52: Amy Westervelt, Carbon Capture, and the Cartoonishly Evil Atlas Network

Investigative journalist Amy Westervelt from Drilled asks us: what is carbon capture and is it good or bad or... complicated? What is the Atlas Network and why are they comically evil dark avengers of the climate world? And how do you go from recording a podcast in your car to creating an award winning podcast network?

🎤 See Tom perform comedy in Brooklyn for Earth Alliance! 🎤

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:14) Carbon Capture
(00:39:05) The Atlas Network/Podcasting
(01:08:25) Outro

We also learn about:

Emailing the local radio station “Would you like an over-aged intern”, Ella’s a climate change fan, natural carbon capture, compressed carbon is a lot more dangerous than it sounds, fracking with captured carbon, “there’s a lot of creative math happening”, direct air capture, carbon capture needs to happen WITH decarbonization, warming waters make crabs produce neurotoxins, unfreezing zombie viruses, a silver lining to the climate catastrophe is the worm broth, moving the goalposts to 2050, historian of past futures, people used to think fridges were weird, are we just giving up on eating slightly less meat, greenwashing, if you’re an oil company everything looks like a pipeline or a combustion engine, direct air capture is actually cool! even if I have 0 silver bullets I can kill a werewolf with 100 brass bullets, Anthony Fisher battery farming turtles origin story, reader’s digest version of Friedrich Hayek, having an evil meeting in a chicken battery farm, now they’re cooking with gas, Margaret Thatcher’s cameo, “what a horrible avengers this has been”, THEY LITERALLY INVENTED THE OVERTON WINDOW, they’re a real life conspiracy theory, Amy gets in a debate, “I have a very difficult mother so tense conversations, I’m good at them”, narratives in climate not just look at my chart! podcasts can communicate the people hidden in stories, producing a podcast in a car, “I want people to come away really pissed off”

Sources:
Mississippi Carbon Capture Accident
IPCC Carbon Capture Report
Latest IPCC Report
Nature: "Carbon dioxide removal is an ineffective time machine"
The New Report on when we’ll Cross the 1.5 Degree Threshold
Thawed Zombie Bug Viruses
Revived Worm Broth
Drilled on The Atlas Network

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