Latest / Second Nature / E171 Troy Carter: AI Will Save the Forests

Transcript

E171 Troy Carter: AI Will Save the Forests · Second Nature

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Troy, in person.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is so lovely.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for coming in and finding the time.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how's your climate week been?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I live around here and I have a two-year-old, so I just hosted a breakfast yesterday, and otherwise I'm here and we'll go to an event in the evening.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, no, not at all.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I don't push myself on climate weeks.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we our first time over here, for one, um, we did New York's last September, and um we were told San Fran's cool, but it's not a patch on New York, New York is ferocious and bigger and so much going on.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be a bit more of a chilled-out vibe in San Fran.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: That is not what we've found.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that's probably because we've tried to attend everything and engage with everything as much as possible.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we've had a hell of a week.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Before we started recording, you asked me about what I'd sort of learnt from this week.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I came across hoping I would find energy, enthusiasm, audacity, entrepreneurial ship all draped in a cloak of what the future could give us with AI.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that is exactly what we've found from from coming into the airport to every single billboard, bus, train being adorned with what various AI companies might bring for the future.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: It has felt different coming from the UK.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: It does feel more optimistic and more.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: That might sound mad in the US context with everything Trump, but compared to the UK, it does feel way more optimistic.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's your take on that opening gambit?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, optimistic.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm an optimistic person.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it will all work out okay, even if it doesn't work out okay.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um but related to so I mean, I run a company called Earthstrout Labs.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: We do reforestation, conservation, we do all the sort of compliance and development work in order for those projects to be eligible for carbon markets, go structure financing, go structure off-take agreements, basically the end-to-end infrastructure to get more money into projects that restore and protect nature.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I do.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um am I optimistic?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it depends on the time horizon.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think in the next couple of years and the last few years, it has been an absolute slog working to get projects started and financed.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not an easy, it's not an easy time because the there are very few forcing functions to be like, yes, a big company or a government or um they have to go commit capital.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: That just isn't that sense of urgency when maybe a few years ago there actually was.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um What's your timeline with uh short?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: When did you first begin?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I started it in 2021.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: 2021.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was also uh where there were there was actually quite a lot of energy and enthusiasm and optimism.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: The markets were very hot, VC was very hot, it was kind of a category that people would go out and fund.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if you had extended the curve of, you know, carbon credit retirements in the voluntary market, you would have thought that it would go up.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, we saw it go up and then it go flat for a few years.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the a lot that has happened in the last few years is really just consolidating and learning and getting the team very efficient.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, now we can go develop and get a project registered very, very efficiently.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: We can go get it financed, we can go secure offtake.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the the demand, this offtake and this credit sales side, it's it's a lot of work.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and at some point in the next two to ten years, that will change because of just the inevitable reality of environmental degradation and climate change.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's just what will happen.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there will be some risk-adjusted decision point that says actually we don't want insurance premiums and wildfires to continue increasing.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we should actually go and do something about this.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we haven't quite hit that point.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so the push for corporate action is still very, very slow.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's my my feeling right now.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: However, we're also doing quite well because, you know, the team's just generally very good at what they do.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And because there's so much friction and inefficiency from systems, how they've been the last decade, well, we can at least do better than that.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so right now it's you know getting a really, really smart team of people, you know, getting projects started and and building the sort of platform so that when that wave comes back, um, we will be there.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I'm happy to talk more about that.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Give give people a feel for the sort of you know how many people are on the team, what the sort of backgrounds they've been drawn from.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Bring that to life.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So so Earthshot Labs, I mean, there's about 30 people on the team, mostly in Latin America, some in Africa, some in Europe, uh, you know, a few in the US, but it's it's a lot of where projects are.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of the team is science and technology.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So folks who are building ecosystem predictive models, you know, a complete and software platform for developing and financing and monitoring projects.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these are voluntary carbon projects, these are projects through different jurisdictional compliance regimes.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: People buy credits for green bond compliance or, you know, insetting.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of different reasons that they do that.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's obviously sort of like specialist, you know, geospatial and model developers.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then just a lot of like compliance and regulatory folks, people who are doing the unsexy manual human effort that it takes to go get a project started.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that could be anything from running, you know, FPIC, you know, free prior informed consent processes in indigenous communities in the Amazon that is not automatable with AI.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: There you're never going to go and AI that process to just understanding all the little technical nuance of meeting what are increasingly complex rules for carbon markets.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, in the end, most of that work is human expert services for large institutional investors and buyers who want to deploy large amounts of capital and generally quite large project developers who have tens or hundreds or thousands of millions of acres of land and they want to go develop projects on them.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: With that sort of geographical coverage, how do you go about finding the right people for the team?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have no problem finding the right people for the team.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would say there are so many more people that want to work with us than we're able to hire.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: We are in a bit of a growth mode right now in terms of we there are just too many projects that want to work with us.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we are, we are hiring people, but every position we put up, you know, there are hundreds of people that are generally like pretty qualified.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um which actually is one thing that doesn't make me particularly optimistic because not that many organizations are hiring right now in doing what we do.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, if someone wants to get hired at Earthshot, they really have to have done the exact job they're being hired for and be very experienced and best in the world already.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's just this kind of selection we're getting.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you is that you defaulting for experience and um specificity in a role, or it's just because you have the ability to make that choice because that you have We have the ability to make that choice because we get such amazing candidates.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Probably someone on the team already knows them.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a you know, it's a tight network.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone has friends that are that are excellent, but also just the the ramp up period.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like developing a carbon project is hard.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's there's so much nuance, these hundreds of page methodologies to comply with.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the ramp up time can take a long time if you haven't done it before.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, well, just get someone that's knows everything about it already, and then they start on day one, you send them to the field and they're off.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's just where we're at.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I it's fascinating the geographical coverage you have of those people.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: How are they almost um not franchises, but you know, the if there's one or two people in a geography or a small number in different countries, that that's quite a distributed footprint.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: How do you think about the culture of the business and things that are the same and different in the geographies?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the culture of the business.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, one is I think you know, if you there if there's mercenaries and missionaries, like it's a team of missionaries, you know, it's just purpose first.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's absolute purpose first where where people love what they do.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's honestly it's too hard to be a mercenary in this field.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just where you'd just work.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: You'd go do something else.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'd build an AI chatbot, and you're gonna make make way more money.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about job security, but um it's really, really hard.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot, people work very, very hard.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to, it's not just like an aesthetic appreciation for nature that gets you there.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's because you have a core life purpose that you have to work in this field to go restore and protect nature, to sort of introduce civilizational sustainability.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is what people are here for.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh otherwise it's just it's just too much work.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we we have 50 people in our central team.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: We do, up until very recently, we do time recording data.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: So people track the time they spend doing stuff.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Q1 of this year, we had 128% of contracted hours from people.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we actually had 58 people's worth of effort working on this.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I totally relate.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we always say it's 100% time allocation, but we we know people are working more.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So people will say, Oh, that's terrible, Rich.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're expecting these people to to work above and beyond.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, no.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I spend my time saying, please stop, please take a break, please take our head of people.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's a joke in the team.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's constantly trying to tell people to take annual leave.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: He gets visibly annoyed that people are to he'll turn up on an all-staff meeting and be like, can these people please take some annual leave?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: But you're right, it is a it is a passion.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing that happens is when you surround yourself with incredibly talented people who are passionate about, it gets addictive.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we without fail, people are sort of three to four months into the business.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because um, I don't know, it's interesting if you do the same thing.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: I meet every new candidate before they start.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you still meet every candidate?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, for sure.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So so I'll meet because I want I want them to be able to ask me questions and understand them and for them to understand the integrity of what we're doing and to believe it.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then um sometimes I won't, these are people that are working in very different geographies between multiple layers of the business between me, so I won't speak to them as regularly as I did when we were smaller, but I'll check back in after month one or two and and I and I'll say, you know, how has it gone?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: What and without doubt, I'll get that it's really addictive here working with people whereby because the people both of our businesses are attracting have been the best people in the rooms they were in before, and that can be quite lonely for them.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you get them into a sector now where they're in like an elite operating environment, it does get addictive and and people get really committed to what they're doing.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in terms of uh next steps and the plans for the business moving forward, so you said you're in a period of growth.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would say moderate growth.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um because we've essentially kind of been a services business the last few years where we support project implementers, we support investors, we support big companies to get projects registered, diligenced, financed.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's a few areas that I see momentum right now where we do have to hire more people.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: One is in North America, actually.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought, you know what, the US is too expensive.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like people, the alternative for timber or like, you know, prime redwoods or Douglas fir, like it's just not going to pencil to do carbon projects.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I'm wrong about that.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that has that has kind of come f come full circle where would that be considered a contrarian view?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you are you unique in that view?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I couldn't say.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's always been a sort of strong California compliance market, but I think it's more recently that I've just, I honestly don't really know what the market thinks.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's just that I started, in a way, doing my own research and seeing one is that there was a pretty dramatic fallout of carbon developers over the past few years, I think with finite carbon and servicing fewer customers for various reasons.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that a big chunk of the capacity to actually go and develop a project through ACR or you know, through the California compliance regime or any of these other systems in North America, big US IFM projects, like large forestry companies or Temos, they don't know who to call.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you have a bunch of land, they don't, there's no one to call to go help you develop that project.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: There are there are a few small consultancies still.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's an area that we've stepped into that now the very large asset managers we work with to go do land acquisition, to go do um, you know, valuation of the carbon potential of a piece of land, as well as, you know, then go develop that project and do verification events and and get that issuance.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's very interesting.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think also there's been because let's just call it geopolitical uncertainty around the world, um people like investing in the US.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And regardless of whether you like it or not, owning a large piece of land in the United States with standing forest and running a carbon project on it, when you go to a bank to say, hey, would you lend me money or something, they'll look at the standing timber asset and be like, oh yeah, we can definitely lend you money, even if it'll be a carbon project, because you know, you know, if that carbon thing doesn't work out, at least you have a bunch of land that you can go develop for these various uses.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so there's just a much lower cost of capital in the United States.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so that suddenly shrinks the difference between Brazil and North America, you know, relatively.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: We we have a a tie to sort of geographical distinction.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: So an acre of farmland in in England might be£10,000 an acre.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's I mean it's a wide range, but let's say£10.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: In Scotland, an open hill that used to be a grouse moor or a sporting estate might be two to three thousand pounds an acre.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So 95% of our land is in Scotland versus England, but not 95% of the portfolio.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: So value for us is derived from a the land itself, because we only work on land we own and manage, carbon big in Scotland, but we've also got the regulatory nature market in England as well, so the B and G units are a significant financial side of it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've often said there isn't really a carbon play in England because the land's so expensive, but we are seeing a narrative that the institutional investors, the pension funds, proximity and investing within a place is super, super important to them.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we might be, as is often the way, a little bit behind you guys in that.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it might be coming in England as well.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, I'm not attached to carbon markets.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, it sequesters carbon, but the idea for me is that there is an intact, vibrant ecosystem.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And however you pay for it, okay, in the UK you have, you know, biodiversity and net gain.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is a you know, excellent mechanism.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know we stole that from you guys?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like wetland mitigation, banking, etc.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there are regulatory programs that maintain durability even through whatever you think is happening with carbon markets.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's also what we see.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a bunch of like infrastructure investors that have, you know,$10 billion of green bonds that they've issued.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's certain metrics that they need to hit in order for those green bonds to lower the interest rate by 1%.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: That means they have, let's say,$100 million a year to go and do sort of sustainable activities related to nature.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a much more durable mechanism than what people think of as the voluntary carbon market.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think we're in a moment where there's this mosaic of regulatory systems that we are shuffling together in order to do the things that we want.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um and the US is, you know, both advanced and not advanced in some places.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think it's, you know, you guys are about owning land.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's never going to be a mistake to go have, you know, control of the asset to actually own the land.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's something that I have also come around on.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: You asked me about my learnings of this week, one of which was I haven't spoken to a single person.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I've spoken to lots of people who are currently or are associated with selling carbon credits.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't met a single one that that's the outcome they're seeking.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: They are all trying to find ways of routing finance into nature restoration, recovery, improvement of the world around us.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it just so happens that carbon is the mechanism best available to them at the moment.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been a persistent theme across every room, every outdoor space, everything we've visited this week.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: That narrative isn't as prevalent in the UK.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Haven't heard it as clear.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, in that way, I think the conversations we're having about the movements, the mechanics of carbon markets are more advanced in the US than they are in the UK, which is interesting.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't necessarily knew we'd find that.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you're talking about other themes.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um another is consolidation and distress.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I saw an email from a developer that we know very well.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: They've got a couple registered projects that are issuing credits, another dozen around the world in development, and they're going bankrupt.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I can probably name a dozen groups that are going bankrupt or about to go bankrupt this year.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that is one, it's a dramatic shame.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like these are actually pretty epic projects, um, with very, you know, in a way, like actually quite good operators that have a lot of experience for decades, and somehow are failing to meet the cash flows that they need because of, and maybe it's a delay in, you know, the jurisdictional risk map or in getting a methodology, you know, compliance and getting the project registered or a verification event that's taking a year longer, like all these little things that seem, oh, it's only a few more weeks.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then they add up into years, and then you miss your, you know, you miss your deadline, and so then the investment doesn't close and then it just snowballs.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that is both awful, particularly for the communities and ecosystems involved, but also an opportunity to be like, hey, what does it take for those projects to actually have liquidity?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what is our role in being able to support that?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where we can actually go and support many of those non-operational activities, all the carbon compliance and verification and investment to actually go get done in a timely manner.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So honestly, I've been just posting on LinkedIn, like, hey, who wants to do a roll-up?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just like throwing the question out there.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: The first time I did this, I was just like, hey, does anyone want to do a roll-up?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like someone should do it.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're honestly not well capitalized enough to just go and acquire every asset that we see.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've tried, um, but uh, you know, we're just not well capitalized.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that will change soon because actually it seems like the idea have has legs.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like the first time I posted that, I probably got 50 people that reached out and said, either I have a distressed asset slash we're going bankrupt, or hey, I have a bunch of money um and I'm looking for deals on projects, or hey, I'm, you know, uh whatever, someone like us that wants to sort of come in and help manage the situation or, you know, take advantage of distress.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: But something, there's a lot that's gonna happen.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: This year, absolutely an opportunity there.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so if there's anyone listening that's like, hey, I have either a commodity trader or an investor or a corporate that says, you know, hey, I want access to the best projects in the world.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of distress.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's an opportunity right now.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So anyone that wants to go put in one to a hundred million dollars in that category, we can get, you know, on the sort of mercenary side, we can get the best deals that this industry has ever seen.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can actually go be the white knight on projects that are having distress for reasons that are unrelated to operations very often.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, sometimes they are, but you know, you have to be able to discern, you know, what projects are really viable and which ones are not.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and then the third, the third category is like, okay, what is the point of just doing like a private equity style project rollup?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is that there's actually no, there hasn't been centralization in the market.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for a while there was like this desire for decentralization.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, we're gonna have this sort of blockchain-based system where that you don't have to talk to people to make a transaction.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's gonna go that way.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: I actually think it will become more and more centralized in the same way that um infrastructure deals get done.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: They don't get done on a website where you go and be like, okay, I'm gonna go deploy my$100 million and it's gonna be this power plant, and it's up and going.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how it happens.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's an investment bank with an individual person who's really smart and knows a lot about this field, and they use the tools and technology needed to make a smart decision.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: But you essentially pay that investment bank, you know, a commission or a fee to use your money very wisely.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no function like that right now in carbon projects.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, or there's like, you know, little groups biting off little pieces of that function.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that would be the outcome of a roll-up like this is they're well-capitalized, um, I don't know, it intermediaries, but well-capitalized uh groups that can actually provide liquidity to both sides of the market.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: So buyers and investors have confidence, and projects have a market to actually sell into that is uh that is consistent.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: And right now there's all these sort of bilateral transformations.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Transactions trying to happen, but neither side can really quite get it done.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um unless you're very maybe you guys can do it because you're very sophisticated and you're kind of this vertical thing, but it's like a handful.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we need multiple solutions in multiple jurisdictions that are structured in lots of different ways still.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I was struck by the consolidation theme, which I tend to try and and stay as aware of what's going on in a range of sectors because you can get so siloed into our world and you can find yourself having a conversation about another acronym about the sector that no one else understands.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: So in the UK, certainly, we're seeing consolidation of people who own sports teams, we're seeing consolidations of the pension fund providers, we're seeing all of these coming together.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we had Dimitri from Ecology on the show before you, and he was talking about um in the carbon accounting space, there's about 400 individual companies.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't think they'll be too much.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: The market doesn't support that, you know.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: It it'll end up being a couple.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way, yeah, intermediaries, market makers, you know, carbon compliance support, it won't be that many.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: One, the market is not currently big enough to support that many.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the second is there are actually dramatic economies of scale.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the other, but we've never actually seen them like really play out.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the other is is network effects, where it's just like, hey, if there is a trusted counterparty to your transaction where you just, if I'm a buyer, I just go there.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm an investor, I just go there because they're trusted.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm a you know project implementer, that's just where I go to get support.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like there is no default right now.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that could, over the coming years, you know, result in significant network effects.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of an inevitable outcome, in my perspective.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it hasn't happened yet.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's just very, very fragmented.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think groups like South Pole actually had the opportunity to do this a few years ago and lost the social license in order to represent that poll, which is kind of a shame.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it would have been nice for there to be a high-integrity poll in the middle.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm saying, well, maybe maybe we should do that.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um you mentioned the network effect.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my mind goes back to search engines as an example of where we've seen that before.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like Google was something like the 21st search engine that that launched, and all those other ones that if we'd have been talking in the first five years of search, we'd have been talking about Ash Jeeves and Alta Vista and all these things that have now gone and largely Google are the monopoly market player there.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like this is a new pattern.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: All industries have it as it develops and and comes.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I do agree with you.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's some incredible investment opportunities at the moment.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then all I mean, that is definitely a sort of counter belief right now, is actually right now is actually a really interesting moment to invest because there was a lot of capital wasted a few years ago in things that were premature or things that were very shiny and sexy that didn't actually move something, like standalone technology businesses and carbon markets.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see anyone making money on that.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's not a real place to do value capture as a pure tech provider.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And where, you know, and it's not like, hey, you know, I started, we're we're kind of missionaries.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we're not doing this just for the value capture.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is you have to like value capture and verticalization allows you to essentially lower cost across for every participant and increase efficiency of the whole system.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't know, it it's such the opposite world that we're in right now, where it's fragmented and inefficient and very chunky and no trusted counterparties.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And probably over the next few years, whoever emerges very well capitalized and very high performing and has kind of all the best sort of development science, um, you know, project pipeline, underwriting, trust of banks and financial institutions, connection with off takers, like whoever can complete that chain end to end um is going to do really well.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna do something really special.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um how so um I mentioned one of my learnings earlier was just the prominence of AI on everything in this city.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how is it impacting you personally and the business?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, many different levels, and I think it's still very early.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because the the sort of initial thing is like, oh, can we use LLMs to write PDDs?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is project design documents for you know projects.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yeah, it's kind of not it's actually not that hard to write a document.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like that's the majority of the work of developing a project.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So direct uses of AI to like solve the high friction points that's uh that are immediately obvious usually aren't the real problems to making liquidity and projects get started.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um just on that point, I'm I meant to mention on liquidity.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I heard a brilliant model shared with us sort of confidentially the other day about uh a mechanism for trying to identify a liquidity route.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um, a a large developer we're aware of, they've put a finance function in place by their parent company that will effectively offer a liquidity window on projects, so almost a rolling credit function to allow people to come in and out of that as an investment during the duration of the project prior to credits being sold and things.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's quite a novel mechanism to allow that.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: No other asset class is gonna lock you in for 40 years into an investment or something.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't make sense.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no financial layer at the end for an investor to have a credible exit.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what investors have to have.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're not allowed to invest in things a long term.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good idea.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: But we haven't seen enough, like the asset itself does not exist right now.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like the basket of high-quality projects with off-take, with future cash flows that you can predict out, that asset doesn't exist.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so let's go make that asset.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: That almost securitization element.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's not quite, but it's it's getting onto there.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a simplicity and elegance to that as well, because if if you're able to allow people liquidity at 5% or even 8% below where you believe it is, all of a sudden that's a very logical investment for someone who would like to take that bet.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what excited me about that is that, oh, we're starting to go to that next level of sophistication and consideration in terms of the tools and techniques we're utilizing.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And don't get me wrong, there'll be a swing over engineering that probably, and then we'll come back again to something in the middle ground.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: But finding different routes of liquidity, I think, is a really important step.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, we use a lot of AI in our work, you know, also for you know, applying to predicting models for for, you know, biomass growth rates.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's this sort of geospatial AI core that we've held, you know, for instance, since before it was called AI.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, with originally I was, I remember we were like machine learning for the planet was our original like logo in 2021 or something, you know.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that has not changed.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it just turns out that the we had to do a lot of other stuff in addition to just being the best at, you know, predicting tree growth under different intervention scenarios in order to actually solve the problems of developers and investors.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's just not enough.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's like 10% of the problem, or you know, less.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um one thing that I see that's really interesting is you know, I read a statistic, a little hard to say how exactly accurate it is, but$156 billion of data centers in the US that are either blocked or delayed.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons they're delayed is environmental.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there's, you know, 230 environmental organizations that say, hey, no building AI.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maine just passed a moratorium saying no building AI.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some people, you know, maybe this is a social thing, like, hey, we're just afraid of what's going to happen.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to lose our jobs, et cetera.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: But there's definitely concern around water usage, around, you know, carbon emissions, around infrastructure impact of power lines, you know, all of that stuff together gets to a, you know, tense no from the American public.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, uh, we, this is not popular.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the ideas that I've been, you know, trial ballooning around different data center companies is like, hey, hey, hey, how can we support you to accelerate the development of what I actually believe is pretty cool?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think AI is awesome, honestly.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like personally, I get a lot of value and think that it is the route to a more abundant future.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like I am, I'm a dramatic AI optimist, which somehow doesn't gel with the anti-AI fear that actually, you know, it's like, no, no, no, we should take care of the planet first.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: I actually don't think that's true.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think we need to, we can do both at the same time.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, same, same.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sort of like a huge space optimist.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, I'm a you know, shareholder of SpaceX.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think going to Mars is epic.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, we can be dramatically on the path for creating sustainable civilization and right relationship with all other species on this planet.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And both have to be true in order for either one of these abundant futures to actually exist.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: So can I and can Earthshot and can other organizations support data center companies in doing environmental mitigation and regaining the social license for AI in the United States and globally?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the answer is yes.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that the people at AI companies are not exactly the ones to do it, because they're sort of right now thrown under the bus.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like anything they're going to do is like a that's not credible.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think we could do really deeply integrous credible projects where we have visual corridors, we have, you know, mountain biking trails, we have wetlands and watershed, you know, projects, we have, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of hectares or acres of you know conservation projects.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Those can be very, very real.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I was doing some math the other day.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just say there's a$5 billion data center project build-out.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: It would take, let's just say, on the order of 100,000 acres of IFM.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: IFM is improved forest management.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: So where you're, you know, previous timberland, it's either going to conservation or much extended uh rotation logging.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but let's just say it's conservation.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: That would sort of roughly mitigate the emissions factors and also probably provide a really huge watershed benefit.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, combine that with a more localized sort of, you know, visual corridor, a lot of big trees, you know, combine it with the needs of whatever that community actually has.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's affordable housing, maybe it's renewable energy, maybe it's mountain biking or hiking trails.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so to actually authentically try to meet the needs of that community.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that could be, let's just say that's$100 million at$1,000, you know, dollars per acre, which actually in the US is a is a very achievable number.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everyone thinks land is super expensive.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: In a lot of places in the US, it is not.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, 20% down on that piece of land, that starts seeming like very, very cheap insurance, even if on average it doesn't solve the entire blockage problem.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: But let's say it saves one month or two months or three months of acceleration on a$5 billion project that's gonna, you know, I don't know, the cash flow, but that pays for itself very, very quickly.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end, what do you get?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: You get 100,000 acres and you get anthropic park or whatever it is, and everyone gets to go there and ride their mountain bikes, and um, suddenly you're the good guys.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I want AI to be the good guys because I get a lot of value out of it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to see it blocked.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so if you're listening and you know, you want to go commit, it's it's literally a tiny amount of money, and at the end you own a end up with an asset.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if, you know, in 10, 20 years, you know, you're decide, hey, we don't that environmental agation thing, that was stupid.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, then just go sell it and you have a hundred thousand acres of land that's an appreciated appreciating asset.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's no downside to this proposal.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: You and I have hit upon the exact same philosophy at the exact same point in time.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: So um my view is if you um look to history, in in the UK, the industrialists who built and owned the railroads were the ones that funded the new towns and the settlements and improvements in living standards.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Then it was the industrialists who had factories and mills and things.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, they did it through philanthropy and and gifting.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think we will have to.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to take$100 million if you want to give it to, yeah.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I think the the nature markets, the recognition of that now, we will have the the tech and the AI companies, especially when we are looking at a SpaceX IPO and then an OpenAI IPO and an anthropic where and and the cash amounts they're printing.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: So Anthropic was a 30 billion um revenue rate recently.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: When you also factor in these organizations, yes, they need that social license.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people talk about cloud computing, but those clouds aren't in the sky, they're in those big physical data centres you described that need energy, water, space, and that social licence side of it.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: They they they also have the factor that with with that cash generation that they're dealing with, they're gonna want to diversify in a way.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: And where else can they move money that won't be disrupted by their very presence?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: So any other investment will be backing the same investment, it will all be AI related unless they move to real physical assets, just as you articulate.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think the other wrinkle is because of that cash flow, the potential is for them to create more national parks and conservation areas that ultimately will be gifted because when you are generating 30 billion in profits, you are the rare organization that actually could benefit from the tax write-off.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you're in such a position of leverage where you could say to the government, right, we will do this, we will take the carbon credits we need, the water function we need, but we will have this program of land gifting back for the tax incentives on the side of it that effectively will do the role that governments used to play.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was at an amazing event that Salesforce put on with Anthropic yesterday.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was fascinating to hear them talk, and other people in the room were describing about how government and politics isn't long-form enough now to do infrastructure because it's so changeable.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: We used to look to government for that longevity, it's not there anymore.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the AI companies might be.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: And like you, I'm a massive optimist about this, and I think it that's the in the UK, it's the contrarian view I hold that everyone else is like, no, AI is terrible for the yeah.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of my friends, like I don't know, musicians, people are just like, no, AI is stupid, it's uh destroying the world.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I really disagree.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we and it will absolutely cause different disruptions over time.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: But uh on the long view, it's going to be epic.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, in the same way in in the United States also, I think nature and climate in particular is not cool right now.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe in in San Francisco at Climate Week, it's maybe a bit cool.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but in general, it's not really part of the political or regulatory conversation.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's it's explicitly not.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of insidious where, you know, before before we were talking, you were talking about, hey, this podcast is also about like men's health and empowerment and performance.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly, care for the whole, care for nature, understanding our sacred relationship with other species and our integration as part of one being on this planet, like that is not a manly perspective, somehow, right now.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, actually, it is.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it really deeply is.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is the role of the male elder in this field?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: We just don't have examples of that, um, of people who we associate of people in power.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, there is an opportunity for organizations who have individuals within them who actually have somewhat of a wise perspective that can make unilateral decisions to go start big parks, like use the power.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that is epic.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, even though maybe the wave isn't here right now of itself, well, then you just we just create the wave, and which is why we're talking right now, and why I would do a podcast with you, is one small drop in in actively creating this wave of we need the cool kids club to say, yes, we are, you know, nature is cool, like make trees again.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have the fucking biggest trees in the world in California.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how awesome is that, you know?
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what else makes America great again, but really big, tall trees, you know?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: What's your views on the concept of role models?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: The concept of role models, uh, I don't really have a concept, but I have some role models.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they're important to you?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: For example, there's the um there's this man in Hawaii who I actually lived with for quite a number of years.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: His name's Jack.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's 94 now.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he's a really wise guy.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you walk into the room and you're like, I think this person is my best friend, and I've I've never really met him before, but he just makes you feel seen and loved and like warmth and understood.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, a total badass guy.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's not like I see a lot of really wise people in positions of influence right now.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think individually, actually, people are pretty awesome, you know.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you think about celebrities or, you know, people who could have very strong voices.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think actually individually, people are quite, you know, like they're I remember a statistic one time that's like people's beliefs about sustainability is that actually they care very deeply about sustainability, and their feeling is that everyone else does not, but everyone actually cares.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and so somehow the the fact that it has become less cool in the sort of cultural vibe, people just are not talking about, even if they if they care very deeply themselves.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need uh somehow a bigger permission slip.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I talk about the cool kids club, like this is literally what I mean.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, can we have the most famous and influential and you know, looked up to people in the world make this an issue?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, I actually think that there are very few decision makers that are needed in order to completely change the future history of this planet.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like very, you know, the this number of decision makers to go reach half a trillion dollars a year in financing for nature is probably on the order of hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Who's going even less, maybe?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's it's not like it's billions of people or it's it's it's a small number of people who are practically making decisions for regulation or for you know allocation of resources.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you are one of those people, or you're near some of those people, like we should make that decision.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: And with bringing it back to carbon markets, I don't think that there are any technical reasons why as a financing mechanism, like okay, carbon markets are are actually fine, you know, kind of as they are.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people quibble about, you know, you know, the rigorousness of methodologies.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is just not the problem.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is as a culture, we have not decided to actually create a sustainable civilization.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: All we have to do is make the decision.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: We um we hold nature markets to standards that just wouldn't apply anywhere else.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh almost in certainly in a UK context, the sector just likes to argue with itself about nuance and detail.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's scarcity of money, you know.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I'm just like, okay, actually, you know, some of the projects that South Pole or others got in trouble with, you actually go look at the project, and I'm like, this is actually a pretty epic project.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe they just took too much money out of it or you know, there were a little bit scammy around the corners.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, let's just say indigenous tribe in the Amazon, and they accidentally misstated the baseline by 10% or something.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Would anyone be really arguing that they got paid 10% too much money?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's like, who cares?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like we that's why we're giving them the money to go restore the forest and protect the forest.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so it's it's just this sort of tightness that there's really just not an adequate amount of financing because regulations don't require it.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's actually not in a corporation's best interest to go deploy a bunch of capital in the nature.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why would they?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a cost.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: They don't really get that much for it.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to make a collective decision that this is important.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can we see the regulation come?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: It will eventually.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I do believe that within the next decade, we will see much more stringent regulations because it will suddenly make risk-adjusted financial sense to have fewer natural catastrophes, you know, to not have sea level rise, to not have as many wildfires.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like at some point, it will just make insurance sense to do something about this.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: But there's not a need to wait, right?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: We can actually avoid a lot of potential catastrophe if we just act now en masse.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it wouldn't be pretty, I think, to continue as we are for the next few decades.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we've talked about AI as a potential route for funding on this.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's also some views about how do we better mobilize institutional investment.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly in the UK, the narrative is that insurance companies and pension funds should be should be better exposed to natural capital because of the longevity of thinking around it.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: Have you done any thinking about how we might access that?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: For for some reason, I actually think that the number of investors that want to and are in this space is actually incredibly high.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk to investors all the time that are trying to commit capital to this space.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: I actually don't think that's where the problem is.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: If there were a committed demand signal where you knew what price you're going to go get for the next 30 to 40 years on an asset, and the rules were steady enough that they could have, you know, project out cash flows and there was an off-take agreement and committed demand signal that was high volume.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Financial institutions are smart.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to go and figure out how to make money and commit capital.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Agnostic, right?
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to invest in whatever.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the it's a demand side problem.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a financing problem.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like financial institutions are smart.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, demand side, corporate buyers are also smart.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why they're not acting right now.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because it's right now it's just a cost and they don't have to do it.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they're not getting brownie points for buying carbon credits.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they should.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: They should get a ton of brownie points, but for some reason they're not.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: We need to cool kids, as you said.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why we need to, you know, guilt trip and and make it so that you are legitimately cool if you want to go and support nature restoration and conservation.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be cool.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have to, you know, make the largest companies in the world winners, celebrate them for doing action at scale rather than criticizing them.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell Rather than attacking the ones that try.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: What are the tools at our disposal to help achieve that?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: What can you and I do other than having this conversation?
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell So I think there's there's two levels at which I always thought Earthshot was a thing.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason we named it Earthshot is because it is too large of a goal for us to achieve ourselves, right?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: We need partnerships with many, many, many organizations in order to achieve what is ecological and civilizational balance.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: So one is systemic.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like we need to build the infrastructure so that if there's half a trillion dollars a year that wants to go into conservation, reforestation, you know, sustainable agroforestry systems, all the things that you would need in order to have, you know, a large, large balanced ecosystem on a planetary scale.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just say it's half a trillion dollars a year.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you quibble about that, but that's kind of an order of magnitude.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: We need the infrastructure to deploy that capital and have it, you know, filter down to potentially billions of people around the world and projects and like there's many, many layers of financial and regulatory and um, you know, everything from developing projects to you know the registry to running audit processes to the technology to do monitoring.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like all those things need to work.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, right now at the scale they're at, they actually work pretty well.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And just from what we can develop internally at Earthshot, we actually do a pretty good job, many of those categories.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just say systemic.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, that's relatively taken care of in terms of the infrastructure.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: What is missing is the regulatory pressure to act, um, and or just regulatory pressure, let's just say civilizational consensus that we are acting on this.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: The other side is sort of this cultural, which is why have we not made that decision?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why do we not elect politicians that say this is an important issue?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: I uh that's honestly a little hard to say.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or it's not a little hard to say, it just begets deeper questions.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it's because there was always there's always something else more pressing.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it feels like about the UK politics.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: That every time it it got prominence as an issue.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Although each general election in my lifetime, in my um conscious awareness from being like a teenager, recognizing when elections are happening, the prominence of environmental discussion has increased.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, like the the leaflets that would come through your door uh local elections, it would now reference the quality of the river and the environment around us, which two or three election cycles ago wasn't a thing.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that is ramping up, but then you get political unrest in the world, you get cost of living crisis, you get financial issues at play, you get other things that are just more pressing to more people.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: And because they can't see and touch the devastation that is climate and nature, well, let's fix this thing closer to home first, as opposed to that we can deal with tomorrow.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I get it, I understand that.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: My worry, I suppose, you know, we started off optimistic, is that by the time regulation comes, because I I don't have a lot of faith in government systems, I think they're too big, too bureaucratic, and do not perform at a level fit for purpose.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: By the time we get there, it will be so bad.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: It will be so bad when regulation comes that we'll need decades and decades to try and address any balance.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, we saw in COVID, you know, you step away from the planet for a little while and it can bounce back really fast and recover if given half a chance.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we've both got little people right now.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: You've got a two-year-old?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I have a two-year-old and a little girl on the way in July.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a little bit further ahead, mine are minor nine and seven.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you wear three hats in this regard.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: You wear the founder, CEO, you wear the partner, husband, and you wear the father.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which of those hats fits best?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Fits best.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um all of them are a fly by the sea of my pants learning journey.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, I uh our our son's name is Kai, and he's a total joy, you know, just a little ball of love and energy and exploring the world and jumping in the waves.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we go to the beach very often in the afternoons, and it's it's a total joy.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also a total joy to, you know, be a partner to my wife.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: And is it a total joy to be a founder in this field?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not a total joy.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is, but neither is being a parent.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um what is your favorite thing about being a father, uh being a founder?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: By being a father or being a founder?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's do both.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was a Freudian slip, though, wasn't it?
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think that no one told me how fun it was.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least I didn't listen.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: People often complain about their children and how much work it is, and like, you know, I don't know, annoying and snotty and all the things you have to do.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, that those also exist, but it's really a lot of fun.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's it's really a lot of fun.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're um honestly, my experience is it gets more fun, I believe it.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the the earlier years I I found the sort of baby years, baby often first zero to one, it's all about mum.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you're a support system.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I don't have boobies, you know, it's just it's not the thing.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then I I was never very good at just the sort of sit-around time, whereas actually now you can have a conversation and interact with like my my seven-year-old is he is just the coolest guy in the world.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: He's so confident and just smart, and he's got a really sharp memory, and he just asks brilliantly perceptive questions to try and understand the world around him, and it really challenges you to answer them in a way that he can relate to and stuff, and that's amazing.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and my little girl, she is she's kinder, she's more creative, she's not as sort of relentlessly running at the world, but just views it in in such a uh a warm and loving and sparkly way, and they're both awesome.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: But as they've got older, I've enjoyed the dad part of things more.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think for um and on and on the founder side, what do you enjoy the most about about business?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I think running a company is because I believe in what we do, and it's I mean, it's in a platform, it's an excuse for me to be able to inject my viewpoint into the world.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a very personal thing to say, hey, this is my view of how things should go.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to create a whole team that thinks the same way so that we can actually go make it happen.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's an act of power to be like, we are going to go and and create systems that will change the surface of this planet.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is the goal.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if I didn't have that, I would feel a bit impotent.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, what am I doing?
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like even if I were to talk on the same show, it's like, well, then what am I doing about it?
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, you gotta go do it.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're if if you think we should start Anthropic Park and buy the hundred thousand, you know, acres of land in, you know, West Virginia and do conservation, well then go do it.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um like so that's that's what we do.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, hey, everything that I want to have happen, well then now now we have a team.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if if there's enough alignment from, you know, the sort of regulations and landowners and all these things, well, then we can actually go make it happen.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's in a way very, very satisfying.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was also on a I was on a field visit to Morocco a few weeks ago, and um a very beautiful project.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, it's an agroforestry project across, you know, tens of thousands of hectares of land, you know, one to two hectare parcels.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and no girls in this area of Morocco go to school past the age of 12, like zero percent.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we asked, and I was like, no, nobody.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then after implementing what, two hectares of olive trees and argon and all, you know, oranges and you know, other fruit and nut trees, suddenly the that extra disposable income, which is not a lot, it's on the order of hundreds of dollars, you know, if the minimum wage is$40 a month there.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that is enough disposable income to then send girls to school after the age of 12.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, we were at this women's co-op and we were just like, hey, what is your dream?
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, to this a bunch of, you know, sort of, you know, tween teenager girls, like, what do you want?
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, we want to go to school.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they wanted.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, uh, sounds like a match made in heaven.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: Someone should go invest$20 million in that project today and go scale it up and then do that times 10.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what other function is there for government, or what other function is there for something like the carbon mark to go do?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: You get climate impact, you restore the, you know, livelihoods of people.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: And like, it's just like good all around.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, those are the sort of projects I'm just like, I will stick my neck out and I will personally go and get that project financed.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm just going to call up everyone.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that's that's what we do.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like there's a market to go sell the project into where it's already liquid.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like that is one example of an epic project and of which there should be 10,000 like that around the world.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we need the systems to be able to support that.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because right now it's they're being failed.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting, isn't it?
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: I sometimes do do other sectors try and solve so many things.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I mean, every word of what you articulated was inspirational and of course moves every element of morality and emotion that we should absolutely be doing that.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: But does that make it harder to scale the actual infrastructure and the business part of it?
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when they were building car factories, were they trying to also deliver the positive?
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe somewhere, like um uh in the 1930s, maybe the so Bourneville, the chocolate company in the UK, they completely built new towns to house their employees in and created schools and created opportunities for people to access things and really did deliver social change through business.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's less prominent now.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's my only question mark, I suppose.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: We've got so many things that we need to solve and move it forward.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the thing.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you need to go design the market any differently to have outcomes like that.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Some will deliver some slightly shittier projects, some will deliver some slightly better projects.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what a market is.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I know what we're gonna do.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I feel moral responsibility to be like, well, then let's have us make the market.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you want to invest in projects like that, well, then come to us.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to invest in the shitty projects that don't have any real impact other than you know being eligible for a carbon credit, well, that's fine.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just do the ones that we believe in.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and it's not like, you know, okay, scale.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: What is scale?
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a lot more people talking to a lot more people to close more project deals.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just like, you know, you you know, click the button on the internet.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how the market's going to evolve.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is going to be individual decisions by individual people at big companies choosing who to work with, choosing what projects to fund.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then the world changes.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: We've we've seen it this week.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the rooms we've been in where there are people who have transacted at significant levels across carbon and nature, it's relationships.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's relationships.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: 100% relationships.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and that is okay.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't have to build for some theoretical scale that is trustless, like the the promise of blockchain that it can be trustless, of like, then what is the point?
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we're not creating a trustless civilization.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're creating a trusted civilization where you can really respect the people that you're working with and you know that their personal integrity is the one going into that transaction.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and like I said, it's not that many people on the order of hundreds of thousands of people.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: We can have one or two or some number of teams be able to coordinate that in a way that's highly integrous.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then does the surface of the planet on the order of billions of hectares of land change?
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, entirely possible.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm very happy you're in your business and in the sector doing this.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: We we need it.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I love the approach you're taking to doing it.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I think you're gonna get Anthropic Park.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it it's just inevitable it's going to come.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Something like that I would really like to have happen this year.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just because people need to take leadership.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is is a way a very large part of the crisis, which is like who is sticking their neck out for the things that they really believe in.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: Even just saying it.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Even just saying it.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because saying it doesn't mean it'll happen, but not saying it means it won't.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Troy, you've been so generous coming in and sharing your time, especially with everything you've got going on.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I always finish my podcast with the same question.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: What's the one question I haven't asked you you wish I had?
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think there's a missing part of our conversation so far.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we've talked about financial consolidation.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about, you know, the different opportunities for scaling business.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about sort of, you know, me being a father, we've talked about um, you know, opportunities in carbon markets for you know scaling.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what we haven't talked about is are are the non-the non-humans and the the things that for me are the actual reason about why I'm doing this.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because why I'm doing this is not for climate impact, personally.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think we'll we'll have dramatic climate stabilization because of restoring ecosystems.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's a few few levels to like to nature, to us as nature.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: And one is I remember in in 2015, I was living in Hawaii and free diving every morning and you know, swimming with the dolphins.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: And over the course of two months, the reef went from the most beautiful, healthy reef you've ever seen in your life to bleached to dead in two months in 2015.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's never recovered since.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it probably will never recover in our lifetime.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because, you know, coral bleaching is not a localized event.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you wear some sunscreen and that's better.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's because of temperature of oceans and acidity of oceans that higher temperatures bleach the coral, greater acidity, you know, stops reproduction of, you know, all, you know, uh, you know, shell-based species that have calcium, um, like oysters and and other things.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so those coral reefs will not return.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they're really cool.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want my children to go swim in coral reefs like that.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are not that many left in the world.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe by the time he's old enough to go snorkeling, there may be none left in the world.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: You could say the same thing about old growth forests.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, go to Mere Woods, you know, 10 miles north of here.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is packed full of people.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there's like, I don't know, like a hundred old growth trees in this grove.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was calculating one time, like, so then what is the tourism value of each of those trees?
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is insane.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it is way more than the timber value of those trees.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there have been 98, 99% of those trees cut down in California over the past couple of centuries.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, uh, we're missing out on a big percentage of GDP by having done that.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what we got those used for one time.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we are throwing away unnecessarily priceless treasures.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just not necessary.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't need to do that anymore.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we need to grow up and not do that.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I like that's one level, like just the aesthetic pleasure of being in a forest.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the other is like there is a real sacred relationship the humans have with the other parts of this planet.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that is a truth that somehow we have forgotten.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is no longer part of the conversation in carbon markets and not part of the conversation in um the economy whatsoever, is that there is a there is a sacred place that humans have on this planet and a responsibility that we have and a set of agreements that we have made over the past, you know, tens of thousands of years with these other species that we are no longer honoring.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and no one even remembers that we have those agreements.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but every story you hear from, you know, the tiny villages in the Amazon says those agreements exist.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's a problem that we've completely forgotten, an entire sphere of why we would do this anyway.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: But we've also lost touch with that.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is what gives life meaning.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that is the that is what fills your heart up, and that that's what fills the other half of your soul is the rest of this planet that is not you, that is not the humans.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so without that motivation, I think that this journey is too hard.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't think the aesthetic pleasure of hiking or or even of having my child see the coral is enough to have the level of effort in order to overcome the challenges that we will have over the coming decades.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's only through this sort of deep interconnectedness with all other parts of this planet that is motivated, motivating enough to go all the way.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: Even the self-survival of the human species, I think is not enough.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I really don't think it's enough.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that doesn't necessarily resonate with everyone.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that it's not like that is needs to be at the forefront of the conversation.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's just why I'm doing it.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and so because I feel that, I feel responsible to make carbon markets in the image of that sense of responsibility.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have a question and then a story.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um if there is a I almost said young person, but we don't have to be young.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a person out there that that resonated with that and and wanted to feel that way, what's your advice to them taking their first step to engaging more with nature to really feeling that connectivity?
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know hanging out in nature is a pretty good idea outside.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there's a there is a there's a lot now that is just distracting it's very easy.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and even myself it's very easy just to get get caught up in the things that I that I think are important, even the things that sometimes seem important in running a business.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, in a wider perspective, they're they're they're important.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: But um But uh being distracted is not useful for feeling connected to the whole
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know who um Tim Kristofferson is?
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: Have you come across him?
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um shout out to Tim.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: Adore him.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh eighty-eight pages of his book is exploring that connectivity um and the realization that we are nature.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and he he's just done in such a most elegant, beautiful uh way possible.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: And any discussion about nature markets, carbon markets, or the businesses and industries we work in are incomplete without what you just articulated.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for adding that, the debate and the discussion.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can design carbon markets perfectly and talk about them with all the acronyms and jargon that we have.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: And by doing so, we alienate another 7 billion people on this planet who are like that.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like bullshit to me.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the reason why they haven't scaled.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because they're not well designed.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're they're pretty well designed.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can make them work.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: We we've done a lot of transactions for, you know, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like it works pretty well.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: But there isn't enough belief.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because that has not been bridged with what is really important.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can get the buy-in of people who are like, oh yeah, that's what I, that's what I personally care about.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: And people, everyone on this planet, or most people on the planet, care a lot more about their ancestral relationship with the forest where they are, than with, you know, making money and transacting carbon credits.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like there are way more people that care about the forest than do about carbon markets.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is what we need to prioritize.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell At a planetary level, I completely agree.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: In a city of London financial district level.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is why we are here.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the two of us and the organizations working on similar things are building the bridge.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of what we have to work on probably for the next couple of decades.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the circularity of the story I'm about to share.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: So my my first meeting on Monday morning this week was with an incredible lady who is um an AI scientist but comes from a pure environmental and nature background.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: And she's trying to build the interface that would ensure that we're training uh large language models and whatever comes after those on biophilic nature principles.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, in the same way that Anthropic has a resident philosopher who's trying to ensure that morality exists in an AI sense, this lady's business is trying to insist that a sense of nature and the awareness of how the planet works from a biological perspective is factored in as well.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: And she she's trying to raise capital at the minute and trying to for me, it is the most obvious case of one of the big companies we talked about will absolutely acquire that company early and needs to because she needs to be sat at the office the office opposite the morality expert and the philosopher because the discussion of one without the other is incomplete.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: Troy, I adore speaking to you.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for coming in.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I look forward to visiting Anthropic Park with you in the in the coming months.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for chatting.