387: Carbon Efficiency vs. Everything Else—Are We Solving for the Polycrisis or Climate Change?

Are we trying to get parts per million of greenhouse gases down as quickly as possible? Or are also trying to solve the nested problems of fertility, toxicity, and resilience as well as the systems that got us here in the first place?

In this episode, I contrast high carbon-efficiency biomass burial approaches (Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage/BiCRS) with biochar and other methods that sacrifice some carbon efficiency but generate wide-ranging cobenefits.

We explore commodification, fungibility, and the dream of a “ton is a ton” carbon market—alongside the discomfort some feel when complex ecological realities get flattened into a single tradeable metric. Is that clarity necessary for scale, or does it repeat the same abstractions that helped create the crisis?

Ultimately, this isn’t a fight between good and bad actors. It’s a productive friction between two worldviews: the PPM-obsessed technocrats and the polycrisis systems thinkers each have their own blindspots and their own superpowers. My hope is not to settle the debate, but to help you notice where your intuitions land—and why.

" we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we use when we created them."

- Albert Einstein

" The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

- Audre Lorde

" If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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"385: Polycrisis, Collapse, Rebirth: Is Regenerative Economics Inevitable?—w/ Eugene Kirpichov, Work on Climate"

"384: Graphyte's Strategy is a Masterpiece of Simplicity—w/ Barclay Rogers & Hannah Murnen"