Reversing Climate Change with Nori
One of the great things about hosting this podcast is the incredible people we come across pursuing actual world changing initiatives! One such guest and full disclosure also a client is
Paul Gambill, CEO, and Co-founder of Nori, who with his team is taking on the mission of reversing climate change by creating a marketplace for carbon removal from the atmosphere.
When Paul realized that the small business he was working on wasn’t going anywhere, he decided to do something bigger and more important for humanity. He was inspired by Simon Sinek’s TED talk, The Power of Why and he wanted his next venture to be centered around his own Why. Shortly after, he read an article about the frustration climate scientists were feeling because no one was listening to them about the imminent dangers humanity faces if nothing is done. He found this topic so intriguing that he started to do more research on it and found out that climate change will bring many disasters, from drought to triggering civil wars to acidification of the oceans. Paul had found his "Why", Battling Climate Change. He was determined to solve this problem and we went about educating himself in every way on the topic. He created a meet-up group in Seattle called Carbon Removal Seattle where the group would self-educate themselves about carbon removal technologies, they also networked with other groups around the world who were also interested in carbon dioxide removal and started meeting the players in the space.
Shortly after, he connected with Christophe Jospe who was equally impassioned by the topic and was working with Klaus Lackner, an early pioneer on the science of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere at the University of Arizona. Although it took a little bit of time, the team eventually formed after winning a Consensys Hackathon on Blockchain for Good. This validation of their idea led to the creation of a company with other domain experts and
Cofounders Alexsandra Guerra, Aldyen Connolly, Ross Kenyon and Jaycen Horton. You can check out their entire Norigen story here.
They created Nori. Nori ’s mission is to reverse climate change through the creation of a marketplace built on blockchain that rewards carbon dioxide removal. The Nori marketplace will include verifiers as part of its ecosystem to ensure carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and stored. Nori encourages the use of regenerative agricultural practices by farmers to increase carbon dioxide removal. Practices include reducing or stopping tillage as well as the use of cover crops on their fields to promote the growth of bacteria in the soil that will pull and store CO2 into the soil. The net result is that these practices also increase the quality of that topsoil to produce better more nutritious crops over time as well as they retaining water better.
Nori is currently building its marketplace on blockchain and connecting with farmers who are interested in being part of the group to test out the system and be rewarded for their carbon removal practices.
Over the last several months, I’ve learned so much working with this team and it is encouraging to know that there are some extremely talented and smart individuals working on the problem of reversing climate change. Nori also has an awesome podcast and we’re big fans.
In the meantime, check out this enlightening conversation with Paul Gambill, Nori CEO and check them out too!
