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This startup wants you to be a 'Karen': 'We're going to have to get a little bit pushy'

"If this industry is going to be a trillion dollars and there's no consumer brand here, maybe that's something we could create."

“If this industry is going to be a trillion dollars and there’s no consumer brand here, maybe that’s something we could create.”

Photo Credit: Climate Karen

When a video went viral of a British woman chastising an EV driver for, allegedly, sending polluting exhaust fumes into the atmosphere — after UK media called her a "Climate Karen" — two guys in western North Carolina saw it as an opportunity. 

Josh Elliott and Aaron White had worked in the sustainability and climate space for years, helping build actor Jason Momoa's successful carbon-neutral water brand Mananalu, for example. Now, they saw a chance to get more people engaged in one of the fastest-growing climate solutions — carbon removal — with a cheeky brand and an easy way for people to be part of what could be a trillion-dollar industry.

Inspired by the brash and irreverent bottled water brand Liquid Death, which built a $1.4 billion business and inspired change from big brands like Pepsi and Coke by bottling water in aluminum cans, Elliott and White launched "Climate Karen," a subscription service where users can be part of a climate revolution for just $1 a month.

"If this industry is going to be a trillion dollars and there's no consumer brand here, maybe that's something we could create," White said. "Could we create this brand that catalyzed the whole industry and create consumer demand for durable or permanent carbon removal credits?" 

The Cool Down spoke exclusively to White and Elliott about how the co-founders plan to remove carbon from the atmosphere — coming at it from doing more of what trees do naturally — all while getting a little spicy. 

🤔 Sorry — first, what is carbon dioxide removal?

"There's too much carbon dioxide in the air," White said. As more and more planet-warming gases like carbon are released into the atmosphere, they rapidly overheat our planet. One solution is to reduce our carbon pollution, but it's also actually possible to remove some of that existing carbon.

This is a distinction from carbon capture and storage, which attempts to capture carbon from pollution sources, such as power plants, and has drawn some criticism for giving polluters a license to keep polluting. Carbon removal, by contrast — especially when funded by volunteers — is more like a community litter cleanup project for the air.  

"A lot of people don't know that there's technology being developed … called direct air capture and that literally vacuums … carbon dioxide out of the sky, turns it into a liquid, and then injects it back into the ground where it becomes a rock," White said.

Think of our planet like a bathtub overflowing with water, Elliott said. Yes, you need to turn off the tap, but you also have to get a mop and start cleaning up. 

"We believe things like direct air capture — it's the mop," he continued. "Climate Karen is directly funding the mop to get started. And we still need to turn off the tap, but we can't do one or the other and expect the mess to get cleaned up by itself."

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🤝 How does 'Climate Karen' work?

Elliott and White knew that carbon dioxide removal could be a trillion-dollar industry by 2025, but there was no way consumers could jump in on that action.

Enter: Climate Karen. It's a subscription service that asks people to join the "Dollar Karen Club" — which means that for just $1 a month, you help them purchase carbon credits from top companies in the carbon removal space. 

"We want people to invest in scaling this market," Elliott explained. "We turn it into a big pool of money that purchases climate credits from companies that are scaling this technology."

But can $1 really make a difference? 

With "everyone chipping in just a buck a month, not only can we begin removing a lot of carbon dioxide," White said, "but we have power as a community."

"We can begin to go to brands like … the North Face and start talking with [them] and say, 'Hey, we got a group of people that want you to start decarbonizing' — to start removing CO2 — so we can begin to push brands in the right direction."

Currently, 80% of every dollar raised by Climate Karen goes to two leading organizations in carbon removal:

Silicate Carbon, which works on "enhanced weathering" of rocks 

Octavia Carbon, the first direct air capture company in the Global South

According to White and Elliott, the other 20% goes to getting the word out about the brand — in a disruptive way.

💪 Pushy … but in a good way

Elliott and White knew that if they wanted to break through what they called a "boring" and "doom and gloom" climate space, they had to be bold. 

"The last thing we want to be is this organization that's a green leaf with a weird name that comes from Latin," Elliott said.

Taking a feather from Liquid Death's cap, they determined the solution was to be irreverent, "to inject some levity and some humor into this conversation because we're going to be competing with a social media feed that wants you to do everything but care about climate change and do something about it," said Elliott.

While the name came first and foremost from that meme of the British woman criticizing an electric, zero-emissions Tesla driver for idling, Elliott and White also found inspiration from "Trail Karens" on their regular mountain bike rides. These are people who call out another rider for going up the wrong way. That trail Karen is "probably right," they said, "but also a little bit pushy." 

The co-founders say that, by extension, a Climate Karen is "someone that's a little pushy — in a good way." 

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"We're going to have to get a little bit pushy if we want to see this stuff scale. We're going to have to maybe break some things," Elliott said.

"It does piss a couple people off, [and] I'm kind of like, yes, I want people to remember it and have a conversation about this," he added. 

"I don't really care if they go good, bad, or ugly. I think it's one of those things that as long as it sticks and they get the idea, it's all that matters," Elliott said.

"We have a few people actually named Karen that work in climate that love us — so, real-life climate Karens," White said.

⚡ Throwing everything at the wall  

Some critics have called direct air capture an inefficient process that's a distraction from more impactful and affordable climate solutions — like electric vehicles and solar panels, as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists argued — and an excuse for companies to keep polluting while purchasing carbon removal credits. 

But White says it's a "both, and" situation. "Current models say that even if we decarbonize everything, the legacy emissions that are up there, we need to start removing that," he said. 

"We need to be throwing everything at the wall and trying to see what sticks. When it comes to something like direct air capture, yeah, right now it's not very efficient, but neither was solar 20 years ago — no one thought solar energy would ever be cheap or effective. And now it's the cheapest form of electricity that we have because it's reached scale," White continued.

Further, with Climate Karen's model, concerned members of the public are chipping in to contribute to this cleanup solution rather than purely a case of a polluting company attempting to use a project as PR. 

White's message, essentially, is not to join the Dollar Karen Club instead of pursuing other climate solutions but to consider doing it in addition to other changes that help the planet. 

💡 Their lightbulb moment 

Before founding Climate Karen and before joining Momoa's water brand, Elliott worked in the humanitarian space helping people get access to clean water, and White spent 10 years working in East Africa, where he saw the effects of climate change up close and personal. 

"I know what climate change can do to a community and how that affects the most vulnerable," White said.

Elliott and White are also both dads who each have two young children. "I want to dedicate even more of my time to figuring out how to show my kids that you make decisions about your life and your career that you want them to take note and be inspired," Elliott said. 

💚 How it's going — and how you can get involved 

When you join Climate Karen, you'll get an irreverent weekly newsletter to connect with the community and get more information on carbon dioxide removal and the companies and people tackling the problem. 

In the future, Elliott and White plan to offer members discounts from partner brands, but they say that's not a huge motivator for their audience, who's more interested in being part of a real solution that doesn't make them feel bad. 

"We're a different vibe when it comes to climate change," White said. 


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People who join Climate Karen tell them, "I don't feel bad about being a part of this. I don't come away from this [saying], 'Man, that was heavy.' They come away with a little bit of a giggle and 'Yeah, I learned a little bit of something.' … It's more of, 'I can have a beer over this type of content' rather than 'I'm going to … get a college class on this stuff.'"

"We want to give this community a bigger tent. … If we're going to solve this issue, it has to become more of an accessible community," Elliott added. "A lot of the people that have entered into it so far would probably proclaim, 'Yeah, I care about this issue, but I don't really read on this every day. It's not something that is inundating my inbox or my social media feed.'"

Engaging people who aren't always living and breathing all things climate solutions — "that's a huge win," Elliott said. "If we're going to solve this issue, and if we're going to scale these technologies, those types of people have to get on board."

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