365: Is Climate Action "Quixotic"?: Don Quixote's Psychosis & the Misuses of Political Nostalgia
Is that a noble man rejecting modernity and embracing tradition? Or is it a lunatic with a lance trying to disembowel a shepherd?The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (Saavedra) is the much beloved literary classic—and perhaps the world's first true novel—but its reputation goes far beyond the book itself. The character has spawned his own adjective: "quixotic", which gets levied at anyone who dares to dream a bit too big.But is this a word kind of like "epicurean", whose true meaning is subverted by modern use? I believe the answer is yes.This episode goes out to all of the climate people who dare to dream of a better, kinder world, and why I don't think your critics know what being "quixotic" means.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersArbonics: forestry project developer in the EUListen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from ArbonicsBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceUse this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcastsSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" by Elvis Costello & The AttractionsDon QuixoteJainismIt's hard for me to think about Don Quixote without also thinking about Sir Digby Chicken Caesar from That Mitchell and Webb Look since it is so clearly based upon Sancho and Don Quixote...And also Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of DuncesMan of La Mancha (musical)Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition meme"Golden Helmet of Mambrino" from Man of La ManchaIntertextualityI didn't explicitly name cases of left-wing nostalgia, but you can look to the Paris Commune (and earlier revolutionary moments in France), primitive communism, republican Spain, the consensus capitalism nostalgia of Michael Moore, etc.Henry VIII: King and Court by Alison Weir
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364: Lowering the Onion into Hell: Strategic Realism vs. Christian Pacifism
In The Brothers Karamazov, the character Grushenka tells a story about an old peasant woman who never did a good deed in her entire life and went to Hell when she died. The woman's guardian angel petitioned God to let him search her life for a single good deed and if he found one, God would let her into Heaven. God agreed. It turns out she had once given a beggar an onion! Her single good deed! So God told the guardian angel to lower the onion into Hell to lift her out of the Lake of Fire... What happens next depends upon the teller of the tale...Today we venture into theology and the surprisingly radical nature of Christianity. Dorothy Day once quoted in The Long Loneliness, "no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy." I do my best to untangle what is genuinely striking in reading the Gospels with fresh eyes, and contrast that against much of the market-oriented and security competition games that dominate our world.So much of where that leads us sounds silly in the cold light of day. It's downright maladaptive to worldly success. But as Léon Bloy once said, "the only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint." So, what the hell are we supposed to make of a world that is so at odds with the gentleness commanded by so many of the world's spiritual traditions?I'll share with you what I've learned about myself in trying to become simpler, and do so with as open a heart as I can muster. "Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"— Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself,", Leaves of Grass“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”― VoltaireThis Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersArbonics: forestry project developer in the EUListen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from ArbonicsBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceUse this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcastsSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackRealism (international relations)Liberalism (international relations)Prisoner's dilemma338: Carbon Security & the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah GodekPax Americana Henry KissingerRobert D. KaplanSermon on the Mount on WikipediaThe Sermon on the Mount starting with Matthew 5, King James Version (for the idioms alone)AnabaptismCatholic Worker MovementThe Long Loneliness by Dorothy DayThe Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy"The Epistle to the Galatians" on WikipediaThe Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X & Alex HaleyA Hidden Life (go watch this film right away!)345: Why Too Many TV Antiheroes May Be Bad for the ClimateDefault to Good (TvTropes)It isn't thematically exactly right since I argue against many of its verses, but the chorus to Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" is apt: "Oh, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now!" I prefer the version by The Byrds.Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green The "no one should die from a preventable illness" memeCasablancaRomanticismLes MisérablesJean ValjeanChaotic Good (TvTropes)D&D Character Alignment (TvTropes)Grushenka's onion story (it's in the middle of the chapter; feel free to search by "onion" to find it)The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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363: Carbon Markets & The Art of Not Being Governed: Legibility vs. Complexity in James C. Scott—w/ Grant Faber
One of my biggest podcasting regrets is not having been able to interview the anthropologist Dr. James C. Scott before he died in 2024. We had corresponded by email, but he'll forever be one of the ones who got away... Rest in peace, James. Your scholarship is still making people think.Today's show serves as an introduction to anthropology, and to some key Scottian concepts like "legibility" that Grant Faber and I apply to the carbon removal and carbon offsetting spaces.Why do states prefer straight lines? Why do more organic shapes take place seemingly everywhere else? How can creating legibility be simultaneously great for transparency and order but perilous for justice and truth? When complexity is often so much more accurate, what is it within us that yearns to abandon it? What is in us that desires to make everything legible to our gaze even if it creates a wasteland and calls it peace?If that's a soupy theoretical mess for you, you'll probably enjoy this episode. It's a doozy!“A language is a dialect with an army and navy."— Max Weinreich, attributed"[The Romans] create a desert and call it peace."— TacitusThis Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersArbonics: forestry project developer in the EUListen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from ArbonicsBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceUse this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcastsSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackGrant Faber's Carbon-Based Commentary on SubstackJames C. Scott's Wikipedia pageJames C. Scott's posthumous In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It BringsWeapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance by James C. ScottThe Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by Jame C. Scott"Not 'gay' as in 'happy' but 'queer' as in "f**k you'." is a line I've heard that is maybe informative here."On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" by Friedrich NietzscheWilliam of OckhamNominalismMichel FoucaultJacques DerridaPostmodernismHauntologies of carbon removal—w/ Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University of Buffalo: RCC S3 bonusCapitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark FisherEdmund BurkeThomas PaineZhou EnlaiMichael Oakeshott, though I wonder if I have potentially overstated his position...Precautionary principleBr'er rabbitFordismSloanism333: Coproduction & Additionality: How Do We Draw the Line for Carbon Removal?—w/ Grant Faber, Carbon-Based Consulting"A primer on additionality and carbon removal" by Grant Faber350: Robert Höglund Presents: The Many Perils of Being Catalytic in a Carbon Accounting WorldDavid Graeber's Wikipedia page
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362: Will Humanity Pass Through the Great Filter and Become a Permanent Civilization?
If there are so many inhabitable planets in the universe, why haven't we made contact with other civilizations? One terrifying answer is that very few civilizations are able to create world-altering technology without also killing themselves off in the process.This monologue episode introduces the concept of Great Filter Events through the work of Dr. David Grinspoon's outstanding book, Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future.Go read it, and listen to the shows I've done with David Grinspoon in the past! Links below.“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”― E. O. WilsonThis Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersArbonics: forestry project developer in the EUListen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from ArbonicsBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceUse this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcastsSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackEarth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future by Dr. David Grinspoon47: David Grinspoon, AstrobiologistGeology Cage Match: The Sapiezoic vs. the AnthropoceneS2E15: Are you a wizard or a phophet?—w/ Charles C. MannGaia hypothesisSearch for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World by Charles C. MannObjectivism and Ayn RandGeologic time scaleGreat Filter Fermi paradoxDrake equationSchadenfreudeNuclear War: A Scenario by Annie JacobsenFallout (franchise)AbiogenesisGreat Oxidation Event
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361: Carbon-to-Value's Long-Awaited Vindication—w/ Matt Atwood, Founder & CEO of Aircapture
A $50M Series A?! In this economy?Aircapture recently raised a big round at a time when big raises in climatetech are hard to come by. Their secret? Producing a valuable product better for their customers than what currently exists, and not being dependent upon policy or carbon credits.They're doing modular direct air capture in places that otherwise need to buy merchant carbon dioxide from companies that sell gases. Shipping merchant CO2 to the Canary Islands isn't cheap. If modular DAC can provide cheaper and less carbon-intensive CO2, that's surely a win for the climate, the economy, and the learnings that allow us to scale along the way.Matt brought his insights about how he built a successful business in carbontech. Folks would be wise to listen up!N.B. The photos aren't of actual Aircapture facilities.This Episode's SponsorsPhilip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliersArbonics: forestry project developer in the EUListen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from ArbonicsBecome a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.comUse this affiliate link to use Descript's transcripting and podcast editing serviceUse this affiliate link to use Riverside to record your podcastsSign up for the 9Zero climate coworking space with my referral codeResourcesBecome a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate ChangeSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change SubstackAircapture's websiteAircapture's Series A announcementA Mighty Wind scene about being retro vs. now-tro357: Making Graphite from Carbon Removal for Lithium-Ion Batteries—w/ Makoto Eyre, Founder & CEO of HomeostasisCapital efficiency
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