Laugh with us as comedian Charlie Berens and "Crypto-for-Carbon" startup founder Paul Gambill explore how communication & investing with farmers could be the key to removing carbon from the sky and storing it in productive, profitable soil to benefit investors, farmers and the planet.
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On this Summit Roundtable we discuss the ROI of converting a farm from conventional to regenerative ag, how there's an elegant solution to transfer wealth from large urban corporations to rural farmers, effective communications strategies to connect to farmers, and how we might solve political partisanship with a game of cornhole.
Featuring CEO of the Nori carbon marketplace Paul Gambill and emmy award winning journalist and comedian Charlie Berens.
Connect with Paul on www.nori.com with his podcast, blog, and more featuring farmers, scientists, founders, and even religion trying to figure out how to remove carbon from the skies.
Connect and laugh with Charlie on his website, youtube, and instagram.
Sponsored by: Aspiration Bank: Signup for Fossil fuel Free banking and get a $50 exclusive offer. #PlantYourChange
If you’re ready to take the leap into converting your land to not only benefit your soil but also start taking advantage of the up and coming voluntary carbon marketplaces, or you want to reduce your carbon footprint of your own urban business -- then this episode is for you!
INSIGHTS AND IMPRESSIONS
Big urban companies can basically give a bridge loan to farmers that want to move from conventional to regenerative agriculture.
There's a huge supply shortage of carbon removal projects.
Regenerative agriculture vs conventional agriculture.
If farmers could see an immediate hit in the form of subsidies created by lobbists to do the "green work" it would make transitions much simpler.
“If latte-sipping yuppies will buy bitcoin, whatever that is, the money is there, they will buy carbon tokens too if they know about it”
Charlie is an emmy award winning journalist, stand up comedian, host, creator of Manitowoc Minute and active with multiple charities supporting veterans, farmers, and many many more. The Wisconsin native has been featured on Fox, CBS, Funny or Die, TBS Digital, Variety, MTV News and more.
Charlie began his career working for MTV News' Choose or Lose. In 2012, Tribune Media tapped Charlie to host the comedic news show Nightcap. In 2013, he won an Emmy for "The Cost of Water" while reporting for KDAF, a television station in Dallas, TX.
In 2014, CBS Sports Network hired Charlie to host the sports gameshow You’re So Money. Also in 2014, PMC (Variety, Deadline) made Charlie the host of their comedy/entertainment news brand @Hollywood. From red carpets to Sundance to SXSW to Coachella, Charlie has interviewed hundreds of celebrities, politicians, actors, and musicians.
Charlie is a frequent collaborator on Funny or Die. His comedic mashup including “If Jack Dawson Was Really from Wisconsin” have garnered more than 13 million views.
In 2017, Charlie began the viral Midwest comedic news series Manitowoc Minute. His fans flock daily to his Facebook page to view his content. He currently has over 550,000 Facebook followers. After garnering millions of views, he’s toured the United States selling out venues within minutes.
Most recently, Charlie’s Midwest-focused sketch comedy videos have garnered hundreds of millions of views. In addition to sketch comedy and the Manitowoc Minute, Charlie also hosts Dark Side Of on Discovery ID.
Charlie hosts his own podcast, Cripescast, where he interviews musicians, artists, comedians, creators and more to talk about their story and connections to the Midwest.
Charlie is currently developing an animated show and is writing his first book that will be released next year.
Paul Gambill is the CEO and co-founder of Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. In 2015, Paul established the first community dedicated to carbon removal called Carbon Removal Seattle. He has 10 years of experience in managing mobile and web application projects for clients including Nike, Showtime, Target, and Starbucks, and has shipped well over a dozen different apps to the public. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree from Arizona State University, and his Master of Engineering Management degree from Duke University.
Learn how your green can grow more green for your portfolio and the planet! Visit us here for everything you need to know: www.sustainableinvestorsgroup.com
Schedule a call where we can discuss your investing needs, outdoor adventure plans, or just to get to know each other.
Special thanks to Paul Gambill and Charlie Berens for taking the time to share so many great insights with us.
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morgan: [00:00:00] I'm very excited today to have our summit round table emerging people you wouldn't expect. So we have from Seattle Paul Gamble and from Milwaukee, Charlie barons, Charlie, thank you for coming on.
charlie: Thanks for having me. How are you doing today? Uh, I'm doing, uh, good. Yeah. Can't can't complain about, well, I could complain about a lot, but no one will care. It's all good fun fact. I'm over here in Germany and I saw that bill Clinton said Milwaukee is the most German city [00:00:30] in the United States.
you know, there are a lot of, I mean, there's, there's a lot of big steins on any bar you go into, you're going to find a Stein somewhere. Okay. And in the back of it, you're going to find a broken Stein. Cause when you combine steins with what's in the Stein, that Stein's not going to last for long, historically, especially in Milwaukee.
So, but yeah, there's a big. Big German population in Milwaukee. That's for sure. I mean, look, we got all the best sauce, all the best broad companies in the, uh, in the world here, [00:01:00] I'm going to double down on that. I'm going to double down.
morgan: I actually live 30 minutes away from the world's largest wine festival. And the name of it is the sausage market.
charlie: Oh, wow. That's it's weighted, so, okay. I mean, I'm doing the math on that. That's fantastic.
morgan: Okay. We can get 600,000 people together to drink wine and eat sausage, but I never noticed that Wisconsin brat there.
charlie: Ooh. Well, how much wine were you drinking? That's the question.
morgan: Unfortunately, they serve [00:01:30] it in like a half a liter glass. It's it's dangerous.
charlie: I know it all came from, Germany, Bavaria, whatever you want to call it. It's where it all came from. So yeah, you are in the Capitol. I probably do have to bend the knee to that.
morgan: Oh, that's good. I mean, maybe your Midwest guy should come check out the sausage market and.
charlie: I, it would be an honor consider me there. That's awesome. our entire office was [00:02:00] dying when we were watching the mid-west Siri translator. Yeah. Cheryl Kaczynski. Is that her name? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually Cheryl Luzinski and folks, if you're unfamiliar with. Uh, what the deal is, you know, in the Midwest, allegedly, we got an accent.
I think it sounds pretty neutral, but any who is some times Siri can understand, you says, Hey, there's Siri, can I get directions to kind of walk? She says, dialing nine one, one. And I [00:02:30] think in a stroke. So if you just download the I O three as, okay. That's IOP tree. Okay. You get the update and share with Sinskey comes on.
Cheryl's just a good, good downhearted Midwest woman who lives on your phone and, eventually in your brain, because you didn't read the terms and can, so that's the, that's the.
I just have to know what was it like growing up as a kid around your dinner table? well, I'm one in 12. So what was always pretty interesting, and [00:03:00] when you're mass produced, you kind of have to like buy for not only food, which you do with a fork.
You stab your siblings hand, uh, if they're going for that last problem. but also, you know, if you want, you try and make people laugh, Cause a lot of times. There's just chaos and you're just trying to, you know, have a laugh with it, or someone messed up and you're trying to lighten the mood.
, at least I always was. So th that, that was a real, a real blessing.
morgan: So you grew up as a kid in Wisconsin, right?
charlie: Oh, yeah, I [00:03:30] should define that. Yeah. I'm from Wisconsin and, you know, born and raised outside of Milwaukee and then grandparents in fond, du Lac, and, we would go vacation up North right up by the UPC.
So when school UWC, so kind of all around the state, I've got a connection to in some way or another.
And then did you end up leaving Wisconsin to make your career. Yeah. After I graduated, I traveled all around the country doing local news. I was in, Michigan, Los Angeles, [00:04:00] Dallas, DC, South Carolina.
, I was going around the country doing local news and doing comedy and then my Manitowoc minute bit took off.
And that allowed me to move back to Wisconsin, which I'd always wanted to do. There just wasn't really a job that, um, I would want him to do there. So it was nice to make that job.
So did you make Manitowoc minute from not in Wisconsin? I made man's man's walk minutes started as a standup character that I was doing.
Cause I was doing [00:04:30] local news and the man talk minute character originated as a guy who instead of taking all the advice, his news directors gave him like the news directors and vice will be like, you have a Wisconsin accent. You got to fix that. I fixed it. This character did not, this character just doubled down on everything that people said was wrong about his accent and that sort of the man talk main characters.
. Do you think it took moving away to realize that focusing on the Wisconsin side was what you needed to do to kind of reach the success you're at now?
[00:05:00] I think in some ways that's true because you know, look being in Wisconsin and Wisconsin and I, and I went to broadcast, did some broadcast training to work on my voice, but I had a very thick Wisconsin accent and I, I really had no idea until I started doing that. And it's kind of like, you know, a fish, a perch, swimming and Lake Winnebago.
He's got no idea that he's swimming in water until some guy with Crocs and a camel, cargo shorts, catches him and then he's dangling, [00:05:30] looking at me. It's like, are you God? And the guy's like, yeah, I know I, and your shoe small, I'm sending you back, you know? And then that fish is like, Holy smokes.
You'll never guess. There's a weird world out there so I'm kind of like that perch, I think. , does that analogy hold water? Yeah. No, I don't think so. Keep working on it guy. but yeah, so I do think it's okay. Leaving in order to find out that the quirky thing about me and maybe the quirky thing about, the culture that I know and love so much in the Midwest. [00:06:00]
I'm not even from Wisconsin, but so much of what you say is so relatable. And I think especially this past year, it's been so refreshing because your content is positive. It's, self-effacing, it's real, but it's super funny and it's kind of the antidote of all the stuff that's.
morgan: Bad with media right now, like the division and the partisanship and, being offended at everything. Like it just hits that sweet spot. So.
charlie: Thank you. That's, that's very, [00:06:30] kind of, very kind of you to say. And that's certainly a hope to kind of be a bridge to bring people who may think opposite things together, because yeah, there's nothing more exhausting than listening to another Twitter diatribe about one thing or another it's like, Ugh, I can't, you know, and I think a lot of us feel that way because it's not that we don't care, but it's this negative way.
Some people approach issues. How are you ever going to convince somebody on the other side, if you're just, if you're approaching it in such a negative way, I [00:07:00] don't think it's going to work. If it, if it was going to work, it would have worked by now. Let's just put it. Yeah. And and that's kind of the point of this round table is to bring people together and find a common path or a another solution forward.
morgan: So I think. Wisconsin. so kind of evenly split between, sort of different ideologies. Do you think that gives you some kind of insight on how to communicate better across boundaries?
charlie: Yeah. I mean, I do stand up, shows all across the Midwest, but it [00:07:30] started in Wisconsin and, I am very, I mean, I try to keep up on all the issues and I don't think it's good to ignore the issues, that are very important, but I think finding a way that you find that relate-ability thing in every issue, every issue has got its common ground.
So maybe starting there. My job, I wouldn't say as to ever convince somebody of one way or another, but it's just to bring people to the [00:08:00] table so they can figure it out. I don't know the right answers in 95% of. Cases, but I know that it doesn't have to be a life or death argument every time.
So my hope is to just bring people to the table in some way.
our family became raving fans of yours after the corn hole, YouTube video with the underwhelming sports competition. Um, yeah, that's great. That, that was a Trevor, a Wallace. A phenomenal actor and [00:08:30] Tom Johnson. Wasn't that? So, yeah. Yeah.
Well, so my, my husband and I've been spending the last five years building a cornhole league in Europe and, um, yeah. And it's something that I've noticed. It's some, it's kind of like you guys hit it. Right on the head. It's kind of boring, but it's easy enough for anyone to do. And so you get all kinds of people together that may have different thoughts, different ideologies, different politics, over a game of corn hole.
And it's long enough though, that you [00:09:00] do have some talking going on and it's hard to get that nowadays. We're so kind of going our own neighborhoods with people who think and look like us. And it's just that bridge, right? It's a vehicle yeah, absolutely. I mean, saving the world one cornhole at a time.
That should be the tagline then. One bag, one bag at a time. Very good. That's probably a better off, that we'll have less confusion.
morgan: Yeah. Charlie, can you share with us some of the charities [00:09:30] or groups of people that you like to support with your platform? Yeah, we've done a lot of work with, VFW of Wisconsin, uh, boys and girls club, uh, Milwaukee, uh, United way.
last year, they were doing a lot of efforts with, the dread show in Iowa. uh, the juvenile diabetes, we have a, a show coming up for them, a benefit show. And then next week, children's hospital.
And I also have a vehicle for other people who are well-meaning, but don't know what to do to [00:10:00] kind of drive that to one organization or another. So, yeah, that is so fantastic. what motivates you to do that? Uh, guilt Catholic guilt, mostly, uh, the hope of getting out of purgatory earlier. Um, that's really my number one motivator.
Yeah. So my grandma can't say enough groceries to get me out soon enough. So I've got to do these good deeds. And I don't have enough money for indulgences. So, you know, this is where I'm really investing my hope for the afterlife. So, [00:10:30] well, you know, one way or another, right when we are now, I know you got to hedge your bets when it comes to the next world, right?
Yeah. I hear your secret heart elementary school here. Right. That's awesome. Okay. So I'm just going to. Move over to the other side of the round table and introduce Paul Gamble. He's coming from Seattle. Thank you so much for joining us, Paul, how are you?
paul: I'm good, Morgan. Thanks. I also grew up Catholic for what it's worth
[00:11:00] morgan: a good friend of mine, had mentioned, I think one of your co-founders as someone who's changing the world and doing amazing things, I've never really heard about carbon marketplaces. I've heard little bit about carbon offsets and not so clear about it. But when I went on LinkedIn, I have a lot of ranchers and they were just sick and tired and fed up and they felt like they're being had, but. Repeatedly. I kept seeing your Nori coming up as quote, the [00:11:30] dark horse doing it.
Right. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
paul: I like that. I like that characterization. I always, uh, I always want to be like the second or third place, horse in the race. So you, can you come back in the wind? The ports jumps out in front, never wins. carbon markets are like 20, 25 years old at this point.
And they come from a concept of how do we deal with the fact that like carbon emissions are continuing to increase and, [00:12:00] uh, we got to stop back as climate changes. is happening because of, an excess amount of. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. it's difficult to just kind of arbitrarily say, Hey, you gotta stop emitting carbon because carbon emissions come from things that are useful and valuable to us.
We need energy to produce all our goods and services and the lifestyles that we live and not just in the developed world, but we want, it would be nice if people in the developing world had access to those kinds of things too. [00:12:30] So. but there is a trade-off, there are consequences to that. And, carbon markets are trying to say, is there a way that where we can create new incentive structures, uh, so that we can get the best of what we want out of energy and other things like that.
Uh, w. While reducing the harmful effects. so the first-generation of those who have been around for 20 plus years, and, what Nora is working on is trying to iterate on that and, pretty something that can actually work better in a more modern context.
morgan: So how does that, [00:13:00] how does it work?
you know, on a practical level, if we're speaking directly about this question, can farmers reverse climate change?
paul: let's just go back to basics. carbon emissions go up in the atmosphere. They stay in the atmosphere that causes warming as sunlight comes in, it, traps heat in the atmosphere.
And then that causes melting of permafrost in the Arctic and, we're, we're trapping more and more heat Marine, this kind of like runaway cycle. So the problem is too many greenhouse gases. And then the solution, [00:13:30] therefore is let's get rid of those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Let's pull them back out and store them somewhere.
climate change is so often discussed as a political problem, but I think that's the completely wrong way to frame it. It's an engineering problem. The carbon is in the wrong place and we have to move it. And you have to figure out how to do it at a really, really large scale because the amount of carbon dioxide that has been admitted since the industrial revolution is, uh, an insanely large amount, we need to remove over one and a half trillion, tons [00:14:00] trillion with a T in order to get back to the same level that we had before we started burning fossil fuels and all of that.
so if the solution is to pull the gases back out, then we need to start looking around. Okay. What are the different ways that we could remove carbon? We can store it in soils. We could plant trees, we could grow kelp. We could build industrial facilities, like direct air capture. We could, uh, put it in construction materials and so on.
And so on. There are lots of different ways. We have all of these, we've known about these for a long time, but they haven't been [00:14:30] happening. And so the real problem is that we should ask is why isn't it happening? What do people need in order to do this? And that's where I come back to incentives. Like if you want people to do something.
The easiest way to get them to do it is to pay them to do it. And so that's what Nori is trying to do is we're trying to make it easy for people to pay other people, to pull carbon out of the air and store it.
morgan: And so how does Nora facilitate this?
paul: We partner today with [00:15:00] farmers in the US who are sequestering carbon in their soils. And this is coming from adopting new regenerative practices, which are, it's funny that people call it new because these are really the old practices. It's just not plowing the land so much. It's planting cover crops in the winter. So you're keeping roots in the ground. Doing different and more complex crop rotations, maybe managed grazing.
You mentioned ranchers earlier. we're trying to increase the amount of organic matter that's in the soil. So soil [00:15:30] is a mixture of dirt and rocks and minerals and microbes and fungi and other small little creatures. And. when we do conventional ag, uh, we're plowing the fields at the beginning of the season, turning over that soil and exposing all of the organic matter up to the air where a lot of it dies off.
That's, that's basically what soil erosion is. So when you hear that term and then. You know, they plant their crops, apply fertilizer. They harvest the crops in the fall and then typically leave the fields [00:16:00] empty, throughout the winter and then repeat the process the next year. And, uh, it's also fairly common to leave fields fallow for like a whole season to, to rest and, just not be used in that way.
So that's that's conventional ag and regenerative ag is saying. Okay. Instead, don't actually plow or don't plow as intensely at the beginning of the season. Maybe do more direct injection of seeds. And then at the end of your growing season, harvest your cash crop and plant cover crops like a rye or [00:16:30] alfalfa or legumes or something.
And you're keeping roots in the ground because what's happening is you plant the crop through photosynthesis. It's pulling CO2 out of the air, and then it's turning that into nutrients that through the roots are being deposited to the microbes and the fun guy. That are in the soil. And in turn those microbes and fungi breakdown minerals, and provide them back to the plants.
It's a very symbiotic sort of thing that organic matter, the microbes and fungi, that is the carbon. So we want to be increasing that. For farmers what was really [00:17:00] fun about this is we don't necessarily have to work with farmers who are super motivated for environmentalist reasons or wanting to deal with climate change.
Adopting these practices is better for their soil is better for their land and they're going to increase their crop yields over time. They're going to become more drought and flood resistant. They're going to reduce their fertilizer in fuel costs. So this is a really good long-term investment, but, It, it takes time before you start to see those increased crop yields [00:17:30] and see the savings from that.
Then it says somewhat risky endeavor. Like Farming is a low margin business. So paying farmers for storing carbon is the perfect form of bridge financing to get through that sort of Valley of death as they go through that conversion. So this is like an amazing, uh, two for one. A win-win situation where we can actually sequester carbon and we can help farmers improve the quality and health of their land.
Yeah. I actually has that, that ring of a triple bottom line with environmental and [00:18:00] social benefits, social and economic benefit. , so it sounds like it's a heritage style of producing food and, managing livestock. If it's so beneficial and there are ways to sort of have the farmer, have a bridge loan to get through the initial period of time that it takes that to happen.
Why is it so hard to get people to do this? I think there are a couple of reasons. One is federal crop insurance programs, where. they work by saying, you pay your premiums, you have [00:18:30] to meet certain practices. You meet, like, depending on what crop you're growing, you have to have planted by a certain deadline, throughout the year.
And there are all these kind of restrictions around it. and that's, that's all backed by the federal government. Yeah. The government interfere like telling the farmer how they have to do their business. Yeah. If they want access to federal crop insurance. So federal crop insurance is saying like, if you don't meet certain yields, in the growing season, maybe there's bad weather, or maybe the, the global markets are impacted negatively in some way or something like that.
then the government is going to make [00:19:00] you whole up to a certain amount. this has been around since the new deal era. And, what that means though, is that in order to comply with those programs that you end up conforming and doing practices that you might not necessarily have chosen to do on your land, but the financial risk of going without that crop insurance, uh, seems too great.
So that's why, especially in the U S this is far less common than it is in other countries where they don't have that same sort of crop insurance program. I mean, there are multiple reasons, but [00:19:30] that's one of the big ones. Yeah. It's my grandparents were dairy farmers in Idaho, so I can, I can imagine.
The margins are very slim and it's very hard work. and it's hard to be kind of told what to do all the time, like your power taken away. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Which is basically the story of farming in the 20th century. yeah. So if this, if this new approach where you can use the carbon profits from the carbon marketplace can.
[00:20:00] Bridge the farmer. How many years on average, would it take them to sort of catch up with the regenerative practices to start to see those benefits? I mean, it's really going to be variable depending on like the state of the land, in, in their starting point in the, what crops are growing and where they're located and all of these types of things, but some somewhere between five and 10 years, It seems to be the average based on, previous studies that have been done, where they'll start seeing better ROI overall from adopting the practices.
And again, that has nothing to do with [00:20:30] any of the carbon side of things. That's just the, the land itself.
morgan: Right? , who's actually buying these who's who's on the buyer side. Yeah, it's a mix of consumers and businesses. we're mostly focused on businesses who are trying to, go carbon neutral or meet commitments that they've been making to be carbon net, zero by a certain dates and that kind of thing.
So something that's, there've been a lot of surveys recently, It's something like 85 to 90% of consumers are interested in purchasing far more sustainable brands. [00:21:00] And this is a fast becoming a cultural phenomenon. It's really changed and shifted in the last few years where more and more people. By doing that.
So it's not just consumers, but it's also employees of companies and shareholders or companies, and that all of these factors are pushing these businesses to be considering what is their own environmental impact? How do they negate that? Reverse that impact. And, there've been carbon offsets in the past and offsets are about things [00:21:30] that like reduce future emissions or avoid future emissions.
But What hasn't been on the table until recently is the ability to remove emissions and actively pulling it out of the atmosphere and storing into ground. And that's where, uh, businesses are kind of shifting towards is like just, it doesn't like make more intuitive sense. You put it up and then you pull it out.
That's it's straight forward. I've been having some discussions with some of your European counterparts. And one of the exciting methods they talked about was putting it into volcanic rocks from Iceland or something. [00:22:00] there's all kinds of crazy, interesting ways to do it. My question is , if they had a small business, let's say they had a small real estate business, for example, and they wanted it for their mission and for their branding, if they did buy something, how would they know it was actually making a proper impact?
paul: So, Quick history lesson. The, carbon offsets came about after the late nineties, when, frameworks were set up at the UN level to develop carbon markets and they were originally intended to [00:22:30] be trading of carbon credits between. Nation States. So, uh, the idea was developed countries would be paying, developing countries for carbon, like avoided deforestation and carbon reduction, planting trees, and that, and that kind of thing.
but it's evolved to be much more like voluntary and corporate driven. And there are a number of what are called offset registries, in existence, that have been around for like 15 or 20 years. These are companies that are they're actually nonprofits and they create what they call [00:23:00] protocols that carbon credit projects can conform to.
So it's the answering the question of how do we know that this carbon project actually happened? We can't see carbon, we can't smell it. So we have to find other ways to kind of prove the validity of it. And there are all these different steps to it. Like you have to, you have to have, what's called a validator, build out a model that estimates the amount of carbon associated with the project.
You have to have a verifier who is separate, who is then checking to make sure you're actually doing the project. [00:23:30] And then you work with brokers who are trying to sell the credits on your behalf, and then they're all sort of all these different consultants. So there's all these middlemen involved.
It's a very. Complex process. And it requires a lot of money to get started in this. So before I, got involved to the point of starting Nori, I was looking into how do I just set up my own carbon offsets project? And I was looking with a group of, like-minded people. And we were looking at this dairy digester project out in Eastern Washington.
It would [00:24:00] have cost one and a half, a million dollars just to get started. , there's the capital required for the actual operations, the equipment and the land and all of that. But there's also all of these fees that you have to pay for consultants and validators into the registries because the registries make their money by charging the suppliers.
You have to pay all sorts of fees to them. So it just seems like there are all these barriers to entry in place, preventing new supply coming online. So, from that we [00:24:30] really took away the learning that Carbon markets are not demand constrained. They're really supply constrained there is nowhere near enough supply to meet existing demand and certainly future demand.
the total number of carbon credits that have ever been created is somewhere between four and 6 billion tons, which might sound like a lot. But we emit globally about 50 billion, tons of CO2 equivalent every single year. So the total number of carbon credits is only [00:25:00] 10%. Of one year's worth of annual emissions.
We've been doing this for over two decades. So we've got to increase the pace at which we are developing new carbon removal projects. And that's really like Nori's primary goal. We're trying to change that whole system, get rid of all of those middleman and make it much, much simpler so that, not only can you create new supply projects, new carbon removal projects but also make sure that more money ends up in the hands of the people who are removing the carbon.
Cut out all of these middlemen. They don't need to take all of their [00:25:30] fees. More money can go to the farmers. That's excellent. That's super cool. I just want to make sure we get to know our guests a little bit. Paul, can you tell us when you first became very passionate about sustainability?
Yes. I remember the exact moment it was, I was in college. I was at a, uh, music festival, in Michigan. And I remember sitting on the lawn and I was watching, these trees that were. Just kind of, their leaves are just kind of fluttering in the wind. And, I just kind of, [00:26:00] the circumstances of the moment, helped me feel, really a lot more connected to the earth in a way that I hadn't exactly felt before.
And then some books I was reading at the time, just kind of started getting me thinking more and more about like these complex systems. Like the, the ratio of different gases in the atmosphere is actually like very fragile and, small amounts of changes can have really large ripple effects on it.
And that, that kind of set me on that path of kind of just. Thinking [00:26:30] about how are we managing this? we do things that make an impact. Okay, fine. There are consequences to that. How do we mitigate those consequences? I don't want to live in a world where we don't have access to cheap energy.
but I do want to live in a world where I can still go skiing in the cascade mountains in 50 years, on present path, that's not going to happen. So we should change something about what we're doing. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, climate change is definitely one of the number one problems we face and surrounding the football on it, attacking it on all edges [00:27:00] certainly it's got to happen.
So that's fantastic. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing and now is my favorite part of the show. I just want to open it up to the round table and so I'll step out and I'll just let you guys talk. So Charlie's got the pulse of the Midwest and frequently, Has farmer's on his show. And then Paul, you're trying to communicate with farmers about how they can add income streams.
And, even if they're not particularly interested about environmental impact, there's a fantastic business opportunity here.
Yeah, I guess [00:27:30] on, on that note, Paul, it wouldn't be the process. If there's a farmer in Wisconsin, who's watching this right now and I want to do this. I want to get involved in it. But you know, my day to day is so tough that I don't have time for it. You know? Do you have. sort of liaison set can help, manage this.
And is it an cost to the farmer or is sort of, sort of like an easy in that they can start the process or at least [00:28:00] start, like, I dunno, fitting their farm or getting on a plan to do this. Cause I think the farmers, I know they're so busy on a daily basis that this may just turn out in the cards. that's, that's the root of the problem. you hit the nail on the head. so first farmers have to adopt the practices, right? Like that's, we're not necessarily not business. And, there are banks and other groups that are interested in helping finance, that sort of thing.
so that's the very first step. And then after they've, made this practice changes, then [00:28:30] what we need is we have to collect a whole bunch of operating data about the farms. And, we're never taking ownership of the data. This is always remains owned by the farmer. We're just using it to help us quantify the amount of carbon that they're storing.
So we need operating data on their land. things like, what crops they were growing on, what rotations, where their fields are located, what kind of fertilizer they applied when they irrigated, those types of things, like their level of tillage, that kind of thing. And, what we've found is that it's a [00:29:00] far more efficient process for both Nori and for the farmers to, with a liaison that we call data manager.
So there are a bunch of companies that we're partnering with on this, For example, granular locus ag. we're getting started soon with Landolakes and with John Deere on how we might be able to import data that they've already got in their own platforms and make that a much smoother, faster, simpler process.
So these data managers are kind of helping manage that data enrollment process, asking the [00:29:30] questions of the farmers about. You know how they, um, how they operate it on their land, back in history. And then once we've got that full data set, then it goes to run through our partners at a company that's called soil metrics and they are, they're, they're a spin out from Colorado state university.
They're funded by the U S and they're able to, quantify from that operating data and say, this is how much carbon you're storing relative to what would have happened. If you could just continued with the conventional [00:30:00] practices, then that data has to be verified by an independent third party.
Not a complex process. The verifier is looking at like, maybe receipts or invoices for seed or fertilizer purchases. Maybe they're looking at satellite imagery, to show you were growing corn, soy rotation over the last few years on this land. And then the verifiers signing off, and then we issue, the certificates that the farmers can then sell through our marketplace to buyers.
we're trying to continually make this a [00:30:30] lot easier because not only are they super busy, but also when it's either planting or harvest season, they have no time whatsoever, to work on anything like this because they've gotta run their business.
So these are different things that we can do to try to, Take some of that load off of their backs. . Is there a certification that then goes on the products you buy in the same way? There's an organic certification.
That is something that a lot of people want to do. There are efforts that companies are making, I think, Annie's they're, uh, CPG doing, cookies and crackers and that kind [00:31:00] of thing.
they've been doing that. There's the regenerative organic labeling thing that Patagonia has been leading. there are some other efforts that, that people want to apply as labels, but nothing has reached anywhere near that same level of, standardization that organic has. But a lot of people see opportunity in that.
Yeah. I think, probably the toughest thing you're coming up against is that immediate hit. I think there's we as creatures are, we want to know the benefit. I mean, if I'm at a bar in Watertown, Wisconsin and, you know, there's a big [00:31:30] farming community around there. And I'm talking about business or whatever, and no, I've got this carbon sequestration thing coming in.
the first question would be like, why in the hell do you have that? I w I'm imagining this, but if the immediate answer is. On making a lot of money off it, then boom, it's going to take off like crazy. So, but I feel like, the windmills. Took off right away because they had immediate subsidies. I wonder almost if it would be worth instead of [00:32:00] the crop subsidies that you have the carbon subsidies, it's the same. instead of getting paid for your crop, you just get paid for the sequence duration thing, because, and then that promotes the, crop usage that you're talking about too, in the same Swift.
So maybe it's a lobbyists that do the dirty work. Maybe they can do the clean work, OH Jeez Louise!. I don't know what I'm thinking is just that immediate financial hit is what's going to be necessary. Cause I think as soon as people see, I got to go through all these [00:32:30] processes, they're like to hell with it.
Yeah. There there's a lot of talk happening in the Biden administration now about how USDA can help, incentivize people to do these sorts of practices. And I think some of the ideas are good and some of them are not. but one of the best ones would be a tax credit program.
there's already a similar thing for other types of carbon capture and utilization. But it doesn't apply to carbon and soil, but a tax credit, paying, for, the amount of Seacoast that they're doing, sequestration be a great way to do that. And that can be [00:33:00] additional to whatever carbon payments they get for storing the carbon.
that's a stacking of benefits that, that really makes that a lot more valuable. And then, like I mentioned earlier, there are banks that are interested in, we're trying to create whole, Financial market side of things of what we're doing. I haven't really talked about, but, we're interested in working with, parties who want to help with low interest loans or, financing of regenerative transitions in ways where everyone can win financially in the end, too.
it's about getting paid and if they can get paid, then they'll be interested in doing [00:33:30] it. And if they can't, then it's too much of a pain. Yeah. This whole ecosystem of you have, the, those who farm or those who do a lot of. the very hard daily taxing blue collar, real good work.
And it, from my experience and family members and friends, uh, done a lot of time to think about that kind of stuff. And then on the other hand, and though you have like, kind of the. Hippies, yuppies, hipsters, whatever you want to call them. Those people who are all like, [00:34:00] I'm going to get this organic tea at the grocery store, you know, and if they got enough money for organic, the money, is there in those people to pay for all of this, it's just.
charlie: Finding that vehicle and maybe it's that vehicle is like, Oh, I only bank with chase because they give loans to get this sort of stuff going. So I think it's in a major, even be a marketing issue of tying all this together, you know? And I, I don't know. I'm just throwing stuff out there. No, I, [00:34:30] I think you're pretty much exactly right.
carbon emissions are coming from, the cities that have that use a lot of energy and there's a lot of concrete and that produces a lot of emissions,
So this can be, if this were scaled up, a really equitable way to. Bring more money into rural areas, which, of course have been hollowed out over the last 70 years or so. it's, this can help with social issues too. , with political divides and that kind of thing.
I that's not necessarily like the main [00:35:00] goal, but I think that could be a really positive, ripple effect benefit. I wouldn't a hundred percent agree. Yeah. It's, it's exciting to see, the potential for it. So, yeah, I there's a lot of work, obviously. I'm glad you're doing it. Cause I wouldn't know where to start, but, uh, it's really cool to see.
Yeah, Paul's making Bitcoin for carbon happen. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, there is a, there is a, the cryptocurrency involved in this and that's more of [00:35:30] like the financial side I was just referring to, you want like in any good commodities market, you've got a lot of liquidity, meaning there are lots of people trading these things.
The more people that are trading something, the more confident you can feel that the price. Of that thing is accurately reflecting what the market truly wants. So you always want to have more and more liquidity coming into your commodity market. there was this concept originally with carbon markets that you would, be able to trade carbon credits.
So typically what happens [00:36:00] in, in these old legacy registries is you'll do your project and then you'll sell your credits to a broker and then they'll sell them to someone else and then to someone else and someone else and someone else. But. I don't really think that makes a lot of sense, because if we're talking about carbon and we were talking about trying to solve climate change in a really rapid and effective way, we shouldn't be paying for the same tonne multiple times.
We should be paying for a net new ton of carbon dioxide every single time. in Northeast market, one of the key design changes we've done, and this is why we're not [00:36:30] working with any of the existing offset registries we're competing with them is when a buyer purchases a ton of CO2 from a farmer it's immediately retired, which is carbon market language.
Meaning when you're saying I'm not going to resell this, it's done. I own it forever. so all carbon that normally sells is immediately retired. But if we do that, then we lose the ability to have a tradable asset that can create a real commodities market. So that's why we've introduced [00:37:00] a token, a cryptocurrency here where one Nori token can always purchase one.
Ton of CO2 and the price of that Nori token is going to fluctuate based on supply and demand. So then you can look at the price of the token as the carbon price. That's the reference price for how much carbon is valued at when you remove one ton of it. So that's, and that creates all sorts of other potential opportunities that can scale this up.
So that's what we're doing here. I really rethinking money altogether. Actually, it's funny you say [00:37:30] that because, one of the most inspirational books I've ever read, is called rethinking money. it's by this, it's late economist named Bernard, the ETA who was actually one of the architects of the Euro.
, the book is it's so fascinating and it's, it's a bunch of different case studies of, different times throughout like the 20th and 21st century, when people have created new currencies and a very like localized sort of way that have helped revitalize, Community economies. so my favorite story, and it was a coastal city [00:38:00] in Brazil that had a lot of trash and waste in their Bay, in the water.
And they didn't have the resources at the city municipal level. They didn't have the resources to just like actually go clean all of that up. And so, but what they did have was, , transit system with buses and people paid for this buses with little coin tokens. And so the city decided we'll give you extra bus tokens.
If you, for every like bag of trash that you bring in from the water, and you can prove that you [00:38:30] brought it from the water. So they started doing that and people who had free unemployed, people who, uh, wanted to do. To earn some extra money started doing that. And then it led to a situation where local shops started accepting the tokens, these bus tokens that otherwise had no value.
They were only used for buses. but they started accepting these tokens because then more and more people were acknowledging, there's some actual, like additional value to this kind of thing. And it ended up creating a much more vibrant local economy. So there were new [00:39:00] businesses being created.
The land got the water, got cleaned up and they did all of this without any outside capital or money coming in. So this concept of creating new currency can actually produce new value. It's almost like magic. it's people are putting labor in, they're creating new value and they're able to transact with each other and that's how you improve your land and your, your livelihood and so on.
So, yeah, it's absolutely rethinking money.
. [00:39:30] Yeah, I think that's incredible. I mean, if you can get, a bunch of people to buy Bitcoin, whatever that is, you could get people buy anything. I think, you know, especially if it's got the planet, I think that's awesome. It doesn't matter what kind of money or currency you're talking about. It only has value because people believe it has value, whether it's a dollar or gold or anything else, or, or a Bitcoin. So it's the same thing here. and we're just tying that value to something that really happens in real life, which [00:40:00] is removing and sequestering.
Carbon is like a commodity pegged, sort of currency. That's fantastic. I know we're running short on time. So as this is a show for outdoor lovers, I just wanted to ask Charlie first, what role did the outdoors play for you as a kid growing up? Uh, it was everything I wasn't into video games. So it was my video game.
I loved biking and it was, being one at 12 new, you're always looking for your independence and freedom, and I've found that, outside and on my bikes, I've always had [00:40:30] deep love for it. Also fishing grew up fishing, so it's always been, that thing that I've connected to first.
so that wildlife is real in your care. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm all, I'm a always all eyes are the gold standard for me. So well, I'm on your corn hole video. I noticed you had a pretty good release. Like you might actually play. So here. For thanking you for coming on the show. I wanted to send you one of our, conking cornhole bags from cornhole [00:41:00] Europa.
That is awesome. Yeah, we can very good sliders. So you would not believe this. My friend Frank last year organized a Scandinavian cornhole cruise, where we've had an onboard corn hole tournament between Oslow Copenhagen and Hamburg. COVID canceled it. But it'll happen in the future. Keep practicing. Maybe you can represent Wisconsin.
If you come on the cornhole, Chris, I would love it. I would love nothing more. Thank you very much. [00:41:30] And Paul, how about you? What role did the outdoors play for you? so I grew up in Phoenix in Arizona and, the outdoors are, uncomfortable, there to say the least. so we didn't really do like camping or anything like that very much.
But when I, got into college, I started doing triathlons outside and, um, I actually started doing my own camping and then I moved to Seattle after school. And that's really where I fell in love with it here. So I love [00:42:00] skiing. I love kayaking. hiking in the forest is just, it, it. It just it's like what, where as humans, where we're supposed to do, we're supposed to be outside.
We're supposed to breathe that air from, from trees and stuff. And so it's just very much the opposite of where I grew up and I love it here. And I love the water and the mountains and everything that goes along with that. Absolutely Paul, if people wanted to learn more about carbon farming, carbon marketplaces, where would they go? So I have two suggestions. one is [00:42:30] just nori.com in ori.com. That's our website. We have tons and tons and tons of content on there.
Um, we also have a podcast, um, so it was called reversing climate change. And it's a weekly show. We've been doing this for like three years now, interviewing different people, working in the space who are, um, we've had a lot of farmers and ranchers on, but we also talk with other entrepreneurs who are building.
Other types of carbon removal, businesses, writers who are working on, different concepts around carbon. there's like a whole like religion series that we did on there and how, how [00:43:00] that relates. so lots of interesting, good content on the reversing climate change podcast. And you can find all of that@analready.com.
Very cool. Very cool. And Charlie, how about you? How can our audience get in touch with you? You can just Google Charlie Barron's it's on, you know, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram to talk or mint walking in it. So if you just Google either those all pop up and I also have a cripes cast podcast that you know is fine.
And we talked to just a variety of different people. Um, [00:43:30] and so yeah, all that. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for helping us on this, this movement to try to tear down the walls between doing well and doing good. Thank you for having us. Yeah. Thank you. We really appreciate it.