Reversing Climate Change

If the US pulls out of climate action, is there room for China or another country to fill the leadership void? Or without the US, does climate multilateralism fall apart entirely?
This episode is a direct response to my recent monologue episode, "How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"", which walked through the political risks to climate and carbon removal policy in a world where the US pulls back. I looked at Canada, the EU, its various member states, and Japan as possible safe havens. One country I left out was China. So I invited Sarah Godek back on as my "sinologist on call" to help set the record straight.
Sarah Godek is a returning guest and very knowledgeable about China. Our previous episode—a conversation about realism and liberalism in geopolitics, born out of a piece she co-wrote with Grant Faber on carbon security—is linked in the resources section and is a useful first step before diving into this one.
In this episode, Sarah walks me through China's energy security priorities, the difficult role coal plays in Chinese strategy, Tencent's CarbonX Prize, the absence of a clear institutional home for carbon removal inside the Chinese government, and the much harder question of whether climate multilateralism can survive without American leadership.
Listen in to hear more about what the "intangible third thing" of world leadership actually is (Sarah argues it's capability — the ability to make other actors stop) and why the war in Iran is a very different status hit for the US than the war in Iraq was; why a peaceful reunification with Taiwan is still the preferred outcome in Beijing, and what that says about the value of legitimacy; how China's environmentalist movement today more closely resembles the US in the 1960s, and how the principle that "green mountains are gold mountains" shapes Chinese carbon removal policy (heavy on sinks and reforestation, light on engineered CDR); what the 15th Five-Year Plan might or might not change; why China frames historical emissions as a Western problem—"if we didn't break it, why must we buy it?"—and what that means for whether China will ever take the mantle on CDR specifically; and Sarah's closing framing... it isn't that the US leaves a gaping hole the world flounders in. It's that the world will continue on without us, and the risk isn't punishment for not being at the table—it's being on the menu.
This Episode's Sponsors
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ about project finance⁠
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Rainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
Resources
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠
338: Carbon Security & the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek
"Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal" by Sarah Godek & Grant Faber
391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"
Tencent's CarbonX Program
China's 15th Five-Year Plan and carbon—"Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality China's Plans and Solutions"

I've had a poem stuck in my head, and it isn't one of biophilia and whimsy. It's about liminality, death, and interregna. Let me read for you one of my favorites and one of the all-time classics of Enlighs literature, William Butler Yeats's "The Second Coming".
While beautiful for its own sake, I'll also make a case for the defense of useless things, an argument for the horror genre as a serious art form, and a close reading of a poem that has become a kind of shared vocabulary for moments when the center will not hold.
I work through the imagery line by line, and connect it to everything from Frankenstein and Genesis's exile from Eden, to Tig Notaro's stage presence, to theriantropic madness from The Office's Michael Scott, to H.P. Lovecraft, to Slavoj Žižek on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and more.
The trigger wasn't climate policy rollback or the war in Iran, as you might guess—it was actually thinking about artificial general intelligence, and that the falcon that can no longer hear the falconer.
Listen in to hear more about why "The Second Coming" reads as present-progressive horror rather than past-tense lament, why "troubles my sight" is a master class in economy of language, what monsters are actually for (the etymology connects to the Spanish mostrar—to show; which I minority mispronounce in my freestyling—forgive me!), how Hereditary, The Babadook, and Jordan Peele's films use horror to talk about grief, depression, and race, and why this liminal moment between world orders feels so monstrous: not because the new world has arrived, but because the rough beast is only now slouching toward Bethlehem.

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters."
- Antonio Gramsci
Resources
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠
"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats
Paul Muldoon's reading of "The Second Coming"
In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk's Memoir by Paul Quenon (referenced via Thomas Merton)
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Eschatology on Wikipedia
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan
Paris 1919 (album) by John Cale
Pervert's Guide to Cinema — Slavoj Žižek on Hitchcock's The Birds
Segment on The Birds
Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Trianon (I didn't mention this by name, but I've been thinking a lot about how it shaped/shapes Central Europe.)
Hereditary
The Babadook
Jordan Peele
HP Lovecraft
Id, ego, superego in Freudian psychoanalysis
Michael Scott's theriantrope fantasy/nightmare/prophecy from The Office

This is the kind of episode you put on and laugh along with us. This isn't the one where you'll get super quick tech takeaways within 30 minutes that you can drop at your next meeting. It's something else entirely.
Emily Swaddle, co-host of The Carbon Removal Show and one of the funniest people in carbon removal, joins Ross for a wide-ranging conversation about life, art, language, climate communications, and the absurdity of having a career in all of the above. A good chunk of the reason The Carbon Removal Show is so fun is because Emily is so fun, and this episode is basically an extended version of her (in)famous segment on TCRS, "Emily's Language Chat".
Emily Swaddle is a storyteller, communicator, and co-host of The Carbon Removal Show alongside Ben Weaver-Hincks and Tom Previte. She's been making the show since 2020, producing deeply researched, highly produced seasons that have become a go-to educational resource for the carbon removal community. Emily brings a unique perspective shaped by her background in the arts, her love of language, and her instinct that the climate conversation needs more humanity, more humor, and far less jargon.
Listen in to hear more about why Emily thinks silliness and vulnerability are underrated tools in climate communication, and why we even bother doing this climate work when it isn't the glamorous, high-paying energy executive type work.
You'll also hear about the Carbon Removal Show Coalition funding model, the tension between monetizing the natural world and actually caring about it, how British class dynamics show up in language and accent, why being a generalist in a specialist world is both a gift and a curse, and what happens when two podcast hosts stop talking about carbon removal policy and start talking about Disney villain queer coding, Mary Poppins, and whether "rabbit tube" should be a phrase.
Special thanks to the team at The Carbon Removal Show for loaning us the perfection that is the "Emily's Language Chat" reggae jingle.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
This Episode's Sponsor
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
Resources
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠
The Carbon Removal Show podcast
"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver
The Carbon Removal Show Coalition
Why Would You Say Something So Controversial Yet So Brave?
Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell
What Makes Disney Villains so Gay?
Money can be exchanged for goods and services from The Simpsons
"The Darmine Doggy Door" from I Think You Should Leave
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
Sumptuary Law

Right now, the world's climate policy architecture is under siege. The US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Right-wing populism is rising across Europe. And Europe itself is torn between defending against geopolitical threats and sustaining the climate policies it has spent years building.
What happens to carbon removal in this environment? And what happens to CORSIA—The Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation from within the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)—when a key moment of judgment arrives this June?
Lev Gantly is a partner at Philip Lee LLP, a law firm specializing in carbon markets and climate law, and one of Reversing Climate Change's sponsors. He advises a broad range of clients on emissions reduction and carbon dioxide removal projects, both through natural solutions like biochar and engineered technologies.
His deep understanding of international carbon markets, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, and the evolving regulatory landscape makes him a critical voice on where climate policy is actually heading—and where it can actually survive political pressure.
Listen in to hear more about how CORSIA works and why it matters (or doesn't matter so much?) for carbon removal. You'll also learn about the specific moment this June when the EU must decide whether to keep the scheme or revert to its original plan to impose its own emissions trading system on international aviation.
Plus, where Lev is actually seeing durable policy support for carbon removal right now—and what it takes to make climate policy sticky enough to outlast a change in government.
This Episode's Sponsors
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Rainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
Resources
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠
Lev Gantly
Philip Lee LLP
Linear reduction factor
European Union Emissions Trading System
ICAO
CORSIA
NDCs
"How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance""

The foundational assumption of carbon removal has been the "pre-compliance" story—that the voluntary carbon market and early corporate offtakes are necessary but not sufficient, and that we're all waiting for compliance to automate demand. That story depends on Japan, Canada, the EU, and the UK carrying the torch while the US sits on the sidelines heckling.
In this monologue episode, I walk through why I no longer think that story holds. Right-wing populism is surging across every country the pre-compliance story depends on. Energy prices are climbing. Growth is stalling. And voters facing rising costs and security threats don't prioritize abstract, probabilistic, future-oriented problems no matter how catastrophic those problems actually are.
This isn't a doom episode. It's a planning episode. If you work on anything strategic in carbon removal or climate tech, you need a clear-eyed view of what the world is actually doing—and a plan for what your company looks like if the world doesn't regress to the mean.

"If you want to make an omelette, you've got to break a few eggs."
- Joseph Stalin
"Where's the omelette?"
- George Orwell
This Episode's Sponsors
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Rainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
Resources
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠
338: Carbon Security and the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek
364: Lowering the Onion into Hell: Strategic Realism vs. Christian Pacifism
Sanae Takaichi
Pierre Poilievre
Mark Carney
Albertan secessionism
National Rally
Gilets Jaunes (yellow jackets)
Friedrich Merz
Willam F. Buckley Jr.
Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland) party
Nigel Farage
Reform UK