The direct air capture industry is attempting to recreate the oil and gas sector in reverse—at a highly accelerated rate.
And those of us in the space have a tremendous opportunity to build something truly impactful.
But how do we educate the general public around the carbon removal technologies at our disposal? Can a well-crafted meme help people understand the benefits of direct air capture?
Jason Hochman is Cofounder and Senior Director of the recently launched Direct Air Capture Coalition, a global nonprofit working to educate, engage, and mobilize society around the deployment of DAC technology at the pace and scale the climate crisis requires. He also happens to be an accomplished mememaker in the carbon removal space.
On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Jason joins Ross and cohost Siobhan Montoya Lavender to do a live meme workshop, sharing his approach to writing DAC-themed memes for popular Simpsons and Sith Kermit templates.
Jason discusses the early growth of the Direct Air Capture Coalition, describing how it seeks to serve as an educational resource and platform for collaboration among its 44 member organizations.
Listen in to understand the biggest problems facing the mass adoption of direct air capture and learn how Jason is addressing pushback on DAC with resources like the DAC Report Library as well as his CDR 101 meme thread.
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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.
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Resources
Carbon Removal Memes for Climate Restorative Teens on Twitter
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Carbon Removal Memes on Reversing Climate Change S3EP18
Groundskeeper Willie -- Damn Scots
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Hi, I’m Ross Kenyon. I am the creative editor at Nori’s Carbon Removal Marketplace. Here co-hosting with me, Siobhan Montoya-Lavender, memeologist and co-founder of Thanks a Ton. Hey, Siobhan.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Hey, what’s up?
Ross Kenyon: Hey, are we still cool with memeologists? I noticed that was your time.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I don’t know. You made me feel self-conscious after the first episode where you ragged on it.
Ross Kenyon: I ragged on it and then I started talking about Mimi’s Cafe, which I think negates any ragging on possible because it was the biggest non-sequitur, non-joke possible.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: That’s true. Well, if somebody comes up with a better term, tweet it at us. Let us know. What should someone who writes a meme be called? Because we have another memeologist with us here today.
Ross Kenyon: Ooh, Jason Hochman, co-founder and senior director of the recently launched Direct Air Capture Coalition. God, there’s so much sibilance in that, Jason. I can’t even say it. Have you thought about reducing sibilance?
Jason Hochman: I guess we could just go with that coalition, but I think Memeologist is above or below a meme lord. I would guess below, right?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Memeologist.
Jason Hochman: Ah.
Ross Kenyon: When someone’s a lord, though, isn’t it? That’s sort of an ironic undercutting of this person, right? Like you’re an edgelord, you’re a meme lord. I just assume it’s a bad thing, right?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: No, being a meme lord is high praise indeed.
Jason Hochman: I think it depends what community you’re talking to in describing someone as a meme lord. I think certain internet cultures... It’s a high compliment. In others, it might be more sarcastic or snarky, perhaps.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve always heard it described as being kind of dismissive or critical. I’m curious what kind of community is rolling, Jason. Are you on 4chan or 8chan or something? Is that what you’re trying to say?
Jason Hochman: I am not on any of those things. I am just on Carbon Removal and Climate Twitter and Air Miners and Open Air Collective.
Ross Kenyon: How’s the carbon removal community on Parler?
Jason Hochman: Aggressive. Aggressive and mean. It is, I’m sure, a diverse community of tolerant, open-minded people who share a common passion of meme-making.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: There you go. That must be it. That must be it.
Jason Hochman: Don’t fact check me on that.
Ross Kenyon: I wanted to issue a public apology to you, Jason, because we did discuss you on the carbon removal memes for climate restorative teens show that we just did, but we think it ended up on the cutting room floor. I think some sections of that show got too silly, frankly.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Too meandering.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, some of them just got, you’re like, okay, what are we doing here? Let’s find our way back. And I’m pretty sure we discussed your excellent contributions to meme making, which have been a huge part of the Airminers memes community since before our account even started. So I feel like now we’re saying, Jason, one of the original meme lords, if you will.
Jason Hochman: Well, thank you very much. That recognition makes all of those days spent toiling in the meme mines worth it. Yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: He has some good ones, though. Jason’s come up with some good ones. And I noticed that, so you started in, we all started in the Airminers meme channel, just slapping up some silly memes for the community. Very supportive community, by the way. Like, I feel like you can launch a real dud there and still people will be like, ha ha, good one. Good job. It’s a really good place to get your feet wet because you get support. Support we all so dearly deserve.
Jason Hochman: You get an A for effort no matter what you do if you are contributing to the meme channel.
Ross Kenyon: It seems like you have a strong Simpsons heritage.
Jason Hochman: I grew up in the 90s kids. So that was, I believe, the heyday for the Simpsons. And they are a great font of meme templates that are versatile.
Ross Kenyon: We’ve been trying to make the groundskeeper Willie brothers and sisters are natural enemies meme for weeks at this point. And we keep going back and forth. And like the question I always ask with me making is where the joke is. What is the joke? Who’s fighting? Did we lose it? Yeah. And sometimes you’ll go, you’ll change too many things. And you’re like, this doesn’t even make sense anymore. Like the core idea of this has now shifted. So I don’t know. Do you want to try making one on the fly right now?
Clearly, you know this one, right?
Jason Hochman: Well, can you pop it into the chat and let’s see if we can do this?
Ross Kenyon: Oh, yeah. Maybe you can help us solve this here. I can even just share my Slack on the screen and we can do this.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, it’ll be a live workshop for memes. You know, we were saying that like sometimes you just put a meme together and it slaps and you’re super happy with it. And then other times I feel like we agonize over the wording. And sometimes I think we produce a good meme that way. And sometimes we shouldn’t have wasted our time.
Ross Kenyon: Is it worth it? I might even, just so people know what we’re talking about, I’m just going to play the audio here of this. So, you know, this is like classic Simpsons. I’ve seen this mostly for political groups, been like, communists and anarchists are natural enemies and blah, blah, blah. Anyways, here’s the original clip. Oh, you don’t know him. He was in Russia. I can’t believe you’re hanging out. Maybe she’ll be a good influence on him. I’m not scotting. The disinterested, you Scott Sherrard is contentious people is such a funny, perfectly delivered line.
Yeah. So how would you approach this meme, Jason? Oh, why is Jason?
Jason Hochman: Well, I think that is what you have there is quite good. Would it make sense for you to read the template that the content that you’ve created so far? And we can see if there are other ideas worth working from there.
Ross Kenyon: I mean, the easiest contrast, I think, to make in carbon removal is ecological and industrial or biological.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Which is really a fault. We recognize that’s like a false dichotomy. Yeah, everything’s hybrid pretty much.
Jason Hochman: All memes have to be 100% open and shut, cut and dry. Everyone agrees on the definition. That is the nature of the art form, right?
Ross Kenyon: That’s very good insight. Yeah. Sure. I threw this up here. Sometimes I like throwing up a template without already having my mark on it. And sometimes I make my first pass on it. I’m not always sure which way is correct to go for encouraging the most creative pathway to the right meme. But anyways, I went with this to start. We started naming methodologies or like broad families of methodologies. So ecological and industrial carbon removal are natural enemies like biochar and direct air capture or enhanced weathering in BECCS. Damn carbon removers, they ruined carbon removal.
You carbon removers sure are contentious people. You just made an enemy for life. So I know the last three panels are good because damn carbon removers, they ruined carbon removal and everything after that. That’s good to go. But the first three, I’m like, what am I trying to contrast with? What am I even trying to say here? What’s the funniest combination of words?
Jason Hochman: So I think perhaps a different angle or different tack you can take with this particular template would be carbon removal and emissions reductions are our natural enemies. Making fun of, of course, the people who actually think that, which, of course, they are not. They are complements to each other. They are not substitutes for each other. Have to say that.
Ross Kenyon: Hear, hear. So many memes about the necessity. We also made a Simpsons meme about that, having Bart having to say the line, Bart.
Jason Hochman: Yeah, I had a good Simpsons meme on that, on the kind of anti-CDR people, the Principal Skinner. The famous meme said, am I out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong. And just having it be anti-CDR people and saying, no, it’s the climate scientists who are wrong.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, that was a good one.
Jason Hochman: Yes. So how about, oh, yeah, I love the carbon removal and carbon capture are natural enemies that just making the distinction they are.
Ross Kenyon: We also thought about doing like... I love anything that’s geological or deep time-based. I love the idea of carbon removers being at war with geophysics and the planet in a way. We thought about being like with volcanism. Is volcanism funnier than volcanoes here as the natural enemy? We also thought about doing it topical with all the private jet stuff, but I kind of like lean away from that a little bit. Yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: And then we’re starting to get too far from the format. And I don’t know, this one... This one might be, you know, one for the history books, or it might be one that never makes history, but...
Ross Kenyon: Who’s it? Oh, Heidi, who’s a marketing manager here at Nori. She just started and she had an idea of what if we did meme seconds? Like you go to the farmer’s markets, you can get ugly tomatoes for cheaper to get the seconds. And what if we just had like, we put out the memes that were half baked and never really worked? Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, Jason. I think there’s still hope for this meme. I think we can crack it. Help us crack it. What do you think is the funniest combination?
And then walk us through those first three panels if you can. It’s okay if you can.
Jason Hochman: Man, I am being put on the spot here.
Ross Kenyon: Design an A plus meme. X Nilo in front of us, in front of a live audience.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I think it has to like, part of it has to stay the same because, you know, he’s like the Scottish and X, the Scottish and X, the Scottish and X. So part of him is like to stay faithful to the original format. It has to be like carbon movers and subgroup, you know, carbon movers and subgroup, carbon movers and carbon movers.
Ross Kenyon: It could be like carbon removers and climate deniers and carbon removers. And what do you call people who don’t like carbon removal? Do they have a demonym? Does that exist? Should we come up with one? Yeah. Carbon deniers. I feel like that’s a way of pathologizing dissent sometimes, though, where you’re just like, haha, you’re denying the truth. Delayers.
Jason Hochman: They’re saying that we don’t need it now, maybe later. Delayers, deniers. Skeptics, I think, is... If you look at the actual definition of skeptic, it’s too kind to that.
Ross Kenyon: It also comes with a free fedora, though. So that’s nice.
Jason Hochman: That is true. So let’s say we want to stay true to that format and keep the verbiage constant. So keep carbon removers in each of the panels. And how about thinking about the emissions reductions idea? Emissions reductions and carbon removal are natural enemies, like solar panels and carbon removal, or electric vehicles and carbon removal. Damn carbon removers. They ruined carbon removal. I don’t know. Does that work? Is there anything? Is that any progress? I don’t know.
Ross Kenyon: You might be onto something. So in this version of it, groundskeeper Willie is just... He’s just like a bad climate advocate because he’s not into solar panels and he’s not into emissions reductions at all.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Well, I think that’s the humor. It’s like if you are emissions reductions, pro emissions reductions and anti-carbon removal, then you’re probably assuming that carbon removers are against all sorts of emissions reductions technology, which is, of course, not the case.
Jason Hochman: I think the meta joke there is about infighting within the climate community, of course, wherein it’s quite clear that we need all of these solutions. All of them have their own benefits and drawbacks and challenges that need to be addressed. And the idea that it makes sense to pit one against the other when we need all of them scaled up and deployed at levels that are hard to comprehend today is It’s just self-defeating, the Willy’s notion that Scots are enemies with everyone. That’s not the case. And to all our listeners in Scotland, we love you and hope that you understand where we’re going with this.
Ross Kenyon: On the comments on the YouTube clip of that, there’s a whole bunch of Scottish people who are like, I am Scottish, can’t confirm. That’s pretty funny. Actually, I think the pressure is less honest because this third panel should be or carbon removers and other carbon removers, which we’ve omitted from this joke by accident. So really, we only have to do... This first one could be carbon removal and emissions reductions or natural enemies, like carbon removal and carbon capture or something like that. And then it could be... Or carbon removal, carbon removers and other carbon removers.
And then we could bust on Willie for being... That sounds about right. Myopic, blinders on, that seems like the right general message. Or antagonistic, combative. I’m just thinking of synonyms right now, so I don’t know how helpful that is. Keep going, Mr. Thesaurus. Here, I want to show you one other one that’s related to this. And this one might go into seconds or it might be unpublishable. Or it’s funny. I want to do like a Sith Kermit where he was actually arguing that if we are so good at CDR, we never needed to carbonize.
And I wanted to make fun of that dark carbon removal instinct where you’re like...
Jason Hochman: Oh, I know exactly where this should go.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, yeah? What? Garbage can? Somewhere else?
Jason Hochman: I mean, the natural... Play there is the role of oil and gas with this one.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Oh, okay. Tell us more.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, go ahead. And describe this meme too. I think people listening.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, for the audience.
Jason Hochman: So the meme, it is the meme with Kermit the Frog speaking to Sith Kermit the Frog in the black robe cape thing.
Ross Kenyon: I’m not even sure if it is a Star Wars thing or a Sith thing. I always associate it with him being Sith Kermit, but it’s just like evil, evil Kermit.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, I think it’s the Sith robes, or like the Emperor, the Emperor’s robes.
Jason Hochman: Yeah. What we have here right now is normal, not evil Kermit saying we need both CDR and decarbonization and evil Kermit saying, or this is a note, argue that if we scale CDR, we never need to decarbonize. I think a different take on this meme template could be Kermit saying something along the lines of, perhaps you can help me with the language here, but something along the lines of, We can get to gigaton scale on our own or something, without oil and gas. And then Evil Kermit saying, well, they happen to have the exact set of expertise and infrastructure and assets to do this quickly or to do this at scale.
I don’t know how we want to address that.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I think you’re hitting on something. I think, yeah, we go in with... You know, the argument of, you know, we don’t need the oil and gas. They got us into this problem in the first place. And then we point to the fact like, well, they kind of have all the infrastructure and engineers to get this done.
Jason Hochman: And the know-how and the people who know about hydrocarbons underground.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, run it in reverse. So then in this framing, then, normal Kermit is like innocence is his archetype. And then Sith Kermit is what, like hardheaded realism? That’s what he represents in this? Is Sith Kermit actually the good guy in this framing? Which is okay. It’s an interesting use of the format.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I love it when we meta flip formats. That happens a lot in MemeLab. We’ll be sitting around and we’ll have some kind of... I don’t want to say stagnant, but we have this like format that we’re toying with, we’re toying with, toying with. And then usually it’s ASA. Sometimes it’s mirror Ross that comes in and just kind of blows up the format. And it’s like, wait a minute, what if we’ve lifted this? And a lot of times that makes the funniest meme.
Jason Hochman: Okay, here it is. Good Kermit is making the argument that you need the oil and gas expertise and infrastructure to do large scale carbon removal. Dark, evil Kermit is saying, yeah, for EOR.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Okay. You did it. You did it live, Jason.
Ross Kenyon: It got the best laugh of any of them. That’s a good sign. And then we go through this process of being like, well, do we want to... Yeah, do we want to touch that third rail there? Do we want to make people believe at the third rail of EOR? I feel like EOR is a fine target.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: We try not to have too many- In order to force out the last little bit of remaining oil that’s trapped in these shale formations that can be hard to get. And so, yes, the captured CO2 is now stored underground, but then all that oil you just forced out is burned. And so it’s at very best neutral.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, thanks for explaining that to listeners. I like this take. Once you know it’s funny, well, funny has to come first. And then once you find something that’s funnier, is this mean or mean in the wrong way or to the wrong person or group? Is this actually like a theme that we want to share culturally? Does this actually help carbon removal in some perceptible way? Does this make us... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: But are we shedding the exact right light on CDR and are we being the right level of sarcasm and all this stuff goes into our psychoses when we’re making these memes?
Jason Hochman: There’s definitely a lot of introspection in the meme lord, memeologist community, I’m sure.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I guess if you’re, yeah, I’ll just leave it at that. Yes.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I like it. I say we make it and then we pitch it to the meme lab and see what other people think.
Ross Kenyon: You should post it and be like, what’s the meme format or like the text of being like, what if we kissed JK unless... That’s the caption. Just joking about this. Unless.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Well, Jason, I think one thing we want to have you do while we’re here, and we don’t have to do it now. I want to hear some stuff about the Director of Capture Coalition, but we would also love to hear from an expert such as yourself a ranking of all our DAC-related memes so far. So you can let us know which ones have landed and which ones are DAC inaccurate. We can do that now or we can get to that later, but we’d love to also just ask you some questions about the DAC Coalition and how things are going there.
Well, it’s really blown up in the last few months since you guys launched.
Jason Hochman: Thank you very much. So it would make sense to talk a little bit about the DAC coalition and then segue into the DAC meme judgment portion of the year. There you go.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Believe it or not, audience, Jason is more than just a memeologist. He also works at the DAC coalition. Tell us about it.
Jason Hochman: So the DAC Coalition is a recently launched multi-stakeholder, non-profit, global coalition organization to help advance and accelerate and to educate, engage, and mobilize society around deploying direct air capture technology at the pace and scale that the climate crisis really requires. And as the UNIPCC has said, and that we need Large scale carbon removal of which direct air capture will play a critical role. And our members include both for profit direct air capture companies and other key actors in the broader value chain and market ecosystem, as well as leading environmental nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups.
And academic and research institutions. We launched at the end of May with at the time, 22 direct air capture companies and 10 aligned stakeholder partner organizations. Since then, we have grown the coalition. We now count 44 members total, including 27 direct air capture companies. Three other for-profit companies in the value chain, as well as now 14 stakeholder non-profit partner organizations. And our goals are to really be a platform for education, for engagement, for facilitating business. Collaboration and connectivity throughout this emerging sectors to help it scale in a timely, effective, sustainable and equitable manner.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, that’s exciting. That’s exciting. And I thought because I remember talking to you right when you were about to launch and you launched. And since then, just in the few months since May, I feel like you’ve already gotten all sorts of additional partners and additional employees, I’ve noticed. So how’s it been kind of Scaling up from zero to where you are now.
Jason Hochman: Well, it’s a really exciting space to be in. We have definitely seen a lot of inbound interest. Folks who are clicking on the join us or contact us forms on our website, our website is DACcoalition.org. I encourage you to check it out after you’re done listening to this episode. And we are getting a lot of inbound interest and inquiries from folks who are interested in joining and learning more about director capture and finding ways that they can be a part of this organization. I don’t necessarily want to say a movement to help get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and put away somewhere for a very long time to help address climate change.
I think that is the key goal here that we are having a great, great conversation, making some fun and making some light out of it. But this is a real need to help. Every percent, every decimal of a degree increase has a significant difference in what kind of world we will be growing up in, leaving, having our children grow up and so forth. And it also is a tremendous opportunity to build a trillion dollar industry from scratch. I’ve heard it described as basically creating the oil and gas industry in reverse in a matter of decades.
So there is a need for this. There is there’s a need for this. And there’s also just tremendous opportunity to build something new, to build something impactful. And if you’re on the for profit side to build something that can be quite lucrative.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, I mean, I think you actually just much more eloquently articulated one of our memes about this exact theme, which is the Keanu Reeves meme. Where he says, it says like, you know, born too soon, born too late to own property, born too soon to be a TikTok star, born just at the right time to co-create the trillion dollar carbon dioxide removal industry or something like that. And I think that’s kind of true. You know, you kind of articulated that. Like we’re at this really exciting moment where, you know, we could be creating, as you say, the oil and gas industry in reverse, but exponentially faster than it was created.
Jason Hochman: I think that’s such an important point and something that’s so appealing and attractive about getting into and getting involved with this sector right now, both direct air capture and carbon removal, all of the panoply or the spectrum of different solutions out there, is that you really have the opportunity to punch above your weight if you get involved now. And if you, for example... I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but recently the cities of Flagstaff, Arizona and the county of Boulder, Colorado formed something called the Four Corners Coalition. And they are basically aggregating, they’re forming a coalition of local governments, local municipal governments that are pooling resources to help advance and deploy carbon dioxide removal technology.
Flagstaff and Boulder, Colorado are not the largest cities in the world. Yet by getting on this train early, they can have an outsized impact in how it develops and in the way that this industry is shaped over time. And I think that’s really exciting so that the policymakers who are working on things now, they are setting a template that Can be replicable across other geographies, other jurisdictions. And the same is true for everyone kind of working in the space in one form or another. This is still in its infancy, it’s still in its nascency.
And the way that it comes together and develops and evolves over time is dependent on what Are you doing that through research, through lobbying, through creating a standards body, something else, all of those things? Well, I think we definitely want to Be a credible, reliable source of up-to-date, accurate information and educational materials related to direct air capture. We also want to be a venue or platform for connectivity and collaboration throughout this emerging ecosystem and things like forming working groups around particular issues or solution forums or Coming up with actionable, if not actionable, then value additive content that can help move things forward or engage with actors throughout society in a way that is beneficial.
And having kind of that frontline access to the real folks who are the practitioners in the space and understanding Where there are obstacles or pain points or opportunities may lie and how we can best articulate or amplify their efforts, I think can add a lot of value to the space.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, I think that’s fair. And like, where do you, I mean, you’ve articulated this a little bit, but like, I’m trying to kind of understand where you fit in the CDR ecosystem and like, where’s the value add, where’s the gap that you saw that you’re like, oh, We need the DAC coalition to fill this critical gap in the CDR ecosystem.
Jason Hochman: So great question. And there are a lot of groups that are doing tremendous great work on carbon removal and DAC is part of their portfolio. What we saw a need for or a gap existing is that There was a need for an organization, a nonprofit, a non-commercial entity that was 100% focused solely on the direct air capture space and can have that focus, that expertise in this space. And we want to work and amplify the efforts of the other wonderful organizations, the Carbon 180s, the negative emissions platforms, the Clean Air Task Force, the Rocky Mountain Institute, all of those folks are doing great work in this space.
We want to help amplify, to enhance, to make their work even stronger. And we think that having the access to the frontline practitioners, that real-world, real-time information and being a channel or a conduit for As I was describing before, what the challenges and pain points are and help inform the way that this conversation and the policies around it and the market ecosystem kind of takes shape. So if there’s going to be a trillion dollar, a gigaton scale direct air capture industry, We think that it’s not just going to be on the backs of a small handful of for-profit companies, of commercial companies that can help it advance in a way that is timely, effective, equitable, and sustainable without having kind of the non-profit, more globally public-spirited, climate-focused hand helping make that happen.
Ross Kenyon: Is there still a lot of pushback going on for direct air capture? And do you see your role as trying to change hearts and minds on DAC?
Jason Hochman: I think on that front, our role is to help raise awareness, to help educate and communicate the facts on the ground about DAC. That’s why on our website right now, there is a whole... We got out of the gate with a lot of educational material on our website. We have a DAC FAQ that has been reviewed and vetted by objective experts in this space. So I consider that the Kind of DAC 101 for people who want to learn more about this, who might have common questions that clears up some of the common misperceptions or confusion about the space, the carbon removal, carbon capture conflation at time.
The idea that decarbon is that emissions reductions in carbon removal are somehow in conflict, as well as just the basic facts about what this is. Then we also have, for folks who want to do deeper dives, a DAC report library, which right now I believe is over 130 third-party, independent, either academic and research institution reports or faculty. Governmental or NGO reports so that if you want to learn anything, if you want to do deep dive on anything related to direct air capture, if you want to see what life cycle assessments are out there, what techno-economic analyses, what policy white papers, what market reports, that’s all there.
You can sort by the topic area. You can sort by the type of entity that has put out this report. And we are upfront that... There are challenges to this and we want to help address them and be upfront about them and to find solutions because this is a critical technology that we need to deploy to help address climate change. So this isn’t about being Pollyanna-ish or rose-colored glasses about what the state of director of capture is. It’s more that there is a lot of potential here and it is needed.
It is critical that we... Deploy this at the pace and scale that climate science tells us is required. And we want to help bring folks together to help make that happen in a more timely and effective manner. The other thing I wanted to highlight on our website, DACcoalition.org, is the DAC company directory. So I think that a lot of people who even know that direct air cache technology exists, they might think there are three or four companies out there doing this. People who might know more about it might think there are, I don’t know, We have 27 direct air capture companies, and you can go to our website, click resources, dat company directory, and learn more about all of them, where they’re located, what their description is, find a link to their website.
And we think that providing that kind of visibility and showing folks that there are all of these innovators out there, many of them with completely... With very different, a diverse set of methods and approaches for direct air capture that it just kind of adds value to the space. And we want to see them all succeed because we need this to be a thriving sector.
Ross Kenyon: What do you see as the biggest problem facing mass adoption of direct air capture? Is it the, well, maybe this is a good point to transition into our memes and you can tell us if we got this right or not, because this is what I perceive as perhaps the biggest problem for direct air capture. And I might be revealing naivete here, but we had one about, oh, this one, here it is with Charlie Kelly doing his Pepe Silvia from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. So it says carbon removers when challenged on the clean energy requirements of direct air capture.
And it has Charlie smoking a cigarette feverishly and trying to explain his conspiracy theory, basically. Did we get this right or did we get this wrong?
Jason Hochman: It definitely is a huge challenge. I don’t know if the response on behalf of direct air capture advocates would be wild eyed and frantic and as a Frankly, psychotic as the episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia that is being referenced here. But that absolutely is a huge challenge. I think that being able to lower the energy requirements for direct air capture is something that a lot of folks are working on. And also being thoughtful about the siting of these locations and making sure that you have Low or zero carbon heat or electricity to be able to power them.
I mean, there are a whole host of, as I was alluded to before, different approaches that can have different kind of, for one thing, energy requirements and different types of energy inputs. And I think the more that we are able to get this technology tested, developed, research deployed, The more you’re going to see efficiencies, both in terms of cost and energy requirements, as this is also happening, you’re going to see more clean energy being deployed so that there’ll be more available. The beauty of the Climeworks ORCA facility in Iceland, of course, and their Their new plan that they’ve broken ground on Mammoth is that it is powered.
It’s located right by a geothermal zero carbon power source and also situated on top of the right geological formation for carbon storage, carbon mineralization. So I think that there are a lot of opportunities to kind of Co-locate direct air capture with the geothermal or solar. We’ll see that this meme says cold fusion, but I do think that there are serious advances in the next generation nuclear, be it fusion or small modular reactors. I think that it’s something that everyone in the direct air capture space is mindful of. And I think it’s why that if you were to look at the companies in our coalition, almost invariably on their website, they talk about how they’re Technology is either a lower energy requirement or can be powered just by clean electricity or can be powered by intermittent sources.
Everyone is thinking about this because it is a real issue.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: It is a hot topic, yeah, for sure. When you hear DAC, I think the critics’ first thing I think they would go to is, you know, maybe citing complaints, but then real genuine concerns around energy consumption and energy consumption at scale, of course.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a good answer. I pulled up the next one here. We have this internal joke about people installing DAC Sorbents upside down. One, does this exist literally anywhere inside of DAC? Is this even possible?
Jason Hochman: I don’t know. I don’t think so. I can give a serious answer to this if we want. It’d be totally tangential. But that is not on my top 10 or 50 lists of concerns, I’d say. I mean, it’d be like saying, you know, you’re using that sponge backwards. I don’t think that’s an issue that people have.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think we all knew that going into it, but we thought it was just funny just making jokes about sorbents. And apparently I’m the only one who thought this was funny because it only got two likes, dang it. I love this final warning, Tyler. Tyler keeps saying that. But are there other direct air capture memes you can even think of right now?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Let’s see. We have the removing in the moment meme.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, yeah. That was a play off that like wizard.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I don’t know. Not a cell phone in sight. It was a play off that. Not a cell phone in sight. Just removing or just, I don’t know, relaxing in the moment. I don’t even remember the original meme format.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, just like being in the moment or something like that. We keep using the same direct air capture like stock image too. And that’s just become its own joke too. We’re like, what can we do? I don’t know. Throw that dumb image in there again.
Jason Hochman: I had a good tweet. It wasn’t a meme, but just a picture or a couple pictures of those stock images that you are referring to, because there are literally three or four of them that you see in every story of direct air capture, about direct air capture in the media. And the two is just something like one of the co-benefits of increased direct air capture deployment will be that One of these three images won’t accompany 95% of press coverage about direct air capture. It actually got retweeted by former Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz, and I was like, whoa, I guess this thing hit.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, that one landed.
Ross Kenyon: Maybe just because it’s legible. Like if you shared a picture of the Orcas facility or you did like Noya and you did smokestacks or cooling towers or whatever, like it doesn’t read in the same way. It’s not legible in the same way. So it’s an incorrect form of shorthand. Is that maybe what’s happening here? Yeah.
Jason Hochman: It’s funny, actually. Yesterday, I saw a commercial. I don’t remember exactly who it was for. I think it was for some bank promoting their sustainability efforts and saying that we’re investing in solutions you’ve heard of. And then it pans out over solar, farm, and some that you haven’t. And it showed one of the Climeworks facilities, the one that I am looking at right now, the one with the nice, not orca, the henwheel one, actually. The one with the wonderful plains and mountains and green in the background. Not the Icelandic landscape one.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. We did this, Siobhan drove this one pretty hard, but we did this, not a cell phone in sight, but it’s S-I-T-E because it’s about direct air capture sighting being important. And we were wondering if this got, the footwork became too fancy for the joke to read. I don’t know. What do you think of this DAC meme?
Jason Hochman: I need to digest it. That’s bad. Which I think is the...
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: That’s a bad sign. Yeah, we were just talking about how some memes we make are just good enough to ship. We’re like, eh, we don’t have any other content today. We’ll put that out there. I think this is one of those, but it all came from a meme format that I was not familiar with, but was somewhat trending. But I think in this one, we actually used all stock photos in existence of DAP facilities in one meme.
Jason Hochman: That is it, yeah. I do want to call attention, well, after we’ve gone through these, I want to call attention to my CDR101 meme thread, which is my pinned tweet that I, it was at the end of that week in April where it was just a nonstop CDR news. And I was like, huh, I could probably put together a thread of my memes that explains CDR pretty well.
Ross Kenyon: Bill Hader at the start here. You got Stefan. I thought about doing this before, but I’ve never committed to it. Oh, you did well. Look at that. That’s some good numbers. Yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. So it’s, yeah.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: So for the audience, this is Bill Hader and he’s saying the world’s hottest club is carbon removal. This place is everything. Trees, soils, biochar, bikers, mineralization, algae, oceans, and machines that remove CO2 from the sky.
Ross Kenyon: Sounds like a cool club. Yeah. Oh man, okay, then you went dazed and confused. I mean, this is a meta joke because you’re making, it’s not, it’s cooler literally. So this is a clever one I like. Oh, thank you.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: It is meta. So it’s the classic dazed and confused. It says, want to remove gigatons of CO2 from the air? It’d be a lot cooler if you did.
Ross Kenyon: That’s funny, dude. I should just, I’m just going to retweet that right now. Why haven’t I seen this?
Jason Hochman: Yes, this is working out perfectly for me, getting that engagement.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m trying to boost you up here. I have to make it up for you after you got publicly dissed and omitted from our meme episode.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: And then here we have a guy talking to a brick wall that says, CDR is a moral hazard crowd as the brick wall.
Ross Kenyon: Do you find that a lot? I feel like this used to be more common back even when Nori started. We used to have more conversations about this. I feel it’s much more rare now. Do you agree?
Jason Hochman: Yeah, I think I probably made this meme sometime last year. And I think that with the IPCC report and everything else that’s happened, people are more acknowledging that it’s a necessity and the moral hazard is its own kind of hazard.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, it’s become more nuanced, I would argue. Yeah, that there’s kind of almost the opposition to the moral hazard of doing nothing crowd. And I think there is an acknowledgement, certainly, of the risks and moral hazards of CDR, of deploying any massive technology at scale. I think we talk about in the Air Miners Environmental Justice Committee a lot about all the risks, all the ways this could go wrong. Here we are at the beginning. We’re at the beginning of something massive and it’s really on us. It’s on like us on this call and everyone listening, like anyone involved in this industry, it’s on us to say, okay, this is the moment.
This is the opportunity to make the right decisions now. So we don’t lock in horrible decisions for generations to come, you know? And so I think, you know, I think there’s a lot of nuance there and I’m glad we’re kind of getting away from the black and white, like, well, if you clean up pollution, then people just pollute argument.
Jason Hochman: Yeah, totally. And here’s, here’s a good, good Simpsons one.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Like a Homer looking real, real fit. But of course he’s got like everything tied back behind his back and neck holding all his, Oh yeah. Yeah. So corporate net pledges looking good. Media Marge fawning. Ooh. And then. That was a good Marge. Yeah. Unverified.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: The moment Marge came off well.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. She’s got such a unique voice too. And then unverified carbon offsets in quotations is the back view. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So it’s like a greenwashing meme. Okay. And then an Arrested Development meme, which is what J. Walter Weatherman, is that what his name was? Yeah. That’s right.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, it was.
Ross Kenyon: Good throwback. Yeah. Good pull. Yeah, we should do more Arrested Development memes. And that’s why you don’t rely on forces, carbon offsets.
Jason Hochman: And yeah, all of these have little explanations in the actual tweet text. And that was in reference to the permanence or durability of forest-based offsets being at risk due to things like wildfires.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve not seen this next one before, which is like a city on fire and it’s labeled as the levels of atmospheric CO2. And then Will Ferrell yelling, which when is he not yelling? Anti-CDR crowd, fire trucks, hoses and extinguishers are unacceptable techno fixes.
Jason Hochman: Yeah, the techno fix thing, that just kind of bugs me as it’s technology that is helping something. You could argue that solar panels or vaccines are also techno fixes. That doesn’t strike me as a really serious argument.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, words that it’s like in Wikipedia would be labeled as weasel words and then be flagged for deletion. I mentioned this earlier too. It’s like if you want to discredit someone, there’s a whole bunch of ways you can do it. And yeah, techno fixes is one of those terms where you’re like, oh, that’s bad.
Jason Hochman: What are you trying to say though? It’s bad to use technology to make things better?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it is, but yeah. Oh, and then this is okay. Another Lucille meme. I remember seeing this one. Did we already share this one? It’s a classic ross development scene. Would you like the plater platter? I don’t understand the question.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: That’s funny. Jason, when you’re making these memes, and here you’re doing a little almost explainer thread on Twitter around CDR, you come from this serious DAC coalition background. Do you think you make memes as kind of your own outlet? Do you think you make memes as a new platform and medium of connecting with new audiences? Do you find them mostly to be educational in nature? Like what’s your goal? If you have one, you don’t have to.
Jason Hochman: No, great, great question. I definitely see it personally as a little bit of a creative outlet and just a fun little thing to do. But I do think that There also is that educational value in it. And I think our friend Jack Andreessen, fellow CDR meme lord, memeologist, however, whatever term of art we want to use. I forgot it was him or someone else’s like, memes are the new white papers. And you can convey a lot of information and kind of shape the debate in a certain way. Through a well-crafted, well-curated meme.
Ross Kenyon: That’s absolutely true. I hope. That’s what I tell myself.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: That’s what I tell myself.
Ross Kenyon: The Nori white paper that needs updating that I’m slowly making progress on? Yeah. But also things.
Jason Hochman: I don’t want to go through all of these. There’s one that is my favorite one that is upcoming.
Ross Kenyon: Well, I love this Underpants Gnomes one too. We don’t see South Park around so much these days. I grew up with it. Which one do you want to talk about? That one. That one is my favorite. Oh, yeah. Suck it up and bury it deep.
Jason Hochman: Suck it up and bury it deep. And then it’s the Drake Hotline bling. With suck it up and bury it deep, saying no if it’s anger management, but yes for carving management. That’s a good one.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: That’s a good one. I like it. That’s a good take on that classic meme format.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, I posted the template for the fortune cookies one, but we couldn’t figure out the right way and it just sort of fell by the wayside.
Jason Hochman: No, it’s just a nice wholesome both and.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, both and ending on a wholesome note. I like it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about, Jason? We have links to the Direct Air Capture Coalition in the show notes, many of the memes, your Twitter, blah, blah, blah. That stuff’s in the show notes. Is there anything else, though, you want to say or drive people to?
Jason Hochman: I want to thank you both for this incredible opportunity and had a lot of fun. And having this kind of hanging out, talking carbon removal is great and really glad that you guys are doing it and that you’ve been such a force at the outset in the nascency of this sector that we need and that we need a lot of folks pitching in on.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thanks so much for listening. We really appreciate you joining us on this podcast. It’s fun to have you listening. I hope this was fun for you. I hope you enjoyed this new format here experimenting with. I hope it serves you well. Thanks for listening. Tell a friend and thank you again. Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people.
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