After ChangeNOW last year, I never looked at carbon credits the same way again.

I was listening to a panel with a blue carbon project developer from Madagascar, a co-founder of a large-scale reforestation startup, and a climate consultant. “We cannot wait until 2050 to start restoring nature,” the climate consultant said. “We cannot reduce emissions and offset only after we’ve reduced emissions by 90%. Our ecosystems can’t wait that long.”

I realized I’d been looking at carbon credits all wrong

Restoring nature and cleaning up our historic emissions are not tasks that can stay on our to-do list until we check off all the other items on the list. There’s too much at stake to put off carbon cleanup that long, and the whole house could crumble if we don’t repair the cracks now.

After that talk, I became carbon removal curious — and I looked for opportunities to learn more.

The next “aha” moment came at a ClimateHack event in Amsterdam, when Direct Air Capture startup Skytree gave us a tour of their office and explained their approach to the technology.

I’ll never forget when their director of technology shared a slide with us. We saw the removal potential of nature-based approaches, and the potential of technology-based approaches.

We need nature-based removals to help restore our fragile ecosystems — but the IPCC report and many other reports have made it clear. Nature-based removals can only take us so far. To clean up our massive mess, we need technology to help us remove ~10 Gigatons annually by 2050 — and keep the carbon locked away for centuries.

Now, I’m promoting tech-based based, permanent removals — and I’m excited about it

These days, I’m all in. I work with startups and policy experts to promote these technologies, and I’m excited to get to my keyboard.

I know the better I do my job, the more I can help scale these technologies, and the more carbon we can remove and lock away for good. What I love is that everyone I work with is clear these technologies aren’t the whole answer — they are just a few of many puzzle pieces we need in place to avoid climate breakdown.

Why am I sharing this story?

Because every day, I hear from peers worried about greenwashing. Are carbon credits legitimate? Why do we need carbon credits when we should be focusing on emissions reduction anyway? And why do we need Direct Air Capture or Ocean Capture when we have trees?

Because:

• Carbon credits are a way for companies to finance nature restoration and cleanup of emissions

• We can’t wait til 2050 to start cleaning up the damage we’ve caused

• We should deploy nature-based approaches now, but we simply can’t reach 10 Gigatons of removals without tech approaches

• We need to scale permanent, tech-based carbon removals NOW if we’re to get there in time

• Tech-based carbon removal startups are allies in this fight — and we should treat them that way