A bonus episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast. You can listen on Spotify (subscribe there for ad-free), Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you listen. Paid subscribers get the ad-free version right here on the page.
Sean Keener co-founded BootsnAll, one of the older long-haul travel communities on the internet, and chairs AirTreks. He was the first person to buy a carbon removal certificate in the Lightning Sale, and his reason for wanting gap years on every résumé and his reason for buying removals turn out to be closer together than the setup implies.
Worth publishing for the record alone. The first buyer in a market is a fact people go looking for later, and until now the only place it existed was behind a paywall.
Sean Keener, cofounder of BootsnAll and chairman of AirTreks, is the first buyer in the Nori Lightning Sale. In this bonus episode, Sean tells us why he chose to support Nori and purchase Carbon Removal Certificates for his businesses.
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Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still goofing around.
The books that come up on this show are collected on my Bookshop shelf.
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Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hey everyone, Ross Kenyon from Nori here. This is a bonus episode of Reversing Climate Change. Nori is pleased to announce our first lightning sale in which carbon removal certificates are available for purchase from the public. We're very excited because this is Nori's first revenue, which is Sean Keener, a self-described travel servant and co-founder of BootsnAll, which is one of the original long-term travel communities of the internet and chairman of AirTreks. Sean is our first carbon removal certificate buyer in the Nori Lightning Sale for BootsnAll. Sean, thanks so much for being a trailblazer and being on the show. Awesome, Ross. I'm stoked to be here. Yeah, we are reciprocally stoked, one might say.
Sweet. So what is it that you do and why is buying carbon removal so important to you? Well, what do we do?
Sean Keener: We want to see a gap year on every resume, Ross. We think it's one of the best ways to learn, whether it's a trip around the United States or your home country, but get away from your home to learn about the world. Yeah. So that's really why we started. I traveled around the world when I was 22, 23 years old on 6,000 bucks for 18 months. And it just totally reinvented how I saw the world. I thought when I left that everybody liked the Cubs Bears Bulldogs. Yeah. That helps people do that sort of transformational travel. And of course, we're aware of the carbon footprint of our customers.
And we do a lot of different things to help our customers offset that. And we do a We went virtual with our offices in 2003, and we went fully virtual in 2009. So we have colleagues in about, I think, 10 to 15 countries around the world, and everybody's commute is to their desk, wherever that is. For some people, it's in a co-working space. Oftentimes, it's in their home. So I got exposed to Nori through your colleague. Yeah, Alexsandra. Yeah. One of her old friends started a climate gap year company, and I was investigating that to try and help you. Young people learn about that. And he told me about Nori.
And when I saw what you were doing with blockchain and really providing what looks to me is super duper accountability on how this is done, it got me really excited. So I personally invested earlier this year and also bought a bunch of pre-carbon credits for BootsnAll as well. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that's great. I mean, if your customers are flying around the world, then that's sort of the only option and people want to know that what they're doing. And like, for instance, I've flown a lot and I've taken I wouldn't call it a gap year so much as I traveled around. Working for my computer for many years in my 20s, I have a lot to make up for. And I've never bought offsets on a plane because I'm like, does this work? I'd have to look into this. And it's the same as if like someone on the street approaches me about a charity. I'm like, in order for me to give you any amount of money, I'd have to go home and research like, where does this money go?
Is this actually effectual? And I've sort of been waiting at least as a consumer myself for something like Nori to even begin wrapping my head around how to account for all my travel. Totally, Ross.
Sean Keener: That's what makes me so excited about what y'all are doing. We've been investigating this for a few years, and it's really hard to tell what you're really paying for, like you said. So if you guys could make it happen, we're totally on board.
Ross Kenyon: Yay! There's been talk internally at Nori of doing some sort of tithing process for like salary or tokens that are issued for being like a certain amount conventionally for religious institutions is 10% that goes to offsetting or negating one's admissions. And there's been internal debate to what degree individuals will be participating in that. But I think we all know it's time to do that. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're taking a step for people at your organizations. Is this something that you're going to be offering customers of yours or is this something that you're going to be using to negate the emissions of people who you work with?
Sean Keener: That's a great question, Ross. We're not sure yet. If you all come up with an API, we'll happily build it into our shopping cart software so that folks can do it and that are purchasing as well as we would definitely consider matching. It depends on how it works, of course. Got to make sure that the financial piece works out. I think I told you previously, we've been looking at Corsia and what the airlines are planning on doing and To me, I don't even know what it is right now. It looks like a great idea, but we're not sure how that's going to work its way through to actually making a difference.
Ross Kenyon: Do you have any idea of how that's going to work for people that are
Sean Keener: thinking about airfare? Because they've made a little bit of a stink about it.
Ross Kenyon: I do. We've been following Corsia, which is the scheme for which airlines for international flights are going to account for their emissions and deal with them. And right now, they closed the proposal process for various ways of negating and offsetting. And as far as I understand, they're debating it now. But we're watching it pretty closely because international flight emissions are quite a lot. And there's not a lot of availability for them to deal with it through insetting or decarbonizing. Like for instance, I don't think we're going to see planes running on batteries and electric rather than liquid fuels anytime soon. Yeah. Possibility for them to become a very large supporter of carbon removal.
I think it's there. But I think it's going to take a couple years. I don't even think Corsia launches until sometime in the early 2020s.
Sean Keener: Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for describing. I'm learning a little bit with some of my colleagues and I've been looking at and trying to decipher when is this going to happen? Is this something we can get behind? Because we know that some of the airlines are already doing some things or at least claiming to do some things regarding carbon removal. So, you know, there could be some double or triple dipping on that. But that's, you know, as far as I'm concerned, it's probably fine.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, there's stuff like I've seen them using increasingly more electric vehicles at airports for ground services. There's experimentation with new types of fuels that I've seen stuff with algae that's really, really neat that's trying to approach lead. I mean, I imagine your customers too. Gap-year people, long-term travelers, they tend to have strong ethical sentiments.
Sean Keener: Totally, Ross. I mean, we're kind of like the anti-Disney company. You know, like Disney, you can pay them 5, 10 grand to go for a week to go online. Go on a cruise or go get the experience down there, whether it's whatever resort they have. And boy, they're good at that. But for the same amount of money, you can go have an experience maybe in one or two countries and really connect with people from a different culture and or region of the world to kind of open your eyes in a way that oftentimes can transform your perspective in your life.
Ross Kenyon: I definitely agree. I've gotten so much out of traveling and often done it with so little money and been so broke historically doing it. That might be the best way to do it. I like that it forces creativity out of you. You can't always buy your way out of problems. And there's something about... Like I've done some hitchhiking before. I've done a couple longer distance hitchhiking trips. And often the people that would help me would be the people that had the least to give. I'm like, God, this is so refreshing. Like you need help, but you've helped me before you've even helped yourself almost. And there's just dozens and hundreds of unique experiences that I've had that have changed how I thought that made the history and the books I've been reading come alive that...
I'm really grateful for and I think people should probably travel more and get outside their backyard. So thanks for helping people do that and also helping them do so in a carbon negative or at least approaching carbon neutrality kind of a way.
Sean Keener: Totally, totally. Well, we're trying our best and it's a learning curve for, I think, for us and presumably, including your audience here at Nori. One of the things I think about the more I've been studying this the past few years, Ross, it just seems like a big math problem. Like at the end of the day, and it's hard to know all the inputs and outputs because it's the world. Of course, it sounds like Nori might be able to get a good crack on that with the first lightning sale that we bought at whatever it was last week. It at least narrowed down to a high degree of certainty.
How much is this farmer putting back into the earth? Because this is sequestration, right?
Ross Kenyon: That's right. Maybe for our listeners who are not aware of the difference, rather than a lot of conventional offset credits will say that when you buy this credit, someone will install some sort of device at a power plant that will cause them to So that's why we focus exclusively on carbon removal. And that's what we do.
Sean Keener: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks for describing it more to me every time I look at your white paper or whatever's going on. I don't understand every nuance to it, but I'm glad that y'all are focusing on it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, and that's part of what the podcast has been, too, because there's a lot of stuff that if you want to know everything, we've been pretty transparent. You can just go learn it all. But we want to make it as simple that you can trust it without having to understand all the math or exactly what a blockchain does, etc. Because it gets real nerdy and esoteric real quick. And that isn't necessarily people are busy.
Sean Keener: I don't know that there's that many people who really want to. I just started listening to the podcast, as I told you the other day, I listened to Joel Salatin's episode and that guy's amazing. And I was just happy to hear that there's farmers like him that can actually be helping because, you know, some of these large scale farms seem to be hurting in a big way. So, I was just happy to hear your staff thinks that he's actually putting, you Carbon, what is it? Carbon credits per acre per year back into, I guess, sequestering it. I thought, ooh, that's awesome.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, Joel, what a character that guy is. And definitely marches to it, I should say, his own drum. But yeah, you should listen to the one that we have with Trey Hill. So Trey Hill, the carbon removal certificates that you have bought originate on his farm in Maryland. And he's also doing a bonus episode, same as you are. So check that out. Hello, Trey, and thank you very much. I'll relay your message. Awesome. Thank you, Ross. Well, Sean, if someone wanted to learn more about BootsnAll or AirTreks, what's the best way for them to be a part of your business?
Sean Keener: Sure, sure. I think probably there's two ways. We have a newsletter on AirTreks that we send out once or twice a month with around the world specials, as well as connecting with people that have done this sort of long-term travel, whether it's a few weeks or a few years. And so you can go to bootsnall.com and sign up for our newsletter there or go to airtreks.com, which is our online travel agency and sign up for the newsletter there. Or email me, sean, S-E-A-N at bootsnall.com, B-O-O-T-S-N-A-L-L.com. Thank you very much, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, thank you, Sean. And if you would like to participate in the Lightning Sale yourself, I'll put it in the show notes. And if you like the show, please give us a great rating and review on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, tell your friends, let them know that car... Carbon Removal is now available for purchase through the Nori Marketplace and help us get these podcasts out there. I think a big part of what we do here is an educational mission. We're learning as we go and we're trying to bring you along with us. So if you know people that would appreciate our particular idiosyncratic blend of insight, humor, and just being goofballs, definitely share it with them.
And thank you so much for listening.
