Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 403: Peter Kalmus

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

Peter Kalmus, environmental scientist, author, and activist joins the DTFH! Download Peter's book, Being the Change, and learn more about him on his website. David Nichtern, Duncan's meditation teacher, is leading a new 100-hour meditation teacher training! Learn more at Tibet House US. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Thuma - Get FREE shipping on your order! Just visit thuma.co/duncan. BetterHelp - Visit betterhealth.com/duncan to find a great counselor and get 10% off of your first month of counseling! DHM Detox - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and save 20% on your first order!

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Welcome. When you die, you step out of a simulator in a video arcade in a mall in the future and realize you're playing a game called don't be an asshole. It was the early 90s or maybe the late 80s. I can't really remember. I was driving through Fletcher, North Carolina with two of my dear friends and we were high as a fucking kite on really good acid. Darryl was at the wheel, shouldn't have been driving, but he was good at driving on acid. It was something he was proud of and he looked in the back seat where Jerry was writhing around laughing and said to him, Jerry, we're almost out of quarters.

Jerry said, what do you mean? And he said, the simulator, don't you remember we're in a simulator at the mall that makes it seem like you're riding in a car. I thought this was hilarious and went along with it. Yeah, man, we're about out of money, so we need some more quarters. At that point, Jerry sat upright and said, I'll put some more quarters in and jumped out of the car. Luckily, we were slowing down for a stoplight. Looking back, I'm not sure if Jerry really believed we were in a simulator or if he was trying to teach us a kind of transcendent lesson, a message to all those who subscribe to any ideology that gives you the sense that the world you're living in is an illusion. In some ways, I think Jerry jumping out of the car high on acid was a critique of those

particular modes of thinking. Yeah, sure, they're great as a temporary thought experiment, but the reality of the situation is we're not in a simulator. People can really get hurt here. Not just people, trees and animals and all the sweet furry darlings that live on our planet that we share with them. This conversation with the day's guest Peter Kalmas reminded me of this in a really intensely beautiful way. So stick around, we'll be back after this. You know, I know that many of you are sleeping on old clumps of hair or bits of rusty metal that you've woven together using the dried tendons you found in the dumpster outside of the slaughterhouse near where you live, but you deserve a better bed than that. That old ugly hunk of metal and rotting flesh

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C-O slash Duncan to get the bed by Fuma. Shipped right to your door for free. Fuma.co slash Duncan. They're beautiful. Check them out. They're very beautiful bed frames and you're going to love your Fuma. Much thanks to those of you who have subscribed to the DTFH Patreon. We are now over 2,000 members, which is incredible. If you feel the call of a community of eccentric, brilliant geniuses, scientists, dominatrixes, I'm assuming there's a few there, transsexual, pansexual, artistic, magical, darmic lunatics, then go to Patreon.com slash DTFH and subscribe. It's time for you to come home to your family. You're going to get commercial free episodes of the DTFH and if you subscribe to the Video Tears, then three times a week you could join us as we

gather together. Tuesdays, it's our group meditation journey into boredom. Wednesdays, it's our book club. It's not too late for you to sign up. We are reading the horrifically cursed book, House of Leaves, and then Friday, it's our family gathering. Come join us. Come join your family. We're also going to probably start a movie night pretty soon. There's also a Discord server where you can hang out with fellow DTFHers, the family, and get to know us and yourself, your dreams where you're getting your head slowly pulled off of your torso by a thing with massive dripping, clawed, furry, stinking, musty hands that have anal glands on their fingers will stop the moment you subscribe to patreon.com slash DTFH. We also have a shop

which is located at dunkitrussell.com with lots of beautiful garments for you to adorn your flesh with. Finally, I want to do a plug for my friend and my meditation teacher, David Nickturn. He's leading a new 100 hour online meditation teacher training. If you want to get certified to teach meditation, lead group sessions, and work with individuals, this is for you. Also, if you just want to dive deep into meditation or Buddhism, he's incredible. He's a brilliant person. I'm lucky that I get to work with him when it comes to meditation and Buddhism. You can find out about what this is by going to, let's see here, to bedhouse.us. He's doing it in conjunction with them and the link will be at dunkitrussell.com. Now without further ado, everybody please welcome

to the DTFH environmental scientist, author and activist Peter Kalmas. Peter is a literal genius. He works at JPL slash NASA and he's written an awesome book which you can download from his website, peterkalmas.net. It's called being the change, live well and spark a climate revolution. If you're somebody like me and you feel hesitant to even listen to stuff regarding the environment because it makes you feel depressed, forge ahead friends because this conversation had the exact opposite effect on me. I feel inspired and enthusiastic about looking into ways that I could be less of a drain on our beautiful planet here and I'm sure you will too after listening to Peter's very passionate defense of our beautiful planet. Now everybody welcome

to the DTFH Peter Kalmas. Peter, welcome to the DTFH. How nice to see you in person. Oh crap. Hold on. I got to tell my kids not to play piano in the background. Oh, no problem. Go ahead and by the way, ambient child background noise, completely acceptable for this podcast. Just letting you know. Can you hear the like WC happening in the background there? I can't hear it and it's okay. The ambient noise is okay and then because if you worry too much about trying to control the chaos of your children during a podcast, I've learned, I've just started developing the scope. Like, oh, that's just what it's like and I make sure the

people know there's a toddler. What do you want? There's savage and wild children and wild creatures. Well, these kids are 12 and 14 and they're the 12 year olds. Pretty serious about his piano. I really loved it. It was your kids that inspired you to make this big leap in your life that I think a lot of us want to make but for whatever reason, we just don't make it. I want to talk about that for whatever reason. Yeah. Should we start over? Are we like going now? We're going. Okay. Because I didn't say it was an honor to be here. I feel honored that someone like you would even be interested in being on my show. So thank you. The respect is mutual. You've done a lot of great work for the world and it's a real honor to have

you on the show. So thanks for being here, Peter. Yeah. Well, it's a pleasure. You're out there in California right now, right? To me, this is just to get to the meat of the thing, man. I just left LA. I left LA driving through ash, falling from the sky. I left LA with the sun turning red like blood. I left LA with air that you couldn't breathe after a pretty fucked up earthquake. And all of a sudden, all of my laziness and weird derision towards people who seemed very passionate about the environment seemed like, and I don't mean derision. I just mean a kind of like, I don't, I know, but I don't want to hear about it. I just want to deal with it. It's too much to think about. All of a sudden, I was looking at ash in the sky and thinking,

holy shit, this is why they're like that, because they know this happens and they know that this is the future. If people don't figure out a way to pull themselves out of their torpor, paralysis, or whatever, whatever the fuck it is. But to me, what I love about your voice in this particular world is that you really do seem to have some form of compassion for us, or at the very least an understanding that if the message isn't articulated in a way that isn't fear-based, panic-based, anger-based, then it ends up, people just don't listen. Is that how you feel? Am I grogging you correctly? Well, you know, I just, I'm terrified of what's happening right now, and I don't feel like I have a choice. Like, my voice, it's just coming from these emotions that

I feel. I mean, I do see the scientific projections, and it can be hard to keep track of how fast things are changing. You know, the news comes so fast. We've lost two-thirds of wild species populations, and the, you know, the green and the nice sheets melting faster than we thought it was, and sea level projections are always getting revised upwards. And then to be living through this in the present moment. So we, you know, a couple weekends ago here in Los Angeles, we had this crazy heatwave where in a lot of parts of Southern California, it actually, you know, got up to 120 degrees. Yeah. Some places it was a little bit hotter than that for a couple of days. And so I've got like little baby avocado trees, and their leaves like turned crispy, and I can't, I kind of go a

little bit insane when it gets that hot. And then, of course, it was completely predictable. This set off a string of mega fires all up and down the West Coast. And since then, we've had, you know, a couple of weeks of just terrible air quality. So I live in a place called Altadena, which is northeast Los Angeles. It's kind of in the foothills. And it has been like ground zero for smoke from the bobcat fire, which is burning a couple of miles away from here. And I don't know why it turns out that my body is kind of sensitive to the smoke. So I get headaches, I get, you know, eye burning, I get, this is a really creepy one for me is I get like tingling in my fingers and hands. And sometimes if it's really bad, like in my lips a little bit, like this kind of warm,

tingly feeling. Yeah. And, and so I've been like kind of hunkered down, we have one HEPA filter, and we put it in the bedroom. And I've been, I went from like living my life in this house, because of the coronavirus, to like living my life in this one bedroom, because, you know, because of the smoke. And now the air is not safe when you go indoors and there is not safe when you go outdoors. And so yeah, this is, you know, I don't know how to say this, you know, in a nice way, but this is all going to get worse if we don't wake up as a species. And if we don't stop burning fossil fuels, it couldn't, it really couldn't, in some ways, it couldn't be more simple. But of course, you know, fossil fuels are running almost every aspect of our lives right now. So, so doing

that kind of disentangling ourselves from that, and from these giant corporations that basically, you know, make easy money by sucking the stuff out of the ground and then selling it and frankly don't give a shit about our futures. There must be some, I'm sure they don't think they're evil. You know, from our point of view, like they, you know, the planets at stake, the future of the next few tens of thousands of human generations is at stake. So it looks evil to us, but I'm sure they have like weird psychological rationalizations where they think somehow they're, I talked to these executives from Shell once, I had lunch with them. They actually picked up the tab, which was nice of them. And they gave me these, they gave me these, I know, so generous, right?

They gave me these glossy pamphlets, you know, with all their greenwash, like how they're planning. But you know what these executives told me, they told me that Shell will go as fast as its customers allow them to go. I was just like, God smacked. I'm like, they, they don't, they have no stake in trying to sort of halt this, this massive, like we all see it and feel it now, right? This massive climate and ecological breakdown that we're experiencing it, that'll just keep, you know, digging out the coal and sucking out the oil and fracking for the fossil gas until, you know, what, until we don't have anything left, right? Until it's, this is just like, you know, this, the Mad Max world with like vastly reduced biodiversity and, you know,

a multi-thousand mile band of land around the equator where like, you know, one and a half billion people live that we can't live anymore as humans. So, so yeah, it's like, it's just like the scientific, the science fiction dystopia that I see coming. How am I, as a human and a father of two beautiful boys and someone who cares deeply about the giant sequoias and the Joshua trees and the coral reefs, how am I supposed to talk about this? That's my question, right? I've been labeled an alarmist and the climate deniers try to shut me up. And, and all I'm trying to do is sound, I think, very justifiably sound the alarm on what's happening so we can preserve what's left of this livable planet for our poor kids and their kids and their kids. And it's like a cosmic thing, right?

It's, it's so many generations here that will be affected by decisions that humanity makes in the next few years. It's, um, this is the only place we know that has life and we're fucking it up right now. Well, what, but I want to talk to you about something. This is something that's emerging now, like essentially the data that's coming in, it seems to be pointing to some kind of exponential catastrophe. Like you're saying that melting ice sheets and people are starting to get in their head. A really brutal idea, which is it's already too fucking late. Hunker down. It doesn't matter what you do. This thing is over. Even if you do become like you are, um, you're, you're like, I was reading, you calculated like you don't use much fossil fuel. You're, um, someone who has

managed mostly to reduce your carbon consumption in this incredible way. I find it to be very inspiring, including not flying, uh, which is easier these days, thanks to the pandemic. But a kind of like dark shadow seems to have fallen over the entire science because people who are really telling the truth are now kind of saying like, I don't even, I don't know. There's nothing, like if everyone stopped moving right now, if everyone like just stayed in their house and stopped, we're still kind of fucked, right? Uh, okay. So there's a lot there to unpack. Um, so first of all, okay, we're, we're, I would say we're already pretty fucked. And I think the fires on the west coast, uh, and these heat waves, which the heat waves now globally are like more than three

times, uh, as frequent extreme heat waves as they were in like the 1960s. And that's going to get worse. I mean, it's just as global heating, it's, it's basic physics. Uh, you, we emit this CO2 from burning fossil fuels. It's just like little three, three atom molecule with an angle in it. And, and because of that geometry, it's able to interact with infrared radiation. These like photons that come from the earth, which would otherwise escape into space. They hit one of these CO2 molecules from fossil fuel, things starts vibrating, and then eventually it reemits an infrared photon in any random direction. So some of it comes back down to earth. So that's how it acts as blanket. Um, and, and that basic global heating, of course, one of the main effects

is just worsening heat waves. Right. Uh, that's, that's one of the most basic effects. And also, frankly, one of the reasons I'm a climate activist, because again, my body just doesn't do well with that. I go crazy when it gets too hot. Um, there's actually psychological research behind that too, you know, the murder rate increases during heat waves, for example. Yeah. But, but that said, that said, um, you know, we're climate breakdown is here. We have to accept that. We're seeing it. We're living through it. More and more people are starting to have their lives and livelihoods affected by it. Right. But I would say no matter how bad it gets, we should all keep fighting as hard as we can, because it could always get worse. It's not like a binary switch that's either on

or off. Okay. Uh, you know, one and a half, we're, you peep, a lot of people say, don't talk about the degrees because it's their, their eyes will glaze over, but I think it's kind of a little bit helpful, right? So we're at about 1.1 degrees Celsius of global heating right now. If you take the average of all the thermometers on the planet, we're a little over a degree Celsius, which is like two degrees Fahrenheit over what we ought to be if we hadn't been polluting the planet with these greenouts gas emissions for the last 200 years. Um, it's going to be way worse if we get to 1.5. And it's going to be worse than that. If we get to two, it's going to be worse than that. If we get to 2.5. And you know, I don't think there's, I don't think there's a point when we slip and we

lose the entire earth and it becomes like Venus. Like there was some discussion about that at earlier points. I don't personally think that that's very likely, but there are these other kind of like smaller tipping points that can happen, which will be really bad. Like we could lose the Amazon rainforest. In fact, I personally don't think that it's, I doubt that it's savable at this point. We're losing the coral reefs in real time right now because they're so sensitive to ocean heat waves. So that's a, I don't think we, I think there might be little pockets of coral reefs here and there for, you know, until kind of late in the century. But if, and, and which means if we, you know, drastically reign in our emissions, as I think we should, they might have a chance after

a few hundred years when things start to cool down a little bit to start moving back into areas that they formerly inhabited. I'm not sure. There's the, the Atlantic overturning circulation, which is part of like this global network of ocean currents, right? And that's starting to change now, which can have, you know, pretty serious implications for weather, for example, in Europe. Of course, there's the Greenland ice sheet that we already mentioned. There's, you know, permafrost and the Arctic, which could get released. So there's, there's all of these, you know, there's numerous tipping points in the earth systems, this vast complicated thing. And we, the thing is, we don't know where those are and exactly when they'll occur and exactly how they'll unfold and how

they'll interconnect between each other and how they'll necessarily, you know, how they'll affect human systems that we depend on as a species for life. But they're out there in this murky climate future. And every day that we emit more fossil fuels makes those tipping points a little bit more likely, but we don't know exactly when they'll happen. And we can probably still stop some of them. And there's probably some that we haven't even really figured out yet, which we'll, you know, we don't, we prefer not to find out about. So it's this, it's this complicated, messy, gigantic earth system. And it's still beautiful. I mean, let's face it, like we're, we're fucking it up. We go around saying we're the smartest species, but we're the only ones, only species right now

that's screwing everything up for all the other species on this planet. So I'm not sure we qualify as being the smartest, but let's face it, there's still incredible stuff on this planet. And it's, it's still a, this life support system, like literally we owe everything we have. Like you take a breath right now, that air comes from the fact that we have a living planet, right? You drink water, same thing. You're protected from cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation by our atmosphere, same thing. You know, the magnetic, there's magnetic field. So we have this, this incredible, you take a bite of food, right? You, I mean, literally we are the earth. We're a part of this like, this crazy, massive living thing that's constantly recycling itself, you know,

we die and then we get eaten by the worms when we turn into trees and then someone needs to fruit and you take a breath and that air from that breath has been in the lungs of every other human on this planet above like the age of 20 or something. So there's this mixing time scale. Yeah. It's like the air takes maybe around 20 years to mix around the planet, something like that. Wait, can you say that again? Say that again. So that can really soak in when you take a breath. Yeah. So a little baby, a little baby's breathing air in and out. Yeah. And that baby's, those baby's breaths haven't had a chance to like spread to China and to Alaska and to all the other places on the planet. But, but after about 20 years, those breaths have spread all around. So,

you know, when you, when you exhale carbon dioxide, you know, it's you, you eat food, you take a bite of an apple, your body basically combusts that right through cellular respiration and it goes out as CO2 and then someone else breathes that in. And so we're all, we're all literally breathing each other, right? Because that carbon, that carbon that you're breathing out used to be part of your body essentially, right? In some sense. So, you know, the same thing goes for all the other species, true, like the, the trees and the animals that are on this planet. We're all literally just kind of these in a very literal way. We're, we're atoms that are in this big kind of recycling thing, right? That's gone back four billion years, right? And then life came, I don't know,

three billion years ago, I can't remember all the numbers. But it's this, I think of it as this big just sort of beautiful system of, of just life and death and like things kind of like a flower opening, right? And in time lapse, but it's like on the whole planet. How much do you think that the tumult in the world right now? The, the, the, how much do you think politics, the economic stuff that's happening in the world, all the stuff that we're seeing that just looks like, to some degree, chaos or revolutions or whatever you want to call it, how much is that linked to the environment? But it's sort of people think that it's happening because of this president or that president or this social movement or that social, is there some deeper pulse behind that?

Do you think? Yeah. So one of the things I believe is that right now, if anything, social scientists are more important than climate scientists because climate scientists have like kind of did our jobs. We, we, we understand why this is happening. We understand why the impacts are being driven by the global heat. And we have a pretty good sense of what's coming in the future. There's still some details to fill in, but there's, there's, we know enough right now to, I think, strongly suggest that humanity better get its collective assing here and do something about this or suffer pretty extreme consequences. And yet humanity's doing nothing, right? So that's social science. Like why, how, how are these things affecting humanity right now?

How are they effect affecting our geopolitics? And why, why are humans so in the state of torpor, as you say? And I personally believe that there is a pretty significant imprint in our geopolitics right now from climate and ecological breakdown. For example, you know, what was like a year or two ago, there were climate migrants coming up from Central America, right? Because they were having heat waves and drought down there and they couldn't grow food and it was getting too hot for them to live. And so they were coming up and knocking on their southern border and look at like, you know, for a couple of years, all, all of that the United States would talk about basically was immigration. And I think it led to a, it was a nudge towards greater

authoritarianism and a more conservative mindset in this sense that like, we don't have enough, and they're going to take it away from us, right? This sense of resource scarcity, which I think subconsciously comes partly from this. So I think that the, you know, a lot of people right now are in denial about this. And I think that denial comes from fear. And I think for a lot of people, they're not sort of self-aware enough to kind of understand, you know, why they're afraid and how climate and ecological breakdown are playing into that fear. But I think there's this sense right now that there isn't going to be enough and that, that a lot of people are going to be coming up from the global south

because it's going to get too hot down there. I mean, how many immigrants, how many climate migrants was that? It was like order of like a million, right? Yeah. And so we're talking about like a pressure on our geopolitics a thousand times bigger than that. And it was also very disruptive in Europe, right? When people were trying to cross the Mediterranean. And that, I think that was somewhat due to civil unrest, which might have been linked to some level to climate breakdown. So this stuff is all extremely complicated. There's always, you know, multiple causes here. But the thing that it's like, it's like this, this, this, this complicated noisy music. But underneath it, there's this kind of this rumbling base that gets louder every day.

And that's global heating, right? Every day, it gets a little bit harder. Every day, it gets a little bit harder to grow, grow food in the global south and waters running out a little bit more. And you're more likely to get climate migrants. And I think that's, and the geopolitics is this complicated noisy mixture of higher frequencies on top of that. But it's all being affected by this thing, which is getting louder and louder and louder. And every year it gets louder. And it's not going to stop getting louder until we stop emitting fossil fuels. It just isn't. I can say that with 100% certainty. So I don't know how it's going to play out. I don't know if like India and Pakistan are going to have some nuclear water war or something like that.

But, you know, human beings are complicated. We're nonlinear. We get frightened. We get collectively frightened. We look for scapegoats. So yeah, I feel like this is a, this is a real crossroads for us right now as a species man. Do you feel like you might be in a movie co-created by HP Lovecraft and Kurt Vonnegut? Are you feeling a little wobbly? Is there something interfering with your happiness? Or is preventing you from achieving your goals like maybe a global pandemic and rapidly disintegrating political system, meeting a sort of sense of isolation and you're drinking coffee all day long? If you're me, better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed

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emphasize that's the sound in your voice. I feel it. I know what you're feeling. I just left Southern California. I'm up here in beautiful North Carolina. It's green. It's raining. It's beautiful and I can see how if you had been living here in North Carolina hadn't been to LA for a while, you might think you might see the news and be like, well, it's whatever it's their fire season or you might you might not understand. And I kind of feel crazy here because I feel I'm legitimately rattled. I'm somewhere in between being completely disconnected from the earth and like being like a nudist or something, you know, I don't know where exactly, but I don't feel I don't feel I don't feel the way I feel right now. I've never felt like this. I've never and I

and I'm around all these people in this beautiful place that and I and I feel like I have this weird look in my eye or I feel like they're you know, just a little rattled and I and I you want to say like you don't understand. It was 115 degrees. It was raining ash. You couldn't breathe. People were being burnt to death. It happened so fast. We might have, you know, we got out of there, but I don't know, you know, and I'm sorry because you're there, but like like I have to kind of like push that part of myself down the part, the alarmist part, because at some point you need an alarm. You need that. Yeah, I want you I want you to wake everyone up. That's what I want you to do. But it's hard. Yeah, it's hard when it's a beautiful

day outside and you know, everything seems fine. Like that's that's what we are as an animal. We're a mammal that's geared towards our immediate environment and you know, we're a mammal that that's very tribal. And it's hard for us to empathize, right? It's hard for us to really feel the pain of others. And that's what we have to start doing now. I think I feel like humanity can go in one or two directions right now. And I have to say that the whole coronavirus thing made me feel a little bit less optimistic about which direction I might go, right? I'm like, I'm like, Oh, here's a chance for us to all realize we're in this together. Yeah. And take collective action together. And like, you know, wear a fucking mask for a couple of weeks and

tamp this down. And even that simple thing couldn't happen, right? So that was a little bit discouraging because, you know, dealing with climate breakdown is going to take, I would say, a greater level of solidarity and a greater level of sort of collective call to action, right? And so we, I think what their earth is telling us right now in this, in my opinion, this kind of sort of trippy cosmic way is that we've been like, as a species, we've been toddlers, not to have anything against toddlers. But we, maybe we're like rotten teenagers or something. And we've been like, these terrible, this, this terrible roommate on this planet, at least this culture, you know, it's not the human animal necessarily, that's bad, I want to make that clear. But the human

animal has like an operating system, right in our brains, which is called culture. And there have been cultures on this planet, mostly indigenous peoples that have lived in, in pretty great balance with the natural world around them, animus peoples, peoples that, that don't think that the human is better than a bear, or better than a stream, or better than a hillside, you know, they see, they see all of those things to some, to some extent, I'm not sure what language they would use, but they don't see personhood as being just something that humans have a monopoly on. They, they've, you know, a lot of them thought that, that these other animals, for example, were actually literally their, their relatives, right, which they are in a literal sense, I would

say in, in, you know, from an evolutionary point of view, they really are a relative, they're our brothers and sisters, right, cousins, these other animals. But this culture now that we have this, this cap, this extractive capitalist thing, which has been going around and hitting other humans over the head and committing genocide and enslaving and, you know, hitting all these other animals over the head, just to like extract monetary gain from it, and it's destroying the planet and sees corporations as persons, right, not, not hillsides and, and streams and other animals. This particular culture, this operating system is just, it's running amok. And, you know, I think we're at a crossroads where we have to grow up as a species

and kind of mature as a species and realize that, you know, there's no separation between you and me. That's the, that's the kind of, I think there's this sense of separation and zero sum gamesmanship and competition, which I, you know, I don't know if I'll lose a lot of people by saying this, but I think it all ultimately comes from fear of death and, and a denial about the fact that we're mortal beings and that we're going to die. And that denial leads to all other kinds of denial. And it leads us to want, it leads to this kind of greed where we want more and more. And we feel like that if we had more money and like a bigger house and, you know, in a nicer neighborhood, somehow we can have more security and we'll be safer. And I think that's a, that's a

very dangerous mentality and it leads to kind of the rise of these corporations and the security state, right? So it's kind of going in the opposite direction. And it's convincing us that we're, we're separate from each other. We're separate from people that don't look like us. We're separate from the so-called natural world, which we're in right now, literally, right? We're, we're sitting inside these buildings, having this conversation through the internet and all of that is the natural world, right? So we have to, we have to wake up and realize that there is no separation, right? That we're breathing each other's air and incorporating each other's atoms into our bodies as atoms and, and kind of doing this sort of cosmic dance together here, trying to figure out

why we're here, what it means that we're going to die. There's something like really beautiful about that. And I think, you know, if we can somehow look at this stuff that's happening now and look at our own mortality in a really courageous way and, and say like, we have to, we have to stop this, this, you know, putting profit above everything else and this quest for everyone wants to be like a billionaire, right? And we're literally poisoning the earth and we're poisoning our mindsets and we're not enjoying, we're not even enjoying life with this mindset, right? That's right. I think a lot of people are extremely miserable, whether they're rich or poor right now, because of this mindset. I went, I went into Pizka National Forest up here in NC.

My goal, your goal might be to get me to wake people up. My goal is to get you to move to Ashton. I'm, I'm already think we're, we're, we're, so my wife and I have been having this conversation. So, okay, so it's, it's complicated for me because I've, I basically, my whole life right now is aligned toward trying to drag humanity, kicking and screaming, and to take in climate action and to sort of realizing that we're all in this together and that we have to share things more equitably with each other. Like that's, that's kind of what the earth is telling me right now is that we can't have these poor nations and rich nations and we can't have poor people in, in a rich nation that can't even afford to put food on their table,

on their table and they're getting kicked out of their homes and they don't have access, their kids don't have access to education, they don't have access to, to justice under our legal system. So I think that climate, to solve climate breakdown, we, it's become very clear to me that we also have to deal with all of those other things, which is what I mean by kind of growing up as a species. And I think we can build something, you know, much better if we do that potentially, or we can slide further into sort of authoritarianism in the security state. That's what terrifies me is I'm not sure which way it's going to go, but right now part of my platform is, you know, being a scientist at a national space lab, I should say I'm speaking on my own

behalf by the way. So of course you're not speaking on behalf of JPL. I don't, I don't want the blue meanies to, to call me often. So yeah, that's part of, you know, my agency, like my ability to help wake people up is also tied to, you know, my reputation as an expert on climate change and climate science. It's kind of, you know, almost feels a little weird to be talking about the more spiritual aspects of this, right? Because scientists aren't supposed to talk about that. No, you're not. But, but I do because I'm a human too, right? And I'm like, just because, just because I'm a scientist doesn't mean I have to shut up about other stuff that's important to me, right? I can speak out as a father, I can speak out as a parent and as a human too, and as a citizen.

So I feel perfectly like I should have a right to weigh in on politics and policy as well, because it's important. Yeah, it's important. I think, I think that's our responsibility as citizens. And I mean, here's the thing, man, a lot of times scientists, I think, end up not having as much of a public voice, not because they don't want to speak out, but because the very nature of the business seems to be that if you like get identified as this or that, you can lose funding, lose your job, lose a lot of the potency that you have is wherever you got. I've noticed that in some of my scientific friends is that they may have, on the human level, they may have had some wild experience or had some spiritual experience, but they are not going to say too much

about that publicly, because they have to, the way the business works is some form of funding of research. And, you know, they don't want to get labeled as quacks long and short of it, because once that, I guess that's doom for a scientist. But, you know, I want to finish a point real quick. When I walked, because it's related to what you were saying earlier, I went into Pisgah National Forest, my son at six or seven a.m. I hadn't been in a forest like that in a long time, a long time. I'd been in like Big Bear style forests or West Coast, but not that, just pure, just that, the air being like just as fresh as fresh could be, but more than that, the vastness of it, and more than that, the sound of rivers and more, and just that moment,

it was like, it really was re-tuning me. It happened, didn't take very long. It was just, oh, right, this is, this is what matters. This is the thing. This is it, which is why I think, even though I agree with you, this is nature, sitting in our separate places, you locked down in LA, me in this office in North Carolina with my artificial light, this is nature. But how easy is it in this situation to forget what that mind is, how that mind, it's a mind, how easy to forget the perfection of that. It's almost like we built these artificial spaces precisely for that purpose somehow. It's what it kind of feels like. Yeah, to separate us from that, because maybe there's something there that was a little bit too scary, I don't know, or something, or heartbreak, something.

So I, one of the most formative experiences I ever had was in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern central New Mexico. And I, you know, for several summers, I worked at a place there called Fillmont, which is actually a Boy Scout Ranch, but it's these beautiful ponderosa pine forests in the mountains, which have also been burning over the years too, like a lot of forested places. But there's one, there's one, you know, this was a really formative experience. So what I was doing there was I was building trail. So we would, we would go out there with like the picmatics and the shovels and the sledgehammers to hit the rocks. And, you know, it was like, you know, 10 kids and a couple of four men. The first year I was one of the kids,

and then I went back a few times for summer job to be, to be a trail crew foreman. You're just like way out there. There's not even a trail because you're building the trail. You're like out there in the forest for the whole summer. And it's just this like primeval experience. And the first, yeah, I saw, I love, I also love western forests. I have this as kind of a young person, this made such a big impact on me. And one night I was, I don't know why I feel like telling the story, but I kind of, the first time when I was one of the participants building the trail, I had to take a piss. And it must have been like 1am or something. I got out of my tent and there was like full moon and it was like silver coming through the pine trees. And something just compelled

me to walk over to the end of the trail that we've been building earlier that day. And I just lay down on that and like this perfect cool air, right? You say like breathing in that perfect, clean air with the sound of the insects looking straight up into the stars, you know, like this, the Sagray De Cristo, perfect Milky Way stars and just feeling connected to everything, right? And so that's like a well that I can draw on, you know, when, when it's just something that I always have inside me, right? It's kind of one of those, it's a little corny, they talk about those places you can go. Yeah. But and I've had other experiences like that too. It's, it's, you know, what you could call maybe a numinous experience. Yes. Where you feel connected and you can get

that same experience through meditation, you can get that by eating mushrooms too. Sure. And maybe that's a big part of the answer is just we need a lot of people to start experiencing this connection, not, not intellectually, but like through their bodies and this, this very profound sense that after the experience, you still have that place where you can go to and, you know, and those experiences too, to, to go back to an earlier point that I was making, for me, at least they really, they, they chip away at my own fear of death, right? So all of this, this stuff is connected. I don't, it's hard to put into words, I think, but I really think that the fear of death is, is one of these big things that separates us and, you know, and this really

bizarre twist of fate is kind of what makes us kill each other too, right? And have wars and stuff like that. Yeah. There's no physical, there's, there's no physical reason, you know, speaking as someone who's a physicist and someone who's already said that I think the social scientists and the psychologists are the really important people right now, but there's no physical reason why we can't build a better world here and we can't start sharing these resources. We could all live well on this planet if we shared with each other and there weren't like a few billionaires. You know, now like two billionaires in the United States have as much wealth as the lower half of all the people in this nation. It's crazy. It's crazy. So we share, we can share this with each

other. And so yeah, I guess I'm, I'm an eco socialist, I would say. I don't, what that means is that I think we can do better at sharing with each other. And I think that that's really important. A big thank you to DHM detox for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. DHM detox, it's the vitamin for people who like to enjoy alcohol. It's the smart, responsible way to enjoy your booze. It's time to start taking care of your body when you drink. Enjoy your drinks and forget the Sunday scaries or the Monday mobs or the Tuesdays, too many drinks or the Wednesday. Why the fuck did I do this to myself again or the Thursdays? I'm thinking I've got to take better care of my body and not drink so much every single night or the Fridays. Fuck you existence

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US. Just head over to nodayswasted.co forward slash Duncan and use promo code Duncan at checkout. That's nodayswasted.co forward slash Duncan. I've used DHM detox. It worked for me. It reminds me of the stuff that I used to take when I would do a drunk history, which I thought was some kind of like MK ultra CIA shit that Derek had access to. This stuff is wonderful if you're going to be bounding into some kind of wild Halloween celebration or maybe you're just in a Mikowski phase. DHM detox is for the no days wasted. I think that when eco socialism, eco anythingism, I think the eco part is the part that we're centering in on here that is an experienced thing. For me, it's like holy shit, I'm so dumb

that instead of listening to people like you who have been talking about this forever, in really believing it, I've been like, well, you know, and it took my state catching on fire. It took ash and then suddenly it's like, oh, fuck, fuck, this is real. But that was a direct experience with nature and out of balance kind of nature, a nature that was dying kind of nature, but still direct encounter with the ecosystem outside. And I think maybe and then to me what's happening is that yes, this is nature, but these billionaires, it's not just like they're hoarding all the research resources, they've become billionaires by creating devices that have become substitutes for nature. So people are staring at their phones for GPS coordinates to get instead

of looking at real maps. People just let the machine tell them where to turn. They don't know where they're at. People let the machine tell them, well, socially things are fucked up, and they don't even think about the earth. You know, this is a bunch of, this is one of the theories that's out there right now, which I love. I know it's not true, but the idea is the sun's about to supernova. It's about to do a mini nova. This is a conspiracy theory, and the mini nova is going to wipe us all out. And people are saying the reason nobody's noticing the sun is fucked up right now is because everybody's staring at their phones. And I think literally that's ridiculous, but as a metaphor, as an explanation for what's happening, I think it's brilliant, which is that

the sun, the idea was the sun told you what direction. It was a great way to figure out what direction you're going in. It was a great way to figure out what time of day it was. It was a great way to figure out what time of year it was. But, and so we were very in tune with just where the sun was in the sky, but now our sun, it's in our phones. We're looking at this little digitized sun that's like giving innocent a weird form of radiation that I think is making people lose that connection that you have, that you feel. That's a great point. You know, I think one of the encouraging parts of the pandemic lockdown was there was a huge resurgence in gardening. Yes. If you tried to go to the Seed Savers Exchange website, they had a message saying they

couldn't handle all the requests, and so they weren't doing mail order seeds anymore. I think they might have run out of stock, and that was pretty common everywhere. So the gardening centers, the seed exchanges, they couldn't handle the demand, which to me was a wonderful thing. So I'm an avid gardener and orchardist, which is someone who basically plants fruit trees. And, you know, it's not to solve climate breakdown, but it helps me stay sane, first of all. But I think it also really connects a person to the earth and helps you not take the earth for granted, which I think is this other epidemic right now, which has come up in this culture of iPhones and disconnection, which is that we take this

earth for granted. We take food for granted. You know, there's no sense of the sacred anymore when we're walking through a forest or over the dirt. And, you know, to compost, it's like practice for death to me a little bit. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful to turn that over with the pitchfork and see the worms in there and all the lizards that scurry away. And to be able to use that in your garden to create new life, right? And then to be able to, you know, the food tastes a lot better when it comes straight out of your garden. And you share it with neighbors. So it connects you to the community because you have like too many lemons at one time or way too many figs at one time, or too many zucchini, you know, or whatever it is that you're growing. So you

trade that to someone else who's got too many, you know, persimmons or too many something that you don't have too much kale or something and you didn't plant kale or whatever. And so you trade and you become friends and you trade tips about like, you know, which varieties don't get powdery mildew as much and, you know, which which varieties of tomatoes are susceptible to spider mites and all that went to plant things. So it's this amazing community resilience building thing and this connection to the earth. So yeah, I think I think that's like that's a great way to connect. It's a great way to feel that to have some gratitude for farmers too and and the, you know, the undocumented immigrants who are out there in the fields with the orange glowing sky and

breathing the smoke and picking our food for us, right? Yeah. And to go back to an earlier point you made too. Yes, I have reduced my own use of fossil fuels just because burning fossil fuels now feels disgusting to me. Like I kind of makes me go into like have a cold sweat. If I got on a plane right now, I'm pretty sure I'd throw up. Like I've had nightmares about being on planes. I haven't flown since 2012. And it's not because I'm trying to virtue signal. It's because it literally feels too disgusting to me. The last time I was on a plane I was thinking of my little baby kids and and how I was going to go give some like, you know, some I was an astrophysicist at the time I was going to give some 15 minute PowerPoint that my collaboration had already seen a couple

of times and I'm like, why am I doing this? Yeah, I'm like stealing from my kids futures for this little like tiny boost to my own career. So and we're not, you know, to be very clear, we're not going to solve this problem by by some of us voluntarily choosing to fly less or voluntarily becoming vegan or riding our bicycles more. Those are all great things to do. But that's not how we're going to solve this. Like we're going to the way I think we're going to solve this the way out that I see. And it's getting to be a narrower and narrower path is to become fire breathing climate activists. And to build to build this grassroots movement, which has been getting it's been exploding over the last couple of years, partly because people are waking up from these climate

catastrophes, but partly because climate justice was put front and center. And I have to say it first as a scientist as a physical scientist, I was skeptical about that. I'm like, why are we making this about, you know, I believe that, you know, that frontline communities are getting screwed more. And I believe believe they deserve a fair shake. But the thing that's going to kill us all is the carbon dioxide. Like that's what I used to think I'm like, focus on the emissions. And now I've completely changed in the last couple of years. Because you can't what we had before that was basically to be frank. And I hope I don't offend anyone by saying this. But for decades, the climate movement, the environmental movement was basically old white people. You know, I used

to be part of this group called Citizens Climate Lobby. You'd look out and it would be all these these upper middle class people who had time on their hand mostly because they'd retired, as they could become environmental activists. But it wasn't something that felt like your youth weren't going to join that movement. You're, you know, your black people weren't going to join that movement. Your indigenous people weren't going to join that movement. You're all people, diverse people that look like this nation, and that maybe are again, you know, don't have the luxury to spend extra time on this, right? Because they're being hammered at a daily basis, you know, with their, you know, with the police literally kneeling on their necks, right? So,

which we're seeing now. So, but over the last couple of years, because of this transition to climate justice and this realization that we're all fighting the same fight, we're fighting against corporate extractivist capitalism, which is killing, which has been killing these people for hundreds of years. And the people kind of that have been privileged enough not to be experiencing that firsthand have been kind of looking the other way. As long as the money keeps flowing in, as long as they have land to build their houses on, which used to be someone else's land, right? And the whole thing now, because of climate and ecological breakdown, is starting to implode in this big way, right? So now, now no one can really, it's harder and harder, even

for privileged people to avoid this, right? You know, we may only interject one thing real quick. You know, the saying of the weather underground, you know, they're saying regarding protesting Vietnam, bring the war back home is what they said. And so they started, and I'm not advocating this at all. But I think it kind of applies to what you're, I think where you're going here. The, their idea was we will blow up buildings, and we'll make sure no one's in it. We'll call and say we're going to do it. So the buildings, they started blowing up buildings, because they thought people in the West needed to see what it was like to be bombed, because we didn't know what it was like to be bombed, because we've been bombing other countries so long. It seemed like this thing,

like a, we weren't connected to it. Bring the war back home is what they said, because if people saw how fucked up the war was, they wouldn't support war. Similarly, it feels like something about like people need to, like what you have had is an awakening, I think. You can't fly. And you're not virtue signaling. You can't fly in the same way that I'm sure there's throughout history, there's been shifts in ethics where things used to seem okay. And they're not, you know, we could think of a zillion examples of this, where if we were living the way somebody in early America was living, or if we are living like Christopher Columbus, I can't, I can't fly in the same way that, you know, you can't own slaves right now. Yeah, I'm not going to hack off someone's arm.

Well, it's morally, it feels morally repugnant to me. Right. You've just connected to the truth. And people that, you know, who, who don't see this as a life or death emergency the way I do, and who haven't connected the burning of fossil fuel directly to these mega fires that we're having in the, in the West United States, for example, they probably think I'm nuts for saying that, you know, and, and there's a lot of prestige, especially in the academic community that goes with flying in these planes, where you get some invitation to give this invited talk or this keynote speech somewhere, and you want to get on the plane and go do it and, you know, and, and you get to, they put you up in a hotel, you get like a nice vacation in this city, and you've worked your

hard your whole life to, to earn this, right. So it's hard to give that up. And, and so even if they, and it's, there's so many different kinds of denial here too, right. So you, they, they know intellectually what's happening on this planet. They understand the science, but they can compartmentalize in their brains. They don't want to, they don't want to give up that flying privilege, the frequent flying privilege. So they find ways to rationalize and, and, and, you know, and again, like I, I, I don't want anyone to be excluded from this grassroots movement because they're not ready to fly less. We need everyone in this, even if you're still a platinum frequent flyer, and you just haven't made it. It took me three years, by the way, to go from like, you know,

feeling like this doesn't really feel right being on this plane to finally being on that last flight and like basically, you know, having this image of like the plane running on ground up babies, basically, and be like, I can't, I can't be on this plane anymore. Yeah, that's, I don't, I, I, I, it's like the first time I've said that publicly, but that's kind of the way, that's the way it felt to me. And I'm, so that's why I can't fly. It's, it's, it's that simple. You know, I'm not trying to, I'm not even necessarily trying to save the planet by getting other people to fly, to not fly, but I just, to me, I had this vision on ketamine and that made it into the show I made for Netflix called the Midnight Gospel, where there's a city that runs on meat and it would

meet flowing. I love this show, Duncan. I'm well aware of the show. The meat flowing through tubes, because the idea is like, holy fuck, you know, what if, if we, that's exactly what, like, essentially once you make the connection, these particles that just have this unfortunate composition that as an effect on photons, they kill, they're killing people. They're literally killing people. That story and the fires of that kid, who they found him, he was dead with a dog on his lap, you know, and it's like, once you make that connection, once you realize like, oh yeah, you're, and again, I'm a, I'm a comic. I fly over, I was, I, before the pandemic, I was flying, but still a little part of me. I flew a lot too. I flew a lot too. Yeah. Business class,

you're proud of it and you feel it's a stupid corporate fucking, you're hypnotized by that. When you get up and prance in there for your sapphire club bullshit and whatever, it's such deep, stupid manipulation, but like the point being like, my God, the thing you just said, it's like a rotten connection, but suddenly when you get, when that clicks into place, which is like, look, take your flight, just understand, you're, you know, you're probably going to end up incinerating some kid and a dog and a lot more than that. And, and that sounds radical, but really, I just left a place where Ash is falling from the sky, man. And, and you are there. I don't mean to keep going back to that. I'm not trying to rub it in. Ash was falling at my house too.

No, I, I, it's, yeah. And, um, I mean, God, God, there's so much we could talk about. I feel like we could talk for hours. I know, but look, let's you hold on. How much we got? We just, listen, I know this is a pretty much the most idiotic question to ask you. I just want to say I really am enjoying your book, by the way, and I really love the compassion in it. And that to me is what, what is very one of the things that's inspiring about you is that you're producing a space within which folks who are still kind of like, man, fuck that, I'm going to fucking fly to still have a part in this grassroots movement. Cause I think right now it does need to be very inclusive. It does. We can't just include people who have like gotten the switch to click in their minds,

that kind of weird eco enlightenment. Cause not everybody's getting it. I haven't had it completely. We need a billion climate activists Duncan. I firmly believe that. And the other thing I had a, so I used to on Twitter, I would, I would always, you know, I'd say this really scary thing. And then I'd write another tweet underneath it saying like, what you can do, you know, like talk to people, join a climate action group, you know, be courageously creative. You know, it's what, what I realized a couple of days ago for me, this was a pretty profound realization is that I can't tell you how to be a climate activist. There's something everyone has to figure out for themselves. But that's to me, that's a beautiful thing. Because I can tell you with,

again, I guarantee that each one of you, your unique form of climate activism is important. And it's needed. And if I told you, if I made like cookie cutter, you know, copies of myself, it wouldn't be as effective. We need, we need like, we need a billion climate activists that look like this biosphere, you know, like all these different forms and people that, you know, someone who's got this talent or that talent, or they do the climate activism that they figure out and that resonates with them. And then it resonates with other people because it's coming so authentically from them, right? So I would say that what I encourage everyone to do is to just like, first of all, there are some, there are some basic principles, I think that that can be

helpful, right? And one of them is, it's very hard. But we all have to let this, what's happening now, the boys that are being burnt with their dogs, this horrible stuff, which is happening now, we have to actually let that in emotionally, we have to not hold that at arm's length. And wow, my wife's going to kill me for bringing her into this. But you're the beginning of this fire close to our house, we got an evacuation warning. And it was like late at night, it was smoky, the fire was a couple of miles away, we were confused, we didn't know what you were supposed to do. If you had to evacuate, our phones start buzzing. And that way phones do when you're getting some warning and all, all the phones in the house start buzzing at the same time. And

we had this blowout fight that night. But kind of like because of the stress of that. And because of this 120 degree weekend, when we sort of like, we tried to escape the heat by hiking in the mountains just above Santa Barbara. Because we thought, we looked at the forecast and I should have known better, but I was so busy with my work that I didn't look into it deeply. When we got to the hike, it was so hot there and so humid that my body shut down, right? And my wife was crying, she felt like it was like, you know, and, and it was this, it was this little five mile hike to a campsite where we're going to sleep there one night and then hike back. But there's a lot, there's all this elevation. And I think it was like, it ended up being like 110 degrees or something

there and super humid. And I literally had to, I just had to like sit by a stream and like pour water over my head until like 5pm. And then, and then, you know, we were hiking in the dark and kind of slipping down with kids, slipping down this like really steep like path in the dark. And it was still super, it was, it was horrible. But so that to put that in context, that had just happened. And I kind of like, I was kind of like, you know, I'm always, I've been freaking out about climate breakdown for 15 years, right? So I think I've been really hard to be married to. And she just wants to have a normal life. And she's kind of an anxious person. And so she doesn't want to think about, and she's a mother, she's got kids, she wants them to be safe. She wants to imagine

that they'll have a future where they can have retirement accounts and, you know, kind of normal jobs and, you know, where piano lessons are relevant and stuff like that. And so, you know, sometimes I'd be like, you know, there's this, there's this new report about, you know, the future of wildfires in our country or something or whatever, like, I just like say something to her, and she'd feel like I was poking at her, right? And she would just kind of like, she would just sort of change the subject maybe or go do something else, right? And then I would feel like she was kind of ignoring me or she didn't want to talk about this thing that was so important to me, right? And so that tension of this kind of all this tension around climate and our relationship

kind of exploded in that night. When I think, you know, I maybe used to talk to her directly, but I think it kind of came into her that this stuff was real and it was serious and that, you know, maybe all of my crazy climate activism over the years hadn't really been that crazy after all. But, you know, and then we felt like once it felt like the air kind of cleared to use an unfortunate metaphor after that fight, I felt closer to her than I think I had in a long time because of that. But, you know, again, I don't want to, what it sort of felt like to me was she finally kind of let this in in a deeper way. And, you know, I don't, it's so hard for me to urge people to do this because I totally get how I've talked to people who, you know, told me that,

you know, to function in their jobs. This was years ago, like they couldn't let this in, right? Because they get too, they get too anxious or they'd fall into despair. So it's very hard to bring this in. But I think it's important emotional work because it's, I don't see how we can really start to solve this if we kind of at some level pretend it's not happening and pretend that we could go back to a normal life after, say, after the pandemic ends. So the silver lining is you got, you can't do this alone because it's too hard. So you got to, you got to, you do have to join a group. So that's another principle. You have to have friends and people around you who get that this is as serious as you

think it is. Otherwise, you're going to feel gaslit. And that's a, it's a terrible feeling to feel like Cassandra to kind of like to know what's coming. And not only to see people not acting, but to have them telling you to your face that it's not as serious as you think it is. So, you know, it's hard. Like I, you know, I do know that we're going to need each other to get through this and that we're going to have to support each other emotionally and kind of share that space with each other. I don't, I don't even know how to do it. It's just, it's so hard. Can you recommend groups or like, where can people, is there like a place people are connecting now in this movement? Is there like a nexus? It feels, still feels a little bit disorganized to me.

And maybe it has to be that way. I don't know. And that's kind of what I mean when I say like, I can't tell anyone how to do this. Right. But, but there are groups, you know, in the U.S. Sunrise Movement is a, is a, has done amazing work. They're frankly a little bit ageist. So they, and I respect that in some ways because, you know, we, you can't have a movement, really, that's not led by those people who are being oppressed, right? The system of oppression that is being fought against, that fight has to be led by the people that are the most oppressed, right? And in climate, that's, that's young people and that's people on the front lines, right? So, so I think part of their power was that they were a group of young people who,

who realized that this was a life or death emergency, especially for them, because their whole lives were stretching in front of them. So decades and decades of being on this planet, as it gets hotter and hotter, and these catastrophes get worse, right? So they, they felt that in a way that, you know, a 75 or 80 year old politician probably just can't feel, because, you know, they've lived their whole lives under this assumption that taking the climate for granted and these fossil fuel norms that it's normal to fly a lot, that it's normal to burn this fossil fuel and that it's okay, right? So it's very hard for someone who's grown up with that and who's lived their whole lives with those norms to understand that this is, this is really

life or death emergencies. So I get that. But there are one, there are one good group, Extinction Rebellion is another good group. I agree with them that we need to start taking direct action. This is such a big emergency. And the powers that be the establishment status quo, which is, you know, for various reasons, you follow the money, right? It's basically profit and power are invested in maintaining this fossil fuel system, which is degrading our planet, breathtakingly quickly, right? So, so Extinction Rebellion says, we have to fight against that. And it's, it's time to rebel and it's time to take risks and it's time to get arrested. Because, and this again, this goes back to why I choose not to fly anymore, or why it's not even

a choice why I can't fly anymore. Because once you see it's a life or death emergency, again, these, these kind of pretty strong actions and these pretty strong words, they feel, they feel pretty justified. And if you think that we can solve this by just, you know, making cars a little bit more efficient, and by putting up a few more solar panels, then it doesn't feel justified. But, you know, I think we have to, we have to recognize that we're entering a major sort of bottleneck for our species. And the outcome isn't guaranteed. And, you know, we might have to use less energy to help speed this transition to a carbon free energy system and transportation system and food system, and to a new economy that doesn't depend on endless exponential growth

for us to afford to function at all, right? We need an economy that, that is designed to make us happy, instead of just making a few people super rich, right? And we need an economy that understands that it sits within this biosphere, and that the biosphere is bigger than it. You know, our human economy, it's, it's like, that's how our species kind of exchanges energy with the, with the, the environment around us. You can think of bacteria and a petri dish, and they're exchanging energy with their environment and with each other. And so like those bacteria have a certain, you could call that their economy, right? Sure. And in the same way, our economy is the way we exchange energy and resources with each other and with this environment or the petri dish that

we live in, which is the biosphere. And we have to realize that the biosphere is bigger. And we're just one species in that, like having this energy exchange. So yeah, we need a, we need a growth agnostic economy that works for all of us. And that sits within this, this, this, this, this pale blue dot that we're living on, right? Which is, which turns out to be just so much more fragile than we thought it was, right? And we've been taking it for granted for too long. And we, we have to stop doing that. And it's just, it's a heavy lift, I know. And that's why I kind of, you know, I do think that I don't see how we can have a commercial aviation system in that kind of a transition. Once we go into emergency mode and say, we got a transition

really fast to, to save what's left and to avoid massive suffering on a scale that we can, we can't even really imagine that we can't wrap our minds around it. You know, the very least we can do is stop flying around, right? And that's a way to sit. That's a symbolic, we can also say we can end fossil fuel subsidies, right? It's a no brainer. We haven't done that yet. We can say we have to have a moratorium on fracking. There's these big symbolic things that we need to do, right? We have to get away from saying, like, we all need to become vegan. And by the way, one, one thing I want to say to go back to your episode, that was profound. And there's, there's something I've been, you know, I spoke with Pixar a couple of times to some of the creatives there and some of the

other employees. And we need climate storytelling. We need art that's able to, it's like a shortcut to that sort of emotional awareness that I was talking about, right? It helps, helps bring people out of this intellectual mode where they're staring at these, these plots that, you know, some scientists is talking about, which is also important. But that intellectual understanding isn't enough to wake people up and make them say like, yeah, this is an emergency. I'm going to go out and get arrested in order to raise awareness for this, right? You need something that helps people make that connection that we were talking about earlier. And I think art is one way to do that. And it's, it's profound. I think we've been telling, you know, Hollywood has been telling

these stories of the apocalypse, which are like, it's like a sublimation of the real apocalypse. Like they'll, they'll tell some story about a planet that gets way too cold, right? Yeah, which is this, this is coming out of anxiety over climate and ecological breakdown, but it's creating a fictional world, which is somehow comforting. And I think it helps us kind of stay in denial because we can process it psychologically, but in this fictionalized way. So we need, we need art that's willing to look at directly in the face, which I think is something somehow that midnight, you know, the weird combination of that art, you know, that bizarre art with, with your voice going on top of it. Thanks. Somehow it's, you know, somehow there was this,

this, you know, what is the, what is this saying? The whole was greater than the sum of the parts there. Something, yeah, something emerged from that. It did from the community that made the show. It was just so many people who were, whose minds joined in the thing emerged. I mean, it's collaboration. It's the real economy is collaborative. The real economy is what is, but you know what I think you're giving us is really beautiful. It's very empowering and heavy duty, man, which is a question that I don't, I've never even thought of the question, which is, how can I be a climate, an activist for the, for the earth? How, what would that look like? If I set my intention to help not just like kids not get burnt to death, but

all the other things, if I set my intention there, what would I do? Like, what's the first thing that I would do? That is great. That's great. Cause that, you know, if I learned working with the animators, that was the best way to work with them was ask them questions was to, to, to, and to give them very broad questions about what this could be. And then they would, their brains, which are brains would make those things. So I, I think just asking that question, get empowering people enough to imagine that you could be an actual activist. I mean, that's kind of brilliant. And it's, to me, it's, it's so spiritual too. It's a, to me, it's a sacred calling. We can't, what the, the enemy to, the enemy to activism is ego. It makes it hard for us to work

together as, as humans, right? So activism is this messy thing where you're not always going to agree with everyone. And it's easy to want to kind of cancel people if they say the wrong thing. And there's not a lot of slack is given. And there's a lot of big egos. There's a lot of egos that want to just kind of make a career out of it or to receive accolades because of it. The sacred activism is to find a way to, to be a proxy for this planet and for the life on this planet and let that, let that speak through you. And then if you just become a mouthpiece for that, you, you don't, you're not scared anymore. The fear goes away, you know, the fear of losing your job. Even the further you go, like more and more, the fear of death starts to go away. And, and you,

you know, we all have this like short time on this planet. It's a, it's, it's kind of a beautiful thing. And we have to decide how we want to spend it. And, you know, we're breathing this air and we're eating this food and drinking this water and having these friendships, which are all provided by this earth. Yes. And right now the earth is, you know, people say, I don't like it when people say the planet will be fine. I mean, we're talking about a hit, a huge hit to life on this planet, which will take 10 million years to recover because we're in a six mass extinction, right? Through the twin drivers of habitat loss. So that's one good reason to be vegan right there is, you know, take some, you can feed more people with less land, but habitat loss and global heating

are putting us squarely now. I think there's a really strong consensus in a mass extinction event, right? And it takes 10 million years. You can look at the fossil record at previous mass extinction events on this planet. It takes around 10 million years for biodiversity to recover. So, and this is the only place we know that has life. So to me, this is a, it's a sacred calling and it's, it's hard. There's this really hard, to me, one of the most challenging dynamics is to, I'm trying to build up a platform so we can get this message out that we're talking about now, right? And to do that, you know, you need, like, to go on shows and you need to kind of people to know who you are so that you have access to these doors open and you get these

platforms that you can actually speak on and get that message out to try to help wake people up. And that can make your ego get bigger. Yes. And so, so, you know, meditation for me, I have like a pretty rocky, vipassana practice. I need to go on a 10 day course as soon as possible. I'm actually trying to try to get into one, but it's been tough because of the lockdown. Yeah. And because, and then, you know, my main meditation center up by Fresno in Central California, it's in this little town called North Fork, which it's, which is in the forest there, like right just, just below Yosemite. So it's kind of a few thousand feet below Yosemite that's on the way between Fresno and Yosemite. And they claim that they're the central point of California,

which is interesting. But they were right next to the Creek Fire. Like we would look, my wife and I would look on this, this map of the Creek Fire and there'd be these little like red, like spots, you know, like, like the fire was like this mushroom that was trying to like reach out and, and take over the meditation center. And it didn't end up burning. But this has been making it harder to meditate. But yeah, to me, like, it's hard to, I don't know how to, I guess I already said it, but you got to put the earth and these other beings kind of above yourself. And it's this, it's this, it's this hard thing, again, of dissolving that, that sort of illusion of being separate. And it's, I find it very hard to put it into words to be honest.

I think you're doing a tremendous job of putting it into words. It's very inspiring. You know, all this, what ends up accidentally happening is that people who feel very strongly, especially people who feel afraid, they become aggressive. And the aggression ends up creating defense mechanisms, the defense mechanisms create denial and it creates a sad feedback loop that started with a very simple, we got to do more than this. So I think what you're saying reminds me of what Jack Cornfield, I heard him say once, this Buddhist teacher, we don't want you to be a Buddhist, we want you to be a Buddha. And what you're saying is you, you are, to me, the ego thing for a lot of people is not they, they are inflated egos, it's their ego has been so

deflated by being not connected to the earth, that they don't think they deserve to be a voice for the earth. They don't think they're good enough to help. They're just a pile of shit. And they've already, you know, made so many mistakes. There's nothing left. And what you're saying, it's empowering. It's like, it's, it's, and I think that is the, if you want to know that the heartbreaking thing to me when I go out in the forest or when I think about Jesus or when I think about is that generally the relationship is not the power. It's saying, you got to help. I need your help. That's heartbreaking. It's such a sad thing. I got to hear you say that because I think you're right. And it's so sad to, you know, so many, so many activists right now are

feeling deflated. And I think some of them are getting depressed. And it's, it's, it is heartbreaking. And, and yeah, we have to lift each other up and we, and yeah, you're all good enough to be a climate activist. You, it's, it's hard to find this way. But man, we got to help each other figure this out and help lift each other up and not tear each other down and help us figure out, help each other figure out how to do this and find our way through this. Because, you know, I don't think any of us really know how to do it. But I think that somehow together, we're able to figure this out, you know, and when one of us feels burnt out, the others can come and lift that person up. It's, you know, it's like geese flying in that formation, right? When the one in the front

gets tired and they go in the back, and then the other ones help it out. And that's, that's sort of how we have to think of this, I think is, you know, not tearing each other down, but lifting each other up and celebrating the little victories and celebrating the differences. And even I would say celebrating to some extent the disagreements. Because, you know, again, I'll go back to how how much I changed a couple years ago, when I felt, I kind of felt threatened about, you know, this focus switching from that, that the keeling curve of CO2 going up every year, right? And switching toward climate justice. And originally, I was sort of suspicious of that. And now, like, you know, I'm so grateful that other activists realized that not only was that

the right thing to do, but that was the powerful thing to do. That was the way to actually get that emissions curve to go down. So, yeah, we, I don't know how, you know, there's this, I don't know if other people have talked about this on your show before, but there's this beautiful idea, which, which I heard Tick Nahan say, which is that, I think others have been saying it too, I think many others, that the next Buddha is the Sangha, that we're right, we're waking each other up. That's it. Yeah. So let's keep doing that. And you know, I think these kinds of discussions help. Yeah. Thank you for saying that, because that's weird. I kept meaning to say, you know, and I don't know if this is true or not. But apparently, when the Buddha came out of his

meditation, having gained realization, the first thing he did was bow to the tree. He was meditating. And yeah, oh gosh, we have a whole show talking about trees. We should listen, listen, this has been a really one of the greatest chats I've had. And maybe in my life, thank you, you are brilliant. You're brilliant. And your form of activism is powerful. And, and yeah, this really spun me around in a, in a good way. Thank you. But please let people know how they can find you, how they could chip in, how they can connect, because people are going to want to connect to you after this. Yeah, so I tweet pretty vulgarly sometimes on climate human. So you can, you can follow me at climate human if you want to get the unvarnished climate truth.

And then I have a, I have a website, Peter commas.net, where I actually talked to my publisher of my book and they, they, they agree that I could put the entire book up there for free. So if you, if you're looking for a pandemic read, you can go to Peter commas.net and dive in there. So thank you so much for having me on Duncan. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was Peter Kalmas, everybody. All the links you need to find Peter are going to be at dougatrustle.com. A big thank you to our sponsors, SUMA, BetterHelp and DHM detox for supporting this episode of the DTFH. And a big thanks to you for listening. I hope you all will heed Peter's suggestion and think about ways that you can be climate activists in this bizarre time period

in human history. We will be back next week with a conversation with the brilliant comedian Tom Papa. Until then, Hare Krishna. Ghost towns, dirty angel out now. You can get dirty angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost towns, dirty angel out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford and J4R. Oh, and thereabouts for kids. Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in-store and

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