Which story is carbon dioxide removal actually in?—w/ Rudy Krehbiel of EcoEngineers

Every industry runs on a mythology, and carbon dioxide removal has several of them available at once. There is the hype cycle, where the trough of disillusionment is a phase you survive on the way to mainstream adoption. There is the solar cost curve, where a technology is expensive and clunky for years and then abruptly cheaper than everything else. There is Moore's Law, and also the one where the world returns to normal after the next election. Each of those carries a promise about the ending that may not deliver.Rudy Krehbiel thinks some of those stories are misleading us, and this episode is about working out which ones. My introduction runs long because I wanted to talk about Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation first, a film about a man who does not know what genre he is in until the genre changes around him, and which you should watch whether or not you have ever thought about a carbon credit.Rudy works on strategic development at EcoEngineers, who also sponsor this show, and he came into carbon dioxide removal from startups and venture capital, which is why he keeps reaching for diffusion curves. His read is that we are at the innovator stage and mistaking it for a trough. His figures, and they hold up against CDR.fyi's April 2026 snapshot: fewer than 50 million tonnes contracted, barely over a million delivered, Microsoft alone accounting for 78.5% of the disclosed total, and a median purchase outside Microsoft still under 100 tonnes. Diagnose that as failure and you start prescribing medicine for a disease nobody has.The harder argument is the one about public goods. Solar panels and EVs deliver something microeconomic you would still buy if climate change did not exist. A tonne of carbon dioxide removed does not. That makes this, in Rudy's words, arguably the hardest public good anyone has tried to fund, and it is why he will not call the ending inevitable. I asked him to name the story we ought to be inside of. What he answered? You'll have to listen to find out.The Show's SponsorEcoEngineers: a full-service advisory and consulting firm focused on carbon dioxide removal, decarbonization, and carbon markets.Listen to the RCC episode I made with David LaGreca from EcoEngineers about how to choose, hire, and fire carbon market contractors.2026 EcoForums Training Series: Navigating Global Carbon and Fuel Regulations, Market Mechanisms, and Life-Cycle Analysis FundamentalsRudy works at EcoEngineers and EcoEngineers sponsors this show. I would have had him on either way, and you should know the arrangement.ResourcesSubscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack for bonus content and ad-free episodesClimate Workers Anonymous, the other show I makeEcoEngineers"How Carbon Removal Loses", the episode Rudy and I keep circlingBelief that makes itself true: a hyperstition for carbon dioxide removalWhy Don Quixote is so misunderstoodHow non-human intelligence will change us, with D.W. Pasulka, where the Marshall McLuhan scene comes upAdaptation (2002), written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike JonzeThe Orchid Thief by Susan OrleanStory by Robert McKeeDiffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/