On Tradeoffs, Nori’s Closure, and 2024’s good, bad, and ugly

Greetings!

Welcome to the December edition of the Carbon A List newsletter. I hope this year has treated you well. If you’d like to get this mailing delivered directly to your inbox (with more than what’s public) — subscribe here.

On tradeoffs (and why they aren’t absolute)

We live in a world of tradeoffs. Tradeoffs occur when unlimited wants meet limited resources, and we must make a choice. That choice typically results in getting one thing at the expense of another. In economics, and life, tradeoffs are inevitable, but they hardly exist in isolation and things are never as black and white as some economists will lead you to believe. To navigate them effectively, we must first clarify our priorities, what the potential “sacrifice” is, the variables to consider, the scale, and the interactions between them. In one project this year, we were able to think more about tradeoffs with a system by developing a causal loop diagram to consider interacting variables. Below is an example from a paper considering similar systems dynamics to understand the full suite of the positive, and negative impact from key decisions.

At the core, every tradeoff reflects an underlying choice about what matters most to the stakeholders making the choice: immediate economic gain, long-term sustainability, equity, innovation, resilience, and more. Yet without a clear sense of these priorities and understanding choice interactions, we risk making decisions that solve one problem while potentially creating others. While applying a systems thinking lens can mitigate this to some degree, understanding our values and objectives allows us to approach tradeoffs not as rigid dilemmas but as opportunities to align decisions with what we care about most.

As much of our work is aligned with making a shift toward greater social or environmental impact, we invariably work against the choice to do something new. In some cases, the choice to do something differently is less of a trade off in traditional sense (sustainability v. production, data rigor v. low-cost collection efforts, cheap food v. conservation), but simply a tradeoff from doing it how we used to, to a new way of doing things. In effect, tradeoffs aren’t always absolute: here’s an article where I do my best to further make that case. It touches an important theme in the work we do in developing and following methodologies to quantify impact and think about issues in a system. If you are looking for a thought partner in thinking through tradeoffs or have had any tradeoffs that turned out not to be actual tradeoffs as you a) had more information or b) better technology emerged, I’d love to hear from you.

On Nori’s closure

Although I walked away from Nori in 2021 (article I published at the time on my reasoning that for me still rings true), a voluntary carbon removal marketplace I co-founded, Nori’s closure in 2024 still marks an important time for reflection. While my reasons for walking away then could ultimately be boiled down to a desire to work more systemically, and further upstream, I still find what Nori accomplished in seven years as a wonderful case study for the sustainability industry on how to build a category defining marketplace.

I recently invited a few Norinauts to a debrief at a private postmortem during a weekly call I host to unpack more of the Nori story. There were many lessons that could be gleaned from the discussion, and generally a playbook that Nori followed to gain trust, drive market traction, and innovate in streamlining impact quantification. However, I must correct the record made by an outsider, that I do not think that Nori fell prey to “shiny object syndrome” or wasn’t transparent about how to quantify impact or working within the long term view, as this article implies. In fact, one of the major reasons that Nori punched far above its weight class was because of commitment to first principles, and a culture of transparency and showing how to quantify carbon assets without reliance on opaque rules or obfuscating systems. In retrospect, there were several decisions made, that could be couched as tradeoffs with incomplete information, but ultimately, Nori’s learnings to and exit from the space creates room for the next cadre of innovators to show more efficient means and methods to connect funds to impact. I am eager to continue to build upon these lessons in the projects Carbon A List undertakes; please get in touch if your company is actively involved with creating or following impact quantification and seeking an out-of-the-box and first principles approach.

On the good, bad, and ugly for 2024

This year, like all years, there was good, bad, and ugly in the world of climate.

The good:

• Deforestation continued to decline in the Amazon Rainforest.
• Funding for climate action is going up: Green bonds are on mark to cross $1T for the year and corporate funding is up in support of public grants.
• Youth Leadership. The youth are increasingly unwilling to let the world they’re inheriting stay on a business-as-usual trajectory.

The bad:

• November 2024 global surface temperature ranked the second warmest, and Jan-November marked the warmest since global records began in 1950.
• Forest fires are getting worse.

The ugly:

• Lack of clarity on reporting standards, what makes a quality credit, or how to use those credits continues to delay large scale demand and action
• The sustainability industry writ large seems to continue to beat itself up over competing camps of different solutions with this latest NY Times Article (gifted link)

What happened with CAL 2024

2024 was the first full year of running Carbon A List and CAL Consulting DBA “Carbon A List” as separate entities. On the consulting side, we were grateful to work on projects that allowed us to:

• Develop Program Design Documents and Methodologies to support carbon accounting projects
• Write and strategize on impactful grant and corporate funding ideas
• Uncover agricultural resilience frameworks and opportunities
• Incubate and convene a coalition around Land Use Change quantification
• Develop knowledge hubs for clients
• Host almost weekly Calls of the Wild as part of the Trailpass network.

With Carbon A List, we continue to accelerate our program deploying funded through the Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities Program. As of December, the project has enrolled 215 farmers, representing 65% of the mid-2025 target of 300 farmers, and 120,000 acres, achieving 60% of the target of 200,000 acres. We currently have our second funding pool for Manure Management open until 1/30/25 in 15 eligible states. Please see our project website details. We’re also thrilled to continue to grow our team working on the PCSC grant and welcome recent additions Andrew Welch and Nicole Watson to the team.

What I’m reading

• The missing middle is all anyone can talk about, but what does it mean? Forbes
• The Latest Data Confirms: Forest Fires Are Getting Worse (WRI) referenced above
• Participatory modelling for analysing interactions between high-priority Sustainable Development Goals to promote local sustainability (referenced above)
• Nori, a Seattle-based carbon removal marketplace that raised $17M, shuts down after 7 years, GeekWire (referenced above)
• Rapid rise in corporate climate-tech investments complements support from public grants, Nature (referenced above)
• The New Climate Gold Rush: Scrubbing Carbon From the Sky, NY Times (referenced above, gifted link)

Can you help?

Now in its 3rd year, the Land Use Change Initiative (LUCI) is gaining traction. Does land use change affect your (or someone you know) work? Please join LUCI here!

If you’re looking for part time contracting work, please fill out this general form. We are always looking for talented analysts, project managers, and subject matter experts. You will be first in line to also get updates about new positions we plan on posting in 2024.