Speaker 1: Pushkin. The other day I spoke with Dan Friedman. He's
Speaker 1: the CEO of a company called Carbon Engineering. Maybe we
Speaker 1: could start with what's happening out in Texas, Like, there's
Speaker 1: actually somebody's building something big in Texas and you're mixed
Speaker 1: up with it in a good way, right, tell me
Speaker 1: what's happening in Texas.
Speaker 2: Yes, and in Texas happened big. That's the good part
Speaker 2: about Texas. Yeah. We are building well. Our partner is
Speaker 2: building our first commercial scale plant. Just broke ground about
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, and all the big pieces
Speaker 2: of equipment are under order, which is, you know, quite substantial.
Speaker 2: We got all our permits, took about a year, and
Speaker 2: the road's been put in place. It's just a big
Speaker 2: bunch of desert with some shrubs. And yeah, construction has started.
Speaker 1: Construction has started on a billion dollar project that will
Speaker 1: be by far the biggest plant ever built to suck
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere. I'm Jacob Goldstein,
Speaker 1: and this is what's your problem. Carbon engineering is at
Speaker 1: the frontier of an infant industry called direct air capture,
Speaker 1: as in directly capturing carbon dioxide from the air. Direct
Speaker 1: air capture won't be able to solve climate change on
Speaker 1: its own. There's no way we could capture anywhere near
Speaker 1: enough carbon to do that, but it might help at
Speaker 1: the margin, pulling hundreds of millions of tons of carbon
Speaker 1: out of the atmosphere every year to buy us some
Speaker 1: time as industry is decarbonized over the next few decades.
Speaker 1: To get there, the direct air capture industry needs to
Speaker 1: solve a bunch of problems, including how to bring the
Speaker 1: price of direct air capture way down, and also how
Speaker 1: to convince companies and governments to pay for sucking carbon
Speaker 1: out of the air. I talked about both of those
Speaker 1: problems with Dan, but to start, we talked about what
Speaker 1: exactly he's building out in the Texas Desert. Let's say
Speaker 1: it's two years from now and you and I drive
Speaker 1: out to this spot in the middle of Texas and
Speaker 1: you've just turned it on, the thing is working. What's
Speaker 1: actually going to be happened? Well, first of all, we
Speaker 1: get there, what do we see. What's it look like?
Speaker 2: Okay, so you know, when when you build any direct
Speaker 2: air capture facility, you've got to process a lot of air.
Speaker 2: So the main thing you see in all of them
Speaker 2: is what's what we call an air contactor, which is
Speaker 2: a fancy name for a huge box with a huge
Speaker 2: fan that's drawing air through the contents of the box.
Speaker 1: So it's a giant box fan like the one I
Speaker 1: have in my living room, but way bigger.
Speaker 2: How big A couple of stories with stories, okay, so
Speaker 2: you know it looks like it looks like a small
Speaker 2: a small apartment. You know, I've quite a small apartment,
Speaker 2: but it's still like couple of stories, and you know
Speaker 2: the width of a narrow house.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The fan is right on the roof of it. Okay,
Speaker 2: So the fan turns on and air is drawn in
Speaker 2: from the sides and goes up the top. So you
Speaker 2: would see about seventy of those in two years when
Speaker 2: this is done, lined up in rows.
Speaker 1: So danisying, there would be seventy of these apartment sized
Speaker 1: fan buildings, like a little subdivision out there in the desert.
Speaker 1: The fans suck in the air and then they have
Speaker 1: this liquid that binds to the carbon dioxide. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I'd heard Dan talk about in other
Speaker 1: interviews is that the chemistry this part of removing carbon
Speaker 1: from the air is actually pretty straightforward. But what's hard
Speaker 1: is removing it efficiently because of how little carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: is in the air, Like carbon dioxide is way less
Speaker 1: than one percent of the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: It's very, very tiny, and that's what makes it so
Speaker 2: hard because you you have to touch so much air
Speaker 2: to get at the little tiny you know, mining a
Speaker 2: tiny bit amount from the air. And traditionally, you know,
Speaker 2: people have been extracting carbon dioxide from the air for
Speaker 2: a long time. If you recall the Apollo thirteen movie,
Speaker 2: they were suffocating from breeding their own carbon dioxide, and
Speaker 2: in a couple of hours they built that.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, that's the Houston We've got
Speaker 1: a problem. Yes, their problem was that there was too
Speaker 1: much carbon dioxide in their in their space capsule.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their director capture machine in there. The little one
Speaker 2: wasn't working, so they were suffocating in their own so
Speaker 2: they built one and they scrabbed it out. So the
Speaker 2: hard part, and that's what's unique about what we're doing.
Speaker 2: The hard part is to pull a million tons of
Speaker 2: carbon dioxide out of the air. So it's all about
Speaker 2: how much we have to do. It's not about doing it.
Speaker 2: The doing it is not that hard, but doing a
Speaker 2: lot of it is incredibly challenging.
Speaker 1: So it's a scaling problem.
Speaker 2: It's coming up with a process that will scale and
Speaker 2: that want use so much energy and materials that it
Speaker 2: becomes useless. Right, so we need to be net negative,
Speaker 2: not net positive. So the challenge is, you know, is
Speaker 2: how much power do you use doing this? And how
Speaker 2: much steel do you use to build these air contacts
Speaker 2: and so on, and how do you scale that smartly?
Speaker 2: So in the end you are net negative, which is
Speaker 2: what the business is all about.
Speaker 1: How long do you have to run the plant do
Speaker 1: you estimate before it will capture all of the carbon
Speaker 1: that was emitted to build the plant and to build
Speaker 1: all of the materials in the plant.
Speaker 2: I don't have that figure, but it's because it depends
Speaker 2: who the final contractors are and their footprints and so on.
Speaker 2: It's similar to electric cars. It's not significance a few
Speaker 2: months and their I year for sure.
Speaker 1: So Okay, you get the plant up and running, you're
Speaker 1: sucking carbon dioxi out of the air. So far, so good.
Speaker 1: But now you've got tons of carbon dioxide and you
Speaker 1: have to do something with it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's that's the hard part that it
Speaker 2: alver forget. What we do is we hand it to
Speaker 2: the world's expert on how to deal with carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2: Occidental our partner who has you know, been burying carbon
Speaker 2: dioxide for a lot of years to.
Speaker 1: Be clear, that's Occidental Petroleum, the big oil company.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, they are the companies that understand how to
Speaker 2: handle carbon dioxide. So what they do is they bury
Speaker 2: that carbon dioxide safely underground according to the US government regulations,
Speaker 2: so that it's permanently stored, meaning that it's scanteed for
Speaker 2: at least one hundred years to be underground.
Speaker 1: So Occidental is they're an investor in carbon engineering. They're
Speaker 1: on the board, right, and they're they're the ones building
Speaker 1: this biggest in the world by far, direct air capture plants, right,
Speaker 1: They're the one paying for it.
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Is that is that?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well why is why is Occidental Petroleum doing this?
Speaker 1: Where are they paying all this? And they're the ones
Speaker 1: spending a billion dollars to do it? Right?
Speaker 2: They were trying to figure out how to become net
Speaker 2: zero meaning net zero in their own production, net zero
Speaker 2: in everything they subcontract and buy, and net zero, and
Speaker 2: what the customers like you and I would burn so
Speaker 2: all the emissions, and they decided to use this to
Speaker 2: decarbonize themselves. And then they said, whoa, we can offer
Speaker 2: this as a solution for other people that don't know
Speaker 2: how to do this, for them to decarbonize like airlines.
Speaker 2: It was a period took a period of years to
Speaker 2: develop to the point where it is now. And so
Speaker 2: they went from being a partner to being a customer
Speaker 2: to also being a part owner and then to being
Speaker 2: a deployment partner of all this thing. And they're trying
Speaker 2: to make this their next business after oil is done, basically.
Speaker 1: Basically selling carbon removal as a service. Let me ask
Speaker 1: you a question. You said in there that Occidental wants
Speaker 1: to be net zero? Why do they want to be
Speaker 1: net zero? And like in particular, given that you know,
Speaker 1: they have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits,
Speaker 1: Like why are they spending a billion dollars to the
Speaker 1: extent it's for them to be net zero? Like why
Speaker 1: is that a sensible thing for them to do?
Speaker 2: You know that kind of gets the heart of this
Speaker 2: whole problem. You know, it's not just Occidental. Microsoft wants
Speaker 2: to be in net zero. Amazon wants to be in
Speaker 2: net zero. Air travel wants to be net zero. Most
Speaker 2: of ninety odd percent of the world GDP has set
Speaker 2: a target to be net zero. So I think everybody's
Speaker 2: realizing Occidental included that in order to survive in the
Speaker 2: long term, we need to get to net zero. So
Speaker 2: at some point, I think society is going to say, well,
Speaker 2: if you're not net zero, you're not in business.
Speaker 1: So the sort of the financial case for getting to
Speaker 1: net zero is the assumption that policy governments will basically
Speaker 1: force companies to be net zero, like that's the or
Speaker 1: customers or customers right right, they will say we will
Speaker 1: only do business with a net zero support.
Speaker 2: You know. I think it goes deeper in terms of
Speaker 2: their management team that they're just committed to kind of
Speaker 2: lead the whole oil sector to get there, just recognizing
Speaker 2: that this has to happen. And in the end it's
Speaker 2: good for shareholders because if you keep your head in
Speaker 2: the sand, then eventually people don't buy from you one
Speaker 2: way or another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I will say, given the history of
Speaker 1: oil companies behavior with respect to climate change, I'm wary
Speaker 1: of their involvement at some level, like just based on
Speaker 1: the fact that they knew that emissions were driving climate change,
Speaker 1: and they obfuscated that fact. Not occidental specifically, but that
Speaker 1: was clearly a widespread practice in the industry, and so
Speaker 1: it makes me some what weary of their involvement.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, you know, I can't comment on that. All
Speaker 2: I can tell you is that when you scour the
Speaker 2: planet to find somebody that can deal with a megaton
Speaker 2: a year coming out of one plant, and then a
Speaker 2: thousand megatons a year coming out of one thousand plants,
Speaker 2: only the oil companies can do that, for better or worse.
Speaker 1: Huh you mean in terms of how do you stick
Speaker 1: it back in the ground. Yeah, you're the only ones
Speaker 1: who know at vast scale, how do stick carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: back in the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and understand the underground. They've been mapping the underground
Speaker 2: for fifty years. They understand. Any country you go to,
Speaker 2: the oil companies the only people that understand what's under there,
Speaker 2: how to operate under there, how to keep it under
Speaker 2: there and not have it leak out. If you want
Speaker 2: to do this at scale, you've got to go to
Speaker 2: the world's experts, and the world experts that have been
Speaker 2: looking at what goes underground with the geology. Because of
Speaker 2: the oil business. Are the oil companies, there's nobody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it is interesting the way this is, you're
Speaker 1: basically running the oil business in revert.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: For one hundred plus years, they have been digging hydrocarbons
Speaker 1: out of the ground, and then we've been burning them,
Speaker 1: and they've been going the carbon dioxide's been going into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, and now it's like, okay, let's just it's
Speaker 1: like on the It's like on my power drill at home.
Speaker 1: You know, you push the button one way and it
Speaker 1: drills in, and then you push it the other way
Speaker 1: and it drills out.
Speaker 2: Right, like exactly, it we got to I think the
Speaker 2: saying goes, we got to put it back where it
Speaker 2: came from. Yeah, and you know, anything else is mucking
Speaker 2: around with this natural system and I don't know what
Speaker 2: the output of that would be, but this is pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2: We just put it back, bring the carbon back down,
Speaker 2: and everything should return to normal.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you one more thing, just on the
Speaker 1: oil company thing, and then we'll leave it. There's basically
Speaker 1: a concern that direct their capture will act as a
Speaker 1: fig leaf to allow for even more emissions, right, and
Speaker 1: it will slow the energy transition that we need. Do
Speaker 1: you buy that?
Speaker 2: No? You know, whoever says that just hasn't done the mass. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is not going to be an excuse for not
Speaker 2: doing anything else. We already know from very well done
Speaker 2: studies that there's only so much we can do to
Speaker 2: avoid emissions. In the end, you're left with depends who
Speaker 2: you talk to, you're left with somewhere between ten and
Speaker 2: twenty percentage you just cannot avoid. And that's where direct
Speaker 2: their capture comes in. It's the last bit of garbage
Speaker 2: that you can't recycle, you can't do anything about it,
Speaker 2: and you've got to take it out. And that problem
Speaker 2: alone is an immense challenge to think that we could
Speaker 2: do ten times that and have everybody go one in life.
Speaker 2: People just haven't done the math. It's just just not possible.
Speaker 2: And then the other key thing is that if we
Speaker 2: stop today and don't emit another carbon molecule into the air,
Speaker 2: we've already emitted enough that we're going to crash through
Speaker 2: one point five at some point.
Speaker 1: One point five degrees of warming one.
Speaker 2: Point five degrees because it's cumulative, and we've, like you
Speaker 2: just said, we just spent the last hundred years burning
Speaker 2: oil and coal, So you know, at some point beyond
Speaker 2: twenty fifty, we want to bring stuff back down.
Speaker 1: In other words, we don't just need to stop emitting
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We need to reduce the
Speaker 1: amount of carbon dioxide that is already out there in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. In a minute, the big problem with direct
Speaker 1: air captured, where's the money going to come from. That's
Speaker 1: the end of the ads. Now we're going back to
Speaker 1: the show. Last year, Congress passed and the President signed
Speaker 1: into law the Inflation Reduction Act, an act that confusingly
Speaker 1: did not do much to reduce inflation, but did do
Speaker 1: a lot for direct air capture. Specifically, it said that
Speaker 1: the federal government will use tax credits to basically pay
Speaker 1: companies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: If we prove to them that we have captured a
Speaker 2: ton of CO two from the air and we've buried
Speaker 2: it up to their requirements, they write your check for
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty dollars.
Speaker 1: And one hundred and eighty dollars per ton.
Speaker 2: Per ton, so it's one hundred and eighty million per
Speaker 2: million tons.
Speaker 1: And how much this this big plant that you and
Speaker 1: accidental are building in Texas. How much does that pull
Speaker 1: out of the air per year?
Speaker 2: The first plant half a million tons, so that'd be
Speaker 2: like ninety million a year from the US government. And
Speaker 2: you know, the plant would not have happened without the IRA.
Speaker 2: This wouldn't have taken off in any kind of speed
Speaker 2: without the IRA. You just couldn't do it without something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: So, if one hundred and eighty dollars per ton is
Speaker 1: the carrot is, what is the cost to you per
Speaker 1: ton on your plant?
Speaker 2: That is confidential, but it's significantly over that today it's more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so to be a real viable business, there
Speaker 1: needs to be some combination of getting more than one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty dollars a ton and or bringing your
Speaker 1: costs down a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you've put your finger on it. We need
Speaker 2: to bring the cost of production down over time by
Speaker 2: improving the technology and making it more and more efficient.
Speaker 2: And that's really the job of carbon engineering. That's what
Speaker 2: we do for a living.
Speaker 1: Can you give me a specific example of some detail,
Speaker 1: some part of the process, either that you have made
Speaker 1: cheaper or solved.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the easiest example, and the one we've
Speaker 2: worked the most done, is Hey, let's get those seventy
Speaker 2: things down.
Speaker 1: To fifty seventy units.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's seventy units. Let's make the way the whole
Speaker 2: thing is configured, and the way the fan runs and
Speaker 2: so on, and the way we place it to the
Speaker 2: prevailing wind. Let's make that more efficient. So the next
Speaker 2: plant has fifty not seventy. You save yourself a pile
Speaker 2: of steel, You save yourself a pidle of sorbent, you
Speaker 2: use less electricity, it becomes more efficient.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a way of saying, let's pull out
Speaker 1: more carbon with every thing, right, with every spin of
Speaker 1: the fan. Let's get more carbon right out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And is there an example of how you have done
Speaker 1: that already? I mean, presumably that is the endless quest
Speaker 1: for improved deficiency. Is there just one little example you
Speaker 1: can give of a way you have improved efficiency so far.
Speaker 2: So inside what we call the air contact or where
Speaker 2: the air is flowing through. In our case, the reaction
Speaker 2: is from a very thin film. That film is exposed
Speaker 2: to the air and react to the carbon. So if
Speaker 2: we can pack a honeycomb structure in it, we got
Speaker 2: more surface that the air is going through.
Speaker 1: Wait, is that one. Is that one you've done already?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Have you already turned it into.
Speaker 2: A honey yes, well not a honeycomb, but yeah. We
Speaker 2: have been improving what we call the fill of the
Speaker 2: air contact or what's inside it for many years, and
Speaker 2: then in the last year before we went to final production,
Speaker 2: we made our own custom filled what we call the
Speaker 2: CE one, and it was twenty percent better. And we're
Speaker 2: now working on the second fill, not going into the
Speaker 2: deck the director capture plan we just talked about, but
Speaker 2: we'll go into the next one and that might be
Speaker 2: another twenty percent and we might be down to fifty
Speaker 2: five fifty six air contact us once we do that.
Speaker 1: What else should we talk about?
Speaker 2: So you know, we know we have to do this,
Speaker 2: and right now our partner is selling these credits. They're available,
Speaker 2: we can go buy them today. But it's not really happening.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a few sales going on, but it's
Speaker 2: not really happening. And if it was really happening, we'd
Speaker 2: probably be building four plants, not one plant. And that's
Speaker 2: the real challenge that bothers me. How do we make
Speaker 2: this happen. We all know we have to do it,
Speaker 2: but if you and I do it, and nobody else
Speaker 2: does it. We just spend a lot of money and
Speaker 2: accomplish nothing. We need everybody to do it at the
Speaker 2: same time kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But it's a weird product, right, Like you're selling you're
Speaker 1: selling a thing that is like the absence of a
Speaker 1: thing globally, right, Like you're selling a weird product. Nobody
Speaker 1: in the absence of policy, really well, nobody in the
Speaker 1: absence of policy or very different customer demand than we're
Speaker 1: seeing now has to buy your product, like nobody, nobody, nobody,
Speaker 1: And so people aren't going to do it out of
Speaker 1: the goodness of their hearts, right, Like they're just not
Speaker 1: gonna They're not even gonna do it for marketing at
Speaker 1: any meaningful scale. So like, I have to think the
Speaker 1: only way it's gonna work is with way stronger policy levers,
Speaker 1: be they carratter sticks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the key thing. We need to make this
Speaker 2: happen at the scale we need it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what really has to happen for it to work
Speaker 1: at scale? Like, what is the policy you need for
Speaker 1: this industry to actually be a thing?
Speaker 2: You know where the US is once again taking the
Speaker 2: lead is the governments are one of the largest polluters
Speaker 2: in the world pickarly. About thirty percent of the carbon
Speaker 2: dioxid problem in a country comes from the government operations,
Speaker 2: the military in particular. So the US is pushing policy
Speaker 2: right now compelling government to clean up after itself and
Speaker 2: buy so to the extent that governments begin to buy,
Speaker 2: that would be amazing. So there are many different ways
Speaker 2: in which we can do this. You know, we already
Speaker 2: cleaned up our garbage used to flow down the streets
Speaker 2: and cause plagues. We then cleaned up our rivers, and
Speaker 2: now we've got to clean up the air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting thinking of this like a basic hygiene problem, right,
Speaker 1: like water quality. Water quality is an amazing one. Right,
Speaker 1: If you go back one hundred and fifty years, the
Speaker 1: advent of modern sewage systems essentially was like one of
Speaker 1: the great public health breakthroughs in the history of the world. Really,
Speaker 1: and thinking of this in those terms is interesting.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There was a sort of collective action problem. It was
Speaker 1: a kind of early government doing something other than fighting wars.
Speaker 1: Like this reminds me a little bit of that when
Speaker 1: you put it that way, right, this is like a
Speaker 1: global version of sewage collection. Yes, with similar things.
Speaker 2: The hard part about this one is you know, when
Speaker 2: when the sewer is running down the street or the river,
Speaker 2: I can see it's in my backyard, and unfortunate climate
Speaker 2: is not in my backyard, or is in everybody's backyard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's harder, but you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, there's a collective action problem here, right, Like
Speaker 1: London cleans up as sewage, London is better off, right,
Speaker 1: But if London is the only one taking carbon out
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere, nobody's going to be better off.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: It makes it a much harder problem.
Speaker 2: But that's it. Just you know, when when we first
Speaker 2: cleaned up the sewers, it was really your neighborhood. When
Speaker 2: we cleaned up the rivers, it was quite a big neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And now it's the whole planet. We got to expand
Speaker 2: to the whole planet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be back in a minute with the lighting around. Now,
Speaker 1: let's get back to the show. Okay, we're going to
Speaker 1: do a lightning round.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: It's going to be way more all over the place
Speaker 1: than the rest of the interview, but it's gonna be fun.
Speaker 2: Okay, Is it correct.
Speaker 1: That you got a patent in nineteen eighty three for
Speaker 1: an electric field detector.
Speaker 2: Oh myself, Yes, I did. Yes.
Speaker 1: Was there anything you learned inventing that electric field detector
Speaker 1: in the process of inventing it or patenting it or
Speaker 1: whatever that was helpful to you when you went to
Speaker 1: work in industry.
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely. You know, when you're sitting in engineering school,
Speaker 2: you think the problem is solving the technical problem. When
Speaker 2: you invent something, you realize the problem is getting it
Speaker 2: to market.
Speaker 1: Huh, same problem you have now, same problem you have.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: What's one thing I should do if I go to
Speaker 1: Chile where you grew up.
Speaker 2: Oh, go skiing. I'm a skier.
Speaker 1: Huh. If I want to go skiing in August, that's
Speaker 1: the place to go.
Speaker 2: I should go to chill That's the best place to go.
Speaker 1: That's one thing I should do if I go to
Speaker 1: British Columbia, where you live and work.
Speaker 2: Now, oh, you should also come skiing here. I'm a
Speaker 2: boring guy, you know, this is paradise.
Speaker 1: If I want to ski in January, I go to BC.
Speaker 1: If I want to ski in August, I'll go to Chula.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: When you were the CEO of an aerospace company, you
Speaker 1: started writing books on the side and not like typical
Speaker 1: CEO type books, right, tell me about those books.
Speaker 2: You know, I studied physics engineering fixes in school, and
Speaker 2: when we worked with NASA for years. One of the
Speaker 2: other things we did with we also built the robotic
Speaker 2: arm on.
Speaker 1: The Shuttle on the Space Shuttle.
Speaker 2: The Space shuttle on the Space Shuttle, so we built
Speaker 2: a robotic arm called the Canada Arm. One was on
Speaker 2: the Shuttle, the Shuttle arm that was instrumental in fixing
Speaker 2: the Hubble telescope. So I interacted directly with a Hubble
Speaker 2: team and kind of kept track of all the advances
Speaker 2: in cosmology. And I came to the realization that after
Speaker 2: having left school thirty odd years, we still had a
Speaker 2: lot of questions to answer. And I had seen some
Speaker 2: allusion to those questions in the Jewish literature related to
Speaker 2: my religion, and you know, when I had a bit
Speaker 2: of time, I went to work on whether one could
Speaker 2: draw us something from each tide to get to a
Speaker 2: better answer of what all the stuff looks like. So
Speaker 2: didn't intend to do much, accept a little bit of research,
Speaker 2: and I talked to a few people and they said, well,
Speaker 2: you should really write this up. And about four or
Speaker 2: five six books later, still doing that, but taking a
Speaker 2: pause in the last.
Speaker 1: Year, and I mean the basic theme is reconciling the
Speaker 1: Old Testament of the Bible with modern cosmology. Is that
Speaker 1: the basic project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the sense that we're both looking at the
Speaker 2: same world, so we need to be we need to
Speaker 2: be describing it the same because we know it's real
Speaker 2: out there. And if we do that, then we can
Speaker 2: go peel back to how how each of those bodies
Speaker 2: or knowledge gets to that answer and see if we
Speaker 2: can learn about how it all came came to happen
Speaker 2: and put those things together.
Speaker 1: If everything goes well, going back to carbon engineering, if
Speaker 1: everything goes well, what's a problem you'll be trying to
Speaker 1: solve in say five years.
Speaker 2: How to build dozens of plants a month, or not
Speaker 2: build them in a month, but have them come out
Speaker 2: of the production line. Yeah, so start a dozen and
Speaker 2: finish a dozen two years later, and then the next
Speaker 2: month another doesn't and finish a dozen.
Speaker 1: In that universe. Direct air capture is becoming a massive industry.
Speaker 1: It's these giant industrial direct air capture plants are springing
Speaker 1: up every month, every week all around the world. That's
Speaker 1: what you're hoping for, and you're hoping that will happen
Speaker 1: in five years, Like is that possible? Like that seems
Speaker 1: like a lot from one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it will look it will look like a bit
Speaker 2: like a solar farms do. Right. Yeah, they're springing out everywhere,
Speaker 2: all the solar panels. So just have little bigger buildings
Speaker 2: with on top and capturing carbon problem in the same
Speaker 2: places because we need the solar power to power them
Speaker 2: and so on. Right, But it's exactly what it will
Speaker 2: look like, and we will have to have them springing
Speaker 2: up everywhere to clean this carbon problem out.
Speaker 1: Dan Friedman is the CEO of Carbon Engineering. Today's show
Speaker 1: was produced by Edith Russello. It was edited by Sarah
Speaker 1: Nix and Robert Smith and engineered by Amanda k Wong.
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein, or you can email us at problem at
Speaker 1: Cushkin dot FM. We'll be back next week with another
Speaker 1: episode of What's Your Problem.