The Rich Roll Podcast - We Can Solve Climate Change Now: Paul Hawken & IN-Q LIVE

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

I'm ecstatic to share my first live podcast event, recorded at the Los Angeles Wilshire Ebell Theatre on September 27, 2019. For all of us, this podcast is an abstraction. The motivation behind the event was to create a tactile, analog experience for 1,100 people to gather around shared purpose and passion. An opportunity to cultivate community. Raise consciousness. Elevate intimacy. Deepen personal connectivity around our collective humanity — and the important ideas of our time. An unforgettable lifetime moment, the resulting impact exceeded my wildest expectations. I'm still basing in the glow. And deeply grateful for an experience that left me feeling more intimately connected with all of you — and optimistic about the future of our planet. The program opens with the poetic spoken word genius of my friend and two-time podcast guest IN-Q (check out RRP 81 & RRP 118). Named to Oprah Winfrey's SuperSoul 100 list of the world's most influential thought leaders, IN-Q is a National Poetry Slam Champion, multi-platinum songwriter, and world-renowned keynote speaker. His groundbreaking performances include selling out one of the largest one-man poetry shows in US history, being the first spoken word artist to perform with Cirque Du Soleil, and being featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam and A&E’s Look Closer campaign, which debuted during the Emmys. He has been featured in major media ranging from Forbes to AdWeek and several of his recent videos have gone viral with over 60 million combined views. I then take the stage to share some thoughts, including a powerful listener e-mail, before settling into a fascinating conversation with Paul Hawken — one of the world's pre-eminent authorities on global climate change and a man who has indelibly shaped my personal perspective on ecological responsibility. A pioneering environmentalist, activist, entrepreneur, architect of corporate reform, and multiple New York Times bestselling author, Paul has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. His work includes founding successful ecologically conscious businesses (including the natural foods market Erewhon), writing about the impacts of commerce on living systems and consulting with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology and environmental policy. In addition to penning countless op-eds and peer reviewed articles, Paul has written 8 books, including Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Paul is also the Founder and Founding Executive Director of Project Drawdown, an extraordinary non-profit dedicated to researching and implementing solutions for reversing global warming Paul has lectured everywhere, including Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. He has given commencement addresses at Yale and Berkeley. He has appeared on Bill Maher, Charlie Rose, Larry King and countless other media outlets. And his new book, Regeneration: Ending The Climate Crisis In One Generation, hits bookstores in 2020. Enjoy! Rich

I feel like this situation we're in, the most gnarly, super wicked problem humanity has ever described and may ever face, is actually a blessing. And if we look at it from the point of view of its feedback, and actually from the whole of the earth, because you can't really separate the atmosphere from plants and forests and water. really separate the atmosphere from plants and forests and water. If you look at it from that way, then it's a gift, it's feedback, and you take 100% responsibility for your actions, who you are, and then you begin to imagine, innovate. You do things that make sense to you, that help you connect more to this beautiful, extraordinary miracle we call the living world.

And that's the gift of climate change. The gift is transformation of self and of the world. And the solutions are transformative. So we can either accept the offering and the gift, or we can go into self-pity. That's Paul Hawken. self-pity. That's Paul Hawken, and this is a very special live event edition of the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How goes it? What is happening?

My name is Rich Roll. You probably already know that. This is a podcast. It's my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. As most of you know, we recently hosted our very first super legit live show in Los Angeles. And it was an absolutely incredible experience, top to bottom. It exceeded my wildest expectations. It was really a lifetime moment I'm never, ever going to forget. And an opportunity to share this work with about 1,100 people and also an event that left me feeling more connected with

all of you, this incredible community, and really optimistic about humanity in general. I've got so much love, gratitude, and appreciation for everybody who attended. And today, I'm honored to share with all of you who were not able to attend in person, a program that opens with the poetic spoken word genius of my friend and former podcast guest, InQ. Check out episodes 81 and 118 from way back in the day if you missed them the first time around, followed by some brief remarks by yours truly, and culminating in a rather extraordinary conversation with legendary pioneering environmentalist, activist, author, and entrepreneur Paul Hawken, a man who has spent the better part of the last many years studying solutions designed to reverse the damaging

effects of global climate change. And I think it's fair to say a man who has indelibly shaped my perspective on ecological responsibility. But before we dive in, please indulge me by supporting the sponsors who make this show possible. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment.

And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it.

Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to

recovery.com. Okay. RRP Live at the Ebell Theater in Los Angeles. In queue. Poetry, community, recovery, personal growth, Paul Hawken, environmentalism, activism, personal responsibility, solutions, food system, soil, regenerative agriculture. It's all happening, people. And I think that's just about all the purposely oblique prefatory remarks I want to make right now with one caveat. We professionally filmed this entire experience, and the production value on the video version of the event is absolutely off the hook, next level gorgeous. So if you typically only digest this show in audio-only format, I would highly, highly suggest that this show, this episode, above all other episodes, would be one you're also going to want to check out on YouTube. It's just amazing. And you can find it at youtube.com forward slash Rich Roll or by clicking on the Watch Video button on the episode page on my website.

All right, time to get down at the Wilshire Eval Theater. Get it on. How are you? Do you feel good? Do you feel alive? I'm going to do a few poems for you guys. It's a real pleasure that I was invited here tonight. life is all about you and not at all about you. Now that's two opposing thoughts, and yet both of them are true. How can we experience everything we choose to do while observing the experience we're having from a higher view? Awareness, but of who?

I am the journey that I'm getting to. Gratitude is my destination. My destiny is perfectly aligned with this location. I am the map, so my rhymes are like road signs. I have everything I want because my imagination's mine but mine is not enough for me because I am not my mind. I could see it all and never get to see.

I'm truly blind. I could be it all but all identity is intertwined. The moon is only bright because it reflects the sunshine and I'm not entirely convinced I even write these lines because my DNA is coded by divine design. But if I manifest abundance while humanity is dying,

I am equally responsible for all that I'm denying. See, you can tell the truth and still be lying. I did it for years. My perception was a funhouse mirror. And my projection was exaggerated on reality till my reflection back was nothing more than technicality. So who am I if I'm not who I am? What if I didn't have my name or my age or my friends? If I didn't do my poetry, who would I be

then? The things that I've become are not the things I truly am. And everything I think I own owns me in the end. Existence doesn't owe me anything. Quite the opposite. Existence will exist long after I am missed. So the art is more important than the artist is. It's not a human race. It's just the human race. it's not a human race. It's just the human race. There's nothing left to chase. We do not run this place, but both medicine and poisons and acquired taste. So I started taking selfies of somebody else's face. Right before I die, I'm going to tell a joke so that everyone on my bedside can laugh before I croak. Most depart on somber notes, but life is serious enough. And we take our seriousness so serious for what? Just because we're serious doesn't mean we're tough.

It requires more courage to laugh when times get rough. Because laughter doubles as an outlet. If energy is stuck, it can disrupt your pattern long enough to shift how you look. And if you shift how you look, you shift how you look. That way, people see you differently and it changes shit up. The glass is either half empty or half filled up. I'm just grateful that I have a cup. So many brag about how they don't give a fuck because they have no fucks to give me. I give so many fucks that you would think I have none left, but my fucks are exponential, so I'll give until my death,

because I'll have infinite fucks until my very last breath, and that's when I'll tell my joke. And it will be so good that the waiting room will laugh like they never knew they could, and they'll have to tell their friends, and their friends will laugh too. And pretty soon the whole city will be laughing at the truth. And they'll laugh until they cry. And they'll cry until they scream. And they'll scream until they love. And they'll love until they dream. It was just a little joke. I didn't know what it could mean. It was just a little joke. Now the joke is on me because the laughter was

contagious. So it spread across the land. My punchline was so outrageous. People couldn't even stand. They started rolling on the floors. They started giving up beliefs. They started begging me for more, but I was already deceased. It didn't matter, rich or poor. Forget the languages they speak because the heart can understand. So we're rippled through the streets, and they laugh beyond their fears, and they laugh beyond their grief, and they laugh beyond their wars. They laugh themselves right into peace. We are pieces in the puzzle, but we've never seen the box. We're addicted to the struggle. It's a fucking paradox. But I put that in my joke.

So the irony was obvious. No mirrors and no smoke. The clarity was so hilarious that people fucking choked. Then they laughed at... Everybody, throw your hands up. People fucking choked. Everybody, put your hands up. Now go like this. People fucking choked. Then they laughed about the choking. It was universal dope.

That humanity was smoking and humanity was open, overwhelmed by their emotions. They heard the laughter coming from the mountains and the oceans. They heard the laughter coming from the skies and trees. Even the universe was laughing as it fell to its knees. And right then, the laughter stopped. It was almost all at once. At first, it was a shock. The transition was abrupt, but eventually they settled in, united in their work. They had a lot to do together as they built a better earth. I never saw it happen, but I was sure it did. I held my wife and kids' hands as I closed my eyelids, and I dreamt about this world and the things we could create.

world, in the things we could create, if I could find the right joke before my soul evacuates. So I opened up my mouth, but I had nothing left to say. So my joke was in the silence as I slowly slipped away. Thank you. Thank you. If you guys feel alive, say yeah. So I was coming out of my new therapist's office the other day. This is totally true. And sitting in the waiting room was my old therapist. My first thought was, I must have made the right decision. I hadn't seen him in a few years, and it was like immediately awkward.

So there was an uncomfortable silence. I was like, hey man, how are you? He was like, I'm good. How are you? I was like, awkward. So there was an uncomfortable silence. I was like, hey, man, how are you? He was like, I'm good. How are you? I was like, I'm good. Then there was another silence. And I just said, all right, man, well, you know, take care. And he was like, yeah, you too, man. And I walked away thinking we are all going through this human shit together, aren't we? This is called One Little Dot. How can something this big be invisible? The environment is everywhere, and yet it isn't visible.

Maybe if we saw it, we would see it's not invincible and have to take responsibility as individuals. How can something this big be invisible? If it's all around us, it should show itself on pure principle. The scientists are certain that the damage is residual and climate change data is reaching levels that are critical, yet somehow that's political. We argue over math. Our citizens are too cynical to believe in facts.

We make excuses and hold on to the recent past. We don't want to sacrifice, so we refuse to ask. I grew up in a city. It's all I ever knew, so even now I have nothing to compare it to. I have to hit the park to see more than a tree or two. I have to visit nature like it's in a fucking zoo. But California was wild before the parking lots, before the mass malls, before designer shops, before the strip clubs, before the sea change, when mountain lines roamed freely over freeways, before the fast food, before the freeze frames.

We live around a bunch of dead shit these days. You with me? It's not an argument for better or worse. It's an observation on how we've been treating Mother Earth. And we always seem to mistreat the ones we love first. But we protect what is ours. My land, my life, my house, my kids, my job, my wife, my dog, my car, my country, my culture. But when it comes to nature, our perspective is external.

The planet, the forest, the ocean, the skies, the mountains, the valleys, always the, never mind if it's not me, never mind, I'm too busy all the time, and without the ownership, we ignore the warning signs. Just look at all the species on the planet that are dying. The coral reefs, the honeybees, the coral reefs, the honeybees mysteriously dying. One fourth of all the mammals that exist are dying. A third of all amphibians are at the risk of dying. We're on a path to mass extinction. It's almost like we're trying because we're relying on an atmosphere

that we've been frying. I could use more statistics, but you probably think I'm lying because over half the politicians we elect deny them. Well, since when did their opinions outweigh the science? I thought experiments are fundamentally unbiased. Capitalism uses nature as its example and excuse for competition. The only problem is we've removed it from the ecosystem.

Profit and balance in the market are attainable, but growth without a conscience is completely unsustainable. A lion doesn't kill all the gazelles. Why do we have to have it all to ourselves? Pretty soon, there'll be nothing left but concrete and cars. And when you see an animal, it'll be like seeing a movie star. The planet, the forest,

the ocean, the skies, the mountains, the valleys, always the. Never mind if it's not me. Never mind. I'm too busy all the time. And without the ownership, we ignore the warning signs. Our planet, our forest, our ocean, our skies, our mountains, our valleys, always we, always mine. My planet, my forest, my ocean, my skies, my mountains, my valleys, always we, always mine, always ours, always yours. One little dot in trillions of stars. One little dot. It's all that we've got. We just forgot that none of it's ours.

We just forgot that all of it's ours. One little dot in trillions of stars. My name is NQ. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it. And now, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce the man of the hour to the stage. He's somebody that I very much respect and admire, and I also consider him a friend. So give a huge, huge round of applause. A lot of fucking love. Give it up one time for Rich Rowe!

Thank you. Thank you. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Imagine walking out onto a stage after that guy, being expected to talk. It's a gift and it's an honor to be up here with all of you this evening. This event has been long in the making,

and I visualized it many times, and it just warms my heart to see so many people turn up tonight so that we can collectively experience ideas and a level of consciousness that together we've collectively experienced, but only in the digital space. Tonight is about analog. It's about community. It's about communication. It's about connectivity and intimacy. And I just appreciate everybody being here tonight. So before we get into it,

I had like a whole like speech that I was going to give, and I decided to toss that out because I received an email yesterday. And for those of you that listen to the show, you know I like to read emails from time to time. And I thought that it would be good to read this one because the person who sent it to me happens to be here this evening. So bear with me. This is from Ron.

Ron writes, Hi, Rich. I'm headed to L.A. tomorrow to join you for the live podcast event and very excited for the experience. We met at the Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit coming on two years ago. We had lunch with a small group, and I shared with you afterwards that my 16-year-old son was in treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. You said the greatest thing to me, and that was, wow, what I would have been able to have done with

my life if I learned the recovery skills at 16 versus 40. I wrote 40. It was actually 31. And that comment gave me hope. I also started listening to your podcast on a regular basis, and it has been part of my journey to be a better father, husband, and leader. I get to share that through my involvement as the founder and board chair of Conscious Capitalism Kansas City, so thank you. Jumping back to this week, my son that I mentioned will be in the audience with me.

He is now 18. He's been accepted to LMU in Los Angeles for fall of 2020. He is at LMU this week taking part in the dedication of their new Lions for Recovery Center in the Student Union and speaking on a panel sharing his story. Right? And this is the part that got me. So you were right, and I learned that recovery gives expansion

and not contraction. Recovery gives expansion and not contraction. Recovery gives expansion and not contraction. I appreciate you for being a light and inspiration to us to live better lives and create a better world. With gratitude, Ron. Ron Hill, are you here? Can you stand up and wave? And your son, Alec.

I can't see the crowd, but there you are. Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you. This is why I do what I do. This is my sustenance beyond the simple sort of personal gratification of hosting the podcast and being able to have the privilege of being in conversation with so many amazing people, it's messages like that that really are my energy. This is an act of service, and so thank you for that message.

That really kept me going, and it's an honor to be able to share that with everyone tonight. As I said, tonight is about community. It's about connectivity. And in mulling over that theme, it has me thinking about the humble origins of this show. It's very surreal for me to be up on a stage talking to you tonight, and I can't do this without thinking back to the very beginning of this show. It was about seven years ago. It started in a warehouse with perhaps the worst acoustics ever

on the north shore of a Hawaiian island called Kauai. And I believe at the time I was feeling a little bit lonely. I was having a little bit of island fever. I'd written a book that had come out some months prior and was feeling a little bit lonely. I was having a little bit of island fever. I had written a book that had come out some months prior and was feeling a little bit of a void, and I had this creative impulse to try to plug back into humanity by plugging a microphone into a recorder and just starting to talk. And I did that for no other reason than curiosity

and a desire to connect with other people. And I loved it. And it was something that I never thought would ever transcend just being a simple hobby. But here we are seven years later, about 500 episodes in, maybe 1,000 hours of conversations that have brought us here together tonight. It's unbelievable. They've brought us here together tonight. It's unbelievable.

And in reflecting over the course of the seven years and all the conversations that I've been blessed to have, it's taught me so much about life, about how to make decisions, about how to be a sober human, a dad, a husband, a responsible member of society, about how to live a fulfilling, purposeful life. But I would say I've probably forgotten way more than I've learned. But a couple themes have emerged that are very clear.

And those themes are community, connectivity. If we want to grow, if we want to expand, recovery begets expansion, not contraction. When we think about that word recovery, let's broaden the aperture. Let's expand the definition of that word recovery. It doesn't have to be limited to overcoming substance abuse. Let's just call it growth. Growth begets expansion. Growth begets expansion. And that journey of personal growth requires a level of personal responsibility, but true healing, true growth over the long term is a group effort. It happens with community. It happens collectively. It is a team sport. Collectively, it is a team sport.

And as gratifying as the podcast has been, in truth, it's an abstraction because it lives in the ether, in the cloud. I have people come over to my house. Some weeks or months later, it gets uploaded to the internet. People enjoy it through their earbuds. I'm so grateful that it's made an impact on people, but it's still an abstraction, and it's an abstraction for me. And this call to community

to cultivate greater connection and intimacy is what spawned the idea of having this event, to have an analog experience, to gather all of these like-minded people who are blazing this path that I'm on. Let's get in a room together and let's connect. So thank you. We are going to get into the main event now. We are so blessed to have an extraordinary, legendary guest for tonight's conversation.

You know his name. His name is Paul Hawken. He is a pioneering environmentalist, an entrepreneur, an architect of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices, a multiple New York Times bestselling author, an activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. His work includes founding successful ecologically conscious businesses, like Erwan, which we're going to talk about, writing about the impacts of commerce on living systems

and consulting with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. Paul is the executive director of Project Drawdown, which is an extraordinary non-profit dedicated to researching when and how global warming can be reversed. In addition to countless op-eds and peer-reviewed articles, Paul has written eight books, four bestsellers, including Drawdown, the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. He's an amazing human. His bio goes on for like 20 paragraphs, so I think I'm going to leave it at that. He has lectured everywhere, including Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton. He's given

commencement addresses at Yale and Berkeley. He's appeared on Bill Maher, Charlie Rose, Larry King, basically everywhere. It is a gift to have him here tonight. So let's hear it for Paul Hawken, everybody. Hey. How are you? Good to see you. How are you doing, Paul? I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be with the rich role.

I've been having rich role in my earbuds for two years. And I'm a connoisseur. I can review it. I just love and I'm so grateful for your... It's more than a podcast. I mean, that's how it comes to us. But to me, it's an exploration with such breadth and depth, and I find myself wanting,

turning on a podcast where I say, I'm not really interested in that. Okay. And then I am. And because of the way you interact with that person, the fact that that person actually opens up to you in a way that I don't think they do normally, or maybe they do. But, you know, for me, it's like so singular. And I just want to acknowledge that and thank you because it just shows, I think,

you talk about recovery, but I mean, with all due respect, we all need to recover. We're all addicted to one thing or another in this culture. And so I think it's exemplary what you're doing and how you've manifested that. So thank you. I appreciate that. I'm blushing. We can end the podcast now.

We're good. Wow, thank you. It is truly an honour to be able to have this conversation with you tonight. And I think it's so prescient because we're in the middle of an extraordinary moment right now in terms of climate activism and awareness. We saw some historic activity over the last week with the beautiful Greta visiting our shores. And so I think the best place to kind of launch into this is hearing a little bit about how you think about what's happening right now. Like, where are we right now? And how are you thinking about the movement and the prognosis for the future given what we've seen over the last few weeks?

Well, I'm glad you used the word prognosis because it's come to be that people think diagnosis is prognosis. And mostly what we hear about is diagnosis. It's as if we went to a doctor for an annual checkup and he says you have a, you know, a life-threatening disease and this is the disease in detail and this is you have a you know a life-threatening disease and this is the disease and in detail and this is probably how long you're going to live and then gives you an invoice and says see you i mean that's what we're doing to each other because we're just getting

assaulted by the science which is impeccable i don't argue with the science but at what point do you have enough of it to know that you either do something or not, but you're going to have to do something. And I feel like this week was really about the fact that the world has become woke and actually nothing happened much in the atmosphere from one week to the, before what happened is, what happened is to us. I mean, we, whoever we are, but but i mean there is this sense in the media for once is no longer doing fair and balanced coverage which is to turn the microphone to a denier you don't see that anymore it's actually flipped something has changed um but underneath that

though what hasn't changed is basically that's still based on fear threat and doom and we know what happens when we make people afraid and they shut down their medulla lights up i mean the whole survival thing comes up i mean he was right there and his poem about that i mean and so and our prefrontal cortex shuts down which is the problem solving part of our brain. And so from my point of view, and I've been, I'm an English major, so I'm not a scientist, but I, a journalist, and I've been watching and reading the coverage on climate for three decades.

And inside, I just felt like I wouldn't say it that way. I wouldn't communicate that way. I wouldn't use that adverb. I think that's the wrong verb. I'm just like convincing to no one. And no one heard me. But I kept thinking, I don't think this is really working for us, you know.

Yeah. And I feel like it still isn't, by the way, because 99% of the world is disengaged. And we still have a world where people, if they go see a documentary on climate change, they think they've done something, you know? And so. Right, right. I mean, my sense is, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. My sense is that we saw this groundswell of civic activity over the last couple weeks.

People pouring out into the streets. I feel like we're at a tipping point in terms of civic-mindedness and awareness and activation. But I feel like the story is still all about trying to get the powers that be at the top to implement change, whereas the people aren't left with that many solutions that they can implement in their own lives. So it's a top-down solution, as opposed to what you're always talking about, which is the middle path, like the solution that's in the middle. Yeah, I really do think it's a middle out solution, middle out manifestation. Yes, New York Climate Week this last week and the top was there,

you know, CEOs and heads of NGOs and heads of state, it was you and me, you know, as well. And there is a sea change, no question about it. It's as if a lot of people suddenly, particularly on the corporate side, woke up. And you had two weeks before that, you had, you know, Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan saying, with the business council, you know, saying basically,

there's things more important than the shareholder value, which the, you know, but I mean, but they said it, 200 of the biggest corporations in the world. And a lot of that was happening in New York, where you had these trillion, multi-trillion dollar commitments from different configurations of the business and governmental world. However, having said that, I hope it all happens. I hope it happens faster.

But I still think we've been looking for love in all the wrong places. I mean, the Conference of the Parties, which is in Chile, Santiago this year, it's the 25th one. When we started Drawdown, Project Drawdown in 2015, excuse me, we started in 2015, in 2015 there was the Paris Agreement.

Before the Paris Agreement, I had lots of friends there, staff there, and I said, ask anyone if they know the top 10 solutions in any order to reversing global warming. And the fact is, after 30, 40 plus years of being in the public sphere, no one knew. I mean, this is phenomenal that we didn't know. To what do you account for that lack of awareness, like that inability to focus on solutions? We're very good on what's actually happening

and the science of what's causing all of this. Why the glaring omission when it comes to solution-based activity up until Drawdown? I think it's for several reasons. One is that we started with impact, like we're making impact. We have cars, we're burning coal.

And so I think it was very much dominated by men, the whole climate conversation, the science, you know, the solutions and, well, we have to stop making so much impact. Well, yeah, I mean, that's reduction, lessening. In other words, let's slow down, let's, you know. And so that was one of the conversations, but basically society led by men was looking at impact and the reduction of impact.

Well, that impact is about greenhouse gases going up there. And so, obviously, we have to stop putting them up in the atmosphere. But there was nothing about bringing them back home. And the conversation and from very well-known people, I don't need to name them, was about solar, wind, and solar, wind, and recently Elon Musk. And somehow, if we did those three, we got a hall pass to the 22nd century. And that's just scientific nonsense. Those are crucial solutions, the first two. But we haven't really seen it in a holistic, systemic way. It's a system that causes

it. It's a system that cures it. And we tend to look at it very, if you break something into pieces and try to fix the pieces, you haven't fixed anything. David Quammen had a great thing about, if you take a Persian rug and cut it into one-inch squares, it's just unraveling wool. It's not a Persian carpet. And that's what we've kind of done. And so what it's done, I think, to individuals is either what it's sold at WIND to think,

well, I hope they do it. I mean, because I can't do that. I can't do a solar farm or a wind turbine in the ocean. And so, in a way, it's been disempowering because then the solutions for individuals will recycle, ride a bike, and, you know, less, you know, use cold water in your laundry. And even the Union of Concerned Scientists had a list.

And one of the things on the list of what you could do was to put a power strip in your home entertainment center. I'm coming. And unless you have an IQ lower than room temperature, when you read that list of what you can do, you know we're screwed. You know we're screwed. I mean, it's inadequate to the task at hand. And so in a way, it's been sort of patronizing to individuals. And so don't worry, the experts are going to take care of it.

And, well, wait a minute, you know. And so I feel like the, and the media still really propagates this. It's all the Democratic candidates. What do they talk about? Energy, energy, energy. They threw a little corn cob to the Midwest for farming. But I mean, it really wasn't about the whole solution. And the whole solution is so much more interesting.

I think the science about climate change is much worse than we know. And the solutions are much better. Both are true. When you say the science is much worse. The science is great. I mean, that is what's going to happen. The radar is going to happen. Okay, I see what you're saying.

Yeah, I think it's still being. Well, I think it would be worthwhile to kind of walk us up to the process of drawdown, like what led you to this and how you put this team together to try to actually do the math and figure out what the most effective solutions would be. Well, it started in 2001 when the third assessment came out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And like every assessment, they're more dire and pessimistic than the prior. And the reason for that is that they're based on consensus science, which, of course, there's no such thing as consensus science. Science is evidentiary. And you don't agree, like you don't have a, you know, a functional medicine doctor talking to, you know, allopathic doctor and say, well, let's come to an agreement about how to treat cancer.

It's not going to work, right? And that's essentially what the IPCC was. You had, you know, the Saudis and the Russians and earlier the Chinese and the Venezuelans, everything's cool, you know, tamp it down. And that's why each one has been more pessimistic because the data supports that.

There's 3 billion data points in the next assessment that's coming out. And so the data is extraordinary. But I think that in 2001, I read the third assessment summary and then at that time simultaneously or a few months later, out of Princeton came the carbon mitigation project which was these seven wedges that were comprised

of 15 solutions and we engendered and enacted those solutions. Each wedge was a billion gigatons of carbon, not CO2 carbon and that we could stabilize emissions by 2050. And everybody who read it in the media was like, yeah, we're on it. And me too. It's like, oh, wow, good old Princeton University. And then I read the solutions.

And 11 of those solutions, I kid you not, could only be adopted by the boards of directors of super conservative corporations eight of them being coal, gas and oil the ninth one being utility the tenth one being a car company and the eleventh one being a big appliance company and each one of those solutions

was deeply underwater financially which means what they were saying is the boards of directors would have to basically spend down their balance sheet and get sued for a shareholder. It's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. And there's only one and a half things that you and I could do,

which is drive less and put a solar panel on a roof or something. And agency was left out. And there was no agency to it. You know, what about teachers? What about schools? What about small companies? What about farmers? What about small companies? What about farmers?

What about foresters? What about grazers? What about ranchers? You know, what about cities? What about towns? I mean, all that was left out. And I thought, and that's when I started to go around to NGOs and universities I knew.

And two things, can we name the goal? You guys to this day, but you guys are using verbs as goals, like mitigating, I'm sorry, not the goal. You guys, to this day, but you guys are using verbs as goals, like mitigating. I'm sorry, not a goal. Combating, doesn't work for me. Fighting, those aren't goals. And so I wanted to name the goal, which is to stop going the wrong direction,

turn around and go the other way, which means that first time on a year-to-year basis where greenhouse gases peak and go down. That's drawdown. How dare you? I know. Nobody, I mean, nobody was talking about bringing it down. No.

It's all about slowing down the emissions, trying to get to neutral or zero. But no conversations about how we're actually going to reduce that and pull that carbon out of the atmosphere. That's absolutely right. And sequester it. No one was. And I said, we need to map, measure, and model

the 100 most substantive solutions to reversing global warming. Everybody said, what a great idea. We don't do that. I went to big NGOs and universities and said, why don't you do it? I said, if I knew how to do it, I wouldn't be asking you. And so it went.

And finally, I stopped asking until 2013. So you put together this incredible team of researchers. No. In 2013, actually, an article came out in Rolling Stone from Bill McKibben called Global Warming is Terrifying New Math. And what he had done is taken the work by Mark Campanale in London as carbon tracker. And Mark, he measured, he was a financial analyst and so he analyzed the balance sheet of every coal gas and oil company in the world whose balance sheet he

could get a hands-on some of them you can't like in Russia and so forth and and he coined the term unburnable carbon because he said you're counting this as assets on your balance sheet but if we burn it you know basically we're Venus so how could this be valuable in fact we wouldn't even be here to burn it by that time and so what bill mckibben did in rolling stone was burn it so that was why it was global warming terrifying new math and i had so many friends come to me using the same language um which is it's game over we we tried we did our best we worked which is it's game over. We tried, we did our best, we worked hard, but it's game over. And the thought occurred to me, and it kind of relates to recovery and addiction in the sense that sometimes when it's game over, it's actually surrender.

It's like, I don't know what to do. Or, you know, and I thought this is actually a teachable moment when people give up. And that's why I started Drawdown. And I just knew that if it was staged on the stage, you know, if it's like a white charismatic male vertebrate telling the rest of the world listen up, I know what to do. I mean, that's just so over, so dead, so nothing. Yeah.

I mean, the problem is because white semi semi-charismatic male vertebrates have told us what to do, and that clearly didn't work. And so I felt it had to be a we, had to be a we talking to we. You know, let's have a conversation together, community, collaboration, connection, you know. And so we got research fellows from all over the world, 21 countries, almost half women, half PhDs, all the major religions, and it's just an amazing group

of young people, astonishing, 128 advisors, everybody from religious leaders and political leaders and governors to even Tom Brady from the Patriots. I mean, he was really eclectic. And then 60 outside scientific reviewers to review our models. So what we wanted to do is present something that was pretty much bulletproof, you know, in terms of gotchas, you know, because the scientific community is such a gotcha community. And it's held up, actually. There hasn't been one criticism of the data since it came out in April

2017. But it's conservative. It's actually conservative. Yeah, you make these conservative estimates. You're working with the median numbers, not the extremes on either side. But talk a little bit about the expectations that you had going into it. You know, as a scientist, you're trying to be neutral, but I'm sure you had imagined what these top solutions were going to look like. So contrast that expectation versus what you actually discovered. Well, remember I said in Paris, I was... At that point, I could tell, shoot, I don't know. Not that I knew, that I don't know.

Oh my gosh. Like how could I not know? How could we not know? I mean, after all this time, they're meeting in Paris. They're signing the agreement. And we didn't know until two months before PubDate what the solution, the ranking. And the reason that is models are never finished.

They're about the future and therefore inherently wrong. But you're going into it thinking it's going to be transportation, it's going to be wind, solar, all the typical things. Energy, energy, energy. And they're vector models, so they all interact, so you can't pull one out

and say, okay, that's the biggest one. And we designed the book. we had it all on a hard drive it's all ready to go just stick it into a printing press so we could wait till the last moment to put in the numbers impact and we were shocked I was shocked and the number one

solution is refrigerant management and I was so disappointed it's not sexy no that's the point. Air conditioning, basically. Well, who's going to write the press release? Who would believe it? Explain this.

Why are we not talking about the number one thing? Because it's not sexy and because there's not much we can do about it and because we don't understand it. I mean, refrigerant gases are one to 10,000 times more powerful than CO2, and they're just all over the world. They leak, and then when they're recycled,

they're not, actually the gases escape. And so that's number one. Number two is wind turbine, which is expected, but I didn't see number three coming, which is reduced food waste. Food waste being number three. Yeah, food waste is huge. So let's spend a little time talking about that because the impact of that is so massive. And it seems like the solution to that is extremely doable.

Well, what's wonderful about that solution is that everybody sitting here with us tonight eats two or three times a day or maybe more, but anyway, at least two or three times. So it makes you conscious three times a day about your relationship to land, food, farming, atmosphere, self, health, other. I mean, it's quite extraordinary.

I mean, and it's not just what you choose to eat. It's what from the food is. In other words, where did it come from? And the farming and the soil, because soil is absolutely the number one solution to reversing global warming, not refrigerant management. And I can get into that, but we waste a third of the world's food.

The industrial ag companies for years have said, if we don't basically poison the earth and kill it with herbicides and pesticides, we're going to run out of food. What they're saying is, trust us, we're going to kill more and more life to have more life. I mean, that's one stand with Syngenta Dow. And of course, that is so upside down and backwards. I mean, it's extraordinary.

But we don't need more farmland. Actually, we need less. And 97% of all soybean production goes into confined area feeding operations to raise pigs and cows. I mean, come on. And, I mean, that's just for starters. You can go to corn.

It's the same. And so we have been, we've sort of bought into this whole thing. If we focus on food waste, we have more than enough food for not only the population that exists right now, but for the 9 to 10 billion that are expected by 2050. Yeah. Well, a couple things. I mean, what's interesting about the food waste discussion is that it's coming in so high in this ranking, and yet you're not even accounting for

all the methane that's produced by the food waste going into the landfill like you left that out of it if you were to factor that in it would be even higher on the list i'd love that you did your homework that's absolutely true i always do my homework um the reason uh we didn't include it is because we didn't have the data. Right. But absolutely, once it goes into a landfill, it becomes anaerobic. Methane is 28 times more powerful than CO2

as a greenhouse gas. And if we added that in, that would vault to the number one solution by far. And that's just the tip of the variable hay bale, you know, in terms of impact. Food is really eight of the top 20 solutions. Eight of the top 20 solutions are food-related. So if you take all of those eight and add them up, it becomes the number one thing. By far.

And to what extent does that trump transportation and energy? Yep. I mean, it's a multiple of that, right? In terms of reversing global warming, not in terms of emissions necessarily, but in terms of the means to actually bring carbon back home. And. Because it's the only solution that actually is able

to take the carbon down and put it somewhere, right? Remove it from the atmosphere. So it's working on both sides of the equation. It's been doing it for three and a half billion years. Photosynthesis, chlorophyll, you know, microalgae, phytoplankton. I mean, that's what it does, you know, right to this day. And going back to what I said about impact, remember? I felt like, remember, some of you may remember,

there's this movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and they're in Devil's Postpile you know and this little flying saucer came down and beep beep beep Richard Dreyfuss' greatest role they're all looking at it and going yeah you know, great contact of the second kind, not the third kind

and then behind them the mothership is coming up behind them and they turn around I just found out the other day somebody who was at the shooting they're looking at a little piece of tape on the wall. When they did, they'd turn around, go, there's a little piece of tape. It was CGI, of course. But, I mean, here's this mothership coming up in there. So, the mothership here is the mothership. The biggest solution to reversing global warming isn't in the city, isn't, you know, our cars, isn't all that. We have to crucially stop putting it up there.

It's soil, forests, and oceans. It's extraordinary. We can sequester a trillion tons of CO2 by regenerative farming practices. We have to increase, if we increase by a half percent of soil organic carbon in our grasslands and forests, I mean not forests, you know, our farms, that's a trillion tons of CO2. That takes us back to 1870, just to give you a sense of dimension.

And the Swiss EHT, the Federal Institute of Switzerland, came out with a report two months ago from the Crowther Lab that said, and they studied with using Google map, like these, I think, two hectare or five acre plots all over the world. And identified in five countries where we could put 800 million acres of new forest that would sequester 750 billion tons of CO2. And finally, there's the oceans.

And nothing sequesters carbon faster than kelp. It's nothing. And there's another trillion tons. That's 2.75 trillion tons. I mean, that would make us, again, Mars. So we're not going to do that because there's 3.3 trillion tons up there. But I want to geek out on the numbers so much as to give us a sense of what the breadth and depth of what we can do, and it lies within life, creating the conditions for life. Right, so in the book, you have these 100 solutions,

80 of them are vetted with science, and then you have this section on coming attractions, and I think there was two super fascinating ones in there for me, and one you just touched on, which is the marine phytoplankton, like sort of, you know, creating permaculture in our oceans. Yes. But there's this crazy story that you tell about discovering that cows that ate kelp had methane, like this incredible reduction in their methane emissions, right? And so this idea is baked to feed them this algae that comes from Hawaii or something like that, and they feed the cows this,

and then it resolves the methane problem. Like, explain this to me. Sure. It happened, it started in Prince Edward Island in Canada where a farmer, every farm virtually is on the coast. It's such a small island, not quite. But, and he noticed that the dairy cows that were eating kelp, some were, some weren't, produced more milk.

So why? And he called his county agent who said, not sure, let me get a scientist in there. And so they brought in a scientist and he said it must be because of reduced methane metabolism. Because methane actually is a pirate. I mean, it got aboard, you know, ruminants a long time ago. It's not innate to being a ruminant. It is now.

And it's very inefficient metabolically. That is to say it doesn't do anything much for the cow or the sheep or the goat. And so they split the herd and kelp, no kelp, and they put plastic bags on their heads five times a day and measured exhalations. And sure enough, there was less methane exhalation from the cows that ate kelp and more milk well that's what you call a science project

good science but doesn't mean anything because you can't feed the cows or the sheep or the goats in the world kelp but that scientist heard of a scientist in australia who was doing the same or had the same observation and together they discovered that there was an algae called Asparagopsis taxiformis that grows actually in the whole tropical belt of the world that if fed to ruminants reduces methane emissions from 50 to 90 percent depending on, you know. And I mean methane emissions from, you know, animals is 14% of emissions. Yeah. I mean, that's a while. But you know what this tells us?

I don't think we know the good news. Remember I said solutions are better than we know? I mean, the rate of innovation and I'm not talking about direct air capture and these kind of silly things, you know, we're going to replace trees and capture carbon. I'm talking about the rate of brilliance and innovation that's happening in the world today with respect to all aspects of what we do, including regenerative agriculture, which is just exploding in terms of techniques, it's not technology, techniques and breakthroughs is truly extraordinary. And that's, I mean, I'm not plugging it,

but that's why I'm doing the next book, Regeneration. Yeah. And it says ending the climate crisis in one generation because we don't know about these solutions. Right. But one of the amazing things about a lot of these solutions, if not all of them, is the compounding impact of them, right? Like you write about the fact that even if these solutions

weren't reducing carbon and weren't part of the global warming solution, that they're still good ideas. They empower communities economically. They create jobs. They're treating the planet better. It's not just, it's not a binary thing, right? I mean, I think the algae story is, you know, exemplifies that very thing. Sure, because you get higher productivity. I think that there's no question that if you take the solutions and draw down,

and we didn't have, say, a climate scientist, we didn't even have climatology, okay, we're clueless, we didn't understand have climatology, okay, we're clueless. We didn't understand where extreme weather came from or what was caused by it. We just had it, you know, oh, Hurricane Dorian, woo. And we would want to do all these solutions because of their second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth order effects that are beneficial in terms of water, health, education,

prosperity, children. I mean, it just goes right, tick, tick, tick, health, education, prosperity, children. I mean, it just goes right tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Right. And the only exception to that, in my opinion, is nuclear. Uh-huh. Which is. All right. Well, coming in hot at number four.

Coming in hot. Plant-rich diet. You got to talk about that, right? You knew about that. The plant-rich diet. Yeah. Is this not a euphemism for eating a plant-based diet? Come on, Paul.

You just got to take that extra leap. I thought plant-rich. Come on, right. Okay, show of hands for plant-rich. I think plant-rich was more enticing to people, frankly, because it's rich. I feel you. I feel you. You don't want to alienate anyone.

I get it. It's okay. Plant rich. It's named after me. It was for me. I felt like in order to model, we had to have a methodology that was straight up and down. And the thing that surprises people about Drawdown

is we never advocated for anything. It's odd. You say, well, of course you did. No, we didn't. There was no advocate. There was no should, must, need to. Because that makes people feel like bad or they didn't or they could but they can't

or all that sort of stuff. We used no fear, threat, and bad or they didn't or they could but they can't or all that sort of stuff we use no fear threat and doom we didn't blame anybody we didn't shame anybody we didn't demonize anybody i said right in the introduction this is not right we think it's approximately right because when you're right you make somebody wrong i'm right more than by the fact that somebody else is wrong because what you could be right about. And so one of the things we didn't do also is advocate. And the reason for that was we wanted to create spaciousness around the subject, because the way it's been communicated

has really put people off or make them numb or make them feel bad. And so we wanted to communicate in such a way that actually drew people into it. And it played out it's taught from every grade from fourth grade fifth sixth seventh all the way to mit graduate school harvard graduate school stanford uc berkeley it's in 14 languages it's in the second biggest hotel chain new zealand along with the gideon bible in every room i mean it just goes on and on. And it's selling better now than it did two

and a half years ago. The 12th printing was the biggest printing so far. By the way, this is a book that Penguin did not want to print because climate books don't sell. But the point being is, I feel like if you create spaciousness for people to come in and make up their own mind and get interested in narratives and stories and so forth, you're going to do much better than if you hammer them and say, if you don't do something or we don't do something, we're screwed. And that may be true in a kind of interesting way, but it's ineffective. And so I'm always trying to think how do you create this spaciousness so it's not a duality, you know. And I mean, in Cuse, his poetry is about non-duality, right.

And so duality is really the core dis-ease that we have, you know, and when we say combating climate change, or I'm going to fix it, you know, I mean, or we're going to fight it, you know, it's so crazy because it's like there's an it somewhere. I'm going to go like this right now, okay. Yeah. Okay, this is it, right.

This is the atmosphere. Go fight it and tackle it as you will. Climate's not the problem. We're the problem. We're the problem. We're the problem. It's a human problem. And we actually want the climate to change. We're trying to get it to change in a different direction.

If it doesn't, we're screwed. So it does, we need it to change. The question is, we need to change what we do and how we relate to each other down here in order to stabilize the climate. And that's what Drawdown is about. Yeah. Well, this stems from, and you've talked about this a lot, this sense of otherness, right?

When we look at the climate or our environment as something that's other, or other individuals and what they're doing as other, as opposed to embracing the, you know, unifying holistic nature, you know, of oneness that we all are, that's what we need to step into and to really, like, grok the solution here. We all grew up with a conditioned mind that basically steals our joy, if we let it.

And that conditioned mind, first of all, is like we're an individual. Well, so here's a question for you as a man of science and somebody who worked very hard with their team to create this, here we should show it for those who haven't seen it, this beautiful book that's so inviting that you can read if you're in fourth grade or you're a PhD student. It's all very organized and digestible, and it's about the data and the math. How do you square being this man of science with your, you know, sort of Buddhist leanings and your spiritual perspective on how we solve these problems? Well, I'm not a man of science. I'm a man of science appreciation. I'm a journalist. Okay. Yeah, okay. I don't think I would have done well in science at all.

And the Buddhist perspective is really one of a really, obviously is used in terms of mindfulness and, you know, awareness. I'm a really piss poor Buddhist, so I just want to put that out there. I know some that are fantastic and I only, you know, I'm a really piss poor Buddhist, so I just want to put that out there. I know some that are fantastic and I only, you know, bow to them every time I see them.

Jack Kornfield's a friend. I just think he's an incredible teacher. And but the basic teachings are about practice, about what to become teachings are about practice, about what to become if you understand that identity, and if you're confused about identity, I am fill in the blank, you're confused, basically. And then from that confusion arises actions that are inappropriate or unskillful or harmful or unkind.

And generosity arises from that transcendence. Kindness arises from that. Compassion arises from that. And I feel like this situation we're in the most gnarly super wicked problem humanity has ever described and may ever face if if we're still here, is actually a blessing and not a curse. It's, I mean, you can look at it like it's happening to me

and say I'm a victim and be pissed off. And then you live your life in that mind. That's the mind you're living in. That's the world you're living in. And that's kind of a hell realm. And if we look at it from the point of view, it's feedback and from the atmosphere, but actually from the whole of the earth,

because you can't really separate the atmosphere from plants and forests and water. If you look at it from that way, then it's a gift, it's feedback, and you take 100% responsibility. You don't ask other people to do it. You take 100% responsibility for your actions, who you are, and then you begin to imagine, innovate.

You know, you do what Inky was doing. You do spoken word or whatever. You do things that make sense to you that help you connect more to this beautiful, extraordinary miracle we call the living world. And that's the gift of climate change. The gift is transformation of self and of the world. And the solutions are transformative. And those are just some of them. There's a lot more. And so we can either accept the offering and the gift, or we can go into self-pity. Yeah.

As I try that on, this idea that global warming, global climate change is happening for us as opposed to to us. And how does that feel? There is an empowerment, I think, with that, this sense of possibility that there are things that I can do, you can do, we can do collectively. And then I scroll through my Twitter feed and I see what's happening at the highest levels of government and what's happening with well-funded lobbyists on K Street and the farm bill and the subsidies

and the lack of regulation and oversight and the stripping away of protections and all the like. And all of that goes out the window. Yeah. So how do you navigate that mine of of what's happening in government the things that actually you you don't you can't control you don't have a say yeah well i mean i read the same rss feeds and stuff that you do every morning i don't read them at night and yeah i think uh first of all, I mean,

Javi says this famous line, you know, fear is the shabbiest room in the house. You deserve better conditions. And so fear is not a place to live in. It doesn't work. And so to me it's about curiosity, which is like, huh, look what they did. Look what he said.

Look what he tweeted. Oh, my gosh. It's like, really? And when I read the presidential tweets, I go, he, look what they did. Look what he said. Look what he tweeted. Oh, my gosh. It's like, really? And when I read the presidential tweets, I go, he's talking about himself again. He's talking about himself. He's disgusting, bad, corrupt. Yeah, it's true.

I mean, I thought, he knows himself really well. He really does. You know? And so I say, you know, and so when I see the ignorance or the inability to connect, again, if I want to connect, you know, I become curious as to what is the solution to that. There was, what is the communication? What is it that's going?

What will it take, actually? And one of the things about this week and the week prior, not just the things that Greta Thunberg said, which is so extraordinary, but I mean the science as it was coming out, is that the sense of urgency is really growing exponentially, which is quite interesting and i feel like and i mean that basically and people say well we're not doing enough and we're losing and it's happening too fast and all that sort of stuff but i think if you actually look

at the climate movement and the rate of growth it's growing faster than the inertial problem of killing the earth and we are at that stage where i think more and more people are going to realize that degeneration or liquidation of the earth actually we're coming to a dead end on that one and so i feel like the urgency is going to change very rapidly and those who think they're ineffective and i mean zach bush and i were on a stage together a few weeks ago and what I said came out I said we're rehearsing the future in other words we're rehearsing an awareness and understanding and practice that as people wake up they will move to and look to and practice and enact and And it doesn't go the other way.

Is there enough time? Unanswerable question. Will we make it? Unanswerable question. Those questions are irrelevant. What's relevant is our hearts and who we are and what we do. And are we actually fully engaged? I mean, there's no difference between a climate denier

and somebody who's literate in climate and doesn't do anything. They both don't do anything, so what's the difference? Yeah. Right? I thought of that. Yeah, beautiful. Your beginnings took place in the civil rights movement, in the world of social justice,

back in 1965 with you working with Martin Luther King in Selma. I'm interested in how you think about the relationship between social justice and civil rights and environmentalism. Is there a relationship there? Is one an extension of the other? Is environmentalism the new civil rights? Like how do you think about that? I don't think environmentalism is, hasn't been. I don't think it has been at all.

One of my critiques of the climate communication has been that it's very much about future existential threat, deadline-ism, 2030, if we don't do it, reduce it by half we're screwed. This deadline-ism is, I'm not saying it's incorrect, but it's been going on since, you know, 1990, 2000, through that. We've had deadlines all along, and we've just been ripping past through them.

And I feel like that way of looking at the world is excludes almost everybody, because we don't think that way. Most of humanity is worried about today. Maybe we aren't here.

We're so fortunate and so privileged and so lucky. But most of the world actually has to worry about food, about safety, about habitat, about work, about their children, about getting books, about, I mean, their everyday worries surmount everything else. And most of humanity is thinking about what they need today. And so if we as a movement don't understand that in order to reverse global warming we have

to actually meet current human needs, not wants, needs. And it's the other way around because the only way it's going to happen is if people, billions of people, see that reversing global warming is in their self-interest. It actually makes better food, better housing, more secure in terms of safety, food security, which is huge for so many people here in this country too and so i feel like we again have kind of looked the wrong way we're looking at the future come on quick you know it's going to happen if we don't get together and you look behind you there's no one there 99 as i said earlier the people in the world are disengaged how could we possibly do that? I mean, that's so inept.

Excuse me. The science is so skillful. The communication has been so inept. And that sense of inclusion has been missing. And so if we're not addressing poverty in the world, we're not going to succeed. It's not a movement of regeneration. It's not a movement that can reverse global warming. And so there's huge benefit there.

I mean, in terms of inclusion, in terms of getting people, you know, feeling like what they do for themselves, for their family, is for their community. The biggest, you had Jan Hary here, you know, on your program. It's a beautiful podcast, but, I i mean he talked about addiction you know and depression but he said the biggest lack in the world is actually connection and that's what addiction is the lack of connection i think it's it affects all of us that's what we have we don't have purpose and meaning here we have the earth about burning up and people are worried about kardashians and this and that and the fact that they focus on social media and this

and Nazism, all that sort of stuff, ISIS, it just, it speaks to the fact that people are looking for identity and they're finding it in all the wrong places. And as a climate movement, if you call it a movement, so forth, we haven't communicated in such a way that everybody feels like we're together in this thing and they receive something from it, not just money, but actually a sense of value, that they have value

and they have respect from their children and their community, that they're doing something that is transcendent of just individual identity. And we haven't done that. So to engender that kind of engagement and to create a sense of ownership over these ideas, like how do we catalyze that? Like how do we solve that problem of communication

to get people more connected to... You don't do it by communication, you do it by action. I mean, one of the subtitles of regeneration is how to create one billion jobs. I mean, we do it by action. I mean, one of the subtitles of regeneration is how to create one billion jobs. I mean, we have this situation where we steal the future and call it GDP and congratulate ourselves and put it in the bank. I mean, we can just as easily heal the future

and call that GDP. That's the choice. It employs hundreds and hundreds of millions of people to regenerate the earth. Look how many people it took to degenerate it, right? I mean, so all the work is there. It's really about action so people feel like I have a job that is purposeful, meaningful, you know, that gives me.

So what are the impediments or the blind spots right now? The blind spot? The blind spot is a technical fix, you know, that there's a technology. I mean, again, with all due respect to our gender, you know, it's such a male thing, you know, like we're going to fix it. Right. Or that we're just going to sit back and let the billionaires figure it out and we'll end up on Mars at some point. Oh, yeah, well, that's the Silicon Valley one where I'm from, and it's really curious.

We don't know how to live here, and we're going to figure it out how to live on Mars. Yeah. If we're going to terraform Mars, why don't we terraform Earth? Well, the wonderful thing about terraforming Mars is really that was the origin of the Gaia hypothesis, Jim Lovelock. He was hired by NASA about how to create an atmosphere, and really, literally, for Mars. Like, here's your job.

Okay. And so to figure that one out, he had to discover, well, what's this one? How does it work? And that's when he discovered that there's no explanation for the extraordinary balance in our atmosphere between carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen. carbon dioxide, you know, oxygen, nitrogen. And they looked back, you know, the Bostock ice record over 400,000 years and so forth and came out with a hypothesis that the earth actually

in its entirety is a living organism with feedback loops. And that those feedback loops, I mean, you have this, you know, up and down in terms of ice ages, you know, and then melts again, and then, you know, big plant life and this oscillation. But underneath that is actually you have the earth in a sense, it's not controlling, but interact, I mean, it's hard to say because it's like it's other and there's atmosphere, but I mean, the earth is an organism. And now people say that's not true say because it's like it's other and there's atmosphere. But I mean, the Earth is an organism. And now people say that's not true, scientists don't like that and so forth.

But he definitely identified something that's extraordinary. And that is something I think that has been lost in the climate conversation is that, I mean, when a photon comes down, you know, from the sun, that fusion reactor, it hits this little tiny pool of chlorophyll and goes bouncing around like a billiard ball until it hits this little thing in the middle and swallows that photon like that and creates energy and grabs some H from the H2O from the water, you know, spits out oxygen, makes a sugar that goes into protein, fats, carbohydrates, and goes

down to the roots and basically feeds the soil, feeds the fungi, feeds the bacteria, you know, which makes better healthy plants, healthy soil, retains water. I mean, you have this extraordinary thing happen, and everything we see, everything we touch, everything that's here tonight was made by light. Everything is made by, we eat light. We're sun eaters.

All our food, everything, even if it's artificial, it's like, it's plastic, whatever. Where did plastic come from? Coal swamps, okay, or gas or oil. And it came from sunlight. And so that disconnection that this sacred, beautiful thing that's happening on Earth also, in a sense, is the description, if you will, of how the atmosphere is, interacts with the biosphere, right, and the cryosphere, right. And it's just a frigging miracle.

The more you read about it, the more you study it, the more you're in awe. Like who could have even invented chlorophyll? Much less the whole nine yards, the whole banana. It's so beautiful. In a handful of soil, there's more bacteria, protozoa, you know, nematodes, mites, and there are in all the human beings that have ever been on the planet, right? Right in your hand. It is the most complex ecosystem in the world. Go out tonight, pick up a handful of soil. It's more complex than the oceans, every forest system, you name it, it's in your hand.

And 90% of what's in that, we don't know what it is. We do not know. And we have, you know, gene sequencing, we have the means to know, and we do not know what's in there. And we don't know how it works. And we don't know the interactions. And yet, you know, we take it for granted. Just not take it for granted. That's what I was saying earlier about and it's not just what you eat you know it's where did it come from in are the people who are producing our food absolutely honoring this and regenerating soil because if they do the food that comes out of it is extraordinary it's so different than the food that comes out of it is extraordinary. It's so different than the food that comes out of, basically, I call it Monsanto soil. But it's not soil.

It's dirt. They took soil and made dirt. They killed the life in it and said, you need us because the soil is dead. And what we're saying is, you bring it back to life and you reverse global warming. Right.

Where's Zach Bush? He's out here somewhere? Zach Bush is here somewhere. There he is. There he is. Beautiful Zach Bush. So Zach, I've explored this with Zach a couple times on the podcast, soil regeneration, soil depletion, the pathetic state of soil today, and the extent to which it's depleting our food of nutrients, and the projections are pretty dire in terms of how much topsoil is left if we don't make changes

and revert to these regenerative practices. But what is amazing and encouraging and leaves me feeling optimistic is seeing all of these farmers now realizing that they can increase their yields, they can increase their profit margins when they make these changes. And the sort of scare tactics that this is going to be a long, drawn-out, multi-year process is proving untrue. And in fact, the soil is quite adept at regenerating itself

when you do a couple simple things. It is. I mean, it's fairly straightforward. At the same time, I mean, it's fairly straightforward. At the same time, I mean, Zach does this wonderful work with farmers. But it is simple.

There's a great story in a book called The Call of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massey. It's absolutely the best book on regenerative agriculture in the world to me. But it's the story of this farmer and he inherited his father's farm and it was pretty much played out.

And so he did what you do with a played out farm is you put in more inputs, more fertilizer, more phosphate, you know, more potash and so forth, and then cranked it up and then it just went to hell, of course, and he lost more money. And he was about ready to sell it, move back to the city, and he wanted to take a picture, the last picture, and he stepped across his fence to take a picture.

And it was standing on the soil, the verge, you know. And it was soft and spongy and there was grasses growing and butterflies and he looked at his farm and he looked at where he was standing and going, oh my God, you know, like I haven't done anything to this, not even my land, you know. And it's beautiful. And for him that was the door back and, you know,

years later because he keylined, there's so many techniques to regenerative farming. It's not just basically no-till, that's one. Cover crops, complex cover crops, number two. You know, animals is very important in terms of grazing or some interaction with the cover crop or the stubble. That's important. But what the key lining is actually having the water, you know, you channel it so it's not going down, you know,

or causing erosion, and so you keep the water. You start to recreate the carbon sponge, which is a water sponge. The soil becomes a sponge again as opposed to a channel. And then one day he heard a reed warbler, which he hadn't heard since he was a child. It wasn't any around for 100 miles. And a reed warbler grows on, you know, goes to reeds in a wetland.

And he realized that he turned his desert back into a wetland in key areas. And that's why it's such a beautiful story and title of the book because it really is about regeneration and what happens. You don't just regenerate soil. You regenerate biodiversity and pollinators and birds.

There's a wonderful story by Isabella Tree called Wilding, wonderful book, about she and her husband, Charlie Burrell, inherited their family estate, 3,500 acres. And he did the same thing at this farmer in Australia there, which is basically, it was losing money. And so they amped it up, better equipment, better pesticides, better controls and bigger fields. And they just almost went bankrupt. I mean, got worse.

And they decided to do something that actually was very controversial. They tore down all the fences, put a big ring fence around it, and brought back the ancient animals that had been on that land, the long-horned cattle, the Tamworth pigs, and a type of horse. And his name is Skid, the Exmoor horse. So these were the animals that were on that land

1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 4,000 years ago. And they didn't do anything. Nothing. And they watched it. And it was stunning what happened to that land. And the birds that came back and the trees and the plants and the water and the peaks started to turn to be hippos and diving in the water and getting fresh water muscles. And the nightingales came back.

The turtle doves came back. Purple Empress butterfly. In other words, they became a red list hotspot. In other words, for species that were red listed as going extinct, basically all concentrated on this farm. And so there is just, there's this, the prospect of basically of wilding, you know, really wilding our earth again is there. It's not just about row crops and regenerative agriculture.

It's about an agriculture that actually brings back life on earth in ways that are so fantastic. And again, I just want to say it is simple in some ways, but actually it is infinitely complex in terms of its prospects and possibilities. And what is, yeah, thank you for that. And I should point out that in addition to the work

that Paul is doing in this area, Zach has his Farmer's Footprint nonprofit and documentary series that goes into this subject matter in depth. And I believe Rylan from Kiss the Ground is here as well. Is Rylan here? Yeah. They're also doing amazing work in this field. I encourage you to check out both of them to learn more.

So what is, how can we, is it communication? They're also doing amazing work in this field. Sarah. I encourage you to check out both of them to learn more. Yeah. So what is, how can we, is it communication? Like how, is it better storytelling? How do we catalyze more of the farming community to make this? We don't. We don't. We let farmers talk to farmers. Yeah.

Yeah. Not, right, right. Farmers don't believe us for sure. Okay. Right. Yeah. Not, right, right. Farmers don't believe us for sure. Okay. Right. They don't really. They believe each other. And it's interesting when you talk to the regenerative farmers

in this country, I mean, they're almost, every one of them is a red state or politically bent that way. And some interesting things come out. First of all, the hardest thing for them in terms of making the transition wasn't the technique, it was their neighbors. Because they're so used to having these glyphosate fields that just are pinned neat, you know, no weeds,

you can see the bare soil, and there's the corn coming up or whatever, and there's pride. They have a sense of pride about that. Like this, you know, looks so beautiful, like Versailles or something, you know, for farms. And all perfectly groomed and perfectly green and all that sort of stuff. And when you go to regenerative agriculture, you never kill.

And so there's always cover. And so there's cover crops that are, you know, 20, 25 different seeds in the seed drill. I mean, it just looks like chaos. Looks like a mess. Yeah, and then it's grazed down, and then it's crimped, you know, and then you drill into the crimped straw

and plant, and then outcome, whatever it is you're planting. And they said the hardest thing for them was going to the coffee shop in the morning. And their neighbor's going, hey, Joe, what's, having trouble out there? It's like, mm-hmm. And no, no, what's, having trouble out there? It's like, mm-hmm.

And no, no, you know. But I feel like, you know, those smaller rural communities, they really do, they are communities. But the bad thing about communities is that they can also be conformities, which is you don't really want to stick out. Yeah. You know.

You become a social pariah. You do. Yeah. You know. Become a social pariah. You do. Right. You do. And I've heard that again and again. And then, but what happened now is you have these farmers who, I don't know of a farmer, maybe Zach does, but who is in regenerative agriculture that didn't hit the wall.

I mean, in other words, they were going to lose the farm. And when you talk to them, they experience this enormous amount of shame. It's not just stress, financial stress for sure, of course, but shame. It was like fifth generation, fourth generation, and everybody had done pretty well and handed over to this person, and they were going to fail, lose the farm, you know, lose the land before close upon, sell off the equipment. And it's just like, and their sense of, the shame that they were interiorizing was extraordinary.

And the, when you listen to their stories about, you know, turning it around, I mean, it is so, it is an American tale. Because these farmers are really, really good people and they got sold a bill of goods. It worked initially after the war and for a long time. You know, you stick NPK, you know, into the soil and you get more. There's no question about it.

You don't get more better. It's like not nutritionally so good but you get more of it. When I started Erwan in 1966 in boston the first farmer we went to was ted whitmer in bloomfield montana for wheat and i remember being in his truck and it's just flat and cold there i don't know how anybody would want to live there i'm from california but you know with all due respect to eastern Montana. And he stopped and saw an elk horn, and he threw it in the truck

and like, stop, threw it in the truck, and there was other horns in the back that pick up the bed, and we talked about that. He would go and bones and horns and whatever he could find from the slaughterhouses and so forth, and grind it up and put it on so forth and grind it up and put it on the soil.

Grind it up and put it on the soil. It was dry land wheat, no fertilizer, nothing. He didn't convert to organics. He never went off it. And his wheat weighed 63 pounds, a bushel. Well, wheat is 60 pounds. That's their equivalent. A bushel of wheat is 60 pounds.

60 pounds is a bushel. His was 63 pounds. The wheat we are growing today is 54, 55, 56 pounds. Volumetrically. It's fluff. It doesn't have minerals. And Ted's, of course, had more minerals than normally. And so there's this beautiful intelligence out there

in our farm community that has been suppressed by the constancy of the propaganda and the BS coming from large corporations. And they have really convinced people that that's the best and right way. And they've tried to shame the rest of us who question industrial ag as saying well you know when i started erwan i mean i had these debates at mit at harvard we're in boston and they're always shaming me because well if everybody went organic you know all the children would starve i mean

really yeah and with a straight face you know and so basically we we were inculcated you know and it's just um so farmers are waking up one by one and what really wakes them up is farmers like gabe brown now who is the sort of the poster child who wrote a book about it in north dakota and you know he goes around you i think you can see him seeing on youtube You can see Gabe talking to farmers, you know. And he knows what to say. He said like, you know, I just got tired of writing my name on the front of the check. He said, I sign it now on the back of the check. It's like, it cuts right through, you know. And they believe him, you know, because he's buying more and more land.

You know, land is degraded and then restoring it. Yeah, it's almost like an escape from indentured servitude. Exactly. It's a lie that has been told for generations, that better living comes through chemistry and that the yields that you seek can only be garnered through GMOs and Roundup and these pesticides and fertilizers. And then, you know, enter stage left,

Monsanto, now Bayer, that controls all the seeds, all the way up to the diseases that the food is creating. I don't know how that company, that merger passed antitrust muster. They're all wondering at Bayer the same thing. It's wiped out their whole network. Yeah, and the debt structures that are set up to keep these farmers sort of in line and permanently,

you know, indebted to these corporations. And so it's so encouraging and empowering to see these individuals figure a way out. They're experimenting. Yeah. I mean, they're really learning about the different covers, cover crops, you know, and how they interact.

And this place, selenium, this does this. Obviously, this fixes nitrogen. I mean, they're playing in a way that they never did. Like, again, quoting Gabe, and you'll see it on YouTube. He said, I used to wake up every morning and figure out what I was going to kill today. And now I wake up every morning and figure out what I was going to kill today. And now I wake up every morning thinking,

what am I going to make live today? That's a fundamental shift in thinking about. And those farmers, they're coming alive too, you know. And because farmers have been hammered both financially but also reputationally because of the poison the glyphosate the dead zones you know in the gulf of mexico from nitrogen fertilizer um and actually in iowa and these communities they're seeing in fifth generation where you have five generations alive okay you're seeing cancers that are so rare i I mean, there's 13,500 diseases

you have to learn to be a doctor. And this is the 13,501 first. I mean, they have to go to Boston or someplace to figure out what these little babies have. How in the hell can a one-year-old or a two-year-old get these kind of rare, rare cancers, you know? Well, I mean, it's hazy in Iowa, and the haze is glyphosate. Wow. Let's talk about Air One.

Oh, yeah. So you founded Air One in? Sixty-six. Sixty-six. Yeah. The Air One Trading Company back then. And talk to me about the impetus behind it. Yeah, well.

That. My motivations were unusual. Basically, I wanted to read. And there was this little buyer's co-op down on Newbury Street in the basement, and nobody wanted to take care of it. And I thought, well, nobody's coming in there, so I'll take care of it. I did $25 on a good day and I couldn't be happier. I was, you know, I love to read and still do.

And one day somebody came into the store and said, how do you know that your oil is cold pressed? And I, you know, I had a, he said, cold pressed. It was from Hain. There you have it. It was from Hain. And then pretty soon thereafter, somebody else came in and said,

how do you know your oats are organic? And I said, because they come from Mennonites. Give me a break, you know. They're Mennonites. They don't even drink water. They're not gonna lie to you. I mean, because they come from Mennonites, give me a break, you know. They're Mennonites. They don't even. They're not going to lie to you. You know, I mean, because they, of course. And when they left, I mean, as a journalist, I felt like, you're just a bullshitter, Hawken.

You know, you don't know either one of those. It's crap. So I wrote to Hayne, dear Mr. Who, whatever, and tell me about your cold pressed oils. And I got a letter back, beautiful stationery, everything, and said, well, there isn't really any more cold pressed oils. They're all solvent extracted. What cold pressed refers to is that the oils are cold processed, which means that once they're solvent extracted, we reduce the temperature

to 34 degrees and filter out the steroids that make the oil cloudy because nobody likes cloudy oil. And I'm going, I was so pissed off. I was so mad. And then two days later, the oats come, the Mennonites in Pennsylvania, I go, okay. And I'm grabbing these oats off the truck and there's a label so it ended up in Bema's bag

and it says National Oat Company, Des Moines, Iowa. And one after another, like six of them. So I call up the National Oat Company and say, tell me all about your organic farming program. And it's the nicest woman ever. And she said, honey, can you explain that to me? And I said, well, organic farming, you know, no pesticides in this and that, blah, blah, blah.

She said, well, that sounds very interesting. You know, we just buy oats and roll them. And I decided then that I was going to replace every single product in that store from a farmer I knew or had visited. And that was it. I was just mad. And that's what I did.

And the Erwan that's here today is somebody else's genius and brilliance. Nothing to do with me. I mean, we opened the original store here in Beverly Boulevard. I did that one. and brilliant, it's nothing to do with me. I mean, we opened the original story here in Beverly Boulevard, I did that one. But I mean, but the DNA of Erewhon is that, which is let's get it right and not lie.

And just be truthful and be very open. And so every label at Erewhon had the name of the farm, the name of the farmer, where it's from, the type of soils, I mean the labels are, and said don't believe us because everybody else, there's a lot of people not really being very truthful about this, and so to be totally transparent, kind of what Everlane does now with clothing. It says here's the factory, here's the workers,

this is what happens, and we did it then with food. It's got to be bizarre though when you go into an Erewhon now, which is very much a, I mean Erewhon is a beautiful institution. They have amazing food. But it's also very much a CNBC thing. It's like a, you know, it's like a nightclub. You know, if I was a paparazzi, I'd just sit in front of it, you know, in Venice, you know, and just wait.

Why chase the stars? They'll come to you, you know. I mean could you have ever, like, imagined that? No. Well, when we opened the store in LA in 1970, we did have a lot of stars. Right. It was the one place where you could go and. Yeah. We did have a lot. And I used to deliver to them and so forth.

But so that's true because actors, at least some actors, they knew they had to take good care of themselves, you know. So that's not surprising, but surprising about Erewhon is it's extremely well done and the quality of the food is amazing. And, you know, Jasmine, my wife is here. We go there. It's not because of the name. It's because it's delicious.

They give you a discount? Huh? Can you get free stuff there? I haven't been offered a discount yet. Alright. So, you're this amazing entrepreneur. Air One't, you know, Erewhon isn't your only thing. You've got one son and Smith and Hawken, the garden supply company.

You've, you know, reinvented yourself as a business person many times. You're this activist. You're this environmentalist. You're this incredible writer. It's rare. I mean, you find people that excel in maybe one or two of these areas, but for you to be able to kind of make your imprint on the world in all of these areas is quite a remarkable thing. So talk a little bit about where and how the writing came to be. The writing came about, my mother told me, and I have no memory of this whatsoever, she said when you were four you said I'm going to grow up and be a writer. And I was the youngest recorded case of asthma in San Mateo County. I had asthma until I was 20 years old.

The reason I got into natural foods was because of asthma. And she would just leave me in bed and then at three years old I learned to read. And books by the Bushel from the library and little bookworm contests, you know, you get paced on. I used to win all the bookworm contests, you know, because I had nothing else to do. And so that writing comes out of reading, really.

I mean, where does a great musician come from? Listening to great music, really, you know. And great poet comes from reading poetry and knowing poetry. It's all the same in that sense, all those kind of professions. And so, but I think it also came from being an outsider. You know, I mean, I came from a really, it wasn't safe to be in my house as a child. It was unsafe.

And so I would spend as much time as possible outside. And I felt safe there, always. It doesn't matter, rain or lightning or floods or even forest fires. And I always felt safe, like I was held in hands, you know. I mean, Mother Nature really was a mother for me, you know. But the thing about being outside is it's different than inside in many, many ways.

But one is that if you stay inside, if you're a child, you can master the inside in an hour or two. Here's the bathroom. Here's the refrigerator. Here's TV or whatever. Here's a light switch. I mean, there's not much to master and understand in a house.

Outside, you can spend ten lifetimes and not know really what everything is and the sounds and how it works and what crawls away. And so it just fed this insatiable curiosity. Yeah, that's, I mean, curiosity is a word that comes to mind. I mean, you could be outside if you're not a curious person. All of that will elude you, right? So you have this predisposition to curiosity that's almost, you know, pretty natural. The idea that I mastered something is actually I would put it in differently,

which is I got very curious about something and then I took it on to do it, even though I didn't know how to do it. Or even writing, I actually learned by writing. In other words, I have some insight. I think it might be, I might think this is a better way of looking at it. We've never looked at it this way or should we talk about the College of Commerce, you know, and blessed unrest.

But it really comes from wanting to know as opposed to knowing. It's not that I know. It's because I don't know. And I feel really comfortable in unknowing. So I felt comfortable in Erwan. I mean, I remember at Erwan, like sixth or seventh year, I mean, we were a favorite target or subject for Harvard Business School, people getting their, you know, MBA

and they do their thesis on. Case study? Yeah, oh yeah. Six of them. And just cross the river close by, you know, all that sort of stuff. And I remember one guy came in once and I used to bicycle with him a lot.

He was on the Olympic team in the Harvard bicycle event. We used to bike a lot out in the concrete. And his name was Graham. And he said, it was like 10 in the morning, he said, you know, I have to talk to you, I've got to talk to you. I said, well, talk to me. It was an open office, you know.

He said, I can't talk to you here. I said, well, what do you want to do? He said, well, let's go down to the No Name Bar, which is in South Boston. I said, it's 10 a.m., you know, come on. He said, well, you'll need a drink. And I said, whoa, you know. So I went down there and he said, I hate to tell you this,

but basically you're out of business. I said, really? I said, how do you know that? And he's, he pulled all these papers. He says you have negative net worth and you have negative working capital, and this, and that, all these terms in my balance sheet, and this and that.

And I was looking at him, and he said, doesn't that bother you? I said, not really. And he said, why? I said, because I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what negative working capital is. No, I really didn't. I mean, it's like, well, okay, you know, it's interesting. And he said, well, you should just cut a check and, you know,

pay people off because the government's really going to hammer you if you don't do that first, you know, and then close doors. Anyway, I said, what do you think I should do? He said, well, he said, with your knowledge of deficit financing, you'll probably get a job with the U.S. government. I said, he's kidding.

I was like, it was a lame joke at the time. But anyway, it went on. You've been to an Erewhon store, maybe some of you. But it was so interesting because, you know, I mean, when I was drafted, you know, the same question came up, you know, I mean, and so earlier, and when I was drafted, I got 100, it's not really an intelligence test. It's a stupidity test. You'd have to be stupid not to pass the test.

But I had asthma all my life, I still had asthma. And so I was, you know, 4F and all that sort of stuff. And I was taken to a counselor who was doing LBJ in the Great Society. And she had my high school record, my high school record. And she's like looking at it like this, like that, and she's saying, high school wasn't your finest hour, was it?

I said, no, and she said, I don't really see a career path for you. She's a career counselor, you know. Uh-huh. see a career path for you. She was a career counselor, you know. I think she was right, actually. And she said, tell me, did you just not care or do you do your homework in the dark?

No, she said, do you come from a family of artists, I want to say this, or do you do your homework in the dark? Right. And I took real umbrage at that first part because I was surrounded by artists. My father and his friends were artists. And I said, well, what do you suggest I do? She said, I think you should get a job at the post office.

I said, take anyone. There was twice in my life where people said, I should go for the post office. So going back to mastery, I never felt like a master. I felt like a learner. And I just felt like we're here to learn, both self and other in place. Right. Yeah.

Somebody who has, whose muse is curiosity and always has followed their curiosity and that has led you on this circuitous path that we, I guess we can call a career. Sometimes at my peril and others, yes. Our time is short. We have to wrap this up soon here. But before we do that, I wanted to give you a little bit of an opportunity to talk about this new book that you have coming out. It's a sequel to Drawdown. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. Regeneration is the name of the book. The working subtitle is Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. It doesn't mean ending it in finality. It means pushing out the horizon. That is the sense of,

we only have, you know, 11 more years to go, and otherwise we're going to go right over the cliff. And so it's undertaking enough activity and actions in such a way that when we get to, whether it's 2025 or 2030, we actually see that we still have a horizon that is doable. And we've undertaken enough things that make us feel like we know what we're doing, that it's working. And it's really based on, as I said, turning around, you know, to the mothership really and looking at the scope and breadth of what is possible if we start to live in alignment with nature. And it doesn't mean abandoning our cities. In fact, there is a section on cities, section on food, section on energy.

But it actually talks about making cities like forests. In other words, cities that are sinks instead of sources. The idea that we can reduce our energy, be a lead goal, that's great. But why not think big? There is in Drawdown a company named Triumph Energy. It's a fusion company.

And I love it because their purpose is to make starlight on Earth because that's what fusion is. Starlight. The sun is a star. And I feel like we need unreasonable goals, you know, draw down in a sense. It shouldn't be, by the way. That's a reasonable goal, but it was at the time.

And regeneration is really about that. And tri-alpha energy was an unreasonable goal. And unreasonable goals are forcing functions. Like in calculus, they force a different outcome. When JFK announced that a man, you know, put a person on the moon within a decade, that was the goal, 30,000 different technologies came out of that. That would not have been invented necessarily then or at all

had they not actually had this forcing function of putting a human being on the moon. It sounds simple. It was not simple. And I feel like Drawdown was all peer-reviewed science and modeled and very, in a sense, very bounded by science and by peer review and by economic robust data, IEA,

and so forth, it was reflection back to the world, what it knows and what it's doing. Where regeneration is about, is also about science, but it's not peer reviewed. We don't have time to peer review the science. It's emerging and growing, and it's just extraordinary what's happening underneath the headlines, you know, around the world.

And we don't hear that. What we hear is the headlines and the media and the back and forth and the fighting. And we get books on uninhabitable earth, you know, and the end of ice, you know. And I don't know about you, but I don't read those at night. I mean, those aren't bedtime stories. And it's not that the science that David Wells Wallace

is basing it on is not valid. It's just that it's not helpful anymore to know that. And so I want to create a book that does that, but I also want to show, which I spoke of early, that it's really about meeting current human needs. That it is just so much about, you know, mountains and it's about migrants, you know, both. It's about forests but it's about favelas as well, you know.

That actually this othering of the world, you know, seeing everything as separate is the cause of global warming. It's the cause of our disconnection. It is the disconnection. And so regeneration is very much about that. My wife, bless her, said, Paul, if you don't have a what to do in this book, I'm leaving you.

So, yeah. Because you have said, like, people say, well, what can I do? Tell me what to do. And you're like, I can't tell you what to do in this book, I'm leaving you. So. Yeah. Yeah. And so. Because you have said, like, people say, well, what can I do? Tell me what to do. And you're like, I can't tell you what to do. What kind of person do you want to be? This is the journey that you have to go on for yourself. Right. I used to say that.

Leaves you at square one. So, now I got to shut that up and go and say, this is what you can do. All right. And on every level of agency, you know, whether an individual, a city manager, buildings and grounds, or you run a company. And it's very clear. And it has a seventh section. It's called social, which is about the path, communication,

mobilization, complex adaptive systems. It talks about how we naturally organize ourselves. And it proposes the inter-organizational panel on climate solutions, the IPCS, not the CC. And what it says is anytime three or four or five people can get together in a church basement, a school, in a company, city council, whatever, that's the IPCS.

And the way we solve this, get together, talk, Rich, what do you know? What you doing at your house? This is what we're doing. This is what we found out. This really works. Do you know so-and-so? Yeah, I know Zach Bush.

Well, bring him in. I mean, that's what people do. That's community. And the way we're going to solve this is to be community around this in a way that's effective because only what's going to happen is in place, not from Paris, not from Chile, not from New York, certainly.

God bless everybody who's doing that, meeting. I'm not speaking against that. I'm just speaking towards this fact that the way we're going to do it is to come together in ways that actually, you know, honor our relationships and our community and our sense of who we want to be right now. Who do we want to be, you know? And so that's what regeneration is about. There's more to it, but that's essentially, yeah.

Bringing it around the community. Yeah. Connectivity. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Paul Hawken. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks. You are a beautiful human. I salute you. Thank you. Thanks. You are a beautiful human. I salute you. So much respect for the work that you do and what you're putting out into the world. Your work is important and thank you so much for sharing. Rich, thank you for everything you do. Yeah.

Thank you. And thank you to all of you for coming out tonight. I appreciate you. I love you. What a fantastic evening. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

That was it. Our first live show, A Dream Fulfilled, A Goal Achieved. I loved it. I hope it translated, A Dream Fulfilled, A Goal Achieved. I loved it. I hope it translated in podcast format. I think it did. In any event, I hope you dug it. If so, stay tuned. We're working on producing more of these events, taking the show on the road for a multi-city tour in 2020.

More on that as it develops. In the meantime, check out the show notes on the episode page for links and resources to expand your experience of today's conversations and experiences. You can find NQ at NQ Life on Twitter and Instagram. You can also dial up episodes 81 and 118 for deep dives with him. And I'm working on getting Q back on the podcast again soon. You can also let Paul Hawken know how this one landed for you. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram at Paul Hawken. Also, don't forget to pick up a copy of his latest book, Drawdown, the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. It will change your life. While you're at it, maybe consider checking out some of his other books as well. They include The Next Economy, Growing in Business, The Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism, which is a great one, and Blessed Unrest.

If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts. That really helps us out. Tell your friends about your favorite episode. Share the show on social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. That really helps us out. Tell your friends about your favorite episode. Share the show on social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank the many, many people who helped put on today's show. This is a much more expansive list of people because a lot of people contributed to the

success of this production. As always, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering production, show notes, interstitial music, super audio expertise on the day, on the day, the evening of the event. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing this podcast and overseeing the production. Jessica Miranda for graphics, Allie Rogers for her portraits. DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships. Brian O'Hara for work on redesigning my logo. Daryl Smith from Kung Pao Production,

the people who are behind the incredible film production version of today's show, plus the cameramen, Calvin, Tyler, Dan, and Sergey. Jonathan Retzek at RXR Sports for helping pull all of this together for the theater experience. Greg Anzalone, my business partner for really making all of this happen. Tyler Trapper, my two step-sons, Tyler Pied, Trapper Pied, Harry Mathis, and Dylan Brosnan, the beautiful band that graced the audience with a couple songs and also the people behind the theme music by Annalema. Appreciate the love, you guys.

I will see you back here next week with Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown. He's the man behind the Impossible Burger, and it's an incredible conversation about the plant-based future of meat. And I'm going to leave you with a meaty taste of that exchange. And until then, let's all think and act a little bit more mindfully about how we tread on our precious blue spinning globe. Peace, plants. Namaste. The mission is very simple.

It's to completely replace animals in the food system by 2035. The use of animals as a food technology is by a huge margin the most destructive technology on earth and really poses a catastrophic threat. It's a major source of greenhouse gases, more than all forms of transportation combined. It is the biggest user of fresh water in the world, the biggest polluter by far of fresh water in the world. And the biggest issue is that about 50% of the entire land surface of Earth is actively in use right now, either growing feed crops or grazing livestock. And that land footprint comes at the expense of all the biodiversity that previously occupied that land.

You know, in the past 40 years, we've basically wiped out half the wild animals that were living on Earth back then. And it's just across the board, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, even insects. And that has happened so fast. and it's continuing to accelerate because the driver is the land footprint of animal agriculture and overfishing. And the demand for meat and fish is growing faster than the population. Thank you.