Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Bill Weir on Tackling Climate Change: A Hierarchical Needs Approach EP 443

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

https://passionstruck.com/passion-struck-book/ - Order a copy of my new book, "Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life," today! Picked by the Next Big Idea Club as a must-read for 2024.In this episode of Passion Struck, host John R. Miles interviews Bill Weir, renowned journalist and chief climate correspondent at CNN. Weir shares insights on addressing climate change through a hierarchical needs approach, drawing inspiration from Abraham Maslow's pyramid of needs. Weir discusses his upbringing, experiences covering global events, and the importance of storytelling in raising awareness about climate change. Bill is the author of the new book "Life as We Know It (Can Be): Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World."Full show notes and resources can be found here: In this episode, you will learn:Bill Ware shares his upbringing and how it shaped his perspective on climate change.The importance of storytelling in addressing climate change and raising awareness.The role of youth advocacy, highlighted by movements led by figures like Greta Thunberg.The need for systems change, as discussed by influential figures like Richard Branson and the B team.All things Bill Weir: https://www.instagram.com/billweircnn/SponsorsBrought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place.Brought to you by Nom Nom: Go Right Now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at https://trynom.com/passionstruck.Brought to you by Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth provided an exclusive offer for my listeners. 35% off site-wide when you use the code “PASSIONSTRUCK” at https://cozyearth.com/This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/PASSIONSTRUCK, and get on your way to being your best self.This episode is brought to you By Constant Contact:  Helping the Small Stand Tall. Just go to Constant Contact dot com right now. So get going, and start GROWING your business today with a free trial at Constant Contact dot com.--► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to:https://passionstruck.com/deals/Catch More of Passion StruckWatch my interview with Jen Gottlieb On How To Create Your Own Success By Being SeenCan’t miss my episode with Dr. Scott Lyons On How You Break Free From Drama AddictionListen to my interview with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor On Loving And Leaving AlcoholCheck my interview with Dr. Elisa Hallerman On How You Reconnect With Your SoulLike this show? Please leave us a review here-- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally!How to Connect with JohnConnect with John on Twitter at @John_RMiles and on Instagram at @john_R_Miles.Subscribe to our main YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMilesSubscribe to our YouTube Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@passionstruckclips

Coming up next on Passion Strike. I'm just inspired by people who are making up these entire new industries that don't even have standard measurement yet on how we quantify carbon drawdown. But they're the first responders, I think, to this problem. And I hear it all the time now. I just had a call with a CEO up in Canada who has this roundtable of people in packaging and in plastics and in these systems based big corporations who've made their fortune and have plenty for their kids to spend in their retirement, but they know their grandkids can't spend that on a dead planet and they want their legacy to be regenerative. And so I do think that there's a lot of pent up energy

around these ideas. And these days, a lot of people are just looking for ways to turn that anxiety into action. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice

for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.

Now, let's go out there and become Passion Struck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 443 of Passion Struck, consistently ranked by Apple as the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week eager to listen, to learn, and to discover new ways to live better, to be better, and to make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that. We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to passionstruck.com

slash starter packs or Spotify to get started. Are you curious to find out where you stand on the path to becoming passion struck? Dive in to our engaging passion struck quiz crafted to reflect the core principles shared in my latest book. This quiz offers you a dynamic way to gauge your progress on the passion struck continuum. Head over to passionstruck.com to embark on this insightful journey with just 20 questions and roughly 10 minutes of your time. Don't miss this chance to gain valuable insights into your passion struck journey. Take the quiz today.

In case you missed it, earlier this week I interviewed the one and only Gabby Bernstein, who shared her transformative wisdom from her latest book, Happy Days. We discussed how to heal from the past, embrace the power of self-love, step into a life of joy and peace, and unlock your happiest days yet. You absolutely want to tune into that in case you missed it. And if you liked that previous episode or today's, we would so appreciate you giving a five-star rating and review. They go such a long way in strengthening the Passion Struck community where we can help more people to create a passionate and intentional life. And I know we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today on Passion Struck, I welcome Bill Ware, renowned journalist and chief climate correspondent at CNN. While at ABC and now at CNN, Bill's adventures have taken him to the farthest reaches of the globe, from the floodwaters of New Orleans to the stunning landscapes of Tibet.

With his captivating storytelling and eye-opening insights, Bill has shed light on the urgent issues of our time, from climate change to global innovation. Join us as we dive deep into the heart of our changing world, exploring the urgent realities of climate change and the remarkable innovation shaping our future. From the front line of climate activism to the surprising resilience of nature, Bill shares powerful insights and inspiring stories that will leave you feeling empowered and hopeful. Get ready to be inspired, enlightened and moved as we unravel the mysteries of our planet and discover

the profound impact of our collective actions. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so honored and excited today to have Bill Weir on Passionstruck. Welcome Bill. Thank you John. It's so cool to be with you. I really appreciate it. Bill, as a child I read that you grew up aspiring to be either David Loderman or Peter Jennings. How did those two contrasting figures influence career path and in what ways, if any, do you see your legacies reflected in how you have approached journalism yourself? Interesting yeah, so I still remember what the classroom looked like in

Second grade Douglas Road Elementary School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin When I said something that made the whole room laugh including the teacher and I really that feeling. And my dad was a very funny guy, raconteur. And my grandfather, who I admired, was a big Johnny Carson late night comic fan. And when Saturday Night Live came, I loved those figures. Sense of humor meant a lot to me back in those days. My dad was a sort of a voracious news consumer. And in our house, he could have picked your favorite anchor

because the network news was a religious ritual every night to watch what was going on in the world and talk about it. He was more of a Tom Brokaw guy. I like Peter Jennings, a James Bond figure, dashing Canadian at ABC News. When I wandered my way into the communication department where I went to school, I had read all the president's men. I also had a newspaper sort of affection and just fell in love with the TV station, the radio station,

all of this on campus. I was really in love with sports and followed it avidly as a fan and hung out with guys on sports teams all in school, even though I wasn't good enough to play. And so I went with the sports route and I thought that was the most personality liberating space where you could have schtick. And it was early sports center days, Dan Patrick, Keith Olbermann attitude towards it. I started in sports and I sent out hundreds of resume tapes around the country. No one ever called me back except for a tiny little station

in Southern Minnesota, Austin, Minnesota, where they make spam. And I moved there, sight unseen, to be the weekend sportscaster. And luckily it was the year that the Twin Cities hosted the Super Bowl, World Series, Final Four, Stanley Cup, US Open. I got to cover all these big events as just a cub reporter.

And then from there, I went to Green Bay to do sports. And then Chicago, I did a morning show and also covered the Bulls during the heyday of Michael Jordan. And went out to LA to do sports, really with the hope of being a late night host. At this point, I'd gotten enough attention and had enough experience in my resume tape. Gave me a few opportunities to audition for The Daily Show when Craig Kilborn left, but ended up doing sports in LA, hoping to do that. That didn't work out. And then one of those pivotal moments that changed a life, I got a call from the head of talent at ABC News and they're starting Good Morning America.

And they wanted me to come be the anchor to my amazement. And so now I was working with Peter Jennings and filing reports for his show. And so the dream came true in that way. I think my years of doing sportscasting, a year I spent in Hollywood studying screenwriting and storytelling writ large, really helped my journalism. It helped me understand why some stories stick

and what resonates with us and how you take that viewer on a ride deliberately and how you script and craft a story to leave them both with insight and emotion. If you can marry those two things together in a story, you've succeeded. And so I, the longest time I was just doing a blatant David Letterman ripoff in my sportscasts.

And so if anything, that maybe informed my legacy that way. But I've tried to honor my heroes of journalism, who I really have sort of a corny reverence for this as a calling, and that information is a safety need in our societies and trusted information and sources of trusted information are more valuable than ever. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And today, in a bit, we're going to be discussing your brand new book, Life as We Know It Can Be, Stories of People, Climate and Hope in a Changing World, which I found to be a fantastic read. You're a fantastic read.

You're a great writer. So congratulations on that. As I was reading a portion of that, I often think now that I've done almost 450, these episodes and I'm on mics all the time and you're on many more than I am. It brings me back to Austin, Minnesota. When on a hot mic, you said a couple words that you thought could have ruined your career. It seems like being in your industry, it's so easy for something like that to happen.

And it amazes me how when you look at someone's career, how one small moment like that can sometimes be earth-shattering. When that happened, how were you feeling and was it something that you thought was going to stick with you for a while? I was devastated. I thought my career had ended before it began. I had come up with this Sunday night weekend wrap-up blooper segment there. I was gonna show off my comedy writing skills over assortments of highlights from the week. And I called it the Sports Sunday and I had animation made. I was so excited to debut it,

but we didn't have enough time in that newscast. And the station was so small, there was no way for the director to talk to me in my ear. We had no floor director. So he just cut to commercial basically and left my mic open. So you hear me say, you gotta effing be kidding me, you know,

over a dishwashing soap commercial. And there probably had 12 viewers and three of them called in. And that was enough to get me suspended for a week. And I was just devastated. But my boss at the time was so kind about it. He's like, I gotta give you a week off, but one of these days when you're working in Milwaukee or Chicago, you're

gonna look back and laugh at this. And he's right. But that's why you start in Austin, Minnesota. And so you're not dropping F-bombs on a national television. And it was a searing lesson from that moment on. I know when I have a mic on my body and have some sort of internal sensor kicks in thanks to that very hard lesson. I also wanted to ask you, because as a kid, I grew up moving a lot and I understand you had an upbringing that involved the same type of transit lifestyle, how did that shape your early experiences and you've now connected with people all over the world? Did it also help you learn how to connect with people

from diverse backgrounds? Absolutely, yeah. My mom married pretty young and completely clashing personality as happens. Sometimes opposites attract and they don't last very long. My folks were split up when I was about two in Milwaukee. My dad was a cop, my mom was a secretary, and then she had a very powerful religious conversion

and became a very zealous evangelical Pentecostal Christian and announced one morning at breakfast that she'd had a dream from God and God wanted us to leave Milwaukee and move to Texas so she could go to Bible school and study and become a televangelist. And she literally put me on the phone with my dad who had joint custody to try to say, hey, can we move to Texas?

Mom says it's fun. There's cowboys there. They worked it out to where I would come back every summer and Christmas and left with her. And then the dreams kept coming, John. So I went to 17 different schools in six states, sometimes for a few months at a time, and my mom literally following her dreams. In hindsight, it turned out to be amazing training for a job in journalism,

because when you're always the new kid, you learn how to read a room, you learn how to empathize with people. I have best friends in deep red Oklahoma and bright blue Malibu, and I understand why they vote and how they think based on having lived in where they live. And it really was a gift.

And my mom had this sort of courage. It was backed up by her beliefs or faith, but a uniquely American sense of reinvention. Like you don't like it here? Well, happiness is just a U-Haul rent-a-low. I reflect also in writing this book in that a rolling stone gathers no moss, which I always thought rolling stones were cool. That's what Nick Jagger and Muddy Waters taught me. But moss is actually a really good indicator of ecological health. And we need moss. We need roots. We need a connection to community. We need a sense

of a congregation, tribe, or however you want to define it. Because we are social animals, we're stronger together. And being a gypsy bouncing all over made me ruthless. And now I look at my kids and how to build that for them, but also instilling in them the sense of freedom and liberty to do uproot and move if something, if circumstances change, to have the courage to do that if you think that's what's right. So yeah, I mean, I always joke that if I snap and hurt people, I'm going to blame it on mom, but in the end, I'm grateful I wouldn't change it. Yeah. You've moved around as a kid more than I did, but your story reminds me of, I don't know if you know who Sean Foley is, the golf coach to formerly Tiger Woods and many others, but he had an upbringing similar to yours.

And he talks about its profound impact on his philosophy. I can definitely see how it's benefiting you in the job you're in now. Speaking of this job, you've had this illustrious career covering pivotal global events, as varied as the Arab Spring to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, time in Afghanistan, deep water horizon spill. All of these have been brought to a worldwide audience. Can you share with us a memorable moment or story from all these extensive travels that's had a lasting impact on you? And there's an awful lot. I'm so lucky to get a front row seat to history sometimes and help write the first drafts of these big things.

When I never thought I'd have a route to that, the one that jumps into mind was my first big disaster was Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. I was flown down with a bunch of other reporters, Bob Woodruff among them. David Muir, who's now the anchor there. We were all just up and coming cub reporters and didn't know what was about to happen. And I was sent to Baton Rouge,

where I rode out the storm and broadcast from there. But at the time, ABC was the only network that didn't have a live truck in the city. The independent operator got nervous and left. And so it was a race to try to get into New Orleans and report on what was happening. The levees had burst and all that suffering was going on. I tried to hire a helicopter to no avail. And at a certain point I thought, well, if we can get a boat down to Mississippi, we

can go into the French Quarter. And I jumped the fence of a boat dealership in Gonzales, Louisiana and banged on the door until the guy answered with a gun in his hand because he thought we were looters. And I said, no, I'm looking to rent a boat dealership in Gonzales, Louisiana and banged on the door until a guy answered with a gun in his hand because he thought we were looters. And I said, no, I'm looking to rent a boat. Can you take us into the city? And he said, well, we can't go on the Mississippi, but I can take you the back way through the bayous across Lake Pontchartrain. And he backs out a gleaming brand new speedboat, like a ski boat with a huge 350 horsepower

engine. And he says, I can get you there in an hour. And it's only $110,000. He wanted us to buy the boat. And so I called New York and said, can I expense a speedboat? Cause I can be in New Orleans an hour if you want me. And anyway, they talked him into a rental agreement and he took us through. And it was just so eerie crossing under a stricken drawbridge with an announcement saying danger, and then

getting closer to the city and seeing pets floating in the water and smoke from the natural gas fires. And then we put a shore and New Orleans is one of my favorite cities. I'd spent a lot of time there. It was just shambles. The yacht club was like a toddler's bathtub with toys and boats upside down. And we went into the West End and an elderly woman called out to me for help. She needed medicine, she needed information.

This was two days after landfall. It was one of those seismic events. When you think a hurricane, you have so much warning. You watch it coming towards you for days. New Orleans is an hour's drive from the beach. You wouldn't think that people would be dying in their homes of this storm days after because of the levy break, because we didn't have the capacity to imagine such a horrible

thing. And so I started then from there did Fukushima and others the intersection between nature and human nature and how these big life-changing events and how people, some communities are just shattered by them, how some pull together stronger than others, began assembling these ideas, making a list of things to try to copy when it came time for me to build a home somewhere and find a community somewhere. And then other than that, the greatest thing that happened to me when I moved over to CNN, I was originally trying to do a studio show in prime time, but had the opportunity to shift to a documentary travel series because Anthony Bourdain had just come and his show was

doing well. And I sold them on this idea of going to the wonders of the world to wonder what will be left of them when my daughter's my age in 2050. And they greenlit that the wonder list. And so we shot that four seasons of that show in almost 30 countries. And I got to see the best of human community and go to blue zones where people live to a hundred or supremely happy societies from Bhutan to the South Pacific and try to understand how they interacted with each other,

their relationship with food, shelter, community, and combining lessons from the best and worst with each other, their relationship with food, shelter, community. And combining lessons from the best and worst is what informed my work in this sort of last chapter of my career is really focused on the enormity of this story. I used to resist being pigeonholed into a beat, but I think climate is the one that includes all the other beats because economics and foreign policy and medicine, healthcare, food, shelter, transportation, all depends on the systems we built for a different planet and a different water cycle. And all of these things are changing rapidly.

I jumped at the opportunity. I'm lucky to be in a place that gives the story some heft and latitude. And I also like to say we're all going to be climate reporters sooner or later. The way every newsroom was a health reporter during the pandemic and had to understand virology and think about relations, business angles of the story and sports were shut down. It's just, I feel like we're headed towards that with the climate beat. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all that and I've never seen anything of the magnitude of Katrina. However, I live in St. Petersburg, Florida, which is on the coast itself. We've been fortunate not to be hit knock on wood by

a major hurricane. A neighborhood that's a few miles away from me called Shore Acres here, which was built artificially by bringing earth in has been hit now two or three times over the past five years. Really hard during times when we haven't even had large storms and it's happens when you've got a full moon hits us at the same time, we get a high tide. I remember this past year when it happened, I'm driving through the neighborhood and it looked as if I think in my mind, Katrina would look and here you're going into this neighborhood and it looked like a complete disaster area.

I mean, people's whole houses are out in their front yards, all kinds of containers, more trucks than you can think of who are trying to deal with mold and water damage and everything else. So it is just so shocking when you see something like that. I've covered enough of these things to see and feel my heart breaks for these families because when the sun comes out and the sun is shining again, the problems really have just begun, right? Like you said, the drywalls molding and the kids can't go back to school and the insurance claim is a nightmare and you have to work and you can't

sleep at night and the power might be out. The more people can get ahead of those things and understand that it's not just you've been the winner of the worst lottery because you just happen to be on the path of this random storm. I think we have to get in the mindset that this is kind of normal and the water cycles that we grew up in, their past does not prologue anymore. FEMA recently reevaluated how they decide the vulnerability relative to communities, especially on coasts. Instead of just factoring in elevation and wind direction, historical storm surge, they also factored in church membership, voting turnout, broadband access, like the fabric of a community, in which case made some places much more resilient right on the coast

than those 50 miles inland, because they didn't have the same safety net for each other and same level of connection and resources. So yeah, it is shocking to see, and there are ways to learn from each of these events, hopefully that the next one comes around. Those people don't have to suffer as much. Yeah, absolutely. Bill, one of the reasons I have enjoyed watching you, whether it was on ABC or now CNN, was I always felt that you had a dedication to honesty and integrity in the journalism that you were doing and uncovering the truth and trying to present it with transparencies.

Now that you are doing climate correspondence and climate change, I think those attributes are extremely important in the polarized element we find ourselves in about climate change. Your work has highlighted the global impact of climate change. And I wanted to use that introduction as an important point, because I think trust right now is a very important element for people understanding the severity of this, but so is storytelling. I was hoping you could talk about the importance of storytelling and playing a role in addressing this global challenge. Sure.

I think that for one thing, the topic has been so politicized and demagogued for so long based on those who are profiting or taking power or even just ideological identity from these legacy systems. The most profitable companies in human history are the big oil and gas companies that exist today. We now have definitive proof, this is the subject of dozens of lawsuits around the country, states and cities and tribes suing big oil companies, essentially for lying to the public because their scientists knew with eerie precision what would happen on a planet that is warmed up by burning gigatons of fossil fuels.

And they predicted this when I was in a treason of mall in high school. They could use the defense we didn't know, now everybody knows. And yet we still live in a society where these companies get trillions in subsidies, direct and indirect. And people who understand the problem feel helpless because modern life is so intertwined with these ideas. And so when we talk about it, it's loaded politically in the United States. It's a very heady topic with no sort of happy ending.

There's no satisfying season finale in the climate change story, really, at least not for a couple hundred years, until somehow we can stabilize the heat trap and gases in the planet or in the atmosphere. It's just nobody wants to be the buzzkill at the party or at drop off with your kids at school. Who brings it up? But I think it's just the way we talk about it.

And Dr. Marti, I have a nightmare. He said, I have a dream. They were living the nightmare. And I think breath is given to the possibilities of renewable energy streams, basically powering a circular, healthy economy. The idea that when you build a power plant that just takes in sun or wind, the energy delivers itself to you. You don't have to go chasing it under mountains and oceans and piping it across landscapes anymore. But then that also means the profit margins go down. So this story that's being written about all of us, life on Earth and our futures, is as much about human nature

as it is about nature and the physics and the laws of physics that are baked in and how we fill our wants and needs, whether we reward big polluters with country club memberships and make that an aspirational thing, or people reflect on the cost of these business models. All of that is, I think, is gonna bring some really seismic changes

in how this next generation thinks. But the reason that we built this accidental heat trapped planet cooking blanket around the planet was that homo sapiens were just using the tools at hand. They were using the fuels that were cheapest and most available. So we burned wood and then dung and then whales for a while and kerosene and coal and all the way up. Well, now for the first time in human history, the cheapest forms of energy, thanks to a technological boom in the last decade, the two cheapest forms of energy are solar powered

plus battery storage and onshore wind energy. And that's why Texas leads the nation in clean power, installing way more solar than California is, has way more wind than any other state. Three of the five greenest states in the country are Republican-led states. So the economics are shifting in a way that's in defiance of even the local politics and ideology around these things. And I was raised to take so much for granted. I never thought about air, water, shelter, the food supplies. And I don't think our kids have the luxury of not knowing the cost of those.

And that there's a really smart way to build a house instead of skinny walls and giant furnaces and air conditioners. We do it the other way around. There's really smart ways to grow food. In some cases, a hamburger can be better for the planet than a veggie burger, depending on the how and the cow and the plow and all the methods that are there. The conversation needs to expand beyond, I think, starving polar bears and scary pictures of glaciers fall, calving and falling into the ocean. There are fortunes that are going to be made by the changes that are happening industrially.

New forms of storytelling, narratives, religions will change. This is going to affect every part of our lives going forward. And the more we can start talking about it, because even people who are really engaged and worried about this, studies have shown, never bring it up. And as a result of that, there's something called pluralistic ignorance in the United States. This came out of a study out of Yale and Boston College and other institutions where in 2022, they asked average American, guess what your fellow countrymen and women, what percentage care about climate and action around it. And most people, regardless of party,

guess between 33 and 40%. When the truth was, it's between 66 and 80%. You think you're outnumbered two to one, if you care about a planet and balance, turns out the opposite is true. You have allies you never knew you had, probably living down the block or all around you. And in some cases, maybe they vote a little differently, but you can relate with each other over your

shared love of your hiking trail or your park or your fishing hole. And that's what sort of forces me into having hope and thinking about sharing these parts of the climate story. Because again, you talk about its truth. And I'm proud to put my career out there for anybody to fact check. We have the most rigorous fact checking standards and practices here that backstop me all the time. And nothing makes me curdle more than the idea that I might have gotten something wrong on the air.

I take this responsibility very seriously. And I like to say, though though that my daughter has a very irrational fear of sharks, but I don't blame her for that. I blame Steven Spielberg who made the movie Jaws so convincing with a robotic shark and a couple of notes on the cello that he scared an entire generation away from this. I'd love the idea, I really I'm holding on to hope that my daughter will go scuba diving with me someday, but I know I'm not going to get her there by calling her an idiot. And so I try to have grace and empathy for the story believers who are hearing mistruths about this very

important topic from people who should know better and hold those storytellers accountable at a time when it is our moral obligation to sound the alarm that the house we share is on fire. Something you can share with your daughter Olivia is in my book, I ended up writing this chapter called The Mosquito Auditor. I got there because I heard this radio program and they were talking about what is the most dangerous animal on the planet and my mind went to the shark or a lion or something like that. And it wasn't even remotely close. The most dangerous animal on the planet is a mosquito. And you can tell her that a mosquito kills more people in one year than all the sharks on the planet will kill in over a hundred years.

Hey, that's a good one. Yeah, I like that one. There you go. Yeah, cows I think kill four times as many people as sharks. Ha ha ha ha. Bill, you speaking of kids, throughout the book, you end up doing a series of letters to your son, River. Can you walk us through what led you to take this approach with the book? Yeah, it came out of that. He was born at the height of this horrible time.

I had been in the climate beat for a couple of years So it was really I've been drinking from the firehose of doom that you get on this beat and was delighted That he was in our lives. My partner didn't think she could be a mom And it was such a brilliant surprise when she got pregnant and we were so thrilled. My daughter, who was 16 at the time, it connected us in ways after my divorce from her mom. That was quite healing. It was a blessed event all the way around, but then I still had this new, old dad view of the world and looking around at what was happening domestically. And it started with these Earth Day letters to him. I'm really sorry. Welcome.

Glad to have you. We need all the helpers we can get, but I'm sorry that we broke this place. It became an annual tradition where I'll be writing my fourth Earth Day letter this year in 2024. They were pretty dark at the beginning, but over time as events happen, as policies changed, and I met more and more innovators and dreamers and doers, my mood brightened, my wonder started to eclipse my worry. The book, which originally came out of that concept of a letter to my son about a sort of an instruction manual on how to live in this planet, it grew from there. My daughter then, I realized in structuring it, certain lessons made sense to be addressed to my son. My daughter, who's now 20, I devote the back end of the book

to her where I really get into my biography moving around how that changed the way I see the world and consume and think about building lives for them, but also cautionary tales about social media. And I think as much as we think about electric cars or heat pumps being keys to a sustainable future, I think there has to be a revolution in the way we talk to each other and our kids communicate. One of my biggest regrets I write about it is giving my daughter an iPhone at 10 and teaching her to use Instagram. I had just profiled Instagram for Nightline and thought I was giving her this tool

to keep her safe and connected and not realizing like so many parents, I was just mainlining the worst parts of middle school development and giving her this anxiety machine. At the same time, I was becoming addicted to Twitter. As a journalist, it was a great source and a thing, but then when I was using it to try to fill my esteem needs and love needs, it's not the real thing.

It's not real human interaction, the way we are wired to engage. And I let real in life friendships go fallow instead of while spending too much time online Modeling that is horrible behavior for my kids. Yes. I have too much Midwestern humility to write a self-help screen It's a this is how you should live But there's something more liberating about just preaching to my kids Trust me your old man has seen a few things and if I could do it all over again These are the ways I would improve life and I think you'll be happier and more mentally healthy to avoid these pitfalls. And I'm trying to draw from role models I found in history, people who are alive today, I've met in disaster

zones, innovators who are trying to build stronger homes or more efficient energy systems to set them up as these are the kind of helpers I'd love for you kids to emulate, but also went looking for tips from the giants of psychology, like Abraham Maslow and his theories on human motivation, a pyramid of needs, and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who's a brilliant woman who basically invented hospice care at a time when doctors didn't want

to talk about terminal diagnoses. And she of course came up with the five stages of grief as a concept of what people cycle through, which helps me think about folks reeling after losing their home in a hurricane or adjusting to these new normals. In the end, it is structured as this big sloppy letter from a dad to his kids. I hope it resonates not just with other dads and moms, but other kids and other folks who are just yearning for a new way to think about this very big complicated problem. Thank you for sharing that. And as I was preparing for this, I happened to listen to an episode you did a number of

years ago with the Clio Institute, a podcast called House on Fire. As I was preparing for this, I happened to listen to an episode you did a number of years ago with the Clio Institute, a podcast called House on Fire. And I bring it up because you were interviewed by, I think, a 21-year-old female and a 17-year-old gentleman at the time. I bring this up because we're talking about our kids. And considering your own experiences covering climate related events and movements like the one that Greta Thunberg has led, how do you perceive the role of youth advocacy in raising awareness about climate change? The Inflation Reduction Act is the most ambitious sort of climate law in this country's history,

any country's history really. And you can quibble over the policy in it and whether you want to tackle it, but I don't think it would have happened without the movement led by Greta, this lonely girl sitting outside of Swedish parliament and that showing one of the positives of social media, any tool, whether it's flame or a blade or a smartphone, you can use it to heal or you can use it to rob and steal and burn things down. And the connecting power of social media to really unite this entire generation of concerned kids who were smart enough to understand the science and are looking at the grownups like,

why are you guys not acting like this is serious and calling out arrogance and ignorance from leadership and taken to the streets? The first time I went from seeing my little boy's ultrasound to a climate march in front of the UN in New York City led by Greta Thunberg and I interviewed her around that time. I think those kids sitting down in the halls of power in Congress, yelling down into Dianne Feinstein's office, calling her out. Absolutely. I think that had something potent. I don't know that it would have happened without that.

To be honest, the movements became harder to see after the pandemic sent everybody back to their rooms. And we haven't seen those kinds of climate marches take to the streets in the same way. You see these direct activists who are throwing paint on artwork in museums or gluing themselves to things which from my perspective doesn't seem to have the intended effect, but I can understand their motivation in doing that. One of my formative books growing up, my dad influenced me, is the great writer Edward Abbey who wrote The Monkey Wrench Gang, which is a novel about fed up environmentalists who becomes eco terrorists and are blowing up bulldozers and dams out west.

And it's a comedic novel around an Earth first movement that was happening in the 70s. And that's not the answer. Activists try to shut down Heathrow Airport with drones, which is what happened a couple of years ago, or just stop people who may be on your side, but I just need to feed their kids. I don't ultimately what comes of that and how they decide where to go from there. I think those groups have had a real reckoning. Like what do we do? What is reasonable? What's gonna move the needle?

What's gonna get people's attention? And I empathize with that so much. And so what I hope is that what I'm preaching to my kids here is to be absolutely engaged, civic minded participants who know exactly what's going on, who wields the level of power in your community to be really active consumers and favorite brands. If you really love that brand and you expect something of them,

email them and ask them about their climate plan and is there sustainability that they're touting for real? Or is this just messaging? We have to teach this generation to spot greenwashing and understand what's real and what's not and who's trying to make you feel better about your choices. I also think that if my kid was tempted to go down that route of just utter frustration, that they could do more good going to meetings of the local utility board and understanding the fuel mix from the power plant down the street and who decides how that works,

or plugging in with the local water commission to understand the health of our environment at this level. We need somebody who's engaged to get in there based on their personality. I've got need somebody who's engaged to get in there based on their personality. I've got one kid who's artistic. I want her to use her voice to make this a better place unless she can. And you can come at it from all different kinds of angles. That's the thing about climate. It touches so many different parts of life. So when people ask, what can I do? What do you love? What are you into? Are you into Beyonce and nature? I guarantee you,

you can find a group of Beyonce-loving hikers and you guys are going to get together and organize something in a way that benefits that whole ecosystem. My heart goes out to this generation. Some people say, you got to save us, which is horribly unfair. They didn't make any of this. We've created this sort of golden age of addiction and depression and distraction in our societies. The pandemic didn't help. We all forgot how to be human with each other, I think, a little bit. It's so convenient to self-isolate these days. Just put in your earbuds and look at your phone and you don't have to interact at all if you don't want to. But I think a little bit of our soul dies when that happens. And we, and the more we can lead into each other and reconnect and build that trust around each other, around nature, by and large, the time.

So over the past two years, I have had a number of incredible conversations on this podcast about the need for systems change with people ranging from David Ribbenstein to Jeff Walker, who was the former co-chairman of JP Morgan Chase for a period of time. I think Seth Godin did one of the best explanations when he was talking about the carbon almanac of how it's going to take systems change to get climate change fixed. But I really like the work, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, that Sir Richard Branson has been doing with something he calls the B Team,

which I got introduced to. And what he is trying to do is get a number of CEOs from large scale corporations together, because if you're gonna do systems change, you have to get large multinational companies to be part of this. And a big aspect of it is to start changing what the KPIs that they're running the company is on and shifting it from shareholder value or earnings to other

vital things such as carbon reduction, et cetera. So I think what you're bringing up and what the youth movement is trying to bring up are huge needs that we've got to change how we're going about things to change the paradigm for how these companies are operating. I wanted to go back into your book. You mentioned Abraham Maslow before and his pyramid of needs is something that you organize the whole book around. And it's interesting because I interviewed psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, who you might know, who in his book, Transcend, redrew the pyramid of needs

to be the metaphor of a sailboat. But in the book he write, it doesn't matter how you draw the pyramid of needs, what matters is how you fill it. Can you explain that statement? Sure, when I found Maslow just as a character and then his ideas, it helped me structure things. Because when I was growing up, I had the luxury

of not thinking about the bottom of my pyramids, the physiological needs, or my food, and the quality of my food and water, and the temperature of where I happened to live, and what that range might be. I came up, I was not exactly, we were middle class, lower middle class, when I was this gypsy kid bouncing around, and I could complain

about mom's tuna casserole, but we never wanted for anything. And not realizing how, as Warren Buffett described it, I had won the sperm lottery and just happened to be born in this land of relatively peaceful abundance at this one time of prosperity, whereas billions of people around the world are thinking about the bottom of their pyramid the minute their eyes open in the morning. Whereas how far do I have to walk for my water? What are we eating today? Do I have

to catch it or grow it? And the more I traveled later in life as a journalist, I appreciated just how lucky I was. And I'm trying to instill that in my kids to help them understand that. At a certain time, I thought in order to fill my pyramid of needs, I wanted to buy a vintage Corvette. And so I fell in love when I was a kid making models of the early 1957, 58, early 60s Corvettes. And when I became a sportscaster in LA, had enough money and I could buy any kind of car I wanted.

And I said, I'm gonna go buy an old Corvette. Like with the fantasy, I'm gonna drive that around. That was not meeting my safety needs of getting me back and forth to work or my physiological needs. That was purely trying to meet my love and esteem needs. By the admiring glances I would get from strangers, at the stoplight.

And nothing pumps you up more than driving around with the top down in a 62-vet. It's like a beautiful sculpture and people are into that stuff for all completely understandable reasons. But at the end of a drive, I smelled like gasoline fumes. And driving down the 405 freeway, it's like being in an oven. I'd sweat through my suits. It was just completely in an impractical way to fill my pyramid of needs. When you think about what kind of house you want to live in, most often, most of my life, it was

just what it looked like. I had this cabin in Northern New Jersey for years. It was a hundred year old house and I spent money to put new cedar shingles on it cause I liked the way they looked. And then think at all about the fact it was so leaky and the cold air would blow up our pajama legs because the insulation was so bad. And I was wasting so much diesel oil heating that place that I'm an idiot in hindsight, right?

It's all just thinking about how, yes, these days you can meet the aesthetic needs you have. You can have a house that is the handsomest on the block, if that matters to you, but it can also be super efficient. And Yvonne Chonard, the CEO of Patagonia, who I really admire the way he's run that company. And he was an iconoclast years ago when he's asked his customers, if you're buying one of my puffy jackets, are you buying it because you're cold or because you're bored or because you want somebody at school to think you're cool? When I think about filling the pyramid for my son, just to ask himself that question, why do I feel I need this?

Right? And do I really need it? Why do I want it? that question. Why do I feel I need this? Do I really need it? Why do I want it? Is there a way for me to get it that is a little bit better for the planet or the people who made it? All the questions until I started traveling and meeting the people who make our clothes and seeing where they get dumped when we're done with them, it just changes how you consume, I think, a little bit. with them. It just changes how you consume, I think a little bit. And also, absolutely right about systems change. And you start to see the inefficiencies of things and how much better they could be. I was a lot more fun before I started studying this stuff. I would see an ice cream truck and just

smile. But now I see the fumes coming out of the generator. I think about how the sugar was grown to make that stuff inside. I think about maybe where the guy came from who's selling the ice cream. If I chat with him, understand his American dream. But you're absolutely right. It's about systems changes. And those come culturally from stories, just how we talk about what we want and where we could go. The one that always irks me is when I see the yard workers who are using the air blowers that are gasoline propelled knowing that in one hour of use it's the same pollution that a car driving round trip across the United States generates which just to me puts the whole thing in perspective. And they're blowing away valuable habitat.

Those leaves and the mulch that they can create is full of life. It's full of pollinators. It's full of friends of nature. And because we like these orderly lawns, again, a story that was told to us that somehow the front of our homes should look like we are somehow bearing a lords from days gone by when the natural sort of plants and animals that in that place could be allowed to thrive at none of the cost of leaf blowers or those sorts of things. It's just the story we've bought into. For the audience, I really found this to be an interesting read.

And you mentioned earlier how you bring up historical figures in the chapters, along with rich stories and just in your chapter on air, because you go through Maslow's hierarchy of needs and at the most fundamental level, you have air, water, etc. But in this chapter you bring up Eunice Newtonfoot and Joseph Priestley and their background, which is worth understanding because I had heard of Joseph Priestley before, but I didn't understand the backstory of how his whole town revolted against his ideas. And then in the same chapter, you tell the story of Marty Oldland, who had a real frustration level when it came to climate change. And in the face of that, he decided to take action by addressing excessive carbon dioxide

levels. I want to ask you about him, because I think it's a great thing that permeates throughout the rest of the book. How do you perceive the role of individuals like Marty, who are channeling their frustration into innovative solutions at the grassroots level? Well, it's a new pursuit, I think. These are all sort of new characters, pioneers that are meeting people who see the enormity of the problem and tackle it from different Well, it's a new pursuit, I think. These are all sort of new characters, pioneers, that are meeting people who see the enormity of the problem and tackle it from different angles, different solutions.

Marty gave me the metaphor that this is a carbon Godzilla that we've uncorked from the Earth, and it's ruining everything we love. At first, it helped us do the heavy lifting, but now we have to chop that thing up. We have to get mad and tackle it and bury Carbon Godzilla back underground. And so he wanted his whole life to just to be a fisherman. He's from the Gulf of Maine, his third, fourth generation, cod, macro fisherman. But a genius as a student went to Duke in Columbia and was studying, I think, robotics and system

engineering. But when he came back to Maine to buy a boat and get a lease of fishing grounds, he did the math and realized he just couldn't make it work because all the fish going away, the Gulf of Maine was warming up four times faster than the rest of the world. And so he got mad and he said his anger, he turned it into action in the form of an ocean repair company. He wanted to have a boat called Running Tide. Instead, he started a company called Running Tide that uses different nature-based solutions to draw down carbon. And they looked at a lot of different possibilities. Of course, there are machines that can do it, that pull it out of air,

direct air capture machines. I've met innovators who take food stocks like corn stalks or farm waste that would normally just left to rot in the field and turn into methane, gather that up, turn it into bio oil, inject it back into old oil wells. There's lots of different approaches, but Marty settled on macroalgae, big seaweed, and with the idea of floating rafts that are made of basically forest waste, you build a raft, you seed it with macroalgae that grows super fast. It can grow up to two feet a day.

It pulls down carbon at a rate much faster than trees. You don't have to worry about gravity. And when this micro crop gets big enough, they cut it loose. And in theory, it sinks to the bottom, where the pressure of the ocean locks that carbon Godzilla away for hundreds of years. And then in the raft itself, it puts limestone, which serves as antacid for the oceans.

Acidification is a huge problem on top of global warming and climate change. And to help balance out the pH of the ocean, he's like, science says we need two and a half Mount Fuji's of limestone. And that's a lot of mass to move, Marty says. But if that's what it takes for my kid to be able to go fishing, give me a shovel. And he had this sort of attitude about, okay, yeah, it's what it takes for my kid to be able to go fishing, give me a shovel. And he had this sort of attitude about, okay, yeah, it's completely screwed up. This is a huge problem. There's lots of people to be mad at, but right now, give me a shovel.

And he was also working with oysters, which are an amazing ecological tool, incredible water filters that pull down carbon and keep them in their shells. And then that is of course is a form of protein and for coastal communities to build these modular oyster beds. He had that as an angle. He had just started the floating these rafts off of Iceland with their support, the government support there.

And along the way figured out a way to stream data from the raft into the cloud with cameras because for carbon markets, you're gonna have to prove that this thing is out there and growing and catching the carbon you say it is. I'm just inspired by people who are making up these entire new industries that don't even have standard measurement yet

on how we quantify carbon drawdowns, but they're the first responders, I think, to this problem. And I hear it all the time now. I just had a call with a CEO up in Canada who has this round table of people in packaging and in plastics and in these systems-based big corporations who've made their fortune and have plenty for their kids to spend in their retirement, but they know their grandkids can't spend that on a dead planet and they want their legacy to be regenerative. And so I do think that

there's a lot of pent-up energy around these ideas. And And ultimately we don't know if Marty's ideas can scale and work. And we don't know what happens when you put a bunch of biomass at the bottom of the ocean, the way that they describe, but he's trying to find out. And these days, a lot of people are just looking for ways to turn that anxiety into action. I'm just looking for ways to turn that anxiety into action.

Bill, I wanted to end on this question. I think what you just gave is a great explanation of the types of stories that you talk about throughout the book. You end the book by talking about Abraham Maslow again and his concept of being values or be values, which for the listener who might not be familiar with his work, to get to a point of self-actualization, you need these values to foster a good society. And I was hoping you could talk about that through the lens of

the historical and environmental changes in Maui and how they reflect a departure from these values that were espoused by Abe Maslow. Late in his life, Abe Maslow went for a jog. I believe he was about 60 years old, said goodbye to his wife and just took a few steps and dropped dead of a heart attack. I've got a hold of all of his journals towards the end of his life and he was really second guessing his self-actualization theory that people in smart aleck students would say,

well, what about Adolf Hitler? Wasn't he self-actualized? He was the very best murderer he could be. And it just was too flimsy for him. And he realized he had confused the people he admired, the CEOs, the generals, who he saw as self-actualized as instead what they had was these 14 being values, as opposed to the D values, deficiency values, which is anger and rage and all the stuff

we're trying to avoid in our lives. But he identified them as truth, goodness, beauty, unity, zest for life, uniqueness, perfection, completion, justice, simplicity, richness, effortlessness, playfulness, self-sufficiency. And that ultimately the most self-actualized people, it's not about self at all, that they hew to these values. For someone who carries truth as a value, maybe wants to become a journalist, at least I do for that. It's as much a part of me as my spleen.

If somebody who cares about the law and fairness practices law with that as their motivating value, I just found that really interesting that in the end, it really comes down to service of others. And all the great religions are based around that sense of shared service. And I argue that if we help each other fulfill the bottoms of our pyramid of needs

and connect with our neighbors around our air and water and temperature and where our food supplies, try to meet the people who grow or catch our food and cook our food, celebrate the people who want us in their kitchens, who want us on their farms, want to see how they steward their land or their livestock, that celebrate those people. And that is where we will find our love and esteem needs,

that these days we chase with likes on social media or spending sprees or cruises or hedonistic stuff. And the model for this I found was in covering the Maui wildfires, which is really something on so many levels. I had done an episode of my Wondrlist show in Hawaii, just as they're opening from the pandemic and really immersed myself in Native Hawaiian culture and the history of that place and how the colonialists said basically sugar barons from the Civil War, torn south went to Hawaii and changed

what was this lush Venice of the South Pacific in Lahaina into just this tinder dry grassland. They diverted all the water, first to grow sugar, then pineapples, now it's housing developments and golf courses and the native land was neglected. And then the fire was the result of that. Amid all this devastation, I went into the burn zone one day and turned a corner and found this neighborhood that was vibrant with life, this one neighborhood of native Hawaiian residents, and they were being organized by a guy named

Archie Kaleepa, who was a hall of fame lifeguard, waterman in Maui. He had pioneered the use of jet ski like tow in surfing and ocean rescue and just was a revered elder in the community. And I watched him manage this disaster with these hundred survivors around him without any outside help from the government at this point. Volunteers bringing in supplies via boat, and we had a U-Haul truck that we had brought in. And the way that he filled his neighbors' pyramid of needs, the way he had the water pallets, the food distribution,

the way they were handing out medicine, just like they had their own pharmacy schedule set up. But he was also filling their love and esteem needs, the way he was connecting and commending the helpers within the community that were stepping up. He had music there, local band to come lift spirits. They had a set schedule that was regimented. We talk about, we use Lord of the Flies

as a metaphor for society coming apart. Well, that book was written by a miserable drunk who had a very dystopian view of human nature when it really happened when a bunch of young islander boys in the 70s fell asleep on a boat and were living on a deserted island and were rescued like over a year later. They had built an entire society. They had a gym and they had a flame that they had maintained that never went out and a system of shared tasks and that is the kind of kid I hope to raise. That is the Archie Kaleppas of whatever life brings us and however this climate

crisis strikes in what form, that we're the kind of neighbor that helps fill the pyramid of needs of those around us in the healthiest and sparest way and cherishes those connections when the sun is shining and as a result will be that much stronger when the storm comes. And so kind of wrap up around that idea that people like Archie Kaleppa

are my new heroes in this age. Bill, I think that's a great way for us to end. And we've left a ton of the book to be explored by any of the listeners and I highly encourage this book. It's a great approach to really understanding climate change and to understand it through the stories that you tell. Thank you so much again for joining us today on passion struck. It was my great privilege, John. Thanks. You're so easy to talk to.

Thanks for the smart questions. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Bill Weir. And I wanted to thank Bill, CNN and Mark Fortier for the honor and privilege of having them appear on today's show links to all things. Bill will be in the show notes. Please use our website links. If you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show,

videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our clips channel at Passion Struck Clips. Please go subscribe and join over a quarter million other subscribers. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one community place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

You can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles, where I post daily bits of inspiration, or you can sign up for a newsletter titled Live Intentionally on passionstruck.com and join over 30,000 other subscribers. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck podcast interview that I did with actor Jason O'Mara from his early days on stage in Dublin to his iconic roles in Hollywood

blockbusters. Jason's journey is nothing short of inspiring. In this episode of Passion Struck, we uncover the secrets of Jason's success, his insights on the power of storytelling, and his unwavering commitment to making a difference in the world. I think all storytelling is about change. Even when you go about writing a script, it's always the story of how a character changes. A character doesn't always get what they want,

but they always seem to get what they need. All art, if it's deep enough and specific enough, has the power to change the person who's witnessing the art, viewing it, reading it, being an audience member, whatever it is. Like for me, I got sober in 1995. And I don't think it was any coincidence that the night before I was watching the Mike Lee film, Naked. And somehow I took from that this sort of idea that unless I get off this kind of roller coaster that I'm on, something bad is going to happen. And David Thulez's character is,

he's circling the drain in that film. He's on a helter-skelter going down and it's like this rock bottom that he never quite hits. And it motivated me to change my life the next day. Remember that we rise by lifting others, so share this show with those that you love and care about. And if you found today's episode with Bill Weir inspirational, then definitely share this episode with those who could hear his message.

In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become passion strut. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music

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