The Most Controversial Plan to Cool the Planet: Make Sunsets

Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Luke, welcome to the Business for Good Podcast. Excited to be here. you've made a lot of headlines recently, I think on like from a per capita perspective in terms of the number of people at your company and the amount that you've raised. You might have raised more headlines, than anybody at such an early station in their, in their company, and you've made a lot of people upset.

so far, which is how you came across my consciousness cuz I heard about you on a Wall Street Journal podcast and I thought, wow, I've got to talk to this guy. So you want to cool the earth and you're on a two-person mission to do it. How'd you come up with this idea?

Luke Iseman: It literally is straight from science fiction.

I've read about it in three different. Sci-fi novels by three different of my favorite authors. But the one that that really inspired me was Termination Shock by Neil Stevenson. And in it, a billionaire in Texas builds the biggest gun in the world to shoot. I think there are aluminum cylinders that turn into sulfur burning engines at altitude into the sky, and, [00:01:00] complications ensue to put it, to put it mildly.

Paul Shapiro: Now, Neil Stevenson is indeed a very famous sci-fi author, probably as in as, isn't it Seven Eves? Isn't that like his big book? That, that went really big, but Termination Shock is a newer one, I think, right?

Luke Iseman: Yeah. Termination Shock's. The newest Cryptonomic Con, I think was the first really famous one, which had digital currency decade or two before Bitcoin came around.

Interesting. All right. Inspiration to me and a lot of other people.

Paul Shapiro: Very cool. does he, does Neil, is he aware of your existence and his level of inspiration to you for this?

Luke Iseman: I think so. I've mentioned it. I've mentioned it publicly enough. I'm pretty sure he is pretty sure he's aware.

Paul Shapiro: But you haven't

Luke Iseman: spoken to him?

I haven't spoken to him. I've emailed Um-huh. But yeah, I'm pretty, I'm pretty confident that he knows, he knows what I'm doing. Okay, okay.

cool. Well, I'm sure that, you know, he must be either thrilled or horrified. I don't know what his perspective may be, but, but it's, yeah, or both.

Luke Iseman: I

Paul Shapiro: mean, [00:02:00] you have called, geoengineering the horrible thing that we have to do.

So why is it horrible? I mean, I think people can understand why it might be a good idea to cool a planet that is rapidly heating and that even under the best case scenarios, is gonna keep on heating. but. Why is it a horrible thing?

Luke Iseman: So zooming out philosophically, it'd be great if we could just stop doing bad things and that would fix the problem.

climate change is now bad enough that even if we magically stop all emissions tomorrow, we'll still probably peak above. Two, two and a half C above pre-industrial levels, which is a really boring number. And scientists will rant about how, you know, none of these are lines in the sand, but, that hides a lot of really horrific things for people in the real world.

Luke Iseman: So it's a horrible idea because it would be nice if we could. You know, just back off and stop messing [00:03:00] with nature so much to fix our problems. But, we have to do it because we created this problem. And zooming, zooming way out to copy something that Neil Stevenson and others have said, it makes sense that eventually on our way to being an inter stellar civilization with a Dyson sphere around our son, eventually of course we take ownership of the exact composition of gases.

In every layer of our atmosphere. Right? So it's kind of, it's just a matter of time before we do it. And it's, it's a little scary and horrible to realize that we have to, to realize that we have this power, that we've had this impact, and you know, I also summarize it as we've done a horrible job of geoengineering with our carbon dioxide emissions over the last several hundred years, so now we need to do a better job at geoengineering the stratosphere to offset that.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I mean, I, I think even if you're not interested in becoming an interstellar or interplanetary species, and even if you've never heard of a Dyson sphere, [00:04:00] It still might make sense to do this, right? If you think that humanity is gonna be stuck on earth in perpetuity, still you might want to figure out how we can, regulate the climate.

In that, as you have pointed out, you know, extinction is already occurring, not human extinction, but other species are going extinct at a an alarmingly unprecedented rate since the asteroid that hit our Earth 65 or so million years ago. And so if we wanna stop that, I guess the question is like, what can we do?

Paul Shapiro: And as you point out, You know, even if we stopped emitting altogether, it's really past that point where we, we really need to start thinking about how do we start taking CO2 outta the atmosphere, which I know is not what you're doing, but is another type of geoengineering. And we've had, we've had on a past episode on this show, Gras from Global Thermostat, which is a direct carbon capture startup.

but what you're doing is pretty different. It's not trying to remove carbon from the atmosphere. So just explain briefly, like what is it that you're doing. You're not actually gonna remove [00:05:00] CO2 from the atmosphere, but instead you're gonna create these clouds. So what are they?

Luke Iseman: Yeah, so we're copying the effect that occurs with particularly high altitude volcanoes and that they put the same molecule that we're putting up to the same altitudes and, create cooling.

Kind of like how when you're under a cloud, if it's sunny and then a cloud comes by, gets a bit cooler. That's the localized effect of a normal cloud. Our clouds of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere have that effect, but instead of just cooling down under a specific rain cloud, they prevent some sunlight, a small amount from getting into the lower layers of the atmosphere.

We put them in the second layer, which is called the stratosphere, and that overall has a very high. Amount of cooling per unit particle that we put up there. For example, Mount Pinatubo, this one eruption, the first, first one that we had really good satellite coverage for back in the nineties in the Philippines, resulted in half a degree Celsius of [00:06:00] temperature drop for two years after the eruption.

So this one, volcanic eruption was able to create that much cooling. We're simply copying that and you know, doing it with a lot less lava.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. so volcanoes, volcanoes with a lot less lava. So, you know, nobody was concerned when Mount Pinatubo put up this sulfur dioxide. Nobody thought, well, we're going to, you know, cause a, a global winter, in the way that some of your critics have suggested, might be an unintended consequence of what you're doing.

But that cooling effect lasted for a little while. But it subsided. What you're talking about is basically perpetual seeding of the stratosphere, right? So you would actually, basically be every year putting more and more sulf dioxide up there in order to cool the planet, and that would at least mitigate some of the effects of the warming of the planet.

Am I accurate in that assessment?

almost I'm, I'm super excited and all my investors understand that I will be thrilled [00:07:00] to stop this line of business for this company. And the way that we'll do that is the work that you're doing on artificial meat, the work that people are doing on direct air capture all the many other technical innovations that are showing early promise.

Luke Iseman: We'll scale up over time and we'll eventually decarbonize and that's when we'll be able to reduce safely the amount of, so two that we're putting into the stratosphere. So it's a

Paul Shapiro: bit, so two, just for, for the scientifically uninitiated sulfur dioxide.

Luke Iseman: Exactly. So, yeah, I'll be very happy to draw this down as, as you and others start to succeed at the important long-term goal of decarbonization and director of Capture.

Paul Shapiro: I would love to see that success and render what you're doing, totally obsolete. On the other hand, I kind of feel like it is like the plastic problem in that I, if somebody created a perfectly functional, biodegradable plastic today, it would be an amazing invention. But it wouldn't stop the fact that there is still hundreds of billions of pounds of plastic that are here that aren't biodegrading.

We [00:08:00] need to find some way to degrade that plastic. Right. You need to do something about the. Problem that has already been created. And so there's maybe some type of microbial fermentations or something that could actually degrade the plastic that we currently have while working on creating new types of plastic that don't create all these problems.

And I feel like the same is so here with what you're doing, if you think that's right.

Luke Iseman: Yeah, this, this cannot and should not be an excuse to avoid decarbonization. There's actually, you know, people philosophies about how there might be this perverse incentive to keep emitting if we do this. That gave me pause when starting the company.

But the reality is one, CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions in general go up year after year. Greenhouse gas emissions have never gone down during my life or your life, or our parents or grandparents. Every year they go up and up so that this perverse incentive from using geoengineering of the stratosphere is gonna make people bit more.

We're already doing that. And then two, there've actually been some good social research studies about how [00:09:00] little impact little to no impact there is from things like direct air capture and sorg geoengineering. Talking about those does not appear to actually shift people into consuming and emitting more greenhouse gases so it doesn't hold up.

Yeah. in reality.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I think that's kind of fantastical to think that individual consumers are contemplating these types of issues when they're buying. You know, it's very few people who are, when they decide whether they're gonna fly somewhere or not, they're thinking, oh, do I want to fly cuz I think it's gonna put more CO2 into the atmosphere or not.

They just look at the price and can they afford it? And that's it. so I think, you know, independent of whether the flight was carbon neutral or not, I don't think it would have much of an impact on most people's flying behavior, just as one example. And I think with meat it's the same thing. I think people generally eat meat cuz they like the taste of it and they don't think about the climate impact and, and probably would not let that impact their choices that much.

That be my, my guess here. O one thing that seems often, I've read so many articles about your [00:10:00] work now, Luke, and one of the things that struck me was the fact that. Factories today are already putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, like way more than what you are, thinking about doing or, or rather what you have done so far, which we're gonna talk about shortly.

But, you know, if, if people were concerned about you putting a couple grams of sulfur dioxide as you've done into the atmosphere, I mean, there are literally, you know, millions of tons of sulfur dioxide that factories are putting into the atmosphere. Every single year and nobody seems to be ringing their hands over this.

So have you, you know, have you contemplated making that argument as well?

Luke Iseman: It's even weirder, Paul, I'm actually arguing with Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They're saying we're governed by this obscure seventies law called the Weather Modification Act. And I pointed out to them that, I'd love to see the records for the weather modification that's occurring by the [00:11:00] actual.

You know, tons and if not megaton, certainly thousands of tons, of s o two that are being emitted by every major airline over America at a lower and hence more dangerous altitude and major power plants. All of these, they don't just emit more than I emit, they emit worldwide s o two emissions. Into the atmosphere are something like 20 x what we'd have to put into the stratosphere.

So if we take five to 6% of what we're already putting into the atmosphere and instead put it into the stratosphere, which is a big thing, it's 20 kilometers up, so it's no small task to get it up there. But if we just shift that small amount into the stratosphere, estimates vary. But that would be approximately one degree Celsius of cooling that we'd be able to create.

And we're only at 1.2 to 1.3 above pre-industrial levels right now.

Paul Shapiro: Right. Okay. So, you know, you gotta go 20 kilometers up. So how'd you do it? You know, you did this test by buying a balloon on Amazon, and then what happened? What'd you do? [00:12:00]

Luke Iseman: Put some. Sulfur in a, I think I actually used a cutoff aluminum can from a, from a tecate or something, put some sulfur in the base of it, lit it on fire, and then as it burned, attempted to wow coughing from the, the sulfur dioxide fumes that when they contact water, precipitate out as hydrochloric acid or as sulfuric acid rather.

Proceeded to walk some of that smoke into a balloon and then added enough helium that the balloon had positive lift. So it was pulling a bit as I was holding it, zip tied it shut, and then let it go.

Paul Shapiro: So, okay, so you put a combination of helium and sulfur dioxide inside of a balloon that you bought on Amazon, and the next thing you know, the Mexican government passes a law to prohibit what you are doing.

You have Noah coming after you, you have, numerous people over the world condemning you. so how did, did anything even happen? do you have any evidence that this made it to the [00:13:00] stratosphere? Were you measuring any aspect of this whatsoever?

Luke Iseman: So it's even. It's even weirder. That was back in February or April of 2022.

The next thing that happened, I wrote about it on my personal blog a little bit. the next thing that happened is absolutely nothing till October when a friend of a friend offered to invest in the company. I said, wow. I'm, I'm flattered, obviously, understand this is high risk and I need to actually form a company so that you can invest in it.

And then, You know, nothing happens for another several months. We launch a Shopify store in November, my co-founder and I, and then nothing happens for two months. day before or after Christmas, m i t technology review article comes out. We had a couple days head up, heads up, it was coming out, whether or not we gave, we gave quotes for it.

So, you know, obviously we wanted to tell our side of the story. And that's when all the, that's when all the uproar right around the start of this year is when all the uproar occurred. The Mexican government doesn't appear to have actually passed a law yet. [00:14:00] Maybe they will at some point. They said they're going to the, there's a couple different ways to read it.

The optimistic one, which is the take that I have, is that they said they're going to weigh the costs and benefits of solar geoengineering doing it versus not. I think that whether it's now or 10 years from now, People in countries who take a calm rational look at this will reach the same conclusion that, you know, David, Keith, and other lead researchers in the field have, which is that even a skeptical reading of solar geoengineering is a hundred to one benefit to cost ratio in terms of saving lives, in terms of the environment.

And you know, it's gonna take a while for the rest of the world to get there, but, but we're in it for the long haul.

Shirley, you've seen snow piercer, I presume, or, or maybe read the book. and so, you know, it's a hundred to one, but if there is like a chance that you know, you, you know, plunge Earth into a, perpetual winter here, I, I guess the question that a skeptic would ask you is, You know, what you're doing or [00:15:00] what you're proposing to do.

Paul Shapiro: It seems like the type of thing that would happen after many governments of the world, maybe the United Nations came together to discuss and debate and deliberate, and then focus on a plan on how to do it not to have, you know, one guy with his friend putting up a helium balloon into the atmosphere.

so. What do you say to that? you know, you, you think it's a good idea and, and, you know, I, I am, I'm encouraged by the idea. I think, you know, this is probably sadly, what we need to do or one of the many things that we need to do, but I think a lot of people who are skeptical would say, you know, there's lots of well-intentioned ideas that seemed like a good idea, and then they had really bad consequences.

Paul Shapiro: So what would you say to them? Like, why are you the one who should be out there doing this as opposed to, let's say the United Nations?

Luke Iseman: I should have no more or less right than anyone else to do this, because I believe that philosophically not, certainly not because I need more headlines. We'll probably start, start selling kits soon, which are, you know, they'll be comically simple.

But I really wanna make the point that anyone can and [00:16:00] should feel empowered to do this. you shouldn't have to ask any more permission to do this than you do before you turn on your car or get on an airplane.

Paul Shapiro: Right. So your argument is that when you get in a car, again, in an airplane, you're engaged in solar geoengineering anyway.

Right? And so this is the same thing, is that that what you mean by that analogy?

Luke Iseman: This is. A more effective way to, to offset the same. I do personally and differentiate quite a bit between what I'm doing and measures like marine cloud, brightening, no serious scientists, in two ways. One, the length of effect for this is well understood.

It's two to three years if we do it right. Less long if we don't do it as effectively. So this is a ch something that happens for a couple years and then we adjust and we learn as we do it. and then two directionality is well known unlike Marine Cloud brightening and other geo-engineering measures that people are contemplating.

I'm not gonna touch marine cloud brightening until the sciences wait until slash if the science is way clearer and. By clear, I mean [00:17:00] directionality known. I don't care if we know the exact efficacy. It's fine to do things that we know help, but we don't know exactly how much. However, if we don't know if it creates net warming or cooling, I'm not gonna touch measures like that until the science is clear and that's, that is the case with Marine Cloud brightening.

That is not the case with injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. So I differentiate a lot between those.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. so for those not familiar, basically there are a few different ways that we can try to deflect sunlight back off of the earth to cool the earth and marine and cloud brightening is another way that, some people have theorized that we could do this.

There's also just cloud creation, right? Like creating, like these wispy clouds at a lower level. Isn't that another as another way to try to block some of the sunlight?

Luke Iseman: Yeah. Clouds are, clouds are surprisingly complicated. There is serious cloud thinning. We're at a certain. Altitude, you can thin clouds and theoretically decrease how much sunlight gets trapped in the atmosphere.

And then there's marine cloud brightening where you can create [00:18:00] clouds of a certain particle size at a different altitude. And theoretically, Reduce how much sunlight gets trapped in the atmosphere. But apparently I'm not an expert on any of this, and particularly marine cloud brightening. The extent of my understanding is that it's really sensitive to particle size.

So if your nozzle is not the right size for the seawater that you're spraying up, you can actually create warming rather than cooling. Yet to be clear, Australia's doing this over the great barrier reefs and no one seems worked up. You don't hear a thousandth of the uproar you do over what I'm doing, I guess because.

It has a clear likely local cooling effect over the great barrier reefs, which it's important to preserve obviously, but you know, we don't know if that's actually net making the world warmer or cooler, which is, is mind blowing to me.

yeah, so I, I'm not familiar with what you're referring to here. So what you're saying is that basically Australia, the Australian government is creating clouds over the barrier reef to cool the area where the reef is so that you have less reef bleaching and, and therefore more, more [00:19:00] marine life.

Paul Shapiro: There Is that right?

Luke Iseman: Exactly. I'm not sure exactly who's putting it up, if it's just a research group with Australia's app improve approval. Mm-hmm. Or if it's mm-hmm. You know, actually government explicitly funded. Mm-hmm. But yeah, little to know I'm far over that even though we don't know if it's making the world warmer or colder.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So one of the things that I was thinking just psychologically, like having a government do this or having a government funding some research group, if that is indeed what's happening in Australia, it seems. Less psychologically terrifying than just having random dudes going and doing this, and let on for profit, right?

Like you have a for-profit company that you've started make sunsets. we haven't really talked about how you'll be making money yet. you mentioned selling kits, I wanna get to that. but it does seem, you know, like from the way person's perspective, if the government is doing this, you know, there might be some people who are skeptical of the government who may not like that.

but the idea of just having. a company go out and do this without any interaction with the government. Seems [00:20:00] odd. And so, you know, first like what's your response to that? And then after that I'd love to talk about how you're actually planning to make this a profitable business.

Luke Iseman: Yeah, I think that.

It's important to differentiate where innovation historically, from my limited understanding comes from versus where it scales up. I agree. This will almost definitely be a government that does this at the megaton scale, just like it is governments that have bought or manufactured a large number of the airplanes that have ever been built.

Right. But you don't have governments coming up typically, with some exceptions about some things, particularly around nuclear. Usually it's not a government that comes up with the innovation, it's some random dudes in a garage, right? Flight is a great example. the smallpox vaccine with a bunch of caveats, I think is another example.

And to be clear, these are brilliant innovators. I'm in no way comparable to them. But this reliance on like that, the idea that government will innovate whether you like or hate [00:21:00] government, doesn't fit the historical record in my, in my interpretation.

Paul Shapiro: Okay, fair enough. So if government isn't going to innovate and if it's gonna require the private sector, How will you make this profitable?

Like you, you know, you can put balloons with sulfur dioxide up there, but why would anybody pay you to do it?

Luke Iseman: Yeah, there's a, so what we're doing right now is we literally just have a basic web store on Shopify where you can buy a cooling credit and a cooling credit costs. We put 'em on sale frequently, especially if you buy multiple out ones, between one and $10 per colon credit.

And that's a commitment refundable by us at any time before we deploy it. Commitment by us to put one gram of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. We then provide evidence of the specific flight that you were on, as in the specific balloon, which grams of sulfur dioxide on that flight map to your colon credits.

And occasionally we're lucky enough, we're still refining it, but occasionally we're lucky enough to capture some video to [00:22:00] include. We recently got, we didn't have it faced at the actual balloon, but we got the balloon burst noise and then the remnants of the balloon and the. Parachute payload plunging, on one of our most recent launches.

So basically just like with any individual purchase or company for that matter, purchase of voluntary carbon credits. This is to make a point. our customers, so far, we have 91 of them and almost to a t. They're people who have stared into the depressing chasm. That is the hard data behind climate change and realized that we.

We're overdue to do things like solar Joe engineering and all the other measures that seemed like crazy sci-fi. A decade ago.

Paul Shapiro: 91 people were buying cooling credits from you so far. Are they buying on average $1, $10, a hundred dollars? Like how much revenue have you brought in so far? Our

Luke Iseman: average order is, I think $50.

So, or 50 some dollars. We're at around [00:23:00] five or $6,000 of revenue. Which to be clear is comically small in comparison to what we need to get to, to solve the problem, to buy time for others to solve the problem that is climate change, right? But, it feels great to have almost a hundred true believers and.

also important to note is that our cost per cooling credit delivered is something like 20 to 25 cents. With our current setup where we're buying helium, we'll switch to hydrogen, which is dramatically cheaper later. We're currently just using the balloons once and they explode. We'll reuse them later, and then at scale, the balloons almost definitely won't make as much sense as using next generation private.

Luke Iseman: Or last generation military supersonic craft. Not for the speed, but for the flight ceiling. Mm-hmm.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. So, the cogs or the cost of good sold is much lower than what you are selling it for. I presume you have other overhead, like your salary and so on, that make the company not yet actually profitable, but you can see the path [00:24:00] to profitability if you were to generate, you know, tens of thousands of customers.

Is that, that's the idea. Exactly. Yeah. Interesting. So, when you said earlier that you are selling kits, that means you are selling the kit that you will deploy. You're not selling kits for other people to deploy. Right.

Luke Iseman: So currently we're only selling cooling credits. We also have, as an experiment, my co-founder put up a limited edition.

You can buy a portion of our first balloon. We recovered the remnants of the balloon, and you can buy a portion of that and some cooling credits as a little collectible pack. In the future, we're planning to sell kits that will allow anyone to do their own launches.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. Okay. Well, I mean, is there not some, you know, like standard operating procedures that are necessary to actually make this thing reach the stratosphere?

you know, presumably that the more of these releases you do, you gain some expertise in making sure that the payload actually reaches its destination that a newcomer may not be familiar with.

Luke Iseman: Yeah, it's also important to note, [00:25:00] so for our, we did, for this climate week in San Francisco, we got kicked off of the official calendar because we're too controversial, but just kind of, renegade style.

We did a small balloon giveaway where instead of using sulfur dioxide, which you know, does precipitate out a sulfuric acid in the presence of water and just generally smells like rotten eggs and isn't great to breathe large quantities of. instead of that we used a different, Thing, which is a calcium carbonate or scho chalk in dust form.

And we put a small amount of that into 10 inch balloons that said Cool Earth on the side, our, our motto and gave them away, biodegradable latex balloons with a burlaps string on them. So fully biodegradable gave those away to people in San Francisco to if they wanted to become their own geo engineer.

So we might not. We probably won't. It's also very complicated to ship sulfur dioxide. We'll probably just ship sulfur in some guidance around how to get it into a balloon. But launching weather balloons that are likely to reach the stratosphere is literally a common [00:26:00] high school science class kind of thing.

And if we, if we emit these below the stratosphere, to be clear, worst case, like with our biggest balloon right now, we could do three kilograms of lift. I think that's about a minute of the amount of sulfur dioxide that a 7 47 releases.

Paul Shapiro: Mom. so, if, if Luke a high school kid can do what you are doing, is there any moat for the company?

if you are, are successful and you start selling a bunch of, a bunch of kits or a bunch of cooling credits, like what's to stop somebody else from coming in and doing the same exact thing? I presume there's no IP associated with make sunsets yet.

there is some pending, basically. and this is super, people either get this right away or they're like, that's dumb.

The IP strategy. Overall, I want to use IP to solve, or at least ameliorate this idea about needing [00:27:00] international regulation. A common complaint from scientists, and you mentioned UN or someone else deploying this, is that, you know, this shouldn't be something that people are just doing willy-nilly without any regulation or at least a logging of it.

Luke Iseman: I plan to have an IP position and have started the process to where, It is easier and cheaper for companies and individuals to license from me, as in sometimes even free or at a negative cost if it's somebody who wants to do this in a place where I want it to occur, but with very rigid reporting requirements.

So basically, and this is super bizarre, on top of an already admittedly strange concept for a company. Basically I want to use our IP position to become de facto. The registrar of where sulfur dioxide emissions are occurring. And just like with media piracy, we don't have to know about everybody doing it.

But if we know about most of it, and if we get people licensed and reporting to us for most of it, [00:28:00] That's enough and we can kind of deal with the error bar from some unregulated or unlicensed s launches occurring.

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. Okay. and I, I do just wanna make it very clear what you're talking about, if successful as intended.

Would have a cooling effect on the earth. It would not though solve other problems of CO2 in the atmosphere, like ocean acidification and other things, right? So you would be basically mitigating one portion of the problem associated with climate change, but not all of it, right?

Luke Iseman: That's exactly right, and I wanna encourage anyone thinking about starting anything to not get caught in the trap that I see a lot of people trying to do good with business getting caught in, which is you shouldn't need to solve everything to work towards improving something.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. well, you know, it would be, it, it would be pretty remarkable if there were one thing that actually, had a, a total panacea effect. But, but yeah, of course I agree we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the [00:29:00] good. And, as you have, pointed out before in other interviews, you know, basically.

The problem is so serious that it requires us to engage in these type of extraordinary actions. So to quote you, you said that, you know, every day that we don't inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere as responsibly as a state of science will let us and as much as we can economically, species are needlessly going extinct, and people were dying.

So let me ask you, Luke, is, is species extinction like your primary motivator? you know, you have a history of being associated with entrepreneurship, including solar and so on. So is the main thing that's motivating you here. Wildlife extinction. I mean, I'm sure it's multifactorial, but what is it that gets you up outta the morning to to drive you to do this?

I'm a big fan. It, it changed my life back in I think, high school or first year of college to read, Peter Singer. And I consider myself in broad strokes and act utilitarian and having made some, but not a ton of money from past business stuff and being at a point in [00:30:00] my life where I was looking for something new to work on, I can't imagine.

Luke Iseman: So something that is, As exciting for me to work on as necessary for the world. I do, I don't mind the controversy, obviously. this is a thing that needs to be done that no one else is doing. I could go back to school and attempt to get, you know, a doctorate in nuclear physics or something to try to actually solve the longer term problems that we need to.

I'm unlikely to do that and there are other people working on it. This was the one thing I've found that no one else was doing that clearly needs to be done. And, yeah, it's for my. Willingness to engage with controversial things and little bit of hack together hardware building abilities. this is by far the best, the best way I can imagine to spend the next, you know, couple decades of my life.

Paul Shapiro: It's funny that you mentioned Peter Singer. I will link in the show notes [00:31:00] at Business for Good podcast.com to our past episode with Peter. and as somebody myself who is highly influenced by him and also self-identify as, as an act utilitarian, it's not surprising to me, that you would've been influenced by him to end up leading to this outcome since so much of, his philosophy is about.

Embracing conclusions, even if you don't really like them based on the principles that you're adhering to. And so, I, I'm not surprised by that. but it is interesting to hear nonetheless.

Luke Iseman: you mentioned, yeah, actually if you can link to it as well, he actually just last month wrote a column People aren't calling for other than me.

No one. Really seems to be calling for deployment yet, but Peter Singer and many others have shifted their stance from being against this to last month. He wrote a column saying, you know, probably from an act utilitarian perspective, we need to at least research this. So it's fascinating to see. Yeah. to see public opinion shifting.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. And he's not the only one saying that we should research it. Right. [00:32:00] I mean, even Noah, who you mentioned earlier, is researching this and I think the Biden administration has a research plan to explore the concept as well. So, you know, there's a lot of people who are interested in researching this, but I think that you and.

Probably me now as, as of this podcast are some of the only people publicly saying, you know, you know, time's up. We gotta just get this done and start, start actually, cooling right now in order to save many species. so, I will link to that. I didn't know that that, singer had done that, but I will certainly go and find that and link to it in the show notes at Business for good podcast.com.

Luke, you mentioned. O, you know, other things that people were doing, and this was the one thing that nobody was doing that you thought where you could actually make a contribution because of your past experience as an entrepreneur and somebody who worked at Y Combinator, I know that you must think often about other ideas that you wish that people would be doing.

In fact, I know that you do because on your personal website, you have an entire list of ideas that you hope that people will start a company or that maybe you'll start a company to do. So [00:33:00] if you could make a recommendation. To somebody out there listening as to what you hope that they will do to help solve the crime crisis, or at least ameliorate it as you say, what would you recommend that they pursue?

I'll, I'll answer this two ways. One, broadly applicable to anyone, and then two, the specific business that like, I will write a check to anyone credibly attempting to do it, or do it myself. First, it was really important for me to quit a comfortable software job, years and years and years ago, and it felt like I was giving up the coolest thing in the world and I was gonna be a total failure.

Luke Iseman: And if I hadn't taken that risk, then and many other risks like it, none of the positive things that I've. Done really in the last decade would've happened. So the broad thing I would ask people to do is try taking some chances that they're a little scared of probably their world is not gonna explode in a negative way.

Maybe it sometimes will, but it'll at least be more interesting. I think a lot of people get stuck, doing things [00:34:00] that are more boring and mainstream than they could or should, because it's just kind of what they've done and what they see other people doing. And then on the specific side, I want to see the philosophy of Andreas moms how to blow up a pipeline, which is not what it sounds like from the title.

it's an argument that we should take more extreme measures in environmentalism because what we're doing isn't working and it's a life or death crisis. his extreme is deflating, s u v tires. Not popping them, deflating them by putting a lentil in the, in the valve stem, and then screwing the cap back on.

Luke Iseman: So choose your level of extremism there. But the business around that, that I wanna see happen is, that combined with Wall Street bets, by which I mean boycott a company after this entity with crypto or otherwise takes out a future position on it. So announce, we're gonna boycott one of the five most environmentally destructive fast food companies.

In the US sometime in the [00:35:00] next three months. This entity then takes out the ability to sell at current price or a bit above it, the stock via an options, market thing. And then rewards people for participating in the boycott with either just money or some crypto tied to it. So basically kill companies that we hate in a fully legal way and in a way that makes money.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. I, I did watch Eat the Rich recently, which I presume you have seen. did you watch that? I haven't. Oh, really? It's a, it's a GameStop saga with Wall Street Bets, so it's on Netflix. it's highly interesting. It's about basically how Wall Street bets engaged in the meme stock, you know, blow up of GameStop.

It, it's really, a riveting tale if you wanna learn more about Wall Street Bets. but, I do recommend it. I'll link to it in the show notes here at. As well to the book that you mentioned about how to blow up a pipeline, which, I'm glad is not as it sounds quite literally. so, finally Luke, you've mentioned a number of resources, whether it's from Peter Singer or this book that I just [00:36:00] referenced.

but is there anything else that, you know, somebody who's interested in getting involved to try to help the planet through entrepreneurship may bene, may be benefiting from? Like any recommendations that you have on resources that have been useful for you, that you recommend for others?

and again, this is a general one.

Luke Iseman: My partner has been doing morning pages. This thing from a book that like, I did not like the God stuff in it. Others might, but the Artist's way, is a book that I'd highly recommend because, for a variety of things. But the thing that stuck with, with me and my partner is morning pages, writing three pages every morning, regardless of whether you feel like doing it.

sounds like just an art thing, but it's not. It's very much helped, helped me clarify my thinking about starting this company and about. I mean, I'll write drafts of emails, negotiating things and all kind of stuff. I use it very differently than my partner does. And I've also wimped out and switched to just one page, each morning.

Luke Iseman: And then I just listened to the [00:37:00] Creative Act by Rick Rubin, which is fascinating. I don't know if others will enjoy it as much, but it really made some things click for me around creativity and business and just how, how to think about doing new things in the world. I will strongly assert something very different than maybe many others in Cleantech will.

There are not. Many or maybe any clean tech companies that have really figured it out. So if you're looking for a playbook where you can switch from whatever non Cleantech job into a clean tech one, one, there's a supply and demand issue. Cause everybody wants to work in clean tech now. And two, a lot of it is just hype or overvalued.

so, you know, don't expect, don't expect an easy playbook switching from other role to clean tech. It's probably more easy for you to start something new.

Paul Shapiro: All right. Well, I, I'm hopeful that somebody will start, start something new because of what you said, Luke on here. And I'm hopeful that that person will get in touch once they've started their company so they can come on the show and talk about how they started [00:38:00] something based on the Eisman principle here of don't just go take a job somewhere else, but start your own thing.

So, I would be flattered. we'll see. That'll be great. but I hope that you're able to cool Earth as your slogan suggests, Luke. And so I will look forward to seeing how many more people are interested not only in investing in your company, but actually purchasing cooling credits from you. Because, this is a grand experiment and it is, it's quite audacious to be doing it even though what you've done right now is very limited.

could lead to something that would, be actually quite useful. So good luck. I hope that your company, arises to the stratosphere quite literally, and I will look forward to following what makes Sets is gonna be doing. Thanks Paul.