What is geopolitics, and has it returned? Did it ever really leave? And how will this affect the future prospects of carbon removal?
Today's guest is Sarah Godek, a Washington DC-based international relations researcher. She and Grant Faber co-wrote an article on Carbon-Based Commentary called, "Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal".
We discuss the tension between strategic liberalism and realism, how the world is changing under the second Trump Administration, as well as if and how the Great Game is currently being played and what implications that has for climate change and CDR.
N.B. Regarding the point about Eastern Europe in the introduction, much of my reading on the region has highlighted its former status as a bustling and fervent cultural mixing place. I think I was a bit too subtle in pointing to this understanding. See: A History of Eastern Europe from The Great Courses, or Shtetl by Eva Hoffman.
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
"Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal"
Graham Allison's Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
Robert Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation
Kevin Rudd's The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China
John Pomfret's The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present
Raj M. Shah & Christopher Kirchhoff's Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War
Go watch In the Loop, Veep, and The Death of Stalin.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and thank you for listening to Reversing Climate Change. I’m Ross Kenyon and I’m the host. I’m a longtime climate tech and carbon removal entrepreneur, and today I have a show I’ve wanted to make for a very long time. First, I need to tell you a little bit about the structure of this episode. There’s a lot of content here. We spoke for an hour and 15 minutes or something like that, and the content is good, but not all of it fits neatly into a story about the geopolitics of carbon removal. In fact, a lot of the episode ends up about geopolitics generally, and about tension between India and Pakistan and China and the US, and goes beyond just carbon removal.
A lot of them are actually about the world as it were, without direct relevance to carbon removal. Obviously all of these things are related and very important to be abreast of, but I’m trying to make focused shows and then move more of the content into bonus content for paid subscribers, so that the stuff that needs to get out there is out there in the world and anyone can listen to. And then if you want more bonus content, for $5 a month, you can become a paid subscriber. And you can listen to Sarah and I talking about essentially the state of the world: what is happening between various countries, what are some of the tensions, what are some of the opportunities in the broadest sense.
So if you are interested in that, that episode will come out on Friday. I tend to be releasing bonus content for paid subscribers on Fridays. That’s $5 a month. You get ad-free listening as well, and additional offerings as I may include them in the future. It means the world to me. I’ve been so grateful seeing lots of people sign up for this. It’s been really nice to see this amount of support come out, and hopefully there’s more to come. It really helps me keep this show going. And hey, if you’re not ready to do that but still love the show, if you give me a great rating and review in Spotify and/or Apple Podcasts, that’s super appreciated too. I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for listening, and thanks, everyone.
So now I’m going to go back to introducing this show. So there’s an article that came out not very long ago that I liked a lot, and not enough is written about this. It’s called “Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal,” on Carbon-Based Commentary. Carbon-Based Commentary, the Substack, is Grant Faber, and Sarah Godek is his wife. They wrote this together. Sarah is a Washington, DC-based international relations researcher and knows her stuff. I learned a lot from her. She recommended several books. I had mentioned that I had previously read Graham Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? The Thucydides trap is a conceptual framework for which a rising power and the status quo power come into conflict, and how that has played out over history.
Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia, wrote a rebuttal to it called The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China. There’s a really interesting book. She had also recommended Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation, which is a great introduction to game theory, especially the prisoner’s dilemma and why repeated games and one-shot games are different. And lastly, John Pomfret’s The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present, which I really liked. I actually liked that he took Barbara Tuchman, someone whose writing I personally love, to task for her treatment — that was overly rosy, one could say — of Joseph Stilwell during the Chinese Civil War and World War II in China. Just a really interesting book that details so much of the relationship that I wasn’t aware of.
We feel this way about Eastern Europe too, or with Eastern Europe at this point in history. It’s so hard to look at it and think of Eastern Europe as anything but gray, Stalinist, brutalist concrete blocks of faceless apartment buildings, and just see a grim people that are beat down, like the popular conception of what it means to be Eastern European. It is rough, and which is why many places in Eastern Europe consider themselves to be a part of Central Europe as a way of distinguishing themselves. And China has a little bit of that going for it too, where it’s really hard for us to look at China and not think of what has happened since 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party ended the civil war and has remained the dominant political force in that country for the better part of a century at this point.
But that’s only part of China’s history and only part of the American experience of China. But that relationship is so colored by communism in the last, you know, many decades that it’s hard to recontextualize a broader sense of history and to keep that in mind. So I thought that was a really nice book for snapping me out of that. Americans are very famous for being an ahistorical people, a people that are not backwards looking at history but very forward driven, tech oriented, westward to the frontier where you can start over, where your family name doesn’t mean anything, you can be whoever you want in America, that kind of mythology. And to what degree we actually live up to that is an open question, and fine, but I think part of it does ring true, and that book was a really nice reminder.
So if you’re interested in this topic, I think all those books are worth a read. The way that this episode works is that Sarah and I start off by talking about what is geopolitics, and then also try to lay the intellectual framework here between two major rival schools of thought within geopolitics and grand strategy: realism and liberalism. We get into definitions. Who are some likely candidates that we can single out as, you know, great embodiments of those ideas, and what they mean? And then we get into the article, carbon removal. Where does carbon removal fit into geopolitics, and if that has changed since the article was written and conceptualized? I suspect that it probably has some.
So if you like this show but you want more, please become a paid subscriber, $5 a month. You can listen to the bonus content where we talk about a lot more of the geopolitics here, ’cause I have a lot of questions and Sarah knows a lot, so I got to ask her a lot of questions. Those are the guests I like having on, by the way: when I want to learn something, I basically just try to get credible experts that I respect that I can milk for information to teach me. Thank you very much for your support. Here is your show. Thanks for being here, Sarah.
Sarah Godek: Thanks so much for having me on, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: My pleasure. I’ve been — I’m always hungry to do more shows about topics that relate to foreign affairs, geopolitics. I think I’ve pitched basically all of the big fancy pants people who write on this topic, and I think I just look like a reputational risk to them. I don’t — former Admirals don’t really want to talk to me. Is there anything I can do to be more attractive to former Admirals?
Sarah Godek: I mean, I think building up your expertise in this space, and as you bring on more guests that have to do with those topics, I think people get more interested over time in general. I think a lot of it has to do more with the fact that these folks are really busy. So people who were formerly in the top levels in military service, I mean, they have oftentimes jobs after they leave the service that demand a lot of their time and attention. And because of their expertise, they’re really highly sought after, and people want to get their time because they know that these people have really valuable insights that could contribute to decision making today. So in general, I don’t know that I would take it as a mark against you, but rather just the [unclear] that they are incredibly busy.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. So if I can’t get McChrystal, Petraeus, Stavridis, it’s not a mark against me per se. They’re quite busy folks, and I’m sure that there’s many, many people who are clamoring for their time. Fair enough. Well, I really appreciated the article that you co-wrote with Grant Faber, who’s your spouse, which is a very funny, amazing thing.
The piece is called “Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal,” which you’d be hard pressed to write an article with a title more attractive to me than that. I’m imagining that people listening here, they’ve heard the term, they’ve probably heard recently that there is a return of geopolitics with the new Trump administration, but they may not have fully unpacked that yet. And we’ll get into the carbon removal and climate implications of this soon. What is geopolitics? And what does it mean when it returns? And do you even agree with that characterization that it has returned, or has it ever left us?
Sarah Godek: So for those who are not familiar, geopolitics really is about the way in which countries and other actors relate to each other on a global scale. And it has to do with the politics that arise from the dynamics when those actors, countries, interact with each other. And those things can get just as contentious as the domestic politics that we see between parties. And there’s so many different issues that are wrapped up in this because you’re really talking about the entire world and how each player on that landscape impacts each other. So from that perspective, I really don’t think that geopolitics ever went away. I think at different times, the contentious dynamics within geopolitics can be more present.
So with the ways in which the new and second Trump administration is coming back and starting to lay the groundwork for the ways in which it thinks about security, I think have really emphasized some of the more contentious elements of geopolitics. And so that’s, I think, why people say that geopolitics is back, because it’s more just that they are noticing those dynamics, specifically the more contentious elements of them, in a way that was maybe less apparent, or maybe less emphasized, or maybe just less visible under the previous Biden administration.
Ross Kenyon: And thinking about geopolitics, there are many schools of thought and traditions available for one to dive in, but two of the biggest orientations one might hold are that of strategic realism or liberalism. Do you agree that those are the two main ones? And maybe you can unpack what it means to be a realist or a liberal in a geopolitical context.
Sarah Godek: Sure. I think it’s fair to say that those are definitely the two that are most emphasized. I think realism especially is really, in the current geopolitical moment, the framework that a lot of people are thinking about and considering. And just the fundamental — really boiling it down, and some people might disagree with my characterization, but really just trying to think about this in the most simple terms — is from a realist perspective, you’re really thinking about the interests that people have and their pursuit of them. And this can sometimes be at the expense of others. Sometimes people’s pursuit of interests can be for offensive purposes, trying to, you know, build their position in an offensive way. But sometimes it’s more for the purpose of strengthening their own security. And there’s different schools of thought within realism relating to each of those.
And again, this is just a very, very, very basic, minimal understanding of what realism is. And then liberalism focuses more on the ways in which we can build things together. And so it’s a little bit less of an oppositional perspective, but it really focuses on the institutions and cooperative dynamics that we can build together, the different actors in the world. And again, just super basic understanding, but those are sort of the nutshell ideas behind each of the frameworks.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a very good start and very careful too, because I know within the taxonomy there are, you know, offensive and defensive realism. There’s — I’m sure there’s an infinite number of subgroups here. And maybe a good place to go is to pick an avatar for each. When I think of realism, I think of Dr. Strangelove, and I think of Henry Kissinger not really being so focused on big ideas — that ultimately, even if American exceptionalism is a thing that we cover ourselves with, it’s ultimately about power and becoming the world leader and not having our dominance of the world system challenged, and trying to maintain that. And obviously there are smaller, more regional versions of that.
And then with liberalism, I think of someone like maybe Madeleine Albright is a good example, where we’re intervening in the Balkans but we’re doing it for human rights, and we’re trying to stand up for what is good, and we’re trying to invite people into better institutions through fewer sanctions, increased wealth, increased prestige that we might be able to offer, rather than the harder nosed portion, or more military forward approach is a thing that might be more realist. I think with every example I just gave, I could think of counter examples where one of those schools of thought is nested within the other. So feel free to make that more complicated. And am I even on the right track at all?
Sarah Godek: Yeah, I think what you’re really pointing to here is the tension between interests and values, which I definitely think is a really important part of the realism versus liberalism school of thought. But like you said, it is more complicated than that, because you could imagine somebody who is pursuing something outwardly on the basis of values, but for a realist purpose. And that’s, I think, a really fundamental question of soft power and building soft power. So we see this in the context of humanitarian assistance, support for infrastructure developments all over the world.
When we’re thinking about why countries are doing that, maybe they do it on the basis of values, and oftentimes you hear language from the United States about the importance of building democratic institutions, capacity building in this regard. But that’s the values focus. But what does it get us? That’s the sort of interest focus. And so those are the two different ways of thinking about it that are oftentimes intertwined, overlapping, and not necessarily clear cut.
Ross Kenyon: You pointed to possibly the most cynical question on my outline here, which is: is liberalism a tactic of realism? I imagine that many realists probably look to liberals and think of them that way, and maybe they aren’t even self aware enough and realist enough to know what they’re doing. But I imagine this charge gets levied at points.
Sarah Godek: I mean, you know, this kind of gets to intention, and I think that certainly liberalist pursuits can be pursued for realist aims. But at the same time, I do think that there is something that realism doesn’t necessarily quite neatly capture, which is personal altruism and the desire to do good for others, not because it gives me something, but just because it is a good thing to do and because others will be better off in me doing that.
So a basic example that I like to think of is: imagine two people who are on a desert island and no one knows that they’re there. No one will know that they have died, and there is maybe one piece of food left. One person already has the piece of food, but then they decide to give it to the other person. That’s not in their interests and it will likely cause them to starve, and no one will know that that’s something that they have done.
So there’s no reputational building through doing that, but they may want to do it. You could imagine such a person wanting to do such a thing just for the sake of the other person. And that’s something that I think realism doesn’t necessarily neatly capture — this intrinsic motivation not derived from our own personal interests or even necessarily our self perceptions, but rather just because you want the other person to thrive. And that’s something I think that realism doesn’t necessarily neatly capture.
Ross Kenyon: Well, one of the books that you recommended that I read in prep for this show is Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation. I mean, how old is this book now? I think it’s about 15 years. It’s pretty old.
Sarah Godek: Yeah, yeah, it is. It is now pretty old, but I think the lessons remain relevant and useful for thinking about the world and understanding it.
Ross Kenyon: I think it’s a great introduction to game theory. It has minimal amounts of math involved. Perhaps one way of saying what the book’s main thesis is, is that in a one-shot game of prisoner’s dilemma — which we should explain what that is — it leads to not so nice outcomes, where defection is common, where people are trying to put themselves first. But with repeated or iterative approaches to the prisoner’s dilemma, the incentives really start to change, and potentially change in favor of more cooperation, in a more liberal mindset. That’s probably the thesis. Am I correct?
Sarah Godek: I think that’s right. I think that that captures what Axelrod was trying to get at in the overall framework.
Ross Kenyon: One thing that I’ve noticed both in the first Trump presidency and then now is that the rhetoric is very much focused on America is getting a bad deal now, that NATO is exploiting us, that China has a terrible trade deal with us, that we’re being exploited and we need to put ourselves first for the first time in a long time. And I don’t remember hearing that as much even during previous Republican administrations. I think they’re still broadly working within a fairly liberal tradition where America as world leader is there to preserve a security order that, in realist terms, probably benefits us. But also there’s a Pax Americana thing going on too. World trade is pretty well supported, for better, for worse.
You could have a different world leader and it would lead to different policy outcomes. But maybe we’ll get to that later. But it does seem that something is very different about the Trump presidency. Maybe it’s at least more direct or revealing in how it views America. Is this actually a major change in American foreign policy? Is this more rhetoric? How do you know which of the two is happening here? Maybe you can help me figure that out, because I can’t really do it.
Sarah Godek: Yeah, that’s a tricky one, because definitely rhetoric is a huge piece of the puzzle. And that’s what Axelrod might point to as reputation building. Clearly the Trump administration is attempting to build a reputation for being strong. And there really is a return to the sense of might makes right. And, you know, this is, from their perspective, in the interest of building a world that is centered around American interests and promoting American interests and creating the most favorable outcomes. Whether the actions actually accomplished that, I think, is a bigger question.
And that’s where you have to really look at the actions to determine whether or not this is really different, because otherwise you just have a lot of statements that appeal to a base, that satisfy a base, that say, look at this administration, it’s fighting for me because they’ve said that they’re going to do all of these things. But you have to actually look at what the actions are and what those actions accomplish to understand the differences.
So, you know, something that the Trump administration has said is that they really would like to continue prioritizing alliances and allies. So, you know, a common phrasing is that we’re not seeking to do America alone. And that’s something that I think is really interesting, because you see a lot of approaches that they take to issues that involve a lot of unilateralism. And so that’s the sort of action piece of things. And so you see this tension in that they want to signal, on one hand, that they’re keeping allies and that they’re not scaring people away, but on the other hand, you see unilateral actions that do just that.
And so that’s the tension between rhetoric and action that I think we’re going to see a lot of in the Trump administration. Because at the end of the day, Trump himself is driving quite a lot of the actual ideas and actions, and a lot of people are running things by him to ensure that it’s exactly what he wants to do, which has created a greater personalization of leadership. That means that we’re going to be seeing more of these sort of unilaterally taken actions, because they come from Trump’s own desires.
Ross Kenyon: One thing that’s puzzled me about his relationship with realism is that a deal like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it’s liberal in a way. We’re all convening around assuming that you think free trade is a good thing, which I guess maybe Trump doesn’t. But that is a sort of liberal foreign policy initiative where we are trying to bring people into our values, into our institutions, and trying to work more closely together in an integrated trade network. And it very conspicuously excluded China. And what came about after the TPP failed is maybe an interesting place to go and to discuss.
It’s both liberal, but it’s also very realist in orientation. And that is trying to create a trade system that excluded China and was trying to weave together the outer rings around China, and East Asia and Southeast Asia and South Asia too. It feels like there’s both a realist and a liberal orientation to those policies, and they actually reinforce each other in some ways too.
Sarah Godek: Yeah, I think that was really the fundamental idea. You know, that’s, I think, actually one of the most perfect examples to describe, you know, pursuit of liberalist institutions for realist aims. And that was really the thinking in the TPP. And so the withdrawal from it really was due to domestic pressure. It was a really hot domestic issue. And so from that perspective, I think you really did get at the heart of Trump’s concerns, where he is not necessarily a believer in free trade. He loves tariffs, and his catch phrase is really fair trade — it’s what he uses to justify the actions that he’s taking.
You know, the results of those actions, I think, are a little bit different. So I guess from his perspective — I mean, I don’t want to delve too much into like what Trump thinks, because I am not Trump and I’m not inside his head. But I do think that there is a sense that he believes that these tariffs will further American interests, and he believes that they will result in certain consequences, such as friendshoring, reshoring of manufacturing, in a way that also cuts out China but on sort of American terms. But, you know, whether that’s the actual results of the tariffs, I think, remains to be seen. And if we look at the results from his first administration, it’s a more complicated picture than that. There wasn’t necessarily the level, I think, of reshoring and friendshoring that the first administration had hoped to see.
Ross Kenyon: What do you think about the old maxim that if goods don’t cross borders, armies will?
Sarah Godek: I mean, certainly more reasons to cooperate helps to avoid fighting. I think the more pieces of cooperation that you have, the more — I mean, yeah, it’s challenging, because this was really the thinking that drove US engagement with China. And it was really a core piece of Obama’s pivot to Asia. And thinking about how to engage China was, you know, building these resilient economic links that would forestall conflict. You know, but it’s hard, because with greater economic leverage, you also allow both sides to sort of pursue their interests more as well too. You know, I think economic leverage is a huge piece of how many countries that have it deal with other countries that they have relations with. And so that can be used for clearly realist aims.
So, you know, I think in general, more goods crossing borders probably does strengthen links, but it’s not a total stabilizer. It’s not the end all be all of, you know, just if we have all this trade, then nothing bad will happen. I don’t think that that’s something that we can conclude.
Ross Kenyon: There’s a story in Kevin Rudd’s book, against Graham Allison’s thesis, about how Norway got punished and was unable to export salmon to China for something like six years because of various statements either regarding Taiwan or something else. And it’s just like, we will not be taking your salmon for now. And eventually they caved. It took some time, but they eventually said, all right, fine, it’s more important to us to be economically integrated. Which at least that was a peaceful solution to this, but it doesn’t necessarily bode well for the “trade makes us all friends and it never gets used against us” kind of thesis.
Sarah Godek: No. And I think that a lot of countries are seeing that, specifically with respect to China. This is something that contributed to a lot of increased negative perceptions of China, specifically in the Asia Pacific. So South Korea is a good example. Australia is another example, where these kinds of trade sanctions that were clearly targeted at political actions that were unfavorable from China’s perspective really caused people to think about the trade connections and think about where their vulnerabilities were, and feel negatively about China for exploiting those vulnerabilities for political purposes. That was the reaction that you see in attitude surveys in the region.
So, you know, I think it does have a cap. That kind of behavior does have a cap. It does have consequences. Sometimes it works for the better, and other times it might work out in the end, but it comes at a cost. It’s just the accumulating and spending of political capital.
Ross Kenyon: Kevin Rudd also documents the diplomatic retreat that happened during Trump one that the Biden administration worked very hard to repair. But when there is American withdrawal, countries around the world seemingly just gravitate strategically to the next biggest player here, which is China. And I know there’s been concern that is this going to happen again with Trump two, where countries essentially have to be on China’s good side in a changing geopolitical environment where the US is maybe not going to stick up for them, is going to look after itself first, is maybe retreating from the type of world leadership that we built enormous amounts of expectations around. Are you noticing changes like that right now?
Sarah Godek: I think a lot of countries are trying to hedge their bets. I think that in general, countries would prefer not to choose a side, because choosing a side is costly, because gravitating toward China could put them in the crosshairs of a Trump administration that has shown itself to be very — I don’t want to say antagonistic necessarily, but how China would perceive them would be antagonistically. So, you know, landing yourself in either camp could put a target on your back from the perspective of either the United States or China.
And so I think a lot of countries are looking to see how can I insulate myself in view of that. And so a good example right now is, I think European countries are taking steps to try to see how they can rely on each other. I think in the Asia Pacific, countries, and specifically in Southeast Asia, are thinking about how they can increase relations with a broader set of actors. I think there’s a really strong push for a lot of countries to not try to pick one or the other, but to have a broad net of partners that they can rely on. So I think this dynamic will probably continue under a second Trump administration, as countries are looking to see who can fill in the gaps here and how can I avoid compromising my country’s own independence and sovereignty.
Ross Kenyon: I have questions about your article that you wrote with Grant. It made me think especially about the dual use tech. That’s something that comes up in a lot of these discussions here, especially with regard to tariffs and other things like that, or technology export, or even things like can Huawei do business in the US, and questions like that. I want to start with what does the article claim and what are some of the arguments in it. And then I want to progress into what has changed since you wrote it, because I have a feeling you wrote it maybe around the election, possibly even starting to conceptualize it before the election. I’m wondering how much of it is maybe less concerning or more concerning. How has the texture of the piece changed since the new administration?
Sarah Godek: Sure. So with respect to the really big security elements — you know, when I’m thinking about security and I’m thinking about conversations in Washington these days, which are focused really heavily around national security, and within that is supply chain security, which has become a huge topic not just since the pandemic. It really escalated during the pandemic, but also in the first Trump administration’s trade war with China, as companies really started looking at where their supply chain vulnerabilities were and where they could see massive increases in prices from tariffs that they didn’t necessarily expect.
And especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when things were shutting down and people weren’t necessarily able to get the parts and inputs to their technologies, processes that they were used to getting, this became a major issue. And it really caused people to think critically about what’s even in my process and technology, where is it coming from, and where are my vulnerabilities. And so there was an attempt here to really think about how that applies to carbon removal and the CDR industry, because there’s tons of different processes that are dependent on different imports, different critical minerals, different chemicals, and all of these things people have to think about: are these things that are subject to disruption?
And so this was an attempt to really get companies in that headspace, specifically given that we were approaching at that time — I believe we started talking about this article before the election. Really we were writing it, I think, primarily after the election, and then publishing it after the election was over. So from that perspective, we really were thinking in terms of, you know, if there’s another Trump administration, what are companies going to have to be thinking about? And specifically for me, working on China, I see China introduce restrictions all the time, especially if the United States takes the first step and, you know, slaps on tariffs. A major way that China often responds is either by additional tariffs or on export restrictions for certain inputs. And so the goal was to have companies really think about where those vulnerabilities are.
And so then getting to the dual use piece of things, I think this is something that actually was a really big deal under the Biden administration, where there was a continued focus on thinking about components that could boost China’s civil military fusion. And oftentimes when there would be export restrictions introduced from the United States side saying we can’t export these things to China because of their capability to be used in China’s military development, China would then respond with other restrictions that similarly targeted dual use items, or things that could be used for military purposes, saying, well, we won’t export these things to the United States because they could have a potential military application.
And so that’s something I think that a lot of companies don’t think about, especially in the context of minerals. You know, when you’re thinking about minerals or elements that are used in your process and parts, you’re not necessarily thinking this could have a military application, because that’s not what you’re using it for. But very easily, if there is a military application, that’s something that could be targeted by export restrictions, import restrictions. And so a good example that we gave in the article was ammonia synthesis via the Haber-Bosch process. So, you know, ammonia is a fertilizer, but it also can be used to produce ammonium nitrate explosives. So that’s just a classic example of something that you wouldn’t necessarily think has a military application, especially if you’re not using it that way, but actually does. And so our goal was to really get the industry to think about where some of their vulnerabilities might be in this. So I don’t know if that helps to answer your question, if there’s something I’ve missed, if there’s more you want me to go into.
Ross Kenyon: I’m worried about critical minerals just for if CDR is even going to exist or need large amounts of critical minerals moving forward. I think the policy support was so key for so much of carbon removal, especially the technologically advanced types of carbon removal. I expect things that enhance soil fertility are more biogenic in nature or hybrid. I think biochar is going to be relatively OK and not as dependent upon things in China. I think that’s probably the case for enhanced rock weathering and things of that nature. But I do worry about specialized membranes or special types of metal that we might be dependent upon China for, especially direct air capture. Those will probably have a harder time sourcing. I’m very curious what will happen with that.
Does that mean that they might relocate to other countries? I imagine there’s probably going to be some amount of jurisdictional arbitrage at this point. I’m in Washington; I hope Washington develops policies at the state level and below to attract in carbon removal companies that will be refugees from federal policy elsewhere. But I imagine other countries will probably do the same things as well, assuming CDR is big enough to even get their attention, which it may not be.
And given that the world has pulled back from so many climate commitments lately — like during Trump one, there was such a strong, OK, the US is out of Paris, you’re leaning that way, we’re going to step up. I don’t really see that this time, which is really concerning to me. I think we’re much more focused on our own supply chains and the economy and war and things of that nature, that parts of this article felt like maybe, unfortunately, it just might be less relevant in a Trump two world. And that’s not something that brings me pleasure to say, but it did concern me.
Sarah Godek: Yeah, yeah, I think definitely you’re seeing the US step back from climate commitments, and even perceive others’ climate commitments negatively. So I think most recently the new Secretary of the Department of Energy described the climate goals and the net zero goals of the United Kingdom, I believe, as sinister. I might have that wrong, but I’m pretty sure that that was the language used to describe those goals. So the focus in the second Trump administration is certainly on hollowing out some of the support for clean energy and focusing more on drilling, and LNG is a huge focus. And especially given Chris Wright’s background, I think that that’s something that is easy to understand where that comes from.
And so, yeah, looking at carbon removal companies, I think it’s really — you have to think about how they’re going to justify any kind of support. And that’s going to take on a much different flavor than what we had initially conceived of. But I think that there are things in our article that sort of point to where some of those opportunities still lie. So for example, military applications like decentralized fuel sources, building more resilient — using carbon to build more resilient materials in the utilization space that could have military application support. You know, anything that has like a really strongly domestic focus already would be a little bit easier to garner support for.
So graphite was something that we mentioned. Like you said, maybe it’s not necessarily ideal that we have wholly domestic supply chains, because they might be more expensive, it might be more difficult to produce, we may simply not even have the minerals that are needed in a geographic location. But for graphite specifically, that’s something where I think that there is an argument to have more domestic based sources of production, because that’s something that China has already instituted export restrictions on. They did that in October 2023, and we import about 42% of our graphite from China, while China mines about 90% of the world’s graphite. So that’s definitely something that a second Trump administration would look at as a vulnerability that they would be interested in seeking to combat.
Ross Kenyon: Makes sense. Dual use technology does strike me as a great go to market for carbon removal companies that are struggling. I’ve heard — I don’t think I can name which type of company it is, but I’ve heard more people... I think everyone looks at Palantir and Anduril and salivates at their valuation and how it [unclear] going well for defense tech. And I think if companies are able to plug in and, yeah, have decentralized fuel available, that’s a really important thing to do. Although I’ve also seen that the Department of Defense called projects like that woke recently. I’m not sure if this is technically one of those things, but I don’t know that it necessarily has to be. Yeah, you’ve seen this too. OK.
Sarah Godek: Yeah, it’s interesting because, you know, you also have a focus right now on cutting things down, cutting funding down. And so that makes it really challenging. And so that’s where the cost component gets in, where, you know, having your costs low is really, really important, especially at a time where they’re looking at budgets and saying what can we cut. And definitely this has been more from an ideological perspective, like you said, looking for things that are so-called woke, and trying to cut those things. But it’s kind of unclear what all gets caught up in that process. And we’ve seen quite a lot of things that don’t necessarily have any connotation of so-called wokeness that have been cut nonetheless, just for even seeming to have such a connotation. So yeah, obviously the landscape of government funding at this particular moment in time is decidedly uncertain, which is causing a lot of risk and uncertainties for many, many companies across the board.
Ross Kenyon: I think we’ll see more companies in carbon removal either try to adapt their technology to be dual use, lean more into that go to market. Finding ways to build revenue that are less dependent upon offsets and less dependent on federal policy may require more creativity and thinking in these ways, which I imagine is culturally going to be strange for many people who get into carbon removal, as I don’t think many of them come from a relatively hawkish place. Did you read that book Unit X? Did you read that?
Sarah Godek: I don’t think so, no.
Ross Kenyon: It’s about the Defense Innovation Unit and basically venture capital for defense tech. It spoke about since prior to Vietnam, if you were a tech oriented Ivy Leaguer, you might look to either joining the American government or working for Raytheon or something like that. And since Vietnam that has not been seen as compatible ethically with the tech establishment and defense tech. Is there a reaction against that of trying to say if there is a war, the US should win it, and we want to be a part of that? I don’t know if that’s culturally trickled into people who are working in environmentalism and in carbon removal to the same extent. It might be a little bit of a cultural mismatch.
Sarah Godek: Sure. And I think your intuition is right. You know, I think that there is a sort of knee jerk reaction against the defense industry, especially since Vietnam. But I think also, from my generation’s perspective, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan too. I mean, I think that that actually is almost in some ways a more motivating factor against support for the defense industry. That’s our sort of new replacement for Vietnam, which a lot of people in my generation are less familiar with now and have mostly access through reading on counterculture. And I would say that, you know, studying Vietnam history proper, and like the history of US intervention in Vietnam — or sorry, US war in Vietnam — that’s definitely the minority of people in my generation.
So when people are going to work for a place, they’re really thinking about how can I make — at least my sense is that people who are working in carbon removal, but even just the climate industry more generally, they’re thinking, how can I make the world a better place? And when people think about defense, they think about missiles, bombs, fighter jets. And that is a hard thing to think about. Like, how is this making the world a better place? Because it’s a little more abstracted, and it’s not necessarily thinking about like how can I make the world better for everyone versus how can I make the world safer for the United States, for example.
And so I think that those are just two fundamentally different starting points that may be compatible. There may be overlap, but I think a lot of people are skeptical that there is such overlap. So I think that’s really why there is that tension. So, you know, it starts to maybe impact morale a little bit of, if you’re working on something that you don’t think is helping to make the world a better place, then maybe you don’t want to be working on it at all.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t think they are necessarily incompatible. I’m interested in all of these things simultaneously and think they’re — at the very least, as a citizen one should be somewhat aware of the repercussions of geopolitics, technology, climate change. These are all related. Sort of the reason why a show like this can be broad based and all-encompassing is there isn’t a whole lot that it doesn’t touch if you look at it with the right set of eyes. I don’t know that everyone approaches it with exactly the weird way that I do, so maybe that’s why I’m doing this. You can care about all these things together at the same time, everyone.
Sarah Godek: Yeah, I think it has to do with what you feel your impact is. And I think when people are balancing things like climate and defense, I think that they have to see if their outputs and the actual impact is making the world a better place in the way that they specifically want to be making the world a better place. I think that people’s alignment between their ideology and actions, I think, is in general pretty important to them.
Ross Kenyon: What’s happening in China with carbon removal? I believe everyone in the entire industry heard about the Tencent thing that’s happening with carbon removal, because there’s not a lot else going on in the US right now. So what is happening in China?
Sarah Godek: You know, that’s actually really interesting. I hadn’t heard about the Tencent carbon removal thing. Is that the news? Like a big contest, or what is it actually called? I’m taking a look at it right now.
Ross Kenyon: Are you? OK, that’s really — there you go. Yeah. Yeah, what timing too.
Sarah Godek: Yeah, this is super interesting, actually. I think what’s really interesting about this specifically is that it’s such a major company, and in general China’s CDR industry is really not developed. There’s a lot of science that’s happening. So if you look at Chinese papers that are related to carbon removal, it’s almost all on the science side of things — and, you know, what is the process we could use, does this work, how does it work, how efficient is it. There are tons of those papers available in Chinese, but there’s less of a really robust discussion of, you know, is this the best way to meet our climate targets? So I’m really interested to see the Tencent program, because that’s something that in general China hasn’t really prioritized.
Because I think in general, the government has a little bit of a different approach to carbon removal, or just a different philosophy around it. I think that when they’re thinking about how to meet their climate targets, China’s government is really thinking more in terms of things that play to China’s national strengths already. So things like emissions reductions through introduction of clean technology, energy consumption limits, increasing forestry coverage, building green cities. Obviously China has a huge advantage in infrastructure. And so along with that, they’ve really put a focus on what are called the three new things, which are solar cells, EVs, and lithium ion batteries.
And these are the three things that China’s government hopes helps to drive China’s transition to what they call high quality development, which is trying to move away from low value add things in the supply chain to higher end technology as the basis for future economic growth. And so those things are more what the focus is on in terms of China meeting its climate targets. They haven’t really put as much focus into carbon removal. I think a lot of that is still at the demonstration phase, looking at the science. There’s more focus on hydrogen in China also. And so I think it’s something that would really need more government support to take off. So the Tencent program is really interesting, because it’s almost a way of sort of building in that support in a way that could translate to government support later on.
Ross Kenyon: Do you think we’ll see more soft power as industrial policy, where if the US is stepping back from leadership on carbon removal and various other aspects of leading on climate change, China will step into the breach even more fully as a way of shaming the US or reclaiming some leadership?
Sarah Godek: On carbon removal, I’m not sure. I struggle to see it, just because I think it’s still niche enough of an area in China and the consideration of meeting their climate targets that it’s less of a focus. And so I don’t know how much of an opportunity they would see there. I think they see maybe more of an opportunity with other things, but I think it also depends on how much investment is needed for it at a time where China’s economy is sort of grappling with the transition away from double digit growth that it saw in the past decades to a slower, more steady state of growth. You know, do they want to target their investments in that way? And I think that that’s a harder question.
You know, do they think that they could gain the moral high ground from the US? I think with respect to carbon removal, because it is more niche and fewer people know about it, I don’t think that they would see as much of a public value in that. You know, possibly an opportunity, especially if there is money to be made and they do believe that there’s going to be compliance markets in the future. But, you know, I think right now there’s still a lot of hesitation for them on carbon removal.
Ross Kenyon: Sarah, thanks for coming on. Thanks for recommending so many great books. I think your work is really important and interesting, so thank you for sharing it with me.
Sarah Godek: Yeah, of course. It really means a lot. Thanks for having me on.
