Tree-mendously Fast-Growing Trees to Fight Climate Change? Maddie Hall and the Living Carbon Story

Maddie Hall: [00:00:00] Despite the fact that as a climate founder, you're constantly wondering, am I doing enough?

Right? Could I be doing more? At least I am. I think starting a climate company it's vote for a, an optimistic future, right? It's a vote that says that, Hey, we actually, if we like coalesce enough resources and talent, we can slow climate change. We can do this in a way that. Allows for future generations to continue the rate of advancement that we have as a species.

Paul Shapiro: Well friend, here we are at episode number 98 of the business for good podcast. I appreciate all the suggestions that listeners have been sending in regarding who you think should be the big, special VIP guest for our upcoming episode 100. And I'm happy to report to you that now we [00:01:00] have decided who that special guest is going to be.

No, I'm not gonna reveal who it is just yet, but trust me, it's going to be a riveting conversation with a very well known and successful person. Who's had an extremely consequential impact in the business and sustainability worlds. So stay tuned and get excited for episode 100, of course, as always, if you have suggestions for the show for future episodes or about anything else for that matter, you can always hit me at the.

Business for good podcast.com. So while you're getting excited for episode 100, get ready to enjoy a tremendously exciting episode 98, or maybe I should say tremendously exciting episode because we've got on a startup. That's making all types of national headlines, slightly further innovative proposal to capture carbon from the atmosphere.

Trees, but not just any old trees, living carbon is pioneering an exciting new field in which they are enhancing trees' natural ability to photosynthesize causing them to grow dramatically faster and therefore capture carbon more quickly. You see trees are essentially just big columns of carbon. And when we cut them down, something [00:02:00] that humans seem to like to do quite a lot, all of that carbon in the trees and that which is stored under the soil underneath those trees gets released back into the atmosphere, heating up the.

One problem with relying on tree planting to capture that carbon is just that trees take such a long time to grow. And well, we, we just don't have the luxury of time as the climate heats up because of what we're doing. So living carbon is bioengineering trees that just grow a lot more efficiently at the beginning of their lives and in turn making money and.

Part from the carbon credits that they can generate. Now, there are other benefits of trees aside from carbon capture, including that they provide critical wildlife habitat. They provide shade and more, and it would be better if we had millions more large trees without having to wait a large number of years.

That is where living carbon comes in. This three year old startup has raised 15 million and has successfully engineered two species of trees to grow so quickly that they have up to 53% more biomass than comparably aged trees of their species. They've already done trial plantings and their [00:03:00] CEO Mattie hall says in this interview that they intend to plant four to 5 million of their enhanced trees before the end of 2020.

Not too shabby. And that is just the start. They're also working on drought resistant trees so that we can still have forests in places that climate change is drying out. In this interview, we talk about what living carbon is doing and why we discuss the controversy over whether anything natural is better than anything human made.

And of course, why it's a good idea to genetically engineered trees that will help fight climate change. Something that as you can imagine, I Elis it's a. Of differing views. My own view is that we need technology to help solve the problems we've created for ourselves and using bioengineering techniques to create new forests faster.

Seems like a pretty good idea to me. I'm excited about living carbon and I think you will be too, so enjoy hearing from their CEO Mattie hall.

 Maddie welcome to the business for good podcast.

Maddie Hall: Thanks for having me here, Paul happy to talk about living carbon and businesses that are also for good . [00:04:00]

Paul Shapiro: very cool. Well, I'm eager to talk about both of those things too, but you know, I am a, a big believer in trees and reforestation. I'm also a supporter of genetic engineering.

And so these two passions of mine, I was surprised I hadn't heard of your company, but I saw you. Front page of CNN. And I was like, wow, my interests are intersecting here. And I started talking to other people about your company and they all knew about it. And so I felt like a fool because I was unfamiliar with living carbon.

So I want to become more and more familiar with it.

Maddie Hall: I mean, that's amazing. I don't think you're too late to the game though. Uh, Almost almost three years at this. So very

Paul Shapiro: cool. So yeah, almost three years. So you were founded in 2019. What were you doing prior to that, Maddie? What, like before you were deciding you were gonna become a mad scientist and create Franken trees as the critics will call it?

Like what, what were you doing?

Maddie Hall: yeah I was actually working at open AI on special projects. So I was also spending my time on just thinking about like something that has a long term horizon, and also a lot of societal influences [00:05:00] specifically thinking about what are the ways in which AI. Impact the world and help solve some of the grand challenges that exist today.

And the way in which we can change the narrative about some of these new technologies, right? People see something like AI and they think, Ooh, that's so scary. Like the popular narrative is. Relatively like fear Mon I bet. I, I, I, I would say, and I think as a result of that, I started to think about, well, what other existential problems are out there.

Right. And how do we start to change these narratives around centered around like the technologies that can be used actually to improve the world more broadly. And I think back in 2018, Well, there were a lot of people working on climate that there were not as many people working in the climate tech space.

And so thinking about what different tools were out there that could be harnessed in technologies that could be harnessed in the same way that we were harnessing a lot of advancements in AI research at opening eye.

Paul Shapiro: well, that's really cool. So it is interesting. You make a distinction Mattie between climate and climate tech.

So when I would think of [00:06:00] climate tech, I guess I would think about people who are doing things maybe like direct carbon capture, or maybe they're trying to create more efficient photovoltaic so they can have better solar panels. Like, what is the difference to like, what's an example of somebody working on climate, who isn't working on climate.

Maddie Hall: Policy some of the folks that are working in carbon markets and have been working in carbon markets for a really long time. I think as like someone. Who is relatively new-ish to the space, right. Despite having cared about it and been educated about it since like high school. I do think that, you know, everyone that's working on carbon rub now and, and climate tech or broadly really stands all the backs of these folks that have been spending, you know, generations and decades, trying to not only do like conservation and pres and preservation of, of different lands and native ecosystems, but also.

Folks that are helping quantify and understand just the speed in which the planet is warming. Right? So a lot of climate scientists live in the Arctic. And in many other places, I think it's like silly for climate to be this like hot, new [00:07:00] topic. No pun intended that when we have these like industries and disciplines that have been around for much, much longer than this sort.

Thing, this, this new wave in Silicon valley has to say the

Paul Shapiro: very least so nice. Was the pun really not intended or was it intended? It feels like it was intended and it was a good one. I applaud you for it, but it feels like it was intended.

Maddie Hall: Oh, my gosh. No, never. I mean, I think if I had a dollar for every time someone made a punt about our company and the seed round the soil around blah, blah, blah.

Ah, I could, I could definitely have removed a couple tons of carbon from the air. I could tell you that.

Paul Shapiro: So we had on recently a company called fungo. I don't know if you've heard of them. Yes. It's a cop. And so, yeah, so they're doing some cool things where they're, you know, basically doing soil transplants to get different fungi into.

Depleted agricultural land from healthy forests. And I was joking that instead of their seed round, it really should have been a spore round because they're a foal company. But yes thank you. Thank you. Okay. So I I'm really interested Mattie and like why you came to be doing this. Cuz I, I heard in another [00:08:00] interview, you had mentioned, you always wanted to be a founder and that seems like, you know, something that, you know, 50 years ago, you wouldn't have heard many people saying, ah, I, when I grow up, I wanna be a founder, but obviously you did, you said you've always wanted to be a founder.

So why, what was it about being a founder that made you think that's what I want to do when I grow.

Maddie Hall: Well, I don't think it was like anything about the idea of being a CEO that felt particularly like status driven or anything like that. For me, it was more of like thinking about how I could have the most impact on the world.

And like, I think working for yourself and being able to build to culture from the ground up is really incredible. And you can mobilize resources in a way that's uniquely suited to what you want to achieve. And so I think for me, there's never like, oh, I like wanted to grow up and like, go be a part of YC.

Like one I'm like a little bit older than that. And two, I think it was more about finding something that I felt like I did dedicate you know, 10, 15 years of my life too. I think I was fortunate to have really good role models, right? Like my dad [00:09:00] was a small business owner and always said, you know, you can do anything.

And never sort of made me feel as though I was constrained by you know, the fact that I was female or like relatively young. And I think that had a, a pretty large influence on just the scope of what I believe to be possible, which I think is something. Like one, a privilege, but also it's, it's optimistic.

It's an optimistic view of the world. And yeah, I mean, I just hadn't found anything that I was super passionate about and wanted to go through the steps of like being in early PM, learning to work with technical teams. And of course these steps are all in hindsight, right. Going to work for seed stage VC, figuring out what I actually like what businesses and what investors actually looked for in, in companies.

And then from there learning a lot about executive management and, and growing very impact driven organizations at open eye, and then eventually found what we do at living carbon and the rest is history. So yeah. [00:10:00]

Paul Shapiro: Cool. Well, I'm eager to get right into talking about what it is that you're doing at live in carbon.

But right before we do that, I mean, you started the company with a half million dollar federal grant. Right. And so how did that come to be? So the department of energy gave you a half million dollars to figure out, can you genetically engineer trees that will grow a lot faster and bigger? Is that, is that really what happens?

No, that's

Maddie Hall: actually not really what happened. So the, the grant we got from RPE actually came along after we had raised our seed wrap. So that was after we had raised about, oh gosh. Yeah. So that's after we had raised like a, a five, five ish million, so, oh, okay. Yeah. Got it. That was, that was like focusing on some of our.

On copper as a source of preventing decomposition of biomass and return of CO2 to the atmosphere. So, you know, one of the critiques of nature based solutions is the fact that you have these durability problems where with director capture that's of [00:11:00] course gonna be stored for a really long. And so a lot of our research is geared towards how do you extend the duration of nature based solutions and terrestrial biomass without actually going through some sort of combustion process.

Paul Shapiro: Got it. Well, let's get to that a little bit later on, cause I'm really interested in, in chatting about that as well. But let's just first start at the basics. Mattie. You are engineering trees that grow a lot bigger, apparently 53% more biomass in the tree, which means they can really hold 53% more carbon than a normal tree.

So is it that these trees are growing faster or are they just growing bigger? Like what is the difference between this and a normal tree? .

Maddie Hall: Yeah. So it's that the trees are grow growing faster, especially over their early life. And the first couple of years of which they're planted, it's hard to say, and they will likely reach maturity faster.

It's, it's hard to say, you know, will they be bigger a hundred years from now? Because simply we, we haven't been around that long. But we do know that one of the biggest issues [00:12:00] with large scale reforestation is. Time to cash flow, right? Or, yeah, it's the time to cash flow. There's a, there's a short term revenue problem in many cases because you're not generating very many carbon credits in those early years.

And so to have that increased growth rate and that was from one, one study. The, the numbers that you shared and just the caveat there is that growth rate is impacted by a lot of factors. Right? So a lot of our focus has been on planting trees on landlord trees, otherwise. Grow very quickly. So degraded land and in conjunction with site prep and genetics get a higher degree of survivability as well as growth rate.

Paul Shapiro: That's interesting. So are, are you genetically engineering? The trees, are you just gene editing them? So like, you know, are you putting genes from other species into the tree or are you just knocking out certain genes that are already present there? Like, what is the actual science that you're you and your team are doing?

Maddie Hall: Yeah, so we use both we are working on a like gene editing system that works in our Poplar. And. [00:13:00] That actually we, we use a proto plastic system. So is there plant cells without cell walls. And then it's a lot easier to, to get that machinery in and then you have to solve for regeneration, which is what we're working on right now.

But if for our first product, it, it is genetic engineering. Mm-hmm and the genes E all come from other plants. So we actually have. Sort of unique status with U S D a and they said, Hey, everything that you're doing comes from other plants. And you're not making something resistant to blight or increasing the invasiveness or readiness of your plant.

And therefore you're not actually regulated in the same way that we would regulate a pesticide resistant crop or something like that. So that's really fortunate. It allows us to have a shorter time to market.

Paul Shapiro: So what's the plan. Like how will you actually make money? I understand that you can take genes from some other plant, put it into a popular tree and get that popular tree to grow a lot faster in the early part of its life.

How, how that sounds like a cool thing to [00:14:00] do, cuz you can capture carbon faster than you might otherwise be able to do and reforest faster than you could otherwise do. How will you actually make money at this?

Maddie Hall: Yeah. That's a great question. So one of the things that we learned from like plant biotech, 1.0 is that you need to have multiple revenue streams.

You can't just be selling the trees. Right? Because being a nursery is not really a venture backable business. So we, we do a combination of generating revenue from carbon credits and also selling the seedlings. So how it works is that we partner with private land owners. We cover the cost of site prep.

Planting. And we provide the seedlings at cost are very, very small margin for us. And then we get revenue from the carbon credits and we give the landowners a portion of that revenue from carbon credits as well as, or like a, a fixed rate, depending on sort of their preference and understanding of the carbon markets.

Paul Shapiro: And what do these landowners get to benefit if they're not benefiting from the carbon credits? If, if living carbon is getting the money from the carbon credits, like, [00:15:00] why do these landowners want that? Like, is it that they wanna cut the trees down eventually and, and sell the timber? Like, what is their what's in it for them?

Maddie Hall: Well, I mean, it's a bunch of things. So one, they, they do get money from the carbon credits, right. We're paying them each year to use their land for a carbon project. And the other uses for sort of degraded underperforming land is they're not very many and they're not very lucrative. Right. So. True story.

Some of our landowners do world war II reenactments, or you know, we'll have game licensees. And so for them, there's a combination of one. Like they get their land restored pretty much for free. Two, they get annual revenue from doing that. And then in some cases after the carbon project they do have the ability to harvest their, their trees and use them for durable wood products only.

But that really depends on the proximity to a mill and which methodology we're following for that particular project.

Paul Shapiro: Mm. Okay. And does that, you know, there there's been a concern from some like bill gates and his latest [00:16:00] spoke about climate wrote, wrote about this about basically the idea of growing trees to remove the trees and how you disturb the soil when that occurs.

And there's a lot of carbon that's stored up in that. Soil, which then gets released. So is planting a tree to cut down that tree and then replace it with another tree? Like, is that an effective way to store carbon or is it just temporarily storing it?

Maddie Hall: Well? So there are many ways that you can prevent the soil carbon from being disrupted one.

It's a particular interest for us given the fact that we work with a species that propagates vegetatively is cough. Right. Composing trees allows for all of the below ground biomass to be maintained. And in most cases we're not actually harvesting them after a short period of time. The carbon projects are very long.

So yeah, I mean, I think we need everything at this point, right? I'm not here to say that. Trees are the only solution to climate change. But I do think biotech in particular, plant biology has this unique advantage, which is the [00:17:00] speed in which you can scale. Right? That's John do's book about climate speed and scale, but.

The fact that all the infrastructure already exists for us to get to scale really quickly and we can do so with pretty low energy costs. So, you know, we propagate trees, just like anybody, propagates trees in the us. And we plant in, in the us each year, we plant 1.6 trees. Annually. So, you know,

Paul Shapiro: sorry.

One, 1.6 million. Like how billion, how many billion with a B? Yeah. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Well, I I, I presume if we're planting 1.6 billion trees in the United States, is that more than we are cutting down? Or is that less like, are we a creating trees or are we subtracting trees from the L.

Maddie Hall: We're trees at this point, but, you know, I think it also depends on where you're planting them.

Right? So a lot of our projects are on these sort degraded, mine lands or areas where you're not actually gonna have harvest. So in that case, the biomass would just end up going back into the into the soil and into the

Paul Shapiro: ecosystem. all right. So you guys have [00:18:00] raised now I think over 20 million in the last few years.

Is that right?

Maddie Hall: Publicly we've raised about 15 million. Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: okay. 15 million. So, you know, in, in just a, a few short years, that seems like a, a lot of money to raise. Obviously there are some venture capitalists who think that this is going to be a big hit and that you're gonna grow a successful business here.

So what is happening right now? Are, are, are you commercial? Like, are you just doing trials right now where you're planting these trees in Oregon on public land, like, what is the actual. Progress of the company right

Maddie Hall: now. Yeah, definitely. So we released our first white paper in March and at this point we are at a commercialization stage.

So what we're doing is we're. Selecting our top performing seedlings and beginning the commercial propagation process. So we have two or three different, like large nursery partners that do like 300 million trees a year. And we have our seedlings being propagated at their location. [00:19:00] This currently as well as we're finishing up the final, the final experiments when it comes to selecting these commercial varieties.

So that's, that's the stage that we're at. We will plant about four to 5 million trees by the end of next year. And that will be about 13,000 acres.

Paul Shapiro: wow. Four to 5 million trees by the end of the year 2023. That's that's a, a lot, that's a lot to do. So good luck. Are these gonna be hand planted or are they being planted by drones?

Like how, how do you achieve 5 million trees in just over a year?

Maddie Hall: Yeah, so for us actually, like. Inventory is constrained. So we have more interest in the seedlings than we have seedlings to provide. So as a result of that, we don't do any drone based planting, cuz you just see a higher degree of survivability when they're planted and containerized process okay.

Planted in, in containers. And so we actually use local planting. Cruise living carbon doesn't plant any of our own trees because one, like we're not experts for how that specific land or ecosystem is gonna [00:20:00] do with the seedling. So we partner with local planting crews that have a lot of experience planting in that specific region.

Two to do that work for us. So, yeah, I joke with our researchers. I'm like we planted, we planted trees for our field trial and it was the most expensive planting we'll ever do. Turns. . Yeah. Yeah, but we are, we are hiring a field evaluation team and expanding that out a little bit beyond our, our current R and D capacity, which is very significant.

I think at this point we were, I was talking to our chief science officer yesterday and we will be evaluating like a thousand trees over and we are evaluating a thousand trees over a 36 week period. Which is pretty, pretty intense. .

Paul Shapiro: mm-hmm so are these all popular trees, like you're gonna plant 5 million popular trees or is there gonna be more diversity in the species that are getting planted here?

Yeah,

Maddie Hall: so we only do mixed stand plantings, so it will be a, a combination of our photos that this has enhanced trees and whatever sort of seedlings the landowner is particularly interested in at this time that works well with the carbon [00:21:00] projects. So yeah, we also propagate things like sweet. And we work with Loblaw pine.

That's what our team in South Carolina does.

Paul Shapiro: Sorry, just so I understand. So first of all, that's a pretty cool term. I hadn't heard that before photosynthesis enhanced tree. I like that. Mm-hmm sounds a lot better than genetically engineered tree mm-hmm but so we're the only trees that you all have photo have, have enhanced photosynthetically popular, and then you're just happen to be planting them with other trees that aren't enhanced, or have you done enhancements on other trees that you're also planting and we've done

Maddie Hall: enhancements on love Aine as.

Paul Shapiro: okay. Interesting.

Maddie Hall: Yep. And we've got, we've got like cell lines for, we've got like 17,000 different cell lines for different species that we could do over time.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So if you're gonna plant 5 million trees, I presume it is legal to plant these. And you mentioned what U S D a has in terms of regulations.

Like, so just to be clear, it is currently legal to plant these trees in the United States. Yes. cool. Awesome. So when, when people are, you [00:22:00] know, criticizing this and you have a lot of people who don't like genetic engineering, and they're gonna say, I'm, I'm sure, oh, you're gonna plant these and then it's gonna, they're gonna, you know, so called genetically pollute the rest of the trees that are in the forest, like what's the response to that?

Well, what do you say to the people who say, oh, we need so-called natural trees. Not these photosynthetically enhanced trees because we just want the ones that were here before.

Maddie Hall: Well, I mean, I think. There's a lot that you could say to that one is that like we've changed our landscapes really quickly, you know, in the, in the 200 years, in which like humans have had a very large impact on the planet.

And so you could say, all right, well, let's just wait for evolution to catch up, but like humans have messed that up. And so we can't really wait millennia for our seedlings and our, and our plant life to become resilient to climate change. We've just warmed it warmed the planet way too quickly. And if you look at recent studies, like it's like 60% of all, all plant life will end up dying off from a biodiversity perspective as a [00:23:00] result of climate, just simply because a couple things, one changing landscapes, lack of pollinators and like animal biomass to, to carry the, the, the seeds and the pollen.

So. You know, I get this question a lot. And actually like, if you look at the plant biology, there's 15% of all plants C4 plants, and can plants actually already have enhanced photosynthesis. They separate out the, the different stages of the photosynthesis process in their cells. And so what we're doing is we're actually just improving the photosynthetic efficiency.

C3 plants. And you know, this is something that we there's precedent for. And, and I think it's very different than making something resistant to a pesticide or an herbicide that then results in all other vegetation being kind of wiped out except for the one, the one species that you've engineered.

So I think it's important to think about why you're engineering something and how, as opposed to just having like [00:24:00] blanket nebulous concern. Like something that there's like a lot of emotional precedent.

Paul Shapiro: why do you think it is that there are so many people, especially environmentalists who should be thrilled by what you're doing?

Who just feel like it's not natural? You know, they feel like, you know, the types of the types of modifications that you were just referring to are things that happen naturally without human intervention. And it feels to some people, especially people who are self-identified as environmentalists that, you know, if it's tinkered with, by a human.

Then it's dangerous. Whereas if the modification occurs in nature, then it must be safe. Obviously. We know that that's not true, but why do you think it is that we just feel that instinctively, that something that is natural is better than something that is human made.

Maddie Hall: I mean, I, I don't know if I feel that way.

And I know a lot of people who don't I mean, I think like it [00:25:00] comes

Paul Shapiro: from yeah, but yeah, but, but, but in fairness, like you, you know, you were working at open AI, like you're involved in, in a social circle that is very techno optimistic. But you know, I, and I, and I'm frankly, I'm in that same circle.

Yeah. Like I feel the same thing. Like I'm, I, I think there's lots of ways that we can improve on. What is so called natural and frankly, most of what we think of as natural as not natural at all, it still is human altered in dramatic ways. But it's still, you can't deny, like there's just a huge portion of people who just instinctively feel like something that is natural is better than something that is human made.

I

Maddie Hall: mean, to a degree, I don't really. Free with them, right. It's not like we're trying to plant our trees in the Amazon or do so in areas where there's a lot of like natural vegetation options that actually doesn't make any sense for us. Right. Because we don't get that much carbon additionality. So we're specifically focusing on areas where there's not.

Natural regeneration where humans have actually degraded the soil so much from extracting fossil fuels or agricultural [00:26:00] practices that like were subpar. So it we're in the, in the business of remediating land to capture carbon. And it it's generally land where there's not a lot of natural regrowth.

Cause if there's a lot of natural regrowth, then we're not capturing that much additional carbon, the business model doesn't work.

Paul Shapiro: So yeah. You know, I mean, what. Why, why wouldn't you do the Amazon? Not, not where the current Amazon rainforest is, but you know, there's huge amounts of land that has been queered from the Amazon rainforest to make way for cattle grazing and, and the meat industry in general.

Like why not take some of the deforested areas there and, and. That are now pasts and put living carbon trees on them.

Maddie Hall: I mean, like one, our, our species are not native to the Amazon, so I don't think we'd want to do that. And I good, good. I think there's a lot of energy being put towards conservation of, of the Amazon, which is really important.

Our team doesn't have the expertise in sort. The, the tropical ecosystem management to even begin to start to think about doing that. They're just people that [00:27:00] are a lot more, a lot more experienced and suited to, to do those things. And so I think we have to be really intentional about what our poor competencies are.

And right now that's the us based reforestation on degraded land and working on these really additional high quality carbon projects. Then starting to change the narrative around the rule that major based projects can, can.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. So, yeah, I, I hadn't contemplated the fact that popular trees don't generally grow in Brazil, I guess, or I guess I hadn't known that fact either, let one contemplated it, but I mean that it, you know, but if there were like, if I don't know what trees grow in in Brazil, but if there were a way to enhance trees that you could refor the deforested parts of the Amazon, it wouldn't seem that bad to me.

More quickly put trees back where they were 50 or a hundred years ago before the cattle industry tore it all down. Yeah. I mean, there,

Maddie Hall: there are a lot of different things that we could do, right. I think you have to look at like, what are the number one reasons as to why there's, there's been a lot of like either tree [00:28:00] death or, or why there hasn't been natural regeneration in those areas and try to either fix that.

From like a soil science perspective, or think about what biotech you could do in conjunction with that to help for the rate of, for the rate of regrowth. And you know, there are a lot of diseases that also wipe out a large number of our trees and, and that's more decomposing biomass, which is one of the largest things.

When it comes to the short carbon cycle, it's about 30 gigatons every year goes back to the atmosphere. So our. Is is beyond just the growth rate enhancement, right? Carbon capture is only one side of the funnel. Carbon storage is actually where there's more opportunity. I.

Paul Shapiro: That's really interesting.

And I you know, I, I certainly agree with you. There are lots of reasons why trees get cut down. It does seem like you know, in the us, we deforested back in like the 19th century basically, and now. And so when we think. Deforestation today. Most of it is not going on in the us. It's going on in places like Brazil, frankly.

Yeah. Vox actually did Vox [00:29:00] actually did a pretty interesting story on deforestation in which they noted. I'm just quoting from their story here. They said, deforestation doesn't happen for toilet paper or hardwood floors, or even for Palm oil. It's beef that queering trees for cattle is the weeding driver of deforestation by a long shot.

it causes more than double the deforestation. Let's linked to soy Palm oil, wood products, all combined. And I thought that was pretty you know, pretty interesting because you know, the goal would be of course, to prevent the deforestation originally, like in the us, what you're doing is making up for the fact that we did deforest this land.

Not we meaning you and me, but people who lived here deforested it, you know, a hundred, 150 years ago or so. But we gotta make sure that we keep the trees that are current. Here on the planet in the ground too. And it seems like there are a, you know, maybe other ways to prevent Amazonian deforestation in, in addition to the idea of reinforcing it, just keeping those trees in the ground already.

But I know that's not, what's on your agenda right now. And so I, I am. Very eager to hear Maddy, like if you're gonna do 5 million [00:30:00] trees in, in the next year or so, like how big of an impact does that make, like from a carbon perspective or a climate change perspective? Like how many trees does humanity need to plant mm-hmm in order to have, make some type of a tangible dent.

In the amount of carbon capturing gases that are in our, or excuse me, in like climate change and gases that are in our atmosphere. Yeah.

Maddie Hall: I mean, I think the point that you make about pasture land is a really salient one, right? Actually just, just to start with that. And I think one of the biggest impacts people can do individually from a carbon.

Footprint perspective is not beef. I think in many cases though, it's like it's, it's unfair for us to say as a developed nation in parenthesis here. But you can't say the podcast. Oh, you know, we should all be like eating plant-based need and imposing that on other countries. You know, haven't gone through the same trajectory that we, that we've gone through and the production cause might be much higher to do something like that.

Or it's just not as [00:31:00] accessible. Right. There's a lot of,

Paul Shapiro: you know, I haven't heard many people argue for imposing plant-based meat on developing countries, but maybe there's some people who think that I don't know. But yeah, it would be good in the, in the in the developed world to at least move away.

And I guess it doesn't really matter if it's plant-based meat or not just less meat in less animal-based meat in general, regardless of whether you're substituting it with the beyond burger or tofu or lentils or whatever, you know, like it it's, you know, the key is to try to raise fewer cattle, I guess, from a climate perspective.

More pressingly for living carbon, Matt that's okay. No, no, no, no, no, no, I I'm. I, I am thrilled to talk about it actually, but like how, like how, what do we need to make a dent? Like how many trees need to be planted whether live carbon trees or otherwise, like in order to make a dent in this problem.

Maddie Hall: Yeah. So you know, for us, we'll plant 13,000 acres next year. And if we keep doubling the amount of acres that we plant every year, which is no small fee. Right. But it's also. not unreasonable speaks the double [00:32:00] negative. It, it, it can happen. By 2030, we will have planted enough trees that over the life of their projects.

Right. So this is the total carbon capture. We will have removed about 1.6, 6% of global emissions. And that's, you know, equivalent to the footprints of hundreds, millions of people which is pretty incredible. So that's, you know, we're, we're on the pathway to doing that, but the fact that we can, we can see, we have a line of sight to that in eight years.

I think demonstrates the large potential of, of some of these nature based solutions.

Paul Shapiro: cool. Well from your lips to the heavens, Mandy, I, I very much hope that happens. You you've been on this pretty wild ride, to be honest, like going from finding a company three years ago to now having raises at least 15 million, and now you're getting ready to change the landscape with literally millions and [00:33:00] millions of trees going into the ground that otherwise wouldn't have happened.

So have there been any resources for you? Like somebody might be looking at you think. Wow man, like Maddie has done some pretty cool things here. Mm-hmm what was useful for you? Any books or anything else that you would recommend for folks that have been helpful for you in your own journey that you think, or somebody else to check out?

Mattie? Yeah, I mean,

Maddie Hall: they might be kind of non obvious, but I think nonviolent communication as a book that was really helpful to me. I think both like professionally and personally just to be able to have the framework to address some of the like inherently emotional things that come up with being a founder.

Giving people feedback and starting to build the culture that you wanna have in your organization. And for me, that was something that I didn't, I wasn't very good at giving feedback for a while and really leaning into that and seeing it as an opportunity for growth. Even those hard conversations that we all put off having, if you can get to a place where your mindset is more like I'm looking forward to this, because I know that I'll grow from doing it.

I think it, it really changes the narrative. [00:34:00] So there's that. And then also I think, like just having a community of like other founders of folks who are in similar positions and dealing with the inherent ups and downs and like small degree of existential dread that you have when you're working on a climate company, I think.

I have a very small like climate CEO peer group that meets once a once a month. That's supported by our investors and also but it is just climate founders. There's no investors in the room and, and I think that that allows people to be really candid. And that's been, that's been great. So yeah.

Paul Shapiro: I is being a founder, all that it was tracked up for you. Like you've said you wanted to be a founder, and now you're talking about like the existential dread like all the problems. It kind of reminds me of something that Ben Horowitz from Andreeson Horowitz said, when he, he said that you start your own company.

You'll sleep like a baby because you're gonna wake up every two hours and cry . And you know, for you, like now that you're a few years in, is it met your expectations of what you thought the wife would be like?

Maddie Hall: You know, I think [00:35:00] I. I can't imagine doing anything else. And I think, you know, despite the fact that as a climate founder, you're constantly wondering, am I doing enough?

Right? Could I be doing more? At least I am. I think starting a climate company it's vote for a, an optimistic future, right? It's a vote that says that, Hey, we actually, if we like coalesce enough resources and talent, we can slow climate change. We can do this in a way that. Allows for future generations to continue the rate of advancement that we have as a species.

And that's really fulfilling for me. And so, you know, it's a roller coaster. Everybody says that and it it's, it's true. And you oscillate between different emotional states in a short period of time. You know, you can go from going to bed thinking everything's good. And then the first meeting of your day is like being punched in the face.

And you're like, all. Love, but, you know, I, I can't, I can't really imagine ever doing anything else. And so I think that's [00:36:00] probably a, a good enough proxy for, for saying that I like my job. .

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I, I feel you on that. Having started my own company in 2018 I, I am often reminded of what the great philosopher Rocky BBO said.

When you said that, you know, in, in life, it's not about how hard you can hit it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. And that is how I feel like every day, you know, see, see how, how do you just keep moving forward? But speaking of moving forward, obviously you have a long history or no, excuse me.

A long future. Well, you have a somewhat lengthy history of, with living carbon now by a few years, but hopefully we have a much longer future with the company as well. So you're gonna be tied up doing this and hopefully succeeding and planting, eventually hundreds of millions of trees that will be capturing carbon.

But are there other ideas that you wish somebody else would do Mattie? Like, are there things that you think, ah, you. I can't do this, but it would be really cool if somebody else started this company.

Maddie Hall: I mean, some of the companies that I would've, that I would've started, I think I actually ended up sort of [00:37:00] folding in folding, into living carbon with our work on durable biopolymers in particular.

But I think some of the most interesting things that I think could be done right now is AI applications where climate models. And like actually running climate simulation models is incredibly hard and, and basically a very arduous that I think is a really cool potential like software application.

I think that there are some energy efficiency areas that are, that are super compelling. I also yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot on the carbon removal side of things. Preventing decomposition of biomass. I think that's like under explored area and yeah, there are some really cool MRV companies that are getting started as well.

So I've been just so ecstatic to see all of the amazing work that people are doing in this space. And I do think. The work that we're doing at living carbon is work. That I feel like we are uniquely well situated to do just given the, the knowledge of plant biotechnology that we have the sort of history in the timber and logging [00:38:00] space from our team.

And, and, you know, I think a lot of it comes down to like, what are the areas that, you know, or want to learn more about what's your need? What's the like founder market fit. And yeah. So it's hard to say if there's like one specific area. But yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. Well, hopefully there is some food for thought or some trees for thought, for folks who are interested in doing something to help overt climate catastrophe here.

So Mattie, I'm really grateful for what you're doing and I'm rooting for your success. And I hope to one day, take a walk through a forest that has some. Photosynthetically enhanced trees in it. And I, I can't wait to take a photo take a, a selfie right, right near one of them. That would be a lot of fun.

Well,

Maddie Hall: you know, we can do that in in a shorter period of time than you think so.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. I'm for I'm for the invite.

Maddie Hall: Can't wait. I'm fantastic. I will send you a tree.

Paul Shapiro: Very cool. All right, Mattie. Well, thanks so much. And I'm grateful for what you're [00:39:00] doing. And I look forward to my tree in the mail. Of course.

Sounds

Maddie Hall: great.

Paul Shapiro: Bye Maddie.