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.
Alexsandra Guerra and I interview Conyers Davis, who directs the Schwarzenegger Institute at USC. The institute bought removals to cover its own office emissions, which in 2019 was a rarer thing to do than it sounds now.
I open this one by telling anyone who does not want to hear more about Nori that they can skip it, and I meant it. Five of these lightning bonuses went out in three weeks. It was a lot of Nori.
At the University of Southern California, the Schwarzenegger Institute works to find common ground and post-partisan solutions to pressing problems, not least of which is climate change. They participated in the Nori Lightning Sale. Find out why carbon removals is important to their work and why they support Nori in today's bonus episode.
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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: Hello and welcome to another Reversing Climate Change bonus episode for the Nori Lightning Sale. Yeah, yeah, it's been going very well. I hope you're enjoying these. If you don't want to hear more about Nori, if you want just the regular Reversing Climate Change podcast, you can skip. These are merely additional. They're not taking away any of that lovable content that you are enjoying. So today I have with me Alexsandra Guerra. Hello. Who's going to be helping me interview one of the Nori Lightning Sale buyers. So why don't you take it from there?
Alexsandra Guerra: Thanks, Ross. Hello, everybody. Excited to do another bonus episode. So today we have with us Conyers Davis, who's the director of the Schwarzenegger Institute at USC in LA. Hi, Conyers.
Conyers Davis: Hi, it's so nice to be with you both today. Thank you.
Alexsandra Guerra: So good to have you here. Thanks for joining us. So let's get started. What is the Schwarzenegger Institute? What do you do? And why are you here?
Conyers Davis: Perfect. So Governor Schwarzenegger set up the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy in 2012, shortly after leaving the governor's office to continue the work that he started in Sacramento during his seven years as governor of the state of California. When we first set up the institute, we had a pretty wide remit. We were looking to engage on sort of the myriad of topics and issues that a governor would address in sort of a regular capacity. But we quickly came to realize that with our small team, We've really focused our energies primarily on energy and the environment, and then also on political reform, sort of gerrymandering, top two primaries, things like that, election integrity.
So sort of as we've grown, as we've been We've really focused our energy on those two areas. And, you know, we will deviate from that from time to time as, you know, with the upcoming 2020 election looming, we'll certainly be producing some content and some research reports relevant to that. But for the most part, we like to stay focused on our core issues. And we are part of the Price School of Public Policy here at the University of California. So we are very policy focused, not politics focused.
Alexsandra Guerra: Wonderful. So you're very policy focused. What does that have to do with carbon removal?
Conyers Davis: Well, I think anybody who spends much time looking at environmental issues realize that we have a problem and much of that problem comes from carbon emissions. So we spend a lot of time thinking about global warming, pollution, you know, sort of conserving the environment, all of this sort of the, you know, the host of Environmental issues that I think keep a lot of people awake at night. We spend a lot of time thinking about them, studying them, and reacting to them. And so one issue that we've really spent a lot of time looking at is pollution. And we think it's a very clear way to sort of talk about the problem is talking about pollution.
And I think if you solve the pollution problem, you'll solve a lot of the climate and global warming problems that we have. And we're really curious at the different ways to sort of address carbon emissions. I mean, there's no question that, you know, modern society runs on energy. We all live very energy intensive lives. But, you know, we need to think of the consequences of the energy that we're producing and using. And so we have worked on that here at the Schwarzenegger Institute. Governor Schwarzenegger is very focused on it. And so that's really sort of why we're here today.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. So by taking responsibility for your climate impact, you and the Schwarzenegger Institute participate in Nori's lightning sale to pay for carbon removal to negate your flights, I think, to Austria and Sacramento.
Conyers Davis: I think it's very important for us that if you're going to talk the talk, you got to walk the walk. And, you know, we definitely have a carbon footprint. I don't think it's as large as a lot of sort of think tanks and organizations out there, but it still is a footprint. And, you know, we wanted to be good stewards and address it. And so I think buying the Nori credits is sort of part of a larger effort that we've been undertaking in the last couple of years here at the Schwarzenegger Institute to just be more aware of the impact that we personally have on the environment.
In addition to purchasing carbon removal credits from Nori, we have reduced the amount of single-use plastic bottles and forks and knives and things like that we use. We've tried really hard to attend the conferences we can by phone or video rather than travel to sort of cut down on flights that we might be taking unnecessarily. You know, we try to carpool, we try to use public transportation when we can in the city. But we realized that those are small changes and we need to do something a bit bigger, a bit more drastic. And that's why we were really excited to offset the carbon that we're using, using your system at Nori.
Ross Kenyon: We're very grateful to have you, Conyers. And you've been a longtime supporter, came up to Reversa Palooza, which is a lifetime ago. Oh, Yeah.
Conyers Davis: It does feel like a lifetime ago, but what a great event that was. I mean, you guys just, I mean, I really went there not knowing much about sequestration and came back with, I think, a pretty detailed understanding of what's happening in the space, what needs to happen. And I was just amazed by the caliber of speakers and attendees that you had at Reversa Palooza. So I really hope that you're planning to organize another one.
Ross Kenyon: There are murmurs of such a thing occurring again next year. It was a large undertaking, especially for a young organization, but I think we've grown so much and it should be time in the near future to regather everyone, to show what we're working on, to get more feedback and to have some more fun with it.
Conyers Davis: That's awesome. We'd love to be helpful. So maybe bring it to Los Angeles, to USC, or we can help bring some speakers to you. So we just are really excited about what you guys are doing.
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, you heard it here, folks. Mike, we have you on record now, Conyers.
Conyers Davis: Exactly.
Ross Kenyon: Well, I know it's important given Governor Schwarzenegger's activism and his work in policy too of trying to find transpartisan or postpartisan solutions. And we definitely think carbon removal, if done in the right way, is one of those things that can reward. I think there's a lot of synergy there as someone who, yeah, has a... We're grateful for all the leadership that y'all have done so far, and we're hoping to see more support for carbon sequestration across the board, and thanks for planting a flag for it there.
Conyers Davis: Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, Governor Schwarzenegger always says, you know, there's no Republican air or Democrat air, there's just air. And I mean, to approach this from a partisan perspective is, in our mind, ridiculous. You know, so we work very hard to be bipartisan or postpartisan or transpartisan, whatever term you'd prefer to use, you know, in addition to Governor Schwarzenegger's leadership here at the Schwarzenegger Institute. We also have two former Democratic state senators that work with us. One is Senator Fran Pavley, who famously wrote California's Tailpipe Emissions Standard. And also wrote, was the author of the Global Warming Solutions Act, which a lot of people know as AB 32.
And then also a former Senate pro tem, Kevin De Leon, recently joined the Institute as a senior fellow. And he is very famous. We have a lot of different voices here at the Schwarzenegger Institute all chiming in and working together on the same problem, the same issue. So we love this idea of being bipartisan and trying to deal with this issue. One other thing I'd just add is that Most people don't look at pollution as a partisan issue. If you're a Republican or a Democrat, you still don't want to live next to a freeway. You don't want to drive behind the truck belching black smoke. I just don't think anybody really sees pollution as something they want to defend in their political platform.
So we spend a lot of time talking about pollution rather than climate change because we think it really resonates with everybody out there, even those people that aren't interested in politics at all.
Ross Kenyon: 100% I think that's that's very true. I've long desired like a high level political candidate who didn't have anything in their platform except being anti littering. I think that could unite the country. I don't think anyone likes seeing a cigarette butter or a rogue bottle being thrown out of a window. I think that's a very, very wise way to put it. And I think there's a lot for people to support there. And it doesn't have to be as alienating as it's become. In fact, what you said has sort of the world's changed around you a bit, Conyers, and it's a little bit more out of fashion these days.
But I hope you can do your part to bring those sort of conversations back because I don't think we're going to get there without it.
Conyers Davis: Yeah, we'll certainly continue to fly that flag and talking about this issue in a way that we think everybody's going to respond to. But I'm optimistic about the future. I think we do have our challenges and this is a difficult problem. It's not going away. But I think you can't underestimate human ingenuity. And I think when people like yourselves are doing such innovative and interesting work, combining markets and carbon sequestration and agriculture, that gives me great hope. So I think that we will find a solution to this. I just hope we don't wait too long and do too much damage before we do find that solution.
Alexsandra Guerra: Absolutely. And we have no more time to waste debating whether or not we should be acting on this time to act. Everybody breathes the same air. So you guys are doing a lot on the policy side for this and more. Where can our listeners learn more about what you do?
Conyers Davis: So the easiest place to go is the Schwarzenegger Institute website, that's schwarzeneggerinstitute.com. You could just do a simple Google search for Schwarzenegger Institute and we'll pop up. [Twitter plug cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio.] I mean, he's a very busy man, pulled in many different directions, but somehow he makes these three very different parts of his life work well together and creates a lot of synergy. So I think any of those avenues are an easy way to find us. You can also just call the Institute. Our number's listed on our website, and the team's here if anybody has any questions.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Well, thank you so much for being with us, Conyers. Thank you for supporting Nori in our lightning sale. Thanks for doing the podcast. We're happy we finally got a chance to do one with you. And clearly we have more to talk about and should probably do more in the future.
Conyers Davis: Yeah, absolutely. I hope this is the beginning of a great collaboration. I also just want to say that participating in the Lightning sale was incredibly easy for us. I think your website is really well constructed. Also, I was amazed at how reasonable it was to offset our carbon emissions. I was a bit nervous that we were going to be undertaking a really expensive project when we decided to do this. I actually thought it was very reasonable and the clean conscience that I think we have now as a result of this really was worth the investment. So we're pleased to be part of this.
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, that just made our day. Pretty sure. That's all we were trying to do is make this as simple, seamless as possible and to allow people to act quickly and make it reasonably priced.
Conyers Davis: Well, I think you've achieved that. And so we're really excited about what you're doing. And we're going to be letting everybody on our mailing list know about the great work that you're doing and our pleasure to partner with you on it.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Thank you so much, Conyers. Thanks for joining us. [Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.] So thank you so much for your support. And back to your regularly scheduled programming. I'm surprised I haven't said that one to date. But thank you. Goodbye.
