Simplifying Sustainability: How Aclymate Founder Mike Smith is Making Climate Action Accessible

How can small businesses take real climate action without massive budgets or in-house experts? In this episode, we sit down with Mike Smith, founder and CEO of Aclymate—a platform designed to simplify carbon tracking and sustainability for everyday business owners. 

From serving as a Navy commander to leading major reforestation efforts, Mike’s path to climate tech wasn’t typical—but it’s one filled with purpose. 

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• What Aclymate does to make carbon tracking easy for small businesses
• Why sustainability is a smart move for business growth and resilience
• Tips for getting started with emissions tracking—even if you’re busy
• The surprising impact small businesses can have on climate progress

Tune in as we explore how Aclymate is making sustainability practical, why it matters for your business, and how even small steps can lead to big impact.

The Riveo Impact Lab is produced for you by Riveo Creative. For more Riveo Impact Lab content, including the video versions of all our episodes, please visit https://riveocreative.com/riveo-impact-lab/.

Transcript

0:00

[electronic music starts]

Emily: 0:04

Welcome to the Riveo Impact Lab, the podcast in which we explore what it means for small businesses to have real impact in an evolving world. On this podcast, we engage our curiosity around topics like sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and the ethical outcomes of our decisions, all from a small business perspective.

Elin: 0:24

I'm Elin and I'm here with my co-host, Emily. In this episode, we're going to be speaking with Mike Smith. Mike is the founder and CEO of Aclymate, which is an all-in-one climate solution to help individuals and businesses measure, track, offset, reduce and report emissions. At Riveo, we've been using Aclymate to track our emissions for the past two years. In addition to tracking, Aclymate has helped us to find certified offset projects that we can donate to to help us achieve carbon neutrality while working towards net zero. Mike as a former naval officer, having achieved the rank of commander, a featured expert for the U.S. Climate Alliance, and before Aclymate, worked at RenewWest, where he worked on one of the largest carbon reforestation projects in the U.S. history, the Collins-Modoc Reforestation Project. This was a 2 million tree project in Northern California. Mike is also the host of The Climate Dad podcast.

Emily: 1:31

Yeah. It was great talking to Mike. We've been using Aclymate as a team and really love the platform, so it was really good to put a face behind the company and just hear his passion and his vision about how to move forward with sustainability and with and with making actual progress in the climate.

Elin: 1:52

Yeah. And his, he had some fascinating statistics that he shared with us. I was floored when when he brought some of those up. And really, you know, he took this very intangible topic of carbon emissions. And, like, everybody knows what it is, but we don't really know what it is in tangible terms. And he made it very real. And that's one of the things I really appreciated about this interview.

Emily: 2:20

Yeah, I agree, he really knows exactly what he's talking about. But not only that, he knows how to make it digestible and understandable to people. And that's also part of what Aclymate is meant to do, is to make it not so difficult to track and offset your emissions. And so I think that he's doing a lot of good work. And we're really excited for you to hear this interview.

Elin: 2:42

Yes we are. We hope you enjoy the podcast.[electronic music][electronic music concludes]

Emily: 2:53

Welcome, Mike, to the Riveo Impact Lab. We're really glad to be able to talk to you today.

Mike: 2:57

Yeah. Good morning, Emily. It's good to be here.

Emily: 2:59

Yeah. So the reason actually that we're talking with you, Mike, is because Riveo actually started working with Aclymate almost a year and a half ago to better account for our emissions and offset those that we couldn't avoid. And we've really enjoyed the service you offer. I particularly have, as our Sustainability Coordinator. Can you kind of summarize what Aclymate provides and what its mission is?

Mike: 3:21

Sure. Let's start with the mission. So the mission for Aclymate is, is that we want to empower non-experts to be able to engage meaningfully with climate. So, more broadly, it's to educate and to empower non-experts to meaningfully engage on climate. And I think that's built into, like what we do at Aclymate, which is— a lot of our competitors, a lot of alternative options for you, if you're a small business or an individual trying to work on climate are to work with some expert that kind of will patronize you sometimes, or to work with some sort of system that just assumes that you can't do much. Or they might expect you to, to start with, like, you have to learn a lot of material before you can meaningfully work. And we just fundamentally disagree with that approach. And so at Aclymate, what we do is we built a software system that helps people to measure, report, reduce and offset their footprint. And then along the way, as they're doing that, you can almost think of it as like a QuickBooks of carbon accounting, while they're doing that, they learn, and they develop expertise in climate by engaging in it rather than having to have the expertise before engaging in it.

Emily: 4:27

That's really important. And I love that distinction, because I didn't come into this work being an expert. And I think, and Aclymate was one of the first organizations that we engaged with. And it's made it very helpful to actually want to track because it doesn't feel incredibly overwhelming and like, we can't do it. So I think the mission that you just expressed is something that we've actually experienced. And so you are fulfilling that mission. I want to kind of get into the background a little bit of what inspired you to found Aclymate and kind of how your prior work experience has shaped your approach to climate solutions.

Mike: 5:03

Yeah. I've had a, kind of a meandering career path. So, I grew up in Boise, Idaho, and had an experience with wildfire when I was a kid. It's called the Lowman fire. Put up about, burned about 44,000 acres, which at the time was one of the first mega fires. Anymore, that's actually a pretty small fire. But at the time, it felt like the whole state of Idaho was burning. And as a nine year old, this is during the Cold War, it put up a mushroom cloud. And, that was just very memorable to me. But my grandfather was a forester, and he told me that, he's one of the first to understand fire-adapted ecologies. And he told me that to not worry, that the forest to grow back. I said, “What do I know? I'm nine.” So I went off. I joined the Navy, saw the world. I was an F-18 pilot, active duty for about 12.5 years, active duty, postings kind of throughout the world. I did Italy, Japan, throughout the American Southeast. And then in 2010, I got married and I brought my wife to Idaho to show her where I'd grown up. And, we went by the scar of that fire. It was 22 years after the fire. And, you know, everybody has this experience when, when they go back to visit the place that they grew up, it feels like a lot of it's changed. But what was most jarring to me is, is the thing that hadn't changed was that fire, like it was still mostly bare. It was not coming back. That led me down a path. I'd actually studied, like carbon markets in the Naval Academy. And so that led me down a path of getting out of the service to start my first company. My first company was called RenewWest, still an active concern. My partner over there, John Cleland's doing a great job with it. And RenewWest was a carbon offset project developer. Specifically, we focused on planting trees in areas burned by wildfire and leveraging carbon markets in order to fund that activity. That was a challenge. A lot of people weren't kind of believing in carbon markets or even climate change at the time. But John and I both saw it through, and together we ended up planting 2 million trees in Northern California. It's the largest project of its type in U.S. history. So super proud of that. Took my kids there to plant the first hundred. They, little core memory build there. But, along the way, I also was an advisor to the U.S. Climate Alliance, which were the 26 states that stayed in the Paris Accords the last time Trump pulled out. That was advising folks on natural and working lands, carbon markets, climate policy. And I was frustrated because the people that, with education and that cared about the material, they didn't grasp this immediately either. And I knew that, 90% of the problem for climate is, is not offsets but emissions reductions. And that if these people were having a hard time grasping it, we, we had a system that was too complex. And so that led me, with John's approval, to start a side project internal to RenewWest called Aclymate, that grew its own legs and we ended up spending it out and I went with it. And, that was with my co-founder William here at, at Aclymate, which is to help people to meaningfully measure, reduce, offset, and report, report and offset their footprint without having to develop that expertise. So there shouldn't be a barrier to getting started or your work on climate. So that's, that's my background. And then on my personal life, I'm, continually, this will be my 15th anniversary this year to my wife, Lindsay. And then, we've got two great kids.

Emily: 8:22

That's fantastic. Yeah. And thank you for your service, you know, to our country and then to continually to the globe. That continues on. I think that it's really interesting when I was kind of reading up a little bit on your background, how fascinating it is, the journey that you took to get where you are, and then all the incredible work that you've been able to be a part of. And now taking that work and wanting to make it simple for other people to participate in that, I think is incredible. So you did touch on this just a little bit, but could you explain, because this is something I had to learn, the difference between reducing emissions and offsetting emissions, and your thoughts on these two different ways of tackling climate change.

Mike: 9:06

Sure. So, every, every American produces somewhere in the ballpark of about 19 tons of emissions, of carbon dioxide emissions every year. So my family of four, if we were the average American family, we'd be approaching 80 tons of emissions. Put another way, you can think of it like, as you're driving down the car if you dump, driving in a typical American car, if you were dumping about a pound of garbage out the window every mile. We don't see it because it's an invisible gas. But in reality, we're using the atmosphere as a, as a large dumping ground for pollution. And just because we don't see it doesn't mean it's not a big problem. And so the atmosphere, nature has ways of capturing that, and planting a little trees was one way to kind of deal with that. And so that's, you know, the carbon cycle a lot of us learned about that in, in, in school. But, we're doing it faster than nature can accommodate. And so as a result, the atmosphere is piling up with pollution. It's invisible carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. And so, we cannot offset our way out of that problem. There's nothing that we can do, technologically or with nature, in order to, to completely overcome the amount of pollution that we're putting into the atmosphere. And so, that's referred to as an emission because we're using a scientific term, but you could also use it as dumping if you wanted to be a little bit more direct. And so we have to stop that. Now, the good news that people don't hear on climate very often, actually, is, is that, when I first started in this work and it, the, we were dumping more and more and more every year. In the last few years, however, we've been approaching a peak. So we're not dumping more relative to last year. We're dumping about the same amount. So the curve is starting to bend. But in order to meet our goals with the Paris climate goals— and the Paris climate goals are based on a bunch of scientific tipping points. I could really nerd out on that if you're interested.

Emily: 11:04

[Laughs] Yeah, sure.

Mike: 11:05

[Laughs] But, but nonetheless, these scientific, these tipping points, if they are to occur, they have some very meaningfully bad impacts to humans, civilization broadly. And so the, the goals there are is, is that we should try to stay below one and a half degrees C, Celsius above the pre-industrial average or, at the very least we need to stay below two degrees of warming. And the pathway to doing that means is that we've got to cut roughly 50% of our emissions by the end of this decade, and we need to cut about 90% of our emissions by the end, by 2050. That last 10%, is known as kind of hard to abate emissions. And that last 10% is where they think that we can get to a net zero by offsetting the remaining 10%. Currently, the planet can't do that either. So we also have to build up the capacity of offsetting systems, things to capture carbon out of the atmosphere. Now there's a little bit of room in the middle there where there are certain things right now where you, if you're working on your emissions, there are other entities that maybe want to work on their emissions but can't afford to do it. And you can help to participate in that by paying them some additional money in order to be able to do that. And so there's within the offset categories, there's things that are carbon removals, planting trees, big machines for example, also that suck carbon out of the atmosphere are examples. But then there's these emissions reductions or, that you're paying somebody else to do it. Short version— Start with your own footprint, cut it as best you can. Remember that this is a multi-year journey. So if you cut a lot this year, great. Remember you got to do it next year. Can't cut so much this year, it's okay. Keep working on it next year. But also in the process there, you also need to be working on, on offsets there. It's kind of like peanut butter and chocolate. Both are great individually, but together they're, they, you know, make a little bit happier of a snack.

Emily: 13:10

[Laughs] I have to agree with that. Absolutely. I think that's a really helpful way to look at it and to keep in mind that progression approach to it that you're continually trying to reduce, to build upon that momentum rather than if you can't do it all at once, just not bothering to do it at all. And that example that you gave or the metaphor of that it's like dumping out, you know, garbage. What’d you say, a pound of garbage a mile? How much?

Mike: 13:37

About that. It’s about 8/10 of a pound per mile for the average American internal combustion car.

Emily: 13:42

That is, I've never heard that before. That's very evocative imagery. I think that's really helpful. And I will keep that in mind because that really, that is really telling for just how much we're putting into the Earth and expecting it to be able to deal with. So as far as, let me switch gears a little bit and talk about Aclymate as a business, what are some of the biggest challenges that you've encountered in your journey with Aclymate, especially as a climate action organization? What are some of the, the challenges that you've come across with climate action on a larger scale via Aclymate?

Mike: 14:19

So most people would expect that you actually want, you know, I'd want to talk about potentially about politics or people that are climate denialists. That's, it's actually not that big of a thing. In every market, there's always going to be people that are laggards. And there are people that are going to be early adopters. And so I haven't, it's not something that I worry about. The thing that I do, that was early on was difficult was, is that the people, particularly some within the investment class, had a hard time visualizing that this would be, to be a necessary thing that would be adopted more broadly than by a couple of, like, evangelists, effectively. And, that for me was frustrating because in the product adoption curve, if you're an investor, you should also understand that, like, yes, there are those, you start with those evangelists, but the momentum builds from that. And so that was some of our early pain points associated with that. The other thing that we were focused on was is that, as a business, was that, there was this older mindset about people, people that just wanted to be like carbon neutral, and they just wanted to know what their footprint was and buy the offsets. And so we tried to have, like, this free accounting software. And people didn't like it, they, because we were trying to help them to reduce their emissions before they did the offsets, which was great. But they just saw it as like a hassle because, like, it's a little bit more work to, than to just, like, do kind of a wild guess and buy some offsets and move on. And so, we had to figure out like, no, actually, what we need to be doing is focusing on selling the service of emissions reductions. And when we did that, we still, it's a very low cost, very affordable option for, for companies. That's an important part of what we do. We don't want to be a barrier there. But when we do that, we actually ended up pairing up with the right people, the folks that were interested in emissions reductions and measuring and reporting their footprint, associated with that. And by charging for that, we actually could improve the experience because we could integrate with, like, some of their data systems, their utility bills; just made a lot more, a lot more automations and integrations that that would make the experience better. We still sell offsets. We have a great offset marketplace. So and that's, that's integrated all in there. And like we talked about, chocolate and peanut butter, they go together. But, that's been that. The one thing that we've been really encouraged by here recently is, is that, we're starting to see earlier, moving out of the kind of the early adopter phase into people that are doing it because, not because they want to, because they need to, and we've been really excited. One customer I really like talking about, they manufacturer rolled wipes. This guy doesn't care at all about climate. He's a very kind of bottom dollar sort of guy, you know, as a business person. A major customer of his does care. And, in order to maintain that contract relationship, he has to report his footprint. Even, what's even more exciting is, is that guy is actually exploring the idea of putting together, like, a science-based target, which to me is just like this, like, “Plant the flag. The market has arrived,” kind of moment. Like, I'm really, really excited about that.

Emily: 17:16

Right. That's great to hear. And it's really encouraging because you don't get a lot of encouraging news around this topic. So I appreciate you sharing that. I know that for us at Riveo we had those conversations, you know, a couple of years ago of, “This is going to turn into something that's a need, but we want to jump on it before that because it's a value that we actually have, that we want to live out.” But I think that there is an awareness that this is going to become not something that is just like a nice to have, but that you have to do to maintain a significant client base, because a lot of people do care. And I think that's important to remember as well.

Mike: 17:52

Yeah, 100%. Like, the, every industry is a little bit different. But, the leaders in each industry from this perspective are being established, right now. They are the ones that are going to accrue the brand value associated with being thought of as the leader, rather than one that has to comply. The laggards are also being identified. The people that are not wanting to get on this until it's being rammed down their throats. You're, you're losing the opportunity to establish yourself, from a brand recognition.

Emily: 18:21

Absolutely. And I think that's important to remember. And you know, you want everyone to take part based on value systems. But if they're not going to do that, then at least recognizing that this is really good for your brand, this is good for you to be on top of things, rather than, like you said, just have to come along for the ride because it's been crammed down your throat. That's, that's not a good look for an organization. So I think that's, that's fantastic to, to keep that in mind. And I'm glad to hear that story. Very encouraging.

Mike: 18:51

It's fun, isn't it?

Emily: 18:52

Yeah. That's great. And continuing along that, you did share a little bit of some success. Could you share a specific success story from your work that really shows kind of the power of combining technology with environmental sustainability?

Mike: 19:08

Yeah. I have a few stories there. So one is, is that, that manufacturer that I talked about that, like, is like setting a science-based target. Like, we enable them to be able to measure their footprint and keep a relationship, and then, like, now, they're like taking the next step on their sustainability journey. Love that. Another one that I really love is, a company that we were working with. They train people from all over the world. And it's a, the thing that they train people in that has to be in person. And it's a great sustainability story, the stuff that they do, but there is flights associated with it. And so they had this assumption of like,“Hey, we can't do anything about our footprint. because, you know, these people are flying in from all over the place.” And so our mantra at Aclymate is, is measure, reduce, offset, in that order, like. And so I said, “Okay. Yeah. Let's, you know, let's just see. Let's start measuring your footprint.” And so, what they ended up doing is they realized that they had these two guys that drove F-150s 40 miles each way to work. And when they didn't have a class in, if they told these guys to stay home and work remotely, which the, the two gentlemen were very interested in doing anyways, they could cut 8% of their emissions, like, with all that international flying, like. So be careful of the assumptions. The data will unlock opportunities for you. Another one that I'm really proud of is, is that we are working, with a, an event, a major, like, concert. And people fly in to go to this thing. Same sort of thing. A lot of emissions associated with that. The only way that they could really kind of get away from that is if they just kind of stopped having some of those flight emissions. But hidden in the data was actually that they had a huge amount of emissions of people getting from the airport to the event itself. A lot of these folks were renting a car, parking and spending like five, six days there. So, for this event, they had a bad experience of getting there. People were flying to this airport, spending a bunch of money to get to this airport, spending a bunch of money to, like, take the, the, to rent a car to drive and park it and then hang out there for days. And, it's a concert. So, what we proposed to them and what they're exploring on doing is, is actually is they, they know when these flights are coming in, provide a bus service with the like, with somebody, with a musician on board, get the party started. You know, like, there's no reason you can't. Like it's a better experience. You're going to have a better emissions footprint. And people are going to save money. It's a win all the way around. Emily That's fantastic. What a good idea. I think it gives you an opportunity to be creative, to try new things, and to stand out in that way. And I love what you said about how, you know, and it goes along with measure first, because the data unlocks opportunities for you. And that assumptions are often wrong. And there is a lot that we can do that maybe we're not even aware of. So that's very exciting. I love, you know, rather than ending on challenges, ending on success stories, I think is, is great. So I do want to talk about, you're also the host of a podcast, The Climate Dad podcast. How did that come about? And what's your mission behind the podcast? Yeah. So, Climate Dad’s a name that my, my staff bequeathed to me. For those of you that are not watching but are listening, my backdrop actually is a bunch of, artwork that my children did as they were growing up. I didn't have the heart to throw it away, so I put it into my Zoom background. So there's a little bit of that, but there's also this component of, of being kind of like a climate expert on our team is, is that like, I take things that are kind of complex and scary and make them a little less complex, a little less scary. And not to be patronizing, but that's what a parent does a lot. And so, I give off strong dad vibes. So they started calling me Climate Dad, to my face even, and so that was kind of the birth of, of the moniker. The podcast is on a pause, actually, right now because, we are exploring expanding it, bringing in potentially a co-host in the, the veterinary space. So actually, it'll be the, the ability to talk about that. So stay tuned to that. You can still go to theclimatedad.com, in order to link to there. That's also on my website at aclymate.com/the-climate-dad. But, yeah, we're kind of expanding that.

Emily: 23:30

That's an exciting reason for a pause, looking to the future and to expansion. And that's incredible.

Mike: 23:35

Yeah.

Emily: 23:37

And, yeah, you know, you mentioned you have two kids. As a father—you know, I'm a mother, so I, I'm very interested in your answer to this question. How do you approach teaching the next generation about climate change, sustainability and the importance of action in a way especially that motivates them to action rather than, you know, scares them?

Mike: 23:59

So part of my goal when I started that podcast, The Climate Dad, and some of my social media stuff was to, just educate people more broadly. And I think this applies to your kids as well. You shouldn't lie to your children. And so you shouldn't hide the truth from them. But you also shouldn't embellish it, and you shouldn't make them fearful. So, you know, here's kind of the blunt truth of it, right? We are never going to be in the climate we grew up in again. Like, that's, that's gone. And so when people think about like, “Oh, climate change is irreversible,” that's true. Climate change is irreversible. We are already—there, there is no path to our, where, to where we've been. It's only to where we're going. In the forestry space, you know, they used to talk about like that we need to restore forests to kind of about a 1900 state, about like what forests were like around the turn of the 20th century. And I've always thought that was a false paradigm, because we're never going back to that. We need to be thinking about where we're going to be at the turn of the 22nd century, the end of this century. And that's where we need to be focusing on that. But at the same time, we also have a lot of choices in the paths that we walk. And, those paths, you know, vary from problems to apocalypse. And you, right now, have a lot of agency in which path we get to choose. And it can be very easy to feel overwhelmed and to say, like,“Hey, there are, you know, powerful forces in play,” but there's a lot in climate accounting that I actually think gives us a super power, which is to say, your footprint relates to my footprint. Right now, sitting in my office, I can choose, you know, the temperature that I set. I can choose how much electricity I use. I don't get to choose what the power plant, you know, produces for that electricity. But there is a relationship there. As they improve their footprint, my footprint will improve. As I improve my footprint, their footprint will improve. And frankly, that's really the, the, the power that we have is, is through a little bit of collective action. Not to use too much of a, like an activist term there, but like, I guess to, to say that, you know, it takes many soldiers to make an army. And no one soldier wins, will win the war on climate. But, you know, no army is formed, you know, in the climate fight without adding a lot of foot soldiers in it. That's kind of the story I tell my children. It's also worth remembering that humanity has been through some, you know, some tight squeezes before. And families were still happening during that time. Children were raised. There are a lot of complex things about, like, what causes, you know, people to start families. But if, if you're making that decision based on climate, I would say don't do that. There are, you know, there's a lot of hope for the future. And, frankly, if we're going to have hope for the future, it's going to come from that generation of people that were raised by people concerned about the climate in order to make an impact on it, now and into the future.

Emily: 27:06

Right. Absolutely. I mean this is, these are the types of conversations that we're starting to have. I have a 12 year old and a seven year old. And you know, they're, my 12 year old especially has a lot of questions about this type of thing. And I think you're right. It is important to be honest, and say, well, here's how you can take steps so that rather than being fearful, we're acknowledging and we're moving forward into the best possible future that we can create from here on out. So that's great. So once again, switching gears, we, the Riveo Impact Lab specifically reaches out to small businesses, to small business owners to kind of help them figure out how they can make an impact even in a small, from a small business perspective. So for anyone listening that is a small business owner looking to become more climate conscious, what's the first step that you would suggest that they take to align their operations, with appropriate sustainability goals?

Mike: 28:06

You know, there's a lot of, you know, kind of generic recommendations that I could give and I'd be happy to, to give a few of them. You know, your business is going to be different than others, but there's a lot of commonalities, and we can talk about that. But the first one that I would say here is, is, set a budget. If it's not money, at least time. One of the things that, then Senator Biden, used to say is don't tell me about, like, what you care about. Tell me about what your budget is, because that'll show me what you care about. And so, we all, you know, small business owner myself, you have to be very careful about, you know, the dollars spent, you know, and then, like, what you're spending your time on. But if you want to be committed to sustainability, carve out something. I don't care what it is, but just put in a dollar amount or a time amount that you're going to spend on it. That will inform a lot about, like what you do on a sustainability path. So probably the first thing is just carve out some time, in order to explore your options. Sustainability is a very, very broad category. It touches practically everything that you do. It includes, you know, everything from microplastics to, to air pollution to recycling programs. And you only have so many hours in the day. So make sure that, like, if you have a budget, that you're spending it on a thing. Now, if you're interested in going down a climate journey, which is a slice of the sustainability problem, and it also touches a lot of things, we'd love to help you at Aclymate. So, a little plug for us there, but, same sort of thing. Set a little bit of time, a little bit of a budget. Think about like, the again, our mantra, measure, reduce, offset. There are some free tools, if you're very if you're small and you're looking to kind of get started without like, spending any money on it, and you can go ahead and start to explore that and that'll tell you roughly where your footprint is and where your emissions are coming from. And then once you do that, you can go ahead and get started.

Emily: 30:08

That's great. Yeah. And I think everyone, like you said, I mean, even if you have to start with the free tools, everyone can start somewhere to just get involved and then, and like you said, measuring as even your first step. That's something that we really had to start taking on, because we were like, “Well, we don't know how to reduce if we don't even know what we're putting out.” So again, I would, I'm glad that you plugged Aclymate. I will do it a second time. Aclymate is a great resource [laughs] for being able to do that. And so you talked a little bit about, you know, like the Paris Climate Agreement and. If you could set one climate goal— this may be a hard question to answer, I don't know. But one climate goal that everyone you feel could rally around, what would that be and why?

Mike: 30:59

So it's worth talking about the idea that, we're probably not going to achieve our climate goals, like collectively from the Paris goals. The Paris pathway was, is that we need to cut about 50% of our emissions every decade for the next three decades. So 50% by 2030, 50% of the remainder by 2040, 50% of that remainder by 2050 gets, you know, roughly 90%. And so that's what the goals were. And that seems like a, an achievable thing that you do the hard, you know, the big stuff, you know, early and then do the harder stuff later. The problem is that's not really how human systems work. I am 100% skeptical we're going to get our goals by 2030. We're not going to cut 50% by then. But I am also very optimistic that we're going to achieve our goals by 2050. And so if you think of, what the two curves would look like, the reason I'm, I'm optimistic about 2050 is, is because, human systems tend to work, in, in exponential curves, where is that you're growing, you know, your company's at a certain size. I mean, you can, you know, grow by 20% this year, and 20% the next year and 20% of the year after that. That's not a 60% growth. That's, you know, approaching 80, 90, 100% growth, right? And so that's how human systems work. Put another way, if you are, let's say if you're doubling your impact on climate every five years, that means that you're going to feel like you're losing until you're about five years from the end. And so, the difference between the curves of what, like the Paris goals are and what I think we're actually going to achieve is, is the Paris goals are is like a fairly steep down slope now. And it kind of shallows out and gets close to the, the x axis over time. We’re staying fairly high and going to, you know, I think is going to kind of nosedive down towards the x axis as we approach 2050. Right? And so that delta between those two curves(for those of you that took, you know, calculus), that delta is our climate future like and how close we can get those two curves, is, is going to be, you know, how successful we are and what path we're choosing. And so I guess the goal that I would put here for everybody is, is to, make an impact this year, but as a percentage and see if you can do it again next year and the year after that. Try to get yourself on some sort of exponential emissions reductions path, because that's what's really going to shrink that gap. If you can go 10% this year, great. Do 10% again next year. But if you can do, if you can make that a 12%, it doesn't seem like all that lot. But if you can keep that 12% up, then you're going to make a lot more impact, a lot more quickly.

Emily: 33:50

Absolutely. That's great advice. And I think something that is very clear and that everyone can, like, like I asked, rally around. And I love hearing from an analytical perspective. Or it's clear that, you know, you're very, aware of the data and the science behind all of this. And there is still optimism there. You know, not false optimism. You know, we're not going to hit it in this particular time frame. We're not going back to where we were. But there is still hope to avoid, you know, an apocalyptic future. And we can do this. So I love that.

Mike: 34:25

I mean, I could even paint a little sunnier of a picture for you. There's, there's an art movement called solarpunk. Have you ever seen it?

Emily: 34:34

I don't think I have, but that sounds great. I would love to.

Mike: 34:37

Yeah. You know, so, like, there's the steampunk, which is kind of like this retro machine sort of thing, but solarpunk is kind of like this futuristic, like this world in which we have, you know, like, you know, new inventive technologies kind of surrounded by nature in the same way. And I think that there's a real pathway for that, you know, not to, you know, just to really let my nerd flag fly. You know, it's, you know, it's a little bit like, like kind of the future of, like, it's like a Star Trek world, kind of, you know. Like, we can have this sunny world where we've gone through the difficult times and we have this future where we've come out better both like in a societal organization, technological, but also nature like that we have come to a place where nature, you know, finds a new balance.

Emily: 35:25

I love that. I think that's fantastic. If that is what, you know, nerding out is, then I'm all about it. [Laughs]

Mike: 35:30

Well, I'm your nerd, then. [Laughs]

Emily: 35:33

That is a future that I think I can get behind. And I would love to look more into that solarpunk movement. That's fantastic. I think this is a good place to start wrapping up. But before we do, I just wanted to ask, Mike, we ask all of our guests, since this is the Riveo Impact Lab, what does impact, the term impact mean to you?

Mike: 35:53

I think impact’s, to a certain extent is identity. I've had a lot of identities in my life, you know, fighter pilot, now veteran, father, husband. One of the things I used to do in my time in the Navy Reserve, I ended up retiring out of the Navy Reserve, was I did a lot of funerals. Every military veteran’s entitled to a military burial, if they're so inclined. And so as a result, I would do about, like, 40 funerals a year on average. I was kind of in the background. Didn't do a whole lot other than, like, my a little bit of folding of the flag. But, you get to kind of really appreciating, the mark that you leave at the end of your life, and very little that it actually has to do with the money made, very little of it has to do with your titles. A lot of it has to do with the impact that you left upon the people that cared about you, and upon the world around you. And so people would talk about the stories, at these funerals of, of the things that people did. My own grandmother, like, she, after my grandfather retired, she was like, “Cool. My turn.” And then she started running a, a thrift shop, that was there to, to raise money for—she was really frustrated that disadvantaged community didn't have streetlights. And my gum, she was going to get streetlights for those folks. And so she started that. And that was the story people told about her. You know, and so that's, what I think about impact. You know, maybe a bit in, in, in the Stoics mindset of like, you know, “memento mori,” remember that one day you will die. And then within that construct, which is, what are you doing with your time on Earth? And if you were spending that time, well, people will tell stories of the legacy you left.

Emily: 37:53

I love that. I could not agree more. That is a fantastic story. Your grandmother sounds incredible.

Mike: 38:00

She was.

Emily: 38:01

You see something that is wrong in your community, and you say, “Well, I'm going to fix it. I'm not going to wait for someone else to fix it.” And I think that's the lesson that we can take from this conversation as well so. Mike, this was an incredible conversation. I feel very encouraged. And I thank you so much for your time with us. Before we let you go, where can people find you? You did mention it a little bit, but I'm going to let us end with that.

Mike: 38:24

Yeah, sure. Aclymate is, is the company. Had to techbro it up, because the the normal verb to, to acclimate, to change to, change in climate was taken. So, you can find Aclymate at aclymate.com. Again, that's aclymate.com. There's some contact information there associated with me. You also can go to theclimatedad.com. And that will redirect you to a couple of things. I'm on LinkedIn, social media, email. You know, I don't think I have carrier pigeon, but other than that, I'm in all the places.

Emily: 38:57

Awesome. Well thank you so much, Mike, for your time on the Riveo Impact Lab. We really appreciated having you here.

Mike: 39:03

I enjoyed being here. Thank you, Emily.

Emily: 39:04

Thank you.[electronic music][electronic music concludes] Want to make an impact? Start with measuring. When it comes to eco-friendly practices, you can start small. You can't change what you don't know. So even if you aren't ready to offset or reduce, you can begin with simply tracking your energy, waste and water usage.[music fades up] Thanks for listening and make sure to do good in the world. If you have questions you'd like us to address on the podcast, you can reach us at info@riveocreative.com. Subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss out on any of our incredible upcoming guests. We'll see you soon at the Riveo Impact Lab.[electronic music][electronic music concludes]