The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Future Council: How Children are Responding to our Planetary Crises with Damon Gameau and The Future Council

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

(Conversation recorded on September 24th, 2024)     It is frequently true that those who will inherit the greatest consequences of our climate crisis – today's youth – have the least voice in shaping what happens next. But if given a seat at the table, what would these children have to say about creating a more sustainable path forward?  In this Reality Roundtable, Nate sits down with documentarian Damon Gameau and three young activists featured in his documentary film The Future Council, to discuss their experiences grappling with the complex challenges of transforming a system that is actively harming our planet and what they think should be done to save humanity from itself.  What do kids think about the actions of the most powerful and wealthy individuals and corporations in our global societies? How would they act differently if they had children sitting in their boardrooms? Finally, what would the world look like if we incorporated the hopes and fears of the youngest amongst us into our decision-making for the future?    About David Gameau: Damon Gameau is an Australian film director, speaker and author. In 2015, he turned to activism with his debut feature documentary 'That Sugar Film', which sold to 25 territories and received numerous awards. Damon then directed the climate solutions feature documentary '2040' and authored an accompanying book '2040: a Handbook for the Regeneration'. Both films sit in the top 10 highest grossing Australian documentaries at the domestic box office.  Damon then co-founded Regen Studios with Anna Kaplan where together they work with philanthropists and partners to build comprehensive impact campaigns for their films, raising money for ecological solutions and awareness in classrooms, boardrooms, and Parliaments around the world.    About Skye Neville: Skye lives near Fairbourne in North Wales. This village has been described as the doomed village and its residents are destined to become the first climate refugees of the Western world. For the past few years Skye campaigns against the plastic rubbish on kids' comics and magazines. Skye is a massive fan of sailing but has a genuine dislike for plastic wrap magazines.   About Clemence "CC" Currie: She is the founder and current CEO of CCs Plastic Pick-up Crew, where they clean up local beaches in Scotland. She has a particular passion for the ocean, plastics and the climate crisis. CC loves hiking with her Dad but has no time for chocolate cake.   About Joaquin Minana: Joaquin is our straight shooter! Joaquin is from The Netherlands and has worn hearing aids since he was an infant. He speaks multiple languages and wants to use these skills to speak about the injustices of the world, as a writer or lawyer. He hates math but loves the first sound he ever heard.   Show Notes and More  Watch this video episode on YouTube   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners  

What you said about like Shell and BP and stuff being the drug dealers is quite appropriate because we are all addicted to their stuff, which is why they try and blame the consumers. Yes, it's your fault, even though we're the ones getting you addicted, but it's your fault, not ours, even though we're giving you all of this stuff. And I think even though consumers do have a role, the big businesses, the polluters, the politicians, world leaders, all of that kind of stuff have a bigger role. You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's.

On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification. Damon Gamow is a speaker, author, and director of an upcoming movie documentary, The Future Council, which features eight children

who take their environmental advocacy to the powerful leaders behind some of the world's biggest corporations. The Future Council, which I understand will be available to view in early 2025, also features an animated character named Groff, which is based on the concept of the superorganism from my paper to my work, and it was kind of surreal to see this come to life on screen. Throughout the movie, the kids learn about Groth and the challenges he creates as they try to address the climate crisis. Today's episode is a brief interview with the director, Damon Gamon, followed by a conversation with three of the eight children from this movie, Sky, Cici, and Yoquin, to discuss their experiences and reflections on what they learned. A brief bit about

these three remarkable children. Sky is from North Wales. For the past few years, she's campaigned against the plastic rubbish on kids' comics and magazines. Also joining me from Scotland is Cece, who works with a team to comb beaches in her home city and rid them of plastic. Finally, Joquin, who is from the Netherlands, speaks multiple languages and wants to use his skills to speak about the injustices of the world as a writer or a lawyer. These children and all children of today are going to have to face the brinketka of our converging global crises, including but not limited to climate change. And many of them are deeply aware of it.

As such, as much as any expert, their voices deserve a seat at the table as well. And when available, like right now, a seat at this podcast platform. With that, please welcome Damon Gamow and future council members, Sky, C, C, and Yochukwit. Damon, great to see you in person. Lockwise night. So you just finished a movie called Future Council, which is a story of eight school children going across Europe in a school bus fueled with biodiesel, talking to business leaders, ING Bank, Nestle, and others. And kind of talking about the superorganism concept indirectly, one of the characters in the movies called Groff. What inspired you to make this film and what was the first process of you thinking about?

how it would unfold. So I did a film back in 2019 called 2040, which was a sort of a vision of what the future might look like if we enacted all of the best ecological solutions. And the narrative for that was based on interviews with about 130 children from around the world, from Tanzania to Stockholm to New York. And I guess in that process,

it was pretty revealing how eloquent the children were and how much they knew about some of these issues. and that really, especially when we did the Q&As for the film, they just had such terrific suggestions, but there was clearly no outlet for them to express their insights, but also their fears, and that's why I think we saw them start to take to the streets, which is an extraordinary thing in itself.

But I really did think that they needed to have their voices amplified in some way, and so could we make this film? And then as we made the film, the children, as we went along, realized that they do have potency in this moment, and so could we create some kind of ecosystem? system or platform where they are meeting other children around the world that are as passionate as them and let them feel like they are being heard. So what did you learn?

I mean, that was your plan. But when you made the film and you got to know these eight young 11 to 14 year olds, did that change the way you think about all of our global problems, the metacrisis, climate change, the future, what were your experiences? It's definitely the most profound film experience I've ever had. And I think I didn't expect it, but the children cracked me open in a sense. They got me in my heart. And I think all of us, yourself included that do this work, you can get really focused on the tech and the governance and the different policies.

But the actual change that's needed is a much deeper. It's a values shift. And the children, I think, provide the simplicity of that. They're almost like a moral compass. and they unlock awe and wonder and creativity and all the things we've neglected because we've overcomplicated this system. So I do think they have an incredible power and potency in this moment. As you know, obviously you talk about energy blindness. There's a morality blindness in most corporations as well.

They're not actually aware of the psychopathic actions they're taking. So to have a child present, which I saw making this film, it humanised these CEOs again. They dropped the mask and they had to think different. about the decisions they were making. And that is their great superpower in this moment, these children. I have increasingly been thinking about these CEOs and anyone. We all wear three hats. The one hat is we're part of the economic system.

We have to make wages or profits or we have a boss. And the second is we want to live a good life and enjoy ourselves. And the third is we want to be good ancestors and do what's right for other species in the planet. The problem is, and this is the character, Groth in your movie, is this, there's this emergent organism and the incentives and the prices and the structures don't allow an individual human to wear all those three hats at the same time. And it's starting to be really be fractured. Like these CEOs and these high level people, they feel the heart.

But the structure they're embedded in is constraining them. Yeah, one of the children said that on the trip, that we're all trapped in the system and that even the people that we met have children and deeply care about the future, but they are deeply intertwined in something they can't unravel from. And I think that's a major reason why we haven't taken the action that we have. So I think that's the power of the children in this moment is that they are a little bit separate and free from that. They look at it from a different perspective, and they bring a freshness that we need right now.

It's actually a cut-through of common sense that says, what you guys are doing is actually that shit crazy and you're calling it progress, but you're polluting the soils and the atmosphere in the water, can we actually think about doing this a little bit differently? And so I think we need to be careful that we're not exploiting them in this moment, but I do think they have an incredible potency to offer. And that's what I hope happens with this entire future counsellors. We get more and more children from around the world that are collaborating

and inspiring institutions and businesses that they do offer. something different. They do allow and give permission to dream again for these companies to think about that better future, to think about their ancestry, but also to say, hey, what's the right thing to do here? Because we've kind of been blindly making these decisions. And now there's a consequence sitting right here at the table. Well, I'm going to invite CC and Sky and Yolkwin up to have a conversation with them. But thank you for putting this together. When can people view this movie, The Future Council? So we're doing sort of festivals around the world at the moment. And then next year from 2025, it'll start releasing in different cinemas

across Australia, Europe and America, but also need to acknowledge you, Nate, because the whole concept of growth did come from your superorganism paper. And I think that the way we're going to get through this crisis is to each use our different skills. And so I thank your acumen, which inspired a story and a whole graphics team to build that, I think the more that we can collaborate on these type of things, we're going to get to the places we want to get to. for all your creative work, Damon, to be continued. She is nice. C.C. Sky.

Yoquin. Welcome to New York City. You are here for your film Future Council, which is about the future and climate change. But you're very young. You're obviously by by a factor of two, the youngest people that I've ever interviewed. How often do you think about the future and what it will be like, given that you're 12, 14, 11 years old? Well, I actually don't really think that much about the future. I just try to live, you know, in the present.

But, yeah, sometimes I do think about it and it doesn't seem very good, you know, the way it's going now. But I do think it can still change. And do you hear about things about the future in your normal classrooms or only from your personal interest in climate and the environment? Well, no, I'd say more only from my personal interests, you know, from reading things. and seeing things, but not really from classrooms now. In my school in Scotland, we're learning about our Wild Scotland, that's our topic, and we're learning about rewildings, where I'm actually, well, the topic that we're on, we're actually learning quite a lot about climate change and, like, our changing environment.

I mean, I wouldn't say I think about the future that often either. Yeah, live in the present, and obviously there's an awareness about it, but at the minute, like the current way things are going, it's quite probably a dark image of the future. so you don't really want to think about dark things almost. What are you most worried about in the future, given what you've learned at, how old are you? 14. I'm 14, yeah.

That we don't find the solutions or use the solutions that have already been found to solve the climate crisis. And so you're thinking about climate. Is it other things beyond climate or mostly climate is what you're worried about the solutions? Yeah, there's so many global problems. My focus is climate change, because you can't focus on all of them.

War, world hunger, all of those kind of things are an issue. I only really think about the climate crisis because you'd get so overwhelmed if you thought about all of them. And you too, what are you most worried about? I'm quite nervous that we won't find a solution as well. I've always been quite worried. Well, before I got too into it, if you know what I mean? I didn't really understand that it would just affect humans and not the actual...

Well, I mean, obviously it affects the Earth, but the Earth... I was always terrified that the earth would just like crumble. And honestly, I still am a little bit sometimes. But like, yeah, I'm very worried that people won't find a solution in time like Sky and that there just might not be a future. What are your biggest hopes for the future in contrast your worries? I would say that people start listening to each other more and actually getting together and thinking of how,

to stop this, yeah. So there's a, there's a lot of people in the world, especially young people, maybe not as young as yourselves, that are experiencing climate anxiety because they think about the future and they visualize different scenarios in their heads. What do you say to those millions of people who are suffering from, from that worry and climate anxiety? I think climate anxiety is very real. I think I've experienced it too. And I always kind of say just, do something, some small positive actions like litter pick, beach clean, eat less meat, recycle plastic, use less plastic. Taking like small positive actions do make you feel better. Once you start doing something positive, you like feel more positive about the world, hopefully. I mean, my whole journey started from writing one letter to a publisher.

I was incredibly lucky in my journey. Your small actions might not lead that to that, but hopefully they'll make you feel more positive about the world. And also maybe something you enjoy doing. So something you would actually like to pursue, like Sky writing her letter, you know, constantly doing that. That's something she's passionate about. So maybe find something like that. I believe in just doing small things, you know,

small everyday things that if a lot of people do, could really become big and really help us. So I'd say I'm mostly passionate about that. For people with climate anxiety, like if you ever feel like no one's doing anything and that like there's no hope, just like you remember that there are loads of people who are doing incredible things to like,

there's like so many campaigns and strikes and like letters being wrote and beaches being cleaned, that there is hope for the future. and like just remember, but sometimes also you just have to kind of let it out. Like I cried on camera and I'm pretty sure loads of my classmates did, but like sometimes you just have to remember that there is hope, but sometimes you just have to cry and let it out or whatever you want to do. How do you talk about these subjects with your families? Are your families very well aware of the environmental and climate crises or did they learn from you or did you learn from them? Well, my dad's generation, they didn't, well, my parents' generation, they didn't learn about climate crisis in school. So I think, like, for us, for our generation, it's kind of just like a something that you can talk about at the dinner table. You know, obviously it's like serious, but like it's just kind of like no way and like we learn it in school and it's like a conversation, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, I mean, I think my parents, we talk about it a lot and about kind of climate anxiety and that kind of stuff. we kind of talks about it a lot. And I think we kind of, I grew up in quite a climate change involved village. There's lots of talk about it flooding and stuff. So I kind of always been aware of like Greenpeace and I've always had like journalists and newspapers in our village. So I've always been very climate aware. So of my parents. We've always beach cleaned, always recycled, been like vegetarians for almost as long as I can remember, that kind of stuff. So we've, My family at least has always been quite a climate-aware family. And then just through my work, I've obviously learned more.

But yeah, it's not been a huge turning point almost in a family. I think my family is pretty aware, but there's plenty of families that aren't really aware. And I think it's great if children who do learn about this, maybe tell members of the family about this, because some might not even know how serious these things. issues are. So how important was it for you eight children that are in the movie to have each other as a support group? I assume you're friends by now. You've, you're traveling to New York for the movie

premiere in a couple days at the UN. Is it easier to have people your age that understand this to share your your thoughts and worries about and your creativity? Yeah, I think it's definitely useful to have a support group that's your age. I don't talk to my parents about it. I don't talk to my parents about it a lot but when when I do sometimes they like obviously they understand but they don't they'll be asking me so so what's this and like you know but with people like you know sky and yoke and everyone like you can just have like it's easier to talk about it because they know as much or more about it than you do because it's harder to talk to a generation that didn't learn about it in school um because like we we do and it's nice to yeah it's nice to talk to someone you're

own age because they understand like that life and that generation's like struggle with it. In the opening scene of the movie, you were all sitting in that forest and walking around. And then there was that like pixie dust coming out of your breath. Have you as young people had a deeply emotional experience in nature where you realized that, oh my gosh, we're all connected. And I'm human, but there's trees and plants and birds and everything else. And I'm, I'm part of the web of life. So I've grown up in nature. We live in the woods.

So since I was three or four, we've lived in the woods. So I've always been very connected to nature. We, obviously, as I said, we live in the woods, but we're right by the beach in the mountains. Always I climb, I sail. So I've always been very connected to nature. So I wouldn't say for me personally, I've had kind of like that one defining experience. It's kind of just been my life almost. So one of the central characters in the movie is not one of you children.

It's an organism called Groh. Can you, in your own words, describe what Groth is or what it represents? Groth is, in my opinion, just a representation of the economy and how it works. And obviously the economy has spiraled out of control, just like Groth. and it should just be smaller and it's just also a tool. So you shouldn't blame growth for what happens, but the people that contribute to it. And how old are you?

Fifty. Yeah, I was 50 when I figured that out, so you're a few years ahead of me. Cici, go ahead. I personally think of growth as like part of different things. I think it's definitely a part of the like economy and humans and greed because like as you can see he got so attached to getting to trading a plant for, you know, like water or like trading things and getting more money and like more stuff to profit from. So it just kind of kept on building and building and building. And I think that's, yeah, it represents like greed and kind of like powerful humans and represents our like addiction to fossil fuel.

and just like stuff in general, it started. It was kind of like this positive thing and then just completely spiraled out of control. So you knew about climate change when you started this film, but then this concept of Groth was part of the story. How did understanding Groth make a difference in how you wanted to interact with the future with your activism and your work?

I think it is pretty important for us to, understand that Groth is a tool and to show everyone how to properly use it. For example, it being more local and not being just like this one big entity, but multiple entities is what I would say, like local entities. I think that's very important. That's how you think we should transform Groth to address your worries about the future, more local? Just don't eat mangoes in the winter. It's just not your season instead of getting them from Spain or something.

So what would you eat in Amsterdam in the winter? Something else. Not mangoes. Yeah. So how about you two? How do you think we need to transform Groff to address the climate worries and your other worries? I agree, Yerkin. I think the smaller individual, more localized Groffs is quite kind of a sensible idea,

because, yeah, we don't need mangoes from Africa or, like, South America or Australia in our winter. Like, it's not a sensible idea. We need to eat more local because food miles are, oh, food miles are not good. So you do understand that underpinning growth is human behavioral decisions and choices. some of its greed and some of its need, and that to shrink growth's impact, we probably have to consume less resources on average. Is that a conclusion that you reached or not really? Yeah, it's not necessarily about completely cutting out all of your resources. It's just more localized.

So more local and regional supply chains? Yeah. Yeah. Like in Edinburgh, we have quite a lot of, like, cattle. but we don't have a lot of, we don't grow lots of, like, fruit. We get it imported because it's not very warm in Scotland. It's all sky. I can back me up on this.

So it's harder to grow fruit. But like my grandma, I go there, she picks me up every Tuesday and Thursday, go to her house. And she's got an amazing garden. And she grows, she grows, peas, beans, beetroot, corsette. Like, if, like, she also had strawberries, like, she grows so much stuff, even though it's not warm. and it's very biodiversity in her garden because there's lots of different,

there's loads of flowers, grass, food, you know, compost, like loads of different stuff. And it's really beautiful because there's lots of things. But I feel like if people started doing that more, not just like one big field of beetroot, like other things, maybe like a small section and then other things to make sure that it doesn't just like become very like plain because then we won't have to import lots of stuff.

It's also good for travelling because it's had another fun ass Like if you're going somewhere else, there's different food. It's not just the same thing everywhere that makes travelling more fun as well. I think another thing to remember though as well, it's like we need to hold big business to account. It shouldn't all be our personal responsibility. BP made the first carbon footprint calculator to put the blame on individuals instead of this massive oil company. And like the producer pays. Like, why can Nestle and these big companies produce so much plastic and not really pay anything into it being cleaned up?

Like, if you see them, I haven't seen them here really, but at home you see all these signs, like get fine for littering, fine for graffiti, all of that stuff. We get fine for making a mess, but the big companies don't really. So in the movie you spoke to some company leaders, I believe, Decahathlon Outdoor Goods, Nestle, and ING Bank. Some of the representatives were in the movie. How was that experience? How did you find those meetings? Personally, like with some of the meetings, well, especially like to Cathal and we had quite a lot of like harmony. Like we agreed and they really listened to us.

She was just really, really nice. And she, like, one of our ideas have actually been put into actions. having like multiple name slots on a jacket or trousers or whatever. So I think it was very like, yeah, it was like harmonized there because they listened to us and we took their ideas in. But like sometimes with ING and Nestle, like especially ING, I asked a question about like, how were you starting to change between like fossil fuels and switching to more greener investments? And they answered me to something about deer.

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like this is not what I've asked you. Yeah, sometimes I'd come away quite annoyed. But like with DeKathl and I was quite happy with the result. I was like, okay, right, they listened to us. They didn't like treat us like we were like little kids. They treated us like fellow people. How did you, your opinions about adults and people in power change?

Or did they after those meetings? For me personally, so from my campaigning and all the stuff I did before the film, I've had experience with big businesses, the publishers, retailers, lots of kind of big businesses. So I kind of learned big businesses don't like change, they don't want to change, they're interested in money, it takes a long time for them to change. My campaign's been going on for four years now and just recently we finally got some hopeful change. So I wouldn't say I kind of went into Nestle and ING knowing that it wouldn't be like, Like, yay, we'll magically stop investing in fossil fuels or we'll stop using plastic just like that. It's going to take time.

So I've just met you today and I really loved your film. So I don't assume that you know anything about my work. But one of the things I look at is the power that is in fossil carbon. And we use one barrel of oil contains around four and a half years of our physical work. And we use 100 billion barrel of oils worth of coal. oil and natural gas in the world. So that's 500 billion human workers that are helping with machines and all the lights and the airplanes that brought you here. And so to make those more expensive, we would use less. But as young people who have your whole lives ahead of you, are you

willing and interested and actually enthusiastic about paying higher prices for things that we would not import mangoes from South America and all those things. Are you, are you excited about a lower consumption than what's currently assumed and advertised in the world? Yesterday I did the high line, which is very beautiful. And at the end, there was a climate science fair. And there was so many, it was like fusion energy. And I was like, oh my gosh, like some of this is actually being used and it's working so well. And it's, and the thing is instead of, like constantly making it, they kind of use one and then that powers that bit forever and then they make another one. I'm sure it's expensive, but so is everything, you know, but like as long as you don't waste money on making things as green as possible and using up like trillions of pounds,

some of the stuff that's happening just now isn't the best, but it's pretty eco. But instead of like sometimes people work too hard to try and find solutions instead of like, because there are some simple things that you've, can do. I'd say I'd be fine sacrifice in some aspects for this like better more better for the world fuel you know I'd be fine with like traveling

less and those kind of things it's a small thing for like better sustainability. Yeah I mean I've been to and stayed for quite a long amount of time in a couple of places where I live in the jungle in Costa Rica for three months and we just had local food pretty much. And at first it is like, I'm used to all of this stuff. But very quickly you become like, no, this is normal. You have to

look at the food that is available and then go, what are we going to make? Like, what can we make? What do we, not what do we want to make? What can we make? And then it actually became really funny because when I got home, the thing I wanted most was just toast because we hadn't had bread. And once you're used to it, and I mean, I think I'm quite an adaptable person. I get that some people would struggle with that kind of thing. But once I was used to it, it's like, yeah, this is normal, not to have all of this imported stuff all of the time. So let me ask you this. CCU talked about nuclear fusion energy, presumably that we would use a different sort of energy and not use fossil energy, and that would be better for carbon.

But do you really think it's deeper that the core beating heart of growth, in the movie is not the type of energy we use, but it's how our relationship is with energy and consumption and each other and the environment. Would a new form of low carbon really cheap energy, would that solve the problem with groth? What do you think? No, it would have to be like,

if we're going to solve growth and solve, like, you know, the climate crisis, we would need sustainable, renewable energy. As long as we're not putting like loads of money and loads of effort into something that we know won't work. We need more than renewable energy. We also need to have enough money because energy's not all of it. You know, we need to try not to work too hard on one thing and spend loads of money on one thing

that we don't have enough money to solve other problems. The thing about growth is, like I said, it's a tool. So this could help, but ultimately it's the people that need to change. So renewable energy technology that allows us to access the sun and the wind is necessary but not sufficient. Ultimately, it's about the people and the culture and our values, would you say? Yes, because even with those things, helping there's so many other issues, like teaforstation, pollution, content, a lot of issues. and this one thing won't fix everything, but it definitely helps. Ultimately, it's the people in control of most of the economy and all those things.

So is it a political problem? Is it the fault of the politicians and the business leaders? Or is it our own consumption decisions? Like Exxon and Shell, they're kind of the. the drug dealers, we're the consumers, we, the people around the world that fly and eat imported things and all that. What are your thoughts on that? What you said about like Shell and BP and stuff being the drug dealers is quite appropriate because we are all addicted to their stuff, which is why they try and blame the consumers that, yes, it's your fault, even though we're the

one's getting you addicted, but it's your fault, not ours, even though we're giving you all of this stuff. And I think even though consumers do have a role, and quite a big role, the big businesses, the polluters, the politicians, world leaders, all of that kind of stuff have a bigger role. They're sitting up there at the highest point on Groff behind his brain. Yeah. I mean, I've seen a thing, and this wasn't climate change related, it's immigrant related, which is very political in the UK at the moment, but it's like a working class man and he's got five cookies. The immigrant who's just come over has one cookie and this big, powerful leader has thousands of cookies. But he's going to tell the miserable working class man that it's the immigrant's fault

he stole his cookie. Not because I have thousands of cookies. It's the poor immigrant who's come looking for a better life, who's only got one cookie, but he stole your cookie. I didn't. He did. It's that thing that we blame people and not, like, the big businesses need to be held accountable. Sometimes you just need to, like, if you do something wrong, sometimes, like, the big businesses are so used to people sort of being, like, afraid of them, like, because they've got all this money and they're very powerful. And some people, like, they think people can just be, like, afraid of them, but actually, sometimes you just need to own it. You know, like, yeah, I do use carbon and I do use plastic, and I'm sorry, I will.

try to, like, sometimes you just need to, like, they don't want to, but like, as I can't remember who said in the movie, but sometimes they're just stuck, like, one person just can't say something like, yeah, I want, I want more renewable energy when they're sourcing coal, because everyone has to agree. You're 11, you're 15, and you're... 14. And you were younger when the movie was made, right? That was 10.

One year younger. I was 12. When I was your age, I was playing Donkey Kong and watching Gilligan's Island and the Brady bunch on television. I knew nothing about ecology or earth systems. I did watch a show called Wild Kingdom on TV that I loved animals when I was your age. It just blows me away how much you know about earth systems and our climate and that you're so outspoken and care about it. That alone gives me like this burst of optimism that you're out there speaking and caring about these things. Well, I think we're not so different.

we still have our own lives apart from this. It's just we care. And you don't have to be a climate fanatic or activist to do this. You just need to be, you need to care a little. And it doesn't need to take over your entire life. So what's the 2024 equivalent of Donkey Kong and Gilligan's Island in your life? I play a lot of this one. Yeah, I'm most experienced with video games.

I play a game called Alden Ring. Really good. Elden Ring? Yeah, love it. Yeah. And you two, what do you do to take your mind off this stuff? What do you do for fun? I am like a massive bookworm and I sail a lot.

I had two weeks of all-day races before I came on this trip. But yeah, I read a lot. I may have read over 70 novels this year. Fiction or non-fiction? Fiction, yeah. Because non-fiction, you're working on nonfiction on climate and this other stuff. Yeah, I need my fiction escape. Me too.

It takes me about half the year to read like a 200-page book. Takes me a week to read a 700 page. You're going to have different careers. My dad's dating someone called Kareen and her daughter is Grace and she's nine months younger than me. And I actually really just hang out together. And I really love her and she's really, she's just very wonderful and like, like full of wisdom and like I just play with her sometimes we might play like Mario Kart together or we might just like snuggle up with the movie but like I like they

kind of they pretty much live with us honestly but like and they come over like most begins but I play with her quite a lot and I really really enjoy it but I also do like video games and stuff like that don't you just love 10 year olds with wisdom um so what changes have you made if any in your own life in your own behaviors and your own decisions in how you view the world since you were involved in this movie and what you learned throughout all that? Well, I've mostly been thinking more about my actions

and just doing small things. Like if I see something underground, I'll just pick it up because it's not that hard to do. I've just been more aware. I've actually taken a lot of flights, which wasn't on my agenda. So I've been doing, I guess, more work to try and offset the flights. We've always done quite a bit, so no real change.

Let me ask you about that, though, because if you understand Groff, which is an economic superorganism that's hungry for more energy, is taking the flights and is then you offsetting it by doing more local things? Is that the right math? Or is it the impact that your movie and your words have on other people? the right math to compare it to? Our thinking was first for the premiere and then we actually traveled around Australia,

so I haven't been home since the premiere at the start of August. But the thinking was the global reach of the film, the inspiration, all of that kind of stuff, hopefully will be incredible and will help offset the flights. But that wasn't enough for me personally. And I know the offsetting work I did at home,

I did 50 beach clunes in a row to kind of like, off set 50 hours of flying sort of. I know it's not perfect, but it just made me feel slightly better whilst I was sat on that flight to Australia and then to New York from Sydney. So yeah, it's not perfect. I'm not happy really doing these flights. But yeah, the global reach of the film, the inspiration and the incredible opportunity, like we're going to be having a screening at the UN in a couple of days. So that kind of helped me. feel okay about the flights but yeah it's really not perfect and I know that

but when we got to Melbourne a couple days in we did a tree planting and we planted I think it was over 300 trees and I think that helped definitely definitely not all of our carbon but it helped offset the majority a little bit yeah do you ever just take a big step back and just wonder that you're a human being alive now and how indistinguishable from magic it is to get on a transportation vehicle like an airplane and fly across an ocean based on dense energy that's from Earth's past. It's crazy because for us, Australia is on the other side of the planet. I remember being in a museum there and Sky's father was pointing at an Earthlop and was like, Wow, we're all the way over here, all the way on the bottom.

It's on the other side. It's insane that we're able to go so far, and it was very fun. But I would have been fine also not going. So the Dyson with like the sacrifices thing I said, I'd be fine not going to Australia if it just meant more sustainability. I mean, to think we're pretty much being chucked across the world in a metal tube is pretty crazy

with wings, yeah, just like we are becoming very aware of the ecological externalities on the biosphere that are not included in our prices. It's a movie about climate change, but I don't think most people,

especially young people, but most people are aware of the benefits that our society get from fossil carbon and hydrocarbons are amazing. We take, we take them for granted. And yes, we've become addicted as a global culture. So there's two sides of the coin, right? There's the environmental impact, which we don't pay anything for. And there's the amazing benefits that we get from shooting the tubes across the earth, but not only the tubes,

also all the cars and the trucks that bring things. And it's part of groth. The benefits are amazing, but are they worth our planet? You nailed it there. Good question. I think it's going to be quite hard to get a world where there's no fossil fuels or no plastic because, yeah, as you said, we have gotten addicted to it. And it's also, like, I remember Nestle, you can't just suddenly change everything to paper because there are things that all sit on shelves for a while. And then that paper might biodegrade because it's been there for a while.

or it just might not keep the item as fresh as it could be. So it will be hard to find alternate solutions, but it's definitely not impossible, but it's going to take some sacrifices. Well, I mean, maybe that's what the three of you and people watching the film and other young people will start working towards. I mean, there are, there's a lot of things that we can do with a certain type of petrochemical

that comes from oil to make plastics. We might need five other substances to replace it, like bamboo or something else. But that may be what you do in future careers. So what are you three doing now outside of school? I know you're in junior high school. But what are you working on? What are your projects?

Well, we're actually, all of us are getting around $10,000 from a donor. So we're going to be using that for something, something to do good. for the climate. And have you chosen a... Have you thought about what you're going to do with it? Yeah, I haven't taught very in-depth yet, but I was thinking just something around my neighborhoods,

and then maybe something that would get other people motivated to actually do that on their own. Like, then maybe like a switch goes on and think, oh, yeah, we can just do that anyway. We don't need money to do that. We could just do it. I know you said besides school, but honestly for me it is cool because I am in, I know that they do it differently in America,

so we don't have middle school in high school in Scotland. So I'm in sixth grade, which is P7, which is the last year of elementary school. So next year I'm going into high school. So I am, honestly, I'm very focused on school just now. I also do singing and I do, and I play the viola. So I have a lot of, yeah, I don't really have a special project just now. I mean, obviously still caring and like, like talking about. But I'm very focused on my school right on school right now.

I would be pretty confident that you're going to think of something to do. And you? Yeah. So I mean, so my campaign, which is, I've been going on four years against plastic toys and comics and magazines, literally this month. And I've missed all the meetings, but the whole industry in the UK is finally come together to have these roundtable meetings. So like the distributors, the manufacturers, the supermarkets, the retailers to come together to try and get rid of the. plastic toys nationally across the UK. So that's pretty exciting.

Thank you, Cici. And I also have a lot of sailing coming up, quite a few races before the end of the season. And yeah, I've got some talks coming up. I've got hopefully a bit of filming as well. And then obviously seeing where the film goes, hopefully there'll be some like UK screenings and stuff again, which will hopefully, I'm planning to use some of least. as money to get to some of those screenings. Yeah.

I think I think we'll go together. We're going to go to the Londonmen together. So I have a podcast and I ask all my guests the same set of closing questions, which I'm going to ask you now. So the people that follow the podcast are systems aware and they know how human behavior and anthropology and neuroscience and energy and money and biodiversity and climate. and Earth's ecology all fit together in a system and they have interested in it and they're active working on it and they have concern about the future. What sort of advice would you have

to the listeners, whether they're younger or older, who are aware of our planetary predicament? Do you have any personal advice to people watching this program? What advice I'd say to people is you don't have to do like a drastic thing like, Small things make a big difference. Like I stopped eating meat. And I mean, obviously, I don't have a chart that shows me how the environment is doing. But, I mean, that helps because it's a small thing and it makes a difference. So you can stop eating meat.

You can try to use less single-use plastic. You can have more plants, you know. Just small things make a big difference. And it's definitely not worth quitting or stopping buying products that you use a lot and you love. I mean, obviously, if you want to, that's amazing, but don't feel pressure to do that. So it's one of my personal philosophies to just try to do small things, like I already said. You don't need to do something big, you don't need to change the world on your own. You just need to do small everyday things.

And if a lot of people do that, it leaves a big footprint. It's very similar to what I kind of said about climate anxiety. But yeah, just do small positive actions. or I mean you can do bigger actions if you want to The small actions are easier But if you want to do something bigger Good work What do you care most about in the world

My family And my environment Mine sounds quite heartless But books Books sailing and I guess the environment Because I need to put that in But yeah Definitely my family and just staying

Like I love going like camping with my dad and climbing and having adventures. So here's a question for you. If you had a magic wand and there was no repercussions to you or your family, what is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures? The obvious answer for me is climate change because that's what we're protesting against and trying to fix. So I'd say I'd just magic away the climate crisis because, yeah, that's kind of what we're trying to do anyway. I think the obvious answer is obviously like get rid of everything, you know, get everything bad.

But I think it's more important to make sure people know these things. Like climate change, how bad that is for the planet. And this also applies to like wars, world hunger. Because you could get rid of wars. But that doesn't get rid of the, well, the causes for. wars, the humans wanting to go to war, just, you know, let people know about these things. We were in the UN building a few days ago and there was some very kind of powerful images and statues and stuff from various wars. So I think, I know you just said like, just getting rid of

war wouldn't get rid of the causes, but I think get rid of the war and the motivations behind the war would really kind of make. a difference because there was also this really powerful kind of diagram about the amount of money that goes into wars and then the amount of money that goes into various other things into the UN, like kind of stuff. And it's just like, if that money was used for good, we'd be able to do so much. This has been really eye-opening and wonderful conversation. I didn't know what to expect. You three are just spectacular humans. Do you have any closing words for the viewers? who will likely watch the movie Future Council,

but who have listened to you on the podcast and are curious if you have any closing reflections to share. Just do what you want to do. Just make sure you're a bit conscious about what goes on in the world. But you don't have to be too conscious. They don't have to be constantly thinking about the future. I don't think about the future. You don't have to do that.

You can do whatever you want. Just make sure it's at least a bit, good be aware about it but don't let it take over your life continue to live your life if you feel anxious or anything like that

try and take action but yeah just live your life don't let it consume you because I know some people who have been consumed by the climate crisis and they've managed to get out of it but they were in some really dark times when they were consumed

yeah doggie consumed because you can just, if you lose hope for things and you lose something, you can lose hope for yourself. And it's just, like, it's just if we stop doing everything doesn't mean that it's magically going to go away, if you know what I mean. So don't pressure yourself to do loads. Otherwise, you'll get swept up into it. It's just, yeah.

Because groth is still out there. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be there anyway. So. You don't feel like you're the person who's making climate crisis because you're definitely not. Yeah. This has been great.

If I'm still doing this podcast in three or four or five years, I'd love to have you back because I'm so curious about what you'd be thinking and doing then. Thank you, C.C. Sky. Yel Queen, thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the interview.

Thank you for the opportunity. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of the Great Simplification, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also visit the Great Simplification. For references and show notes from today's conversation. And to connect with fellow listeners of this podcast, check out our Discord channel. This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagen's, edited by No Troublemakers Media, and produced by Misty Stinnett, Leslie Batlutz, Brady Hyann and Lizzie Siriani.