The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Rex Weyler: "Crisis in the Ecology Movement"

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

On this episode, we meet with ecologist, writer, and Greenpeace cofounder, Rex Weyler. Weyler explains how the ecology movement was hijacked by the environmental movement. How is climate change one of many issues that has a root cause of overshoot?  Weyler also explores the dangers of relying on hope as a strategy.  Why must we be careful about virtual signaling in the environmental movement, and how can we "sharpen the sword" as individuals? About Rex Weyler Rex Weyler is a writer and ecologist. His books include Blood of the Land, a history of indigenous American nations, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Greenpeace: The Inside Story, a finalist for the BC Book Award and the Shaughnessy-Cohen Award for Political Writing; and The Jesus Sayings, a deconstruction of first century history, a finalist for the BC Book Award.  In the 1970s, Weyler was a cofounder of Greenpeace International and editor of the Greenpeace Chronicles. He served on campaigns to preserve rivers and forests, and to stop whaling, sealing, and toxic dumping.  He currently posts the "Deep Green" column at the Greenpeace International website. He lives on Cortes Island in British Columbia, with his wife, artist Lisa Gibbons. For Show Notes and Transcript visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/rex-weyler

You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. That's me. On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, and our society. Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. Today's guest is author, ecologist, and activist Rex Weiler. Rex was an original director of Greenpeace International in the 1970s, whose work was highlighted in the film How to Change the World. Over the years, Rex and I have become good friends, and we share a network of other systems

ecologists trying to better understand and influence the human predicament. Today we delve into how the ecology movement got hijacked by the the environmental movement, how climate change is one of many issues that have a root cause of overshoot. And we even had a speed round on Earth's prior mass extinctions. Rex is a gentleman, a scholar, and a good friend. And I hope you'll enjoy his wisdom and insights on today's show. You were one of the original founders of Greenpeace, have been a lifelong teacher, activists,

and ecologist. So what better way to start our conversation if you're willing than with a speed round of some basic questions in the realm of your expertise? Oh, okay. We'll see. Okay. So these are just like 30 second answers because a lot of people on this podcast are fluent in these things such as ecology and others are not. So let's go. Let's start with that.

What is ecology? Oh, starting with easy ones. Ecology, to me, is the observation, and it's the study of who we are as organic beings in a living world, co-evolving with all the other species on the planet. We talk, for example, about trees and a soil and atmosphere, but none of those things, tree soil and atmosphere or human, exist independently of the others. For example, take a bite of an apple, you eat an apple, now when does that apple become you? So there's this mindfulness and awareness of the depth of our relationship with everything around us. And to me, that's ecology. Follow up to that.

Why should we care about ecology as citizens as a part of modern society? Well, ecology is fundamental to everything. First of all, we are organic animals. You know, we have a genetic training and code that has taught us survival, certain survival skills and so forth. We're, as I mentioned, are co-evolving with all other beings, bacteria, birds, mammals, everything. And so ecology is fundamental to who we are. Now, in our modern culture, we tend to think of ourselves as somewhat separate and technological beings and somewhat independent of the ecosystem. But of course, we're not.

And by ignoring ecology has led to every crisis we now face. So it's critical. We will be getting back to that. in the deeper dive, but carrying on with some of the definitions in the speed round, what is the ecological concept of carrying capacity? Ah, yes. Well, carrying capacity is really the biomass limit for any ecosystem. Now, an ecosystem has to capture energy, capture sunlight through the plants.

The plants capture sunlight and turn that into biomass. and then the plant eaters eat the plants and so forth. So that energy stream sets a limit on the biomass of any ecosystem. And we call that the carrying capacity. Now, for any population of or any species or population of species, that carrying capacity limits how many there can be. So there can only be so many wolves in a watershed with a certain number of deer and so forth. And every species on Earth is limited by space and food and water and necessary

resources. And the interesting thing about carrying capacity is you're never quite sure what it is until you've gone too far and overshot, which is very common in nature. So what is overshoot then from an ecological definitional perspective? Yeah, well, overshoot is when any population, I mentioned wolves in a watershed, but it could be locusts in a prairie or it could be algae in a lake, a population of a species exceeds the habitat or ecosystem carrying capacity. Now we see this even in our gardens. If we don't tend our gardens, everything grows into each other and starts literally killing each other. Plants grow over the top of other plants and there's only so much space and nutrients and soil and so forth

for everything to live. So overshoot is when any single species simply expand. beyond the available resources. And we grow into the all available space, and we consume all the available resources. And this happens often. And we can see this in the predator prey relationship. When the wolves overeat, overconsume the prey, the wolves start to die back. The prey recovers. When the prey recovers and the wolves die back, they can eat more prey.

then the prey drop down and the wolves overshoot again and then collapse again. And then that goes on all the time in nature. That process of overshoot and return to homeostasis is something that is constant in nature. Well, I'll ask a connected bonus question. Are humans also subject to carrying capacity and overshoot? Yeah, we're mammals. We're animals. We're subject to all the limits and restrictions of organic life, and that includes overshoot.

And what is our prey in the definition that you outlined? Well, we are what we call, a biologists call a K-species, K standing for the capacity and the Germanic languages. A K species like ourselves and like most large mammals, we learn to consume every available resource. So our prey is pretty much anything that we can eat that has nutrient value to us. So we eat plants, we eat other animals, we can eat virtually every animal, fish, anything on the planet. So unlike many species, we're not restricted to specifics in terms of what we eat, but we are restricted to the biocapacity of our habitat, which now our habitat is the entire Earth, because we've expanded across. the entire Earth. So there's the biocapacity of Earth, but there's also the prey could logically be described as the bounties of the fossil sunlight that were eating historical productivity

that's added to our food systems via the Haber-Bosch process, et cetera. But we'll get back to that as well. Another area that I know from you teaching, guest lecturing my students, is a personal area of interests of yours is mass extinctions. What is a mass extinction? Well, it's a somewhat subjective idea. What's a mass extinction? Depends on your perspective. But generally, we think of mass extinctions in which over 60 or 70 percent of the species disappears. Now, some people have said we're in the in the sixth grade extinction. That's actually incorrect. And this is. something your listeners might be learning here, is that we're actually in what I would call the ninth mass extinction because there were three large extinctions prior to the first big extinction

in the Cambrian. And the first one is very interesting, Nate, because it was an extinction caused by bacteria that released oxygen as a part of their metabolism. And at that time, oxygen was a poison. And so when bacteria learned to synthesize sunlight, they released oxygen into the atmosphere. Well, oxygen was a poison to them. And so they died off because of this oxygen. And this was 3.5 billion years ago. There was an eddicarian fauna existence after that prior to the Cambrian, which is the famous Cambrian explosion of life. But that edicarian, life forms, they all disappeared as well. And then during the Cambrian, during the Great Cambrian explosion, there was actually a phyla collapse. And in biological taxonomy, a phyla is, the phyla are the basic

forms of life. And during the Cambrian, life just went crazy and created many, many, many different forms that no longer exist today. And so there was a fairly large collapse of phyla. And then we have what A lot of people call the first extinction, which was actually the fourth, which was the Ordovician about 440 million years ago, when 85% of the species, all marine species, of course, at that time, disappeared. And then about 70 million years later, about 370 million years ago, what we call the Devonian extinction, 83% of the species disappeared. And then 250 million years ago, the big one, the big person. Permian extinction. Ninety-five percent of the marine mammals or marine species disappeared. 70 percent of the terrestrial species disappeared. And this was caused most likely by volcanic action. Volcanic volcanic action leading to a CO2 pulse.

That's right. CO2 in the atmosphere. The same thing we're dealing with right now. Now the original first extinction of bacteria was because of oxygen in the atmosphere. These later extinctions were due to CO2 in the atmosphere, which killed off during the Permian 250 million years ago. 95% of the marine species, 70% of the terrestrial species. That's a big deal. And it would have been dramatic, of course, at the time. Many people are familiar with the Cretaceous extinction 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit Earth and about 70%, 76% of the species marine and terrestrial were lost. including the dinosaurs, except for the little survivors, which are now the birds.

Well, and the little survivors that are us, we weren't dinosaurs, but we came from... That's right. And except for the little mammals, little shrew-like mammals that are our beloved ancestors. So thank you for that. That was very fast and articulate. Are we headed for another mass extinction, Rex? Well, Nate, we are already in a mass extinction, the ninth mass extinction. But not as defined by those magnitudes of die-off. No, but it's already underway. And the extinctions that have been caused by human activity on Earth are forever recorded in the fossil record. So anyway, the answer to your question is, yes, we're headed for another mass extinction,

and I would note it has already well underway. The extinction rate right now measured by biologists in various parts of the world range from 100 times to a thousand times faster than the background extinction rate. And this modern extinction rate is accelerating with each passing year. And besides, and this is important, besides species that actually go extinct, the general collapse of diversity is tremendously important. Because even if there's a few of a certain species left, that species may be reduced to the point where it's no longer useful to other species in the ecosystem.

And even species that don't go extinct but are severely wiped out is serious for all other species, including humanity. And of course, the decline now is higher than any time since that asteroid, the Chixilube asteroid 65 million years ago. And only this time, humans are the asteroid. Okay. Ding, ding, ding. You finished the speed round. Yes.

So I have a lot of questions for you. You and I have been talking for a long time about climate change, about the environmental movement, about what we could do as a culture to steer away from the worst outcomes and towards some emergent, equal it or ecologically literate society. But before we get to that, maybe we'll just take a little history trip. And how many years ago was it? Almost 50 years ago that you guys founded Greenpeace? It was exactly 50.

Exactly 50 years ago, 1972? Well, 1971, Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver. You know, there's so much that happened, 1970, 71, 72. I mean, that's when we went off the gold standard. That's when we came up with Earth Day. Limits to growth. Limits to growth was published. The genuine progress indicator, that's when,

If you subtract out the negatives that come from GDP, the genuine progress indicator for our culture peaked in 1971, all kinds of things created that. So what were you and your friends thinking and feeling when you formed Greenpeace in 1971? Many of us were involved in the peace movement at the time, which remains in the name of that organization, Greenpeace. We were involved in the civil rights movement, the women's movement. And those movements, the peace movement, civil rights, women's movement, of course, were universal around the globe at that time and very powerful. And people were beginning to feel like we can succeed at changing the direction of our society. But one thing was missing that we felt was very important and we felt very certain that this was missing in the mix of social activism.

And that was ecology. There was no ecology movement. There was no ecology action movement. There were some conservation groups like Sierra Club that were protecting parks and so forth. But we felt that the world needed an ecology movement. And that even if we solved all of our human priorities, civil rights and peace and women's rights, gender rights, even if we solved all of that, we could still completely blow it and destroy. the very foundation of our life, which is our ecosystem. So we set out to do campaigns that were focused on ecology and felt that that was going to be really the next big social movement was to recognize our ecological crisis. 50 years on, how did that work out? How's that going? Well, sad to say, Nate, we're not making progress as fast as I thought. And there's a lot of reasons for that that we can go into. But society has a certain momentum. And we live in a society that's based on growth and consumption and capitalism and industrialism.

And I should note that even the socialist and communist countries destroyed their ecosystems. So we live in a system that's a human system that's based on growth and industrialism and making money. And it's very, very difficult to turn. and those things around. And I remember thinking back in the 1970s, Nate, that, you know, once people understood the ecology crisis, just as well as understanding the women's rights movement or the civil rights movement, that it would be easier to change things. But it's proven to be a very tough nut to crack because we live in such a human-centered culture. I was joking with our mutual friend, Randy Hayes, the other day. What is the definition of an ecologist? And I said,

someone who appeared wrong his entire life, but was incredibly right afterwards. It does seem that ecology of all the disciplines is in the long term, the most important discipline there is. But in the short term, these things happen on long time scales. And as you point out, human commerce and quarterly earnings and this weekend's entertainment plans, those all shout louder to the human brain. than ecological principles, at least in this culture of massive energy surplus. So do you think that there could be a renaissance of the ecology movement?

Or is it just too stacked against and too difficult now that we're 50 years further on and the ecological damage and degraded carrying opacity and everything else is already grown and not only that, but is the decisions that would need to be made to adhere to more of an ecological blueprint now much more difficult than they were 50 years ago or even 20 years ago. Oh, they are more difficult. You know, put it simply, Nate, that human race is not more sustainable today after 50 years of ecological action than we were in the 1970s. We're less sustainable.

There's more of us. Human population has doubled. The consumption of material resources has quadrupled in that time. There's less fresh water. There's more starving people. There's a billion people living on the edge of starvation. There's about 10 million people a year starve to death. Ten million people a year starve to death. And that's like a thousand an hour. That's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, as we speak. And most of them, of course, are children. The ecological crisis has gotten worse during the last 50 years of the so-called environmental movement. And so, you know, it's really time for a gut check. It's been time for a gut check all along, but it's certainly time for a gut check now for the entire environmental movement. Like, what else must we do to change the course and trajectory of human society? So I'll get back to the Greenpeace origins and your experience in a bit. but you've mentioned the ecology movement, and now you just mentioned the environmental movement. How are those distinct?

And how did that difference happen? Well, when we first started in the 1970s, we were inspired by Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Arna Ness, and there was a sense of this deep, what we called then deep ecology. That term was coined by Arnines. But it also comes from Taoism and Buddhism, indigenous cultures. And the word ecology was coined in 1866 by biologist Ernest Hako. And it comes from the root word, Greek word, Oikos, which means home, our home. Ecology is the study of our home and that we are a part of. Some of the other issues with deep ecology was this sense of that the self is not, isolated. There is no real isolated self. The isolated self is a socially reinforced delusion.

I mentioned before about eating an apple. When does the apple become me? When I breathe the air, when does the air become me? The tree, the soil, the atmosphere. None of them exist without the other. Gregory Bateson, is one of my ecology mentors put it this way. He said that all divisions are arbitrary. And we make these arbitrary decisions so that we can speak to each other. We want to talk about a tree. Every time we mention a tree, we don't have to mention that it requires soil and atmosphere. So it's helpful to make these divisions for our language, but they are all somewhat arbitrary. And this is the ecological, deep ecological point of view. The other thing about the deep ecological point of view comes from Arna Ness and indigenous communities and Taoism and so forth,

that when we spend time in nature, we begin to get a better sense of ourselves, a deeper natural feeling of ourselves and we begin to understand that we are part of all these living things. We're co-evolving with every other living thing and that we have an obligation to protect this home, Oikos, that we live in and we are part of. Now there's an environmental movement and whenever there's a popular movement, it's often colored by popular ideas. And so I would say that the main difference between the deep ecology movement and the sort of modern environmental movement, well, it was put very well by Stefan Harding at Schumacher College, the ecologist at Schumacher College. He says, many mainstream environmentalists still see nature as some kind of a machine

that we have to repair. For the deep ecologists, we don't look at ecology as something that we have to fix. We look at as something we have to learn from. We apprentice ourselves to, to wild nature, not assume that we're going to fix it or manage it. And that's a huge difference between what I would call the ecology movement, and certainly the deep ecology movement versus environmentalism. Gregory Bateson, he said, as something else that really moved me, I think he mentions this in the book, Mind, and Nature. But he said, most of our problems, the greatest problems we have in the world

are linked to the difference in the way we think compared to the way that nature actually works. And it's very important for us to understand that what we need to do is apprentice ourselves to nature, become students of nature, understand how it works. Now, we can go back 2,000 years in Taoism. I think they already knew this. I think in many indigenous cultures, most indigenous cultures understand this. We live in relationship, not just relationship with each other in human society, but we live in relationship to every living thing. And those living things, they're not things. They're part of nature. Nature is not a thing. It's a process. It's an integrated process, an organic whole. And we are part of that organic whole. To me,

like the first ecologists, we're, of course, the indigenous cultures and the Taoists. And the Taoists have a concept of shingling, which can be translated as divine efficacy, which means that not just sort of a practical, mechanical, linear cause and effect, relationship with the world, but a deeper relationship with the natural world being a part of it. So it's not just a matter of being able to brag at the dinner table. Hey, I helped save a river or something, but it's really feeling that deep relationship with nature and a sacredness of the natural world, that the environment is not something outside of us. And words matter. Environment means this thing around us.

and ecology is somewhat different because we are inside of it. It is inside of us. We are part of it. And every living thing has inherent value. Thank you for that. I have several follow-up questions based on things that you said. First of all, you said that we are focused kind of on the self and we miss the connections between ourselves and others, ourself and nature, ourself and the ecosystems we reside in.

And do you think that focus on the self is a product of energy surplus that we're so rich relative to our ancestors in an energy and material sense that we don't feel that we need those other connections and or is it some combination of that and we're just distracted by all the technological gadgets and supernormal stimuli that we don't have time to connect with the real stimuli in nature with the forest and the seasons and the solstice and what have you. Yeah, I think it's both of those. I think that it's reinforced by industrialism. Industrialism, which is connected to the energy we now have access to through the fossil fuels, allowed us to not care so much about our home, about our living space around us.

industrialism taught us ideas about efficiency that, oh, if we all go to work in a factory and, you know, we make one thing and one community makes one thing, we can sell it to the rest of the world and so forth. So this has reinforced this idea of the isolated self. But it goes back even, you know, it goes back really throughout human history because think of our early, you know, ancestor communities, they kind of had an in-group, out-group survival instinct to know who was in your group and who wasn't. And that had survival value. And also to know who was your friend and who was your family and who could you rely on and who could you trust and you kind of were careful about everything else. I mean, you may love wild nature, but you got to be careful. Bears can eat

you, wolves can eat you, bacteria can eat you. So you have to be careful. in the natural world. So this sense of community and of self existed for a long time. But I think that one of the big problems is how industrialism not only has destroyed the physical planet, it has destroyed community. And the two things that kept us alive through 99% of our evolution was community and the living Earth. And both of those have been destroyed by the industrial mindset. So that is certainly part of it too. And the industrial mindset is fueled, of course, by the fact that we discovered what we call exo energy, energy outside of ourselves. So the first we got from burning wood and then burning coal and now oil and gas. So what are your, just to be explicit, what are your core current critiques of the environmental movement?

Well, I believe that the environmental movement as it stands today, first of all, it's one, critique is that it's driven by sort of popular ideas rather than deeply understanding ecology. In the 1970s, for example, we did campaigns to save the whales, which were very successful, and in some ways almost too successful because people begin to identify with large, dramatic animals and cute animals like seals. And ecology doesn't hold those animals like ourselves above anything else, that really ecology is about the community of every living thing on the planet. And so in some ways, popular ideas have kind of taken over from the deep ecological ideas. Is that, is that like a deep human truth that ecology is the opposite of popular?

Because, I mean, I've seen that in my own work, you know, like... Not necessarily. I think it's, I think it's more that. the fact that that ecology is the opposite of industrialism and that if you look at our roots, our community roots, I've mentioned Taoism and industrial cultures and so forth, Buddhism, that there was a deep respect for nature in primitive, what we call primitive communities. And I think that we grew up in the, you know, our ancestors for most of our evolution grew up in the lap of nature. and so had a respect for nature. And if you, for example, if you spend time with indigenous people, say, going hunting and being in the wild with indigenous communities, they have a deep respect even for the animals that they're hunting.

And there's a term among the indigenous communities of the Western Hemisphere of all our relations. And so there's a deep respect. And our relations aren't just our brothers and sisters and our mom and dad and children. our relations are every living thing, including that animal that we're going to go out and hunt and kill and eat. And so there was a kind of ritualization, which we call, I think this is the basis of sacrament. What sacrament is, is this deep ritual of respecting the wild and respecting mystery and respecting nature, even if we kill it and eat it. And I think that's somewhat, again, lost in our industrial culture. but I think that sense of belonging to our ecosystem,

I think it's very deep and very real. And I think that causes the loss of that in our industrial world, I believe is the source of a lot of the dysfunction of our culture. And a lot of the trauma and tragedy of our culture is that people grow up missing something that they don't even know they're missing. They're missing their deeper mother, the mother nature itself. I totally agree with that. And I didn't mean humans innately.

I just meant modern humans popular as opposite of ecology because of the Upton-Sinclair, quote, you can't expect someone to understand his job, expects him not to understand, because the ecological implications of our situation will require, less consumption. And so politically, that is a non-starter in many ways. So it just, I mean, do you think we could ever have ecology become popular or the basis of some new reality, religion or something in the future? As people reconnect with their core mother, which is Gaia, like you've said. I think it's possible. But as I said before, I think ecology is kind of anti-capital. capitalism is anti-ecology. Industrialism is anti-ecology. And so in order to fit into our modern

culture, we are kind of pushed to ignore ecology, to ignore our ecosystems. It's it's mocked. It's treated as a kind of sentimentalism. Oh, they love animals. Oh, they think animals are so cute and so important. Ecologists are constantly. mocked in our culture. Why is that? I see it all the time, too. Well, it's because our culture is really attached to these ideas of growth, making money. Because we've lost community, our connection to community and wild nature, most people,

their connection to eating is not hunting, is not wild nature, is not having a community that goes out and finds food or gathers food and eats, it's making money. If you don't make money, you don't eat. You end up one of these people I see every day on the streets of Toronto in the middle of winter with no place to go, freezing, cold, no food, you know, begging for a cup of coffee on the side of the street if you don't make money. So, of course, there's a tremendous push to join that industrial capitalist money-making culture and to consume, consume, consume. And it's kind of interesting that there seems to be no

into it. You know, people that become millionaires and want to become billionaires. And once you have a billion dollars, you want to have 10 billion so you can go to the fancier parties. And so there's this, I call it the sort of organized denial cabals, that there's this kind of organized mocking of the respect for nature. And to me, it reminds me, it's very similar to the Roman Catholic Church in the 15th of the 17th century, when scientists could not publish any data that challenged the beliefs of that church and the beliefs of the age. And I think, in some ways, in our modern world, we've shaken off the yoke of the churches somewhat. But we've, we've we labor under the yoke of the new religion, which is money-making, capitalism, technological optimism.

And, you know, if you try to publish a paper, I mean, you know this, I know this, many of my good friends and your good friends, whenever we publish something that talks about, well, wait a minute, you know, there are, there are biophysical limits to this energy transition that everyone's talking about. they get attacked. And I call those attackers the Grand Inquisitors of our age. You know, they're just like the Grand Inquisitors of the Catholic Church. Hey, you can't say that because we all believe that we're going to fix our ecological crisis or our climate crisis with technologies. And so people like Bill Reese and Vaklov Smil and even Rachel Carson in her time were just mocked. And they're like the Kepler's and Copernicus, of the 15th and 16th century. And just as Copernica showed that the earth was not the center of the universe, ecology teaches us that humanity is not the center of life on earth. And yet if you say that too loudly, the bishops of techno-optimism will resist and mock you.

So you've read my paper. Actually, you did more than read it. You very helpfully edited it. You know how I think about the superorganism that humans have become. And I think the market, we have outsourced our decision making to the market. And there's this downward causation that happens that it's not anyone humans fault. Is the market and the imperative to grow are dictating what happens to humans at levels

underneath that like institutions and individuals. So the market's compulsion obviates any alternative paths of wisdom or constraint. Yet at the same time, many of us, many of my listeners, most, if not all of yours and my colleagues, feel both this deep connection to nature, a horror of witnessing this slow motion tragedy that's unfolding with other species and ecosystems. And that gives me hope that there is some possibility of cultural transformation towards a redefinition of what is sacred. Because like you said, sacrament, things in nature, is it possible that we could revere

nature in an equalite renaissance sort of using science to be? aware of our place in the universe sort of way, or is that door already closed? No, I don't think that door, that door is closed any more than the door to the Enlightenment was closed in the 16th and 17th century when scientists were burned at the stake for saying the obvious. So our modern scientists are figuratively burned at the stake for saying the obvious. But, you know, time marches on, and it's possible that over time, the truth of ecology will be understood in wider circles. And I think there's a natural affinity to love the natural world anyway. And we've got to have that working for us.

We have the cultural histories of indigenous communities and Buddhists and Taoist traditions. to provide some ideas. But we're up against this juggernaut, which you call the superorganism. And no one is in control. I think this is one of the important things that you've, one of the important points that you have made about the superorganism. There's no one in control, certainly not the president of the United States, not the president of Russia, not the chairman of the Communist Party in China. no one is in control. The billionaires are not in control. The social activists are not in control. So we have this humanity, the 8 billion people. Everyone wants more. Everyone wants to eat every day.

Everyone wants warm water. Everyone wants fresh water. And everybody wants a little bit more to live in a little bit nicer house and have more to eat and have hot running water in their home. And so this human desire for more and more and more is part of the problem and no one's, no one's in charge of it. How much of that human desire is actually for more and how much of it is we want more because we look around us and others have more or we need more to get us a bowl of soup or some heated room like the people you were mentioning in Toronto? And how much of it is actually who we are? I think a lot of it is who we are, but first let's talk about the sort of social status aspect of it.

Certainly, once you're living comfortably and do have warm running water in your home and eat every day, if you have warm running water in your home and you eat every day, you're in the top 15% of humanity. And the top 1% of all the humanity that's ever been. But go on. Yeah. So most of humanity today wants more. because they're hungry. And as Van Danesheva says, you know, the, the poor nations of the world aren't poor because they're stupid and don't know how to do things. They're poor because they've been

robbed. They've been plundered by the wealthier nations. So most of humanity wants more because they have to do without, and they're hungry, and they get cold in the winter, and then they need shelter. But what about the millionaire who wants to be a billionaire like you mentioned before? Well, that's the other part. That's the crazy part in a way is that people who really should be satisfied with what they have and should just relax and spend more time with their families and their children and their communities and enjoy some of life and take a walk. You know, they just want to make more money. It's almost habitual. It's like habitual behavior. You've made money and you get a lot of status because you have money. And status translates into ability to attract a sexual mate,

ability to have some power in your community. And so there's this kind of need to always want more. And that's why I say the millionaires want to be billionaires. And by the time somebody has a billion dollars and they look around at all their billionaire, for instance, and they see the ones that have $10 billion, they want to go to those parties. So, you know, it's just, it just becomes habitual behavior, and it's certainly not based on a real sense of the sacred of the living world. So I'll interject there. I don't know if you've heard me tell these stories before, but I used to manage money for

billionaires on Wall Street. And what you just said is exactly true. When they had 50 million, they just said they want to get to 200 million and they're going to quit and buy an island and retire and write a book and become a gardener. And when they got to 200 million, you know, it was the shifting baselines or the receding horizons. Yeah. It's exactly as you said. And I don't know if they wanted to be at a better party per se.

I guess that could be true. But it's it's the more stuff was the proximate reason. The ultimate reason was the dopamine and the game and the feeling of conquest like I can turn this amount of money into more. One time I was in Las Vegas and I was at a craps table and one guy was betting a dollar and another guy was betting a thousand dollars on the same role and I was just watching them. And it was fascinating to me because obviously the $1,000 better was rich. But they were both getting the same thing out of the roll. They were both getting dopamine and the winning or the loss.

And yet the magnitude of it was orders of magnitude. two difference. And I think the same thing applies on our scale of the human enterprise where there's eight billion of us running around and some of us have a very much outsized impact, but we're all just getting the same neurotransmitter cocktail that we're trying to pursue that matches the emotional states of our ancestors. And I think ultimately an ecological worldview would craft a path where we can get that neurotransmitter cocktail by using less energy and material throughput. But there's no path from here to there, which is part of the problem, right? Yeah, well, there's a, and there is a path for some people.

I mean, some people have discovered, you know, a path to a more, you know, what I would call a sacred or spiritual life of, you know, I mean, I realized when I was a teenager that, wow, I'm, when I started learning about the world and learning the fact that people were starving in other parts of the world and, wow, I'm really lucky. I live in a home and I get to eat and I get to go to school. And that's not true for everybody in the world. And I remember when, even as a young man, as a teenager, thinking, I don't want my life to be about getting more. You know, I'm happy. And I want my life to be about creativity and seeing things and vision and having friends and community. And

And then, of course, in that process, I discovered certain paths that I call sacrament or ritualizing respect for mystery and diversity and so forth. And, you know, led me to the Taoist, led me to Buddhism, led me to indigenous communities. And there's a sense of sacredness of the world. And I personally have found, you know, my peace of mind and in those things and not in having more possession. So I feel fortunate, not just happy, but actually fortunate to live the life I live, which by the standards of my community in my society, I live, I'm actually under the poverty level in Canada. But I live a really nice life and I'm happy. So said differently, you are an incredibly rich person. You just have a wider definition of what constitutes rich.

I certainly do. And to me, rich isn't about having more cash. How much more stuff do I need? You know, and I have, you know, my children, I love to provide for my children. But my children grew up understanding that they weren't going to have the best of everything and most of everything. And you know what? To this day, they're all grown young men now, but they appreciate modest pleasures in life. And their partners appreciate modest pleasures in life. And I'm very proud of that. for them, I'm happy for them that they've discovered that there's more to life than just having more stuff. Well, I mean, it happened at a later date for me, but that's what I went through when I saw these billionaires that I was managing their money. And by the way, they weren't all that happy. And the clerks that were processing their trades were playing practical jokes, making 20 grand a year, and just really enjoying themselves.

So, yeah, in retrospect, I wish I would have stuck it out another couple years. and so that I could have had some savings. But I am paid. I have a good salary now, but I'm paid in things other than dollars. I'm paid in the experiences that I have, the meaning I get from interacting with people like you, the pride I get in working on what really matters, which is fixing the ecological human predicament. And so I also feel incredible gratitude for being alive at this time and being born into the United States, which is really quite something, you know, of all the humans that were ever born, those alive in the United States today, what a ride that has been or Canada, for that matter. But at the same time, I feel a fiduciary responsibility to that.

I shouldn't splurge that privilege turning all this opportunity and fossil magic into just spinning your wheels and dopamine, et cetera. So I'm digressing. Rex, what were some of your favorite campaigns that you did as one of the core founders of Greenpeace? Yeah, okay, favorite campaigns? Well, you know, as I mentioned, you know, we were casting about, we said we wanted to have an ecology movement. We need to do a campaign that's going to excite people about the natural world. And at that time, we learned about decline of the whales and that the whale species worldwide were down to about 5% of their peak populations. And the Atlantic greywell was already extinct.

And we came to the idea that if we did a campaign to save the whales, that not only could we reverse the decline of the whales and bring them back in our oceans, but that the whales themselves could kind of represent the ecology movement at large that we wanted to create. So we set out to confront the whalers, which were primarily at that time the Russian whalers and the Japanese whalers. And we achieved that. We found the Russian whalers in the middle of the Pacific in 1975. We blockaded the whale hunt. We stopped them in the middle of the ocean. We took film and photographs, which was all part of our strategy. And we released those film and photographs of the whale hunt to the newspapers and television at that time. Of course, there was no internet. In those days, we couldn't process the film on the boat and send them around the world. We actually had to come into port.

It was a different world at that time. But we did it. We came back into San Francisco. We sent the film around the world. And it worked. It hit a chord with humanity all over the world. People love the whales and wanted to save the whales. And that's one of my favorite campaigns because it was the first one.

It was successful. And it not only helped save the whales. allow the whales to recover, but we eventually got a moratorium on deep sea whale in around the world. But it also really helped launch what I think of as the modern environmental movement. So I'm very proud of that. I'll mention another one though, Nate, that was one of my favorite campaigns. This was a campaign that happened in 1980. We were sitting around in our office in Vancouver in 1980.

At that time, Greenpeace was small. We had very little money, and there had been a few offices popped up around the world, but we were still in the original Greenpeace office in San Francisco, or in Vancouver. And a friend of mine was reading the newspaper, and he read this thing, a consortium of oil companies was going to bring a supertanker into Puget Sound and the Salish Sea and was going to demonstrate how easy and maneuverable it was to bring a supertanker. tanker into these inside waters of the U.S. and British Columbia for the purpose of promoting the idea of an oil port in Puget Sound. And they said that this was just a test that the supertanker was not loaded with actual oil. It was just loaded with water, but it was a test to show that they could do this. And we're reading this and go, this is crazy. What are we going to do? And our office manager at the time, Julie McMaster, just said offhand, she said, He says, test, it's just a test.

She says, well, you guys should do a test blockade. Exactly. That was our response. We thought that was hilarious, a test blockade. So we called up the media in Seattle and Vancouver. We said, we're going to do a test blockade. We told them the whole story. Of course, the media loved it because it was funny, had a sense of humor.

They're going to bring in a test super tanker. We're going to do a test blockade. We're going to see if we can blockade them. So we did this. So we got out there with our. boats. And by the way, this was only three days away. We had to, we got this whole thing up and running in three days. We got some boats. We went out into the middle of Wanda Fouca Strait, which is the connection between the inside waters and the Pacific Ocean there between the U.S. and

Canada. And we confronted this giant supertanker that came roaring down, roaring down Wanda Fouca straight and we stopped it dead in the water and the helicopters were going overhead and we were on the radio to the bridge of the super tanker saying you know this is just a test we're just this is just a test blockade for when you really come in with oil and uh we got arrested by the u.s coast guard for whatever they call that blocking you can't block it the channel you're not supposed to do that So we got arrested and we got put in it. We got arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard and put in the boats. And we're saying to the Coast Guard, this is just a test.

We're just test. This is test blockade. And they put handcuffs on us. And we're going, yeah, the handcuffs work. Yep. And they took us into the local jail there. Test blockade, real handcuffs. Yeah, real handcuffs.

But we're testing. The handcuffs work. Yeah, that works. And they took us into the jail. And we kept this whole thing up when they fingerprinted us going, well, we're just this is a test, you know, and we're just testing, we're going to test the jail and do all this. Well, the local police, this was north of Seattle, the local police, they had nothing against us. They were kind of on our side, and they were very friendly, and they didn't even lock,

I remember they put us in this big holding cell, and they didn't even lock the door. They just left the door. And they, you guys go in there. And they, it was dinner time, so I guess they're obliged to feed us. So one of the, one of the policemen went out and came back with, a couple of big bags of food and came in and put it in the middle of the table and said, here, test this. So the reason that's one of my favorite memories of our Greenpeace campaigns is because it was

so spontaneous. The idea came not from some highfalutin campaign committee. It came from our office manager. And it was funny. And it was when we did it in a few days and we pulled it off. and it was amazingly successful, and it was fun and funny the whole way through, and the media thought it was funny, and the police thought it was funny. And it was funny.

It was hilarious. And it was successful. That tanker port never happened. So I've always remembered that. That was one of my favorite little episodes during the Greenpeace. That is a great story. So in the movie, How to Change the World, one of the highlights or the focus is on Bob Hunter, of Greenpeace, who coined the term, I think he coined the term, mind bomb.

Could you explain that a little bit? Bob did coin that term, the mind bomb. And the mind bomb was essentially a dramatic action that the pictures and the film of which could circulate around the world and change people's minds. But the idea of the mind bomb, Hunter introduced in a book he wrote called Storming of the Mind. This is Bob Hunter from Canada, Robert Hunter, great writer, brilliant. guy, one of my best friends of all time. I spent 10 years and working side by side with Bob in Greenpeace. And he wrote a book called Storming of the Mind. And the title, Storming of the Mind

is a play on the idea of storming the Bastille in a revolution. But we wanted to have a revolution that was not about physically storming the Bastille. It was about storming the mind of humanity, about changing the mind of humanity. And we're going to do this with images. And we're going to create these images by creating dramatic actions like blockading a whaling ship or, you know, blockading the ships that were dumping toxic waste into the oceans. And so the idea of a mind bomb is that when the images go around the world in the film, that these images not so much change policy immediately, but what they will do is they will change the public perception of a particular issue. In this case, whaling.

or ocean dumping or ecology in general. And so the mind bomb became really the central strategy of Greenpeace, early Greenpeace, and still to this day, that these crazy actions, and people often again mocked us for these silly things we were doing. But the reason for doing these crazy actions was to create a narrative and images that were interesting enough that they would actually move through the media system. which at that time, of course, was all print media and radio and television. So I think I remember reading that the picture of someone about to club a baby seal made it within a week to 30,000 newspapers around the world or something like that.

Oh, yeah. In fact, the photographs of the first whaling campaign in 24 hours went around the world. I went to the newsstand the next day and I saw the picture that I had taken. out at sea and brought back and processed on land and sent the night before on virtually every news cover of every newspaper at the newsstand. So 40 years ago, we could have mind bombs like that with today with Twitter and YouTube and Despacito videos getting 20 billion watches and everything is the signal to noise barrier to making an ecological splash and storming the ecological mind of humans. Is that a much grander challenge or is it still possible to change people's on mass? They're thinking about these things. I'm not sure that it's a grander challenge,

a harder challenge. Look, Nate, there's always been mostly noise in the media. In the 1970s, most of the media was noise just like it is today. And to actually get, at a front page above the, we called it above the fold headline in the newspapers, you had to do something that was more interesting than the latest celebrity breakup or, you know, the same thing as today. And what we used to talk about is to get past the noise is you have to jump systems. We have to do something that's actually going to crack the culture, crash the culture. We used to use the expression, crash the culture.

And the trick is to do something that no one expects you to do. And if you're just saying what everybody expects you to say, if you're saying I'm for peace and I'm for, you know, I'm in favor of stopping climate change or whatever. And everybody expects it. It's not news. So you have to do something that nobody expects. So it was just as hard in 1975 as it is today. I would say maybe it's a little harder now because of social media. And I understand what you're saying.

Yeah, I mean, every individual in the modern world with access to phones and computers is just flooded with that sort of media noise. And so, yeah, it's very difficult. But you still have to do the same thing, which is do what no one expects you to do. Crash the cultural trend. Crash the sort of cultural trajectory and do something different. I'll give you a couple of examples of, you know, people who have successfully done that. That was the Extinction Rebellion. They were able to crack the culture and do something different.

The Fridays for Future group, the young kids, they were fantastically successful. Greta, Turnberg was amazingly successful. And she did something very simple. She left school and she went and she sat outside the parliament in Norway. And that broke the whole culture. So it's still possible. Very difficult. I'll give you another example, which I've been advocating for years in the environmental movement, talking to my friends at Greenpeace and other environmental groups, is stop going to these stupid climate conferences that are accomplishing. Absolutely nothing. I think we're up to 34 climate conferences since 1979. And through that whole time, the human carbon emissions have continued to increase. So why are we going to these climate conferences and saying entirely predictable things? So here's what I'm suggesting. Don't go to the climate conferences. Boycott the climate conference. Do something that no one expects you to do. Boycott the climate conference and then explain why you're boycotting the climate conference. Because after 34 climate conferences, these airheads and political appointees have done nothing. And our carbon emissions have continued to increase. And so let's figure out what the root of this problem is and stop.

stop supporting this system, which is really just business as usual and just a way to pretend that you're doing something when you're doing nothing. So that's an example of what I would say, crash the culture, do what's not expected. Don't just do what you did last year and the year before and the year before, if that makes any sense. It does make sense. Of course, when you use a term like crash the culture, there now is a much bigger systemic risk from that line of inquiry than there was 50 years ago because we have a six-continent supply chain and a monetary system in deep overshoot and a geopolitical fragility. So I think there are the larger systemic risks that exist today make those sorts of strategies and appeals more dangerous

than they were when you started Greenpeace. Oh, yes. But remember, remember when I'm talking about crashing the culture, I'm talking about, I'm talking about disrupting the cultural narrative. Yeah, right. You know, and that's the same thing that the women's movement did, and that's the same thing that the civil rights movement did, and the peace movement. That's the same thing that Gandhi did. That's the same thing that Rachel Carson did with her book Silent Spring, is to crack the cultural narrative. Because the cultural narrative tends to be a bullshit story, which keeps the power structure and power, keeps business as usual chugging along. And, you know, that's always the case in history, is that in order to

change society, you have to point out that the emperor has no clothes, and you have to, you have to crack that cultural narrative. And it's very difficult to do, but it's possible. Greta Thurnberg did it. And Friday's Friday's... The Future did it, and Greenpeace did it in its day, and Extinction Rebellion did it, and the women's movement has done it, and it's possible. The Me Too movement has done it, and so it's possible to do it, but you have to be smart and you have to do something that is not expected, do something new and creative. So in addition to the signal-to-noise barrier, which you've just articulated why that's not insurmountable, there's also something else with the environment.

environmental awareness in general people's minds, I find. The formula for showing of sad environmental movie with lots of scenery about damages to animals and oceans and ecosystems. But then at the end, it's not too late. And they show solar panels and wind turbines. And this formula of environmental tragedy, but it's not too late, we can do this, is kind of numbed people to potential mind bombs like you guys did in the 70s. What is the formula? I mean, there is no formula, but what could happen there that could change? I thought the Don't Look Up movie was quite refreshing in that they did not mention climate change in the entire movie. Yet everyone

that was aware of what was going on knew it was kind of about climate change. And they made it like a parody almost, but it was a real visceral message in that movie. which is basically we're not going to get warning that everyone will believe until it's too late, number one, and number two, speaking truth as a scientist to these issues, pales in comparison to glib, popular, funny, feel-good things in the media, which is exactly what you were saying earlier. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, well, the storyline that you're talking about is showing the environment.

destruction and then telling everybody there's hope at the end. Yeah, it's exactly that. It's a formula. Everybody expects it. So it's not going to change anything. So you have to do something, like I said, different. I sometimes refer to this as hopium because it's like a drug. It's like, oh, look how bad things are. But if you donate to us, we're going to help and you can help change things. And there is hope. And we're, you know, this story is what all the environmental groups are telling to all their, their donor. and I'm not against hope. Hope's a great frame of mind. Hope as a frame of mind is great.

And it helps invigorate one. It has to be a realistic hope. Well, it's a great frame of mind. But Nate, it's not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. And yes, it helps invigorate people, but it's also a trap. That we need to be really serious about

what our challenges are and not just tell people that there's hope. Of course, there's always hope. But we have to be really clear about it. And we have to, the other thing I think we have to be careful with is what's now known as virtue signaling, just saying things because we know that our in-group is going to think that we've said the right thing, that we want to stop climate change and so forth. By the way, I agree with you about the movie. Don't Look Up. And although I think the message needs to be a lot larger than climate change. We have an overshoot crisis, not just a climate crisis. We have an ecological crisis. But nevertheless, I think it was a serious mind bomb and got a lot of people thinking and talking in the right way. But we have to be careful about

virtue signaling, and especially in the environmental movement, where, you know, being a climate activist can be, for some people, just a status-seeking opportunity. And, and, you know, And that's probably not going to be helpful. You know, you asked me once I remember about, you know, how much of the environmental movement is really serious deep ecological thinking and how much is virtue signaling and status seeking. And I would say it's like everything else. It's like 90% versus 10%.

90% status thinking and virtue signaling and about 10% really serious deep ecology. And I think that's just the normal human. distribution of anything. There's a famous story about Theodore Sturgeon, the great science fiction writer, and a journalist was asking him, why do you write science fiction? Sturgeon? 90% of science fiction is crap. Theodore Sturgeon thinks about this for a minute, and then he says, yeah, well, 90% of

everything is crap. So how would... the climate movement reconnect more with the ecology movement so that it wasn't so predominantly about memes and status signaling, et cetera. Well, I think, you know, what I said about doing something that's not expected, like every day, I would say to environmentalists today, every single day ask yourself the question, what do I need to do that I haven't done yet? What do I need to do that no one expects?

What can I do that's creative and different that's going to actually help get the ecological narrative in front of people? And I think that this sort of deep self-questioning is number one, that if you want to be an activist and you want to have an impact on the world and change the trajectory of society, you better be asking those deep questions about. what can I do that's new and different. Now, how do I be creative? Well, the truth is, there's no formula for creativity. If there was a formula for creativity, then it wouldn't be creativity, would it? So because there's no formula for creativity in the arts or in social movements, then the onus and the responsibility is on the activist to ask himself or herself every single day, what else can we do? What can we do this different?

What can we do this really going to shake up the culture? It's not just business as usual by other means. I mean, that's part of the problem with the idea that we're going to just transfer from this oil industrialism to an electric industrialism. The problem is industrialism. So, you know, if we think, first of all, you know, the idea that we're going to end fossil fuel, use anytime soon and keep on life business as usual. It's a, it's a delusion. And it's been pointed out, not just by me, but by lots of people, that, you know, this idea needs to be rethought and deeply

thought about it. And Vaclav Smil has written about this recently. And so is Bill Reese, and lots of other people have written about this and talked about it. And we have to accept that there are certain biophysical limits to how fast we're going to be able to change an energy system. And if you say, in some circles in the environmental movement, if you say things like this, well, you'd just be laughed at or ignored or ridiculed because it's this belief structure. It's this narrative that's accepted narrative that we're going to have business as usual with a different energy system. So do you really believe that a lot of people in the environment, or climate movement truly believe that we can solve climate change by growing renewable energy

and getting rid of fossil energy, that that will solve or mitigate the climate risks? Well, it would mitigate the climate risk. But the problem is that it will also collapse the economy. But collapsing the economy is what we need to do. And this is what people don't want to accept. If we could get rid of fossil fuel use, yeah, that would help. Of course it would help mitigate the climate risk. But a lot of people in the environmental movement are somewhat energy blind in this sense

that they don't understand how this entire culture, even the idea of making windmill, wind turbines and solar panels, is a fossil fuel intensive idea because of all the mining of the resource. Look what's already happening with the demand for. lithium and the mining around the world and coup d'etaz and you've got you got what's his name Elon Musk claiming that they can have a coup d'etat against anybody they want because they're doing such important work. So, you know, this pressure to mine the resources to mine the lithium and the cobalt and the copper and so forth to build all this stuff, that kind of gets swept under

the carpet sometimes. And so, yeah, this needs to be looked at and understood it a much, deeper level, this idea of the energy transition, what we really need to do is contract our economy. And no one wants to say that. Very few people want to say that. Bill Reese will say that. I'll say that. There's no mechanism for that to happen that is politically and socially acceptable, which is one of the reasons I am having this conversation with you and people like you is so that people understand the linkages between energy and GDP, between materials and GDP. Materials and GDP, by the way, are almost one-for-one correlated. Absolutely.

So if we double our GDP, we're going to double our material use. And so at 3% a year, we're using double the materials we do today in 25 years or less. That's right. And this whole decoupling idea has not worked. not work and does not work, that energy and material use is connected to economic growth. So this idea, I mean, this idea in a way was something that happened in the 1990s, Reagan and Thatcher era when a lot of people in the progressive movements is, oh, we can have all of our values, we can have our civil rights values and our gender rights values and our

ecological values, and we can still all be rich and we can start companies and make lots of money. Well, that's just not true. that if we're going to continue to grow our economies, then we're going to continue to pollute and destroy the natural world. So if we're not willing to reduce our human population, which is another issue that the environmental movement has a hard time getting their head around. But if we're going to allow population to decline, which we could make a lot of progress just with universal women's rights and universally available contraception. But a lot of people in the progressive ecology movement or environmental movement don't even want to bring that up because then they're going to be accused of, oh, you're blaming the poor or you're being racist or whatever because you brought up the fact that the human population is overshooting the capacity of the planet. So let me ask you a hard question. I have a couple hard questions. Is there a possibility or what do you think about the possibility of a phase shift in human behavioral response?

if people realize that we are running out of runway to be able to grow and that any growth is tethered to energy and materials and pollution and is going to require more deterioration of the natural capital of the world. What happens if what people like me have been working and you have been working on for a long time, which is the assumption that if we educate common people and politicians about our biophysical limits, that we will make better decisions. Is that a naive assumption? And that once people really understand what we face, that some unexpected other trajectory will ensue, or do you still believe that education about these things is important?

Well, it's important, but it's not enough. We're never going to win any of these battles with just the facts. The data won't win. You have to do more than the data. And that's why I'm saying. That's why Greenpeace for decades has done these crazy stunts all over the world because you have to reach people at a more visceral level. You have to reach people at a more emotional level. And just repeating the sad, depressing data is not enough and can even be counterproductive at a certain point. But I do think there is progress, Nate, that year by year, decade by decade, more people are realizing that business as usual is, in fact, the problem, that we can't just have more stuff every year, more growth every year, more humans every year. Right now, we're adding 88 million

human beings to the planet every single year. Eighty-eight million humans. That's the population of Delhi, Sao Paulo, and Mexico City all combined every single year. And yet, We're hardly talking about human population growth. It's as if people think that humans aren't like every other animal that we can overshoot our habitat. So how much of that is ignorance and how much of it is fear to say something really uncomfortable? It's mostly fear to say something uncomfortable. It's, again, it's virtue signaling. It's like, oh, there's this notion in the, and it wasn't just in the environmental movement,

but when environmentalism was, or when population was first proposed at the 1919. 72 environment meeting in Stockholm. Some of the environmentalists there rejected the idea, no, we can't talk about population because there's poor nations all over the world and their population is growing fast and it sounds like we're blaming the poor. The rich can't blame the poor. Well, that's true. The rich cannot blame the poor.

And a lot of our problems are because of the rich, not just because of the numbers. But nevertheless, population is of human population. is a very real environmental ecological issue, and we should at least be discussing it. And then a lot of the reason it's not being discussed is people are afraid of being mocked and ignored or canceled or whatever. And so they're afraid. They're afraid to mention it. Are we approaching a cancel singularity where the most important issues?

Well, no, that the most important issues can't be discussed for fear of being canceled. I think we're already there in some sense. Like the fear around discussing certain critical issues is so huge that it keeps a lot of people silent. It doesn't keep me silent. It doesn't keep you silent. But it keeps a lot of people silent. And yeah, that's a problem. Well, I suppose it's no coincidence that a lot of my first guests are silverbacks, to use a term of the ecology movement,

who've been talking about these things for a long time. And I've been recently having success with this initiative I refer to as advanced policy, which is talking to silverback politicians who are retired, used to be in power, famous men and women, senators and congressmen and governors. But now they don't have the status risk and they have more time. And they're interested and deeply care about these issues. So it's almost like people under the age of 25 and over the age of 65 are completely riveted into this conversation because they get it and it's relevant to them. And people in the middle, and this is a generalization, of course, people in the middle, it's too much of a status or paycheck or cognitive dissonance hit to take these big discussions on board about population, the great sense.

simplification, the end of economic growth, climate change, ecosystem destruction, etc. So it really is, I mean, we're not robots. We're an ultra-social species that is highly emotional and highly conscious of what other people think of us. And so to throw that whole thing in the mix, it makes this a really thorny challenge, not only the biophysical, but the psychological aspects of discussing and working up both a top-down biophysical plan and a bottom-up cultural response to caring about deep time and ecology and the 10 million other species we share the planet with and other generations. But given what we face, do you have any short recommendations or frameworks for recommendations

that you could suggest at various scales, either global, national, community level, or as individuals, given some of the things we've talked about. Well, yes, I do. Quickly, I think that most of the important changes that are going to happen are going to be localized. They're going to be a community scale. I don't really think there are any global solutions.

We're not going to come up with some plan that everybody's going to agree with globally. But I think you can protect your own communities so you can certainly help mitigate some of the pain in the future. So I would say my recommendations are to stay active and focus locally, localize. Localize food production, localize energy, if you can, localize health care, preserve and restore local ecosystems, wild places, and spend time in nature yourself. And there are certain things, you know, just on a personal level.

that, you know, I think are very important, you know, for us to do. For example, spending time in the natural world and really becoming a student of the natural world to trust and love nature and then educate and teach others and, you know, plant your garden, grow your food. There's something that I learned in a Buddhist tradition, which is called Sharpen the Sword, sharpening the sword. And it's a Buddhist precept that before you go into battle, you sharpen your sword. But in this case, it's a metaphor.

And the sword is you. You are the sword. So make yourself a better person. Make yourself a more generous person and a more aware person, a more gracious person. You know, practice just common decency. Learn to get along and build cohesion in your community and work with people and become a more effective agent of change. And that's one of the best things you can do. Most of the problems that I've seen in the environmental movement or any social movement are about the ego. So if we can quiet our own ego

and not need to be important or not need to be famous or be in charge or be the boss, and if we can, if we can learn how to do things effectively and be a better agent of change, that's one of the most important things. Now, of course, there are large-scale activities that we need to do and we can do. And I think militarism is at the top of my list. I started out in the peace movement, and Greenpeace is the combination of the peace movement and the ecology movement. But militarism is still one of the biggest problems in the world.

And it's a trillion-dollar industry around the world, and there's a lot of money to be made for the corporations that supply the militaries around the world, and that drives a lot of the militarism. But we need to quiet the militarism in the United States, in Russia, in China, NATO, in Europe. Isn't that a collective action sort of game theory? I mean, for us to just say we give up on militarism, then we become a target to the other people that don't? I mean, that's a really tough thing to give up for our sort of. culture. It's a really tough thing. And I'll go back to my mentor, Gregory Bateson, who did a lot of

work on this. He came up with the concept of schismogenesis, which is the creation of conflict. And how do we keep conflict alive? And then the reverse idea is how do we quiet and calm down conflict? And he worked with the U.S. government on this for years and trying to quiet the competitiveness and conflict between Russia. in the United States. Would that he were around right now? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And his work and that work would continue. You have to pay attention to it. Nothing changes if you don't pay attention to it and don't keep track of it. So we need to look at the conflict creation that goes on in the world and conflict resolution and how that really works. The other thing, of course, is consumption. I've mentioned this throughout our conversation, is that we actually have to contract our economies and we have to get comfortable with doing with less instead of more.

And of course, that's for the rich nations, mostly in much of the world, in the poor part of the world, we need to help those cultures live decent lives. And so that, you know, that militarism, consumption, and the other one I mentioned, of course, is population. we need to become more energy literate and then just work and practice decency and social justice. These are the big ones. But again, I go back to localize, build cohesion in your own community and sharpen your sword, become a better person, become a more effective agent of change. Thank you for that.

And I will put in the show notes your written recommendations to my students on that question. So Rex, what do you care about personally more than anything else, given all the stuff that we've talked about and what you know as an ecologist looking at our time on this planet and what's happening today? Well, I suppose like most people, I mean, personally, what I care most about is that my family is healthy, that my children are healthy and can live productive lives and, you know, my friends and my community and that my community is healthy and and my you know if there are conflicts in my community that we can resolve them and and just kind of help each other get along and take

care of each other that that's what I care about most and um I think that's a natural human instinct and an important one that that we look after ourselves we look after our families we look after our communities I love nature I trust nature I'm heartbroken everything single day of my life of what we're doing to the wild world and the natural world. And I'm aware of the number of species that are disappearing and the individuals within those species that are disappearing. And I find that the ecological destruction of our world is just heartbreaking for me. I stay upbeat, but I can find something to be heartbroken about any day of the week, not just the suffering of humanity, but the suffering of the entire.

wild world. And I care about that. And I would like to see us come up with ways to have human existence on this planet that didn't end up destroying everything around it. I was just out the other day in Toronto, in the middle of Toronto feeding the birds. And I ran into another woman who was feeding the birds. And she had some, she had some better stuff than I did. She had some nice birdsie. Where'd you get the bird seed? She told me where she got the bird seed. And we had a nice chat. And we were both just talking about this, how heartbreaking it is here we are. It is the middle of winter in this frozen city and we've destroyed the forest. We've destroyed the ecosystem. These poor animals have virtually nothing to eat and, you know,

there's a few people out, you know, trying to feed these poor things. But I care about that too. I care about every living thing and, you know, everything alive in our ecosystem and the health of our ecosystems. And I'm never, I'm never free of those carings because it's just, it just feels primal. to me. So not to follow the formula, but given what you know and what you see and what you care about, what are you most hopeful about, even if it's a kernel? What are the things that do give you hope about humanity and the future? Well, as I said, hope is a good frame of mind, but it is not a strategy. So the frame of mind part, first of all, what gives me most hope is nature itself. I really believe in nature's resilience and its developmental path. And no matter what we throw at it,

you know, it's not going to be any worse than the asteroid that hit us 65 million years ago. I believe in, I have hope in life's ability to adapt to change and to experiment its diversity, its sense of symbiosis. And that's what I believe in most. And that's one reason I believe in protecting the wild world and ecosystems because I believe the lessons for our own survival are there in the natural world. Thank you. Any closing words of wisdom for our listeners, my friend? To me, one of the important things that I think I realize is that I'm a product of nature. Nature made me. Nature made my eyes to see. And I should be grateful for that. And I should stand by the natural world and help it endure and prosper.

And number one thing for anyone who wants to help in the environmental ecology movement is to become a student of nature, be apprentice of nature. This idea that we're going to manage the natural world or that we're going to fly off and occupy Mars, it's just delusional and it's insane and it's destructive. We really need to be students of nature, not the managers. And the other thing, last thing I would say is that, you know, art, humor, play, creativity, find things in your life that you can be creative because creativity is the essence of nature. And so when we play, when we play music, when we play with our friends, when we play with children,

when we play with dogs, when we take walks in the woods, this sense of play and creativity, I think, is that's one of the most effective traits that we can grow. in ourselves and in others and help others grow their own creativity and sense of play. Thank you so much for your time and for your career working on these issues, Rex, to be continued, my friend. Oh, Nate, my pleasure. And I love the work that you're doing. And you've done, you've, you've, you've really helped inculcate some important ideas into our culture. And you've done what I've suggested, which, you know, is you've come up with ways to do what no one expects and to get new ideas into the public discourse. So I applaud you for that. We'll see how that goes.

Yeah, we'll see how that goes. And I'm really happy to participate with you. Thanks for this opportunity. Thanks, Rex. I'll talk to you soon. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of the Great Simplification, please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and visit thegrat simplification.com for more information on future releases.