The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - How Water Shapes Our Planet: The Undervalued Resource that Supports Everything We Do | Reality Roundtable 18

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Water has always been a fundamental force shaping our planet – both in sustaining life across ecosystems and in guiding the organization and survival of human societies. Yet, many of us are unaware of how intertwined our lives are with the water cycle, much less of the ways we  deplete and degrade the water resources that we and other living creatures rely upon for our very existence. What might change if we had a deeper understanding of global and regional hydrological cycles? On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by Heather Cooley, Zach Weiss, and Mike Joy to discuss the importance of water and hydrology and the complex ways they impact our planet. Together, they unpack how we are disrupting global water systems through global heating and pollution, resulting in increases in droughts and flooding across the globe. Additionally, each expert offers their perspective on the action required to heal our water systems – including ecosystem restoration, regional watershed planning, and national policies to reduce industrial and agricultural pollution. If we continue with our same patterns of agriculture, industrial production, and consumption, what will the availability of clean and affordable water be like just decades from now? Are we already beginning to see the signs of destabilized hydrological cycles in our planetary system? And could fostering a better relationship and understanding of the water cycle lead to a broader recognition of our interdependence with all systems that support rich, complex life on Earth? (Conversation recorded on June 11th, 2025)   About Heather Cooley: Heather Cooley is the Director of the Pacific Institute's Water Program. She conducts and oversees research on an array of water issues, such as the connections between water and energy, sustainable water use and management, and the hydrologic impacts of climate change.     About Mike Joy: Mike Joy is a leading freshwater ecologist and an advocate for the conservation of our waterways. He has been working for two decades at the interface of science and policy with a goal of addressing agriculture's polluting impacts on New Zealand's waterways.   About Zach Weiss:  Zachary Weiss is the founder of Elemental Ecosystems, an ecological development company specializing in watershed restoration and ecosystem regeneration, and has worked in over 25 countries across 6 continents. After 10 years, Zach also founded Water Stories as a way to train others in the same work through his watershed restoration expertise.    Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   Want to learn the broad overview of The Great Simplification in 30 minutes? Watch our Animated Movie.   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future   Join our Substack newsletter   Join our Hylo group and connect with other listeners  

I've seen estimates that by 2030, half of the world's population is going to be living in areas of extreme, severe water stress. We have also seen examples where bringing water back to areas has actually caused the reverse migration, where people have returned to their homelands that they don't want to leave. They're being forced to leave because they don't have a viable future. When you create a viable future in those areas, people return and you can reverse this migration. You know, it takes a little bit of steady effort by people, but it is very much possible. 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. Greetings. On this reality roundtable, I'm joined by three experts to discuss a long overdue topic for this platform, which is the subject of water and hydrology. Joining me to share their unique expertise are Heather Cooley, Zachary Weiss, and Mike Joy. Heather Cooley is the director of the Pacific Institute's water program,

where she conducts and oversees research on an array of water issues, such as the connections between water and energy, sustainable water use and management, and the hydrologic impacts of climate change. Zachary Weiss is the founder of elemental ecosystems, an ecological development company specializing in watershed restoration and ecosystem regeneration, where they work in over 25 countries across six continents. After 10 years, Zach also founded water stories as a way to train others in the same work through his watershed restoration expertise. Mike Joy, a longtime follower of this show and

my previous work, is a leading freshwater ecologist and a powerful advocate for the conservation of our waterways. He has been working for two decades at the interface of science and policy with a goal of addressing agriculture's polluting impacts on New Zealand's waterways. Every year we see an increasing number of droughts and floods all over the world and even entire cities that face critically low levels of available drinking water. In this roundtable conversation, we cover how everything from climate to agriculture to land use change has contributed to these issues and what the possibilities are for us to recover the integrity of the planet's water systems. While this is a massive topic that would take many hours to cover fully, this episode serves as a. an excellent primer on hydrology and how water shapes the world. With that, please welcome Heather Cooley, Zachary Weiss, and Mike Joy. Welcome to another version of reality roundtable. Today we're going to

talk about water. And one can argue that after all, the oil is gone, water will be pretty important for the rest of human existence on this planet. With me today are Heather Cooley, Zach Weiss, and Mike Joy, world experts on the issue of water. Maybe each of you could just briefly introduce yourself where you work, where you live, and what's your particular interest in water is. Heather, start with you. Yeah, thank you, Nate. I'm Heather Cooley.

I'm chief research and programs officer at the Pacific Institute. I'm calling in today from Oakland, California. But our work at the Pacific Institute is global in nature. The Pacific Institute's a non-profit research organization working to solve the world's most pressing water challenges. So we take a real interdisciplinary approach to the work, given how water is connected to so many things. And we take a really collaborative approach working with diverse stakeholders from governments and corporations to grassroots organizations. My name is Zach Weiss, working around the world with water stories and elemental ecosystems. and I practice what's called water cycle restoration.

So how do we get the water cycle working in a healthy way that's cycling as much as possible to bring water and life to landscapes in desperate need of all around the world? And today you're joining us from Greece. Yep, from an island in Greece called Samothraki. Excellent. Mike Joy. Mike Joy, I'm a senior researcher at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. I'm talking to you from Paikakariki, which is a little village on the coast north of Wellington.

I've researched water for 30 years odd now as an academic, mostly. Also, I've been a farmer and an amazing array of jobs in New Zealand. So I come from a really diverse background and now just really a freshwater campaigner, I guess. And following your social media accounts, I know you watch our podcast. Yes, I have. Let's start with this. I have not had a water expert on the show. Maybe each of you could just take a stab at this question. What is the most important water issue in today's world from your perspective, Heather? Yeah, great, great question. Probably could be 10, but just pick one for starters. Let me pick three if we could build on it. I mean, often with water, it's too much. too little or too polluted. I think those kind of three areas, I think, encapsulate a lot of what

we see within water. I think through my work, I'm very focused in on water scarcity, too little water, whether that be sort of ongoing challenges in mismatches between water supply and water demand or ones that occur really during drought. When I think about kind of the challenges we are facing, of Of course, climate change is a major component of that. It's putting tremendous pressure on water systems, systems that in many cases are already strained. And it's really exacerbating a lot of our challenges in creating new ones. From my perspective, the biggest challenge we face with water is the disturbance of the water cycle, the healthy cycling of water through the land, through our land use changes, through destruction of forests, wetlands, channeling,

of waterways. We've created this system where water funnels downhill very quickly, leading to floods. And then because we have the floods, we're immediately followed by drought. And so we see all around the world places are getting bigger storms with longer time periods in between, and that's leading to this cycle of flood and drought, which are really two sides of the same coin. You said because we have the floods, then we have drought. Is that necessarily true? Yeah, you know, you think as that rain would have been received by the landscape instead of rejected, all of that rain that would have gone into the ground and slowly moved through that system is now being forced very quickly downstream.

So if you look at a hydrograph, a flow of water over time, we're making these very high peaks followed by these very low troughs. So we're creating the flood and the drought all at the same time through our disturbance of the water cycle. Thank you. Mike. Well, I think it's the number one issue here and probably in many other places is eutrification. So too much nutrient ending up in water. And that, I mean, it links to everything with the main source, the main problem being nitrogen in the water. And that coming from fossil fuels through that Harbour Bosch process.

So, you know, you've talked about it often. But that massive increase in reactive nitrogen, you know, that we now, humans now make more reactive nitrogen than all the natural systems put together. And so the eutrophication of water that then goes on to pollute offshore, so you get those big dead zones offshore, like you end up off the Mississippi and other big rivers. And within the rivers and lake systems, the hypoxia that it causes for the life in the rivers. And then we've got this huge issue and it's blooming in New Zealand where drinking water is contaminated with nitrate as well. And there's a whole bunch of human health issues associated. with that. So, you know, in my world, it's nutrient pollution. That's the biggie.

And how much on the radar screen of governments and policy people is eutrification and excess nitrogen and the water supply, either in New Zealand or globally, because I don't hear about it much? No, well, the industry do a really good job of trying to cover it up here. I mean, they've got all the money and, you know, to spend on PR and buying science. to kind of make the problem go away. You know, we're seeing it show up here. We have the highest level of colorectal cancer in humans of any country in the world. And we have the highest levels of nitrate in our rivers of most of the countries in the world.

I think we've got a bunch of our rivers are the higher flux of nitrogen than the Mississippi River. And so we're seeing that show up. There's papers, lots of research now from Europe and from the states that it's a really big issue actually in the U.S. is nitrate and water and the cancers that are associated with it. Where I live, we have access nitrates off the charts in our water supply. We've had our well checked. Yeah, being really careful with that because there's so many things associated with it, yeah. Let me ask a follow up to that because I have no idea the answer to this, but I'm asking you because you follow the podcast and I know you're ecologist and a nature

above. Does the eutrophication, well, I know the answer to this, but does the eutrophication have deleterious effects on the natural flora and fauna in addition to human impacts? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was only highlighting the human one because that's a more recent one that I kind of imagined that people sort of thought, oh, well, it's only fish, you know, it's only the life that lives in this dream. Who cares? But now, cancer, you know, things will change, but really didn't, which shock me. But no, what happens in rivers and lakes, particularly in river, where you have algal blooms, and in the case of rivers, they bloom on the bed, the bent, like algae on the river. So you see this huge mats of slime on the bed of rivers, which is bad

in itself, but what happens is that through photosynthesis, those plants, you know, are drawing down the oxygen. So early hours of the morning, we're getting down to 30 percent dissolved oxygen and peaking super, you know, utrophic in the, sorry, levels of oxygen up around 160% in the afternoon. So in a healthy natural river, it's just a flat line. You know, it's dissolved oxygen's around 100% all the time. But the more polluted they get, the more those swings happen. So you get just not enough oxygen for the fish to live in. So not to go too far down this tangent, but what happens with the organisms in the water then?

And when there's not enough oxygen, they swim towards an area that has more oxygen if there is such a place. Yeah, so if you see, I mean, I'm sure people have seen with goldfish in a bowl how they'll go to the surface and they'll gulp oxygen off the surface. You know, fish like goldfish that have evolved in eutrophic systems, then they have that ability. But here in New Zealand, where we had no, you know, no sources of high levels of pollution like that. We had very forested, you know, so the life here has evolved. without having to deal with low oxygen. So they have no ability to do that. So they just die when there's not enough oxygen.

So we have between an hour and hour and a half to talk about how important water is to our lives and our futures. It's like we couldn't cover this topic in 10 hours. So let's get to something in the news, Heather. Could you outline the relationship between hydrology and water systems play? in the climate system. And what I'm most curious about is we have all these models in the world, but the standard deviation of rainfall and drought, as Zach mentioned, has been increasing. So what's the inner relationship between the climate system and hydrology? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And we all learn about sort of the water cycle when we're kids, right? The movement of water is really the

primary way energy is distributed around the world. And as we're seeing rising temperatures, we're in effect accelerating that water cycle. And Zach talked a little bit about how our disturbance of land also accelerates that as we're paving areas. So with climate change, you know, these impacts are not off in the distant future. We're seeing them now and they're getting worse. So some areas are getting wetter, others are getting drier. That's part of that intensification. We're seeing more sort of transpiration, more evaporation happening. And then that water goes into the atmosphere and comes down in other areas.

And so we're seeing really big shifts in that movement of water. We're seeing areas experiencing more extreme weather. Again, more extreme droughts, more extreme floods, more frequent occurrences. We're seeing with warmer temperatures in places that, that rely on snowpack, more of that precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow. And the snow that they're getting is melting earlier in the spring. And so that has really big implications then for the amount of water and the timing of that water that's available for agriculture or for ecosystems or for downstream communities for drinking water. We also see in coastal areas,

rising seas, right? We're pushing that salty water from our oceans is pushing further up into rivers and streams. It's pushing into coastal aquifers. And again, these are waterways that people are using for drinking water or for agriculture. They're using, they're of course, supporting ecosystem health. Another big issue is water quality. So with warmer temperatures, of course, warmer air temperatures, we're seeing water temperatures get warmer. That, of course, has impacts on ecosystems, but it also can affect our energy systems because a lot of energy power plants are using water as cooling water. So when it's warmer, they're less able to do that, less effective. In some cases, we see where they have to shut down because they just aren't able to cool appropriately.

We're seeing algal blooms, concentration of pollutants in waterways during drought. So there's lots of sort of knock-on effects with climate change. Another important piece, and one I think is too often ignored, is the effect of rising temperatures on water demand. So when it's hotter, plants need more water. That means demands, especially at a time when there's less water available, we're seeing demands get pushed up, demands for agriculture, for example, demands for, you know, people irrigating their yards in those places that do that. So those are, I think, some of the direct effects. I'll also say, though, that there are indirect effects of climate change on water. We can look at

wildfires as an example. When we have wildfires, we see water systems that are destroyed. We see sedimentation, right, that happens after the fire. That affects the quality. of water. We see impacts on energy systems that then affect water systems. So, you know, climate change is having already having tremendous impacts on water, both directly and indirectly, and those are going to continue. Thank you. Zach, do you have something to add to that? Yeah, I think in addition to everything that Heather said, which is right on point, there's also, as Dr. Milan-Melon-Melon describes it, the second leg of climate change, which is land use changes in disturbance of our water cycling. And as we know, water is absolutely the main driver

of heat regulation on our climate. And if we look and estimate at how much water we're draining out of the landscape every year, that would actually absorb and dissipate up into the upper atmosphere 250,000 terawatt hours of heat energy. So that's actually more heat energy than we're producing as a civilization each year that would be moved through evaporation or transpiration, and then if that water vapor condenses in the upper atmosphere forming clouds, it would actually dissipate that heat up into the upper atmosphere. So I think it's really important to look at the two legs of climate change. There's the emissions-based, but also the water cycle disturbances. As we aridify landscapes, we get high-pressure heat domes.

that actually prevent the inflow of more moisture, more humidity, more cool conditions. And then as areas heat up, their ability to store and re-radiate heat increases to the power of four. So you can quickly see how these two effects together really start to lead to some disastrous outcomes. Sounds like we live as part of a system or something. Exactly. But that second leg, when does that happen and what are the important? implications for humans in our current institutional arrangements? You know, I think this is the harder part to solve

because we have to really look at our land use and how that's affecting how water is received or rejected by a landscape. You look at all the cities that we build, all the agricultural fields, we've lost 87% of the world's wetlands globally, and so we're destroying the actual retention structures of the landscape, the ability to store that water that then dissipates and moves heat around and actually creates more precipitation as well through the small water cycle. And our land use changes are not so easy to address. You know, people don't want to move out of the city. People don't want to stop doing farming.

And so I think we tend to have a myopic view towards carbon when water is also a main driving cause of the issues, especially when we look at flood, drought, and fire. Real briefly, you mentioned wetlands. I often hear how important wetlands are. Could you just give me the cut and dry explanation of why restoring or maintaining wetlands is important for us? There's this huge shock absorber in our system. So if you imagine a big series of sponges all throughout our system. Now, when the rains come, when the floods come, if we can actually store that water in the

landscape, it's not just getting trapped in that wetland, it's slowly dissipating through that landscape. So we can use the same water again and again. And when we look at a healthy ecosystem, like the Amazon, for example, the same raindrop cycles through that ecosystem seven times transpiring, condensing, falling as rain, transpiring, condensing, seven times through that whole cycle before it moves downstream in the river. And so wetlands are a great way to store that water on the land so that land can benefit from that water. And as we lose them, we're losing that shock absorbing of the moisture that used to be in place. Mike, you're a water ecologist expert.

What do you have to add to what Zach just said? Yeah, totally. I mean, I come from a country where we've lost 90% of our wetlands. And it's even worse than that because what replaces the wetlands or, I mean, they're still there. They're just being drained as intensive. farming, which happens in those spaces, which has a whole lot of negatives to go with it, as if it wasn't bad enough losing the wetlands. There is a kind of, if you look at, and I've done some work on this, the biodiversity within

those wetlands is incredible. And so it's not just, you know, the physical, you know, the great job that they do is ecosystem services to protect us, but the life that was in there, you know, for the First Nations people, the Māori people of New Zealand, they were the food bar. basket, they were the pharmacy, everything was in those wetlands. And so it's far more that, you know, there's just so many components to wetlands that make them important. So how has our water demand tracked GDP and population and our economy? Does it track kind of the same as other inputs and what's going on with water demand globally right now? And I think there is a positive

feedback aspect, Heather, that you mentioned is as temperatures warm, that creates more demand for various reasons, not only for plants, but for human systems. But is demand for water going up globally? Globally, it is going up. However, there are many places that have decoupled water use and both population and economic growth. And so I think that's an important sort of silver lining and an important shift that we're seeing. In many areas, again, on a global level, we do see population growth, economic growth. We also see shifting in lifestyle, shifting towards meat diets, for example, higher levels of consumption. All of those things put an upward pressure on water demand. But again, there are many areas that are starting to see.

a big change in that. In the United States, for example, water use peaked in and around 1980. Since then, we've seen water use decline, whereas population, the economy have grown. Is that because of technology? We're delivering it using less resources, or is it because we've actually demanded less? It's that we've demanded less, but there's a couple reasons for that. One is that we're seeing more uptake of efficient devices. So homes are equipped with toilets, with showerheads, close washers, all of those things that use less water. We're also seeing in some areas denser developments.

And so when you have denser developments, these areas typically have less outdoor area that they're irrigating. We also are seeing a shift in the economy. So shifting away from manufacturing. which tends to be water intensive towards more service-oriented types of economy, which use less water. So there's a number of reasons. And even in agriculture, shifting from flood irrigation, for example, towards more drip and micro sprinkler. So we absolutely have a long way to go there. But I think there are many places, many large urban areas, states, even again at the U.S. level where we're seeing that shift already. So on the on the issues that each of you care about the most, two-part question, how do you find the people in charge of making changes and decisions on water in your work? How receptive are they to your information and scholarship and policy recommendations today versus five or ten years ago? I mean, I think it's under the radar in terms of, you know, the importance of water and how connected it is to so many things in our life. It's connected to energy. It's connected to food security. It's connected to gender equality. I mean, there's just so many things. So it's undervalued, underappreciated from that level. That being said, I am seeing a shift towards that. I'm seeing a lot greater recognition of the role.

water plays. I see that from government. I see that from corporations. I see that from the general public as well. Again, it's not where we need to be to make the changes that we all know are needed. But I'm seeing a lot more realization of the importance of water. I'd be curious if Zach and Mike are seeing the same thing where they are. You know, I'm pretty fortunate to be working in the private sector mostly, and I've seen a huge shift because the reality is most farmers, most people are having issues with water scarcity, and they are very receptive to do things that they do what they can on the land that they're managing to improve that scenario. So we're seeing just huge, rapid uptake of these techniques all around the world. You know, more than 200 different countries are

now implementing these types of things on the ground, grassroots efforts. for the land managers, because they see they're participating in these landscapes every day. They see the changes that are happening, and they see that some changes are needed for their farms, for their landscapes to be viable for future generations. So I'm seeing a huge, rapid uptake of these kinds of approaches, and people are very receptive to it. Yeah, I kind of want to respond to something that Heather said, because there's this issue of virtual water. You know, it might look like you're not. using it there, but you're just importing it just like, you know, the emissions if you start

shifting your manufacturing offshore. So, for example, the work that I published recently shows that to make a liter of milk in New Zealand in one of the worst parts than Canterbury, which is 11,000 litres of water to make one liter of milk. That water isn't destroyed or polluted. It's just cycled back into the system? No, no, that's polluted. So about this green, blue, and gray water. So the green and blue, which is the irrigation and the rainwater, make up about, so they're about 300 liters each. And then the other, you know, 10,000 liters is gray water. So that's the water that's polluted by the process. And where does that water go? Well, so it goes down into the groundwater and that's what the pollution is that's in the drinking water and it's polluting the lakes and

that's how we get nitrates and such. Yes, yes, yes. So, I mean, it's just a way of thinking of it is to to think that, well, to solve that problem in Canterbury, if you increase the rainfall 20-fold, if you had 20 times more rain, then you could dilute that nitrogen back to a safe level. So that's where that measurement comes from. Wait a minute. 10,000 liters of water to make one liter of milk? Yes, that's how much water is polluted. What about a kilogram of lamb or beef?

Is it that magnitude? No, no, it's nowhere near that bad. but I was just thinking about most of that milk. So that liter of milk won't get drunk as milk. Most of it will be dried with coal, in our case. We're the biggest exporter of milk powder in the world. And the Mars Corporation, so you guys will eat that water as Mars bars. You know, I mean, that's what I'm talking about, that virtual water.

That's where our milk powder ends up. In candy bars? That's where it ends up, yeah. So Danone, Nestle and Mars are the big buyer. of our milk. It's a cheap protein, right? And they can, whatever your sort of junk food is you're making, then milk powder is an ideal thing to put in it. And it comes from a place like New Zealand, where we are the biggest exporter. Not that many other countries, they sort of supply their own drinking milk, but this is the industrial side of it. And so that's the, the claim is made

by the industry that we're feeding the world. But the reality is it's milk powder for junk. food and infant formula to be sold to poor people. And increasing the nitrates dramatically in our own country. Yeah, yeah. How much does the average New Zealand citizen understand what you just said? Oh, very, very few. I mean, when I'm campaigning around freshwater, people contact me and say, oh, but, you know, we love our milk and cheese, you know, and I try to explain that, you know, maybe 2% of the product

ends up consumed in New Zealand. 15% overall might end up as some kind of milk product you would recognize, you know, as cheese or butter. And the rest is powder to end up in Mars bars and Oreos and all of those kind of things, you know. It's really amazing. Once you start pulling on a thread of the tapestry that is modern civilization, there's so many things that were unseen before that are just mind boggling. I mean, I didn't know that, Mike.

I didn't know that about milk in New Zealand. So what if, I mean, this is going to skip around a lot of places, this conversation, but what do you think is baked in because either of our institutional inertia or because of climate and what's even in the base case of the models, what can we expect? in coming decades as kind of the base case with respect to water in our current living styles and expectations. Can each of you hazard a guess? Zach, start with you.

For me, this is where we have a tremendous amount of agency because from what I've seen and experienced, we have a huge amount of ability to change the outcomes that we're experiencing in terms of water. Some of these projects, when you set up a landscape to receive that water, they're able to grow three, four crops a year when they were just able to grow one.

They're able to have water abundance, recharge their aquifers, recharge their wells. So to me, there's a very hopeful message here in that we don't have to accept this doom and gloom narrative, that things are going to get worse, that things are going to get more extreme. We can very easily, if we put our minds to it, really severely reduce the flooding that we're experiencing,

reverse the drought that we're experiencing, recharge the aquifers that we're using. How can we reduce the flooding? By decentralized water retention. So you imagine so much of the flood mitigation. We don't change the rainfall. We just change what happens to the rainfall once it comes. Exactly.

You imagine all these hardened surfaces are all pushing that water downstream, rejecting that rainfall. And then usually our flood mitigation strategies are to dredge and levy the waterways, which then just force that water at an even stronger forest downstream, creating these horrific flooding events.

So instead we have decentralized water retention. We're storing that water throughout the landscape and all of these small ponds and water bodies and wetlands. We can really reduce that flood peak, but then also, because of that retention and infiltration, we've now reversed the drought that that landscape is experiencing, all with the same methods. So it's education, and we're not going to alter, well, maybe we could, but we're unlikely

to alter the drought and flood that is kind of baked in with the higher standard deviation of a warmer atmosphere holds more water. But we can alter the human response, and maybe in an ecological net positive for the planet stewardship sort of way, change how locally, regionally, globally we respond to what's coming. Yes, to the latter, but we can also even fix the former to a certain degree. So, for example, ecosystems produce these hygroscopic microorganisms that nucleate rainfall in the atmosphere. And when you store enough water in the landscape, when you create enough vegetation, when you grow enough of these hygroscopic microorganisms, you can actually increase the rainfall in a place.

As you reduce the temperatures, you can start to re-trigger the biotic pump and bring more moisture into those areas. And so we've seen increases of 15% up to 50% recovering the rainfall that has been lost in some of these places. Getting back to my broader question coming decades, Heather and then Mike. Well, you know, I agree with Zach in that there are absolutely a lot of challenges. We've talked a lot about those thus far. There are a lot of opportunities to be doing things better. And we have the technologies, we have the practices, right? Yes, there's room for innovation, but really what is needed is scaling the technologies and practices and strategies that we know work. So that is really what gives me hope, is that we're starting to see evidence of positive change.

And it's really about how do we expand? You know, just in terms of, as Zach was mentioning, the idea of Sponge City. Right? We're seeing more and more cities tear out pavement or not put it in when they're first being developed and instead put in trees, start greening those areas so that they are able to absorb that water such that when there are intense rainfall events, there's less flooding. There's, of course, biodiversity benefits there. And then when there is a drought, you have some of that storage, some of that water held in the soils. That's an important shift that I think, again, we're starting to see we can and must do a lot more. Similarly, in agricultural areas, looking at soil health, storing carbon in soils, storing water. All of that is so that we're able to withstand these extremes. In addition to those types of things, I'm seeing much greater adoption of water efficiency, recycling and reusing water. You know, So many of our systems were built. Use water once, get rid of it. More and more, we're seeing people close that loop, looking at ways of recycling and reusing at a building scale, at a district scale, and even at a much more a larger centralized scale.

So there's lots of, I think, positive signs of hope and things that we can really build on. So counter to, in contrast to some issues that we face in the world, where we really do. don't know what to do. This situation is we kind of know the problem and we have a lot of solutions. They're just not widely known or scaled or implemented. Yeah. Mike, to you on coming decades, what's the base case regarding water and water risks? Yeah, well, I mean, the thing is as the other, as Zach and Heather pointed out, we know the answers. We know the things that we can do to fix the problem. And they, you know, as usual, they have all of these other positive effects as well. it. We're seeing the reverse here. So we've got a very right-wing government at the moment that

is just tearing apart all of our legislation and throwing it out. I mean, it would be seen extreme. It would be seen as very extreme here, but you're outdoing us in the States. And so it doesn't seem so bad because, you know, the way you're throwing science out. Let me double-click on that. Republicans, conservatives, the origin of the word is conservation. So does the fact that someone is right wing necessarily say that they're anti-conserving our water and our wetlands and our ecosystems and the health of water for the future? Now, what we're seeing here is the right wing that I'm talking about is they see property rights as being the most important thing. So according to them, we don't need legislation because if you're my neighbor and you're harming me, then I can take you to court. I can sue you.

That's the kind of, their ideology is around that kind of worldview, which might work in some cases, but doesn't work in river systems where everything accumulates down a river, and there is no one person you can point the finger at. It's the whole catchment land juice thing that's happening. So the other part of it is linking those gains to other things. So our biggest greenhouse gas emissions here are methane from agriculture. You know, that's our biggest footprint. More than half of our emissions come from.

Those very cows that are doing all of the harm, well, the way that we farm them, all of the harm is also a huge greenhouse gas emissions problem, the human health side of it. You know, so I think we do a bad job or, you know, linking these things together that you can, what we do for water, we also do for climate, atmosphere, human health. You know, we tend to silo these things. I mean, our government department's silo water. There's a water kind of people and there's the greenhouse gas people and there's the energy departments, everything's separate but not seeing the connections, you know. Yeah. I have a follow up there, but Heather, you wanted to chime in. Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit. I mean, some of the things that we have seen with polling, and again, this is polling based in the United States, is that water is really at the top of concerns of people, even before the economy, even before many other, you know, inflation, things that we hear more about in the news, you know, on the day-to-day basis. It polls in both party, Republican and Democrat, identify water as one of their biggest issues and concerns. They support investments in water systems and water infrastructure.

And so I think we are absolutely living in very divisive times. This is an opportunity, though, for water to be a connector and a bridge builder. And, you know, I think there's a lot of momentum and interest in solving water problems, whether it's water quantity or water quality. And, you know, I think we need to really build on that. and that can serve as a model where we can find common ground on other issues as well. So I'm going to return to governance and watersheds and what we can do. But I want to ask this question because I don't know the answer and I don't know which one of you to call on.

But how much of our water usage, either in the United States or in the world, is from fossil aquifers that don't replenish on human. time scales. Can any of you educate me briefly on on the situation with fossil water aquifers? Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't have the numbers globally, but there are many parts of the world where you see continuous declines in groundwater levels. In effect, we are mining that water. And with that, you, of course, in some cases, start getting subsidence, which is where the groundwater aquifer starts to compact. Now, in some places, you can add water and it acts like a sponge, but once you start getting that subsidence and compaction, it becomes a permanent loss of that groundwater storage capacity. And so, you know, we see that in parts of California in the Central Valley. You talked about the Ogallala aquifer, parts of China, India, the Middle East and North Africa. There are many parts of the world, unfortunately, where we're seeing that mining of groundwater. Well, just because the word fossil is involved, it's the same sort of dynamic as hydrocarbons, where we're treating it as if it were a paycheck, but it's really a trust fund that we're drawing down.

And I think there's a lot of people live in areas that are dependent on fossil aquifers. So, Zach, do you have any follow up there? And is some of the sponge technology for wetlands, can that replenish fossil aquifers as well? Well, so we have confined aquifers that are not going to replenish, you know, not only within our lifetimes, but thousands and thousands of years, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of years. So we're drawing down these aquifers. We also have unconfined aquifers, which we do really have the ability to recharge. And I always like to draw a really simple analogy. I think overall this is a failure in governance in that we've highly regulated surface water. and we haven't really regulated groundwater so much. And so we've incentivized people to pull out groundwater, but groundwater and surface water are actually very interlinked. And most water systems in the dry season in a river,

half of the flow of that river might be groundwater. So as you draw down the groundwater in that area, you're losing the surface water in that area. And the analogy that I like to draw is a bank account. If we're always taking out more of a bank account than we're putting in, we all know what happens with that. It gets really bad really quickly. If we're always putting a little bit more into that bank account than we need to use, then we always have a healthy surplus for the times that we do need it. So I think it's really important that it's not to say we shouldn't be using groundwater, but respectful use and not overuse. And how do we make sure we're recharging even more than we're using from those groundwater aquifers? So let me ask you this. There is some, quite a few of my previous guests on this show have talked about the mismatch between grid-based division of governance where we have cities and counties and such. I'm talking about the United States, but I think this probably rhymes globally.

And the reality of the boundaries of a watershed where water comes from the sky and goes with the topography of the land and flows. a certain way, and that Governor John Kitshober, among others, has recommended that we divide our governance and community leadership decisions, structures by watershed instead of these ad hoc boundaries. Is this playing out in the world at all, or what do you each think about that concept? Yeah, I mean, we do amazingly. In New Zealand, we have our regions that are the administrators are based on catchment boundaries. So it is totally what you say is the way it's done here. So we don't have any rivers.

And that's always been the way? Since the Resource Management Act in 1990, which split the country up and this was the way that the thing is run at the moment. And so we don't have any waterways that cross boundaries at all. And yet you still have 10,000 liters. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that's the problem that even when you do that. So that sounds fantastic, but what we ended up with,

is those regions are then told to, they have to, you know, they have four pillars and two of the pillars are environment and economy. And so, of course, economy is the winner. And you can imagine when you're stuck with that situation as an administrator. And then below that level, as an example, so at the regional level, which is the catchment boundaries, then within that, there are smaller units, the district councils. The district councils and city councils are responsible for example for wastewater management and so they have to

get a consent from the regional council to be allowed to discharge into waterways. Half of the waterway, half of the wastewater treatment plants discharge to rivers in New Zealand. And so you get the situation where the

police effectively, the environmental police, which is the regional council would have to enforce something on their own ratepayers, and so there's a tendency to do nothing. So, for example, my favourite wastewater treatment plant that has not complied with any of the conditions in a couple of decades, the penalty for not complying is a sad face stamp.

You know, somebody at the regional council then bangs the stamp down on a piece of paper, and you get that sad face. And so, of course, nothing changes. You just get ongoing degradation. In my small circle of online systems ecologists friends, our response to the story you just said is, what a species. Zach and Heather, do you have any comments on governance and watershed and such? I think generally as governance gets more centralized, you get a lot of issues in terms of

decision-making because the decision-makers are not actually connected with that landscape. So a lot of the best examples we've seen go to hyper-local governance of those areas. So they develop their own water councils, their own water congresses to start looking at how do we manage water within this watershed? And I think, for one, it's a much better way to look at boundaries and governance by watershed, but it's not just by the catchment areas, but actually by the aerial flows of water that are very important. So we not just have the rain falling and where it falls, but where is that rain coming from? And a number of colleagues and friends, climate scientists say, you know, it would be

so easy to recover the rains in the desert southwest, except for one little problem, California. And because California is breaking that moisture conveyance into the desert southwest, You really, if you're just looking within watershed basins in those areas and not looking at where that water is coming from, how it gets there, how that precipitation is nucleated and seeded by biological systems, you're only looking at part of the equation. How much, let's just leave energy depletion and climate change aside for the moment, which, or not climate change, but economic turmoil, which is difficult to leave that aside. But how much like population migration are we going to see in the next few decades due to water issues, either too hot and not enough water or too much of a higher standard deviation of flooding and just people are going to have to move? Have any of you looked at that? I would just say, you know, in fact, we already are seeing that, right? But I think one of the challenges in tracking it is we don't often identify water as sort of the core.

issue or the core driver. It's people are responding to famine. They're responding to job loss, some of which is dependent, you know, on the fact that water was not available when and when and where it was needed or it was too polluted. So we're already seeing that. And I think there is a, you know, a really important conceptual understanding of that relationship between water and security. It's been a topic that people, some people have recognized, but, But we're not talking about it broadly, but it is a really big issue. And I think as we look at climate change and the other pressures that we're seeing on water, it's one that we need to really be mindful of, aware of, but also proactive in trying to kind of address and solve these issues.

It really underscores one of the important reasons why we need to really focus on solving our water challenges. Building on that, everything that Heather said 100%, we're seeing it so much already. And I've seen estimates that by 2030, half of the world's population is going to be living in areas of extreme, severe water stress. 2030, that's five years from now. It's right around the corner. And we have also seen examples where bringing water back to areas has actually caused the reverse migration, where people have returned to their homelands that they don't want to leave, they're being forced to leave because they don't have a viable future. When you create a viable future in those areas, people return and you can reverse this migration.

You know, it takes a little bit of steady effort by people, but it is very much possible. Okay, so let's do this. The three of you each know far more about water than myself or my guests. clearly we have lots of systemic issues in the world, climate change, economics, energy depletion, polarization, but also water. And you've outlined some of the problems that we have. So what I'd like to do now is ask each of you, if you were given a very brief audience with, let's start with a world leader or a national leader. And they said, what should I be concerned about and how should we think about it and what should we do? In 90 seconds, what would be the high points of what you would tell this international global leader?

For one, I think it's very important to actually tailor the messaging to the audience. And so I would need to know what country are they from, what challenges are they facing? Let's say the United States, because I'm very familiar with there. The big thing I'd say is empower local governance around water. Now, we have a lot of laws that actually inhibit people from storing rainwater on their own land because that rainwater is owned by the state to be distributed by the water rights system of that state. We have a very broken water right system. So we need an overhaul change of our water rights system to allow the raindrop to service the land where it falls

as much as possible to slow the flow of water through that landscape. And so empowering local governance to be able to accomplish that slowing of the flow where water runs, help it walk, where water walks, help it crawl, where water crawls, help it go into the ground. And empowering local governance isn't a local decision, I take it. It's got to be at a level higher, like federal or state or something. Well, it can be a local decision if people have the civil courage to do it. And we've seen this in some of the best examples. like in India where people just, you know, as the land managers, they take the power into their own hands, the federal government be damned. So maybe my question is not the correct one then. Maybe on this issue, all the real answers are at the local and regional level, not at the federal and global level.

Is that fair to say? I think there are a lot of roadblocks from the federal level that need to have some loosening. of them in order to empower that local level. Because to ask local people to break the law to do the right thing is a very difficult challenge that only some people are going to do. Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of the importance of water, if, you know, speaking to sort of a national leader or internet, I would really sort of emphasize the role of water in security, and economic development and public health. I think it's really integral, connected to all of those things. And so I think that's an importance of sort of why water. And when I would point to what I think the solutions are,

and again, I think these solutions would apply across scale. It's about rethinking water demand, rethinking water supply, and rethinking water management. I think those are the three areas in which we need to see real, real changes, rethinking our economic priorities and choices, and how that affects demand, looking at alternatives, you know, for far too long, it's been about extracting water from rivers and aquifers, in effect, mining it. We need to be looking at alternatives, capturing urban runoff, looking at recycling and reusing that water. And then I would focus in on with respect to management, it's about, and I think this gets on Zach's point, it's about sort of open, transparent, and inclusive decision making and making sure that people are involved in that. And it's about

data and information, making sure we actually have the data and information to make informed decisions. I think those are some of the key points I would kind of highlight as helping to a underscore the importance of water, but also identify some of the key solutions. The important thing to think about is that we have to manage catchments. What is a catchment, Mike? Sorry, a watershed is your term for it, I guess. Sorry, yeah, we call it a catchment, but a watershed. So you have to, you can't fix the bottom.

You have to start at the top. And so for the management side of it, I think that it's what we've seen in New Zealand and I'm sure that it's happening everywhere is the pressure that goes on to grow to intensify to get more off the land all of the time

in our case capital gains from just increasing how much the land value goes up because you intensify the farming so there's a real economic pressure there what we've seen and I think this is really important mostly what I'm involved in now

is a legal case So the legislation up until recently anyway has been there, but it just hasn't been applied. So I spend most of my time writing evidence for court cases. The most recent one, one of the indigenous tribes here, Naitahu, which covers more than, you know, area-wise, half of New Zealand, has taken the government, the crown to court to take over freshwater management. Basically, saying you, the government of New Zealand, have failed to protect fresh. It was an agreement that we had under a treaty and you haven't done it. And so I've been cross-examined in high court in the last couple of months presenting that

evidence. And the gains that we're having is in court. So the legislation's there, you know, coming back to your question, to me it has to be at the highest level to then empower the lower levels to be able to go back to that legislation and say, you said here that this is what you were going to do. and we force it to happen that way. So we have a lot of viewers of this program around the world who are system thinkers and care about how all the issues interconnect. What sort of advice would you give to someone who's understanding the risks that the water and climate pose to coming decades?

What can they do, either in their own lives and their communities or to play a larger role? role in our collective future with respect to water issues. My favorite thing to advise people to do, it's super simple. Go outside in the rain. Put on a nice rain jacket, get your umbrella, go outside in the rain and learn from that landscape. The water and the land is going to show you everything that's unfolding. And you're going to very quickly understand what areas are rejecting the rain, what areas

are receiving the rain, the areas rejecting, that's creating the flood downstream and the drought later on. And so simply by just spending some time, get nice and bundled up outside in the rain, you can learn everything you need to know about water management on land. Okay. Mike. Oh, I think from individual point of view, getting meat out of your diet is going to be a big one. I mean, animal agriculture, without a doubt, in this part of the world, is the biggest issue for water quality and for the state of our rivers. And the catchments and the flooding. and all of the impacts that have happened because we've deforested. Can you just spend one minute on the logic of why that statement is true?

Because all of that nitrate that ends up in our waterways is put there to grow grass for these animals to eat. And that is from that. I mean, we have 10 million cows in New Zealand. And if you look at that, you know, like we, you know, you talk about the human equivalence with energy. slaves, or if we look at human equivalents for those cattle, then we're looking at equivalent. So we've got five million population, 10 million cows, but that 10 million cows is equivalent

to, you know, 150 million people in the amount of nitrogen and pathogens that come out of them. And I'm sure that big parts of the states, it's very similar. It's the animals, the crops that are grown for the animals and the animals themselves that are a big part. But wouldn't the grass or something grow even if we didn't have cows? Or you wouldn't have to water it. You wouldn't have to continually water it if you would follow natural cycles. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

It's not the cows. If you go back to the 1990s here, we had about one cow per hectare. We've now got about four cows per hectare. And the only way you have four cows per hectare is pouring on nitrogen fertilizer. In our case, we import huge amounts. We're the biggest importer of palm kernel. so we feed them with palm kernel, nitrogen fertilizer, and so that's how you get that high intensity of animals

and all the harm that comes from. If you were back, if you were farming cows in a natural way, the way we did in the past, the nitrogen is fixed by clover in the pasture, so we didn't have to add nitrogen fertilizer. We fixed it naturally. So if you got back to those levels, and so that's why I'm pushing that not stopping animals,

more agriculture, but massively reducing it to a natural level. And that would have so many beneficial effects for freshwater for greenhouse gas emissions and all of those things, just linking them together. Thank you. Heather. Yeah, both great points. I would add to that in terms of your homes, so starting where you live, is to look at ways in which you can be capturing more of that rainwater on site, slowing it down. right, into the landscape and reducing waste inside and outside the home. I think those are critically important. But then going out beyond that, looking where we work, what are the opportunities there for the workplace to be a better water store, for the company to be a better water store,

or the government, wherever your nonprofit, wherever you're working. And then looking even beyond that to the community, what are the ways in which the community can be implementing some of these solutions. And I think, you know, while we've talked about a lot of these global issues and we absolutely face global challenges, in many places water is managed locally, right? There are locally elected boards, water utility districts, et cetera. And so there is a real opportunity for people to engage, even just starting by showing up at those meetings. Hardly anyone does. And so, you know, getting engaged, thinking about when you're voting, what the candidate thinks about water, really pressing that issue, I think can help to elevate it. But then get involved in local organizations,

in local government, to find ways to help solve some of these complex challenges that we face. Thank you. Yeah, I have so many questions on this, but I would like to ask each of you just as human beings who are aware of climate and water and biodiversity loss and all the things. Do you have recommendations or ideas for the people watching this show just generally on how to engage with the issues of our time? Heather, start with you. Yeah, it's a really important issue. I mean, we are faced with lots of crises on a daily basis. And so I do think it's about balancing care for the environment in society with self-care and just making sure you are taking the time to go out and enjoy those things that you love. You know, personally, I going for a walk, just getting out really helps me. I would also, the other thing I would add is just we can focus in on all of the disasters and the bad. things, but we can also make a shift and a choice to look for signs of hope, identify ways to really amplify and build on those areas. I think it's critically important for people working in

this space, but in order to ensure longevity, but it's also important for people just in their, in their everyday lives. Well, that's why I kind of asked, because the three of you have chosen on the economy environment side of the ledger, you're working on the environment side. and it can't be easy always this path. Zach, what are your thoughts? The biggest thing for me is educate yourself about all of the incredible stories that are out there, the success stories of people restoring their landscapes,

rehydrating their landscapes. This is why we created water stories, because there's amazing examples from all around the world of people implementing all of these things, but they're just so little known. it's so easy to get wrapped up in environmental despair, but in fact, you have all of these clear examples and clear solutions from every continent, from every type of people. And I've been amazed hearing from some of our students how it's actually cured their

depression, because now instead of focusing on all the problems, they can put all of their time and energy into the positive solutions that exist, work every day towards creating more positive outcomes, and then you just have all this positive energy within you as a result of that. Is one of the positive examples or possibilities getting rid of green lawns in front of people's houses? It certainly could be. What are your views on that? Oh, I mean, you look back to the source of lawns, and lawns were from feudal times in England, where they would take crop fields and grow a lawn on it to show that they were so wealthy, they didn't need to. And, you know, to use this productive land for agriculture.

Yes, it's a vaiblin good, a conspicuous consumption signal. So it's something we could really do away with, you know, can we create living, biodiverse habitats in those areas? Can we can heavily reduce our water usage in those areas and create really good biodiversity and ecosystem outcomes in those areas that are otherwise just, you know, kind of an ecological desert. I mean, I don't know whether Heather and Zach get the same kind of flack that I get. I'm a freshwater campaigner here, but I come up against this huge industry,

and they turn very nasty, you know, litigious and threatening. And people have wanted me to be, or called for me in public to be hung, drawn and courted. And it is pretty nasty here when you question this big system. So I've seen friends burn out and fall by the wayside. And so I totally agree with the other two about that, you know, making those connections and getting into freshwater, into nature and connecting with it and how important it is. It's very limited in what you can do. And I kind of feel more and more and about all of the issues that you talk about, Nate.

It's a crisis of imagination. It's our inability to imagine a world that isn't like. this because this is all we've ever known. And in my case, all I've ever known is that as a kid, our rivers were clean and I could swim in them. And now that's changed when I started studying as an older student. 20% of our native fish were listed as threatened with extinction. Now it's 74%. So just in three decades, you know, we've gone that, that far in the wrong direction. And we've done so much work 10 years ago, polls showed that freshwater was the number one environmental issue for New Zealanders, and now it's just fallen right off the chart.

So we've peaked, and we're slipping away now, and we're in the process of seeing all of our freshwater protections being thrown out with this system at the moment. So it's very hard not to feel negative about what's happening here. We just, I guess we hope for a for a coup and that it will turn around. Thank you for, I mean, I've known you for a long time, so thank you for continuing your Sisyphian task. I don't usually ask this on roundtables, but I will. If you had a magic wand that there was no risk to you personally and no recourse, what is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary or even?

water futures. Heather, start with you. Yeah. So I think with respect to that, I think one of the key things that we need is to really understand and respect the value of water. So I guess if I had a wand, I would waive it such that everyone did understand and respect that value. And is that what you're doing at the Pacific Institute is trying to educate people on these things? It is certainly a really big component of what we do is not only looking at success stories, strategies and approaches that are working, but really sharing that. We do a lot of work with the media. We do a lot of sort of other forms of outreach to really get people to understand that. So absolutely, it's not only understanding it, but then how do we solve it? Mike, Magic Wand. It would make a law that no money is to be

involved in political parties there is just completely take the money out of the whole democratic process because it's just so obvious here that our politicians have been bought out by industry and they don't even embarrassed about it anymore they're quite open about the fact that they've received money from and then immediately you see them we've got this thing they're calling fast-track legislation so we don't have we only have one layer of parliament here and so they've fast-tracking and they're not going through any of the due process and just throwing out laws. And you can see exactly that the funders who paid for their campaigns are the ones that are being given the special treatment. So if we could somehow take that out because New Zealanders, I'd say all the people of the world understand the problems.

And there's just a tiny proportion of the population who profit from all this harm. and most of us pay the price. And that's, and that's, somehow undoing that little process would be the thing. You're not the first, uh, guess to, to suggest that as a magic wand. Um, Zach.

Since Heather already used her magic wand to get everyone to respect water, I can go in a new direction with mine. Uh, and I would say it would be to really get everyone to understand the intimate, interconnected details of the water cycle and the, approach of water cycle restoration because it's so simple when we understand these things. There's so much agency that we actually have. And it's confusing, but I always tell people, I want to have the biggest environmental footprint possible. They're thinking, what on earth are you thinking? Because we can have a positive environmental footprint. And if we're only ever focused on having a

less negative footprint, we're always going to be going negative, just maybe more slowly. So how do we really start to build that positive footprint. I totally agree with that. In my lectures to young students, I talk about maximizing your impact, not minimizing it. So let me close with this. What is one thing that each of you are working on or seeing that you're particularly excited about, probably to deal with water, but it could be anything in your life. Zach, start with you. Springs coming back to life.

Springs. Spring water. the highest quality water, drinking water, true drinking water for humans and for animals being revived as a function of our work. And this has happened in our own projects. This has happened in our student projects. We're creating enough retention and infiltration is actually reviving the flow of springs, sometimes creating new springs, sometimes making springs flow five, ten times or more what they previously flowed. And this is all just happening in a couple of years. And is that, is the technology to do that kind of universally applicable? Like could I find a how to guide on how to do that where I live?

Yes, there's going to be geological conditions that need to exist. So it's not that you can just create a spring on any landscape, but it is using Earth to hold water and get it going into the ground. That water that goes into the ground ends up coming back out as fresh, clean, filtered water in waterways. in rivers, creating those springs and creating those flows and the life that results. Such a great question and so hard to choose. I think some of the work that we're doing that I'm really excited about is looking at ways to reimagine, revision sort of our urban landscapes, looking at ways of making them less dependent on, you know, applying irrigation water essentially and letting them use kind of water that's coming naturally

and looking at ways of putting in native plants, low water use plants, to really kind of make those areas greener, make them more resilient to climate change, supporting biodiversity. So I think it's exciting work. We're also looking at ways that low-income households can benefit from those as well, and I just think it's going to have a real knock-on effect as folks realize the many, many benefits of these transformations. What's making, what's spinning my wheels at the moment is working with the indigenous people here, the Māori people in New Zealand, and mostly it's involving the court cases, but it's getting that management back with the people who have

values other than economic values, you know, so they're much more complex. connected and so I find it so invigorating working with these people and teaching in that space as well. So that's where my effort is going now. I hope it brings you a little joy. Thank you all for your time and your continued work on this issue. This was just a tiny scratching the surface of the importance of water in our current world and the changing landscape with climate and pollution and everything else. Thank you all, and be well. Thank you.

Thank you. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of The Great Simplification, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. You can also visit thegreat simplification.com 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 Hagan's, edited by No Troublemakers Media, and produced by Misty Stinnett, Leslie Batlutz, Brady Hyann, and Lizzie Siriani.