You're listening to the reversing climate change podcast
by Nori. The world's first carbon removal
Marketplace, here are your hosts, Ross, Kenyon and
Christoph jospeh, say hello and welcome to the reversing climate
change podcast with Nori. I'm Ross Canyon here with Chris,
Bosh pay, and Paul gamble. We are in New York City.
Right now. We're in our Airbnb in Brooklyn.
We are happy to be here. We have seemingly nothing.
But meetings running around the city the entire time Kristoff.
Are you happy to be back in your in your Homeland?
I am. But I think I no longer feel
like a New Yorker. I feel like an ex-new Yorker.
I jaywalked this morning on the way, to the bodega, it felt
amazing. No one looked no one judged,
they judge and Seattle, do they? I've never never noticed.
They had a judge, a judge really hard and in New York, it's
expected to jaywalk. We judge you especially hard for
running. Stop signs on your bike.
Yeah, that's just in my blood. I have seen people in It's
always in Midtown where in the tourists come but I see people
will walk in front of cabs and the Cavs will keep going just
lay on the horn. Be like this is your choice.
Do you want to die or no? Yeah well okay let's get going.
I'm really excited to have our guest today.
It is another validation of just how amazing the connection
economy is like people are out there wanting to make kaname.
You do a Ted Talk on that. Someone else can it's just about
like people are out there wanting to make the world a
better place wanting to Know about each other.
And then once they do the sort of flash of, hey, let's get
things done. As quickly as possible.
Just gets that much stronger. And I forget how I'd seen this
one woman's profile. Her name is Maggie.
Hannah, that's not our guest, but she had something that.
Well, so, first of all, she was saying, really smart things
about sustainability and energy. I'm said only add people on
LinkedIn who give specific reasons as to why they should
add me. And I looked at her profile, and
I just gave her a number of reasons and Maggie and I They
hit it off and then Maggie joined something called the
future fit foundation. And there was a presentation
from John elkington and Lorraine Smith about volans and various
elements of sustainability. And this is the group that
they're not the cookie cutter sustainability.
There are thinking on the edge and looking at where the world
is going. You know, very much the Wayne
Gretzky skate to where the puck is not where, or skate to where
the puck is going not to where the puck is, right?
And so Maggie connected us to Lorraine and we're just sort of
reminiscing, both Lorraine and I were getting chills on that call
because we were realizing so many of the connections.
And so of the many hats that Lorraine.
Where's as an independent consultant, one of them is
volans. I'm sure we'll learn about a
number of the other hats as well.
Lorraine is also a podcast listener.
So again, she knows what she's getting into do free to listen
more flattery on us, it's Malcolm.
Yeah, that's got it in my Hopper here.
We don't invite people who would disagree with us.
Kidding. Without any further Ado,
Lorraine you are an amazing person, I think.
And I think you also have a fascinating story, and so we
love for you to start with telling your story.
Why? Why is the sustainability and
working on reversing climate change?
Something that you care so deeply about?
Wow. Well, thank you, and it's really
fun to be here. It's actually more fun.
I think to just keep listening to your podcast, but I'll try to
contribute to the fund. I'm delighted to be here and my
story probably has to Many twists and turns to make any
sense of in a brief podcast, but I'll cherry pick a couple spots.
And I've heard a lot of your guests, talk about their
different Pathways into the sustainability conversation, the
regenerative agriculture conversation, Etc.
And I think one of the things I love most about that, is that
there are just infinite doorways.
So 0.2 Doors, number one, and two, and leave the, the infinite
ones for future conversations. I think the first one really
happened in a recess playground fight in grade.
When I was probably about seven or two of my friends at the
time, were debating religion of all things.
And one was from a Catholic Family and the other was from a
Protestant family. And they were arguing about
which one had figured God out. And I was raised as a religious
mutt, no access to any one pathway or the other.
And I remember later that night thinking about the fight and
thinking, you know, that didn't make a lot of sense to me
because everything we need, we can see when we look sideways
because we can see all the forests and the Gardens and the
flowers and the people and I was just totally puzzled by this
argument about who had figured God out better.
So that was probably the beginning of my thinking about
how we interpret ourselves within the wider world.
And what Nature has to do with it?
This is clearly in Canada. Yes, it was.
I did grow up in Toronto, actually has quite a city mouse,
although also lots of access to, to Nature partly because Toronto
is built on three beautiful River beds.
There are three rivers that run through Toronto and I played a
lot. The Ravines probably more than
would be deemed safe today, but I also spent a lot of time in
farmland and in Forest land in Northern Ontario but fast
forward to around the year 2000. Before I knew what
sustainability was or corporate responsibility or all of the
synonyms we throw around. I found myself working in a
financial services Institute I was in this episode of trying to
have a proper job and be a normal person and I remember the
themes I talked about at the time where greed and vanity T.
It was like, why don't I just try those and see what they're
like, because they seem to be kind of normal and people seem
to be thriving with those. So I'll check it out as one does
in New York City, right? At the time, I was still in
Toronto and a number of my friends, wonderful, people, whom
I respect earlier, lawyers, Bankers, you know, leading those
normal lives and so I sort of got recruited into a financial
services role. Lots of things I could say about
that role but one of the things I recall very distinctly, it was
being in a meeting. This was in a company that
although it's Canadian, it's bread and butter.
The 401K industry in the US, which is essentially retirement
savings. Maple syrup portfolios, right?
Yes, that's right. It was almost 90% invested in
maple syrup and then a few other things like hedge funds and
other financial instruments. And one of the meetings that we
had my role was to bridge between the it group and the
Marketing Group, of course, the Marketing Group wants to say,
invest more money and the IT group needed to figure out how
to do that legally and manage, all their fiduciary
responsibilities. And I had a kind of translator
role, which is something I I find myself in a lot and I asked
in this group of about 15 people a few vp's from different parts
of the business and some of the coders and some of the
marketers, why don't we include in our messaging, you know,
along with showing older people in hammocks and sailing and
holding their grandchildren's hands?
Why don't we include in the messaging information about what
the money is doing? Well, it's invested over these
20, 30 years and everybody turned and looked at me and
said, who cares how the money is invested.
It's just that they have money at the end of the day when they
retire. And I remember a penny sort of
dropped for me, really? That's, that's how Global
investing Works. Who cares how the money is
invested and whether or not it's creating value.
So, I ran away for three months and traveled across Canada, and
I basically put my name on to what was then a bulletin board
on the world wide web through my spinning and weaving and textile
Artisan group to see if any Farmers needed volunteers on
their firms. And I was handed from Farm to
farm Heritage breeders of this and that, and And different
agricultural fairs and over wolves to spin either wolves,
sheep's wool, mohair rabbit. Some were growing flax all kinds
of good stuff. So I learned a lot about farming
about life about people about women entrepreneurs.
And when I came back to Toronto, a friend of mine called me and
was like, have you spent all your money yet?
You need a proper job and the answer was yes, and yes.
And so I got hired on to work at Canadian business for social
responsibility. That was 2004 fast forward to
today. I'm In that field.
I'm not a board member of CBS are, and I'm making trouble in a
few related ways. That's amazing.
What a great story. You definitely fit in around
here. We all sort of have a weird
paths that led us here and that's part of what makes this
space Dynamic and fun. I'm curious.
How do you make trouble these days living?
Yeah, I can actually organize it into two neat categories but
they interact with one another quite a bit.
I say in in simple terms I write and I lend a hand So I write a
blog that's on my website and then I also write content, I
contribute to reports some of which I've co-authored with John
elkington and his team that explore the themes related to a
regenerative economy and of course regenerative.
Agriculture sits very happily in that space so that writing takes
a number of different forms. I'm also working on my first
nonfiction book that explores the relationship between trees
and people, and that writing is something, I've been exploring
for very, very long time. Long before I knew About this
form of making trouble. And the lending a hand part is I
contribute to a number of different teams, so volans and
John, elkington's team based in London, is a group that I spend
a lot of time working with I think of them as thought
partners and and instigators and also contribute on a couple
other teams or directly to clients.
So one quite tied to this Agriculture and soil.
Carbon conversation, I sit on the sustainability Advisory
Board of a large Forest Products company based in Brazil, called
FIB idea, Yeah. And that would be an example of
me. Sort of lending a hand to an
executive team to think about how they can contribute to the
sustainable economy of the future.
It's quite a story. You have a hard time coming up
against John elkington though, whose story began?
Well, start with me, looking at thousands of eels, so one of
the, the greatest Intrigue comments, there have been
dropped on the show. I want to hear about this book.
What's what's relationship between humans and trees?
Oh gosh, Toria. I I've had the very good fortune
of living in a number of different places.
Sometimes for work sometimes for school sometimes just because I
had a really interesting conversation with a taxi driver
followed by another interesting conversation with another taxi
driver that made me spend some time in Ethiopia and so long ago
I lived in Brazil as a teenager and then I've gone back a fair
bit for work because I speak Portuguese.
But you weren't were you in Sao Paulo.
I was just sort of the American school there.
No, I I was in a regular, Brazilian High School.
My dad went to that school and I was wondering.
Yeah, no. I was fully immersed in
Brazilian culture, which was an Incredible Gift in 1989.
The year of the first democratic election and of course, there's
a very interesting election playing out right now.
Maybe we maybe we have time for that here, maybe we don't.
But all to say, living in Brazil being from Canada and I've lived
in many parts of Canada. I now live in New York, also
spent some time in East Africa and Ethiopia, and a couple
episodes I lived in Germany on Exchange as well, and And
through these periods of my life of almost half a century.
I've started to notice a pattern that trees and I think you could
insert nature, or biology for trees and all of these
sentences, I'm about to say, but I'll use trees as a sort of
Handy visible proxy. They've been telling us things
forever and it's my interpretation.
That we've just not been picking up the instruction manual.
And the pattern I've noticed is one I've essentially Mass
deforestation, that's, that's not a news headline, but
deforestation in a way that's been very subtle and that we
have the potential to hear and understand and come back to and
basically heal. And I think if we listen to how
nature is trying to get things done and get out of its way,
will do well. So the book is really a series
of nonfiction stories. You could call them Memoir or
travel log, but each one is me. Finally, getting the message
from trees. I worked as a tree planter in
Northern Ontario with to pay my way through a couple years.
School and tree planting. I don't know if you guys have
ever met any tree planters but it's a pretty interesting summer
job, like The Lumberjack Song from Monty Python, Yes, except
all day. And when you're in the north,
the day is long. So it starts very early and it
ends very late. So, you're working 14-hour days
planting a tree, every six feet, you're carrying those trees and
you are physically creating the space, to put them in the ground
day after day like that. Core is probably pretty strong,
huh? Yeah, was what I was, you know,
19, 20. So and then other experiences
with trees Working with Forest Products companies in Brazil and
listening to the dialogue between the FSC.
The first Stewardship Council which seeks to certify Forest
Products with wonderful, intentions around economic
social and environmental measurable impacts.
And yet they face the same puzzles.
We do as humans trying to trying to function so much more.
I could say on the book but it's trying to explore our
relationship with trees and come out with a more hopeful hopeful
set of possibilities for how we can.
Within the wider world that's fairly characteristic of your
writing to I always whenever I see a new blog post of yours go
up, I always take a look. And that's one reason, I think
that you Inori have a connection is that we tend to look for the
Silver Lining or the opportunity there, which is not always that
common in the climate change space.
I think it's definitely more helpful for generating action
and not feeling totally out of control and Powerless.
Yeah, I actually think that's a really important point and I
didn't Say in my answer to how I make trouble, but I'll add it in
here. One of the things I try to
infuse in everything, I do, including my own conversations
with myself, is this sense of where the mindset or the
Paradigm plays a role and, and I'm sure you and most of your
listeners could probably run circles around my technical
knowledge of systems thinking, but I've spent a lot of time
reading and exploring the work of Donella Meadows.
I'll just insert. She was a hand spinner and, and
produce a lot of her own yarn. Your little known fact that her
Will end and if you've ever spun yarn you'll quickly see that
it's a form of systems thinking and and integration that kind of
manifests in a way that's kind of neat.
But Ulta say I think that the notion of the Silver Lining
comes from a mindset or a paradigm approach where and I
have some kind of awkward conversations with my so-called
environmentalist peers where I get the intention you know we
want I want a better world. I'm pretty sure everyone I meet
wants a better world. But what do we mean by that and
people become so entrenched in their beliefs, that I think one
of the reasons, the Goosebumps happened for me on that initial
coal with you Kristoff, and with John elkington was, that you are
providing at least pieces of the pathway that help those DieHard
environmentalists and people who are really concerned about
climate, broaden their mindset to recognize.
This is not an emissions reduction conversation.
This is not an energy transition.
This is not a coal is evil conversation.
This is a conversation about realigning, our industrial value
chains and our human interactions with a natural
process that has been underway and evolving for 3.8 billion
years, you articulate, it slightly differently.
I think in the Nori universe but you offer a financial mechanism
and a conversation that helps reorient that narrative.
So I think it's more than a silver lining.
I think it's a functional lining and and I'm kind of excited
about that. That's great.
And thanks for all the nice things that were forcing you to
say about Nori's in the air. No, forcing whatsoever.
I was trying to think of a way to extend that metaphor, of
course, you know how we do it. I know, I think we found each
other in a metaphorical space, so I'm happy to keep playing
their. Yeah, well, it's kind of like
we've got this lining around this small, little piece of yarn
or whatever, but we have to make it so much bigger and so much
more inclusive. I gotta teach you guys to spend.
Because then, you'll know where to go with those those metaphors
when I was a kid. I remember doing the the latch
hook. Oh, nice bug hooking.
Yeah, remember, I don't think I did much beyond that, though.
Do you do it with, like, the knitting?
But the needles. Well, I've got some knitting off
to the side there. We can check it out a little
later. But knitting is essentially just
creating a continuous. Not, if you take a look at the
spelling, you see, there's an interesting little clue
knitting. We let's go there some other
time although I will say it's a physical manifestation.
Station of taking something that has no integrity and giving it
strength. So I'd like to go in a different
direction other than knitting, but perhaps the weaving that you
do in the boardrooms is relevant here, you know, you're working
with companies sometimes which have been demonized.
You know, we'd look at deforestation is a major cause
for climate change and Forestry companies can be the quote,
unquote bad guys, but they're not necessarily the bad guys per
se. And so, I'm curious the
experience that you find when you're in boardrooms, and
Innocent people who have always sort of seen the world in one
way, just trying to squeeze them to see it in a slightly
different way that might actually impact their bottom
line and are beneficial way and most certainly impact the
environmental bottom line. What do you see working most
effectively and what do you see not working?
Yeah, that's a that's a really good bundle of questions and I'm
going to I'm going to turn some of them around and I'm with
respect, I'm going to challenge some of the mindset that brings
those questions forward because I've I've had a lot of sort of
aha has going through my work over the years with Forest
Products companies. So where to start their first
I'll just say it's my personal belief that I can't convince
anyone of anything so as soon as the word convinced is part of
the project, I accept defeat and I stopped that pathway likewise.
It's very difficult to convince me of something I've changed
things and I've spent a fair bit of time and done a bit of
writing exploring, why have I change things?
But it's Pretty much never because somebody sat me down and
convinced me. So when I am in the privileged
position of being paid to share what I think with somebody who
works internally at a company or a group of people or Executives
or other stakeholders, I first try to understand what the
current circumstances are. And so in the case of this
company that I do a fair bit of work within and have known for a
number of years, so hopefully I'm not telling Tales out of
school and fibia is incredibly Transparent about what they do.
I think we quickly see that what the man on the street or even
the deeply knowledgeable climate professionals that I spend time.
Speaking with don't realize is a Forest Products Company, from
Brazil is not cutting rainforest.
They're not deforesting, in fact, unlike a lot of parts of
the world, say Texas, no offense, Texas companies.
In Brazil are required to protect almost a third of their
land as native Forest. Imagine telling a text Rancher,
you need to put aside a third of your land for Native Forest.
That would be a sort of non-starter conversation in
Brazil. It is legally required and
upheld, and certainly upheld by publicly listed companies who
are, you know, carefully regulated and very public about
what they do. So to begin with few Bhatia and
all of its Forest Products Company peers in Brazil are not
deforesting. It's just a basic reality.
What are they doing? They're growing trees on
plantations. So that is a mono speed.
These conversation it's a lot more similar to Soy production
or corn production. I call it slow growing corn.
These are there closer to agriculture companies then then
the Lumberjacks of yesterday. But they have a very interesting
conversation that that I think there's a future opportunity and
this is where our conversations tend to hover.
It's why when they asked me to join their Advisory Board I said
can I be me? You know, because I'm a bit
weird and I'm I'm going to say some things that maybe don't
show up. In every conversation I'm going
to talk about biomimicry. I'm going to talk about
regenerative agriculture. I'm going to talk about why
creating shared value, doesn't mean giving permission to
communities to have rates. It means the knowledge is in
your communities. They know the forest, they know
the soil. They know the hydraulic you know
the hydrological Cycles better than anyone.
That's where the value is. So it isn't about allowing them
to function. It's about enabling them to
thrive and maybe you'll generate some value through that.
So I'm not Ali convincing anybody of anything but I am I
may be a bit of a Spore based actor within a corporation where
I'm trying to sort of sneeze, a few spores on to people and some
worse than Kristoff. I like you guys some will take
purchase and evolve. Some may just, you know, cause
infections and harm, but I do think it's important.
And I mean this With all sincerity and respect and
challenging myself as well, that we check our assumptions at the
door that we let go of Zil Forest company deforestation.
And we try to understand what is the status of deforestation in
Brazil right now and how does it relate to that of Indonesia,
which is also globally relevant and very different.
And by the way, how does that relate to Canada or the United
States and the simplest pattern, which I learned in my travels,
in which I seek to express through some of my writing?
Is that the biggest difference is we just deforested a long
time ago. So like we're sitting on one big
deforested patch right now and we don't call this
deforestation. Ian, but we're pretty quick too.
You know, retweet memes that trash a company tied to
deforestation their supply chain without understanding, you know,
the house you own that, you're generating personal Equity from
that you're proud of and good for.
You is part of a deforestation supply chain but come on your
ear shattering. My my sense of know that you're
absolutely right. I looked at a picture the other
day of Seattle and 1880 and I saw The old growth trees.
Very few still standing there over 200 feet tall, but, you
know, they're all gone, like, in Seattle.
Proper in Seattle, proper, right?
And it was quite interesting just to thank, yeah, we used to
have enormous forest in the Pacific Northwest and they're
all gone because we deforested and we built cities with them
that burned down and then we built them against.
Oh great more lumber right? And I don't I don't mean to
disparage progress or home ownership or Urban Development.
I mean since Plea to cast light on my understanding of reality.
And one of the other things I do in making trouble, in a lot of
this has come from listening and learning to your guests and, and
interacting with, I think people who are doing great things in
the regenerative egg space. And so, I bring this into my
little spores sneezing events. We see, you know, even have a
metaphor to see the forest for the trees and that's a handy
Meme and we throw that around, but if we break that down a
little bit, we see forests and within Forest, we see trees but
we can't see with our human eyes.
Is the soil microbiology, right? We know it's there.
You guys know it's there and a lot of your stakeholders are
pretty solid on what goes on in soil, although it's an emerging
scientific space but most people have absolutely no idea the
degree to which soil microbiology is what has
essentially maintained our lives on Earth through time.
And so we don't recognize what we've lost, you know, the Joni
Mitchell fellow Canadian really just sums it all up.
We don't know what We've Got Till It's Gone.
And we're still trying to figure out that Big Yellow Taxi of our
lives. And we're running to keep up
with the soil science and yet, we're bashing companies for
deforesting. Not realizing we already did
that, and we have a lot of healing and learning to do to
bring that back. Yeah, I can see it being a bit
of a problem to be the beneficiary of those past
actions but then also casting aspersions to others who are
trying to develop much less wealthy than the person
criticizing the probably Justifiably rubs you the wrong
way. You're or I try not to judge
because I'm the benefactor of that as well.
You know, I'm a middle class white lady from Canada living in
a small, but perfectly comfortable apartment in New
York City. I'm not suffering as a result of
that. Deforestation, if I stand back a
little bit further, I'd say, you know, in this, hopefully veers
us into the Silver Lining. Well, maybe I'm not suffering
today and I'm, I have many great choices and I'm excited about my
life. Laughs and I feel very engaged.
I'm aware that collectively. We have some work to do and I
promise there's a silver lining at the end of the sentence but
the not so Silver Lining is if we keep going where we're headed
will end up where we're headed, right?
Like it's not pretty and it's I'd rather avoid catastrophe.
I'd rather avoid a mass human failing and some of the
biological systems that will take down with us, and I think
we're perfectly capable. I think we have incredible
Knowledge and will and capacity. And so I'm excited about
leveraging that it's less about being rubbed the wrong way and
more unawareness of, there's a way better way to be and I'd
rather be that. Yeah.
Well what is that? What do we do?
It's so tell me the answers. We invest in Nori tokens and we
amplify what we know. I mean Nature has given us an
incredible instruction book, right?
We've got those who understand far better than I am very much.
A lay person getting sneezed on on this.
One, but we, we have the instructions for how networks
work for how soil Dynamics are able to communicate.
We have so much information about how this works.
I think what you guys are doing is an example of sort of
imitating nature, right? You're, you're a piece of a
network, you are or even multiple nodes of a network.
And so I think what we do is we amplify the pieces of the
network that work. And I mean, I love a Mighty Oak
Tree. I love seeing old growth in the
rare instances where Get to see those big trees there.
Just staggeringly beautiful, but more and more lately.
I'm like, okay, tree, you're pretty awesome.
But what's going on underneath? You is where the real party is.
So I think it's how do we incentivize through financial
mechanisms and inspire people to understand that party
underneath? I think that's the path forward.
I've heard people all described as the underground economy, I
like, what is the party underneath?
Yeah, that's reaction is, that's for all the informations being
Transferred and the carbons being exchanged and they're
talking to each other and it's really crazy to think about the
web of interconnectivity and the way that the mycorrhizal fungi
or sort of Ross, you're learning all about this through.
This is this make it like a tree mullet or it what its business
up top. But the party nice Apollo for
the win. Yes, it does.
Well done, well we're sort of burying the lead a little bit.
I think there's an exciting announcement that I'd like to
put on the air. You know, nor he has done.
Webinars on our own and that has had some success and we've
shared some knowledge but I just got off the phone with one of
your colleagues who gave me permission to say this so Nori
and volans will be working together to help share knowledge
about much of what we're talking about in the new carbon economy
in the drawdown carbon drawdown economy, and like how my all
this work, and how can we educate and share knowledge.
So that the world is even more interconnected and has the
agency to do something and really create change.
So that makes me excited. I kind of want to put it back to
you in terms of your a changemaker whether you like it
or not the rent, you're a troublemaker.
But you're really a change maker and you're totally right to call
me out and say, no, it's not about convincing, it's about
guiding and in some way and so that said, we okay, we don't
need to use the word convinced, but I'm furious.
What the rate of change is not happening.
Quickly enough, we really need to The needle like now, how do
we do it? Yeah I'm right there with you.
You know I had a really heartwarming but also
challenging conversation was a good friend of mine.
I don't know if you guys know Nick Parker who sort of the
grandfather of the cleantech movement based in Toronto.
Toronto has like a weird Vortex of really neat folks doing
amazing stuff including Nick and he was asking me.
So what are you doing for a living these days?
And the first thing that came to mind really unsought through was
I worried and, you know, I didn't lead with that, when you
asked me what I do, But I feel like in a way I totally got it.
I've got that fire in my belly and and it's on a cellular
level, right? Like, I feel like I this may
sound drastic and irritating but I feel deeply concerned about
where we are and how we shift. I do think it's worth as a sort
of not just a coping mechanism, but a progress mechanism, it's
worth focusing on where knowledge is emerging that can
help. So for I mean, definitely, But
you guys are doing and and listening to you and following
some of the trails you've pointed to has been helpful a
few come to mind. For example, you know, there's
an amazing book called the soil will save us by an author named
Christian Olsen. I know that some of your people
are familiar with her people and you know, that book puts in such
accessible terms really basic soil science and why the the
sequestration of carbon in soil is a key piece of the solution
and I think of work by people like that.
And I think that's that's part of where we need to go.
We need it's Not sexy. It's not you know the greatest
Ted Talk in the world. It's not, I don't know, I guess
there's stuff on Netflix or whatever it may be.
It's not that and that's not how people want to spend their time
but if we're serious about getting where we'd rather be I
think we need to energize the stuff that's working and stop
energizing the stuff that's not. I also think there's some hidden
Pathways like I think one of the fun things I remember about
field trips as a kid, you know, where he went on these need
field trips, whatever. It was the greatest parts were
things. You didn't know, we're going to
happen and I feel like that's part of our path forward is like
what, what am I not thinking of? So I'll give an example of
something. I wasn't thinking of that.
Just fell into my lap and made me feel really encouraged.
I was in São, Paulo for the last two weeks, I was there for a
committee meeting with food idea.
I had a chance to present at the stock exchange, they're doing
some really interesting things. They have a carbon index, by the
way, we should put a link to that on your site.
Really interesting conversations.
Leading conversations, that get missed, because they're in
Portuguese. But then I had a chance to hang
around a little bit and catch up with a few other folks that I've
had the pleasure of getting to know.
And then since I had some time, I went with some friends to a
musical performance at this really neat, theater, sort of
Music Theater, quite a small venue.
Maybe 100 people that was restored through a crowdfunding
effort called Casa de Francesca and there was a cover-up, there
was a band, not a cover band, a band, my Anna, the lead singer
happens to be the daughter-in-law of Gilberto Geo,
amazing voice kind of reminds me of Feist just absolutely
wonderful. And she was covering xuxa songs.
I don't know if you guys know xuxa xuxa, it was a Megastar.
When I lived in Brazil, in the late 80s, continue to be a
Megastar sort of known for her cheerful singing and dancing and
engaging. Everyone kind of a Brazilian
thing hard to translate but just a Marvel of a human and in a way
I credit her with teaching me Portuguese because I watched The
Shoe Show when I was there and when my Anna did these cover
tunes of xuxa? I realized that along with being
liked Crazy kid shouldn't retro in a little bit wacky and over
there. The songs are about love and
about looking after each other and about wanting to live on
earth and making sure we get it right because xuxa the beginning
of every show would arrive from another planet.
So she arrives for this other planet but it's like you know
Earth is kind of awesome. I like it around here and we
should be good to each other. So what does that have to do
with the path forward? I was I was reminded for the
millionth time, the value of Art and creating things with Another
and in collaboration with people and sharing the beautiful parts
of it and inspiring one another, to recognize the good parts that
matter, and that wasn't just a sort of fun show.
Although it was fun. Like, you should have seen,
these were, you know, as I mentioned I'm almost a half a
century old. Most of the people in the room
were about my age. So these are like, you know, not
the Hipster crowd mostly men but lots of women as well.
And they were so into it. They look like five year olds,
there are bouncing up and down they were having such a good
time singing. Singing songs about being good
to one another. And this is at a time when I'll
just Veer into the dark side for a moment.
This is at a time when in Brazil like in other parts of the
world, there are some really really - all this, a fascist,
not okay. Forces getting a lot of air time
and those run counter to what we're trying to do, right?
Those run against being kind and inclusive.
They run against what Nature has taught us.
Nature has explained very well. That biodiversity Is resilience,
it is a form of efficiency. It is a form of a future
insurance policy. And so inching towards sameness
is a dangerous dangerous Prospect, that's not just a
political point of view. It's what Nature has been
building into her instruction manual for 3.8 billion years.
So hearing that from an unbelievably talented vocalist
wearing the kookiest outfit you've ever seen looking really
sexy and just having all these people bouncing up and down with
Joy. It was a reminder that part of
the path on this field. Trip of life isn't just climate
science and policy. It's just reveling in what feels
good and right. I have a bumper sticker that I
bought on the lot at a fish show that says, save the Earth.
So we have someplace to Boogie nice.
Exactly. My Anna would be right there
with you. I'll send you the link to her
parts of her shows just mind-bending and heartwarming.
I think that's part of the path. It really speaks to a lot of the
things that we think about the interconnectivity is sort of,
We're All in This Together. We have this moment to bend the
curve. I mean we're talking about
reversing climate change which sort of look at it from a very
carbon Centric point of view and Nori stays laser-focused on the
carbon removal but we know that's just one piece.
So I would be interested to sort of hear from you.
Learn to paint this back to how you see carbon fitting into the
broader sustainability. Three and specifically.
Because we know Nori is just one piece of it and obviously, we're
not hubristic enough to say we're reversing climate change
alone. No, we're just trying to push
along in this direction by starting a new market.
So how do you see kind of the whole carbon story fitting
together? Yeah, I love that question and I
think it actually underscores some of where the conversations
will go in those webinars that you reference with John
elkington and team. So I'm really excited that
that's going to unfold. I think there's a few ways.
One is in that broader narrative For Paradigm and I think you do
contribute greatly to that which is helping companies.
So let's let's talk about corporate sustainability for a
moment which is really where a lot of my focus has been.
It's helping companies, recognize that as they do what
they do, which is develop and Implement strategies,
sustainability, Innovation, investment.
All the things they do, is they go but their strategic ways that
they shift their understanding and therefore, their planning
and implementation of their plans to go Well, beyond
emissions reduction because what we've noticed so far is that
companies have really focused on emissions reduction and energy,
renewable energy, that's being where they go.
So, I think the opportunity here is to help every company across
any value chain. See that?
This is a story, they are part of.
Obviously you guys are really switched on to Agriculture and
other points of value chains that touch the soil but there's
more I'll give a super quick example that's been on my mind
lately where we Take for example Automotive.
They've been thinking about climate for a while.
They've been looking at light waiting and getting Energy
Efficiency into their fuel and approach to moving cars forward,
that's great and they need to do more of that and, you know,
thank you for doing that. But what if we looked at how the
cars were actually made and looked at the materials that go
into the interior of a car, we've got interface, making
climate positive, carpet tiles. What if some of those climate
positive carpet components were on the interior of a car?
We've got kovas. Tro making Industrial Foams and
other Plastics and Coatings using CO2 as a feedstock.
What if some of those are in the interior of the car, it starts
to get more interesting. But even then you're still just
looking at a piece of the puzzle.
What if we go to the wider system?
And we say, we know that vehicle electrification is happening.
It's happening, more or less in some regions.
What if we go to a region? Where the grid is, still not
very renewable. So you've got an electric
vehicle, you plug it in. And this is what a lot of people
argue against electrification rate, but they still burn coal
here. Okay, no problem, plug your car
in your Urging, or plug the current, it might not be yours,
you're sharing it. And now that electricity is
drawn on a grid that is not renewable, but the 10 carbon X
prize finalists, all of which are making products across
different value chains, not all in energy in many, many value
chains are using CO2 as feedstock for their products so
that non-renewable, whether it's coal or Gas Energy Generation.
Well that's what we'd like to transition off of in the
long-term we know, The best-case energy scenarios include burning
fossil fuels into the future at least a couple decades out.
So as we're doing that, were capturing that CO2 as feedstock.
So you plug in your EV, you capture that CO2 that goes into
totally other value chains that have nothing to do with the car
that you Plugged In which by the way is including climate
positive, interior materials and very efficient.
I think those kinds of system shifts that touch multiple
value, chains that draw an emergent.
He's that rethink how we understood that waste CO2, that
recognize the opportunities in many, many different ways and by
the way have the potential to be highly commercially viable.
I think that's how we shift and stop talking about emissions
reduction only within the corporate strategy context.
Yeah the Nori term around here that you've heard a million
times by now is more shots on goal.
I think it's important that we have lots of different things
going on. We Get hung up sometimes with
monetizing ecosystem Services. Sometimes, if you isolate one
variable, in this complex system, you could overdo it too
much and we like carbon removal because it is relatively simple.
But if you think about the entire climate space and
activism and economics, that make it up.
It's also very complex ecosystem.
And we do need all these different projects going on.
There's also a line, I think, John Stuart Mill, has it in on
Liberty, he says something like there's always a party of order
and a party of Press. And if you only have one of
them, they would just run. Like, it would either be pure
status quo or be like total, Jacobin French Revolution style,
do everything from scratch, you need.
You need both of them in relationship to temper the worst
elements of the other. So even sometimes, if we're for
criticizing people that we don't necessarily like their approach
to climate change, and in a weird way, I'm almost grateful
that they exist. No matter what just for the
example, feel free that was a tenuous one.
But I wonder if you agree that was beautiful Ross.
And I think Lorraine if you want to respond.
Yeah. You know you've touched on the
language point and in interesting ways, I know we
don't have all the time in the world so I'll try to bundle this
one and put a bow on it. You referenced an author whose
work. I'm not familiar with talking
about order and progress and that is eerily relevant to the
conversation today. Those two words translated in.
Portuguese are the current official flag of Zillow or Demi
Progressive exactly and if you're bored and looking for
reading my most recent blog post redrew, the Brazilian flag and
what I did was I've been having a lot of fun with Google
translate. It's really fun.
You can put a word in and translate it but then you can
see alternative translations and some of them are just helpful
synonyms and some of them Verge on absurd, that's a whole other
fun conversation. But if you just take some time
and think of a synonym for order, one of them is sequence.
And another synonym for progress is evolution.
And so I redrew the flag to think about sequence and
evolution which to me is just a reinterpretation of what nature
is doing all the time. It's sequencing our Evolution,
we may or may not understand it. We may or may not like it or
benefit from it. I just throw that out there
because it's quite interesting you referenced order and
progress. But more importantly, I believe
language is important. I think there's a reason to
explore and test. Why different terms work or how
to improve a narrative with better language, the folks at
Carbon X prize released a really interesting, Port a report and
during climate week the other day around the language of
carbon and exploring, you know, Carbon removal versus circular
carbon and cetera. So good things to hone in on
there. But two points, I want to make
on this that I remind myself and I try to do so respectfully.
When I hear people demanding a certain form of language which
comes up more than I would like in our field and I'm not sure
it's always useful. The first is that there is not
going to be one phrase because we don't all speak the same
language. Like even if we All decided
carbon removal is the one guess what?
It doesn't mean anything in Mandarin or Portuguese.
So, you know, get over ourselves, North American white,
people speaking English. There's a whole big world out
there and they don't all speak English so we're not going to
find the right phrase. We don't need the right phrase.
Reminder nature loves diversity, but the second thing I remind
myself is to check. What has the language done to my
understanding over time? I first learned about climate
change also known as the greenhouse effect in 1989 living
in. On a field trip to the Amazon it
was called of8 of stuff. The greenhouse effect or fatal
stuff, then it became global warming and then it became
climate change. It's probably a whole other
podcast to explore how and why that changed.
But I really challenged us to think long and hard about how we
understand the challenge, when we call it global warming versus
when we call it climate change and look for those Those Clues
from language or language lose as I call them because they give
us a lot of information, not in an unequivocal way, but in a
useful way we've had that discussion.
Internally Alessandra is definitely on team global
warming. Other people have switched back
and forth, I don't put words in her mouth, but yeah, we have a,
it's hard to find the correct way to describe complex effects
like that. But having those discussions, I
was reading the other day. That was saying that the most
vibrant ecosystems are all where they messed up against Each
other, and I think that like we have strong opinions.
Obviously, if you listen to the podcast, you can probably guess
some of our leanings. But we're friends with lots of
people who disagree with us and read a lot of things that people
don't. And I think we're all better for
that rather than having to sort of, like, static approach, which
the worst crime of all, is that of being boring, right?
So I agree with you. Yeah.
Nature favors that a verse and you should do the same thing,
ideologically and in your space when you're thinking about How
to think about climate and what to do about it?
You say, that's a fair fair thing to say, yeah, I would.
Absolutely. And the only line I would draw
is recognizing where something really isn't.
Okay. Yeah, that's where I think we're
in an interesting space, including in the global warming
climate change greenhouse effect space, where we need to be
really honest and open to recognizing, even genuinely,
uncomfortable, truths and ask ourselves, tough questions, and
come up with the most honest answers because the The truth is
climate change has always been happening, it's anthropogenic
climate change. That is part of the problem,
right? The climate has always been
changing and that's okay. And, you know, if we kind of
think about what was the first climate change.
Well, is when this wonderful chemical reaction,
photosynthesis occurred that changed the climate in a
dramatic way and then you kind of go back and there was a great
oxidation event which killed off the majority of life on Earth
and all of these climate changes are things that are beyond our
control. But now Now we're having this
Global awakening us being humans that we are causing it.
And now that we have this recognition, it's kind of this
Collective conversation, we're all having well what do we do
about it? And there's no one right
solution, it's kind of, yes and yes, and all of the above let's
move as quickly as possible. That said, we certainly have our
biases about easier ways to cooperate, and they can make
things happen. And obviously, there are, there
should be a line. This came up on the podcast that
John elkington to rehearse iCarly.
Phones approach where you're trying to show them a better way
of doing things. These big corporations, you
don't necessarily want to be harming the planning's like,
well, yes, but you can't just give them a free pass.
Sometimes you also need to be ready to criticize even publicly
and like being open to other ideas or having a diverse set of
ideas does not mean that you give everyone a free pass.
You shouldn't be. Yeah.
So open-minded your brain falls out as the old ezekiel's.
A joke goes but uh yeah, we should do another one of these
Because there's literally too much content.
It's bursting out of the seems there's a brains are falling
out. No, it's being hemmed in and I
was trying to do a little knitting knitting, I got?
Yeah, I couldn't. I don't know the line, I'll get
you guys, moving and spinning, and then you'll be able to go
there really easily. It's just Rife with metaphors
will be that the tech company with a knitting room, Gandhi had
all these people spend every day.
Every day that's amazing how well this this has been a lot of
fun. I look forward to the next time
we have you back on and to all the collaborations Between Nori
and volens and the broader community.
That wants to reverse climate change.
It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much guys.
Thank you.