August 6, 2025 • 42 mins
Summary
The conversation delves into the complexities of climate change, particularly the implications of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature. Bobby Donohue expresses skepticism about the public's understanding of this metric and emphasizes the need for nuanced discussions rather than alarmist rhetoric. The dialogue highlights the challenges of conveying scientific information in a way that resonates with the public, especially in the face of disinformation.
Speaker bio
Bobby Donohue is the creator of Planet Bonehead, a globally distributed climate education platform that helps kids understand environmental science—and feel empowered to do something about it. Since 2011, his work has reached over 3 million students across 1,000 schools, and is now free for all teachers through strategic partnerships with greentech companies. Contact: planetbonehead.com
www.linkedin.com/in/bobbydonohue
Takeaways
The global average temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius is a critical threshold.
Public perception of climate change is often alarmist and lacks nuance.
Understanding temperature changes requires a detailed and informed approach.
Disinformation spreads more easily than nuanced scientific explanations.
The complexity of climate science is often lost in simplified messaging.
Effective communication about climate change is essential for public awareness.
Skepticism about climate metrics can stem from a lack of understanding.
Temperature changes should be contextualized for better public comprehension.
Alarmist narratives can hinder constructive dialogue about climate action.
Nuanced discussions are necessary to foster informed public engagement.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Planet Bonehead and Its Mission
03:36 The Evolution of Planet Bonehead
08:24 The Impact of Capitalism on Climate Change
11:20 Disinformation vs. Climate Alarmism
15:30 Empowering the Next Generation
20:40 Challenges in Climate Education
22:39 Mission Possible: Reaching 100 Million Kids
25:13 Simplifying Complex Concepts for Kids
31:39 Innovative Solutions in Green Technology
34:03 Final Thoughts and Call to Action
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If the global average temperature of this planet
reaches 1.5°C higher than it is now, terrible things are going
to happen that we're going to reach the point in no return.
And it just makes us sound like we're all going to die because
this thing that I don't understand is going to happen.
1.5° give me a break. That's so if I go outside and
(00:20):
it's 70, we, we use Fahrenheit here.
So if I go outside and it's 70°F, I know that's warm.
If I go outside and it's 71.5°F,that's not dramatically warmer.
What are you talking about? You know, tell me that it's
getting like 50° warmer and thenI'll be alarmed.
Nobody understands what 1.5° means.
(00:41):
It takes understanding, it takesnuance, it takes detail at,
whereas the disinformation takes4 words, 3 words.
Welcome to Sustainability Transformations podcast, where
we explore bold ideas to drive positive change for people, the
community and business. Today's guest is mission driven
(01:04):
creative, strategic climate educator Bobby Donahue is the
creator of Planet Bonehead and the force behind Mission
Possible, helping green tech founders transform their
breakthroughs into free climate education for worldwide.
And the key goal of our discussion is to explore how
sustainability transformations need cultural and generational
(01:26):
reach. So making the mission possible,
turning those climates breakthroughs into education for
100 million kids. Bobby, thank you so much for
joining. What inspired you to blend
environmental science with storytelling and focus with the
mission on kids? Yeah, that's great.
Thanks. Well, thank you, Enoch.
I appreciate being here, first of all.
(01:48):
And so thanks for having me. And So what inspired me?
Well, I, I tend, I'm one of those people who just like has
things inside of them and I can't shut up about them.
So I've tried lots of different things like spiritual stuff and
stuff for artists and stuff for entrepreneurs.
And this is the one that I've always come back to.
It's never it's, it's, it's always been like the one that
was the most important to me. I started Planet Bonehead almost
(02:12):
20 years ago when, when my kids were very little and my son was
just born, he was an infant, youknow, so I, I had little kids
and I was concerned about the world and the environment.
And I was realizing that most ofwhat people knew about climate
change was wrong. It was just all misinformation
and myths over facts. I decided that I didn't really
(02:32):
enjoy arguing with other adults about it because they didn't
want to hear it and I would justend up banging my head against
the wall. But little kids tend to not have
any of those preconceived notions or any of those worries
like we can't afford it, you know, and, and things like that.
So I was just like, I'm going toteach little kids about the
environment and get them to understand how spectacular and
(02:55):
amazing our planet is. That's how planet bone.
It started in the beginning. It was generally environmental
science. In recent years, though, with,
with everything happening with climate change and things that
have been happening politically,you know, around the world, but
especially here in the United States, I wanted to focus Planet
Bonehead on teaching climate science, but also introducing
(03:15):
kids to the green technologies that we already have.
We could solve climate change tomorrow.
We have the technology, we have the financial capital, we have
everything that we need except the cultural acceptance.
We don't have the political will, but the reason we don't
have the political will do it isbecause the people don't believe
(03:38):
in it. They just don't care enough
about it. We haven't reached that tipping
point where more people care about it than don't.
And I believe that education is the key to that.
So I'm teaching little kids about it, but I'm also teaching
the teachers about it because they're just as susceptible to
misinformation as anybody else. They're not climate scientists.
They don't know everything. And so that's what Planet
(04:00):
Bonehead's mission is right now,to tip those scales and make
green technology more culturallyviable and accepted.
Yeah, that's impressive with thegenerational focus.
So what is Planet Bonehead and how did it evolve from an idea,
as you mentioned, with the youngchildren into a global
(04:23):
educational platform? Great.
Yeah. So Planet Bonehead itself is an
educational program. It's designed to teach kids in
grades three to five about climate change and introduce
them to green technologies that we already have.
And the way that it works is I do it in four steps.
So I'll pick a unit, I'll pick atopic, say ocean plastic,
(04:44):
plastic garbage in the ocean or recycling or something like
that. And I'll, I make a cartoon with
my characters, the boneheads. And, and the cartoon is
basically just a soft introduction, a way to bring up
the topic without scaring the pants off of little kids.
Because let's face it, climate change can be a scary topic even
for adults to talk about. So I'm not trying to scare kids.
(05:07):
So the the cartoon just kind of touches on the topic, brings in
some lightness and comedy and lays the foundation for the the
real plot points, which are the educational points that I make
in the in the coming segments ofthe unit.
The next segment is something I call It's Your Planet 2.
And this is a documentary segment where I explain the
(05:28):
problem. The problems are real and the
problems are important to understand.
They affect all of us. They affect marginalized
communities generally more than they affect a rich communities,
and they affect poor countries harsher than they affect rich
countries. So a lot of times the kids who
grow up in the privileged communities in the richer
(05:50):
countries, they don't really understand why this is
important. They hear about it, but they
don't understand why it's important.
So I'm trying to use equity, empathy and empowerment to sort
of level the playing field a little bit and let them know,
like, just because this isn't happening on your block in your
neighborhood, doesn't mean that it's OK that it's happening to
(06:10):
these kids here or to these people here or to this country
here. And kids get that, by the way,
kids understand that they're notOK with it. grown-ups are like,
well, it's doesn't affect me, soI don't care.
Kids don't have that yet. We teach that to them.
So I'm trying to not teach that to them.
I'm trying to counter that teaching early.
That's one of the reasons why I do this with kids instead of
(06:33):
fighting with adults about climate change because that's
AI. Can't do that anymore, but
that's the problem. And the problem is real.
And the next segment is called Think Like Engineers.
And this is my favorite part because this is where I say, OK,
that's the problem. And you may know about that.
But what you may not know is that there are people who have
already solved this problem. We have the solution to this
(06:56):
problem already. We it's not like a thing.
We don't know how to fix This company here created this green
tech thing. This company over here has this
amazing invention. This company over here has this
process that we could we could do it tomorrow if we wanted to
and the kids want to. When you tell the kids that
here's a problem, here's the solution that they're their
minds go to how do we make this solution better?
(07:19):
Whereas adult minds go to we can't afford that, you know, or
that means I'm not going to be able to do the thing I like to
do because now we have to spend money on that.
The kids don't have that problem.
They just imagine even better solutions.
And then the 4th part is called You Have the Power and it's a
song, music video that empowers them to go outside in their
(07:41):
backyards, in their schoolyards,in their neighborhoods and
actually do something right now.They can do something that that
is a part of the solution right now immediately.
And, and that's the empowerment part of the program.
So that's what the program itself, in addition to that, I'm
making courses for teachers so that they can learn the truth
(08:01):
about climate science. They can understand the myths
versus the facts. They can understand the
specifics of this green tech versus that green tech.
A lot of people look at wind power, for example, and they
think, oh, it's killing whales. It's not, it's not killing
whales, but it's a myth that's been permeated into our culture
because fossil fuels don't want us to use wind power.
They want us to keep burning coal and oil.
(08:23):
So they say, oh, the wind is burning.
Well, no, it's not, you know, soI'm I'm I'm trying to counter
that through education, so that in and as quickly as I could do
it is what plan upon it is. Yeah, that's impressive.
I'm curious to know how grown-ups or those who are above
the children, did it come about?Is it true the media
(08:47):
proliferation of sensitizing adults to always go towards the
challenge of or we haven't got enough money compared to the
children? I'm curious to know how did it
come about from the various forces who want society to keep
on the status quo of more fossilfuel.
(09:09):
Yeah. That's a really good question.
In a nutshell, what I believe has happened on our planet is we
we have a we have a capitalist system that is designed to make
money and grow. The capitalist system has to
grow in order to justify its ownexistence.
So if it makes this much money this year, it can't make this
(09:32):
much money next year. It has to make this much and
then it has to make this much, and then it has to make this.
And that kind of growth becomes unsustainable in an equitable
way. Meaning there is no way to have
that kind of growth unless you are growing on the backs of
slaves or you are growing on thebacks of marginalized people who
(09:54):
maybe they're not technically slaves, but they're making $0.15
a day, they're slaves. You know?
So this is the way capitalism works, the way that's not the
way children work. Children, if one kid has lunch
and three kids don't, that kid is going to share their lunch.
But in capitalism, if one company has lunch and the other
(10:18):
three companies don't have lunch, that company with the
lunch wants to figure out how toget whatever crumbs those other
companies that don't have lunch have.
They want all of it, You know what I mean?
And this is a psychosis. It's, it's, it's completely
counter to human survival. So what ends up happening is we
(10:38):
have a fossil fuel industry on this planet who knows for
decades that their product is killing us.
They don't have a problem with that because killing us or
making us safe or not, what capitalism is about, capitalism
is about money and growth. So they have to then lie about
what they're doing. They have to spread
disinformation. They have to.
(10:59):
And I use the word disinformation purposely because
disinformation versus misinformation.
Misinformation is when you're misinformed.
You got it wrong. Disinformation is on purpose.
I know what the right answer is.But I'm telling you the wrong
answer on purpose because I wantyou to believe that solar is a
waste of time, that wind energy,the production of windmills,
(11:22):
kills birds or whales or whatever crap they're saying.
I want you to believe that that the only way that we can have a
sustainable energy on this planet is through fossil fuels.
That there's no other way, even though we've got this giant ball
of energy in the sky. Rain bringing energy down on us,
more energy in a day than we could use in a year.
It's all right there and it's free, but we can't use it for
(11:44):
free because nobody's making money on that.
That's how this happens. It's, it's our capitalist system
that then it's a cancer metastasizing on our entire
planet that then creates this culture of disinformation.
And then nobody knows what's true anymore.
You got, you turn on this news channel and they're saying this,
(12:05):
you turn on this news channel, they're saying the complete
opposite. And if you're not really paying
attention and immersing yourselfinto one or the other world, you
have no idea which one's correct.
And unfortunately, you have a lot of people who don't know
which one's correct. And you have a lot of people who
are immersing themselves in the incorrect one on purpose and
they just believe everything that's incorrect.
(12:27):
I could talk about just for 75 days, but let's not I I'll end
it there. I think I I think I answered
your question. Not that you've done a good
analysis of that. So on one side is the selfish
interests who are perpetuating the lies or disinformation is
the right term. But I'm curious to know on the
other side where there is the climate alarmism or using the
(12:50):
fear. And there is, Yeah.
And there are some school of thoughts which suggests that
when you use fear to communicateto people, it shuts the part of
the brain that makes them think.And so I'm not a psychologist,
but I'm just curious to know howthe ones who are not using good
storytelling inspiring like the solutions you've mentioned by
(13:12):
just using alarmism, which from a news perspective, it appears
people tend to respond more to negative news than positive.
So I'm curious to know if we cantease out on that side.
Thank you so much for this opening because this is the crux
of it. On the one side, you have the
disinformation. The easy part about
disinformation is it doesn't require research.
(13:34):
It doesn't require facts, it doesn't require sources.
It's just requires opening your mouth and saying whatever the
heck you feel like. Wind kills whales.
That 3 words plants seeds of doubt.
No, no facts, no documents, no data necessary.
Just three. Wind kills whales.
Solar doesn't work at night. 5 words, you know what I mean?
And that's it That's all it takes to to just make everybody
(13:56):
go oh, well, that's no good thisis too expensive, right?
4 words, that's all it takes. So that's on the one side.
The other side, the green tech side has science, which, which,
which requires research and experimentation and nuance and
understanding and explanations with detailed white papers and
(14:17):
all. And, and nobody has time for
that. You know, nobody has the, the
mental capacity for that. So what they try to do is they
try to say, look, maybe you'll understand this if we don't
lower the temperature of this planet here.
Here's the one we hear all the time.
If the global average temperature of this planet
reaches 1.5°C higher than it is now, terrible things are going
(14:37):
to happen. We're going to reach the point
in no return. And it just makes this sound
like we're all going to die because this thing that I don't
understand is going to happen. 1.5°, Give me a break.
That's so if I go outside and it's 70, we use Fahrenheit here.
So if I go outside and it's 70°F, I know that's warm.
(14:58):
If I go outside and it's 71.5°F,that's not dramatically warmer.
What are you talking about? You know, tell me that it's
getting like 50° warmer, and then I'll be alarmed.
Nobody understands what 1.5° means.
It takes understanding, it takesnuance, it takes detail at.
Whereas the disinformation takes4 words. 3 words Yeah, wind
(15:19):
kills whales, right? It's a hoax.
That's all it takes. And now nobody knows what to
believe. But you're 100% right.
Because when you use the fear, if this happens, then we're
going to have more storms, We'regoing to have this, we're going
to have we're all going to die and blah blah blah blah, blah.
People can't handle that. Our nervous systems can't handle
that much stress and fear all the time.
(15:40):
It's so much easier to just believe.
The people who are saying none of that's true don't believe
that stuff. Come over here where where
everything's great and we're growing our capital Federalist
Society on the back of slaves. It's great.
You don't have to be a slave. You can live in a white in a
nice house with a white picket fence.
Don't worry about it. Just do your thing and send your
kids to school and vote for us and just have your job and live
(16:01):
your life and hurry up and die so we can make room for somebody
else. That's the promise of the
disinformation side. It's easier to swallow and you
don't have all the stress of theworld on you because quite
frankly, who wants to hear that?We're all going to die.
I don't want to hear it. I can't handle it.
And this is my business, you know, So that's why I always say
Planet Bonehead is climate change education for kids
(16:24):
without the doom and gloom. The doom and gloom doesn't work.
I'm not here to scare kids. I'm here to empower them.
I'm here to make them understand, to grow up and be
like, hey, we have the solutions.
Let's just use them. Grow up and say we have to use
these solutions instead of saying we can't afford these
solutions. That's not an option.
Does that. Answer your question.
(16:44):
Yeah, yeah, I said. I have to clear.
So one of the examples I always give is when the ozone layer
depletion issue came up, you know, in the last in the
previous century in one way or the other, action was taking,
solutions were found. Yes, it took some time.
So perhaps that ties in with empowering the young generation
(17:06):
to be able to find the solutionsin order to solve that.
So that's great. Looking at the planet Bonehead,
what are the biggest obstacles that schools and partners
usually face, you know, in termsof getting on board with the key
initiatives? Schools.
(17:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Schools and darkness, Yeah.
So I don't deal directly with schools.
It was a, it was an Ave. that was open to me and I was looking
into making it where I was goingto bring Planet Bone it directly
to schools myself. But I didn't want to be in the
business of selling things to schools.
It was never what I wanted to do.
So the way that I am in my, my program is already in schools,
(17:49):
but the way that that is, is I use distributors.
So the distributors do the selling for me and then the
teachers find me through the distributors.
So I can't really speak to that question.
But if I may go back to what yousaid in the run up to that
question about the ozone layer, right, can I speak to?
Sure, absolutely, yes. So, so you said the ozone layer,
because that is a perfect example of what I am talking
(18:12):
about here. Years ago and not many years
ago, I, I remember I was a youngman.
I wasn't even a kid. The the ozone layer had a giant
hole in it and it was letting radiation in.
And we're all going to die. So there was doom and gloom.
But scientists said, OK, yeah, yeah, it's bad, but we can fix
it because we know what's causing it.
The problem is that we're all using these aerosol cans that
are letting out these gases. I think it was Freon or
(18:33):
something. And that's breaking up the
oxygen atoms, thumbs molecules in the ozone and it it's and
it's breaking them up. And then we don't have that
protective layer of ozone. All we have to do is stop using
these cans. We can use some other technology
that doesn't let out this stuff.And all the countries of the
world went, OK, that sounds good.
And they started passing laws that we're going to stop using
(18:55):
these cans and we're going to start using these cans instead.
And everybody went, I don't care.
It's still, I still get my deodorant, you know, I still can
do what I want to do. And everybody was happy.
And we haven't completely fixed the hole yet, but the hole is
shrinking and it's on track to completely close up in like
20-30, forty years, whatever it is.
But the problem's over. The emergency is over.
That is a perfect example of what green tech tried to do with
(19:18):
climate change. Oh, hey guys, the the
temperatures going up. But if you're not, all we have
to do is start using wind power and solar power instead of
burning fossil fuels. The reason the ozone worked and
the this one's not is because there was no big ozone industry
and there was no big aerosol canindustry saying no, aerosol cans
are the wave of the future. And if we don't use aerosol
(19:40):
cans, we we can't afford these other cans.
They're way too expensive and they and they kill whales.
Nobody was saying any of that garbage when it came to this
because nobody cared. Even the can companies were just
like, yeah, we could just take this cartridge out, this
cartridge in, it doesn't matter.Nobody cared.
But the oil companies and the cold people, they can't.
They care. They can't have a switching from
(20:02):
their thing to this other thing.And what has always boggled my
mind is that they could have just said we're not digging for
oil anymore, we're building windmills.
We're not digging for coal anymore, we're building solar.
They could have just done that and kept their monopoly and kept
their capital growth and it would have been fine.
(20:23):
But they didn't and they opened up the market for the people who
are will bring those things. And now that market is crushing
their market, and they're fighting back.
And I think they're going to lose.
But it's got to be this big battle for no reason whatsoever.
There's no reason for this. So the ozone thing is a perfect
example of what happens when youdon't have the capitalist
pressure. Yeah, because nobody cared what
(20:45):
cans were used. And I don't go.
I don't sell to schools. So I don't hear.
Like they push back from the teachers directly.
Oh so right. I mean, it was just out of if
there are any schools personal or a stakeholders maybe
listening today's and maybe in their mind because again, they
might might be just go up. You know, I wonder what the
(21:06):
challenge might be, but clearly you don't operate.
Well, the challenge for the schools would be #1 they, they
can't afford it because the original way that I was bringing
Planet Bone it into schools was through these distributors, as I
said. So think of these distributors
as like Netflix for schools. You got this company and they
can subscribe to it and then they can stream everything in
their library. And then this company, same
(21:27):
thing. And my program is just one of
the programs in their streaming library along with PBS and
National Geographic and Discovery and Disney and stuff
like that. Lots of schools use it, but many
schools can't afford programs like that.
And at the same time, there are,there are plenty of STEM science
video learning programs that do go directly to schools.
(21:47):
And, and they're like, you know,maybe a couple $1000 a year for
one school or a few $100 a year for one classroom.
And so many schools can't affordthat.
They just can't. So they end up going without
and, or even worse, what happensis the teachers end up paying
out of pocket. Now, Speaking of capitalism, I
decided I don't like the idea ofteachers paying out of pocket
(22:08):
for my thing. So, you know, maybe, maybe I
don't deserve my capitalist membership card, but that was my
decision. I didn't want to see teachers
paying out of pocket to use Planet Bonehead.
So I was like, how can I make this free?
So I built Planet bonehead.com as as an option to get Planet
Bonehead. And if you don't have those
distributors and the program is there for free, you can, you can
(22:29):
buy it for $0.00 if you want. And So what I'm doing in,
instead of making the teachers pay for it, I'm looking for a
sponsor to pay for it. And that's that's that's what
I'm doing. We've certainly explored why
climate education is so critical, but what are kids
telling you they want to learn? OK, so kids aren't like telling
me, but there's plenty of research on this and the numbers
(22:50):
are very, very high. They're in like the 70s.
Eighty percents of the percentage of teachers that want
to teach kids about climate change, it's like 75% surveyed
the percentage of children that want to learn about it because
they have anxiety, they hear allthis stuff.
They want to know what's real. They want to learn about it.
The problem that is happening isthat teachers want to teach kids
(23:14):
about this. Kids want to learn about it.
Parents want it taught, but the teachers lack the knowledge and
they lack the resources. So it's not even just that I'm
trying to make it for free. It's also that I'm even just
trying to make it planet bone itbecause there, to my knowledge,
there are no resources teaching what I'm teaching.
There are none. It doesn't exist.
(23:35):
There are some resources that are teaching climate science for
kids. They're, they're explaining what
global warming is and they're explaining the greenhouse effect
and all of that's great, but that's the doom and gloom
science, you know, that's the basic scientific facts.
So now I understand how it works, but I still don't know
what to do about it. I'm teaching the empowerment.
I'm opening their eyes to green tech industries that they don't
(23:59):
even know exists. The teachers don't know it
exists. The kids don't know it exists.
Amazing careers in science, in engineering, in the trades that
are just waiting for them, hungry for them.
These these people are desperatefor workforce development
programs to prepare kids for careers in their fields, but
kids just aren't learning about it because nobody knows about
(24:21):
it. There are no resources to teach
about it. So I'm making one.
I'm making one as quickly and aswell as I can.
Even most of the STEM things outthere have climate videos or a
climate unit or something like that, but they touch on the
surface. I'm trying to teach them, look,
this is this specific problem and these are specific green
(24:41):
technologies that we have today,not things we're designing, not
things we might have in five, 1020 years, things that we have
today that it works. The company sells it.
You know what I mean? Like it's being used.
It's just not being used at scale, right?
That's the problem. And that's kids getting those
research is always good opportunity because it's more a
(25:02):
larger scale done on individual base.
That's always useful. So what's mission possible and
how are you working toward a 100million kids school by 2033?
Well mission possible so all right so just to understand the
background here, the the bone heads are my characters and the
bone heads are like these super spies that work out of hope
(25:24):
headquarters help our planet Earth and they're always
fighting the evil JP Rothbone. This this mega corporate tycoon
guy who he's always looking to make money It's got anything
that he does has 2 rules. It has to make him a lot of
money and it has to be bad for the planet.
Those are the 2 rules. Even so we're always offering
him ways to make the same amountof money in a way that's good
(25:44):
for the planet. And he's always like, no, we're
not doing that, We're doing thisone.
And and that's like the I'm trying to explain how the world
works to kids without, you know,being an ogre and and getting
all grumpy so, so. So.
So that's, that's the, that's the basic thing and, and the spy
theme I was pulling into the working with green tech.
(26:05):
So, you know, I use Mission Impossible as sort of A and
James Bond and things like that.I use tropes from those things
in the cartoons. So I thought it's not Mission
Impossible, it's mission possible.
And so in the real world, I'm working with green tech
companies on a mission possible program where I want to work
with green tech companies to create videos for the Think Like
(26:26):
Engineers segment of the programabout their specific green
technology. If I'm doing something about if
I have a unit about solar energyor I have a unit about recycling
or I have a unit about whatever,and you have a piece of green
technology that fits in that unit, I want to make a video
about it and put it in the in the unit.
Hey kids, here's a thing that's working right now to solve all
(26:46):
the problems we've been talking about today.
This company makes this thing, you know, and then I explain how
it works and I explain why it works and I explain why we need
it and I explain how it's solving the problem.
And then I invite the kids to design their own version of it.
How would you make this better? How would you make it bigger?
How would you make it? Whatever you know?
(27:07):
And that becomes the Lesson planthat the teachers can then do.
They they can design their own prototypes.
They could build them, They could demonstrate them whatever
the teacher wants to do. And so Mission Possible is
inviting green tech companies tocome work with me to make this
content. That's what that is.
How were you able to simplify those complex topics, carbon
(27:27):
tech and ocean acidity into whatan 8 year old can understand and
act on? Now I know there are AI tools
perhaps, but I'm on your journey.
How you were able to overcome those?
Well, if overcome the challengesor you were able to create a
breakthrough. Yeah, so I do this on my own.
(27:51):
I used to have other people thatworked with me on it.
I had, I used to have a partner that did the research for the
educational parts, but she left the company about even 12 years
ago. For a while, I wasn't making new
units because I didn't know, I didn't understand the needs of
the school for the educational parts.
I was the guy who did the video editing and the animation and
the storytelling and the fun things, you know.
(28:13):
But then I started to learn about green technology and I,
and I realized because I do havean engineering background, I
went to school, school for engineering and I went to school
for art. So I, I'm like one of those left
brain, right brain people. I can, I can be creative and
analytical at the same time. And a lot of my clients in
marketing and design have alwaysbeen engineering companies
because I'm good at taking theirvery complex things and
(28:34):
explaining them to their lay audience.
And so when I started talking togreen tech people about six or
seven years ago, I started to realize that they had all those
problems, that they had solutions that nobody
understood. They had solutions that nobody
knew about. Green tech is saving the world,
but nobody knows about it. That's another one of my Planet
Bonehead tag lines. So I was like, I can explain
(28:55):
this and I can explain it to kids now.
Plant opponent is for grades three to five.
So they're like 8 to 1112 years old.
And which is perfect for me because with the cartoon part,
you know, I, it's like, it's whoI want to speak to because they
haven't been molded yet to, to be in the, I can't camp.
They're still in the, I can campand that's where I want to
(29:17):
connect with them. But so now I realize that I can
do it. What I needed to do is figure
out how to take what green Tech is doing and apply it to the
standards that are required for the curriculum in the classroom.
Because if a teacher can't pointto the standards that they're
using, then they can't use the program, no matter how good it
is. It has to, they have to know
(29:37):
that I'm teaching this standard.It fits in the curriculum.
This way, they have to be able to write their lesson plans in a
way that they can justify it to the administration or to their
state or their county or whoever, whatever they answer
to. So for that, I use a lot of AI
and research. The AI helps me give me the
ideas and then I do my own research to make sure that the
AI got it right. Because I don't.
(29:58):
You can't just believe whatever AI said.
But doing the research from scratch was kind of hard because
I didn't know where to start. So the AI kind of gives me a
chat sheet, BT gives me a starting point.
I can say, listen, I want to teach it about this.
This is the green technology I want to talk to you about.
Talk with them about how does this fit into science standards
for grades three to five? And it'll tell me, and now I
(30:18):
know I've got things. Now I can go and I can look that
up and I could be like, Yep, that's right, that's right,
that's right. And so far, it's actually been
right all the time with this. It's very good at this.
And so it's been helping me. And then it helps me to come up
with ideas for the lesson plans.So, you know, I'm a smart guy,
but I can't come up with every idea it all by myself.
So in lieu of a team of people doing this, I have my chat CPT
(30:42):
partner and we do it together and then I have Google to make
sure that it's correct. So that's that's, that's how I
do it. Yeah, that's impressive.
I think I've got that experiencewith the AI and chat CPT where
it's an augmenting tool. It's probably 6070% there, and
it needs that human expertise tobe able to guide it at.
(31:04):
Again, 5070% is a lot, you know,if we're starting from scratch.
No, absolutely. And personally, being able to
identify where the limitations are takes time and finding where
those limitations are. So that's good.
What makes Humor, Laughter, the animation tools so effective for
education and empowerment? The humor part I think is
(31:26):
essential because if you just put on a documentary about some
green technology, most of the kids will check out.
I'm not into science. I'm not good at this, you know,
and you're, you're, you're goingto miss them.
We found that the, the thing that the kids connect with the
most are the characters, the cartoon characters.
(31:47):
So I create the characters to have different personalities.
I create Bonehead to be the hero, but he bungles the job a
lot. He is literally a bonehead, you
know, he's not a perfect hero. And I have Wishbone, who is the
female counterpart to Bonehead. She believes she has these
superpowers, but she doesn't. So she's always trying to use
(32:08):
her superpowers to save the day.But really she's just making a
lot of noise. But she thinks that her
superpowers save the, the, the, the day.
You know, I have Marrow, anotherfemale character who is the
highly intelligent one who explains the scientific parts.
And it was very important to me to make her female because
there, there are far too few girls in STEM.
(32:29):
And I wanted to present a femalecharacter that had all the
answers. That was the smart one that knew
the science part. And then I have T-bone who he
didn't start this way and and I even just said he I've
transitioned T-bone to where I'musing they them to explain
T-bone. I wanted to bring an LGBTQ
character into planet bone it without being in your face about
(32:52):
it. I'm never going to say T-bone's
gay. I mean, this is for little kids,
you know, but I figured using they them pronouns in future
units is going to be enough of an indication.
I always had it in my head that T-bone, I was like, like a trans
character. And it's very important to me to
be inclusive. I want, I wanted to figure out
how to make it so that every kidcan see themselves in the
(33:16):
boneheads. You know, that's hard to do.
And I'm not perfect at it. I know I failed.
And somebody will say, what about these people?
And I'd be like, I didn't even think about them.
I'm sorry, you know, But my intention is to make it so that
every child can see themselves, no matter how they identify
themselves, whether it's by their skin color or race or by
(33:38):
their sexuality or gender. Sexuality is interesting to say
with little kids. I don't mean sexual, but I mean,
you know, their gender or even their confusion, you know,
because a lot of a lot of these kids don't feel safe in the
world. And I want Planet Bonehead to be
a place where they feel safe. That's what's important to me.
So the characters pull a lot of heavy duty.
(33:58):
They do that part form the otherpart they do is they're just fun
to watch and it's silly and it gets their attention.
And the other part that they do is that they touch upon the
topic where the kids understand.We're going to start talking
about recycling. We're going to start talking
about why this is important. We're going to start talking
about why this ocean plastic is killing sea turtles.
We're going to start talking about that.
But we haven't gotten into anything that's really scary yet
(34:19):
or really sciency where I'm going to be like, Oh my God, I'm
I'm exhausted from this. The characters pull all of that
heavy duty and then the documentary parts come into
play. So that's that's why they're
important. Yeah, that's looks like you've
had a good thought of the different rules.
And this has been evolving, by the way, over like 1520 years.
(34:40):
Like I, I didn't sit down and design everything in one shot.
Like I was just like, we should make it be this.
And then I added this and then the whole thing with T-bone and
the pronouns is relatively new. I have cartoons made that I
didn't include that because I'd never thought of it before, but
I thought of it now. So it will be for future
cartoons. But yeah, it and it's constantly
evolving, you know, so there's that.
(35:02):
OK. What is a great example of a
founder who turned their tech into a kid powered message?
I'll tell you my favorite one. There's a company in the UK
called Hughes Energy and they have technology which is not
even all that amazing. It's technology from the 1800s,
It's Jules Verne stuff. It's what's called an autoclave.
(35:25):
It's a giant metal tube. That's all that it is.
And you can put steam into it and apply high pressure and
steam and temperature. I'm sorry, yes, pressure and
temperature and steam into this tube.
And what you do is you take garbage, you just scoop it right
out of a landfill and you put itinside this tube.
You don't have to sort it or do anything to it.
You just scoop it out of the landfill, throw it in this tube,
(35:47):
shut the door, turn it on, and the steam and the pressure and
the temperature, just push on itand push on it and push on it
for one hour. And after one hour, all of that
garbage has been transformed into this fibrous material.
It's all this uniform fibrous material.
I don't understand how this works, but it does.
And that material is then used to create alternatives for coal,
(36:12):
oil and wood chips. There are processes to turn it
into any of those three things. And then so instead of burning
coal, you burn the coal that youmade from this fiber and it
burns clean. Instead of using oil, you make
oil out of this fiber and you use that and it burns clean.
And same with the wood chips. So we're killing two birds with
one stone stone here. We're solving 2 incredibly
(36:35):
important problems. We have all the greenhouse gas
emissions, the methane, the CO2,and not to mention the smell and
just the space being wasted in the water, the garbage seeping
into the water from the landfills because despite our
recycling efforts, we have not slowed down our garbage creation
(36:56):
on this planet. We have more garbage every year
than the year before. So now we can take all that
garbage and turn it into fuel through a process that takes an
hour and doesn't create any emissions in the process.
And then it turns that into a fuel we can use where now we
don't even have to. We don't even have to use solar
or wind. We can still use oil and coal,
(37:16):
but we don't have to dig it out of the ground.
We can make it from this stuff and now it'll burn clean.
This is solving all the problem.This one company could literally
solve climate change all by themselves.
So it just boggles my mind that I've known about this for years
and we still aren't doing it. Why?
Because it's not culturally accepted and that's what I'm
trying to solve with Platiponent.
Now that's impressive. So what is your final thought
(37:40):
for green tech, CE OS or funderslistening right now?
What is your final thought? For Green tech CE OS, I want to
work with you to make videos about your projects.
I know that a lot of green tech CE OS don't have a lot of
funding, so I'm trying to figureout ways to do that economically
for them. I can't always do it for free,
(38:01):
but the problem that I'm having is that because they can't pay
me to do it, I end up not makingthese videos.
And that's not sitting well withme either.
So I'm trying to figure out how to do this for free for green
tech too. And the way that I came up with
was to get a sponsor, and I meanone sponsor.
Now here's my pitch to that. If I can have two minutes to do
this, we do not have a technology problem.
(38:22):
We do not have a financing problem.
We have a cultural crisis. People just don't believe in
this. They don't believe in climate
change. They believe it's a hoax.
They don't believe that green text can solve solve the
problem. They believe that it's too
expensive or it's too dangerous,or it's too this or it's too
that. They just don't believe it.
We have to change that narrative.
(38:42):
And the only way to do that, youcan't do it by making better
technology. All the technology exists.
We've got enough technology to solve climate change. 15
technologies problem. You can't throw more money at a
Series A or a series B funding or a series C or a series,
whatever. It doesn't matter.
All the funding in the world, there are countless green tech
companies that have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars
(39:04):
in funding and then failed. And they didn't fail because
their tech didn't work. They failed because nobody
accepted it, nobody embraced it,and it did not scale.
That's why every single time, the reason is because we don't
have the education structure in this world, in this country, my
country, your country, any country, not in Africa, not in
Asia, not in Europe, not in Australia, not in North or South
(39:27):
America. It does not exist.
We don't have the education infrastructure to combat the
disinformation. The disinformation machine is
strong and it has decades of momentum.
And I'm one guy trying to do this with my dogs in the back,
trying to make a program to teach kids to counter this
disinformation machine. So what I decided to do is say,
(39:47):
hey, somebody, if you want to make a name for yourself,
instead of putting your name on the next green tech thing that's
going to fail or the next finance capitalist investment
company that's investing in thisamazing portfolio of green tech
things that aren't culturally sustainable, Put your name on
this. I have spot for one sponsor
(40:08):
want. I'm not I don't have a gold
level and silver level and bronze level.
I don't want to be in the sponsor selling business.
I want one person or company to stand up and say I want to put
my name on that planet. Bonehead brought to you by.
This guy, I don't care or this girl or this company, I don't
care who it is all right, but I don't be a Nazi.
But so there's one slot and whenI find that slot, that's it.
(40:29):
I'm done looking. I'm not looking anymore.
You missed it. So that's my pitch is call me,
connect with me on LinkedIn and let's be that person and, and,
and help me do this because we can do this.
Education is always the key to fixing things.
It always has been throughout human history.
That's why Nazis and fascists want to burn books.
(40:49):
That's the first thing they wantto do is burn the books.
Why? Because education is the key to
combating that. Education is the key to
combating this. But the disinformation machine
is very powerful. But kids don't listen to the
disinformation machine. They listen to cartoons.
Huge thank you to Bobby for yourtime and the incredible insights
that you've shared on the various aspect and the
(41:11):
opportunities it brings. If listeners like the work or
maybe the sponsor is listen, where can they find your work?
Well, you can see Planet Bonehead for yourself at
planetbonehead.com, just as it sounds.
The best way to connect with me personally is on LinkedIn.
So that's linkedin.com/in/bobby Donahue, just as it's spelled
right there. And, and that's me.
(41:32):
So look me up on there. Connect with me.
I'm open to connections. You don't have to just follow
me. You can connect and, and let's
talk. Let's, let's do I.
I'm already doing this. By the way, Plantaponet isn't an
idea. It's already in 1000 schools,
100,000 teachers use it. It's been used by three million
kids since 2011 in in 86 countries.
It's a thing. I just need to grow it.
(41:54):
I just need to reach 30 million kids, 100 million kids.
And I can't do that all by myself.
I need, I need somebody to step up and say here's some funding
to go do that. Just go do it.
That's impressive. That person exists, I just need
to find them. And hopefully through this week
and visibility, the message can be spread out there.
Thank you once again. Thank you.
(42:15):
I appreciate it so much. You know, thank you so much.
Comes.
If the global average temperature of this planet
reaches 1.5°C higher than it is now, terrible things are going
to happen that we're going to reach the point in no return.
And it just makes us sound like we're all going to die because
this thing that I don't understand is going to happen.
1.5° give me a break. That's so if I go outside and
(00:20):
it's 70, we, we use Fahrenheit here.
So if I go outside and it's 70°F, I know that's warm.
If I go outside and it's 71.5°F,that's not dramatically warmer.
What are you talking about? You know, tell me that it's
getting like 50° warmer and thenI'll be alarmed.
Nobody understands what 1.5° means.
(00:41):
It takes understanding, it takesnuance, it takes detail at,
whereas the disinformation takes4 words, 3 words.
Welcome to Sustainability Transformations podcast, where
we explore bold ideas to drive positive change for people, the
community and business. Today's guest is mission driven
(01:04):
creative, strategic climate educator Bobby Donahue is the
creator of Planet Bonehead and the force behind Mission
Possible, helping green tech founders transform their
breakthroughs into free climate education for worldwide.
And the key goal of our discussion is to explore how
sustainability transformations need cultural and generational
(01:26):
reach. So making the mission possible,
turning those climates breakthroughs into education for
100 million kids. Bobby, thank you so much for
joining. What inspired you to blend
environmental science with storytelling and focus with the
mission on kids? Yeah, that's great.
Thanks. Well, thank you, Enoch.
I appreciate being here, first of all.
(01:48):
And so thanks for having me. And So what inspired me?
Well, I, I tend, I'm one of those people who just like has
things inside of them and I can't shut up about them.
So I've tried lots of different things like spiritual stuff and
stuff for artists and stuff for entrepreneurs.
And this is the one that I've always come back to.
It's never it's, it's, it's always been like the one that
was the most important to me. I started Planet Bonehead almost
(02:12):
20 years ago when, when my kids were very little and my son was
just born, he was an infant, youknow, so I, I had little kids
and I was concerned about the world and the environment.
And I was realizing that most ofwhat people knew about climate
change was wrong. It was just all misinformation
and myths over facts. I decided that I didn't really
(02:32):
enjoy arguing with other adults about it because they didn't
want to hear it and I would justend up banging my head against
the wall. But little kids tend to not have
any of those preconceived notions or any of those worries
like we can't afford it, you know, and, and things like that.
So I was just like, I'm going toteach little kids about the
environment and get them to understand how spectacular and
(02:55):
amazing our planet is. That's how planet bone.
It started in the beginning. It was generally environmental
science. In recent years, though, with,
with everything happening with climate change and things that
have been happening politically,you know, around the world, but
especially here in the United States, I wanted to focus Planet
Bonehead on teaching climate science, but also introducing
(03:15):
kids to the green technologies that we already have.
We could solve climate change tomorrow.
We have the technology, we have the financial capital, we have
everything that we need except the cultural acceptance.
We don't have the political will, but the reason we don't
have the political will do it isbecause the people don't believe
(03:38):
in it. They just don't care enough
about it. We haven't reached that tipping
point where more people care about it than don't.
And I believe that education is the key to that.
So I'm teaching little kids about it, but I'm also teaching
the teachers about it because they're just as susceptible to
misinformation as anybody else. They're not climate scientists.
They don't know everything. And so that's what Planet
(04:00):
Bonehead's mission is right now,to tip those scales and make
green technology more culturallyviable and accepted.
Yeah, that's impressive with thegenerational focus.
So what is Planet Bonehead and how did it evolve from an idea,
as you mentioned, with the youngchildren into a global
(04:23):
educational platform? Great.
Yeah. So Planet Bonehead itself is an
educational program. It's designed to teach kids in
grades three to five about climate change and introduce
them to green technologies that we already have.
And the way that it works is I do it in four steps.
So I'll pick a unit, I'll pick atopic, say ocean plastic,
(04:44):
plastic garbage in the ocean or recycling or something like
that. And I'll, I make a cartoon with
my characters, the boneheads. And, and the cartoon is
basically just a soft introduction, a way to bring up
the topic without scaring the pants off of little kids.
Because let's face it, climate change can be a scary topic even
for adults to talk about. So I'm not trying to scare kids.
(05:07):
So the the cartoon just kind of touches on the topic, brings in
some lightness and comedy and lays the foundation for the the
real plot points, which are the educational points that I make
in the in the coming segments ofthe unit.
The next segment is something I call It's Your Planet 2.
And this is a documentary segment where I explain the
(05:28):
problem. The problems are real and the
problems are important to understand.
They affect all of us. They affect marginalized
communities generally more than they affect a rich communities,
and they affect poor countries harsher than they affect rich
countries. So a lot of times the kids who
grow up in the privileged communities in the richer
(05:50):
countries, they don't really understand why this is
important. They hear about it, but they
don't understand why it's important.
So I'm trying to use equity, empathy and empowerment to sort
of level the playing field a little bit and let them know,
like, just because this isn't happening on your block in your
neighborhood, doesn't mean that it's OK that it's happening to
(06:10):
these kids here or to these people here or to this country
here. And kids get that, by the way,
kids understand that they're notOK with it. grown-ups are like,
well, it's doesn't affect me, soI don't care.
Kids don't have that yet. We teach that to them.
So I'm trying to not teach that to them.
I'm trying to counter that teaching early.
That's one of the reasons why I do this with kids instead of
(06:33):
fighting with adults about climate change because that's
AI. Can't do that anymore, but
that's the problem. And the problem is real.
And the next segment is called Think Like Engineers.
And this is my favorite part because this is where I say, OK,
that's the problem. And you may know about that.
But what you may not know is that there are people who have
already solved this problem. We have the solution to this
(06:56):
problem already. We it's not like a thing.
We don't know how to fix This company here created this green
tech thing. This company over here has this
amazing invention. This company over here has this
process that we could we could do it tomorrow if we wanted to
and the kids want to. When you tell the kids that
here's a problem, here's the solution that they're their
minds go to how do we make this solution better?
(07:19):
Whereas adult minds go to we can't afford that, you know, or
that means I'm not going to be able to do the thing I like to
do because now we have to spend money on that.
The kids don't have that problem.
They just imagine even better solutions.
And then the 4th part is called You Have the Power and it's a
song, music video that empowers them to go outside in their
(07:41):
backyards, in their schoolyards,in their neighborhoods and
actually do something right now.They can do something that that
is a part of the solution right now immediately.
And, and that's the empowerment part of the program.
So that's what the program itself, in addition to that, I'm
making courses for teachers so that they can learn the truth
(08:01):
about climate science. They can understand the myths
versus the facts. They can understand the
specifics of this green tech versus that green tech.
A lot of people look at wind power, for example, and they
think, oh, it's killing whales. It's not, it's not killing
whales, but it's a myth that's been permeated into our culture
because fossil fuels don't want us to use wind power.
They want us to keep burning coal and oil.
(08:23):
So they say, oh, the wind is burning.
Well, no, it's not, you know, soI'm I'm I'm trying to counter
that through education, so that in and as quickly as I could do
it is what plan upon it is. Yeah, that's impressive.
I'm curious to know how grown-ups or those who are above
the children, did it come about?Is it true the media
(08:47):
proliferation of sensitizing adults to always go towards the
challenge of or we haven't got enough money compared to the
children? I'm curious to know how did it
come about from the various forces who want society to keep
on the status quo of more fossilfuel.
(09:09):
Yeah. That's a really good question.
In a nutshell, what I believe has happened on our planet is we
we have a we have a capitalist system that is designed to make
money and grow. The capitalist system has to
grow in order to justify its ownexistence.
So if it makes this much money this year, it can't make this
(09:32):
much money next year. It has to make this much and
then it has to make this much, and then it has to make this.
And that kind of growth becomes unsustainable in an equitable
way. Meaning there is no way to have
that kind of growth unless you are growing on the backs of
slaves or you are growing on thebacks of marginalized people who
(09:54):
maybe they're not technically slaves, but they're making $0.15
a day, they're slaves. You know?
So this is the way capitalism works, the way that's not the
way children work. Children, if one kid has lunch
and three kids don't, that kid is going to share their lunch.
But in capitalism, if one company has lunch and the other
(10:18):
three companies don't have lunch, that company with the
lunch wants to figure out how toget whatever crumbs those other
companies that don't have lunch have.
They want all of it, You know what I mean?
And this is a psychosis. It's, it's, it's completely
counter to human survival. So what ends up happening is we
(10:38):
have a fossil fuel industry on this planet who knows for
decades that their product is killing us.
They don't have a problem with that because killing us or
making us safe or not, what capitalism is about, capitalism
is about money and growth. So they have to then lie about
what they're doing. They have to spread
disinformation. They have to.
(10:59):
And I use the word disinformation purposely because
disinformation versus misinformation.
Misinformation is when you're misinformed.
You got it wrong. Disinformation is on purpose.
I know what the right answer is.But I'm telling you the wrong
answer on purpose because I wantyou to believe that solar is a
waste of time, that wind energy,the production of windmills,
(11:22):
kills birds or whales or whatever crap they're saying.
I want you to believe that that the only way that we can have a
sustainable energy on this planet is through fossil fuels.
That there's no other way, even though we've got this giant ball
of energy in the sky. Rain bringing energy down on us,
more energy in a day than we could use in a year.
It's all right there and it's free, but we can't use it for
(11:44):
free because nobody's making money on that.
That's how this happens. It's, it's our capitalist system
that then it's a cancer metastasizing on our entire
planet that then creates this culture of disinformation.
And then nobody knows what's true anymore.
You got, you turn on this news channel and they're saying this,
(12:05):
you turn on this news channel, they're saying the complete
opposite. And if you're not really paying
attention and immersing yourselfinto one or the other world, you
have no idea which one's correct.
And unfortunately, you have a lot of people who don't know
which one's correct. And you have a lot of people who
are immersing themselves in the incorrect one on purpose and
they just believe everything that's incorrect.
(12:27):
I could talk about just for 75 days, but let's not I I'll end
it there. I think I I think I answered
your question. Not that you've done a good
analysis of that. So on one side is the selfish
interests who are perpetuating the lies or disinformation is
the right term. But I'm curious to know on the
other side where there is the climate alarmism or using the
(12:50):
fear. And there is, Yeah.
And there are some school of thoughts which suggests that
when you use fear to communicateto people, it shuts the part of
the brain that makes them think.And so I'm not a psychologist,
but I'm just curious to know howthe ones who are not using good
storytelling inspiring like the solutions you've mentioned by
(13:12):
just using alarmism, which from a news perspective, it appears
people tend to respond more to negative news than positive.
So I'm curious to know if we cantease out on that side.
Thank you so much for this opening because this is the crux
of it. On the one side, you have the
disinformation. The easy part about
disinformation is it doesn't require research.
(13:34):
It doesn't require facts, it doesn't require sources.
It's just requires opening your mouth and saying whatever the
heck you feel like. Wind kills whales.
That 3 words plants seeds of doubt.
No, no facts, no documents, no data necessary.
Just three. Wind kills whales.
Solar doesn't work at night. 5 words, you know what I mean?
And that's it That's all it takes to to just make everybody
(13:56):
go oh, well, that's no good thisis too expensive, right?
4 words, that's all it takes. So that's on the one side.
The other side, the green tech side has science, which, which,
which requires research and experimentation and nuance and
understanding and explanations with detailed white papers and
(14:17):
all. And, and nobody has time for
that. You know, nobody has the, the
mental capacity for that. So what they try to do is they
try to say, look, maybe you'll understand this if we don't
lower the temperature of this planet here.
Here's the one we hear all the time.
If the global average temperature of this planet
reaches 1.5°C higher than it is now, terrible things are going
(14:37):
to happen. We're going to reach the point
in no return. And it just makes this sound
like we're all going to die because this thing that I don't
understand is going to happen. 1.5°, Give me a break.
That's so if I go outside and it's 70, we use Fahrenheit here.
So if I go outside and it's 70°F, I know that's warm.
(14:58):
If I go outside and it's 71.5°F,that's not dramatically warmer.
What are you talking about? You know, tell me that it's
getting like 50° warmer, and then I'll be alarmed.
Nobody understands what 1.5° means.
It takes understanding, it takesnuance, it takes detail at.
Whereas the disinformation takes4 words. 3 words Yeah, wind
(15:19):
kills whales, right? It's a hoax.
That's all it takes. And now nobody knows what to
believe. But you're 100% right.
Because when you use the fear, if this happens, then we're
going to have more storms, We'regoing to have this, we're going
to have we're all going to die and blah blah blah blah, blah.
People can't handle that. Our nervous systems can't handle
that much stress and fear all the time.
(15:40):
It's so much easier to just believe.
The people who are saying none of that's true don't believe
that stuff. Come over here where where
everything's great and we're growing our capital Federalist
Society on the back of slaves. It's great.
You don't have to be a slave. You can live in a white in a
nice house with a white picket fence.
Don't worry about it. Just do your thing and send your
kids to school and vote for us and just have your job and live
(16:01):
your life and hurry up and die so we can make room for somebody
else. That's the promise of the
disinformation side. It's easier to swallow and you
don't have all the stress of theworld on you because quite
frankly, who wants to hear that?We're all going to die.
I don't want to hear it. I can't handle it.
And this is my business, you know, So that's why I always say
Planet Bonehead is climate change education for kids
(16:24):
without the doom and gloom. The doom and gloom doesn't work.
I'm not here to scare kids. I'm here to empower them.
I'm here to make them understand, to grow up and be
like, hey, we have the solutions.
Let's just use them. Grow up and say we have to use
these solutions instead of saying we can't afford these
solutions. That's not an option.
Does that. Answer your question.
(16:44):
Yeah, yeah, I said. I have to clear.
So one of the examples I always give is when the ozone layer
depletion issue came up, you know, in the last in the
previous century in one way or the other, action was taking,
solutions were found. Yes, it took some time.
So perhaps that ties in with empowering the young generation
(17:06):
to be able to find the solutionsin order to solve that.
So that's great. Looking at the planet Bonehead,
what are the biggest obstacles that schools and partners
usually face, you know, in termsof getting on board with the key
initiatives? Schools.
(17:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Schools and darkness, Yeah.
So I don't deal directly with schools.
It was a, it was an Ave. that was open to me and I was looking
into making it where I was goingto bring Planet Bone it directly
to schools myself. But I didn't want to be in the
business of selling things to schools.
It was never what I wanted to do.
So the way that I am in my, my program is already in schools,
(17:49):
but the way that that is, is I use distributors.
So the distributors do the selling for me and then the
teachers find me through the distributors.
So I can't really speak to that question.
But if I may go back to what yousaid in the run up to that
question about the ozone layer, right, can I speak to?
Sure, absolutely, yes. So, so you said the ozone layer,
because that is a perfect example of what I am talking
(18:12):
about here. Years ago and not many years
ago, I, I remember I was a youngman.
I wasn't even a kid. The the ozone layer had a giant
hole in it and it was letting radiation in.
And we're all going to die. So there was doom and gloom.
But scientists said, OK, yeah, yeah, it's bad, but we can fix
it because we know what's causing it.
The problem is that we're all using these aerosol cans that
are letting out these gases. I think it was Freon or
(18:33):
something. And that's breaking up the
oxygen atoms, thumbs molecules in the ozone and it it's and
it's breaking them up. And then we don't have that
protective layer of ozone. All we have to do is stop using
these cans. We can use some other technology
that doesn't let out this stuff.And all the countries of the
world went, OK, that sounds good.
And they started passing laws that we're going to stop using
(18:55):
these cans and we're going to start using these cans instead.
And everybody went, I don't care.
It's still, I still get my deodorant, you know, I still can
do what I want to do. And everybody was happy.
And we haven't completely fixed the hole yet, but the hole is
shrinking and it's on track to completely close up in like
20-30, forty years, whatever it is.
But the problem's over. The emergency is over.
That is a perfect example of what green tech tried to do with
(19:18):
climate change. Oh, hey guys, the the
temperatures going up. But if you're not, all we have
to do is start using wind power and solar power instead of
burning fossil fuels. The reason the ozone worked and
the this one's not is because there was no big ozone industry
and there was no big aerosol canindustry saying no, aerosol cans
are the wave of the future. And if we don't use aerosol
(19:40):
cans, we we can't afford these other cans.
They're way too expensive and they and they kill whales.
Nobody was saying any of that garbage when it came to this
because nobody cared. Even the can companies were just
like, yeah, we could just take this cartridge out, this
cartridge in, it doesn't matter.Nobody cared.
But the oil companies and the cold people, they can't.
They care. They can't have a switching from
(20:02):
their thing to this other thing.And what has always boggled my
mind is that they could have just said we're not digging for
oil anymore, we're building windmills.
We're not digging for coal anymore, we're building solar.
They could have just done that and kept their monopoly and kept
their capital growth and it would have been fine.
(20:23):
But they didn't and they opened up the market for the people who
are will bring those things. And now that market is crushing
their market, and they're fighting back.
And I think they're going to lose.
But it's got to be this big battle for no reason whatsoever.
There's no reason for this. So the ozone thing is a perfect
example of what happens when youdon't have the capitalist
pressure. Yeah, because nobody cared what
(20:45):
cans were used. And I don't go.
I don't sell to schools. So I don't hear.
Like they push back from the teachers directly.
Oh so right. I mean, it was just out of if
there are any schools personal or a stakeholders maybe
listening today's and maybe in their mind because again, they
might might be just go up. You know, I wonder what the
(21:06):
challenge might be, but clearly you don't operate.
Well, the challenge for the schools would be #1 they, they
can't afford it because the original way that I was bringing
Planet Bone it into schools was through these distributors, as I
said. So think of these distributors
as like Netflix for schools. You got this company and they
can subscribe to it and then they can stream everything in
their library. And then this company, same
(21:27):
thing. And my program is just one of
the programs in their streaming library along with PBS and
National Geographic and Discovery and Disney and stuff
like that. Lots of schools use it, but many
schools can't afford programs like that.
And at the same time, there are,there are plenty of STEM science
video learning programs that do go directly to schools.
(21:47):
And, and they're like, you know,maybe a couple $1000 a year for
one school or a few $100 a year for one classroom.
And so many schools can't affordthat.
They just can't. So they end up going without
and, or even worse, what happensis the teachers end up paying
out of pocket. Now, Speaking of capitalism, I
decided I don't like the idea ofteachers paying out of pocket
(22:08):
for my thing. So, you know, maybe, maybe I
don't deserve my capitalist membership card, but that was my
decision. I didn't want to see teachers
paying out of pocket to use Planet Bonehead.
So I was like, how can I make this free?
So I built Planet bonehead.com as as an option to get Planet
Bonehead. And if you don't have those
distributors and the program is there for free, you can, you can
(22:29):
buy it for $0.00 if you want. And So what I'm doing in,
instead of making the teachers pay for it, I'm looking for a
sponsor to pay for it. And that's that's that's what
I'm doing. We've certainly explored why
climate education is so critical, but what are kids
telling you they want to learn? OK, so kids aren't like telling
me, but there's plenty of research on this and the numbers
(22:50):
are very, very high. They're in like the 70s.
Eighty percents of the percentage of teachers that want
to teach kids about climate change, it's like 75% surveyed
the percentage of children that want to learn about it because
they have anxiety, they hear allthis stuff.
They want to know what's real. They want to learn about it.
The problem that is happening isthat teachers want to teach kids
(23:14):
about this. Kids want to learn about it.
Parents want it taught, but the teachers lack the knowledge and
they lack the resources. So it's not even just that I'm
trying to make it for free. It's also that I'm even just
trying to make it planet bone itbecause there, to my knowledge,
there are no resources teaching what I'm teaching.
There are none. It doesn't exist.
(23:35):
There are some resources that are teaching climate science for
kids. They're, they're explaining what
global warming is and they're explaining the greenhouse effect
and all of that's great, but that's the doom and gloom
science, you know, that's the basic scientific facts.
So now I understand how it works, but I still don't know
what to do about it. I'm teaching the empowerment.
I'm opening their eyes to green tech industries that they don't
(23:59):
even know exists. The teachers don't know it
exists. The kids don't know it exists.
Amazing careers in science, in engineering, in the trades that
are just waiting for them, hungry for them.
These these people are desperatefor workforce development
programs to prepare kids for careers in their fields, but
kids just aren't learning about it because nobody knows about
(24:21):
it. There are no resources to teach
about it. So I'm making one.
I'm making one as quickly and aswell as I can.
Even most of the STEM things outthere have climate videos or a
climate unit or something like that, but they touch on the
surface. I'm trying to teach them, look,
this is this specific problem and these are specific green
(24:41):
technologies that we have today,not things we're designing, not
things we might have in five, 1020 years, things that we have
today that it works. The company sells it.
You know what I mean? Like it's being used.
It's just not being used at scale, right?
That's the problem. And that's kids getting those
research is always good opportunity because it's more a
(25:02):
larger scale done on individual base.
That's always useful. So what's mission possible and
how are you working toward a 100million kids school by 2033?
Well mission possible so all right so just to understand the
background here, the the bone heads are my characters and the
bone heads are like these super spies that work out of hope
(25:24):
headquarters help our planet Earth and they're always
fighting the evil JP Rothbone. This this mega corporate tycoon
guy who he's always looking to make money It's got anything
that he does has 2 rules. It has to make him a lot of
money and it has to be bad for the planet.
Those are the 2 rules. Even so we're always offering
him ways to make the same amountof money in a way that's good
(25:44):
for the planet. And he's always like, no, we're
not doing that, We're doing thisone.
And and that's like the I'm trying to explain how the world
works to kids without, you know,being an ogre and and getting
all grumpy so, so. So.
So that's, that's the, that's the basic thing and, and the spy
theme I was pulling into the working with green tech.
(26:05):
So, you know, I use Mission Impossible as sort of A and
James Bond and things like that.I use tropes from those things
in the cartoons. So I thought it's not Mission
Impossible, it's mission possible.
And so in the real world, I'm working with green tech
companies on a mission possible program where I want to work
with green tech companies to create videos for the Think Like
(26:26):
Engineers segment of the programabout their specific green
technology. If I'm doing something about if
I have a unit about solar energyor I have a unit about recycling
or I have a unit about whatever,and you have a piece of green
technology that fits in that unit, I want to make a video
about it and put it in the in the unit.
Hey kids, here's a thing that's working right now to solve all
(26:46):
the problems we've been talking about today.
This company makes this thing, you know, and then I explain how
it works and I explain why it works and I explain why we need
it and I explain how it's solving the problem.
And then I invite the kids to design their own version of it.
How would you make this better? How would you make it bigger?
How would you make it? Whatever you know?
(27:07):
And that becomes the Lesson planthat the teachers can then do.
They they can design their own prototypes.
They could build them, They could demonstrate them whatever
the teacher wants to do. And so Mission Possible is
inviting green tech companies tocome work with me to make this
content. That's what that is.
How were you able to simplify those complex topics, carbon
(27:27):
tech and ocean acidity into whatan 8 year old can understand and
act on? Now I know there are AI tools
perhaps, but I'm on your journey.
How you were able to overcome those?
Well, if overcome the challengesor you were able to create a
breakthrough. Yeah, so I do this on my own.
(27:51):
I used to have other people thatworked with me on it.
I had, I used to have a partner that did the research for the
educational parts, but she left the company about even 12 years
ago. For a while, I wasn't making new
units because I didn't know, I didn't understand the needs of
the school for the educational parts.
I was the guy who did the video editing and the animation and
the storytelling and the fun things, you know.
(28:13):
But then I started to learn about green technology and I,
and I realized because I do havean engineering background, I
went to school, school for engineering and I went to school
for art. So I, I'm like one of those left
brain, right brain people. I can, I can be creative and
analytical at the same time. And a lot of my clients in
marketing and design have alwaysbeen engineering companies
because I'm good at taking theirvery complex things and
(28:34):
explaining them to their lay audience.
And so when I started talking togreen tech people about six or
seven years ago, I started to realize that they had all those
problems, that they had solutions that nobody
understood. They had solutions that nobody
knew about. Green tech is saving the world,
but nobody knows about it. That's another one of my Planet
Bonehead tag lines. So I was like, I can explain
(28:55):
this and I can explain it to kids now.
Plant opponent is for grades three to five.
So they're like 8 to 1112 years old.
And which is perfect for me because with the cartoon part,
you know, I, it's like, it's whoI want to speak to because they
haven't been molded yet to, to be in the, I can't camp.
They're still in the, I can campand that's where I want to
(29:17):
connect with them. But so now I realize that I can
do it. What I needed to do is figure
out how to take what green Tech is doing and apply it to the
standards that are required for the curriculum in the classroom.
Because if a teacher can't pointto the standards that they're
using, then they can't use the program, no matter how good it
is. It has to, they have to know
(29:37):
that I'm teaching this standard.It fits in the curriculum.
This way, they have to be able to write their lesson plans in a
way that they can justify it to the administration or to their
state or their county or whoever, whatever they answer
to. So for that, I use a lot of AI
and research. The AI helps me give me the
ideas and then I do my own research to make sure that the
AI got it right. Because I don't.
(29:58):
You can't just believe whatever AI said.
But doing the research from scratch was kind of hard because
I didn't know where to start. So the AI kind of gives me a
chat sheet, BT gives me a starting point.
I can say, listen, I want to teach it about this.
This is the green technology I want to talk to you about.
Talk with them about how does this fit into science standards
for grades three to five? And it'll tell me, and now I
(30:18):
know I've got things. Now I can go and I can look that
up and I could be like, Yep, that's right, that's right,
that's right. And so far, it's actually been
right all the time with this. It's very good at this.
And so it's been helping me. And then it helps me to come up
with ideas for the lesson plans.So, you know, I'm a smart guy,
but I can't come up with every idea it all by myself.
So in lieu of a team of people doing this, I have my chat CPT
(30:42):
partner and we do it together and then I have Google to make
sure that it's correct. So that's that's, that's how I
do it. Yeah, that's impressive.
I think I've got that experiencewith the AI and chat CPT where
it's an augmenting tool. It's probably 6070% there, and
it needs that human expertise tobe able to guide it at.
(31:04):
Again, 5070% is a lot, you know,if we're starting from scratch.
No, absolutely. And personally, being able to
identify where the limitations are takes time and finding where
those limitations are. So that's good.
What makes Humor, Laughter, the animation tools so effective for
education and empowerment? The humor part I think is
(31:26):
essential because if you just put on a documentary about some
green technology, most of the kids will check out.
I'm not into science. I'm not good at this, you know,
and you're, you're, you're goingto miss them.
We found that the, the thing that the kids connect with the
most are the characters, the cartoon characters.
(31:47):
So I create the characters to have different personalities.
I create Bonehead to be the hero, but he bungles the job a
lot. He is literally a bonehead, you
know, he's not a perfect hero. And I have Wishbone, who is the
female counterpart to Bonehead. She believes she has these
superpowers, but she doesn't. So she's always trying to use
(32:08):
her superpowers to save the day.But really she's just making a
lot of noise. But she thinks that her
superpowers save the, the, the, the day.
You know, I have Marrow, anotherfemale character who is the
highly intelligent one who explains the scientific parts.
And it was very important to me to make her female because
there, there are far too few girls in STEM.
(32:29):
And I wanted to present a femalecharacter that had all the
answers. That was the smart one that knew
the science part. And then I have T-bone who he
didn't start this way and and I even just said he I've
transitioned T-bone to where I'musing they them to explain
T-bone. I wanted to bring an LGBTQ
character into planet bone it without being in your face about
(32:52):
it. I'm never going to say T-bone's
gay. I mean, this is for little kids,
you know, but I figured using they them pronouns in future
units is going to be enough of an indication.
I always had it in my head that T-bone, I was like, like a trans
character. And it's very important to me to
be inclusive. I want, I wanted to figure out
how to make it so that every kidcan see themselves in the
(33:16):
boneheads. You know, that's hard to do.
And I'm not perfect at it. I know I failed.
And somebody will say, what about these people?
And I'd be like, I didn't even think about them.
I'm sorry, you know, But my intention is to make it so that
every child can see themselves, no matter how they identify
themselves, whether it's by their skin color or race or by
(33:38):
their sexuality or gender. Sexuality is interesting to say
with little kids. I don't mean sexual, but I mean,
you know, their gender or even their confusion, you know,
because a lot of a lot of these kids don't feel safe in the
world. And I want Planet Bonehead to be
a place where they feel safe. That's what's important to me.
So the characters pull a lot of heavy duty.
(33:58):
They do that part form the otherpart they do is they're just fun
to watch and it's silly and it gets their attention.
And the other part that they do is that they touch upon the
topic where the kids understand.We're going to start talking
about recycling. We're going to start talking
about why this is important. We're going to start talking
about why this ocean plastic is killing sea turtles.
We're going to start talking about that.
But we haven't gotten into anything that's really scary yet
(34:19):
or really sciency where I'm going to be like, Oh my God, I'm
I'm exhausted from this. The characters pull all of that
heavy duty and then the documentary parts come into
play. So that's that's why they're
important. Yeah, that's looks like you've
had a good thought of the different rules.
And this has been evolving, by the way, over like 1520 years.
(34:40):
Like I, I didn't sit down and design everything in one shot.
Like I was just like, we should make it be this.
And then I added this and then the whole thing with T-bone and
the pronouns is relatively new. I have cartoons made that I
didn't include that because I'd never thought of it before, but
I thought of it now. So it will be for future
cartoons. But yeah, it and it's constantly
evolving, you know, so there's that.
(35:02):
OK. What is a great example of a
founder who turned their tech into a kid powered message?
I'll tell you my favorite one. There's a company in the UK
called Hughes Energy and they have technology which is not
even all that amazing. It's technology from the 1800s,
It's Jules Verne stuff. It's what's called an autoclave.
(35:25):
It's a giant metal tube. That's all that it is.
And you can put steam into it and apply high pressure and
steam and temperature. I'm sorry, yes, pressure and
temperature and steam into this tube.
And what you do is you take garbage, you just scoop it right
out of a landfill and you put itinside this tube.
You don't have to sort it or do anything to it.
You just scoop it out of the landfill, throw it in this tube,
(35:47):
shut the door, turn it on, and the steam and the pressure and
the temperature, just push on itand push on it and push on it
for one hour. And after one hour, all of that
garbage has been transformed into this fibrous material.
It's all this uniform fibrous material.
I don't understand how this works, but it does.
And that material is then used to create alternatives for coal,
(36:12):
oil and wood chips. There are processes to turn it
into any of those three things. And then so instead of burning
coal, you burn the coal that youmade from this fiber and it
burns clean. Instead of using oil, you make
oil out of this fiber and you use that and it burns clean.
And same with the wood chips. So we're killing two birds with
one stone stone here. We're solving 2 incredibly
(36:35):
important problems. We have all the greenhouse gas
emissions, the methane, the CO2,and not to mention the smell and
just the space being wasted in the water, the garbage seeping
into the water from the landfills because despite our
recycling efforts, we have not slowed down our garbage creation
(36:56):
on this planet. We have more garbage every year
than the year before. So now we can take all that
garbage and turn it into fuel through a process that takes an
hour and doesn't create any emissions in the process.
And then it turns that into a fuel we can use where now we
don't even have to. We don't even have to use solar
or wind. We can still use oil and coal,
(37:16):
but we don't have to dig it out of the ground.
We can make it from this stuff and now it'll burn clean.
This is solving all the problem.This one company could literally
solve climate change all by themselves.
So it just boggles my mind that I've known about this for years
and we still aren't doing it. Why?
Because it's not culturally accepted and that's what I'm
trying to solve with Platiponent.
Now that's impressive. So what is your final thought
(37:40):
for green tech, CE OS or funderslistening right now?
What is your final thought? For Green tech CE OS, I want to
work with you to make videos about your projects.
I know that a lot of green tech CE OS don't have a lot of
funding, so I'm trying to figureout ways to do that economically
for them. I can't always do it for free,
(38:01):
but the problem that I'm having is that because they can't pay
me to do it, I end up not makingthese videos.
And that's not sitting well withme either.
So I'm trying to figure out how to do this for free for green
tech too. And the way that I came up with
was to get a sponsor, and I meanone sponsor.
Now here's my pitch to that. If I can have two minutes to do
this, we do not have a technology problem.
(38:22):
We do not have a financing problem.
We have a cultural crisis. People just don't believe in
this. They don't believe in climate
change. They believe it's a hoax.
They don't believe that green text can solve solve the
problem. They believe that it's too
expensive or it's too dangerous,or it's too this or it's too
that. They just don't believe it.
We have to change that narrative.
(38:42):
And the only way to do that, youcan't do it by making better
technology. All the technology exists.
We've got enough technology to solve climate change. 15
technologies problem. You can't throw more money at a
Series A or a series B funding or a series C or a series,
whatever. It doesn't matter.
All the funding in the world, there are countless green tech
companies that have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars
(39:04):
in funding and then failed. And they didn't fail because
their tech didn't work. They failed because nobody
accepted it, nobody embraced it,and it did not scale.
That's why every single time, the reason is because we don't
have the education structure in this world, in this country, my
country, your country, any country, not in Africa, not in
Asia, not in Europe, not in Australia, not in North or South
(39:27):
America. It does not exist.
We don't have the education infrastructure to combat the
disinformation. The disinformation machine is
strong and it has decades of momentum.
And I'm one guy trying to do this with my dogs in the back,
trying to make a program to teach kids to counter this
disinformation machine. So what I decided to do is say,
(39:47):
hey, somebody, if you want to make a name for yourself,
instead of putting your name on the next green tech thing that's
going to fail or the next finance capitalist investment
company that's investing in thisamazing portfolio of green tech
things that aren't culturally sustainable, Put your name on
this. I have spot for one sponsor
(40:08):
want. I'm not I don't have a gold
level and silver level and bronze level.
I don't want to be in the sponsor selling business.
I want one person or company to stand up and say I want to put
my name on that planet. Bonehead brought to you by.
This guy, I don't care or this girl or this company, I don't
care who it is all right, but I don't be a Nazi.
But so there's one slot and whenI find that slot, that's it.
(40:29):
I'm done looking. I'm not looking anymore.
You missed it. So that's my pitch is call me,
connect with me on LinkedIn and let's be that person and, and,
and help me do this because we can do this.
Education is always the key to fixing things.
It always has been throughout human history.
That's why Nazis and fascists want to burn books.
(40:49):
That's the first thing they wantto do is burn the books.
Why? Because education is the key to
combating that. Education is the key to
combating this. But the disinformation machine
is very powerful. But kids don't listen to the
disinformation machine. They listen to cartoons.
Huge thank you to Bobby for yourtime and the incredible insights
that you've shared on the various aspect and the
(41:11):
opportunities it brings. If listeners like the work or
maybe the sponsor is listen, where can they find your work?
Well, you can see Planet Bonehead for yourself at
planetbonehead.com, just as it sounds.
The best way to connect with me personally is on LinkedIn.
So that's linkedin.com/in/bobby Donahue, just as it's spelled
right there. And, and that's me.
(41:32):
So look me up on there. Connect with me.
I'm open to connections. You don't have to just follow
me. You can connect and, and let's
talk. Let's, let's do I.
I'm already doing this. By the way, Plantaponet isn't an
idea. It's already in 1000 schools,
100,000 teachers use it. It's been used by three million
kids since 2011 in in 86 countries.
It's a thing. I just need to grow it.
(41:54):
I just need to reach 30 million kids, 100 million kids.
And I can't do that all by myself.
I need, I need somebody to step up and say here's some funding
to go do that. Just go do it.
That's impressive. That person exists, I just need
to find them. And hopefully through this week
and visibility, the message can be spread out there.
Thank you once again. Thank you.
(42:15):
I appreciate it so much. You know, thank you so much.
Comes.
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