Two guys on the subway were talking about planting one trillion trees

It was the evening of July 26th, 2017. I decided to walk a few blocks after leaving night 5 of Phish’s 13 night residency “The Baker’s Dozen” at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and was waiting for the C train at the 23rd street station.

On the bench next to me, two guys sat down and were talking about strategies to plant one trillion trees.

My ears perked up. I introduced myself and we started talking. From the beginning, it was clear that Ethan Steinberg and Harrison Greene of Propagate Ventures were in the business of reversing climate change for the right reasons, and thus were not only the kinds of people that I wanted to be friends with, but if at all possible, the sorts of folk to do business with.

They are systems thinkers who take the long view. They are millenials who are fed up with status quo and are willing and ready to try things differently. They are aligned on a mission to regenerate the earth, and their savvy spanned finance, biology, and software. I had a ticket to go out to Seattle two days later to spend two weeks with Paul Gambill to determine if we wanted to go into business together (and watch the remainder of the 13 Phish shows from his couch), and I was keen to make friends like these.

At the time, I had set a personal challenge to create a video series and different people taking and sending me videos on different “climate change solutions.” I got Harrison to agree to participate in a 50 day video challenge where I released daily videos taken from a cell phone about different climate change solutions answering 4 questions. What is the solution, how does it remove carbon, what additional benefits does it provide, and what does success look like? Most of the videos I cut down to 90 seconds, but this version was too good not to cut.

This video is worth the full 3 minutes.

When we were in NYC last November we were very glad to bring Ethan and Jeremy Kauffmann, another co-founder, onto the third episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast to talk about what they are doing with Propagate Ventures.

To achieve the vision of planting 1 trillion trees, it’s not just about teaching a man to fish, but teaching the men and the women the capacity to propagate fish that also interact with an ocean that can create even more fish. This moves past the concept of sustainability. This is not just about sustaining the earth. This is about using agriculture and markets to achieve regeneration. Regeneration is giving all the systems the capacity to thrive and be regenerative and more valuable all together. Propagate Venture’s special sauce is that they are securitizing trees specific to bioregions and regeneration, much like utility companies securitize solar panels. Instead of a “power purchase agreement” they create a “produce purchase agreement.” It’s essentially a forwards contract that pays landowners for the trees on their land, and provides financing options.

They have a deep understanding of the nuances required to make things happen (that sequester carbon) and achieve the goals of the landowner on a project by project basis. How labor intense? What can the soil support? What are the options available? How does the land become an asset? And then, how does can this be scaled out on a bioregional basis?

At one point in the podcast they brought up a really important point that is very aligned with Nori’s perspective. Oftentimes regeneration focuses on the small farmer. There’s a certain challenge for the small farmer to compete with larger farms. They need to get over that hump. The knowledge of the smaller farmers is critical and cannot be lost. But that has left out larger farms which have the potential to remove the most amounts of carbon. The the ideal way forward is one that does not marginalize big agriculture but realizes the benefits of working across all different land types.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that on the podcast that Jeremy may have dropped one of the best (or at least corniest) neologism of all time: Seq-C. Sequestering Carbon. Say it with me. Seq-C. Yup, that’s right, removing carbon is sexy.