Let Me Sum Up

Carbon dioxide removal: We’re running behind on the backup plan for running behind

Episode Summary

Your intrepid hosts discuss the prospects for sucking carbon out of the atmosphere laid out in 'The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal'.

Episode Notes

What would Bing’s chatbot make of your intrepid hosts’ attempts to achieve the elusive 45 minute podcast we promised our Summeruperers all that time ago? As T Reed conjures increasingly elaborate powerpoints that (so far) have failed to keep us in line, we’ve decided to stick with Clippy for fear of Bing chatbot seeking to turn us against each other Yoko Ono style and breaking up the pod. Welcome to your fortnightly one-hour 45 minute podcast!

We revisit the last fire in the forest this week as the fear of Safeguard embers dimming is on minds across the Aussie climatesphere (with not a little PTSD from the CPRS days) as the political debate over legislating for Safeguard SMCs sees a stalemate of worrying familiarity. Where will the ground give - limits on offset use, treatment of new facilities, baselines? We refrain from speculating too hard lest we bend the karmic space time continuum to guarantee no ground is given at all. AKA watching brief.

Our curated paper of choice this week for you dear Summerupers is the world’s first comprehensive assessment of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal brought to you by a host of experts in CDR who are also authors of IPCC reports, the lead authors being Stephen M Smith, Oliver Geden, Jan C Minx and Gregory F Nemet. This paper was brought to US by Summeruperer Filomena Beshara - many thanks for your excellent suggestion!

Frankie’s One More Thing is her recent out of body experience seeing the Sydney Theatre Company’s one-woman spectacular The Picture of Dorian Gray starring Eryn Jean Norvill. 

Tennant’s One More Thing is a climate change-solving computer game called Terra Invicta in which solving the climate crisis is a mere byproduct of fending off an alien invasion!

Luke’s One More Thing is the recent annual foresighting forum held by Energy Consumers Australia. Putting people at the heart of the energy transition is what they do best! Sessions will be available here shortly if you’d like to watch back.

And that’s all from us this week Summerupperers! We shall see you next time and until then, please keep tweeting your thoughts to us at @LukeMenzel, @TennantReed and  @FrankieMuskovic and if you would like to weave some golden threads through our back catalogue, give us your feelpinions or suggest papers to read we are always here for that - hit us up at mailbag@letmesumup.net