Fighting for a Livable Future: Exploring Frontier Climate Interventions with Kelly Erhart
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While current conversations about global heating tend to center around a few well-established pieces of science, we don't often hear about the scientists and leaders working at the frontier of what is still unknown about Earth's systems. This includes unpredictable tipping points and cascading effects of our rapidly changing climate, as well as the unconventional adaptation strategies that might help us maintain a stable planet. What is the newest climate science being researched right now, and what areas are we still needing to explore as we fight for a livable future?
In this episode, Nate is joined by climate philanthropist Kelly Erhart to discuss the urgent state of climate science and emerging response strategies beyond traditional mitigation and adaptation. Kelly explains the climate research that reveals increasingly alarming risks, including natural feedback loops such as glacier collapse, declining albedo (the reflectivity of Earth), and methane release from melting permafrost. They also discuss frontier emergency climate interventions such as oceanic carbon sequestration, atmospheric methane removal, and glacier stabilization strategies, among others – while emphasizing that none of these replace the need for the drastic reduction of emissions.
What are the biggest climate questions that are currently being researched? How can an interdisciplinary approach help us better understand the climate mitigation and adaptation options available to us? And finally, how do we, especially the youngest among us, maintain hope and motivation to continue working towards better outcomes for humanity and the planet?
(Conversation recorded on September 26th, 2025)
About Kelly Erhart:
Kelly Erhart is the Director of Partnerships at Outlier Projects (a climate philanthropy).
Her work at Outlier Projects focuses on funding teams that are accelerating research on efforts to improve forecasting of catastrophic risks, and research on tools that could help stabilize climate systems at the necessary speed and scale. Previously, she was a repeat climate non-profit founder and entrepreneur; including co-founding Vesta, a pioneering ocean-based carbon dioxide removal approach.
Erhart's multidisciplinary background spans climate technology development and commercialization, nonprofit leadership, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy. Erhart was also named one of Forbes 30 under 30 for Energy and Green Tech in 2026.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Climate change is nonlinear now, and I think that means that we need to take a nonlinear approach to solving it. |
| 0:06.0 | There already are, and there will continue to be devastating impacts to humans and ecosystems, |
| 0:10.0 | and so we need to finance ways to adapt. |
| 0:14.0 | And we also need to look upstream and be more clear-eyed about the risks that are on the tail end, |
| 0:20.0 | and be funding research and |
| 0:22.8 | supporting efforts to better predict those tail-end risks so that the most vulnerable people |
| 0:27.5 | in the world don't have to suffer the consequences of things that are impossible to adapt to. |
| 0:34.7 | You're listening to the Great Simplification. |
| 0:37.9 | I'm Nate Higgins. |
| 0:39.1 | On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 0:47.6 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming |
| 0:56.0 | great simplification. |
| 1:02.0 | Today I'm pleased to be joined by environmental nonprofit leader Kelly Earhart to give us an update on the key climate questions are in most need of further research. |
| 1:14.0 | Kelly Earhart is the director of partnerships at both outlier projects as well as gigascale capital. |
| 1:21.8 | Her work focuses on securing funding for key research and development into high-impact projects for addressing the global |
| 1:29.6 | heating crisis. Additionally, Kelly is the co-founder and advisor of Project Vesta, a pioneering |
| 1:36.8 | initiative using Oliveen weathering to sequester carbon dioxide. In this episode, Kelly gives |
| 1:43.6 | an overview of the key technologies and leverage |
| 1:46.4 | points for stabilizing Earth's climate system, including geoengineering techniques, |
| 1:53.1 | glacier stabilization, and reducing highly potent methane emissions. Kelly emphasizes the need |
| 2:00.0 | to continue to fund research and to explore every |
| 2:03.2 | option and when it comes to preserving our biosphere's health, a mission that is also at the core |
... |
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