Chris Neidl on how OpenAir Collective reimagines the model for climate activism

The second episode of The Carbon Curve Podcast is with Chris Neidl (Twitter, LinkedIn), Co-Founder of the OpenAir Collective. OpenAir is a volunteer-led, global network accelerating carbon removal advancement and evolution through member initiated missions. OpenAir has completely re-imagined climate activism by mobilizing people to not just support, but co-create policies at the local, state, and federal level to scale up carbon removal. The group is grounded in open source principles like decentralization and peer production. Through OpenAir, people are discovering ways to get involved in carbon removal that draws on their unique backgrounds and experiences - which will help make the field more dynamic and diverse.

Chris Neidl is the co-founder of OpenAir, a global volunteer collective launched in 2019 to advance carbon dioxide removal (CDR) through member-driven advocacy and research and development missions. In this role Chris has helped lead CDR focused policy advocacy campaigns at the municipal, state and national levels including the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act (LECCLA), the Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act (CDRLA), and the Luxembourg Negative Emissions Tariff (L-NET) Chris came to DAC and CDR from a fifteen year career in solar energy, which spanned diverse research, activist and project management roles in North America, South Asia, Afghanistan and East Africa. Chris is an upstate New York native and long-time Brooklyn resident currently based in Puntarenas, Costa Rica.

In this episode, Na’im and Chris talk about:

• How working internationally informed their views on approaching climate change with a global perspective

• The origin of OpenAir Collective and embracing “peer-production” to empower its members

• Initiatives like New York State’s Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act and This Is CDR

• OpenAir’s role in advancing a federal Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act

• Zooming out on the carbon removal field more broadly - what’s working well and what’s not

• How people can get involved in OpenAir

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up the climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.