Kenya is exploding into the Direct Air Capture scene. New York City is hosting the first ever global DAC conference. And while Al Gore is deeply knowledgeable about climate change, he might be wrong about carbon removal.
In this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Jason Hochman, the co-founder and senior director of the DAC Coalition, takes us on a foray into Nairobi, Kenya, where he recently attended the first Africa Climate Summit. We learn why Kenya and the countries along the East African Rift will be critical for carbon removal.
Coming up on October 16th and 17th, Jason shares that Columbia University will play host to the first ever Global Direct Air Capture Conference. This event is designed to bring together all interested stakeholders to discuss the current and future states of DAC, and how the parties can come together to bridge the gap.
The conversation explores what is considered to be "responsible" DAC, why there is opposition to it, and why there is also bipartisan support for it.
Come for the direct air capture, stay for Jason's new nickname.We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did!
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Resources
Global Direct Air Capture Conference
Carbontech Development Initiative
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.
Jason Hochman: It’s Dak Daddy, but that’s just too much.
Ross Kenyon: Why don’t we refer to you as the Dak Daddy, Jason Hochman? Why don’t we do that? Could we?
Jason Hochman: You could as long as it’s not attributed to me doing so about myself.
Ross Kenyon: I like the idea of you trying to get it to catch on as an alternative to the Carbon Wrangler. You’re just the DAC daddy. And then I think other people who have been involved in DAC for longer than you would be like, what the hell, man? How come you get to be the DAC daddy?
Jason Hochman: Just fomenting bitterness. Yeah, you see. Fetch isn’t going to happen.
Ross Kenyon: Klaus Lochner is going to be like, excuse me, I heard you were using the Doc Daddy term.
Jason Hochman: I am Doc’s godfather, and I do not approve.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: No, he’s going off the rails already.
Ross Kenyon: I’m so glad I started recording, though. I knew there was going to be some gold in there. So yeah, as you can probably hear, Jason Hochman here from the Direct Air Capture Coalition. Hey, Jason.
Jason Hochman: Hey guys, thanks for having me.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, Siobhan Montoya-Lavender also here as she often is. Hey Shiv.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Hey everybody.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s good to have you back, Jason. It’s been some time we made a meme last time you were here. You’ve done a bunch of cool stuff since we last spoke. Like what, you were just in Nairobi, you were saying?
Jason Hochman: Yes, so I was in Nairobi, Kenya last week for the first Africa Climate Summit, which was a tremendous... Really inspiring event gathering, dignitaries, heads of state, innovators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, investors, stakeholders across the landscape who are committed to seeing Africa become a core part of the solution to climate change. And in particular, I was with our little cohort of emerging Carbon removal players down in Kenya. In particular, the incredible team at Octavia Carbon, which is a DAT Coalition member. And more importantly than that, far more importantly than that, Africa’s first direct air capture technology company.
I had the opportunity to visit their facility outside Nairobi and saw the Global South First direct air capture machine and got to meet some of the incredible, young, talented, dedicated engineers, young Kenyon engineers that are working for Octavia there. And they have a, they recently announced a project called Project Hummingbird in partnership with their storage partner Sela Mineral Storage to build a thousand ton per year DAC facility. In Kenya and seeing the enthusiasm, the intelligence, the ingenuity and innovation going on there is really inspiring. And this was really across the gamut of climate solutions and in particular related to carbon removal.
Africa and in particular, Kenya and the countries along the Eastern Africa rift are really well positioned to be powerhouses in all means of carbon removal from both the nature-based methods to the more engineered approaches. And there are a host of reasons why that is the case.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: And for DAC specifically, what are the benefits of that region?
Jason Hochman: So for direct air capture to work and to make sense on a climate basis, you need it to be powered by Clean energy and you need it to you need somewhere to put the CO2 so that it is out of the atmosphere and locked away durably for a long period of time. And Kenya checks both of those boxes in that Kenya has a not today as a 93% renewable energy grid and they have a whole host of untapped clean energy resources from geothermal to wind. To solar. They also happen to have the right geology basalt formations for mineralizing CO2 for durable sequestration.
There is a TED talk by a man named James Mwangi, who is the founder of something called Climate Action Platform for Africa. He and Climate Action Platform for Africa were leading forces in driving forward this in planning and organizing and making this event a reality, I’m proud to say that James is also an advisor to the Director of Capture Coalition, and he has a TED Talk from last year, and you can just Google James Mwangi, TED Talk, M-W-A-N-G-I, to see him present this extraordinarily compelling vision and Really well-argued case for why Kenya should be leading on direct air capture.
And the element of the talk that makes it so particularly intriguing and compelling is that it’s a real win-win-win because even though Kenya has this wealth of clean energy resources, a large percentage of the Kenyan Population does not have access or does not have affordable access to power. And direct air capture in its energy intensity, which is one of its great challenges, that becomes actually a little bit of a feature here because it can then serve as an anchor client, an anchor source of demand for renewable energy infrastructure build out.
Because there aren’t any heavy... There isn’t any heavy industry, there isn’t necessarily the reliable demand or load for it to make sense to build out large scale clean energy infrastructure in Kenya. If you had a lot of DAC facilities there, then that does make it more economically viable. And by doing so, then you are able to provide more affordable clean energy access to more of the Kenyan population. This is all part of James and others’ vision for climate positive economic growth, which is really the only way forward here.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I mean, on the one hand, that’s so cool and totally tracks with demand for clean energy and why would you build infrastructure? But then also, isn’t it just kind of always tragic that these things get led by Economies of scale and can we build infrastructure because we need to power development as opposed to just like people’s homes and lives. That said, it seems like, like to your point, it seems like a win-win when you went there in person, you’ve toured lots of DAC facilities. Talk to me about some of the differences you noticed or what, what struck you?
Jason Hochman: So I think that they are thinking about particularly Octavia, they are doing more with less right now. I was talking to some of the engineers there about what are the challenges they’re facing and saying just the supply chains, for example, getting some of the pieces they need is it’s just harder from where they are and they need to be more clever, more resourceful. And I think in some ways that has enabled them to do things even quicker in certain regards and be able to test things out and perhaps Find more innovative solutions to problems.
But that being said, it is definitely an entirely different host of challenges that you will find trying to build a direct air capture startup from scratch in Kenya as opposed to in the US.
Ross Kenyon: I love how counterintuitive it is. I can imagine criticism from people who care about environmental justice saying that starting DAC in a place like Kenya might compete for resources with locals, but it’s actually saying that it is the creator of abundance rather than competing. Or like if you only look at that first step, maybe it does compete. But if you look at the second order effects, you say, actually, this might actually drive a lot of growth and infrastructure development. I think those kinds of counterintuitive examples are really fascinating and may win them more allies and maybe change the way DAC is perceived, especially because I know we were all anticipating the Al Gore Ted Countdown video to be more impactful and we’re concerned about it.
I frankly haven’t heard much of a peep about it. It seems like, at least in our spaces, it hasn’t really come out as being so important as maybe we thought it would be. Has it been your experience or are you fretting over there, Jason?
Jason Hochman: My concern to a degree, and I know that there has been concerted and well-intentioned efforts to educate Vice President Gore and his team on the necessity of direct air capture and the fact that this is a diverse ecosystem of companies, of entrepreneurs, of advocates, and that there isn’t one particular company that perhaps is unfairly associated with the vast majority of the space. And just educating on where the space is, why it’s important, why it’s essential and unavoidable for it to be a critical climate solution. My concern is that it has a little bit of a long tail and that maybe it didn’t.
Generate outsize interest at the start, but then you’ll just keep seeing it cited. For example, when the DAC hubs announcement was made, I think the coverage was generally fairly straightforward, positive. This is the largest investment in the history of this space. It is critical that it Be scaled to reach our climate goals. And this is a really important first step. There was one news outlet in particular, a quite well-known one that had the worst article I saw.
Ross Kenyon: It was saying that- You’re not from Manchester, are you?
Jason Hochman: Not from Manchester. I am from New York and it may or may not be a paper published herein. The headline was US Invest. Billions in direct air capture, environmentalists and scientists skeptical. They quoted Gore and they quoted a scientist who actually said it’s necessary, but the whole framing was a bit skewed and inaccurate, I felt. But in any case, speaking about direct air capture and speaking about New York and speaking about New York City in particular in the fall, I want to use some time to plug the global direct air capture conference, which will be taking place At Columbia University’s Lerner Hall on October 16th and 17th.
It’s a partnership between the Direct Air Capture Coalition, Columbia University’s Carbon Tech Development Initiative, Breakthrough Energy, and Rocky Mountain Institute.
Ross Kenyon: And we are hoping- And all the oil majors.
Jason Hochman: What, sorry? Precisely, precisely. This is intended to be a premier cross-stakeholder Conference. It is the inaugural one and it will be an annual one. It is the first large direct air capture specific conference taking place in North America. And we think that it can be a real catalytic moment for the space can help enable and facilitate collaboration, networking, agenda setting, narrative framing, and just getting the right people in the room talking about the right things and hopefully Gaining some, connecting this community, sharing critical knowledge and informing and engaging new audiences.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Well, that’s exciting. Who are the people in the room? Who’s, who would you like our audience in our audience to attend? Like who’s your target audience for this?
Jason Hochman: My target audience is anyone and everyone who is sincerely interested in playing a role in developing what needs to be one of the Fastest growing, most impactful sectors in the coming decades that will play, as the UN has said, an essential, necessary, and unavoidable role in reaching our climate goals. So if you’re an investor, if you’re a researcher, if you’re an academic, if you’re an innovator, an entrepreneur, an environmental advocate, a student who wants to get into this space, a corporation, media, general public, Wherever you may be, a policymaker, come on to New York City in mid-October.
DACcoalition.org backslash conference. Check it out.
Ross Kenyon: Man, you got that pitch on lock. Yeah, that’s all I want to go.
Jason Hochman: Please do. Come by.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, I’ll send to Saria maybe who’s on my team.
Jason Hochman: As DAC coalition members, Nori does get a nice discount.
Ross Kenyon: The discount is important. The schlepping people around the country part. Can we stay in your apartment?
Jason Hochman: Yes, you specifically and anyone who is listening to this. We have an open door policy in my New York City apartment. Please do not take me seriously. My wife and very young daughter will not be pleased.
Ross Kenyon: Do you have any insight on this? Everyone knows about the IPCC report that references a big coming-of-age moment for carbon removal, where it acknowledged that carbon removal was necessary to hit climate goals. But then also there’s other UN bodies who seemingly are much more skeptical, especially with the engineered solutions. I don’t know which bodies are important, which ones are not, how they reconcile different beliefs here. Do you have any idea how UN politics actually works as pertains to DAC?
Jason Hochman: No.
Ross Kenyon: It’s also opaque to you. That’s scary. Does anyone listening understand how that works? I do not.
Jason Hochman: Well, perhaps after the... Well, we’re going to have a whole lot of... Folks in town next week for New York Climate Week, which aligns with UN General Assembly. Perhaps we can get some intel there. Or a month later in October, we can send a delegation down to 42nd Street in the East River to do some fact finding.
Ross Kenyon: You can line up behind all the middle schoolers going on a tour.
Jason Hochman: Seeing all the flags. I think we could go down a very deep, very complicated rabbit hole on the impact of UN politics and the Article 6. 4 mechanism of the Paris Agreement and all of these things. Instead, I will again direct people to DACcoalition.org backslash conference. You can check out the excellent speaker list that we have been able to secure. You’re going to hear from Folks like Klaus Lackner, Jen Wilcox, James Wongi, who I had mentioned earlier.
Ross Kenyon: These are good.
Jason Hochman: Everyone’s favorite, Jack Andreessen, Doreen Harris, the present CEO of NYSERDA. We’ve got a really top-notch list, and there are some other high-profile names that we are. Optimistic that we’ll be able to add to that website. So bookmark it, check it every day. You may get some pleasant surprises. Follow DAC Coalition on Twitter, or I guess X now, and LinkedIn. Sign up for our newsletter, and you’ll be the first to get these updates.
Ross Kenyon: Have you ever heard self-promotion as successful as this on the podcast, Siobhan? Jason’s a master.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: No, rolling out your tongue. I’m loving it. The agenda I like because it’s kind of like, what is DAC now? What is the future? And then I like the term like bridging the gap, of course, right? We’re trying to figure out how to get to that future. One thing I was curious about, though, is on the site, you list that of the goals is the conference is dedicated to accelerating the responsible development and deployment of direct air capture. To help address climate change. And I’m just curious, you intentionally put the word responsible in there.
And I’m curious, what would you classify as irresponsible or unresponsible DAC? And how would you focus the energy of this company on responsible DAC?
Jason Hochman: I did not watch this show very much, but I did catch it sometimes. And I understand that in the Bachelor or Bachelorette series, it was a bit of a cliche. To say whether you’re here for the right reasons or not. I think in that regard, the question of responsible DAC deployment is twofold. One is the critical importance of doing this hand in hand and with the buy-in of local communities so that you have done, to use the word again, but not just responsible, but concerted two-way dialogue and engagement So that you’re not just leaving scars on communities and landscapes in a manner that has unfortunately been the case with other sectors.
Direct air capture has this incredible opportunity to be built hand in hand with the priorities, the interests, the concerns of local stakeholders in mind. So that’s one element of it. Second is the bigger picture of, are you doing direct air capture as an excuse for business as usual, as a means of forestalling, delaying, preventing robust and rapid decarbonization? Is this the type of thing that you’re going to spend 20 times as much promoting via your marketing budget than you will on the actual project? A company that wants to hide behind direct air capture, or are you doing this because you understand that there’s a critical climate solution that we need to scale rapidly and robustly to have any shot at, um, limiting climate change and limiting the worst impacts while also building a robust thriving new sector from scratch.
So that’s, I think where that word responsible comes in.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t really believe that you’re referencing The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. I think you’re referencing the I Think You Should Leave sketch that we both know that you probably, am I right?
Jason Hochman: I was referencing The Bachelor, I think, actually. I don’t know if you have any, if you watch that or Ross, if you have, I can say I didn’t, which I didn’t, but my wife would have it on at times and, you know.
Ross Kenyon: Catch it, you know, and you got you got a rose. So you’re still here. Yes.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I really think that those all sound like the kind of jack coalition people can get behind. Like that’s a conference and those are agendas that I think, you know, to the point of like Al Gore or whomever thinks that this is controversial or problematic. I think when you lay it out that way, I’d be curious to see who’s in opposition to that, you know?
Jason Hochman: Likewise, but I think that there are some people who have a bit of a knee jerk skepticism and we are trying to put forward a credible vision and accurate, reliable, scientifically backed rationale for why we need to do this and do it well. And I think that having partners like Columbia Breakthrough Energy and Rocky Mountain Institute on this effort is a testament to our sincerity and our seriousness and wanting to see this sector scaled in a climate beneficial and timely and effective and sustainable manner.
Ross Kenyon: Do you have any speculation or analysis of why direct air capture has faced such critical headwinds, even in cases where a great deal of care is going into making sure these are not boondoggles to make sure that the Energy concerns that you raised at the beginning of this show are adequately addressed. Making sure that this is not giving fossil fuels an endless lifespan. These are all things that within the carbon removal community, I hear about ad nauseum. And yet we face criticism from outside the industry that points to these things as though they’ve never been considered before and are not taken seriously.
Do you have any thoughts on why that might be?
Jason Hochman: I want to take a quick step back here and realize that this whole conversation, this dialogue, this discourse that we are referring to is within our own little carbon removal climate bubble. When you look at the bigger picture of the population, most folks don’t know what direct air capture is, and those who do are informed of it are overwhelmingly in favor. Not in flavor, in favor.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, Guy, for you.
Jason Hochman: Flavortown. Flavortown. Get the latest DAC projects over at Flavortown.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I mean, you bring up a good point, though. It is statistically bipartisan.
Jason Hochman: Yeah. Data for Progress did a poll that they released, I think sometime back in the late spring, that showed overwhelming majorities across Partisan and demographic lines being in favor of direct air capture. So we might be in our little bubble and there might be a loud minority that is yelling about it, but the vast majority of people understand why it’s important, why we need it and are for it.
Ross Kenyon: But then you have cases where people who are quite well informed may like, as you specified, the person above. We’re being so diplomatic here. You think Al Gore is well informed, but you think he either doesn’t agree. Does he have good reasoning for doing so? Is there some political... I don’t think maybe he just... The best case scenario, the most charitable interpretation is he just does not trust... I think that is a valid concern. I think there is probably going to be some of that sort of misdirection happening. That doesn’t mean that the entire industry is suspect But that one concern is not invalid.
I don’t know. That’s like the best case scenario I can come up with for the motivation beyond he just agrees with Mark Jacobson or others who are just decarbonization, uber all this kind of people.
Jason Hochman: So I think that Al Gore is certainly well informed on climate change and climate change politics and the political economy and the international political economy of climate change. Where I think there need to be, and I know that there are sincere education efforts needed is on the broader picture of the DAC ecosystem. So look, we all know that there are, there are, I mean, I can count on one hand that companies that are working with, with large oil and gas companies and to be completely Fair, it isn’t a black and white issue.
These companies have the exact set of assets, of infrastructure, of expertise, of wherewithal, of general capability to scale direct air capture and carbon removal broadly a lot more quickly than a startup can. That’s just a matter of fact, but it goes back to what we were discussing before about It needing to be a sincere effort and not an excuse to maintain business as usual and not an effort where these large legacy companies are engaging in bad faith with this. If they are engaging in good faith and that it is a way to potentially scale as quicker.
The element of it that I think is lost in that discourse is the much, much broader lens of the direct air capture market ecosystem of the innovators, the researchers, the entrepreneurs working on this. If you go to DACcoalition.org and look at the DAC company directory, there are over 45, I think nearly 50 DAC companies in there. And I can count on one hand the number that Have any ties at all, be it investment, be it partnership, but what it might, whatever with oil and gas companies. And I hold nothing against and, you know, don’t look down on or anything of the very small number that do.
But the matter of fact is that the people who are building direct or capture companies are doing so because they are committed to being part of the solution to climate change, not as an excuse to maintain Business as usual.
Ross Kenyon: Is there any sort of conference one could learn more about these?
Jason Hochman: That is an excellent question, Ross. If you go to DACcoalition.org backslash conference, you can interact with some of the leading entrepreneurs and innovators and actors in this emerging, very exciting market ecosystem. And have these conversations one-on-one in person.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I think a critical question that we haven’t yet addressed is last year, I forget what conference in Europe she was at, but Cara Mizano from Rocky Mountain Institute.
Jason Hochman: One of our partners on the effort.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: True, true. Notice that there was some memes being used at the conference to perhaps like- Oh, really? Yes, and I’m wondering if there’s going to be any means included in your presentation or your piece of contribution.
Jason Hochman: That is an excellent question that I had not yet considered. I plan on opening the conference and perhaps there is some Easter egg that we can discuss right now that I can seamlessly weave in that only those in the know will We’ll appreciate.
Unknown speaker: I love that.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I think our listeners, extra incentive to go.
Jason Hochman: Yes.
Ross Kenyon: It’s got to be something Dak Daddy related. And I don’t think it should interact with the Arrested Development leather daddy. It can. It mustn’t. It must not. It doesn’t have to.
Jason Hochman: It can. Oh, man. I could litter my remarks with Arrested Development references, which might be the move.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Yeah. You do your opening statement. People are like, yeah, there’s a lot of, uh, a lot of our rest of development coming through in all of Jason’s presentations. It feels a little excessive. Probably, probably not the greatest.
Jason Hochman: It’s 2050. We have not scaled back. And I just, I think I’ve made a huge mistake.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: There you go. Well, Jason, I’m very excited to see this conference. Um, not in person as I am far away, but, um, There’s a virtual attendance option.
Jason Hochman: Yes, there is a virtual attendance option. You don’t need to schlep all the way and you can hear from these amazing speakers and be part of this.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: No excuse, listeners. We’re all going.
Ross Kenyon: Yes. Siobhan, have you even been to www. daccoalition.com backslash conference?
Jason Hochman: Www. daccoalition.org backslash conference.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: There’s the register button, but I didn’t see that there was, you could register for a...
Jason Hochman: It’s in person or virtual.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Oh, right. That’s terrific.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Jason, how many of these questions that I’ve asked you, have you felt the need to be extremely diplomatic? It’s about the United Nations and Al Gore personally. Are those difficult questions to answer as a guest? Speculate on a major public figure’s motives.
Jason Hochman: Going back to the rest of development, I just don’t want something where I say something and then I’m ending up talking to my lawyer and saying I may have committed some light treason.
Ross Kenyon: Is it treasonous to criticize Al Gore’s position on environmentalism?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Within some circles, I bet.
Jason Hochman: I think there are education efforts underway and I think Vice President Gore will have an open mind to what the latest science has indicated is going to be a critical part of the solution.
Ross Kenyon: Are you open to working with oil and gas still? I know that you said that there’s gray area. Is that something that you’re interested in continuing to explore? Or would you like that to be a thing that is less explored in the future?
Jason Hochman: I’m not going to make any blank information. Comment for any direct air capture company on the appropriateness of working or not working with oil and gas. I think it’s a matter of are they or would the oil and gas company be doing so in good faith or not? And I understand that based on their history, it’s not unreasonable at all to be skeptical. Yet they do have a that. Expertise and those resources and that infrastructure and those assets to offer. I don’t think it’s my place to lay some blanket position on all of the dedicated entrepreneurs and companies that are working to get this technology.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Good try, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: My traps. He’s so stately. You’re a statesman, Jason.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I know. I know. You come up with these tar traps and he’s just bouncing right over them, which I like. I think that’s honest to God. I think if you’re going to run a coalition for Director of Capture, we need a bit of statesmanship in that area. And I think you bring up fair points around not blankedly excluding anyone.
Jason Hochman: The matter of fact is that we need as many sincere good faith actors working together to get where we need to go. And this is a massive problem that demands coordinated effort towards a solution and thinking about it as a problem that we need All the tools at our disposal to be able to solve, I think is a more effective framing than good guys, bad guys. And I know that life is more complicated than that. And that there may be bad actors or those operating in bad faith delay or prevent more robust mitigation efforts.
And we can’t let that happen. We need to be honest and call bullshit on that. The fear of that, the risk of that is not at all worth not pursuing what we need to do in the first place, which is scale direct air capture among the other methods of carbon removal. And I talk about direct air capture. I am co-founder of the Direct Air Capture Coalition. I am in favor of scaling all methods of carbon removal we have put Way too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is causing us problems.
We continue to put a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is causing us problems, and we need to begin cleaning up that mess. And direct air capture won’t do it on its own. It is a significant role to play, but we need it all, and we need it at scale, and we need it soon. Or now, really, but more realistically soon.
Ross Kenyon: Jason, do you think we’re going to see more direct air capture ecosystems like is beginning to form in Kenya right now? At least partially because there’s an arbitrage opportunity. Obviously, it’s much cheaper, I imagine, to do something in that part of the world relative to the United States. At least in some cases it would be. Do you think that’s going to be a trend we’re going to see more of? What other trends might you forecast for the next couple of years in DAC?
Jason Hochman: So Kenya definitely has these characteristics. And high-level political support for scaling DAC there. And it’s a very exciting space to be monitoring and to be supporting. I think that with 45Q and the Inflation Reduction Act and the Director of Capture Hubs, which are part of the infrastructure bill, the United States has really taken a leadership role in facilitating the growth of the DAC sector here. I mean, I talked to early and later stage DAC companies from around the world that are looking to or have already set up operations in the US because of the robust policy support.
Ross Kenyon: Do you think we’ll learn about more trends within direct air capture at any upcoming conferences?
Jason Hochman: Yes, I’m glad you bring that up. If you go to DACcoalition.org backslash conference, I recommend you register either in person or virtually to attend the inaugural Global Direct Air Capture Conference, a partnership between the Direct Air Capture Coalition, Columbia University’s Carbon Tech Development Initiative, Breakthrough Energy, and Rocky Mountain Institute. Scaling together for impact.
Ross Kenyon: We’re at the point now where that joke, I think, reached its nadir of humor. But now if we keep doing it, it’ll do the family guy where it’s funny, not funny, and then very funny because it’s gone on for five minutes in a row.
Jason Hochman: Nadir of humor, but perhaps crest of effectiveness.
Ross Kenyon: This has been such a surreal show. I’ve been rebuffed so many times. But then you also pick up a weird little turn of phrase like that and you elevate into poetry. So I don’t really know how to feel about our continuing collaboration, Jason.
Jason Hochman: I can’t think of any better crescendo to this call.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. Well, let’s wrap it here. As you heard about 17 different times and ways, DACcoalition. gov.org. Oh, is it org? I had it in my head. Oh, no.
Jason Hochman: We are not the government yet. Did I say . gov?
Ross Kenyon: You did say . gov.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Say . gov.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a joke around my house. We like taking stupid fake URLs and adding . gov to it.
Jason Hochman: So I think that’s what happened. Actually, I’m going to make a quick plug related to . gov to the Open Air Collective because the Open Air Collective is doing incredible work in advancing forward-looking Carbon Removal Policy at the state, local, national, government level. And so check out Open Air Collective and get involved with some of their advocacy missions. In particular, they’re making tremendous progress on a local level or state level, excuse me, bill in Massachusetts. So if you’re listening in Massachusetts, you can help lobby and push that bill across the finish line.
Ross Kenyon: That’s nice. I’m sure they’ll appreciate that. Yeah, Open Air Collective.
Jason Hochman: That’s for you, Chris.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, Chris, we’ll have you back on sometime. Chris Neidell there being referenced. Well, thanks for being here, Jason. It’s always fun to have you back on. We didn’t even talk about memes. Well, I guess we referenced the rest of the guy.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: The Dak Daddy, but also he’s a meme king, guys.
Jason Hochman: A Dak Daddy, but a meme king.
Ross Kenyon: The Jason Hochman story.
Jason Hochman: I’m adding these to my LinkedIn and my business card and just my introduction to strangers.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, I don’t know if you want to lead with all those, especially the Dak Daddy, but okay, fair enough. I just imagine you, like, telling someone this on the subway, and them being like, oh my god, I gotta change the grades.
Jason Hochman: And the buster, not buster, excuse me, in Tobias Funke’s voice, it’s a mouthful.
Ross Kenyon: It’s a mouthful. All right. It’s time to conclude. For the love of God, we’re done. Thanks, Shiv, for being here. Thanks, Jason.
Jason Hochman: Thanks so much. Thanks so much, guys.
Ross Kenyon: 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. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com, follow us on social media, and we will catch you next time.
