Chuck Yates Needs A Job

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1:44 Hey, everybody. Welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job. The podcast. My guest today, Deena Reitman, DLA Piper. I was thinking this. When did we actually meet? You and I? Yeah. In person or

1:59 through the phone? Through the phone. Oh, my goodness. Maybe

2:05 2014. I actually did we meet it when you were at Constellation. Oh, we met when I was at Constellation. I think we did. I can't remember what we were working on, but there was like. Was it a.

2:18 It had to be some sort of a natural gas deal. It was something because Constellation owned some assets. We at one point tried to buy Felix Dawson and the MLP tried to buy an asset from us. That's

2:32 right. And I think we may have met them. That's right. I remember that So it had to be 2008 or before 2008. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy how time just flies. Yeah, and then you became my

2:44 lawyer. I know, we know it's even crazier is that I didn't remember that, I'm sorry. That's all right. Well, I should have remembered, but I didn't remember that. I'm such a memorable guy, I

2:53 get it. No, you're totally memorable, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, it's all good. So, do this for mom, it's benefit, 'cause mom watches the podcast. Hey mom. So, hey mom, tell mom who DLA

3:05 Piper is and what you're doing these days. Yeah, sure, so DLA Piper is a law firm, one of the largest in the world, and I'm really proud to be there. And what I do there is I run their

3:15 commodities subsector. So, I have a group of people that work with me, not for me, but with me all throughout the world. And we specialize in anything and everything commodities from agricultural

3:27 commodities, metal, your traditional oil and gas commodities, of course. But then we're also expanding and doing a lot with that

3:38 we have that nice base to allow us to expand to the newer commodities, in digital assets, so we do it all throughout the world. And so what's an example of like, is it trading contracts? Give me

3:51 some sort of example of the actual law you're doing. Okay, so yes, it's trading contracts. So any kind of supply chain type trading contract or hedging or the underlying business and commercial

4:08 needs of commodities companies, we do Because I literally grew up in a commodities trading firm. I just was telling you that. Yeah, tell that story, Robin, this is so

4:16 cool. Okay, so this is embarrassing. And if my parents really are listening, I'm sorry, folks. So yeah, so one of the first in my family to go to college and they sent me off to NYU, but they

4:29 couldn't afford the meal plan. Now, if you talk to my dad, he'll say he didn't buy a meal plan because I would never eat it. But I actually know that they couldn't afford the meal plan And so I

4:39 was starving to death, like literally starving to death. seven pounds. And so I went to the World Financial Center and I knocked on doors. And I became the office manager at 18 years old of Revco

4:51 Inc. So I've been a commodity since I've been 18, which is a very long time and do not ask me how long. No, of course not. That is so cool. That's awesome. So you said something that surprised

5:03 me. Okay. And I guess now we're hearing it, but carbon's a commodity. What does that mean? What's going on in there? Yeah. So a lot of people don't know that. And actually it's been great for

5:14 me to educate and it's been great for my practice. So carbon like renewable energy credits can be traded through certificates or the purchase and sale of certificates. And so the way I come to the

5:30 conclusion that carbon is a commodity is that in the federal register where the CFTC defines what is a swag. and see if

5:44 CTFC come out. Oh yeah, I should tell you what that is. That's the Commodity Future Trading Commission. So that in the United States is our regulatory body over commodities and interstate commerce.

5:55 So I don't know if you remember this, but in like 2008,

6:00 there was a huge crash. Remember and the regulators were saying it was a huge crash because of all the speculation. And so they blamed the crash on a large amount of speculation in the oil and gas

6:14 markets, the commodities markets, et cetera. And so they created a construct under the Dodd-Frank Act called a swap. And so what is a swap? And so for years and years, they debated and had

6:30 conversations through notices of proposed rulemaking with the industry as to what is a swap. And in this thousands of pages, There's this little section about. renewable energy credit and what is a

6:44 renewable energy credit and is it swap because when you buy and sell renewable energy certificate or renewable energy credit, you're literally just transferring that certificate from one account to

6:57 the other. And there's all this talk about, well, can't ever be physical. It's not physical. It's not anything. It's not, you know, it's not a commodity, is it a commodity. And so where they

7:08 end up is they say that it is, this renewable energy certificate is an is an environmental commodity. Now they won't tell you or define what an environmental commodity is per se, but just taking

7:24 from that carbon as an extension is an environmental commodity. And then taking from that even further, the way that the carbon credit is transferred between the buyer's account and the seller's

7:37 account is similar to how you transfer the renewable energy credit.

7:42 Again, taking from that and the years and years and years in commodities, since '18, carbon is a commodity. So carbon, when you buy and sell that certificate, which is almost like the commodity

7:57 itself as a certificate, you have to make sure you don't run a fell of the Commodity Future Trading Commission rules. Got it, okay, now I actually understood that So start me off on how we even

8:11 create a certificate. Oh yeah. If I choose to plant a tree, can I create a certificate? Are there organizations, regulatory bodies that certify? How does that even start? Yeah, so that's a

8:24 really, really good question. And it's a little bit more involved than just planting a tree. Although planting a tree does remove carbon from the air. If we're gonna buy and sell these things,

8:37 people have to have faith, that it is an identity. Conditional carbon reduction, so I know that that sounds super weird because it's an additional reduction

8:48 But the way this works is especially in the voluntary markets you have what's called registries or bodies they're not necessarily government bodies in the involuntary markets or regulatory bodies,

9:03 but they're bodies and these bodies set rules and the rules are called methodologies and the methodologies are simply mathematical equations where they set up baseline Chuck of What the carbon should

9:18 be from a certain activity, right? So what should the carbon be for a certain activity that your baseline and then you have to prove through a mathematical Equation that you are reducing carbon or

9:30 removing carbon in addition to that Baseline, right? So that you get to go below the baseline and then when you go below the baseline Um, they take the carbon dioxide equivalent, like, so one

9:45 metric ton. And then that is issued in the form of a certificate. Now right now most registries do that through serial number, right? So like they give that one CO2 equivalent, you know, cause

10:02 there's also methane in there. There's a lot of greenhouse gas, but they reduce it to the carbon dioxide equivalent One metric ton is a serial number, a certificate. And that's what most people

10:12 are doing today. But with the world of digital assets, I mean, that's going to be game changer. So are there two registries on the planet or 10, 000 or somewhere in between? And are there shade,

10:29 are there better ones versus weaker ones? What is, I don't even know what that world looks like. Yeah. So I don't know, it depends on what you think is better So there are. multiple registries,

10:41 there are some major ones, right? So like, as a former, you know, commodities like trading lawyer, and that was all I did, the ones that are bigger seem to be good, because the, you know,

10:55 the supply and demand is there, you know, you have the right mechanisms to get the right pricing, right? So there are some big ones that have a lot of projects on them, and a lot of people

11:04 interested, right? Are they the best? I don't know if that's the right answer, because they are allowed to set their own methodologies and their own standards, and some of them are very strict on

11:18 what they will allow on their registry. So, you know, as a former, well, not former, as an oil and gas lawyer, some of the big boys don't have any methodologies that allow a reduction in oil

11:30 and gas, for example, in an oil and gas technology or in an oil and gas activity, right? So, perhaps they're better because they are, you know, bigger. The love's to man, but perhaps they're

11:41 not better because they're excluding a large chunk of the market, right? But then you have smaller ones that are popping up all over the place, like all over the place that are seeing this need and

11:53 they're trying to fill that need, right? Trying to set up different registries with different methodologies that tackle all sorts of activity and technology, including, you know, you know, vegan

12:08 leather, methane capture, and all these things don't exist or in the process of becoming a thing. So there are multiple, there's not thousands, but there are multiple and more and more popping up.

12:21 Gotcha. That's interesting. What it feels like to me, having just heard your answer is cell phone, cell phones in the beginning, networks were kind of popping up everywhere with different kind of

12:36 features. And here we are. 50 years later, or 40 years later, and there are five of them. I think that's what's going to happen for sure. That's what kind of feels like it's going to happen.

12:47 The vegan leather one works really well. Big guy's going to buy the small guy. And they're going to have that specialty. Oh, that's interesting. Or it's going to be the guys that have the vision

12:57 on the technology. Okay. That are going to be the ones that will probably survive or take over. Because a lot of what we have here is we have someone telling you, remember, I told you about that

13:09 methodology, and then they do that calculation to show you how much they reduce right now. It's just someone doing a calculation and they write this really long report and they send the report in

13:19 and you believe the report. Right. The more we get this kind of measurement on a blockchain or through meters or through a technology that can't be changed. Remember, we were talking about crypto

13:34 before this whole thing started those credits that come out in the end. going to be more valuable because then you actually know what you're buying and you know it hasn't been changed or messed with

13:45 or whatever the case may be and you're going to have more people wanting to buy that one. So I actually think it may not even be the bigger ones that end up surviving. It'll be the ones that are

13:53 able to use technology to get rid of probably the largest risk which is fraud like it's not real like or it's already bought and sold before right and all that will go away through the use of

14:06 technology. Yeah, because at the end of the day, generally speaking, transparency wins in the long run. It may not win in the short run, but generally speaking. So that's how we're creating

14:18 certificates.

14:22 I've got my factory, I do 100, I've got a project reducing it to 80. So I'm going to have a certificate for 20 that I can go out and sell who's buying this stuff, who's on the other side of the

14:35 trade. Right, so that is what's really interesting right now. So most of the registries have rules that say, when you buy the certificate, you must consume it. And you understand why they have

14:48 those rules, right? They have those rules because they wanna help the environment. What they don't want is for someone to buy the certificate, hold on to it forever, never consume it or retire it,

15:01 they call it, because then, you know, the environment's not really helped, right? Like it's literally just sitting in - Okay, I have cookie monster in my mind, eating cookies What does consume

15:10 mean? Right, so consumes means retired. So it means that once that certificate is retired, it's like, at a commission, and that reduction actually sticks, is that the right word? Look at that

15:24 reduction actually happened then, because then no one else can use that certificate for anything else, right? So, back to my factory, I created my certificate for 20,

15:39 Consume means tear it up. Consume means tear it up. And most registries have rules that want you to retire because they want to help the environment. If you don't tear it up and then we just get

15:49 this huge, think about it, we just have this huge inventory of credits no one will make them anymore. Who's gonna invest in a project? I could just buy credits from somebody 'cause he never used

15:57 them, right? So they have to be consumed, just like oil or gas would be consumed, right? So we think create this, almost like we wouldn't any other commodities market They create this natural

16:08 consumption. So most registries have rules about consumption. So who's buying it? Those that need to consume. But really in this country, there's no real like requirement. So

16:25 there are other buyers popping up and then there are also very entrepreneurial buyers that are popping up that see that the writing on the wall that at some point, whether it's from government

16:35 regulation or whether it's from your consumer saying carbon, right? Like, so you're some big retailer, right? And you know that customers are leaving you because you're a competitor saying that

16:46 they're offsetting, right? Like, there are buyers out there that are buying them up saying that they're going to consume them because they know that there's going to be demand later. So there are

16:59 ways to get around this consumption and it's not necessarily around it, but registries are getting smart. So like some of the, again, like you said about the cell phones. So it's ever, whoever

17:10 can think ahead in the market is going to be the winner. So some of these smaller registries are getting smart. And they're saying, I'm going to set up different types of buyers. So I'm going to

17:19 set up an aggregate buyer. So some of them have like tags that say aggregate buyer, which you would think of between you and I would almost be like, like a marketer, right? So they're allowing

17:30 that now. So you could buy them an aggregate and then sell them some of the smaller registries, even some of the larger ones have been. gone to put language in their rules about agents or marketers.

17:44 So right now the buyers are consumers, although I have to say the trend is moving towards people understanding in this market that there is going to be a Russia demand at some point and they need

17:56 aggregators and they need marketers. Like my mom's going to want to credit at one point. She's not going to want to open an account, he has to pay the butt to open an account Because the thing I'm

18:05 trying to wrap my head around is, and I've talked a lot about this on the podcast, and I think the genesis of talking about it was a couple of years ago with Dan Pickering when he came on, you know,

18:16 as much as we like to say this is big, bad government. Yes, she, no, this has been consumer led. I mean, my three kids have led the greatest life of any three kids on the planet. Mine too. I

18:28 would love to come back as one of my kids. It would be great If you ask him tomorrow, hey, do you want to get rid of oil and gas? Oh yeah, we need to ban that. in a heartbeat. I know, and

18:38 literally it's like in everything that they have and it's in their clothes, it's in the table. I, it's probably what helped them go to school. Exactly. I do. Live this great life. Yeah, no,

18:50 it's, it's crazy. And I always, a little snarky back. I'm like, hey, I know how we can shut them all down. How's that dad? Stop using it. You can just stop using it. You don't need to drive

19:01 your car there. You can walk and stuff. But anyway, that seems to fall on death ears But so I'm thinking through these buyers and someone that's retiring it,

19:13 let's pick somebody, a big consumer company, Coca-Cola. They buy 'em 'cause they wanna be able to say - That's right. We have done XYZ in reducing carbon as part of this. Do I ever go buy them

19:28 because I need X amount of credits to be able to build my new factory? So in my mind, that doesn't get rid of it. No, no, so you're kind of mixing between like a compliance market model and a

19:46 voluntary market model. Now, just my personality is I believe that as a free market, like we can figure this out. In my mind, I think you should be consumer driven. Like you were saying, right?

19:56 Like my kids, your kids, you know, maybe even me at some point will get a little bit more into this, I do this for a living Right. You're going to want to find the Coke can or the makeup that

20:10 says, listen, this was carbon neutral, right? And so why do I want to do that? Because I kind of love the planet, and I know that I have to do my part. So yeah, I think it should be consumer

20:22 driven. And usually, if we allow the markets to work, it will be consumer driven, right? Like that's one approach. That's one idea. Another idea is it's regulated. compliance market, like

20:34 someone tells you, like in your example, if you're going to start a factory, you need to have X amount of carbon credits in your Profile to offset what you're doing and that's like a mandated thing

20:44 And maybe it's not one or the other. Maybe it's a mixture of both But you're definitely hitting on something like it has to go from being a luxury buy to just a buy and once we can do that then You

21:00 know the markets will take off. Yeah, that's my belief. That's my theory I mean, I literally structure businesses all day long on that belief in that theory Paul Thank you is the oil and gas

21:10 research guy a long time at Deutsche Bank and now on his own He describes it this way. He said I told my wife 25 years ago. Just buy organic. Just go ahead and buy it Let's make it the standard.

21:23 Let's pay extra for it and once you know that becomes standard then that's great That's good for for all of us and so to your point it's I now see what you're saying. It's like, oh, I'm gonna buy

21:34 Coke and not Pepsi or Pepsi, not Coke because it's carbon neutral. That's right, and I'm gonna do it too. I'm gonna do it because my kids want me to and I'm gonna do it because it's the right

21:43 thing to do. I mean, we close the whole, in the ozone layer, we can do this. Right. Right, we can do this. We don't need necessarily, listen, the European model is all about

21:56 regulation and compliance and we comply markets and everything needs to be done through the government. And we're seeing in this country a little bit more of the activity and like the real excitement

22:11 is where we're finding we can make money in the industry where it's consumer driven. And we're getting standardization through just the fact that we want our markets to work. I think we don't need a

22:22 government to tell us we need standardization, do we? 'Cause we need it, right? We need transparency, like you said, 'cause we want our markets to work So the British girlfriend. that I have

22:32 never watches this podcast anyway. So I'll go ahead and say it. The Europeans don't mind being told what to do. And we just really hate that. We just don't do it. It's just not our jam. It's not

22:42 our jam. Exactly, why run to California to go pan for gold 'cause we can get rich and we chose to do it, not because someone in the government told us to do it. So yeah, no, I got it. So any

22:56 idea how big this market is? Right now Right now, just even ballpark-ish 'cause if you told me it was 25 million, I'd be like, Okay, that didn't surprise me. If you told me it was 500 billion,

23:10 that wouldn't surprise me. Any idea how much of this is trading? I had no idea how big it is right now, but it's supposedly gonna be over 400 billion market by 2050. It's gonna eclipse the energy

23:22 market. Okay. I mean, I don't know, there was this new show on Netflix that Glenn keeps trying to get me to watch where it supposedly takes place in 2050.

23:33 and your carbon footprint is your money. Your profile, your carbon score. Yeah, if your carbon score is your money. You know, that actually happens today. I had the lady that's running for

23:45 Attorney General in Louisiana, and she's the solicitor general of Louisiana. She has sued the federal government numerous times on your carbon score, meaning they are using, and you're seeing a

23:58 lot of this in the news, if you'll charge your phone at night instead of during the day, you have a better carbon score, therefore they're more likely to loan you money. I mean, this is becoming

24:09 a real thing. Well, I'm telling you, whatever that show is, and I'll have to ask Glenn what the name of it is, 'cause I can't remember, but it's real. And well, in the show, it's real, and

24:17 it's your currency. Yeah. Like how much you can produce is how, like you said, how much loan money you can get, like where you can go, almost like you're locked in the shows, of course, it's

24:27 over the top. It's almost like you're locked in your house,

24:31 carbon commodity to go out that day. No, that's. And it's all commodities. Right. And it starts from when I was 18 years old. I kid you not. Well, this is funny and a funny side night on this.

24:45 Your husband has negotiated. I don't know how many bank deals for me. I don't think I've ever met him in person. Really? I don't think I ever have. I think I've only talked to him on the phone.

24:56 We use DLA Piper for gosh I forget when we switched from making Gump. When Jacqueline Guacame over. So whenever Jack left. I don't remember when that was. Yeah. Because Glenn was with him. Yeah.

25:08 But 2004 happened to wait 2005. I don't remember. But yeah, they're really good friends. Yeah, no, it was great. I've talked to your husband a million times on bank deals. Although my guys

25:18 figured out early on don't let Chuck near the legal documents because then he starts asking questions. So I only got when somebody walked into my office and they were talking about legal problems

25:29 that it's like. legal agreements. It's like, oh my god, there's a bit, there's a big problem. So anyway, that's funny. You have to meet him. Oh, we work together. Dara and y'all haven't

25:39 killed each other. No, it's amazing. It's wonderful. I swear and everyone asks if we will kill each other, but we work together. So he's a finance lawyer and obviously I do commodities. And so

25:51 when you try to, if we're going to talk about carbon and like financing these projects, like he and I are like, like peanut butter and jelly because I'm trying to structure the finance of the

26:04 carbon stream, right? And he's trying to tell me, you know, oh, well, that looks like debt. And I'm like, I don't want it to be debt. I wanted to be project finance of the stream. I wanted

26:13 to be a stream. And so no, we come up with structures together. Oh, that's cool. So, so give me like two or three, just example of law work you've done. Now that we've kind of talked about,

26:26 we've got the market of. people creating certificates, understand why buyers will buy them.

26:35 What are you doing to facilitate that like on various sides? Oh, okay. So I do a lot. So let's talk about, let's almost like take it lifecycle. Yep. So when you have a project and your project

26:53 is going to additionally reduce carbon, you need money. Right? Let's just take the most vanilla example that I have in my repertoire right now, which is like a cook stove project in Africa or

27:07 something. You need money to actually manufacture the cook stove. So there are companies out there that have money to deploy like funds to projects that are going to be creating a carbon credit

27:27 stream or stream of carbon credit. And so what I do then is on both sides. I'll either represent the project, right? They have a lot of projects. You mentioned planting trees. I have tons of

27:40 projects that are looking for money that I'm structuring the finance because they're bringing money in for their stream of carbon credit that will come, either they're either being produced or they

27:51 will come in the future. Now that's a wrinkle, um, which forest land, forest land all over Canada. I hemp farmers. I have rice farmers. I have in Asia, right? Projects. So legally I helped

28:04 the project developer structure their finance for that

28:10 stream of carbon credit, right? So they will then sell that carbon credit. It's not debt. So they don't have to pay it back, which is great It's not equity. So I don't have to worry about the

28:21 SEC, which is the Security Exchange Commission. It's a commodity that we're selling. We sell forward. So I do that. And I do it from the other side too. So like from the funds that are trying to

28:30 deploy capital, I help them do that too, which involves a lot of due diligence, right? So I've got teams that we work with in Africa and Asia and we've got people who work for us who speak Spanish

28:41 because a lot of these projects are in Honduras or Latin America, right? Where there's rainforest and things. So I do that. So I do for both sides. There's often an indigenous community, which

28:53 needs to be represented, or you help somehow carve out some money to help the indigenous community, right? So I do that. But then, you know, right to my roots, I help people figure out how to

29:06 market it and trade it and set up exchanges and set up registries. So one of my greatest friends, who you know, is Jim Rao. Okay? Jim Rao is starting a registry, like a carbon registry called

29:21 Capturian And he is one of the first to put money towards creating a digital asset. carbon. Like he's putting a ton of investment in a registry that will have that certificate member, how I told

29:36 you most of them are by serial number, not his. He's going to tokenize it, which has every piece of information on it from that project all the way so you can see what you're buying and he's going

29:50 to create an exchange for that eventually. I mean, there's regulation about the exchange, but I do all that. All the commodities work. And by me, I mean, really, we have a team. I mean, we

29:59 have a team of people at DLA. We have a chief technology officer that we bring in from soup to nuts, all of it. So we do it. So I'll give an example Kane Anderson, where this is pre me getting

30:11 fired. So let's say

30:14 2019. Okay, we're gonna But, uh.

30:25 You know, we just celebrated the three year anniversary of your fire. Yeah. Three years of being unemployed. But anyway, so let's say pre that 2019, we're going to send out documents for a

30:38 startup oil and gas company with a new management team, right? Literally 98 of those documents, standardized, we changed some names, whatever we send it to them, we negotiate, maybe 5 of it

30:54 gets negotiated. And so I will say that is level 10, standardization. I will say the first deal that Julian smith did for us, even before we met Jacqueline Gua and we were doing a deal, we

31:12 created it from scratch. I mean, we were. Yeah, that's what we're doing. Yeah. So where are we on a scale of zero to 10 or one to 10? Okay on a deal. So I come into you and I'm gonna plant

31:25 trees and save the rainforest and do all this, how much, and I know I'm asking you to guesstimate, but how much of this is like, hey, the market's kind of developed about this 50 and we're going

31:37 to wind up negotiating this 50 is it 80, 20, zero, zero and we have so many people out there that are trying to develop their own forms or lawyers that are trying to do this based upon things that

31:54 they've done in the past like maybe they are a dead lawyer or maybe they are a finance lawyer for cars or whatever and so they'll use forms that they had and they try to adopt them for this market

32:05 super

32:07 risky because it is a regulated it is regulated by the safety scene you have to be super careful so I'd say zero because I can't tell you how many times I get documents from other law firms whatever

32:19 and I'm like mmm mmm like you can't even show me where you have title to this But yet, you want my client to give you money, like no, like this document has to have, you know, I need to see your

32:31 accounts, I need to see who owns it, I need to see your project operations. It's not as easy as just like plugging things in yet, but it's getting better. But every time I do it, I think of

32:45 something else I want to do better, right? So like, you know, one deal had a donation agreement attached to it And like, I did this donation agreement, I did like a two-pager at, you know,

32:58 you're going to give money to the, to the community. And as I thought about it, I'm like, no, no, no, no, it needs to be better than that, right? Like it needs to be like tied somehow to let

33:07 the community know that this isn't like, you know, we're not colonizing them, you know, like there has to be some sort of not only just donation, but perhaps education component, you know what I

33:16 mean? So like every time I do, I do it better at some point, I'll get to a 10. Right now I don't think we're anywhere near a 10 So that's really cool. for being a lawyer, right? I mean, it's

33:27 fun being in the wild, wild west, Captain Kirk, Goat boldly going where no man's gone before. The, how prohibitive have you seen that on deals? Meaning, to some degree when I'm buying an asset

33:44 from natural gas partners, whatever, we know what the sale and purchase agreement looks like. We may not get something done 'cause we're fighting, but we at least know the five things we need to

33:54 argue about I would almost think starting from scratch, it kills a lot more stuff, but am I making that up? No, no, it kills a lot of stuff. I've had one thing die this week.

34:05 People are super motivated. Okay. I mean, I know I feel, I feel like, you know, I don't mean to be like, I'm not green or granola-y at all, but people are really motivated. People wanna do

34:17 this. Depending upon what they're motivated by, I mean, there's a lot of money to be made here. I think about what I just said. They're saying this is gonna eclipse.

34:25 the oil and gas markets, right? Like this is gonna be, there's a lot of money to be made here. So yes, deals die, but you know, just smile.

34:35 Just smile, I had some guys, some law firm, like last week, like he kept cutting me off. And it was like, you just keep cutting me off. You just got to stop cutting me off. And if you just let

34:46 me explain it to you, I do this all day, every day. And I promise I want to get this done.

34:52 And it works, it works, but you're right Things do die a little bit more than you would probably see in what we used to do a lot of, you know, yeah. And, you know, it may be the same amount

35:02 dies, it just dies before you get called, you know? I mean, if I was going to buy something from natural gas partners and there was a red flag, I'd pick up the phone and call them and just say,

35:13 Hey guys, what are we going to do about this one title issue? Well, you're just going to have to take it and never mind, you know, so it may, it may actually just die quicker.

35:23 Okay, so that's cool, that's happening. So I guess money to be made is you'll have registries make money 'cause I'll figure out how to be better, just like any other service provider. You'll have

35:36 legal, you'll have

35:39 finance, just like any other business. Right. And then at the end of the day, projects, if I can sell the certificates for more than I paid to generate them, I make money. Right, and you're

35:50 also selling the thing Yeah. Like in my example, you're selling the cook stoves. Yeah. And the vegan leather. Right. And like I said, I got another exchange, I'm setting up Pan Exchange. I

36:02 don't know if you've heard of them. So they're an agricultural

36:07 exchange, right? And it's agricultural farming. They're also selling the farmland. Yeah. I mean, it's just another revenue source. Like I had lunch today with these guys that have this really

36:18 cool idea It's like a, it's like a methane.

36:22 super cool idea, almost like a methane capture. And that's reducing carbon gas, but they're not monetizing it. It's like, you guys are literally giving up an entire stream of revenue.

36:37 Why? Let's think about, let's talk about how we monetize that. Let's go. 'Cause I mean, we did, so we did a, what we call a Netflix streaming event back during the pandemic, here at Digital

36:48 Wildcatters, that we called

36:53 Zero. And it was about driving emissions and the oil and gas business to Zero. And one of the things that came out of putting that content out is there is so much of that happening in the oil and

37:06 gas business, but no one tells that story. So we don't get any credit for it. No, it upsets me. It really upsets me too. It upsets me so much. With this, with this, my iPhone, I could go

37:18 document this stuff. You know, it upsets me. I'm on speaking circuit. and I'm like, you have to stop the Oregon soil and gas industry. Do you know how many clients I have that have just

37:28 knowledge in their head that if we would just let them deploy it? Tell them to sit right here and tell that story. I know, I should tell you, I should have these guys talk to you for real. Yeah.

37:38 It's so much knowledge. Because, and I said this to a very prominent private equity, oil and gas professional, couple of weeks ago who I've known forever as a dear friend, I actually said, you

37:50 need to come on the podcast and talk about all you've done. Ah, not really my thing, I don't want to do it. Yeah, because I'm gonna beat him up. I go, guess what, in a vacuum, the other side

37:59 gets a talk and I go, the environmentalist and what they've done, demonizing this industry would not happen if the general public knew that you existed and all you've done for the charitable folks

38:12 around Houston. 'Cause this guy's been amazing. He's been on multiple boards, charities. Maybe he's gonna get him on here. Yeah, he just beat each other. I'm literally on speaking circuits.

38:22 the war on this industry. Like I said, there are registries that literally were set up and one of their major tenants were, was no hydrocarbon projects, period. Can you believe it? Yeah. The

38:33 one place where we, I mean, shoot, when I was at Chevron, this was before my youngest was born, when I was at Chevron, we were doing this stuff then, before it was cool. Yeah, and we don't

38:43 tell this story. We don't tell the story. We don't tell the stories at all. And you know what's interesting is if one of the things I've gotten being the unemployed social media influencer that I

38:52 am, ha ha. But being kind of outside of energy and seeing around, what's amazing today is you cannot tell the difference between a private equity fund, a venture capital fund and a media company.

39:07 Pull up Andreessen Horowitz's website, VC fund. Mark Andreessen, arguably the greatest tech investor these days, certainly one of them. And you pull up the homepage It's here's our podcast on.

39:20 future gaming, what we think is gonna happen there. Here's our newsletter on this. It's all this great content. And then you go to energy, any of the energy private equity funds, and you're like,

39:31 well, let me see your content. And they're like, oh, we don't do that. Yeah, we don't do that. We stick our head in the sand. And then they sit there and go, but we can't raise money. And I

39:39 go, you're trying to raise money, like people did 20 years ago, the rest of the world, I mean, there are people crowd surfing 500 million funds on Twitter that started literally in their mom's

39:51 basement, but they became an acknowledged expert on storage, on whatever, convenience stores, whatever, just because they became thought leaders and people sought them out. And so, yeah, the

40:04 fact we don't use content, we're kind of getting what we deserve. I hate to say that in the energy business, but if we're not gonna tell our stories, then - I know, I know what, think about it,

40:14 they are being demonized, you said it, and they're being beaten up. So it takes a lot. a lot of guts to be like, um, can you just let me spec? Like I said, can you just let me finish? Can you

40:25 just let me say what I'm going to say? Can you please just let me speak? Because if you let me speak, then I think we can work together. But that's why I'm all about really this voluntary market,

40:35 like this free market, because I think at some point it's going to correct itself. We're going to need that knowledge. We're going to need that, we're going to need that knowledge. I mean, how

40:45 do we do without their knowledge? I mean, I got, I got a friend. I see it, Chevron. I can't remember where it was, but, um, chemist and, um, you know, he's making some really cool stuff in

40:56 water, which is going to be the next big thing, right? And he's came from, I think, it was Chevron. Do you see, you get my point. Yeah. And, and quite frankly, I haven't been able to wrap

41:08 my head around it. So I'll pose the question to you, but I'll go first just so I'm not sandbagging you Thank you.

41:15 At the end of the day, I always say on the podcast, there's no peeing and non-pying section of the pool, right? So if China and India are gonna pollute, we can do all we want to. Doesn't matter,

41:24 it's one pool, right? And so being able to force China and India to do stuff, I don't know that we can do that regulatory-wise. I mean, 'cause you put laws in place, people get around laws,

41:42 they do whatever I almost think it has to be voluntary. I think people in the United States, if they want to buy carbon neutral stuff,

41:55 if they do that, that's what drives up potentially China and India providing us with products more so than anything we could do trying to get something out of Congress. So that's my question.

42:08 You're preaching to the choir. I don't know the future. I do know that there are some regulations out there that are trying to almost like solve what you just raised is a really important problem.

42:20 They're corresponding adjustments.

42:24 It's not here. We don't have those regulations yet, but it's like when you have, so say, my example,

42:34 my farmer,

42:37 say that they create the additional reduction in Honduras. There is laws that are on the books that if you create the credit or the additional reduction in Honduras, it needs to be used retired in

42:54 Honduras, right? And there are laws coming out to make that a thing and make that happen. Now, I don't know the future. I don't know what that will do to my whole theory about voluntary markets

43:09 or what voluntary markets can do like if if voluntary markets will be allowed to be used in different countries or what the heck the case may be because right now they can, it's a global market, but

43:19 you're right, that is an issue that I'm hoping you're even more right than you think that the consumer driven, the market drive will use that to make India and China do what they have to do for the

43:35 environment, I just don't know, so. Yeah, I don't know that I've thought that through, I do think one of the big things that highlights is our previous point is that we've got to do a better job

43:48 of educating, just because if we're going to have a consumer led reduction in carbon, we need to make sure it's not a splashy Madison Avenue ad firm that led to all this buying and it's actual real

44:05 reduction in it. Yeah, there has to be real reduction. That's what I told you most of them have rules about consumption. create consumption like you wouldn't any commodity market, right? Like

44:15 you don't pull oil out of the ground to just look at it. Right. Right. Like at some point somebody needs to consume it. Right. So that's got, that's the key. It has to be used like a commodity

44:26 and it has to be fungible like a commodity. Yeah. And I think I'm the front end, the certification that needs to be real. And yeah. And that's what you're saying. The technology piece to make

44:35 that certification real is going to be what drives more and more and more investment and more and more projects. And we'll drive the market to get better and better. I mean, think about it.

44:47 Wouldn't you, if you were running a fund that had money to give, wouldn't you rather give it to someone who you knew had the technology to really keep track of the reduction tied to that, you know,

44:58 that activity in the project, tied to that certificate, tied to whoever you bought and sold it from, right? I mean, that's going to be key. That's really cool. It's, it's, It's fascinating to

45:11 me because one, it's being consumer-led too, as we talked about earlier. It's the wild, wild west. It is, yeah. I mean, this is kind of new days and so they're interesting things to surround

45:21 and think about. And it's only going to get bigger. It's only going to get bigger. I mean, this is a tidal wave. It's a tidal wave. Yeah. It's going to be huge. Like, huge. I'm just so happy

45:31 that I get to do it. And it just so happens that I get to do it because I'm starving.

45:39 Thanks, dad

45:41 Well, you're not starving now, but yeah,

45:45 I was just so lucky, just so lucky. Two partners at DLA probably doing okay. Yeah, no, we're not. We're so than an unemployed podcast. That's right. Chef Gates needs a job. Chef Gates needs a

45:56 job. Were you cool to come on and talk about this? This was awesome. How do people reach you? Yeah. So they can reach me through my email address, which is dinarightmentgmailcom.

46:09 D-L-A-Pipercom and it's hard to spell. Thanks, Dad. D-E-A-N-N-A. R-E-I-T-M-A-N at D-L-A-Pipercom. Or they can just find me on LinkedIn. Finding me on LinkedIn is super easy and I'm constantly

46:27 answering the DM. People ask me to post videos and things. They can just write in the DM if

46:31 they want me to answer a question, if I didn't answer it here. Happy to, not a problem. Very cool, very cool Well, tell your husband I'm looking forward to meeting him at some point. I will.

46:42 And thanks for coming on. Oh, you're so welcome.