions where you get to meet people, you build your
own set of connections, you build your own set of friends.
And those are the times when I've always have the best, like
when I joined are minors, there may be only like 10 people last
June. Regularly posting.
And when I popped in and introduce myself, all those
people reached out to me and we had really good conversations
for as it's grown a little bit now.
And I don't think if I had joined now I would have quite
the same experience in terms of, you know, immediately finding
that people with my similar interests who I can become
friends with immediately. So I think for a climate
Community to be successful, it's important to have these sort of
smaller, subcultures within the full thing, so that people can
find connections. It's the whole.
Hmm, I definitely think that's the case.
I have posted another slot groups before, not in SL
promotional way. It wasn't like, hey, everyone
here should come check out this amazing podcast, I just did and
here's why I posted something else.
I posted it like things, I thought were relevant to the
community at large and it had a little bit of a cricket's, kind
of reaction to it. Am I doing this wrong or or or
is this more of a sort of like a status hierarchy game?
And I don't have enough status to attract any emojis or what is
happening that is I've clearly have done something wrong or
maybe it's just objectively boring and no one cares about
what I'm posting about. That's also possible but being
able to actually interact with people on a old-school.
One-on-one basis, I think it's nice to like one thing I did God
I'm going to say this on the podcast, I'm closing this up for
now because it was too much, but I just opened my calendar on are
minors, like, hey guys, I've decided that slack is a bad use
of my time for the Most part I have.
I'm just too busy but I'll gladly take meetings with anyone
if they want to. And so I've just had, I don't
know dozens of random meeting. Like all of them were pretty
fun, and interesting, some of them didn't have a direct call
to action or something we could do as a Next Step, but I did
feel like it was good to take the Pulse of the entire carbon
removal Community or at least that small subset as feels like
there's value there. I prefer that over text or
something about text that I find really inhospitable someone.
I was reading, maybe you interpersonally.
It's just different. Yeah, I mean I definitely know
what you mean. Definitely.
Sometimes when you post something and you're seeing how
many thumbs up you get feel like a popular, huh?
Yeah. Some experiments in the small
problem pack groups. When you post something, they
read. There's a whole interesting
discussion that can often emerge because it's relevant to the
brainstorming that's going on. And I think it's ultimately even
when there's so many fewer people that are actually there
and that little private community.
Within the larger thing, I think more interesting discussions
often emerge in that setting because people are more willing
to engage and more willing to put themselves out there on that
smaller scale. I think that Personal Touch
makes sense and maybe it's also got John, you're so much
younger. So maybe this doesn't even make
sense to you the like differences between terrestrial
versus digital satellite radio. Do you know much about that?
Yeah that's I think before my time.
There used to be a radio waves that were beamed by towers and
something with electromagnetism. You probably know more about
this than me John but it happened and there was a
tendency I think to rush towards a lowest common denominator
within a certain genre. So at least when I started
listening in probably like the 90s or the early aughts.
There was a like a classic rock station, there was an
alternative station. There is a Kiss FM pop kind of
station but they all basically play the same things.
You can find that in basically any city in America as far as I
know, and XM came along, and it's like you want.
Howard Stern. Here's 24/7.
Howard Stern. You want Grateful Dead bootlegs.
We got that, you want Outlaw country.
So, whatever. Genre it just got more and more
specific nowadays, a Spotify. It's, it's a, your own exact
personal, but it was a gradual process of it happening in a big
group. I think there's a tendency to
sort of like, converging among uncontroversial.
Shoulder or things that are almost kind of banal.
And in some cases potentially present, a smaller group,
there's, there's more of a tendency to want to dig in, or
it's more Niche. Maybe, maybe that's the
difference between like, the mass Society versus The Core
group or something. Yeah, I think it is.
Partially this, like, I don't know, I wouldn't want to be
wrong in the, my climate Journey carbon removal Channel.
With several hundred people, there watching me be wrong, but
if I was just testing out an idea, it's much easier to do.
So If there's, you know, a friendly group of seven people
that I've talked to 10 times before and I can say like, oh
yeah, I'm just thinking about this.
Anyone have any thoughts? Like it just feels more
comfortable. I think.
And more productive maybe for that reason.
Dang, I've never thought about it in that way.
But yeah, if you say something in public, as a member of a
company, there's this whole is this canonical is this a Nori
thing Mike and I just is there not a space where I can noodle
on an idea and not have a sort of what?
Trying to get out though, right? Like you wanted to be
explorative and creative and you don't want someone to come
screenshot and like, well, John last week you said this when now
hypocrite. Yeah, I feel like that's fine.
Once you have your thoughts together, maybe and, you know,
your, maybe your you have a friendly group of people.
You know, is in that bigger channel so that it's less scary
to post their. But yeah.
Ultimately, I think it's about creating me and fostering these
environments, where that level of creativeness and that level
of Of, you know, this is very, very tentative, I'm just
noodling but like here's a thought, anybody want to take it
further? Who might?
We talked to, in order to develop this idea?
Anybody have further thinking on it.
Hmm. And you think that's primarily a
feature of just the scale, you think?
Maybe if it's a people are maybe Kinder and smaller groups or
something else? Yes, Gail is part of it.
But I think it like if I knew every single one of those 300
people and like, It builds relationships before then I
think I'd have a different feeling whereas I think it's
just something about context and something about feeling like
that's the type of thing that belongs in this space versus and
in a bigger space also it's worth mentioning that for the
problem packs. One major feature of it is that
whenever people go to sign up they have to click a checkbox
that says they're willing to commit to 10 hours per week,
commitment for every week of the three weeks that it actually
runs. And so that's definitely like
there to be a filter for people who are not just going to sit it
out and wait on the sidelines while other people actually
attend the meetings because I think as soon as those you know,
slack Channel start piling up with people who are less active
and less motivated as the other people in the group, maybe then
it sort of drags the energy level down, or the creativity,
level down to some extent, the meeting start getting less and
less attendance and then the project Falls to Pieces, Maybe
And I've seen that happen in some bigger learning group
style, things where, you know, everybody is welcome and then
the meeting comes and there's three people there out of 100
people in the channel or something.
So fostering that right mindset where people are committed and
this is a real project that you signed up to do I think is
really important to me. That's a great way to put it.
I've thought a lot about that too.
In particular on that episode I did with Evan Hines of climate
based not long ago. About what does our patreon book
Would look like if it, you know, air quotes scales like for
instance, we had Kim Stanley, Robinson common, hang out with
are like 40 book club members. And I could have advertised that
and be like if you want private time with this world, renowned
science fiction, author, pay this amount and come hang out
with us. And then we have just been
crowded in with with newcomers who don't actually care.
It would have taken away from the experience of people who
have been there month after month.
Does this have to Skill. Why does everything have to
scale? Is that a, is that a way that
teca in Silicon Valley has invaded our brains and
everything needs this? How sad about this?
I mean, I'm very much looking to get a lot of people to do the
boot up and to do the problem pack.
So, that is a scaling exercise, but I think by preserving these
small communities within the bigger Thing by, you know, you
guys, this is a cluster friends. This is a cluster of people who
care about this other topic. Like you can still scale while
and maintaining that small community feel.
I think that Difference with the book club is that Ross Canyon or
Kim? Stanley Robinson or finite
resources that aren't going to go meet with like all 50 mini
teams of book club members at the same time.
So maybe there's some scarcity in that, you know, people are
signing up so that they could talk to you specifically or talk
to an author specifically that's there.
But I think scaling can still happen within larger
communities, under the condition that the small groups of friends
and connections are maintained Hmm.
I started thinking about whether or not I'm a finite resource or
not. Well, you have finite time.
Yeah, that's true. But okay.
Well how do you scale is? It seems difficult to have well,
for you to administer multiple of these problem pack groups is
there some point where you're like, I can't do more than five
of these at a time, or what happens?
Yeah, well, the way I'm thinking about it right now is, like I
said in February, I was the team leader for all of the problem
packs. Found it hard.
Yeah, given that it's a 10 hour per week.
It meant for every problem pack and I was doing four of them
that was intense. But this one, we're running six,
so slowly moving up. But I'm not actually
participating in any of the problem packs.
Instead, I had people on the signup form ranked how
interested they were in being a team leader on, a scale from 1
to 5 and the people who are on the higher end of the spectrum,
ended up being sort of taking on the roles that I did during the
February round by, you know, setting up the meetings.
Facilitating brainstorming and driving towards that end
deliverable. But I've been meeting a lot with
those team leaders in order to, to help them learn the lessons
that I learned the first time and the effective, at whatever
it means to run a problem pack. So that's sort of one level up.
I can I can sort of have team leaders who run those packs, but
then, the next question is, like, is there someone who can
take over my role as person who helps the team leaders figure
out what they're doing when they start running the problem packs
and how sort of team leader managers for maybe a particular
topic. So somebody who's really
interested in regenerative agriculture wants to be sort of
a little bit apart of several regenerative agriculture packs
without having to commit 10 hours per week per any one of
them so they can help the team leaders and be in those slack
groups but maybe not be full participants and still be, you
know, managing on the sidelines. So the question becomes, you
know, what are all those topics that people can come into and
how do you create this? Chain of people, people being
leaders at different areas but definitely still in flux and I
have a ways to go in terms of building that out.
Why do this? Is it some sort of you want to
see more people in carbon removal and for you personally,
what are you getting out of it? The something accusative I
didn't I didn't mean it that way, you better.
Okay. So in terms of why do this like
on a climate perspective, I think there is like You go into
work on climate or my climate journey and just everyday,
there's an influx of people who, like I said, are like, where do
I get started? How do I pursue this topic?
I'm new to the space. I want to, I want to get going
on, direct air capture but don't know where to start.
So like, you know, this whole time with carbon removal Academy
in the boot up and problem packed, it's always been like
how do you provide more structured opportunities to get
involved? A lot of times when I was
talking to people about this topic at the beginning, they
were telling me that like Like oh, we need to find more ways to
connect people with jobs that are relevant to them but what
ultimately popped out the other side of that discussion is like
there aren't that many structured jobs out there for
people to sign up for and the ones that exist are not looking
for the person who knows the most about, you know,
regenerative agriculture. But they're looking for the best
software engineer to come build their product or something.
So it's their skillset that matters more than the knowledge
about the topic often. So, for me, it's like, okay, so,
if there aren't that many structured opportunities, that
exist to plug into the climate World, especially for people who
don't want to be Founders, then how can we create?
More structured opportunities that maybe aren't jobs, but are
interesting ways to, you know, make a dent, do that creative
brainstorming and come up with what your next PATH is find that
Affinity. So you know what you want to go,
apply your skill set to but you know, again on a short-term
basis, so it's not Like you have to go through the grueling job
hunt processed first only to find out that they were an
impressed by your software engineering skills, yet, maybe
that's a question we Face hiring at Nori a fair amount to wear.
What does easier to teach software engineering or sort of
enough about agriculture, right? I could Envision a world though.
We're, you know, you would want to optimize probably for the
person who's a better software engineer because they're going
to be the ones building your product.
But that companies like Nori would send people through either
a boot up or maybe problem packs, that send them deep into
the particular problems, that Nori is working on.
And then all of a sudden they've got their their brain full of
ideas about how to shape their regenerative, add space with
that combined with that software, engineering skill set
that they came in with. No, that's absolutely right.
There's also something really valuable about people being
because we have hired people who have found us through the
podcast. We have either had interns or
projects that that have come through in that way.
And that's also really valuable having people love what they do
and are passionate about it. Mostly people that I think we've
hired, they came through a climate check sort of Journey of
their own where I care about climate change.
Like, where do I even look. What do I do?
I think that part of it is really important but if we were
still sending people through boot up, which we have like a
couple of knots have been through at this point and I'm
sure we'll continue using this valuable resource.
And if you're listening and you want to get involved, you should
join, are minors and go. Without that are minors dot-org?
That's pretty good. Sign up.
There you go. I think having that level of
interest and passion is really important, but if they weren't
also good at their core duties, I think we'd have a hard time
figuring out a role for them. Right?
Which is why for the way I've begun to think about this is
steering people who have skill sets to help figure out where
their climate Affinity is. I think that's one of the
value-adds because, you know, if I'm a really really talented so
Software engineer, who wants to go work on climate change?
There's tons of problems. I could go work on and like the
right decision for them. Probably isn't to just go find
all the software engineering jobs and apply and apply and
apply. It's like okay well do I
actually you know, am I intrinsically more interested in
the cement world or in the regenerative, a girl door in the
transportation world or something?
And as you start to explore and figure out where your Affinity
actually is that will inform for that person where they want to
apply their skill set and which companies Go work for where they
want to spend their time. What are you excited about in
the next couple of years with carbon removal?
Yeah, sure. Well, I actually spend time one
of my other smaller projects that I've been building is
carbon Visions, which is a slack another slack Community for
college students, who are interested in the space.
And, you know, we haven't done very much active Outreach to
students at this point. But it's just, you know, people
seem to find us one way or another who are interested in
this space. And we have, you know, regular
Allure discussions about papers and talk about new ideas, but I
think maybe it's just being a young person and seeing a lot of
other young people getting into the climate world, but it's just
really inspiring. As like a new wave of people
comes in to help meet climate deadlines and make the carbon
removal space and the climate space, more, broadly, bigger and
better. I think it's super exciting to
as much as we /. Mostly me were a little less
comfortable in these bigger man. Society kind of spaces.
It is nice that I don't know many of the people in are minors
or other places at this point and it keeps growing like we
need this so badly. If it's everyone can fit in a
single room it's not going to do anything of import probably.
Well, I feel that I feel that way sometimes about the carbon
removal like academic ecosystem. Because like, when you look at
some of the papers, most of the Papers written about carbon
removal, they often have one like this, they may be 15
authors that you could, you could pick out and You know, a
lot of those authors were also part of the CDR primer and like,
it's great to have a tight-knit academic Community, but like
between the startup side and the academic world and the NGO
space. Like I would love to start
seeing a lot of new faces. As I know, a lot of people are
starting to get phds and carbon removal or climate related
fields and the number of voices talking about the space
continues to increase. Do you have a strong opinion on?
I see it. Go back and forth almost like
the tide. Of the ecological carbon
removal, only or only industrial, or geological
sequestration. It goes back and forth.
I see someone credible on me on every side of that seemingly
every week. So how should someone think
about that debate? I know, it gets kind of useless
sometimes because like their post, sometimes that talk about
like why this form of carbon removal or carbon removal the
field as a whole is overrated or people shouldn't be talking
about it or we need to Focus on other things, it can be
frustrating and you know, on a policy level.
Maybe there is a need to prioritize based on like where
that federal budget goes. And that's a conversation that's
worth having, but I don't know if I really like when people
sort of loudly scream into the public discourse, that what a
whole group of people who's working on and trying hard to
build out, you know, for climate change is invaluable or a waste
of time just because There's a lot of exploration and a lot of
innovation and still needs to happen and calling people out
for doing good work. Doesn't seem to be very
productive often why I feel pretty.
Similarly, and one of the things I really like about all of your
work and all of these programs that you've been developing, is
that I might be reading too much into this and correct me if I
am, but there's a sense of genuine, curiosity and not
having a final answer already built into the curricula.
That is refreshing because there are many places.
You can go, that will be all too happy to tell you the exact
right answer. And it doesn't seem like you
have that John and I think that's actually a good thing.
Yeah. Well that some of those debates
are even built into the carbon removal Academy curriculum
itself like in the regenerative, agriculture module.
I don't know if you remember this but back in I think June
2020 World Resources Institute put out a blog post that said
soil carbon sequestration is not nearly as effective in
mitigating climate, as people think it is, and then a bunch of
the The like Keith Houston and a bunch of other big soil,
scientists, put out a letter of response, sort of hammering home
their argument for why actually is valuable and has Merit.
So both of those the blog post on the response are in the
curriculum so that people can sort of see this back and forth
and appreciate that. A lot of these things are open
for debate and have discourse and have a lot of nuance, more
than any one side of an argument would like you to think there is
so that's definitely a value for sure.
I have said this in a previous show, forgive me if you've heard
this one, but I think the phrase teach the controversy without
sort of ruined by the intelligent design, Scopes trial
kind of like 20th century fall out but I like that a lot.
My undergraduate degrees in history and a lot of the ways.
History is practice in universities tends to be.
You be like this school of historiography approaches the
problem this way. And this other, School of
thought approaches it this other way.
You're like God there's good insights from all these
different angles. I don't know how to make sense
of them all at the same time, but I usually think of it as
approaching a problem. Kaleidoscopic lie.
And if you can switch between lenses that usually makes you a
better thinker in my humble opinion.
And I think the more people are able to do that.
I think it would help us break out of some of these really
intense fights that we have. Sometimes it also makes me a
little more charitable than I should be or less willing to
commit to a position firmly. Which also makes me really
annoying to debate against because I'm like, I don't know.
This is an interesting question. I was asked to give a
presentation recently and I was like, I don't know.
I'm like, kind of okay, at asking questions, I don't know
that I have any definitive answers to give you Nori the one
way to reverse climate change. My I don't know, like I can give
that presentation in good faith. Sorry.
Got an idea. This might like we're trying,
dang it, but yeah, right. Yeah, now I Three.
I think being intellectually humble is really important,
especially when we're talking about topics is important and
often as heated as climate change, maintaining that
attitude serves you well, I think.
Yeah, I think so. It probably at least keeps it
interesting for me and I'm sure for you to that sort of like the
more you think about these things or the more you look at
them the more angles you discover, he keeps you coming
back for more. You could have been doing
stand-up, you could have been doing what else was in that that
hat? I got it.
What else is in there? As lot of Music guitar playing
there was a whole section of just random one.
So actually the way, the way that I found carbon rule
specifically and actually delve into the space, was that the
week after explore the climate Tech startup ecosystem.
There was read five Shakespeare plays but after that, there was
complete a one week internship. So I do this, I was trying to
find people to reach out to for this one week internship and
during That climate Tech exploration week.
I found Tito's YouTube channel as he talked about the carbon
removal space. So I sent him a quick email
saying, hey, I'm happy to do stuff for are minors.
Maybe produce a YouTube video, who knows, but he responded and
we set up a call and that's how I fell into the carbon removal
world could all Tita. Yeah, that's that's a great
story. I'm really happy that you found
your way in and such a strange way.
One week internship, that's just like a stage in a restaurant or
Things barely even there. That's creative though.
Yeah. Okay.
Books Shakespeare, you're one of the people that whenever we hang
out we always end up talking about books and they're always
the books that you get to be like, oh yeah, some I was
reading Moby, Dick, the other day and you get to Pat yourself
on the back a little bit, but I think those books are important.
I like reading them. I think books, that are still
being read, either stand the test of time for Quality
reasons, or are at least part of the arc.
Common cultural mapping of the universe and sort of make sense
to read at least. Why our book school.
Why our book school? It's a tough question.
Yeah, but I think that is true that like reading a funny scene
from Moby Dick or my favorite book is 100 Years of Solitude by
Gabriel Garcia, Marquez, great one.
And I used to sort of snob Ali. Tell people after I read that
that like, all of life, and every human emotion can be found
within this book. And so this is my bitch.
You know, for me I turned up some people feel like that
anymore, but still it's like I think there's I think there's
something that you know, you can find ways to tie things in your
own life or or laugh about these particular particular characters
or connect them with the way that you view.
Other people that really helps me and that I get a lot of
enjoyment from I think that's that's pretty close to it
solving this. If you grew up in Europe or
America, Erica. Especially it's probably true in
other places, too, but they're just our sort of stock images
and idioms that you can pull off the shelf.
And people kind of like, oh yeah, I recognize that scene.
Yeah, but I like, for me, it's even that cultural context is
important. I think, but even funnier for
me, like, in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
They're like all of these one-off references that like,
never come back. Like, I think, at one point one
character mentions like and that was the biggest The Ring of the
community since Big Mama's funeral Carnival and it's like,
what we never get any reference to that, but sometimes like
that. That one line will stick in my
head and come up as a frame with which I've used some other
situation that I find myself. He was just thinking of how to
set up the prequels. That's where all the real money
is made. Yeah?
Right. Yeah, not that's interesting.
I sort of wouldn't have pegged you as a magical realism
appreciator, I just started reading Midnight's Children for
the first time that Salman Rusty Saundra.
I am utterly Blown Away. It is, they just packed so much
in there. Like every sentence is just
crafted in such a way that it feels like it captures some
essence of an idea and you know, some people like magical realism
for the Magical elements. But I feel like for me that's
sort of an aside to the atmosphere that they put you in
and how dense and how much they get into a single chapter, that
just flows from One Mini story to the next.
Then each one is like its own interesting window into a life
or a? No, I like it a lot.
You're looking around. Are you looking for a book?
Heather? I was just looking at myself.
So, yes, you were, you're reading the Bible to, right?
How's that going? And well, you know, the, the
interest there spun from one of my favorite podcasts, which is
called literature and history. This is by a guy named Doug
Metzger who has undergone an apple super and is Continuing a
super intense project of creating these to our Mega
episodes. That sort of March through
anglophone literature starting with like the Epic of Gilgamesh
and Mesopotamia. And I think anticipating moving
towards the 21st century. But there was a whole series on
the Bible that you know, I still have it totally sunk my teeth
into but it's a project I'm looking forward to in which he
has 10 episodes on the Old Testament and a full series on
the, the New Testament. And I think by now that podcast
Like 1.6 million words written total for it.
So it's crazy projects. But yeah, looking forward to
that one, too. That's neat.
You've pitched this shit out of me so many times and I've, it's
so good. It's like, I don't I don't need
more reasons to have headphones in.
But yet, for me, it matches, my aesthetic of trying to build
some element of Whimsy and fun into the learning process
because at the end of every episode, he has a A comedy song
that reflects on or makes fun of some of the material from the
previous episode, as someone who appreciates the art of the
comedy song and someone who initially came to, to Tito
pitching him on my one week internship saying that I can
make an error miners theme song. A lot of it, a lot of that sort
of style and the material itself as well really goes goes well
with my personality you think you can go toe-to-toe with Baba,
Brinkman for his are minors Write a grant Faber produced a
song recently to, that was pretty good.
So, fighting against some some high Talent here we'll see.
Is there any connection in your head beyond our personal
proclivities for literature and art and the humanities and
carbon removal. Do you think so, or are we just
looking for ways to connect them?
Yeah, I mean, you know, this is going to sound cliché, but I
think when I read these books, I often think about carbon room.
Evil, because the things that I do in my day-to-day, like, boot
up and problem pack work, sort of layer themselves on top of
the happenings in the book and I feel like, wow, yeah, that makes
sense. This character also was thinking
about a problem of scaling up like we're talking about or
thinking about running up against the limits of some
ecosystem, may be. So even if it's like it's
sometimes hard to say that like, you know, we can use the lessons
taught to us by the Those karamazov to solve climate
change because it is nothing that direct I find that the work
that I do to build out carbon removal and problem tax, and
boot up, and whatever it is, is often in my mind and my own
mental web. Very interlayer, do with the
books that I read and you know for me that enhances my
experience gives me new ideas and helps me build out solutions
that are better I think. Yeah I'm having a hard time
seeing that in Dusty of ski. They already feel like
raskolonikov and solar radiation management like an analysis.
By John Sanchez. Yeah.
That'd be, they little be my senior thesis in college.
Yeah. You like you like, okay, not
everything is connected. Sometimes a thing is just a
thing. Yeah.
But you know, a lot of dealing with climate is interacting with
real people and convincing people to behave in a certain
way and you know, observing What it will take to get people to
appreciate something, or to commit, to some proper to commit
to some process. And like the human insights,
that you can get from reading. These books are definitely real
and Dostoyevsky. I read Brothers, karamazov
earlier, my Gap year, which is why I'm thinking about him.
But like I think, when you look at how like, alyosha or Ivan or
some of these characters behaves on a regular basis, it sort of
helps me map onto the other people that I'm interacting with
Again, I think it's just a frame that then becomes a way of
conceptualizing. Those interactions.
I have that less from dostoievski personally but the
one that I do think about probably more than any others.
Don Quixote you ever read that one I haven't it's on my list
for eventually getting there but yeah I've heard good things I
really like the Edith Grossman translation to and she did a
bunch of Gabriel García márquez's and Mario Vargas
llosa's translations but Don Quixote is so funny because The
musical Man of La Mancha portrays him as being this noble
man out of step with a the corrupt world.
But in the book he's he's like dangerous.
Like like if Don Quixote comes your way in the book, it's not
like a cute old man. It's like, oh God, there's a
crazy guy with a lamp and he's trying to stab me just because
I'm hurting my sheep and he thinks it's an invading Moorish
Army. There's a bunch of stuff like
that. Yeah, well people running it
windmills. Sometimes attracted, the only
thing. But I like the idea of for
instance there's a there's a bookstore I went to and
Guatemala City Once Upon a Time and it was named after Don
Quixote and it was a sort of like leftist bookstore, I don't
know that you want to link your politics is guy because in the
book He's a guy who constantly misinterprets the world and acts
upon it and makes it worse. So is that that's not clearly.
Not how you see your politics? Maybe he isn't just like a
noble, noble guy in a corrupt world, but you can see that like
that the Christian bed, you know, that famous Parable from
Greek mythology. It's like the, like a cyclops or
Giants. And if you stay with him, he has
a bed that he'll either stretch your limbs to match or I'll cut
off. Your limbs may seem to love
loves this story as being a case of ideology blinding people.
You feel like a bit whatever though?
Well, yeah. Well, for me, like, it's one
thing to like, have somebody tell you that ideology, blinds
people, right? Like, I feel like most people
sort of have some sense of that to some degree.
Read. But then to see it unfold in
those different ways and to hear what might be like a wrote
lesson that like could be some Maximum that some Silicon Valley
Guru might present to you. Like that's one thing.
But then it's another thing to like, witness the events of the
novel unfold and like, have all of the context and, you know,
have that lesson framed in a way where for me at least it hits
home, much harder. And like, rather than thinking
about the ideology blinding, I have a whole narrative in my
Head. That becomes a map for that
particular maximum. Yeah, I think that's true.
There's other cases of that were.
Yeah. Ideology blinds you.
It's sort of something like maybe like a 18 year old with a
Bob, Marley poster over their dorm couch, might say, but if
you read something like A Confederacy of Dunces, which
have you ever read that one? Yeah, I love it.
Okay, so well in 8th grade. I read that for a book report
and for the book report I brought there's this In
Confederacy of Dunces where Ignatius de Riley's becomes a
hot dog cart manager, that he's Wheeling around.
So for my book report, I brought in a prop which was a set of
boxes stacked, on top of the skateboard, that was my hot dog
cart. And I think he's just as a
visual prop, I guess for, for presenting my, my take on the
book, most precocious thing I've ever heard, John Campbell your
little pull that off. Ignatius is a great example of
this. Right.
Like he's always talking about but we Theus and The Wheel of
Fortune and the corrupt modern world and and he's just like
lives with his mom and is a slob and always telling people that
they're completely lacking in Theology and geometry which it's
perfect. He's like extremely delusional
and like lives in this made-up world.
And yeah, you could picture some of like the hardcore
nature-based CDR people. Yet the technology see are
people that they're all lacking in Theology and geometry?
Yeah, there's there's maybe maybe you can apply it there if
you'd like, but yeah, you don't ever want to be that guy.
And I really do, which is I saw great article in the New Yorker
recently about how like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and
Ignatius. J.
Riley are oftentimes found as protagonist that young men in
particular look up to was like these people are Is a satire
that you're not supposed to like these people.
They're clearly the Bad Guys. Don Quixote is the bad guy of
Don Quixote Achilles is the bad guy or like one of the bad guys
of The Iliad? You're not supposed to go with
it. Yeah, well I'm sure we could
just goof around talking about books forever.
Maybe one of the final things we should start wrapping up on
though, is Your Love of memes. What is happening in the world
of carbon removal? Me Murray.
Yeah, so funny in my newsletter, which everyone listening should
sign up for especially if you want to hear about the next
problem packs as they get released, the bottom of every
issue comes stocked with a the latest and greatest in the
carbon removal meme space. So I definitely feel very
plugged into the Zeitgeist of the memes that are going around,
but yeah, it's exciting. I like I like to see people
thinking about carbon removal in a way that Take itself.
So seriously all the time and where people are happy to just
goof around and have a connection on that level, where,
you know, there's more levity, more laughs and yeah, I'm a big
fan of the work that's being done and not very dignified
area, the a dignified, memory signified, me Marie, I'm all for
it. Yeah, well John, if someone
wants to follow your work and get involved in any of this,
where should they go? Yeah, totally.
Well, problem packs is beginning to be built out and I'm working
on a website for it'll be more official than what exists now,
but definitely subscribe to the sub stack where I post most
announcements at Carbon travels dotsub stack.com.
You can also check out carbon removal, academy.com, to see all
those resources and like we said before, boot up dot are minors,
dot-org is where you could sign up for that but also would love
to talk to people about all these things.
If you want to get involved with any of those things or have
ideas. It's about how to make them
better. I'm on are minors.
I'm on most of those climate communities.
So, feel free to DM me, we love to chat.
Great Links. All those things are in the show
notes, and thanks so much for being here, John.
Yeah, thanks, Ross. This was fun.
Fun for me to get in the Gap about books.
That's always a pleasure and if you like, also gabbing about
books, you should join the patreon for Nori's.
We have a book club which is fun John's in it.
You can come and hang out and talk to John about book.
Sometimes I don't have you mind me saying that John but it's
It's been a lot of fun. We have authors come out and
chat with us sometimes, and we have a really nice community of
people talking about climate books and things that Jason.
And if you like what we're doing here, please rate and review our
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