The Interaction of Security and Climate

Summary

In this episode, Mike Smith, founder and CEO of Aclymate, and Christian Moore, Vice President of Risk Consulting and the climate lead for Concentric, contemplate the intersection of environmental protection, climate change, and security. Mike begins the episode by explaining the basics of climate change, including how carbon dioxide traps heat on Earth, the concept of relative concentration pathways (RCPs), and how climate change poses a risk to national security. In the conversation, Mike and Christian discuss their shared military backgrounds and how they became interested in climate change. 

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Both Mike and Christian emphasize the importance of technology and carbon offsets in combating the climate crisis. Christian shares how innovation within acoustic sensors has allowed park rangers to better monitor protected areas, as they can better differentiate between various animal and human sounds.    

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They also discuss the growing movement for firms to transition to more sustainable practices and how this has been integral for Concentric in attracting and retaining talent. Christian explains how he has taken steps to improve environmental commitments at Concentric. 

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Mike and Christian stress the urgency and significance of tackling climate change and the potential for technology to play a crucial role.

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:50 Understanding the Basics of Climate Change

04:19 Exploring Relative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)

08:15  Balancing Environmental Impact and Human Development

12:09 The Threat of Deadly Heat and Security

16:21 Getting to Know Christian

25:06 Security within the Environment

34:07 Transitioning to Corporate Sustainability

39:03 Looking Towards a Better Future

49:10 Final Thoughts  

51:49 Outro

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Transcript

Mike Smith (00:00)
Hi everyone and welcome again to The Climate Dad the podcast where we talk about and explain the news and science of climate change and the things that you can do, both as an individual and as part of an organization. I'm your host, Mike Smith, a father of two great kids and the founder of Aclymate where we help businesses measure, reduce, report, and offset their footprint for an affordable price and without having to become a climate expert. Today we'll be doing

across a wide range of topics, including some of the basics of climate change, things known as RCPs or Relative Concentration Pathways, what I like to call the rock and the hard place a concept known as deadly heat and national security. So, buckle up! buckle up, it should be a fun ride and we'll be talking about a lot

Mike Smith (00:50)
So let's start with some of the basics around climate change. The Earth's atmosphere, as you probably know, is mostly nitrogen and oxygen. It's 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen. And there's about 1% that are these trace gases. And of those, one of the most significant is carbon dioxide. As we've all probably learned in our education, as humans and other animals, we inhale oxygen to,

convert fuel in our bodies into energy and as we then exhale carbon dioxide. Thankfully in the biosphere the flip of that is also true that plants inhale carbon dioxide and use that in the process of photosynthesis and exhale oxygen. And that's all been mostly in balance for many years. The concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have gone up and down over the eons.

sometimes being, you know, well over a thousand parts per million, other times being significantly less. But in the late 19th century, a couple of scientists, one was a woman named Eunice Newton Foote, another one was a guy named Svante Arrhenius, described about how carbon dioxide actually caused the gases that it was part of, like any sort of sample that included carbon dioxide to warm up when it was exposed to sunlight.

This was known as radiative forcing, ultimately, which is that as infrared energy from the sun comes through the atmosphere, it's absorbed and retransmitted into the atmosphere by carbon dioxide, where other gases, such as oxygen or nitrogen, will allow that energy to just go ahead and pass through unimpeded. And so without carbon dioxide, the infrared energy from the sun would hit the surface of the planet and radiate back out into space mostly.

some of it would be absorbed by the rocks. And so we have carbon dioxide not only to thank for the plants that we eat, but also for keeping the earth warm at night. We would have much more drastic temperature swings at day and night without carbon dioxide. It's an important gas for life and you know it's part of what makes the earth just such an amazing place to be. But it's gotten out of balance. If you think about it, eons ago

Lots of plants lived and died and that carbon dioxide instead of being released back into the atmosphere was stored in the bodies of those plants and when they died either the plants or the algae or other things that go through photosynthesis They were buried sometimes that ultimately became fossil fuels. It was stored carbon from millions of years ago

That stored carbon as we dig it up in the form of coal or pump it out in the form of oil and then burn it is being released in the atmosphere. And so things that were in general balance for our atmosphere of living things has now become out of balance because it's almost like we've taken things that were stored long away and decided to re-release it. And that's caused a high degree of human flourishing. We've had a lot of that release of energy has been what we've used to kind of build our civilization around.

But there's a problem. As you add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, you warm it. And we have exceeded the ability of nature to capture that carbon dioxide, especially as we continue to cut down forests around the world, and especially in tropical areas. And so that has changed the pathways that we have to go on. And these pathways are known as relative concentration pathways, or RCPs. Some of the stuff that came out of the science around the

Paris Accords, which we talked about in our previous episode, was that there was essentially like different pathways that humanity has laying in front of us. These different RCPs lead to different degrees of warming. And these relative concentration pathways are based upon the idea of like how carbon intensive, how much carbon we're going to release associated with the energy that we're going to consume. So whether it's fossil fuels versus solar, for example, and how much energy we're going to consume associated with a growing population and economic

activity. And so you can kind of guess and model about what those are. There's a graph that I like to show when I talk to people in person that shows kind of four different pathways there. And the thing that's always striking to me about this is that those four pathways are all warmer than our present day. Like there is kind of no going back. And so when some of the doomists get a little bit about like, well, climate change is coming, they're right.

Our future is it will be different from our past and that is a guarantee But those four pathways I sometimes like to talk about as being A manageable disaster as the kind of the lowest you know lowest impact one to kind of a catastrophe to the third pathway as being a Cataclysm and the fourth one is truly something more like an apocalypse and I'll talk about more why and I don't mean to be

an alarmist, but I do mean that some of this stuff is alarming. So the lowest pathway, RCP 2.6, is a pathway where we get up to maybe about a little under two degrees of warming and then we get down to about no more than about one and a half degrees of total warming. And this sort of pathway is going to be requiring

us to pretty rapidly cut the emissions that we're doing there. This usually looks like about 50% emissions cuts in the next decade, 50% of the remainder in the decade following that, and then 50% of the decade following that, to get to about a 90% emissions reductions by 2050. At the same time, it also, in order for us to kind of hit that, that higher temperature and then to come back down, means that we're going to develop the systems that are going to capture carbon dioxide back from the atmosphere.

There is a lot of natural systems, so this is a regeneration of trees and forests and preserving the capacity of nature that we have now. But it also includes some potential technical solutions. And so that's important to think about there as well. When I first started in climate, however, the pathway that was most likely, and what was the baseline modeling for all of it, was RCP 8.5. That's the apocalyptic scenario. That's where we get unconstrained hot temperatures and we're looking at

Five degrees warming by the beginning of the 22nd century about like eight degrees of warning by the beginning of the 23rd Just a drastically and apocalyptically different world And we'll talk a little bit about that here in a minute It's worth noting that of all the commitments that we've had coming out of the Paris Accords that were right , we're kind of halfway in between those two. We're sort of between the pathways two and three

where we look at probably somewhere around three to three and a half degrees of warming. And that's kind of the baseline scenario now that like if we don't continue to push and work on this, that's probably where we're gonna go. And there's a lot of bad things that happen with that. We'll talk about that more with tipping points as we move forward. So still a lot of work to be done, but there's also small, small cause for joy here, which is in the decade that I've been working on climate, we have shifted.

through the actions of many, many people around economics, of renewable energy, for example, we've shifted from the apocalyptic scenarios being the most likely to something that's still pretty awful, but not nearly as bad. And so we should be happy for that. Now, I talked about this as kind of like a rock and a hard place, and I really do mean that. So the rock and the hard place is the idea that

The world is going this direction. We are heading to some hard places. And if we fail to change the direction that we're going on, they get harder than they need to be. But then there's also this rock in which we've built our civilization, and that's the consumption of energy. And so one of my favorite little factoids is that if you're an American or in North America, potentially if you're an Australian as well, your refrigerator,

probably consumes 10 times as much electricity as the average Nigerian does off of the grid in their entire lives. And I'm not in any position to deny a Nigerian a refrigerator. So we're gonna have to figure out a way from an equity standpoint, to allow the developing world to develop, to responsibly develop in a way that people get access to some basic human needs. Everybody has the human right.

to food, water, shelter, refrigeration as we move forward. And any sort of premise where we deny those is one that's not really built for success. So we have to figure out a way to both improve living standards and to reduce our impact upon the environment. This is something that's kind of sometimes known as donut economics, which is there's like this floor.

which everybody has to be above, and then there's this ceiling beneath which we have to maintain our, reduce our consumption of resources. And one of my favorite things to talk about sometimes is the idea of false choices. And so a lot of times what you'll see is like, well, we have to keep burning fossil fuels for human flourishing. Well, we're not really actually helping people flourish as much as we should be.

The global middle class has grown quite significantly over the last 30 years, and that's a good thing. But failure to deal with climate change is actually the biggest impediment to human flourishing, not the other way around. And so we have to figure out a way to do that. So it's not a choice between we need to take care of the environment or take care of people or we need to take care of the environment or have a flourishing economy.

It's actually, we have to take care of the economy and take care of people in order to have a flourishing economy. And anybody that's not really internalizing that is not being serious about the problems that we face or about where the world needs to go. So that's one of the things I like to think about. There are some very deadly serious consequences for us to be thinking about though. Should we fail to do the actions that we need to. A few years back, there was a paper that came out in Science Advances.

about the concept of heat in the Indian subcontinent. And it introduced some concepts that people hadn't really fully internalized. And if you wanna read a good fictionalization of what is potentially to pass, I'd encourage you to look for the book, The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. And pretty much what that book describes is what this paper said is a likely outcome.

Within the Indian subcontinent, which is India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, 1.75 billion people currently live. It's not known for being a cold place, but if you look at a map of it, most of the heat is kind of up in the Ganges River Valley in northern India. It's also where most of the agriculture, most of the economy, and most of the population live within India as well.

And so right now about 15% of the Indian subcontinent of those three countries, the population experiences some sort of form of extreme heat every year. That is extreme, this kind of extreme heat is the sort of thing where you're really not doing physical activity outside. if you aren't inside in air conditioning, you need to be sitting in the shade drinking water, just really like taking it easy. Sensitive groups are gonna have some real health problems.

In an RCP 8.5, that kind of apocalyptic scenario that goes to from 15% of the population to over 75% of the population. Over a billion people every year would be subject to extreme heat. Okay, well that's livable. It doesn't sound awesome. Where would you live there? So you have to start thinking about like what would happen if you live in a scenario there. But it also introduces the concept known as deadly heat.

And deadly heat is something that we're really not super familiar with as humans, but it's coming increasingly to pass. And so deadly heat is the idea is that the combination of temperature and dew point is so high that in order for water to evaporate, it's above about 98 degrees Fahrenheit or about 35 degrees Celsius. And that's a pretty scary sort of thing because what that means is that even the healthiest bodies cannot cool themselves through sweat.

it doesn't matter how much water you drink, it doesn't matter if you're sitting in the shade or if you have a fan on you, sweating will not cool you off, you will continue to heat up. It essentially means that if you don't have air conditioning, like if the electricity should fail, there's a high likelihood that you could die. And the Ministry for the Future illustrates that. It's a pretty like gruesome sort of story about like,

people effectively being cooked alive by the environment that they live in.

So I'd encourage you to give it a read. It's kind of a bit of a depressing view of where we could go there. And don't think of this as fiction either. We just last year in Lawrence, Kansas a wet bulb temperature of 35 C. We saw that happen in Kansas. And so as a result, the heat index was 134 degrees Fahrenheit.

That was deadly heat. Thankfully, there was minimal injuries associated with it. It didn't last super long. But this isn't just in India. This is also going to be happening in, for example, the Mississippi River Valley. And when you start thinking about that, that starts having some pretty wide-ranging national security issues, things that we all need to be thinking about. And as a former Navy guy, I think about a lot.

What happens when millions of people, 70 million people are potentially in the Indian subcontinent would be exposed to deadly heat in an 8.5 scenario, where do those people go? Would you continue to live there? If you lose air conditioning, you could die. It starts looking pretty dark. And so you start talking about migration and people moving. And we've seen what happens to political systems in Europe and in the United States.

with relatively small levels of migration and what that's done for political stability in those two regions of the world. What happens when and when people start moving in much higher numbers to those places? One kind of unappreciated fact is the world currently has the most amount of displaced people in the history of the planet and that is unappreciated because most of those people are internally displaced.

they've moved from one place in a country to another place in a country. But at a certain point, the capacity of a country to be able to manage its affairs and to have internally displaced, not become externally displaced falls. And then you start seeing mass migration. So you're talking about political destabilization. In the Indian subcontinent, the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta flows is Bangladesh. Bangladesh is one of the most crowded countries in the world.

And that river delta is the most likely to flood associated with rising seas. So now you have compounding effects with that. India and Pakistan are both nuclear states. And they have a historic animosity towards one another. They border a third nuclear state in the form of China, which has its own climate concerns that would be driving that. And also one of the largest populations in the world.

And so you can see how these things start compounding on each other very, very quickly and become something that cannot just be dealt with through traditional security measures.

So I don't mean to say all that to scare you but just to say like, there are some very real consequences in failing to act. And it's something that I usually talk about with any new hire at Aclymate about like, this is why we're doing this. It's not only just about saving the polar bears, it's about human flourishing and the prevention of human suffering. And it really is truly a fight for the future.

Mike Smith (15:36)
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Mike Smith (16:22)
I'm glad to be joined today by Christian Moore, the Vice President of Risk Consulting and the climate lead for Concentric. We've been helping Concentric here at Aclymate for a while and Christian is a quiet powerhouse of a professional that I've really enjoyed getting to know. His role is a unique one, being the lead on the security services that Concentric offers to its clients while at the same time managing the climate risks and impacts of Concentric's operations. I really enjoyed this interview.

Christian is a veteran of the British military and has spent time in Belize working on both forest preservation and security. It's really fascinating stuff. I think it ties into what we've been talking about. And moreover, his personal story really resonated with my own. So enjoy.

Mike Smith (17:03)
All right, everybody, welcome I'm here today joined by Christian Moore at Concentric. He, in his current role, he's the vice president of risk consulting. And as we'll get into the discussion, is he also wears the primary hat of being the climate lead within the company, both kind of within a risk construct, but also beyond that. So we'll talk about that more. Christian, really great to have you join me today.

Christian Moore (17:28)
Thank you Mike, yeah, it's nice to be asked and I hope I can bring some value in talking about our particular journey as a company and me as an individual.

Mike Smith (17:38)
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, the first question is, could you tell me just a little bit more about who you are? Your background, obviously we talked about your job title, but anything that makes you who you are is what I want to know.

Christian Moore (17:48)
Yeah, sure. I mean, first and foremost, I'm a Brit, as I hope you can still tell. I've been in the States for 17 years now, but holding on to my accent with regular viewings of Downton Abbey, just to polish it up. And I was in the military in the UK for 20 years. I was in the British Marines for 10 of those years. And then our special forces for the final 10 of those years.

And then I sort of transitioned into initially corporate intelligence and then corporate security as a career. So I've been a consultant really since I left the military. Phases with an alcohol company in Asia where I was doing business intelligence.

Then I had about six years with a focus on oil and gas out of Houston, managing their risk and then when I moved up to Seattle and discovered Concentric, I have a focus there on private family and corporate risk management. And yeah, I think...

That's 37 years since I was 19 of thinking about risk in one way or another. And I find that it's a, you know, personally appeals to me as an area of interest and can't really imagine doing anything else. And so when I, as I, you know, I became...

Well, certainly I'll go back to, you know, I spent a lot of time in the jungle. During my military times, I think three months in total, if I added it all together, that I was deep in the trees, both in Brunei in Indonesia and then in Belize. And, you know, I'll be frank that I had very little appreciation for the nature that was around me. I look back at that time now and just how precious it was as an experience.

to be dropped by helicopters just deep into, prime forest and old growth trees and seeing things that are sort of untouched other than us camouflaged humans roaming around training, you know, in jungle warfare. And it wasn't really until I met my American wife that I began to give any thought whatsoever to

you know, to the environment. Um, she had trained as an environmental biologist initially. And as I, , courted her, I realized I probably needed to have something to say on that front. Uh, so I threw in a few white lies about how, , how beautiful it had been in the forest and in the jungles. Um, but it really wasn't until, , my current boss, , dispatched me. Down to Belize to do some pro bono consulting for a group of forest ranges there.

that I really joined the dots between my interest in risk and the need to protect nature. And so since then it's become probably my driving passion.

Mike Smith (20:30)
I really love that story. It's also interesting, every so often you meet a veteran that's in this space. And so it's interesting to see how your identity, like, do you think of yourself, you know, you spent 20 years in the service. So I would imagine you do think of yourself as a veteran.

Christian Moore (20:46)
Yeah, I do. You know, I think it's in the US, veteran status is somewhat different. The whole, you know, thank you for your service is something I've had to get used to. You know, I was, I feel extremely lucky to have had 20 years being paid to, you know, run around doing interesting stuff. And I don't feel any need for thanks. But I...

have now four teenagers, two of whom are themselves orienting towards the military and I'm quite happy with that, although I'm not pushing them. but I just think there's no better start in a young life than any form of service, you know, whether it's military service or, or otherwise, , and, , and, you know, I'm just very grateful. It set me up both with a, you know, a sense of responsibility. Um,

And it gave me a card to put on the table when I was looking for other jobs. And then still today then I don't dwell on my being a veteran, but I do find that when it comes out in conversation, it's a point of interest, becomes a point of pride as you realize that other people are grateful for what you did, maybe impressed by what you did.

Mike Smith (21:50)
Yeah, in my own kind of experiences, veteran, I feel that way as well, which is just like, I lived an incredible life for, for years. Uh, and you know, my country made great investments in me as a person. Um, and so I just.

Christian Moore (22:04)
I don't even think I knew that you were a veteran.

Mike Smith (22:06)
Yeah, I used to fly F-18s for the US Navy.

Christian Moore (22:08)
Blimey. I was at a wine tasting a couple of weekends ago and got introduced to a very haggard looking fellow who was in construction and he looked like he'd been building you know houses in the valley here for decades and I said have you always done this? He said no I flew fast jets off aircraft carriers for 12 years before this.

Mike Smith (22:10)
Yeah.

Christian Moore (22:32)
I forget what he flew precisely, but yeah, thank you for your service, Mike. I love that, you know, veterans are finding their way into this space. And I know I have a significant network of veterans who are in or looking to find something useful to do in the environmental protection space.

Mike Smith (22:49)
Why do you think that is?

Christian Moore (22:50)
Well, I think primarily it is this.

It broadens your perspective to join the military, both in terms of the part that you are playing in a much broader strategic role for your country. They send you to interesting places, so you get mind expanded there. We all will have useful memories that serve as benchmarks of places we've been where people live very different lives.

And that's always made me feel grateful for the place that I was born into, the circumstances that I was born into. And I think, you know, you get exposed to that as a young person. And the values that the US and UK military strive to instill in you, I think they leave you, and I'm going to swear now, giving an F, you know?

Caring is a bit of a soppy, sensitive word, but giving an F is something that I think you find all veterans come out with just instilled in them. And then I think that sense of risk and security is instilled in anyone who's served. And so I think in the current times, and this

previous decades, but in the current times, you cannot avoid awareness of the threat from environmental destruction and changes in the climate. And so if it, if that sense of security and risk is instilled in you, you're gonna, I think how you'll see some natural alignment between things that you care about and are good at and things that need doing my

biggest frustration and we'll probably get under this is, is finding a way to get paid to do that. You've done a good job, sir, at that. I'm still trying to figure it out for myself, but I feel that I'm slowly, slowly closing in on what doesn't exist right now, which is an environmental security industry that isn't nonprofit, it's commercially driven. It's gonna attract, you know, veterans for sure, young people who care.

and I'm excited to be, you know, potentially at the forefront of that.

Mike Smith (24:46)
So I couldn't have said that better myself as well. Like I think you and I are very similar minds about like why I was attracted to this work. Can you tell me a little bit more about, a background about what Concentric does, and then-

Specifically, why is Concentric concern about sustainability and climate? Like it wouldn't necessarily seem to be an obvious connection.

Christian Moore (25:06)
Yeah, so I mean, Concentric is a security company. That includes the need for intelligence in order to deliver security. So security and intelligence are the two main areas that we deal in. Our clients range from private individuals, families, family offices, corporates and non-profits.

And, you know, our stated mission is manage risk to keep people safe everywhere. And by that, we're talking geography and we're talking, you know, physical and cyber. the company's been around for, .. you know, around 12 years, I would say. And, .. has, has grown to be the biggest.

security company on the west coast.

I think it was 2017 when our founder, Roderick Jones, who also happens to be a Brit, residing in San Francisco. He himself was a former special branch police officer in the UK. He just through sitting at a dinner in London next to someone from the police high commission, came up with this opportunity for Concentric

have a look at what these ranges and Belize were doing in the Chigabal National Park, which is one of the biggest in Belize and it's on the border with Guatemala. And they have a lot of cross-border incursions into that national park for illegal logging, gold mining, illegal wildlife trade. So that was fascinating for me to go back into

into the trees as we used to call it and I spent a week with the Rangers there up there on the border. Fascinating working with you know non-profit Rangers dressed in camo and carrying AR-15s wearing camouflage cream. It was almost alarming to see that sort of juxtaposition of non-profit conservation and a military role.

Mike Smith (26:41)
Yeah, I bet.

Christian Moore (26:47)
they shared it with the police defense force. But it was a very militarized approach. And there was no doubt that the conclusion they expected was that you need better camouflaged uniforms, you need more powerful weapons, you need all of the military tools of the trade that you don't have in order to combat this problem. But I actually came away with realizing that

what they really lack is situational awareness or what we what we came to call domain awareness so if you take a group of rangers you've got responsibility for a national park  that's  it was a lot of real estate to  keep an eye on  impossible to do without you know surveillance technology essentially and they weren't using that they were picking areas of the forest maybe picking up on a

a lead from a local community and then they were making long patrols into these areas up by the border trying to find people doing things they shouldn't be doing. And it sometimes culminated in armed exchanges with people getting shot and in some cases dying. All of which seemed to me somewhat unnecessary and what was lacking was something that we do use in the military, which is...

domain awareness, which you can achieve through space observation from satellites and through ground-based sensors. There was a whole range of things that were familiar to me from my military days that could usefully be applied here in a similar situation where you've got a small group of people trying to protect a large piece of real estate that by its nature, its forested nature, it's difficult to see what's going on.

Um, so I, I came back and just did a bit of Googling to find out if anyone was doing anything relating to this. And I did, I found some fascinating advances had been made in satellite monitoring, the use of drones, , evolutions in camera traps, seismic, , sensors and most excitedly for the forest acoustic sensors. Um, and I've, , subsequently ended up.

you know, climbing 100 feet up into the canopy of Belize to help install , phenomenal acoustic sensors that run off solar power for four years before they need any serious maintenance. And they are just continually sucking up all of the acoustic data, , within a square mile of this sensor, , and then using AI to process, process that acoustic data.

to differentiate between natural sounds and human-made sounds, whether it's a vehicle or a gunshot or voice, somewhere that there shouldn't be a human. These sensors will hear that. They're working on triangulation so they can be more accurate about, but they certainly immediately notify that within this square mile, there is the sound of a chainsaw, for example. So that helps the rangers go where they're needed, and maybe they go slightly better prepared than they would do if they just bumped into the illegal locking event.

Mike Smith (29:20)
Fascinating.

Christian Moore (29:40)
Quite fascinatingly, I found the team, they're called Rainforest Connection, I'll give them a plug here, rfcx.org. They are on about the third or fourth generation of these acoustic sensors. They brought a bioacoustic team of scientists into their fold along the way and they realized through machine learning

that the acoustic signature of a chainsaw is like just one decibel different from that of a howler monkey. So the sensors kept triggering when they heard the howler monkey and they'd go there and there was no chainsaw activity, no evidence of it, and then they began to realize. And so now the AI understands the difference, even though it's very fine difference between the two. So fascinating application of technology. We ended up doing a pilot.

down in Belize and proved that can be really useful. My constant struggle is to find the bandwidth and the way to have that paid for, to do it more expansively. But certainly along the way, so I had the support of our founder then, and we all, I think at the same time, realized this very natural link between a security risk consultancy and...

the risk that we all face from not protecting those forests down in Belize. So it's a fascinating risk model when you think about at the ground level you've got the loss of biodiversity, the loss of captured carbon, the loss of blood as people confront each other over the protection of these carbon assets.

and this biodiversity. You then have bullies in Guatemala actually, you know, saber rattling at each other over these cross border insurgents. No doubt that the pilfering from this particular forest was happening, you know, was part of a chain moving through Central America to feed us our cheap lumber. And then you've got the

you know, the impact on climate change of those events down in Central America are directly impacting me, my kids, their future, everyone in our company. I mean, it's an inescapable risk and probably the greatest one that we all face together. And there was just this joining of dots in my mind, in the mind of our company's leadership.

that it just made complete sense. It made so much more sense that a company like ours would get more directly involved on the front lines than it would if we were making, I don't know, car tires and trying to reduce the environmental climate impact of that, you know, that production of that product. And so, yeah, we feel a sense of purpose that we really ought to, now that we've

Seeing that we really need to do something about it and get more directly involved.

Mike Smith (32:23)
I think that's an incredibly vivid story and talking about quite literally being on the front lines of environmental destruction and climate change. It makes it very personal and I appreciated hearing that from you. It's definitely something that I've talked about a little bit as well, which is that climate is the number one threat multiplier for the international security order out there. And it's the sort of thing that if we let it get out of control, it's going to be a

security itself will get out of control. And so it's both like in the short-term risk and the kind of the longer-term risk that you see here. So I love this discussion about risk, environmental destruction and security.

Christian Moore (33:00)
No, I could, as soon as you said threat multiplier, which, you know, for us military people is second language. But that's, I hadn't included that in my, in my off the top of my head list there. But that, you know, when I think about Belize and I think about Central America and I think about environmental, environmental degradation there, I think about, the increased prevalence of hurricanes and, you know, weather events that are making it a struggle.

more of a struggle to earn a living down there. You know, there are other factors at play of course, but just the environmental factors are driving people north to perceived, you know, safety and a better way of living up here. So I really do, I really feel that there is important work to be done down there. We ideally would have those people stay there and we would pay them to do the important work that's required to help us, but also, you know, help themselves, you know, down there on the equator.

facing those most direct impacts, the earliest impacts I think of climate change. So there's something in that I think that I'm striving towards. The big question is, you know, where do you find the money to fund all this?

Mike Smith (34:07)
Sure. Well, let's talk about that a little bit. So, you know, this is, you know, it's an internal project here. It sounds like, if I had to guess here, the person that usually brings up that there's a problem gets tasked to be the one to solve it. So, it sounds like that's kind of how you got to this. How about, how did you deal with this internally? Did you have, how did you convince leadership and other, you know, of your colleagues to, to work on this?

Christian Moore (34:19)
Yes.

Well, I mean, the origin story of Concentric doing anything around sustainability was not that experience and beliefs. Just prior to that and very conveniently, our number one client, which is a family office, the principle of that family was taking a

a significant interest in climate and had written a book that was going to be his entry into the discussion on climate. And the family office reached out to all vendors to just a sort of a finger in the air to see what if anything was being done by vendors to the family.

to, you know, around sustainability. And so the literal question to our leadership was what does green security look like? And I, at the time, my title was Director of Special Projects. And I'd just come back from Belize, and in order to secure the attention of my wife, had become a faux tree hugger.

And so for all those reasons, it came to me to answer that question. What does green security look like for this company? Um, and, , you know, the, so there was buy-in from the top at the outset. Um, we needed to answer that question and we did it through, , joining the Green Business Bureau which I believe is now called the Green Business Benchmark Um, and.

working through their platform to identify opportunities for us to reduce our environmental footprint. Office recycling, composting, low-energy lighting, power strips, a volunteer day, all sorts of initiatives that you could complete in return for points and

and elevate up through their tiered structure. So we're actually five years later, platinum member of the Green Business Benchmark, We're also on the members advisory council. We were one of their earlier signups and I started asking lots of difficult questions like, do you guys do anything around carbon, for example? And they didn't.

So I was invited to join the members advisory council and there are 10 companies that have a representative on that. We meet quarterly and they now have a carbon component to being a green business within the Green Business Benchmark. So, but prior to that, I identified that we're covering the environmental impact of the company through GBB, but we're not addressing the...

the carbon footprint. And again, five years ago, that was, you know, even the use of the term carbon footprint to leadership met with quizzical looks. But one of the earlier movers on this was Amazon and they established along with the non-profit, must not blank on this, global optimism.

led by Christina Figuera, who was the architect of the Paris Climate Agreement. She got together with Jeff Bezos and they established the Climate Pledge. We I think were the 200th signatory, I think they're up to five or six hundred now. The sports arena in Seattle is now Climate Pledge Arena.

Mike Smith (37:20)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Moore (37:36)
and actually my water bottle here made by our local company MIR who presented a recent climate pledge gathering. They make water bottles and other liquid containers using half as much metal as the typical product and they are signatories.

Mike Smith (37:40)
There you go.

Christian Moore (37:57)
So we signed the climate pledge, which is essentially you commit to accounting for your carbon footprint, reducing where you can offsetting with high quality offsets, the unavoidable emissions, and then reporting all of that publicly.

We've done everything except publicly reporting, but we're doing that this year for the first time. We have until 2030, but our own goal, actually our own goal is the end of 2025. We're definitely on track for that and might even be able to accelerate it. But that, the climate pledge was a perfect framework for us. I mean, happy to tell you that Amazon is one of our clients. And so there was a lot of alignment there.

And that's been our vehicle for starting our carbon accounting journey, which of course led us to me talking to you, Mike.

Mike Smith (38:42)
Gotcha. Okay. Let's switch topics or switch gears just slightly here, which is, what do you find exciting about working on climate? Or what do you think's the total headache?

Christian Moore (38:51)
Hmm. Um, so I don't know whether you ever ejected from your jet Mike Um, but I, right.

Mike Smith (38:57)
No, thankfully. I would be about an inch shorter if that had happened. So I'm glad to not have done that.

Christian Moore (39:03)
Yeah, I did a lot of parachuting, sometimes into the sea at night. It's very exciting, but also quite terrifying. I actually have a fear of heights that I had to overcome throughout my career. And yeah, when I think about climate, it's terrifying. And certainly in the context of how fast things are changing.

how those models were all inaccurate in their estimation of when things would really start to change. And yeah, I've got four teenagers who are going to be living in that world for a good while longer than me. So it feels very deep down, scary to contemplate.

what the world is going to look like in five, 10, 15, 20 years time. Uh, even if we do a lot of good stuff, you know, it's, it's going to be. Very different world to the one that you and I grew up in. So that, that worries me. But I also, you know, with that, I, the whole thing I find quite exhilarating because it's, it's happening now as is the generation that has the imperative to do something about it or not.

or not do enough. When I was at the there was a climate pledge summit for signatories to gather in New York. We of course all offset our flights. John Kerry spoke there and was very impressive. I see he's now relinquishing that role. But the most impactful speaker for me was Jay Inslee, who's the governor of Washington State.

And he made it, he made a point that really stuck in my head. And it was a quote from Winston Churchill in October 41. And he was talking to his old school, Marlborough school in the UK. And he referred to, what were they two years into the second world war, three years from its conclusion. But by then he'd managed to get the Americans.

you know, support and things were somewhat turning around from a backs to the wall situation. Um, but he referred to, , in his speech to these school kids as these are great days, , which surprised some people. It became a headline at the time. Um, but what he meant was these are days of incredible significance and importance. And he went on to say, we are lucky.

to be a part of tackling these great challenges. And in so doing, reorienting the course of history as they did with the Second World War and as we need to do with tackling climate change. So yeah, Jay Inslee left us with that. These are great days, scary but significant. And people like you and me, Mike, have the opportunity to be there.

at the pivotal moment, you know, getting stuck in and, and turning things around if it's possible.

Mike Smith (41:50)
Yeah, I love that. These are interesting times, but they're times of great import. In some ways, you could say that the next 20 years are potentially the most impactful in all of human history. And so, yeah, I feel fortunate to be able to help to do my part to steer the direction I think it needs to go.

Christian Moore (41:59)
Yeah.

Churchill also said, never, ever, ever give up. It was in the same speech to these school kids. But of course the whole world heard it and they remember that quote in particular. But that I draw some strength from as I keep looking for the open door to getting more involved in the frontline work. I know it's there.

I'm banging on all sorts of different doors, but I'll find the one that's open through not giving up. But yeah, exciting times.

Mike Smith (42:35)
I think it was the IPCC said that every degree counts, every decision matters, and every year matters. And that's where we're at. What's something that you've learned about climate on this journey that you wish everybody knew?

Christian Moore (42:42)
Yeah, no, absolutely.

Oh, I mean, I've learned a heck of a lot for sure. I still defer to you on some of the technicalities of carbon accounting. Still don't fully get my head around Scope 3 emissions, but I figure I don't need to because you understand that. But the thing, I think it's the...

incredible power potential of technology to help us protect the natural world. Because, yeah, there just aren't enough boots on the ground to do it effectively. There never will be. The scale is going to be achieved through

you know, existing and fast evolving technology, sensor technology, space based and ground based. I, as I told you about those acoustic sensors, I mean, you're in this world. And it seemed apparent that you weren't aware of these acoustic sensors and what they can do. And I'm probably already out of date because it's such so fast moving. It's it's really uplifting to

You know, technology is clearly not the solution for everything. But I think in this particular case, when we're looking at environmental protection, it's a staggering how much more we could be doing with existing technology that is progressing very fast.

Mike Smith (44:00)
There are definitely within remote sensing, both, you know, as you talk about space-based acoustic sensors, etc. That is a rapidly evolving field and it's certainly within the space of carbon offsets as well. It's also changing how we measure and verify carbon offset reduction. It's interesting. If you had 10 times the budget that you have now, what would you do differently?

Christian Moore (44:27)
with 10 times the budget, a portion, some decent percentage of that to...

novel ideas that are still in development that hopefully will derive future credits well two companies specifically that I'm fascinated by one is called Seaweed Generation. They are in the Caribbean, they've developed surface drones that are collecting sargassum

before it lands on Caribbean beaches and creates a toxic atmosphere and ruins the local tourist industry. And they are scooping this up like a big surface fish. And when they get to a certain weight, the drone deep dives and takes it down below a thousand feet, I think, which is where the seaweed, the air pockets.

are completely yeah, burst or just flattened to the point where they're no longer buoyant. And then they release this sargassum instead of landing on a beach, it lands on the seabed and gets eaten by fish. And they film it, the whole thing is filmed with cameras. So that, you know, they're still in the prototype stage. And I've spoken with them directly and buying an offset from them is more expensive than it is buying from, you know, forest protection in Brazil, which we currently do.

Mike Smith (45:33)
How fun.

Christian Moore (45:45)
that I've had more money, I would definitely place more bets on companies like that. The other one is you may have had a Running Tide and actually I, I was aware of them a couple of years ago. They were, they were seeding, , lines in the ocean with, , sugar kelp. And then when the lines with sensors on them got to a certain weight, , with the kelp, of course, you know, it grows through sucking.

to some extent through sucking carbon in the atmosphere, very quantifiable. And then they would sink this line, similar to the sea regeneration, they'd sink this kelp to the floor for seafood.

Those sorts of things fascinate.

me and excite me and when you think of the scale at which they could be done, the potential for them, it's very uplifting and I wish I had more money, I would buy more of their credits to help them along that development process.

Mike Smith (46:35)
I know Running Tide, for example, has had some early funding through Stripe and some of their work around that. And so that's definitely important work. We work with a preferred partner called CNaught that does offset curation. Essentially they buy the offsets for you.

And part of their portfolio is to invest some part of their offset buy into these emerging technologies, which aren't at scale yet. And so like, it can never be like the bulk of your portfolio, but they are definitely an important part of that, where we go.

Christian Moore (46:52)
Okay.

Yeah, I think when Concentric I want to do that with a portfolio approach. And I want to have some portion, even within our existing budget, some portion of that to be looking at these future methodologies for capturing carbon. You know, because it's important to do it. But also, there's just a great story there. It's fascinating stuff.

you know, we produce an internal green team newsletter. And I've referred to these types of opportunities before and you can just see, you know, faces lights up. This is kind of cool stuff that we can be a part of. I don't know what I have mentioned, but we've seen a really profound impact of our sustainability efforts supporting recruitment and retention.

particularly among, are we allowed to say millennials? I think so. But plenty of young people that I work with on my green team, part of their continuing desire to work for Concentric is that they've seen on our website before they were recruited that we're talking about the things that we do and then they get here and find we're actually doing them and that they can be a part of that.

It's we've had great feedback from our HR team that it's one of the things they ask about the most. Uh, and then I feel it, you know, within our green team and broader interest from the company, when we brief out that this is, they like belonging to a company that is involved in this, , and, and involved in a way that is genuine and, , and, , as far from greenwashing as we can possibly get.

Mike Smith (48:30)
100%. Would you say that it's helped you with employee retention?

Christian Moore (48:34)
Absolutely, and for the same reason. And, yeah, because it's certainly in our space, there aren't many people, there aren't many other companies who are thinking this way.

we're not aware of any other medium sized consultancies that have done what we've done. But we make a fair bit of noise about it in marketing. You know, I like to think that it helps.

generate interest in maybe new business, but we also would love it if all of our competitors did something themselves. That's how we're going to unlock the full potential of business to, to tackle this problem.

Mike Smith (49:11)
Alright, last question. If you were going to write a book, what would it be about?

Christian Moore (49:16)
So, you'll be surprised, I've written two books, neither of which have been published because I haven't submitted them. The first book I wrote, when I left my 20 years in the military, I wanted to be a writer. My wife was working in Brazil, leading...

Mike Smith (49:19)
Okay.

Christian Moore (49:31)
, college kids on environmental tours of Brazil. So I went to hand it over my squadron one day and the next day I stopped shaving and plugged into a group of Antioch College kids, most of whom were barefooted and literally tree hugging. And I went from, you know, commanding a special forces squadron to roaming around Brazil with a bunch of college kids. and, ,

also try and write my first book. So I had a period about six months where I tried to write a book. I did complete it and went through various edits and it was actually an environmental, like an eco thriller based on someone with a similar background to mine who similarly fell into environmental security, in this case working alongside indigenous people in Ecuador to protect their forests from oil development.

And that was based on having an Ecuadorian friend who was a former Ecuadorian Marine who was absolutely engaged in that himself. So, it was a pretty decent book. But then my first son came along and I realized how little you might well be, most likely will be paid for your book, even if you get published.

I followed the money, sadly, but it's still there. It may see the light of day one day. And then I've also written a book with my wife. She and I have written a book about how we met in Paris 20 years ago from two different perspectives, alternating chapters. I won't go into it now, but it's really quite the romantic story and not just because it was in Paris.

I would love in my retirement to pick up the eco thriller genre and get back into that. Green James Bond.

Mike Smith (51:02)
Green James Bond, I love it. And I think that's where we should wrap this up. Christian, I've really enjoyed speaking with you today. I think you're a fascinating person. I hope you do actually get that book published sooner rather than later. And I want to thank you for your time, for trusting Aclymate for the work that we do with you all. It was great to talk with you.

Christian Moore (51:20)
Yeah. I've really enjoyed it. Uh, as anyone in the company will tell you, if you, you know, give me an inch as far as talking about the environment, I just, I'll take a mile it's, , within everything that I do at Concentric, it's the bit that, that excites me the most that I feel most fulfilled by. So this I saw in my calendar, I got a whole hour to talk about this stuff. Wonderful. And it's been wonderful. Thank you, Mike.

Mike Smith (51:49)
What do you think of Christian? Like I said, I really enjoyed how he connected the dots of nature, preservation, climate, and security. Anyways, that's our show. I want to hear from you. Go to Aclymate .com, again, A -C -L -Y -M -A -T -E, or send an email to TheClimateDad@Aclymate.com to submit a question for me or the show. Thanks to Christian for joining me today, and thank you all for listening. I'll be back next time with a breakdown of all things climate and with another guest.

Make sure to subscribe to The Climate Dad wherever you get your podcasts and to share, like, and comment on social media. My name's Mike Smith and this was The Climate Dad.

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