Are we trying to get parts per million of greenhouse gases down as quickly as possible? Or are also trying to solve the nested problems of fertility, toxicity, and resilience as well as the systems that got us here in the first place?
In this episode, I contrast high carbon-efficiency biomass burial approaches (Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage/BiCRS) with biochar and other methods that sacrifice some carbon efficiency but generate wide-ranging cobenefits.
We explore commodification, fungibility, and the dream of a “ton is a ton” carbon market—alongside the discomfort some feel when complex ecological realities get flattened into a single tradeable metric. Is that clarity necessary for scale, or does it repeat the same abstractions that helped create the crisis?
Ultimately, this isn’t a fight between good and bad actors. It’s a productive friction between two worldviews: the PPM-obsessed technocrats and the polycrisis systems thinkers each have their own blindspots and their own superpowers. My hope is not to settle the debate, but to help you notice where your intuitions land—and why.
" we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we use when we created them."
- Albert Einstein
" The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
- Audre Lorde
" If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This episode's sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP
Rainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry
"Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow
"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.com
Resources
"384: Graphyte's Strategy is a Masterpiece of Simplicity—w/ Barclay Rogers & Hannah Murnen"
More from the show
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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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