Hey, thanks for listening. This is Ross Kenyon.
I'm the host of Reversing Climate Change, the podcast you
are listening to right at this very moment.
Before we get into the bulk of today's show, I'd love to tell
you about our sponsors, Absolute Climate and Philip Lee LLP.
I've made great radio with both. Of them, they should be familiar
to you if you listen to this show.
But I want to tell you about why you should learn a little bit
more. The first sponsor is Absolute
Climate. I did a show with their founder
Peter Miner few months back and a lot of people love that show.
I was asking a question of can registries design their own
methodologies for carbon markets without it being a conflict of
interest? An absolute climate's thesis is
no, they shouldn't be in the business of doing that.
We. Actually need to.
Disintegrate functionality within carbon markets even
further. They are literally the only
independent standards body for carbon removal that exists.
Their name is very well chosen. I.
Think they are some of the most aggressively idealistic people
within carbon removal. It's come up on reversing
climate change so many times about how and why there's
tension between commercial teams and science teams within carbon
markets. There's some fundamental tension
between the rules of running a business, or I should say the
rules of running a profitable business is maybe a better way
to put that and climate impact. And I think Absolute is one of
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know of them over there, I think they're going to be some of the
staunchest holdouts. Just trying to make sure that
there can be a justified true belief that a ton purchase is a
ton truly removed. They're betting big on not
compromising. It's a bold strategy.
I respect the absolute hell out of that.
Absolute is very much doing things their own way and they
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Go check them out. I really am endlessly fascinated
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fascinating. Part of our.
Shared social life, It structures so much of it.
It's badly understood by most people.
Just structuring deals within carbon removal is hard.
I'm talking grown up deals here, like when you're trying to put
together an enormous package, complicated structuring, a lot
of money, changing hands. The stakes are high.
You really do need a good lawyer.
I'm sorry to tell you that if you are a startup out there in
carbon removal, you're going to probably pay a fair amount of
money to lawyers. There's just no way around it.
Your choice is basically do you get a bad lawyer or a good
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Show it's awesome and. It's LinkedIn, the show notes,
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You really make this so that it's something that in a busy
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coming back and making more, reversing climate change.
Thanks so much for what you do. And now here is the show.
Hey, thank you. So much for listening to
Reversing Climate change. I'm the host, Ross Kenyon.
I'm a climate tech and carbon removal entrepreneur.
Today I have someone on that. If you work in carbon removal,
essentially needs no introduction.
So I won't belabor it too long before I get to today's guest.
If you could please smash that like button, as they say on
YouTube, subscribe to the show. If you're not already
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review. Something really simple, really
quick. Write it up right now, take you
30 seconds and is so helpful to me and would be so appreciated.
Also, five stars and Spotify is also very useful.
If you use some other app or YouTube or something else, a
great rating review goes a long way.
This week's episode likely has some bonus content that is
available for paid subscribers. For $5 a month, you can get
access to bonus content. And also the ads that I don't
read myself are removed from the show for a more straightforward
listening experience. And thanks so much for your
support. So anyways, today's guest,
Sebastian Manhart. If you hang in any carbon
removal or carbon removal adjacent spaces, you've
certainly seen Seb or Basties, as I'm told that he is often
called Bastie by the Germans, Seb by the Americans.
I'm just going to call him Ian, you know, like, I'm going to go
my own way on that one. I knew I wanted to have them on
for a long time, but only want to do a show when I could think
of an angle that would be a little bit different.
Like whenever I have guests on this show, especially those who
have a career being communicators, they often have
the things that they communicate about.
And many times they have a spiel.
And some of the shows I'm least proud of on the show are the
ones that end up with a guest inside of their spiel that I
can't break them out of. So if you listen to shows I've
done with celebrities or people who have publicists, I'm often
trying to find ways to throw them curveballs so that we can
be more spontaneous, more open. And I think that leads to a much
better listening experience. That's why I finally had this
with Sebastian. Sebastian had his first kid
recently, and we use it as a way of getting into some of the
difficult feelings of caring about climate and working on
climate in a world in which many of the trends are troubling and
what it means to be a parent inside of the circumstances, I
get Sebastian. Sebastian is a very effective
user of social media. I get some advice.
I get to share some of my. Some of the difficult.
Feelings of being a social media user produces where?
You kind of have to use it. You can't really opt out of it
at this point without taking some serious sacrifice.
OK. And and so if you don't know who
Sebastian is, Sebastian is behind so many things in carbon
removal. He's a senior policy advisor at
Carbon Future. She's a major carbon removal
marketplace. He Co founded Cdr jobs, which is
the carbon removal dedicated jobs board.
I described him during the episode as a sort of Johnny
Appleseed of trade organizations for carbon removal.
So many of the trade organizations in different
geographies around the planet have a Sebastian thumbprint on
them. He's the Co host of Cdr Policy
Scoop with Evitama. So if you want to have very
regular updates on what's happening in the world of Cdr
policy, it's also more than that.
But their main hook is to focus on policy.
Great show, very effective, very short link to all those things
are in the show notes. Sebastian, I'm so sorry.
Am I leaving anything out about your very active carbon removal
career? There's a bunch of other things.
You can you can cruise around on this LinkedIn if you really
want. Oh the Giga 10, which is a great
newsletter that updates one on a monthly basis of the 10 biggest
stories of Sebastian sees it from the world of carbon removal
and he also does a nice video podcast with Layla Connors.
Layla is the founder of Tree Media and environmental
documentary Legend. Her latest film, Legion 44,
features so many alumni of this podcast because it's all about
the world of carbon removal, so. They do a little video podcast.
Version of Giga 10 every month to that I would recommend in any
case the show we are ready to begin your properly.
Contextualized, you're ready to listen.
Now, thanks so much for your time.
Have a wonderful day, enjoy the show, share with your friends.
By the way, post about it if you like it.
And here it is. Hey, Sebastian.
Hey, Ross, this is this is another.
And you're one of the the people I listen whose voice I'd
probably listen to most. So yeah, finally here talking to
you. Likewise, but it's the case with
people that have a lot to say. And you and I both have a lot to
say that you you always want to find a way to invite people in
that would give them something new.
Because I feel like they like when someone asked me to be on
their podcast, I'm like, don't you already know what I'm going
to say about some stuff? Like, do I need to be somewhere
else? And maybe you have a little bit
of that inside of you too. You power a lot of ground like
you're you because you you do episodes on things in a lot of
different areas. So yeah, I've heard you talk
about a lot of things already. Yes, I always, my line for this
is always for better or for worse, but I think that's what I
am good at insofar as I am good at a specific thing.
I like the synthesis. I like being broad and
connecting new things. I'm not always the person that
you want with the incredible amount of depth on a single
thing. And I think there's someone else
that you should ask for those kinds of questions.
And I'm a much better question asker than an answer giver, I
think in general. So test.
That today. Oh crap.
Yeah, get this plan going. First of all, am I cool enough
to call you Seb? I hear people say call you Seb
by the way, so this is. This is a good starting point.
It's finally I can clear the air on this.
I've never actually done this. And it's really funny.
Nobody ever called me Seb until I had my first American
colleagues. And there's a thing where a lot
of Americans, they, they just default to send before they even
know me. Like my, my shorthandle is
actually busty in Germany. So it's Sebastian and Busty, but
yeah, I go by Seb with most people these days.
But yeah, it's Sebastian or Basti usually.
Wow, That's just as a result of you doing more work with
Americans. It sounds like that's what
happened. It's.
It's honestly like it's an, it's an American thing.
Europeans, they never, they say Sebastian, they never say Seb.
And then I meet an American for the first time.
They're like, hey, Seb. And I'm like why?
I don't, I don't like changing of you as more American because
in in my mind you've got a Tyrolean hat on.
Like that's like in my mind, like you are just a Tyrolean.
OK, you're really letting me clear up the air on a lot of
things now, because this is another thing that people can't
say. I always say I'm Germany,
Italian, right? And I live in the mountains in
Italy, and I have a very German name.
And for those people who are a bit more vested in history, they
might know that there's a part of Italy that's German speaking,
which is South Tyrol, which is probably what you're referring
to. So when people see my name and
they're like, I'm Italian, they're like, yeah, enjoy S
Tyrol. How is it in South Tyrol?
And this really stings because the Dolomites where I'm from,
which are these this beautiful mountain range. 2/3 of it.
And the Italian speaking part from which I'm actually from,
which is Veneto and 1/3 is in South Tyrol, and all the big
mountains, all the beautiful mountains, I'm the Italian
speaking side. But the marketing of the German
speaking side is much better. So everyone thinks that all the
great mountains, I'm the German speaking side and everyone
assumes that I live there, but I'm not.
I'm from the Italian speaking side.
Oh man, we're 3 1/2 minutes in. We've already.
I you you do reveal a fair amount about yourself online.
I feel like you do try to communicate about your personal
life and like you share that you recently became a father.
Which is it? Your first child?
First time. First human.
Yeah, I have a dog that I've had for 10 years and that was a big
step for me at the time, but it's nothing compared to having
a kid. So yeah, first time Dad.
You saved yourself there because parents hate when people say
that about dogs. I felt I find that to be like
one of those universally like, oh, I have a fur baby so I kind
of know what it's like. And parents are like, you have
no idea. You don't even know what you're
so ignorant. There's no comparing I.
Thought there would be no no. Yeah.
I kind of want to get into that with you because I think if you
are in carbon removal, obviously we see your stuff all the time.
You're very plugged into policy, but you also are a business
person. You're you're in the back end of
like basically every Trade Organization that exists.
I think it has your thumbprint on it somehow.
You're just like a. Johnny, I like trade
association. I like them.
You like them? Yeah.
It's like your main model for getting things done.
I want to find some, like, new ways to understand you and what
you're thinking about that are maybe outside of what we see
every day. I wanted this to be a Christmas
show and I wanted it to be with ugly Christmas sweaters on, but
I just did not have. Should have.
Told me I have some great ones. I have some that even used to
have LEDs that kind of blink. Unfortunately they got they
broke at some point, but I've got some good Christmas
sweaters. Send me a picture of of you in
one and I'll make it the the image for the.
Show. And so we will.
Not deny the people what they want.
They want this from you. Sebastian, that's true.
We can make that happen. OK, Yeah.
I want to see. I want to just see a little bit
more inside what your life's actually like because you are
someone who makes things happen in carbon removal.
But you're also more than that. And I know that you're also
watching this space with a fair amount of trepidation, like
probably everyone else is, and trying to make sense of it.
You have a child. Having a child, I think is an
inherently optimistic act to some extent.
And yet the the world is feeling not so good to us.
I think I've seen you bemoan the potential death or lacuna in
climate multilateralism that has me very spooked internationally.
I don't know. How do you make sense of this
hope, despair, parenthood Nexus that I think a lot of people are
probably in? It's a really tough one and I I
know that you you come with this quite a lot in your episode as
well. I know that you're very as
anyone in the space should be, right, thinking about both sides
and, and personally, it's been a rough year.
I mean, honestly, I also, I, I, you know, I haven't used letter
word recap every month, the Giga 10 and the last couple of months
it's just been I tried to put in some nice wins as well, But boy,
I've been sharing stuff that's just functioned the gut after
punching the gut. And and that's just in Cdr.
Once I look at climate more broadly, I mean, it's, you know,
if I look at the US, if I look at the world, if I look what's
happening to my country, Germany, and there's a lot of
stuff that I would never have dreamed years ago and not in a
good way. And so there's that reality.
And my way to deal with it in many ways is I have always been,
my therapist says I'm a a compulsive optimist and it's
something that honestly drives some people mad.
But it's kind of, it's helped me a lot and it's helped me also in
this situation a lot because I'm able to see all the negative
stuff, but I'm able to kind of put it in the corner in my brain
and then focus on the good stuff again and communicate that good
stuff. And kind of hoping that by
communicating the good stuff, we'll be able to generate
momentum and get more good stuff.
But it's tough, especially this year has probably been the
toughest yet, at least for me. How's it been for you?
Well, you listen to the show, so it's been up and down.
I, I find working in this space to be helpful.
I think if I were more of an observer and not doing much, I
think I would feel very disempowered and very scared.
And part of me is very focused on where to move.
Like, is there a safer place in the world to be to bet on for
the coming decades for my family and for myself?
But when I'm working at carbon removal, I feel encouraged by
the fact that I perceive I am making a difference.
I feel like I'm making connections for people.
This last month I made several what I think are very high
impact introductions to people where I'm like this is a new
business, this is a new partnership, this is a new idea.
And that stuff gives me hope. But if I if I wasn't working in
this, I think I would start feeling like this is happening
to me. And my job is for as a family
man is to find safety. And I don't want to be in that
small individual like kin kind of orientation.
I want to be able to have the moral sphere expanded to have
more and more people in the world as a whole taken into it.
But when you do feel disempowered, I can feel it
happening even in my own heart where I'm like, crap, now I'm
becoming selfish and selfish in a non pejorative way.
Selfish in a, your job is to take care of the people closest
to you kind of provider mode. And that's, that's probably like
a reptilian brain, like as old as our brains get.
And it's not helping us make the best decisions for the world as
a whole. I don't want to think a lot.
Of us have been like I, I identify with that and I think a
lot of us have been taking more of these decisions lately than
we wish. And it, it sucks, right?
Because you're spending very, yeah, money, time your brain on
things that you thought you you don't need, that you should
never have to think about. And yeah, that really sucks.
Yeah, I feel that way too. But are you saying the Giga 10
has been pessimistic? I mean, I, I really like those
newsletters. I think they're very well
organized and they're good and they're like great monthly
recaps, but I don't perceive them as being, is that you being
pessimistic as an optimist? Because it doesn't even read
that way. I just I must have.
Happened like, OK, that that's like maybe one thing that was in
the Giga 10, but that's it. I can't even remember any other
things. So literally just before this
recording, I spoke to to Leila Commons.
We do kind of a podcast video version of the Giga 10 once a
month. And as we went through it, I
realized I had kind of three really bad news in a row in it
and that there were still a lot of good stuff in there.
But but by the end of that third one, when we discussed it, we
were like, damn, this has been a rough month.
So I try overall, the way that I like to look at it, a really
good quote. I don't know who to attribute it
to, but is that what's important are not headlines, but trend
lines. And we tend to get stuck a lot
in, in headlines because that's how our brain works.
That's how newspapers work. That's how a lot of the
information we, we, we get works.
It's always headlines, headlines, headlines.
And but it's really healthy to look at trend lines.
And I love doing things like the Gigaten because it allows me or
yearly reviews and stuff, because it allows me to actually
take a step back and look at, OK, all the stuff is happening.
I have all these headlines in my head, but where is it going over
all? And when I look at that, we are
going in the right direction, right?
Like this is, this is what I perceive like both on the policy
front, on the, on the start up front on the, the, the
deliveries when we're going in the right direction and what 1
theme made. And this is an interesting one
that gets me thinking more and more about my work is this year
more than ever, I've seen the tailwinds in carbon removal come
from people that I really don't identify with really in the
politics space. And this is really concerning
and it creates kind of an ideological tension in me that
I'm sure many feel. And what I'm talking about is a
lot of the, the tailwind for Cdr has come from people who are
trying to lower climate emission.
And there's a lot of, and Cdr has been used and is being used
as we speak in countries that I worked in, in the exact way that
I always hoped it wouldn't be used, which is, you know, we
kind of want to keep doing what we're doing.
We're not going to take decarbonization too seriously.
But look, here's Cdr and I feel really, really torn because on
the one hand that's wrong. On the other hand, we are in
such a fragile situation that we, I don't think we can afford
to turn down the few governments and policy makers that are
trying to push Cdr. And so this is something that
this year has really kind of, I, I still don't know really how to
navigate that, but this is something that I'm very torn
about and that until 2025, I didn't really encounter to this
scale. Yeah.
This is maybe governments saying that they're making strategic
investments or procurement in carbon removal to scale this up,
but they're slowing decarbonization at the same time
or something kind of like that. Is that what you're pointing to
I? Mean that the most obvious
example is if you just look what happened 2 days ago in Europe,
they agreed on a 90% emission reduction target for 2014, which
is great, but then they build in 5% international credits and
this could be huge news for non European carbon removal, for
global S carbon removal. This could be the biggest demand
side boost we're going to see in the next couple of years.
And but where's this coming from?
This is not coming from increased ambition.
This is coming from people who are hoping for cheap credits
abroad to not have to do the job at home.
And you know, this is a good example where it's like lower
ambition. Everyone agrees that it's lower
ambition, but it might actually be really good news for carbon
removal. And that's the tension that,
yeah, I, I find quite hard to navigate.
I always hate this with policy. I had this when the trade war
stuff started probably close to a year ago at this point, where
everyone I know that worked in anything that touched graphite,
any critical mineral was just like, yes, we need to reassure
everything. I'm like, you know, this is this
is leading to a a world that is not as not as friendly, right?
Like overall, this is not a I'm glad it's good for you.
I'm it's going to benefit you. That's great.
But if you can do math. With it, yeah, so.
Carbon removal Has one of these potentially corrupting or
potentially myopia inducing kind of moments now, Yeah, biochar in
the global SA lot of demand. That's great, but it also just
means what we're not doing what we need to be doing.
The main thing is decarbonization, right?
That's the main show. And I'm really worried about
doing more harm than good. And this is the other thing that
I find very tough. Take this international credits
aspect. One option would be to just not
take a stance or to push against international credits, period.
But obviously, if you want to see potential demand for carbon
removal, you're going to push for international credits.
What could happen very realistically is you push for
international credits, but then you end up with no carbon
removal and you just end up with a ton of of cheap productions
that don't do the job. And you've been part of that and
you've made that partially. Obviously I don't want to
overestimate my own influence here, but you, you, you're part
of something bad that has happened.
And so that's the other thing that I'm, I increasingly see is
that push and calm removal is often a bit of a gamble where if
it turns out the way you want, it'll be great.
But there's a part where it won't turn out the way you want,
and it will actually be worse for the climate.
Yeah, I know because you've been advocating for global S
inclusion and ETS integration in Europe and carbon removal and
like that's a, I'm also at heart a free trade person.
I think if we can go to places where it's cheap and that's
helping on the global carbon budget like that's, that's good,
that's value for dollars. Like that's a good thing, but
not if it results in for like a policy leakage kind of thing
where it's like. Oh, this is actually just.
On net, not doing what we want. I love that.
I also love one of the recurring themes of the show.
I don't know if you've been listening long enough to it to
have caught all of the references to it, but do you
know the the literary device of the monkey paw?
Do you know, have you ever heard of me reference this?
Maybe remind me? It shows up in countless horror
fiction and and films, but it's usually when someone wishes for
something and they get it, but it's not in the way that you
want. Like Pet Sematary is a good
example of the Stephen King book and film where OK, if you just
like bury your kid back in here, it'll come back to life, but
it's not your kid anymore. Like something happened in the
grave and it's sure you talk, your kid is alive again, but
it's not the same kid that went into the ground.
It is dark. It's supposed to.
It's a monkey paw. Like it's supposed to be dark.
It's a horror literary device. But yeah, so you feel like you
have some monkey paw dynamics here of just advocating for what
you think is good. People are like, they love what
you're saying. They support it, and then it
gets enacted in a way where you're horrified.
Is that probably what's happening?
Yeah. Wow.
What's that? What should?
We do, right? Like I'm I'm a person.
I'm a very intuitive person and I realized that the best things
in my life came when I, when I trusted my intuition.
And I've, I've become very comfortable trusting my
intuition, which sometimes really backfires, especially
when you're like publishing a post that reaches 50 or 100,000
people before thinking about it twice.
And then you realize an hour later, I really shouldn't have
done that. That happens too.
But overall, it's a good modus operandi for me.
And and so in this case, my intuition tells me like, we're
already nowhere close to where we need to be, and we just need
to push where we can. We need to be opportunistic.
We need to get whatever we can. I just hope that in a few years
we won't look back and be like, damn, that that turn we took
there shouldn't have done that. But yeah, we shall see.
I prioritize the gut and intuition very highly.
I think people underrate it a lot and should use it more,
although you shouldn't do it when you're hungry because then
it's hard to tell like which signal is actually operating
here. Like knowing when it's actually
your intuition versus some other bodily desire is a really
important thing to know. How do you pair that with just
your rational analysis though? Because I feel like a lot of
your work is data-driven. It's very quantitative.
It's policy. Policy is not a probably a good
place for intuition. Although that being said, there
are people who are like highly intuitive policy makers or
visionary political leaders that probably are not thinking from
data, so maybe that's even a wrong supposition.
What do you think? So a little back story here is
that one of my most important early professional experience
was I was a Co founder in a in a tech startup and it was coming
out of the University of Cambridge.
I'd done a masters, all the other Co founders had done a PhD
and it was very kind of, you know, Cambridge grads startup
and we did a lot of things great.
We did a lot of things wrong, but one of our core values was
RF, which was robust as fudge and and it and basically was the
opposite of intuition. It was any decision had to be
backed up by really strong analysis and date.
And at the beginning it felt really, really good because it
gave me confident everything was always you always had a
rationale for every decision. And with the years I realized
that it just really wasn't how I worked and I ended like arguing
with I was the COI ended up arguing with the CEO so many
times. At some point I left after seven
years and, and, and since then, when I'm reflecting on that, I'm
like, OK, this was really not me.
Like I, if I, if I was running a company again, a bigger company,
I, I really wouldn't force every decision to be data backed the
way that it was there. And, and that I think, you know,
there's a time and place for data.
And especially when you communicate a lot online, you,
you do need to make sure that when you make strong statements,
you back them up with data. But there's also time of it and
a place for emotion and for and for just saying what you're
thinking and for and for ranting and for, yeah, putting something
out there that people will contradict with data, right.
Even as an, as a, as an intentional step to elicit
discussion and to get the best out of other people.
So yeah, I I'm really taking a very much more dialectic
approach these days than I think I would have done 10 years ago.
I think the dialectic is appropriate here.
Nori made all the opposite mistakes where it was very
visionary and but visionary in a way that is like some of the
things that were envisioned are still nowhere close to
happening. And you're like, cool, some more
empirical grounding and data-driven.
This might have been useful more early.
The goal is not to just be purely data-driven or purely
intuitive. The ultimate goal for being good
at business or probably anything is is being able to to marry
these things, to being able to use your intuition successfully,
pair it with quantitative analysis where appropriate, but
also not get so hidebound to either that you make poor
decisions. I think that's just what wisdom
is, as far as I know, is being able to combine those things and
wisdom has to be beaten into you by learning the hard way, I
think is mostly how that works. Yeah, there's nothing that that
I think makes you understand things as much as running a
starter when you're 25. And yeah, it's it really helped
me on a lot of fronts. You got all the answers then,
didn't you? You knew everything, I thought.
What I did, it's so funny that I mean, another aspect that maybe
people know less about. I had a burnout when I was 28
and and I was very much in the you got to work eighty 100 hours
a week kind of can and kind of glorifying that.
And, and, and I remember having an off site discussion where
somebody that is now one of my closest collaborators, Helen
Lundaby, who is now also in CDI and she works with me on all
projects. She's fantastic.
I remember her raising the point that we should have an
expectation of not working more than 50 hours a week, which is
already way too much. And I remember making such like,
yeah, taking her argument apart and being like, absolutely no.
And when I think back about those moments, I'm like, who the
hell were you? And, and thankfully, thankfully,
I ran against the wall when I was 28.
There's some people who never run against that wall or who run
against that wall much later in life and who spent decades doing
what I was doing. And I did it for 3-4 years and
it was a really low point, but everything changed after.
And for people who kind of know me also outside of work and in
my free time, they will know that I've probably one of the
healthiest setups that you can imagine.
I'm very happy with how life is and how much I work and how I
get to be in the mountains and with my family, with my wife and
with my kid and say that's another big, big learning.
And I'm glad I did it early, even though it was painful,
because I really, I hate the glorification of, of, of working
that much. I think it's one of the silliest
things we have done in our modern society.
Yeah, the worst boss I ever had quoted this Elon Musk line.
He said something like to be an entrepreneur is to chew on
broken glass while staring into the abyss.
How? Freaking depressing.
Yeah, like, like that's why are we doing this.
This is, this is terrible. Yeah.
If you hear something like that, by the way, you should run.
If you're if you're in an interview and someone quotes
that, you should get out of there.
And it's all about to realize what the yes, it's all about in
our job, not in all jobs. In our jobs, it's about the
quality of our interaction and thought.
And I realized a really interesting inverse causality of
the less I work, the higher the quality of my interactions and
thought and the more productive I am, the more successful I am,
the more compelling I am. And this is, this is something
that I think is super under underutilized by people in
business and by individuals is less is more when your job is to
be creative and impactful in the way that we are hoping to be.
So yeah. Of course the European says
this. I'm in the European August.
I know how you people do things. Yeah, you Americans, I don't get
it. I.
Don't think it works very well for us either.
One thing that helps me be much more OK with the model you just
stated is there is a way of understanding creativity and
consciousness. This is a little bit woo.
I'm going to go a little woo here.
Tiny bit. I'm not even sure that I fully
believe this, but if you can get yourself there, I think it helps
in certain ways where consciousness is more of a field
rather than something that's endogenously generated by a
material brain. And creativity is something that
is received. Your mind, your body more of an
antenna for receiving intelligence rather than the
thing that's generating intelligence.
Even if this is poetry, if you think that way, your job is to
clear enough space where you can be creative.
It doesn't mean you fill all your time up with meetings, but
you have enough time where you're thinking passively and
openly and then things come to you.
And a lot of the ideas that I've had recently, we're doing just
that, not overbooked. That's really resonates like
super high value. I'm like targeted.
I know exactly what to do. I know who to introduce.
This is the deal. You guys should cut this deal.
This is serious. And that's that's not because I
was working 80 hours a week. It's because I was listening
very effectively. I think my.
Best business ideas have all come while cycling or running or
hiking. All without exception.
Not while I was sitting at the desk.
And those, I mean, the decisions that kind of really changed the
trajectory of what I was doing. They all happened when I was
outdoors doing something that I love.
And when that happens, not one or once or twice, but 10/15/20
times and you see that pattern, you, you realize I, I have to
get, I, I mean, I love doing that stuff.
But even just from a business perspective, from a career
perspective, that's how I get the best outcome.
Otherwise I will never have those ideas.
It works. You don't have to.
I don't know the mechanics of it.
I don't know if it's just exercise, taking a break, weird
thoughts about creativity. It doesn't matter.
The proof is in the pudding, as we might say.
It just kind of works. Yeah, I find that too.
Why do we fetishize it then? Is there something about the, I
don't know, toxic hustle culture?
We got to be super busy. Makes us look productive and
important. And I.
Was I was a proponent of that. So I, I, I get it.
I understand that I was part of that.
I was, I was pushing my managers, my employees to the
brink for years. And I feel awful for it now.
And I'm like, what, what? And we were, and the worst part
is at the time, we thought we had this best working place in
the world, right? We had all the flexibility,
unlimited paid time off, all that bullshit that when you,
when you, when, the minute, when the manager at the top is, is
exuding toxicity day-to-day, it doesn't matter what policies you
have, you're just going to have miserable people in your team.
And when they have families, you know, you're 25, you don't get
it. At least I didn't, and I'm not
proud of that. That is the one, the one group
of people that in considering who to work for, if I want to
take a full time position somewhere, I'm like, I don't
really want to work for a 25 year old CEOIII think that's the
one. I'm like kind of discriminatory
again for him. Like I think you need to come
back to me 20 years later. And almost up to you.
I mean quick reference my the the I mean main company I work
with right at common future. The reason that I ended up with
them is exactly this is because Honus, the CEO is freaking
awesome. He had two kids ready early in
life and he is the, he's 1 of this perfect mix of kind of
environmentalist, but also he used to work in finance.
He had kids early. He kind of gets family life and,
but still works, you know, productively.
And when I saw that together, I was like, this is a person I
want to work for because he gets it right.
The things that I didn't get 10 years ago, he gets.
So I'm, I'm completely with you. I'm very picky now when it comes
to the people I work with. Yeah, Honus is somewhat because
he's a, he has a PhD in financial engineering, I think,
right. Yeah, he's one of those people
that in the long, long arc of carbon removal, as soon as it
becomes necessary to do some of that, like serious financial
engineering, you're like cool carbon feature, not a bad place
to be. Those skills, those skills are
here now. They're ready now.
And most importantly, I have to hope I don't expose him too
much. He's, he's a really strong
cyclist and I love that about him.
I love that whenever I go to Fry book I, I bring my bike, we go
out. And but again, to me, when I,
the people I work with, I don't have the expectation I had when
I was 25 that I need to be best friends with everyone.
Again. I think that's actually the
toxic, but I have the expectation the people I work
closest with, there needs to be some sort of human connection.
It can't just be a business transaction.
I need to understand the person behind the face.
Otherwise, I find it really hard to genuinely trust someone and
do good work. And with Honest I, I found that
which is really, really great. But it's something that, again,
with 25, I had a very different understanding.
Yeah. How bad was your 28 year old
self meltdown? Like what exactly happened?
I never had thankfully, except that moment month.
I never had mental health issues in my life, but I started having
essentially anxiety and almost panic attacks and couldn't
breathe and stuff, right? And it happened kind of a day.
And then I didn't really. I just went to work.
I remember opening my laptop and not being able to breathe.
And like that happened two or three times.
And then at someone I was like, click, like, what the hell just
happened here? Like where did you get to right?
And I had to be, I was building, I was building that startup.
I was building another startup in the evening from 9:00 to
12:00. It was ridiculous.
It was really ridiculous. And I was trying to have a
relationship that obviously didn't work out right?
Like, and it, it, it was crazy. And, but I remember once I
realized I went to, to the CEO and I said and done.
And I was like, look, this is happening.
Either we reduce my workload now in this meeting by 50% or I'm
out. But it's the only way this can
continue. And after that, I've changed my
life and, and two years later, I, I left the company.
And ever since I've kind of structured until then, my work
always came first. And now it doesn't like I, my
lifestyle, my, my other things come first.
And I structure my work around it.
And this is something that has been game changing for me is the
acceptance that I can do impactful, meaningful work that
I really enjoy and that can sustain my life without it being
the top priority, which it is for many people, but for me,
it's just not anymore. I'm genuinely surprised to hear
you say this because you strike me as someone who is
ridiculously productive. Not just the frequency and depth
of your posting and your writing.
I saw how many words he wrote in the last year.
Just like that's a huge number. There's podcast, there's stuff
that I don't know about that I'm sure is like policy briefs and
other things for Carbon Future, other clients.
There's trade organizations, you.
Delegate. Really.
Yeah.
I I want to add that. I I know that's the answer at
least partially, but it's true. So Sebastian, like what is the
mechanics like who doing all this thing for you?
Yeah, the people think I wear crazy eyes.
I really don't. And I've surrounded myself with
probably 8-9 people and over the years that are exceptional, that
are highly autonomous, that require almost no management.
Like literally half an hour a week at Max.
And I often batch them together. So there's maybe 2-3 hours of
management per week and they are just incredible.
Some of which I like Helen, the person who asked for the 50K50
hour week, I've been working with her for more than 10 years,
right? And, and she's been kind of
transitioning with me now into carbon removal in other places.
And, and so I, I think I'm just really, really good at finding
and retaining very good people and delegating to them.
It's the only explanation I have because yes, I have a lot of
output, but I don't work as much as people think.
Are these paid by you? Is it the different businesses?
Does Carbon Future have like a team for you behind the scenes?
Like what? What?
How did this all work? Well, there's different,
different entities, right? There's different things I run
and they're paid to different entities.
Basically there's a policy scoop, there's Cdr jobs, there's
kind of my consult, my policy consulting, right?
So there's different entities and some of which, Helen, for
example, she works on every single project of mine because
she's so good. And but yeah, they're all
freelancers doing their thing in different businesses of mine.
And for me, it's working great and it's keeping getting better
and better. So I'm I'm very glad with that.
Are the rest of us just fools that we're we're artisanally
cranking this stuff out? And you're Henry Ford.
You know this assembly line of freelancers.
That's one thing that I showed that anyone who works with me
closely knows I'm obsessed. Like I I said earlier about the
intuition, right to do stuff, but when it comes to analysis,
I'm insanely data-driven. Like I analyze the crap out of
everything to understand patterns and to understand what
works and doesn't work. And I've been doing that for
years. And so I've been gradually
optimizing everything I output to see what actually what
actually has an impact. However, I define impact for the
given activity. If I can't track it, I probably
don't do it in the first place. Like I, I really don't like,
I'll give you an example. I was thinking of writing a book
and I was kind of of thinking about it.
I even started a proposal. And then I decided halfway
through that to drop it because I realized it didn't fit my
modus operandi for how I do pretty much anything else and
everything else. And that's the beauty of working
through all these digital channels.
You have data, so you can be intuitive, you can be impulsive,
you can you can try things out, but when you look back, the data
doesn't lie. Like you can see what worked and
what doesn't. And when you keep optimizing
your activities for years with data, you end up with stuff that
doesn't take a lot of time and that has pretty big reach and
impact. And so I guess that's a big
component of the story as well. Interesting.
I, I feel like that's a part that I fail at in my own content
creation that I think by the time this comes out, the, the
last of the carbon removal shows, new little series will
have aired. And I gave an interview for
that. I end up talking about how the
podcast for me is almost more art for art's sake.
Like I don't, I don't have like a goal with it.
I, if no one listened to it, if I get one good comment of
appreciation for every show, I'm like, that's good enough for me
almost. Cuz I, I, I process my own
thoughts through it and the creative product, I've detached
myself from the outcome. But there are times I'm like,
I'm like, surely leaving money on the table by not being
obsessively data-driven and growing this thing.
But then I also have a bit of a tricky relationship with social
media. I'm not a very showy person.
I don't like having to say, Hey, everyone, stop what you're
doing. Like you must listen to this
thing. It's the most important thing on
your feed right now. But the people who are able to
do that confidently and successfully in that kind of
way, the results are there to to see for all.
But I think a lot of people maybe get caught in a similar
thing where they're proud of their work.
But the the way that social media encourages us to behave, I
think makes us feel a little bit icky.
This is me getting free advice from you.
What should I do? No, but it's, it's a tough
world, right? Because I mean, take, take my,
my wife is an actress. And it's really interesting
because we come from completely different worlds.
We, our professions couldn't be more different.
And the social media we use is completely different.
But one thing we have in common is that both professions, in my
opinion, depend to a huge extent on personal branding in in the
digital space. Like for her, it might be
Instagram, right? For me, it might be LinkedIn.
But I think nowadays and any job for me, it's it's funny, like
even a physiotherapist. And if you're a handyman,
anything you do these days, if you have a strong online brand,
you will out compete everyone else.
And so we live in an age and that sucks.
Just to be very clear, I don't think it's a good thing overall.
But we live in an age where I think the people who don't play
the game, who are not comfortable on in these
channels, who are not comfortable being on social
media, also putting themselves out there, making themselves
vulnerable in a public way, which I understand fully why
some people don't want that. And they will be out competed by
people who are less qualified who can do that.
And, and I see that across professions.
And this is something that is not fair.
I don't think it actually gets the best results overall, but
it's something I recognized and I happen to be very comfortable
with that kind of stuff. It was a process, but I feel
quite comfortable with it. And once I realized this is how
it works, I was like, OK, of course, like let's go for it.
Yeah, it's one of those lingering things I've been
thinking about. I know I need to confront it.
I'm, I'm also content with with what it is for its own sake, but
I also wouldn't mind growing it. And for the people who like it,
they really like it. There's probably more of them
out there who don't even know about it because I'm being shy
about it in a weird way and it's not really helping anything by
doing it, by acting better than the algorithm.
I don't need the algorithm. I don't want to participate in
LinkedIn to the extent that is necessary to truly Max this out.
I messaged you recently because I had a post that I felt like
was vulnerable that was dealing with some of the just a grief of
working in climate. Like this is like, I think a
fairly real post. And yeah, but like some of
there's like mechanical errors of like OK, you're you're re
sharing from a post like. This.
Is like don't do that at all. And some other parts of it are
also things like, I don't know, maybe it's not written in a way
that is I don't. I'm sure I could ask AI if I
wanted to like rewrite this in a way that that the algorithm is
going to favour on LinkedIn and 10 seconds later it'll be like
cool, post this and it'll probably work.
But this actually, by the way, you're opening up a whole nother
area, which I think is super interesting, which is AI
generated content in our space. And actually I'm going to
release this one. I've been doing a quick and
dirty again. I'm want to see data.
I have an intuition. I want to see data.
I I did a quick and dirty analysis and of I shall not name
them by kind of the top 20 influencers, CDI and climate.
I looked at the last 15 polls and I ran them through a couple
of AI check checks, you know, just because I wanted to see
like I had the feeling like that our that in the last 6 to 12
months, like a lot of the content out there.
I'm not I work with with Chachi PD all the time, right.
I have it proofread my drafts. I have to give feedback to me.
I help to bounce things set back and forth.
And I think anyone who's not doing it, it's just, you know,
not utilizing this amazing tool. But what really irritates me is,
and maybe that's just me, but is when I see content that is 100%
obviously copy and paste generated by GPT and I see more,
more of that content go viral. People love it.
And I, and I'm, I'm just like, I'm like ripping my hair out.
I'm like, what's going on here? I'd so obviously something like
it really triggers me when I see those posts and then I see like
500 likes something. Then I'm like, who are these 500
people? And then I see people that I
know and I'm like, you like this stuff.
I don't know if you've noticed that, but to me that's that's
been something that's been, yeah, tricky.
I don't. Know the the.
The show that's going to come out before this that I
referenced earlier today, I'm about to edit that out because
it's not going to make any sense to a listener.
Yeah. The the dynamic here though, is
you also have to make the nice a little bit.
And so there are people that you know, you, you throw a like,
it's like appreciated. There's sort of a economy of
approbation and affection happening.
That's fine. Even there, I, I like something
sometimes where I'm like, this is fine and I'm glad you exist.
So here's a like, it's not necessarily the most insightful
thing or whatever. Maybe there was a big AI assist
and well, I don't, I don't necessarily mind that,
especially if maybe the core ideas came from a particular
person, but they, they use help to get through the laborious
writing process. Like whatever it is just some
original idea in there that probably came from you.
I get advice from AI sometimes I'm like, this doesn't make any
sense at all. So I see something like that
sometimes too. Yeah, I'm.
Just I'm, I'm wondering what will social media look like in
like even LinkedIn? What will LinkedIn look like in
five years? Like there's, that's my
hypothesis, which is that people will crave authenticity and that
very few formats lend themselves to authentic content anymore.
Not text, audio for a while. Video I'm getting really scared
about like how good some of these video models are getting.
So it's, it's really tricky for me to know what will be truly
authentic content. I love lives.
I love doing lives because that feels like the most authentic
thing we can do is get someone on a live and talk in front of
people and whatever they say will be listened to, right?
But there's also a side of me and I'm trying to go all in.
I'm kind of more authentic content because my hypothesis is
that that will pay off. But there's also a side of me
which things the solely AI generated, like, yeah, momentum
that's happening now could destroy social media once and
for all. Because if you just have AI
interacting with AI and there's no human involved anymore, I
mean, what's the point going on LinkedIn, right?
No idea. What do you think?
Yeah, I've seen the predictions of the like, slop overwhelming
social media and the Internet as a whole, and that being like a
major risk for the Internet as it's currently structured.
And there's probably something to that, I don't know.
I find LinkedIn and a lot of these spaces to be somewhat
aggravating already. Social media I don't hold in
great high esteem and have them for a long time either.
They do weird things with your data all the time.
They don't care about you and they're not your friend.
They make poor decisions. Some of them buy carbon removal.
Cool. Not sure that makes them a great
global entity, but thank you. Like I, I don't know.
And it I don't like the way that it forces us to reform, like
monetizes by engagement through anger.
Like you stay on because you're pissed off.
I think like X and Twitter often has that LinkedIn has it where
you get a lot of like some of the posts that will do well and
there will be like, here's a selfie of me at a conference and
I'll see like 400 like like, cool, you like bought a ticket
and went somewhere like why? Why is that worthy of this
amount of approbation? And it's really frustrating.
But then I'm it also, it also knows that it's probably pissing
me off, like looking at a really low quality kind of idiotic
post. And so I'm engaged on LinkedIn
by looking at other people being performative and showy about
their own like quote, UN quote accomplishments here.
And then I so I'm engaged too. Like it was also working off of
anger. And I don't like being in spaces
that encourage the basest parts of our animal natures here.
I find I'm like, not sure that increasing digitization of all
of our lives and all of our social relationships are worth
it. That being said, though, there
are so many places like if you're a parent, you know, like
your child's school has a very active Facebook group or
something, you might you might not even want to be on Facebook,
but if you're not, you're missing information that's
valuable. The stuff they always make it
like just valuable enough that you can't really leave.
And Linkedin's like that too. Like if I left LinkedIn, the
opportunities for me would would not be as great.
Like I got a lot of lot of good stuff comes from LinkedIn for
me. But.
I think I would also kind of like to not have to play the
game, be like, guys, I have a new affiliation.
I just started a new thing. Here's a new podcast.
Like, everyone, stop what you're doing and listen to me.
But if you don't do it, then you're also not getting the
opportunities. That's always just just good
enough to keep me in the mix. But I can't like get off of it.
And then or you could just like go be a hermit or like Bill
Murray apparently has a voicemail that you can just call
and ask him to be in your movie and like state the terms of it.
And that's why he doesn't even have an agent.
Like could I just do that? I don't think I, I don't think
I'm far enough along career wise to to just have like a landline
with a with a answering machine you're.
Getting there, Ross, you're getting there.
Sorry. I just went on like a 10 minute
rant on this, but I I find the whole social media business to
be inherently sort of icky and corrupted in this way.
But I also know that I kind of have to use it here.
Help me disabuse myself at least some of those notions unless you
totally agree. I mean, you've done almost have
you done 400 episodes of this podcast yet?
Have. You count that and carbon
removal newsroom, it's probably like closer to five, I think so,
OK. There you go.
I mean, that's your answer, right?
Like you, you've really built a platform that you can control,
that you can keep authentic, whatever that means to you,
right? And, and that's incredibly
powerful. And yeah, be on LinkedIn, do
your thing, but like, you have your channel.
And that's something that's actually really important to me
is I, I, I, of course I'm on LinkedIn, Everyone knows that.
But I, my biggest objective is to diversify away from LinkedIn
and to, I mean, the podcast. I love that that whole
experience has gone into a direction I would have never
dreamed. It's, it's amazing.
And the opportunities that come from it and the conversations I
get to have there and we control it 100% and it's authentic.
And so I, I, I'm a huge, I was always a fan of podcast.
Now I'm a huge fan of being a podcaster.
It's amazing. And so for me it's more about
building those platforms in future.
Still doing LinkedIn, I see a lot of value there, but I really
prefer things like we are doing now and that I get to do in the
policies group. For me there's much more.
Value there. What's being a parent like for
you? So what I, what I find really
interesting is that before being a parent, I, I, now that maybe
one step back, I act very intuitively and I don't think
too much about the negative consequences of what a certain
decision could have, could have. Again, can be bad, can be good.
I adopted a dog and then went to my employer and said, I have a
dog. I need to bring him into the
office. That example when I was 20.
And, but even with the kid, I didn't think too much about it.
And I'm glad I didn't because it's just really difficult.
And there are two sides. Often it's like, oh, being a dad
is amazing or being a parent is amazing or being a dad is
exhausting. They coexist.
And what I didn't understand before enough is that within a
minute, within an hour, within a day, you will have great
happiness that you've never known before and love coexist
with complete exhaustion, despair and frustration.
And that, that kind of those two things happening at the same
time. I wasn't ready for that.
And now I'm, I'm starting to. But it, it, it's almost
everyday, both of them. And so, yeah, it's, it's a lot.
That's usually what I tell people is that it's everything
that people say about it. It's it's the most rewarding
thing. It's beautiful.
It's incredibly aggravating at points to there'll be sometimes
where I'll be I'll be praising my son for something to I was
talking to my wife and and be like celebrating some
achievement. And then I'll go walk in the
other room to check on him and be doing something that's like
is well known to be against the rules.
And it's just like, what are you talking about?
What is this man? We we talked about this.
Come on, it never stops as far as I know.
I think that's just like part of it.
Maybe that's just also people. People are both like some of the
most, most wonderful things on the plant to interact with.
I don't like calling them things, but but also they are
the most aggravating things. I'm I'm not that worried about
tigers. I'm not that worried about rain.
I'm, I'm like pretty worried about people making decisions,
but I'm also like most encouraged by people making
decisions too. How old is your kid?
He's 1616. Wow.
Oh yeah, completely different face then, huh?
Yeah, it'll be funny story. It always says like one of the
weirdest, weirdest ways to start a family.
But I always see people, they're doing math in their head.
When I tell them that they're like, were you a teen dad?
Like, how old were you? I'm like, no, I adopted.
Don't. At what age?
At 12:00. So my my wife, I don't know if
I'll keep this in or not, but she, her family's Lithuanian
American and spent a lot of time volunteering in a children's
home in Lithuania. Met him when he was one and then
as soon as you're married long enough to qualify for adoption,
we adopted him. So we decided when he was 10 and
I think it took a toll. He was 12 to complete it.
That's amazing. I, I, it's adoption's definitely
something that I, I think I want to do in the future as well.
Like I've always really, really liked the idea.
Again, shout out again to, to the show you did on it, which I
really, really enjoyed. And yeah, I mean, I'm now
getting to do the whole newborn baby thing and it's a journey.
But yeah, in the future, I'm sure I'm I'm very open to, to
adoption as well. What are you going to do with
your kid during the climate wars of the twenty 40s?
Are you going to enlist them as a child soldier?
Are you going to wait? Honestly?
Again, trying to put that in the corner of my brain, that's on
excess very often. And but one thing that I'm
really glad coming back to what we said earlier is with work
straightened out before having a kid, because for me, it's, it's
a no brainer that my kid comes first like any time of the day.
And, and that's really important.
Like if I imagine like being in the place where I, I, I, I
really departed my work. I kind of departed my kid.
That would be right now really, really, really hot.
So, yeah, I'm glad that I took some decisions before having a
kid. Travelling little, working from
home. Like there's a lot of things
that I've done structurally that allow me to be the father.
At least I aspire to be. I don't succeed all the time,
obviously, but at least I can try, right?
And I know many people, I have the luxury of being able to do
it like this. Many people don't.
But there are also many people who could structure their life
to be much more present and who don't.
Right. And so this is something that
for me was really important before having a kid.
Yeah, I think it's very, very sensible advice.
Do you have a tradition of Christmas movies?
Or maybe you've just seen American Christmas movies where
there's a dad and he he's overworked and it's Christmas
time and like trying to meet deadlines and you just know that
by the end of the movie he's going to learn the spirit of
Christmas. And like it sounds like I've
seen 9. 100 shows like. That yeah, it's.
Like it's like, so we talked about the monkey.
Paw and we talked about whatever this archetype is called, I
don't know, it has a name. Whatever it is, it has a name.
Is the Father who needs to learn the meaning of Christmas.
And whenever I feel that way. Last year, Nori had closed in
the summer. And I was.
Doing a case study for a job that I did not get and I ended
up having to do it like I thought I would finish a couple
days ahead of Thanksgiving. And I ended up working on it a
good chunk of the morning of Thanksgiving.
And I'm like, Oh my God, Christmas movie, I got it.
Like. And anytime I find myself a
directionally approaching that, I'm like, no, no, no.
My relationship with my family way more important than whatever
stupid job this is, Don't care, do not do this.
And I find my life is much better when I make decisions
like that. Sometimes they're painful.
It's painful saying no to opportunity.
And you always wonder, like, would that have been a good
thing to say yes to? Like, am I missing out on?
It's something that I would really like to be a part of, but
you are also saying no to your family and you don't want to not
be a part of that. And I think if you say yes to
me, other things, you don't leave a lot of room for them
either when one very simple exercise.
That helped me when I left my startup was I literally just put
on a piece of paper kind of what are the big categories in my
life, you know, whatever relationship, wife, dog, sports,
job, whatever it is for a, for a person.
And then I just matched it against how much time am I
spending on these right now, my wake time.
And then I put next to it, how much meaning and happiness do I
get from each of these? And it was crazy because, you
know, work, whatever was like 60% and it didn't give me 60% of
my meaning or happiness. At no point, even at my start,
when we, when my startup was going the best it possibly
could, even at that moment, it didn't give me 60% of my
happiness, right. And then you see other things
which are just like, I don't know, you have like wife and
it's like 10% and you're like, give me 40% of my happiness.
Like, what the hell am I Am I doing?
And and it was very simple exercise, but I saw that and
then I was OK, this is my this is what I need to get to, right?
I need to make sure that those numbers add up as much as
possible. Yeah.
Good lesson. Wow, Ross, that was a wild ride.
Yeah, I don't. Know what I'm going to do for
editing? Some of this is going to end up
as bonus content. I don't know.
Damn it, the Russ and Sebastian talking about geopolitics.
It's not, it's. I mean, there's more that should
be said I. You're, look, you care about
policy, you're in Europe, you're also globally oriented.
There's a lot to say about all of this, I think.
And I think we ignored at our peril.
I think we pretend like it's not something that influences
climate work, but I think it's one of the climate stories that
is least represented in our space and possibly the most
important. So I'm tolerant of it.
Maybe it's a little bit of a joke, but that's OK.
Ross, thank you so much. I'll have to go down.
Dinner's ready. But I.
Really enjoyed it and yeah, looking forward to it.
This was great. It's great to cut me off to go
do family obligations. It's very much on theme.
Thanks for being here. Exactly.
See ya.