August 19, 2025 • 77 mins
Back on Earth Day in April 2024, we started our journey of the Americas with friend of the podcast, legendary best-selling author, Paul Hawken. It was just ahead of the release of his latest book, Carbon: The Book of Life. So we recorded a podcast in his incredible garden about it (along with some other life story stuff).
Later we thought it could be good to record a pod just walking and talking around the steeply sloped streets of his local neighbourhood, among the redwoods - see what this tallest of tree species had to say too. Alas, with both our travels at the time, we didn’t get to it. But having managed to return to northern California a few weeks ago, ahead of flying back to Australia, we did.
And as it happens, Paul’s next book is in full flow. Working title? 'Upstream: Why the climate movement failed and where to from here'. Given this is by the bloke who compiled best-selling volumes Drawdown and Regeneration, this seemed as good a place to start as any - after the redwoods introduce themselves. And after arriving at a powerful analogy for our times, we converge at the end on, well, the wisdom of Dolly Parton.
Recorded 26 July 2025.
Title slide photo by Olivia Cheng.
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Music:
The River, by Peter Cavallo (sourced on Artlist).
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.
Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (sourced from Artlist).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Paul (00:01):
And do you know where we get all these plants?
We get them by the side of theroad.
Really, yeah, yeah.
AJ (00:07):
The wild verges.
Paul (00:09):
Yeah, we didn't buy any of them.
AJ (00:10):
Yeah, G'day Anthony James here for The RegenNarration,
your independent,listener-supported podcast
exploring how people areregenerating the systems and
stories we live by.
Paul (00:22):
Not too close.
Yeah, you'll have something tosay.
AJ (00:25):
That's right, and we've got top secret discussions.
Paul (00:29):
It's much too young to hear this stuff.
AJ (00:33):
Back on Earth Day in April 2024, we started our journey of
the Americas with friend of thepodcast, legendary best-selling
author Paul Hawken.
It was just ahead of therelease of his latest book,
carbon, the Book of Life, so werecorded a podcast in his
incredible garden about it.
Later we thought it could begood to record a pod just
(00:59):
walking and talking around thesteeply sloped streets of his
local neighbourhood among theredwoods.
See what this tallest of treespecies had to say too.
Alas, with both our travels atthe time, we didn't get to it.
But, having managed to returnto Northern California a few
weeks ago ahead of flying backto Australia, we did on our very
(01:20):
last day at Paul's place and,as it happens, paul's next book
is in full flow Working titleUpstream why the climate
movement failed and where to.
From here, given this is by thebloke who compiled best-selling
volumes, drawdown andRegeneration.
That seemed as good a place tostart as any after the Redwoods
(01:43):
introduced themselves and later,after arriving at a powerful
analogy for the times, weconverge at the end.
Well, on the wisdom of DollyParton Well, mate, we're doing
it.
Yeah, we're walking.
This is great, yeah.
Paul (01:59):
I'm glad you're in my forest.
AJ (02:01):
Yeah, and I tell you, leaving this today, I'm just
soaking in every smell of itevery smell of it, every sound
of it.
Paul (02:11):
A redwood forest is not a typical forest in the sense that
typical forests are a hotbed oflife, you know, because even
non-deciduous but lots ofdeciduous trees and seeds and
things for bark insects to eat,birds to eat them, sounds of the
(02:35):
birds, and redwood forests areunusually quiet because the bark
of the redwood is inedible toany insect.
Is that right?
Yeah, and so that's why itlasts so long.
Right, it's used because it'sresistant to infestation and rot
, but you don't hear any birds.
AJ (02:55):
No, and we were wondering why that was true.
Yeah, no, yeah, like when wewere up north in the really big
stands that were left, that areleft, and it was so quiet and we
got where no people were and itwas so quiet.
Right, it was delicious, but itmade us wonder yeah, it's like
a beautiful tomb in a way yeah.
Paul (03:17):
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, so what made themimpervious insects made them
extremely valuable to settlerswho cut almost all the redwoods
down, you know, in California.
Yeah, like 95% on top yeah yeah, for housing primarily, but
also for any use where it neededto be resistant to insects, rot
(03:41):
or water.
So we're walking by a fenceright here and it's redwood.
AJ (03:49):
Yeah.
Paul (03:50):
So it goes on for several hundred feet.
AJ (03:54):
It's unusual.
It's not a common sight to havethat sort of wall up here.
Paul (03:58):
Actually it's against the city regs, Is that right?
Yeah, all the neighbors aretalking about it.
AJ (04:02):
Oh, there we go.
You can't do that here it'sunusual, it looks weird in that
sense.
Paul (04:09):
But there are a lot of animals here in Marin County.
I mean, it's not like I'm insome Indian desert or something
like that, I'm in the Shropshirehawks and red tails and gosh
hummingbirds.
Of course I have the garden too, too, but hummingbirds and the
robins come in swoop in everyspring and, you know, sprinkle
(04:30):
the whole place with music, yeah, and song.
And then there's uh gray foxwhich actually slept in our
living room during COVID.
There's something about COVIDthat it seemed like animals.
I read about even kangaroos,you know, in Adelaide and going
(04:50):
down the main street, Well ithappened here too.
Animals just sort of came out ofthe woodwork, who were always
here, but you didn't really seethem, and they just felt I don't
know.
It's like, oh hi, I'm yourneighbor and we leave the door
open this summer the back dooron the deck and we turn the
(05:12):
light on.
And there was a fox Two of them, wow, yeah, just sleeping Like
hey.
AJ (05:17):
That's cool.
Paul (05:18):
Why don't you turn the light on Like, hey, they get up
and then sort of go out, isn'tthat awesome?
Okay, if you're going to botherus, I They'd get up and then
sort of go out and go like Isn'tthat awesome.
Okay, if you're going to botherus.
I mean, it was so cute, it wasso charming, you know, and now
it is said or it has beenreported, there's about a
120-pound black bear in thisneighborhood.
(05:40):
Really, yeah, and obviously not, obviously, but not
understandably.
Uh, some people complained, youknow, out of fear, of course,
because it was tearing upgarbage cans, you know, for
looking for food, what else?
And the county, to itseverlasting credit, said because
(06:03):
people ask what are you goingto do?
And they said nothing.
Oh God, yeah, thank God she'slike nothing.
And so when I'm driving home oreven walking, so often you'll
see a garbage can is justshredded, not the can itself,
but everything that's in it, yougo oh, she or he, I don't know
(06:29):
what sex it is, but it's hereAnyway.
It's a lovely place to live,obviously, and it also makes me
reflect on the climate movement.
We've been talking about that,but, as you know, the subtitle
of the book I'm writing rightnow is why the Climate Movement
Failed, which sounds like I'mnegating the activity and
(06:54):
actions and insights that everyone of your listeners has, and
that's not what I'm saying.
Not at all.
When I'm talking about theclimate movement, I'm really
talking about the narrative thatis used and goes around and is
repeated endlessly, both on thenews and social media and
(07:19):
articles and NGOs and so know,and there's a singularity about
the narrative that is completelythe opposite of what you and I
are seeing right now.
We're not seeing one thing thatrepeats itself.
We're seeing extraordinarydiversity, even if we don't know
(07:40):
it.
Or hear the bird sounds andidentify them.
Or you know, look in thestreams and rivers.
You know, uh, for the salmoncome in, uh, our eyes are
telling the truth, which is findone thing that is repetitious
yeah you can't.
And it is also a narrative, butit is a narrative from whence
(08:06):
both solutions and brilliance,insight emerge.
This is where it comes from.
It doesn't come from librariesand books.
This is where it comes from inall of history.
And so when we think of theclimate movement, what we're
thinking about or not we'rethinking about, what we hear is
(08:28):
you know, fight, tackle, combat,climate change, climate crisis
you know, all these different uhvariations on, there's a thing
that we have to remedy change,alter, fight, you know, and in
that process, unknowingly orwithout necessarily
(08:50):
intentionally, we bother thenatural world, we just other.
It's like something else outthere somewhere and we've gotta
do something about it, otherwisewe're screwed.
And that singularity is theopposite of what the living
world tells us, teaches us,what's in our bodies, too.
You know.
(09:10):
The extraordinary complexityand beauty of everything that's
in nature is disembodied ordistanced in the climate
narrative.
But people say, oh, we've gotto save nature, save the earth,
you know, and talk about theliving world as nature Again, as
if, well, that's nature and wehave to really be careful and do
(09:34):
something about it.
Well, yes, of course, but thenwho are you?
If that's nature, who are you?
I mean it's easy to say, oh, weare all nature and so forth,
hello, but it's deeper than that.
I think it's like there's athreshold.
(09:55):
I think possible for everyone,easy for a child, because
they've never seen the thresholdor created the threshold or
been taught the threshold.
Seen the threshold, yeah, orcreated the threshold or been
taught the threshold, but athreshold as adults.
That is about emergence, likethat moment or time or
experience where you realizethis is me, not in an egoistic
(10:19):
sense, but this is me as much asany other me I've ever imagined
, and then you look at it withnew eyes, you know, and that is
the source of real remediation,of transforming the world that
we live in today, which is sodestructive and so harmful and
(10:43):
so degrading to animals, tobirds, to nature, to ourselves,
to children, you name it.
AJ (10:55):
We are harming it Even that word jumps out at me the
degrading bit, Because thenyou've got a hint at some of the
language and some of themeaning that what about the
opposite of degrading?
What would that look like?
Paul (11:10):
revitalize, regenerate yeah, I mean, these words are
coming into prominence right nowespecially regenerate they are
yeah yeah, yet.
AJ (11:17):
Yet you're seeing it still embody the same narrative to a
large extent.
So that's interesting.
The language shifts, the wordsare sort of being gravitated to,
but where is the meaning?
Paul (11:30):
Well, where is the consciousness that uses the?
AJ (11:33):
words.
Paul (11:33):
I mean you think of Charlie Massey or the Haggardys
and so forth and say, oh, you'reregenerative farmers.
Well, yeah, but the experienceof being them, those farmers,
many, many, many others, is notone like.
I'm gonna wake up this morning,go regenerate, I mean, you know
it's like thank you for thepraise, you know, but what?
(11:56):
I'm gonna go outside and I'mgonna look, see, feel, walk,
touch, look at texture of thesoil, you know.
Look at who's showing up interms of wildlife, the call of
the reed warbler, you know, yeahcharlie massey's uh book title
which is so exquisite, it wasn't.
I'm gonna save the world, or howfarmers can save the world,
(12:16):
even right, yeah or how to makebetter soil, yes, and out of
that comes, you know, obviously,insight and practices.
That is a relationship with,again in this case you know,
soil and everything that dwellsupon and within and under it.
So again, the language keepssort of slipping into a kind of
(12:46):
simplicity or oversimplification.
And then that's why I go backto the climate narrative.
The climate narrative is a vastoversimplification on where we
are and what to do about it.
And out of that you get theseyeah, every so often there's a
(13:16):
car, yeah, on this road, hey, hi, of where we are.
And I want to, I don't want tocall it a problem, just like
where are we?
Well, let's talk about that.
That's a really goodconversation to have.
But the reason I called thetitle the book is upstream is
like we're still trying to solveproblems downstream.
And they're problems, for sure,you know, but, and they need
(13:38):
tending, they need remediation,all that sort of stuff, but
we're not going upstream tocause.
And if you don't look at cause,then the cures are simply
symptomatic and our wholemedical system is about
downstream.
Really.
That's why the pharmaceuticalbusiness is huge.
(14:01):
20% of our economy is in theUnited States.
You know, it's the medicalpharmaceutical industry.
It's over 20%.
And well, why is everybody sick?
And there's that Bishop Tutu'shomily, which he repeated many
times.
I kind of rephrased it slightly.
But you know, we keep pullingpeople out of the river and
(14:27):
instead we should go upstreamand find out who's throwing them
in.
And we're throwing ourselves inthe river, you know, by
thinking and seeing the worldthe way we do.
AJ (14:35):
Well, you had an acute representation of this hay the
other day.
You told me about the 1.7billion dollars just being
invested in the.
You can describe it.
Yeah, this is like, but this isjust indicative too, right,
it's not the only one.
Paul (14:51):
Yeah, I mean this was 1.7 billion from Microsoft.
They do have a lot of money.
That's in a company that'sgoing to take food, waste and
literally poop, okay, okay fromsewage systems and liquefy it
all and bury it 5 000 feet underthe earth.
(15:13):
That's a, that's a carbonsolution.
In other words, we're going totake this carbon that the living
world is producingphotosynthesis, you know, it's
eating sunlight all day long youknow producing sugars in this
carbon dioxide when they arebreak down and digested or
(15:34):
whatever and then getting rid ofit like well, can we go
upstream and say, well, why dowe, you know, sequester carbon
in the first place?
Why we need to do it actively?
It happens automatically ofcourse.
Well, it's because we're burningthe lights out in terms of
(15:55):
fossil fuels and coal gas.
But that's upstream, Like well,why and to what end?
And we have to be realistic inthe sense that, well, why and to
what end.
And we have to be realistic inthe sense that what I mean,
human beings, for as long as wehave any history record
understanding, anthropologicallyor otherwise, have always
(16:20):
sought the most intense orconcentrated form of energy at
the lowest price.
Yes, no exception.
So we're doing that today, youknow.
I mean I mean coal, gas and oil, right?
AJ (16:36):
and that you can.
You can then extrapolate.
Well, I extrapolate two thingsfrom that.
I go okay, we're not evil, thisis just the way we've always
been.
No, it's wired, and it's whyit's hard to change.
Yeah and then b.
It's why we are still growingemissions.
It's why, even with renewablescoming on, they're more
(16:56):
additional than replacement.
And is that just our fate then?
Paul?
Paul (17:02):
Well, so far.
Yeah, I mean that's what we'redoing.
AJ (17:12):
We're clearly capable of well, at least in thought,
transcending it.
And in part, like there's apart of humanity that is
transcending it or attempting to, so it's in us Of course.
But not as a whole narrative,not as a larger narrative.
Paul (17:24):
So it's in us, but not as a whole narrative, not as a
larger narrative.
Well, that's also part of, Ithink, the delusion of the
climate movement is that we'rein an energy transition.
I mean that is used from theWorld Economic Forum, down to
the IEA, down to the World Bank,down to the Conference of the
Parties, you know COP, etc.
And you say no, not really, andmaybe we will at some point.
(17:52):
But right now, as you just said, I mean the incremental energy
from solar panels and windturbines has barely kept up with
the growth of energyconsumption.
So we are using differentenergy to grow with, you know,
grow energy consumption, but wehaven't touched the amount of
(18:13):
energy we actually combust andconsume on an annual basis.
Haven't touched it after 20years of solar becoming more
practical, more affordable, moreavailable, and it is, I mean no
question about that.
But even if tomorrow we couldmore affordable, more available
and it is, I don't have aquestion about that.
But even if tomorrow we could,you know, transform all
electrical use to solar and wind, that's 19% of the energy we
(18:35):
use.
What about the other 81%?
That's coal, gas and oil.
And we're walking on a road,glad we have it.
How do you make this road withelectricity.
It's crushed rock, it's asphalt, it's tar Slightly different,
(18:59):
and it's laid down with bigtrucks, steamrolled and made to
last for decades.
Well, okay, how do you do that?
With electricity you can't.
And so there's a greatenthusiasm about the conversion
from, obviously, fossil fuels toelectric cars, evs.
Yeah, understandably, we have amuch lower footprint in terms
(19:22):
of their daily consumption ofenergy.
But they're also talking aboutthere being 3 billion cars in
2050, they being the IEA and allthese other economic
organizations project growthgoing to the future.
Well, where are the cars goingto drive?
What roads are these?
(19:43):
And the prediction is that by2050, new highways will circle
the earth 600 times For our EVs.
AJ (19:57):
This is and little of where they're going to park.
Paul (19:59):
Yeah.
AJ (20:00):
This is the sort of thing that, again, has been talked
about for decades, yeah, yeah,this is the sort of thing that,
again, has been talked about fordecades, yeah.
Yet on we go, which seems tocome back to that predisposition
, or just habit, over a long,you know, a couple hundred
thousand years, of just takingwhat you can in energy
availability, and we justhaven't come up against this
(20:21):
sort of conceptual need, theseleaps that we're being asked to
make now.
We haven't.
Paul (20:29):
Yeah, and again I mean, that's the tesla going by us.
I'm not criticizing theconversion to evs at all.
What I'm saying is what's thethinking here about the cause?
And the cause is incredibleindustrial growth and
consumption fed by the largestextractive industry in the world
(20:51):
, google.
It's taking every bit ofinformation you deposit on the
web that it can get its hands onand selling it to people who
are advertising, creating socialmedia.
I mean targeting you, makingsure your life is satisfactory
(21:12):
and less.
Yes, you get you know some fastfashion from Shane in China.
You know and look like.
AJ (21:18):
All that EV that just passed us.
Paul (21:19):
Yeah, the cool girls in school.
AJ (21:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Paul (21:22):
You know, frumpy, I mean, this is where we have to go,
which is what's the anxiety, theinsecurity, the vast
disconnection that infiltratesour life, that makes us almost
reflexively go to consumption?
You know, and again, I knowI've listened to all your
(21:42):
podcasts.
I know I'm not talking to yourlisteners, okay, I've listened
to all your podcasts.
I know I'm not talking to yourlisteners, okay, and so I'm not
trying to hello, this is not ademonstration or critique or
anything like that.
No, I'm just looking at thewhole, at the thing the so
called climate movement is whatI'm using and saying we failed
(22:04):
we failed, so this is the nextbit of your subtitle.
AJ (22:07):
There's more, there's a second half to your subtitle.
Paul (22:09):
Yeah, it's like where to go from here yeah, and I look at
I again think a lot of yourlisteners are going there, have
gone there or are there.
So again, I want to make surethat they don't think I'm being
sort of you know a jerk how tosuck eggs, as we say.
Yeah, exactly, not at all, youknow, but I jerk how to suck
eggs, as we say, yeah, how tosuck eggs?
Yeah, not at all, you know.
But I'm looking at the climatenarratives of the climate
(22:29):
establishment, you know, andit's like the conference of the
parties, you know.
It's like somehow we have cometo believe, or came to believe
that if we got all theseimportant quote-unquote people
together from as many countriesas possible, because I've just
looked up this expanse of grassleading into a house and the
(22:51):
goats.
AJ (22:52):
What I thought were sheep.
Oh, they're sheep, but they'renot real.
They're statues on lawn that'sbeen mowed.
There's opportunity in that.
Isn't there A lot about realsheep?
Because there's grass left.
So what do you think the sheepdo?
Well, that's it.
What are they doing?
I think about this a lot.
Right, because I I see it a lot.
The representations of ourinnate connection, ongoing still
(23:15):
, with the living world, and Imean, you may be even longing
for it, but certainly connection, yeah, that you see manifest in
ways like that where we stillwant it to be present.
Even though it's not Pristine,it does say something.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, what ifyou did have animals on that
grass, not?
Paul (23:33):
just statues which you should have.
AJ (23:35):
Yeah, well, exactly, why not ?
Paul (23:36):
We're in a fire-prone region.
AJ (23:39):
All the more, yeah, but anyway, sorry to interrupt.
We're going into another COPsoon enough, aren't?
Paul (23:45):
we yeah, conference of the Party.
And then you have all theseimportant people and delegates.
In the blue zone there's agreen zone where all the NGOs
are.
You know you separate them.
Yes, the activists you overthere.
AJ (23:55):
Yes.
Paul (23:56):
You know, the people who have been elected and are not
going to be re-elected if theyactually do everything the cop
wants to do are in this zone whokind of argue and fight and
stay up all night, you know,trying to pass these resolutions
that mean nothing, becausesince cop 15 in paris and so
forth, you know, nothing hasreally changed.
(24:18):
The only two countries thathave met the guidelines, uh, are
britain and costa Costa Rica,and that's because they have so
many forests, not because theydid anything special, but the
point being is that theunderlying belief and this is
part of the climate movement isthat it has to be solved
top-down.
We have to get the top together,or at least the representatives
(24:41):
, and work us out.
Well, work what out, if I mayask yeah.
Is it energy source?
You know?
What are you burning?
What are you consuming?
Interesting?
Are you going to set targets?
Great, nothing wrong with thetarget, but who are you?
(25:02):
You don't set targets forindividuals.
You don't set targets forcountries.
You don't set targets forcountries.
There's not a country in theworld, hardly, that actually
pays attention to the targets.
They try to adhere to the goals,for sure, but domestic politics
and votes, you know, which areusually quadrennial, if not
every two years, you know,overrule anything that could
(25:24):
come out of that, because peoplewant to be re-elected.
So you're taking people whowant to be re-elected to make
decisions that are far-reachingand to adopt practices that most
people, especially the 5billion people who need more
energy, frankly, you know, notless, to adopt, and so, and then
(25:45):
we look forward to that every.
Well, I don't know if we lookforward to it, but, but in other
words, we think, well, what'sgoing to happen?
You know.
Well, this one, you know, Imean, it's going to be different
.
Well, it'll be different, allright, but it won't be
intelligent in terms of howchange arises.
And it's not that change arisesfrom the bottom.
(26:06):
I'm not saying it doesn't comefrom the top, but that idea that
there's a top and a bottom isactually mistaken, because in
our forest here, where's the top, where's the bottom?
That's not how the living worldfunctions, and it's vastly
interconnected, complexrelationships that are beyond
(26:29):
mysterious, of which we knowvery little and intuitively.
Indigenous cultures who livedon the same land for hundreds
and thousands of years had muchbetter sense of what was going
on in the living world thanWestern scientists, because they
lived there and they dependedon knowing the living world,
(26:52):
without which they would die.
AJ (26:53):
Well, this is interesting because that was a very clear
dynamic.
Then it's still the dynamic.
It still is, but it's not clearto us that we are so dependent
on this ability to observe andknow where you are, even in a
body, as we were talking aboutthe other day.
Let alone on land, yeah, andthis comes to our
(27:16):
conceptualization then, andnarrative.
This is why, well, it's alwaysfelt important to me, but I
guess it's interesting lookingat you saying even the people
like that would listen to me onthis podcast, who are doing
awesome stuff in one respect oranother yeah, you know, one
thing that's often been said ishow much do we need to
(27:37):
understand what we're doing, aslong as it's a good thing.
But it sounds like you're saying, actually we really do need to
understand and to speak the alanguage and a story or a set of
stories that makes sense to theliving world.
Paul (27:54):
I mean, look, I'm a, a white boy, you know, with a
genetic mutt, you know fromEurope.
And it's not for me to start toexplain or romanticise
Indigenous cultures and so forth, but the fact is we know
certain things.
(28:14):
Indigenous people knew wherethey lived.
AJ (28:16):
They knew where the water was is what they said to me.
Paul (28:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AJ (28:21):
Never forgot where the water was is what they said.
Paul (28:23):
Careful observation passed over generations and
generations and generations.
You know and we don't knowwhere we live.
I mean I'd say we beingbasically the dominant cultures
in the world today and they comeout of Western science and
industrialism andcolonialization and settler
(28:43):
mentality and the extraordinaryuse of fossil fuels to power
those cultures.
But I would say I mean thefollowing things one is we don't
(29:07):
know where we live.
We do not know, and we, I oftensay, the most dangerous pronoun
in the world.
The second person plural,because who's we?
AJ (29:16):
but I'm just saying first person plural, you mean oh well,
first person plural.
Paul (29:21):
I said no, yeah, you got it right, cut.
AJ (29:25):
Make me sound smart, I'll waste you.
Paul (29:27):
Let's put some blur on his .
AJ (29:29):
Paul's greatest hits only.
Paul (29:30):
Oh my God.
Okay, end of subject, butanyway, yeah no point, though.
No, we don't know where we live.
There's more life under theground than above the ground,
literally in terms of biomassand life living creatures.
We don't know.
I'm talking about land now, notthe sea.
We don't know what's underneathand the car coming, I think, oh
(29:54):
no there's a wind.
There's a deer yeah, and thebody, our body.
AJ (30:01):
Look how they move.
Paul (30:02):
It's so amazing, complex, but most people don't know
they're in one.
AJ (30:07):
Yeah.
Paul (30:07):
Because they don't treat it that way.
What they eat, what they think,what they do, how they move,
you know what they breathe?
I mean just check, check, check, check, check, check.
Do you actually know you're ina body?
AJ (30:19):
Yeah.
Paul (30:19):
And do you know?
And if you want to be good togo tomorrow and next week and
next year and towards the end ofyour life, you know, let's pay
attention, but those principlesor those activities or those
sensibilities are identical towhat we need to become, be
(30:47):
express in order to addressglobal heating and catastrophic
loss of life on Earth.
The consonant.
It's not like we're a differentcreature than blue whales or
turtles.
We're not.
So, again, where to go fromhere?
I hesitate to use the wordsolutions, but the activities
(31:11):
that fully inform a vibrantculture that is renewing,
restoring, revitalizing,regenerating, are right in front
of our nose.
It's not like, okay, I'm goingto do this technology or this or
that, I'll get that.
Or you know, I'm going to bury,you know poop 5,000 feet under
the ground, a mess, and I'mgoing to get paid for it because
(31:34):
Microsoft needs these carboncredits, you know, to justify
this huge amount of energythey're using in their AI,
artificial intelligence plants.
You know it's like what I mean.
It wasn't that long time ago.
If you had sort of written thatscenario out, somebody would
have just laughed at you andsaid that's ridiculous.
(31:58):
Well, bang hoot for AI.
Like I'm sure Dare, I say shitin, shit out.
No, I won't say that, I meanit's like it's not that simple.
AJ (32:04):
But AI Dare, I say shit in, shit out.
No, I won't say that I mean.
It's like that's not thatsimple, but yes, point made.
Paul (32:12):
Yeah, yeah, and there's many other, by the way,
technologies, quote, quote andproposals to do direct or
capture, you know, in otherwords, capture carbon, like it's
a thing you know we're going togot it and got that one.
You know, when the whole earthis using that verb, it's
capturing carbon everymillisecond.
(32:32):
Look at what you're looking atExtraordinary amounts of carbon.
AJ (32:36):
You've just made me think of something funny.
What's that?
Remember the old Ghostbustersmovie?
Yeah, catching the ghost.
It's almost you could make thatanalogy to it, that trying to
catch the ghost.
It's not carbon, but we thinkit's carbon, we're trying to
catch it.
I know calling in the expertsto catch it and put it through
the machine.
Paul (32:53):
Yeah, we'll be right, mate .
That's what I'm saying.
That's downstream thinking,yeah, downstream, and good luck,
you'll be there forever, yeah,until you die, until the culture
dies, till the civilizationdies, until all that is harming
perishes, because they willperish.
And that realization, of course, is really growing and
(33:14):
spreading, especially, maybemore especially, with younger
people.
Older people tend to sort oftuck in, you know, like I want
to be safe and have enough money, yes, before I die.
Yes and uh.
I'm not seeing as muchleadership as I am in people who
(33:34):
are 20 and 30 years old and soforth, but it doesn't matter.
Comparison is useless, thepoint being the growth of
understanding about what istruly the activity a human being
should engage in to reverseglobal heating and the
(33:56):
catastrophic loss ofbiodiversity and water and many
other things is here, and youknow the analogy I use.
I think I shared this with you,but when I was a lad and lived
in the Sierras, I was acaretaker.
I didn't have a home, actually,so I loved being a caretaker
(34:17):
because I had a home, but we'dhave in the fall.
This California, just likeAustralia, it's fire season, you
know, opposite time of year,but like Australia it's fire
season Opposite time of the year, but in Australia it's fire
season, of course, why it'sdried out, no rain, doesn't take
much to start a fire andthere's all that dry brush and
grass, so it didn't take muchfor the fire to spread.
(34:41):
Where I lived there was veryfew fire people.
I couldn't afford them.
The population was not dense,you know, spread out all over
the place, and so everybody knewevery young man and boy at that
time women weren't on the firelines as they are now, but was
(35:03):
expected to volunteer, yeah,yeah.
And then when you did, you weretaught the basics.
You know, don't fight the fireif it's upwind, things like that
.
I mean, you know it soundsstupid, but people you know
whatever.
But after the fire we would tampit down with our boots, and the
(35:26):
boots had metal soles and thepurpose was to make sure there
was no manzanita embersunderneath the ash, and
manzanita is a hardwood, growseverywhere in California and it
will stay red hot for a longtime.
And so you had to make surethere was none there and if it
was, you had to get it out, andso because the wind could come
(35:50):
up and blow that ember into thenext area where there hadn't
been a fire, okay, and then thefire was out, mission
accomplished, in the spring,then you would see, same as
Australia, luxuriant growth ofgrasses and I think, wildflowers
(36:13):
too for Australia, butcertainly for California, you
know Like just you know poppiesand lupine and it's just like so
beautiful.
Okay, but there was a big firehere in Berkeley, in Oakland,
near the University ofCalifornia.
It was all eucalyptus actually.
AJ (36:32):
Yeah, sorry about that.
Paul (36:33):
Yeah, which people brought here in their infinite wisdom
to make fence stakes that thentwisted into little hook screws
into little hook screws, do yourhomework first.
And a really hot fire, as youknow, given all the oils, and I
(36:55):
think it destroyed 300 homes.
It was a big deal getting itout.
Nothing seemed to touch itHelicopters.
AJ (37:04):
When was this?
Paul (37:05):
Oh gosh, this was about 35 years ago 30 years ago yeah,
Still remembered because it madesuch an indelible mark on that
area and impression.
But it was near the Universityof California and botanists were
all over it in the springlooking at what was growing and
(37:26):
they were identifyingwildflowers that hadn't been
seen in California for 50 or 100years.
AJ (37:33):
Extraordinary.
Paul (37:34):
Yeah, and anyway, that's called fire-triggered succession
, and there are seeds withcarapaces that actually will
just stay sealed until a certainamount of heat touches it and
then it'll break open andgerminate.
Okay, and so I believe where weare today, as opposed to being
(37:55):
sort of linear, we're screwingup.
We are, things are gettingworse.
They are, but it's that thefire and the fire-triggered
succession are happening at thesame time.
So we're well aware of what Icall the fire.
You know this relentlessassault on people, place.
(38:18):
You know the living world, onthe atmosphere, on water, on the
seas, on the.
You know, just check off thelist.
You know there's no place thatisn't being assaulted and
extracted and degraded and soforth.
Okay, and we take in that news.
We try to take in small doses,because it's overwhelming and it
doesn't really change.
It just changes in magnitude.
(38:41):
place, you know, but what Ithink, the podcast and the
people you've chosen are aboutthe fire-triggered succession
which is that in the world todaythere is an amazing bloom, if
you will, of people andcommunities and farms and NGOs
(39:02):
and volunteer organizations andmore.
Nows you know that arebasically, like I say,
revitalizing, restoring,renewing life on Earth, and
they're not seen incontradistinction at all.
They're ignored practically bywhatever all the press everybody
reads, because they're toosmall.
(39:22):
Yes, yes.
Too small.
They're like, well, yeah, butthat's nice.
Or if there's a human interestthing there, I'll do that.
Or maybe this famous movie starhas a regenerative farm, oh
great.
But they won't really look atthe diversity.
I mean even like, look at theHaggerty's, you know, okay, they
get the award, but look attheir community.
(39:47):
Look at the how what they doextends out into communities,
other places and other peopleyou know, and uh, into
universities, to studies, tostudents, to, you know, farmers
who already are facing the samesalinization issues you know
that they confronted in WesternAustralia.
(40:08):
I mean, it just goes on and on.
You can't really map it, youcan't see where the boundaries
are from who they are, what theydo and what their impact is.
But that's true for literally amillion organizations on Earth
today.
AJ (40:22):
Yeah, I want to come back to that because you're a man who
can say, literally because ofblessed unrest, that was written
yeah 18 years ago and there'salmost.
We were talking the other dayabout this book being a form of
blessed unrest, a redux.
Let's come back to it.
But just to hold that fireanalogy for a while longer,
because when we talked aboutthat I mentioned that bruce
(40:44):
pascoe's farm back in Australia,the author of Dark Emu.
For those who haven't sort offollowed the story, Great book,
by the way.
Great book and really changedAustralia and really put him in
the gun, by the way too, ofpeople who were threatened by
this sort of story coming tolight.
So there's a there are layersto that story for those who
(41:04):
don't know.
But he found on his farm afterthe black summer fires
extraordinary I mean again forthose who don't know that was
upwards of 60 million acres, Ithink it was three billion
animals dead.
Uh, extraordinary damageobviously is essentially a whole
flank of australia flames.
That's five years ago now.
(41:24):
And out of that on his landthey, partly because the canopy
was gone and partly because ofthe heat and intensity of the
fire, that there too wasgermination, but in this case of
ancient plants that theyremember in story, but only in
story, they'd been gone for solong they had germinated again.
(41:45):
So not only is your analogypertinent, but that's with the
most intense fire, right, andthat hits me.
It's like, okay, well, keep inmind, it's almost no matter how
intense things get, you justdon't know what it will
germinate Exactly.
Paul (42:04):
I mean it feels ironic or strange to say that our
ignorance of the living worldand how to live upon it and with
it is actually precipitatingits eventual restoration.
Yeah, it's like.
No, no, you're destroying theplace, uh-huhhuh yeah, and
(42:27):
you're doing it ignorantly andit's not like you want to,
you're just doing it, you know.
But the damage, you know, whichis sort of a hard-witting thing
, um, and I'm putting asidechildren for a minute and women
and people, okay, putting thataside, I'm not taking taking
that that's inexcusable, in myopinion period always, ever.
(42:47):
But in terms of, you know, theso-called natural world, you
know that is the living world.
We're creating the conditionsfor a massive renewal,
regeneration, revitalization ofthe world, and the only thing
human beings can do is theycannot regenerate the world.
Human beings can do is theycannot regenerate the world,
(43:08):
they can't restore.
That's the point.
They create the conditions, yes, or the conditions for its
demise.
That's what we can do.
We create the conditions, andit's how we talk, it's how we
relate to each other, it's howwe live, it's what we choose,
it's what we honor.
I mean, these are things thatare deeply, I think, within the
human character.
You know, no matter what youread, and the divisiveness and
(43:30):
the stupidity and theproto-fascism that's arising.
The fact is, and I think allgreat religions recognize that,
that within human beings is thisextraordinary beauty of
character, of heart.
And people ask me, you know, youknow, like, don't you feel
grief, aren't you grieving?
(43:51):
And I said oh yeah, oh yeah.
But what is grief?
Loss, sense of loss, personplace, sense of loss, person
place, any number of things.
But grief can only arise fromlove.
If you didn't love something,you're certainly not going to
(44:12):
grieve its passing.
And love originates in theheart.
That's where it comes from, andthe heart is the organ in human
beings that always tells thetruth.
So grief actually is an openingto.
AJ (44:29):
To a deeper truth.
Paul (44:30):
Yeah, yeah, which is within you, not somebody's book
or me or someone.
No, it's within you, and that'swhy where to go from here?
Ah, well, here, hmm, I mean I'mpointing to my heart, yeah,
where'd it go from here?
But then what the book istrying to do is give examples
(44:56):
and stories and narrative.
You know about how that's beingexpressed in the world.
You know, in ways that are verydifferent than you know, the
litany of climate solutions.
Look, I did draw down.
I know what solutionism is, butin a deeper sense, you know the
arising of human beings who maywell be forgotten they never be
(45:18):
honoured but who are actuallythe seeds of new life on earth.
AJ (45:25):
When we're talking about blessed unrest and this redux
version we sort of both haveobserved you in a very direct
way from blessed unrest, havingliterally researched the
proliferation of the movement inbroad terms, if you like, and
in those 18 or so years sinceyou've observed an ongoing
(45:47):
proliferation which I feel likeI'm witnessing too.
And I said to you, I'vequestioned hard are you really
seeing that?
Is this true, or is it mylittle slice of reality?
But it's coming up so farbeyond my purview again and
again and again and again andagain, and that's as my
knowledge, and that purviewbroadens and increases, right so
(46:09):
, but it's, it's like way out infront of it and around it and
above it, and so thisproliferation continues.
And, yeah, you felt, by ordersof magnitude potentially, and
that's interesting too, isn't it, that it seems to bear some
kind of evidence to thatgermination out of out of the
intensity of the fire, and whenyou can despair at the
proto-fascist governments and soforth coming in around the
(46:32):
world as many do, that there isstill this thing growing on the
ground, if you like.
Paul (46:40):
And we can ask ourselves and Bruce, I think, would be the
first to agree there'srejuvenation, regeneration,
that's happened that he doesn'tknow how to recognize yeah, yeah
, hey in other words, he's onlybeen here for what?
(47:02):
80 years, I forget, and you knowonly, and he's only had his
experiences, and he's brilliant.
But we might not even recognizethis emergence completely,
because we have our own beliefsabout what is or isn't, or
what's going on and so forth.
I just feel, like you know,there's something happening that
(47:25):
is we can't see oh yeah, I'mexamining myself, as you speak
for for the form of conceit.
AJ (47:33):
That might have expected me to be able to answer the
question am I?
Am I to judge?
There is, in fact, aregeneration happening or not?
Yeah, the form of conceit, evenin that yeah to think of
everything you're not not seeingyeah and wondrously, so type
thing yeah it's interesting,paul, when I think about your
trajectory through the booksyou've written, and of course
(47:56):
it's far from all you've done isthe writing, but just taking
those books as sort of snapshotsin time and and the trajectory
of your life, in that way thathere you are, almost 80 yourself
and still inspired to do it, towrite, and in a sense, despite
(48:20):
the fact that you know that'sthe first part of your subtitle
the climate movement's failedstill motivated to write.
So there's something in you,there's a spark in you out of
the fire, and I know you feltthe fire.
You briefly alluded to itbefore.
Yeah, you felt that reallydeeply and in fact you know you
say the work, yeah, it does, itcomes out of that.
(48:40):
Even just writing books hard,it comes out of the fire.
But I'm really curious aboutthat, as someone who's here
lived a brilliant, long life,why there does feel like there's
something left to say thatburns so strongly that you still
(49:00):
write a book about what you'refeeling yeah, I mean, I think
its origins are a littledifferent.
Paul (49:08):
The origins are curiosity, you know, as opposed to like
seeing an arc of my you knowover the years and so forth.
To me.
Each of them arose fromcuriosity, like I wonder you
know, how does this work?
Or how could this work better?
You know just differentquestions.
(49:30):
But that arose from childhoodwhere, as I mentioned to you,
like, I lived in a home thatwasn't safe at all.
I mean, I mean it is a shitshow.
And so I went outside wheneverI could.
And when I went outside it wasa completely different world,
(49:51):
because inside I could identifywell threats.
Of course, leave my parents,but you know everything.
You know the plug, the lightswitch, you know the
refrigerator, all those kind ofthings.
You know you can master a houseif you're two, three years old,
in 30 minutes or less.
But outside I had no idea whatI was hearing, seeing and, just
(50:15):
like you can't, you can spend alifetime actually trying to
figure that out as a goodscientist.
Even so, for me it arose thenwhich?
Which is like where do I live?
What's going on, what'shappening?
You know just why, why, why andwhat, what, what, and so that
is still there.
I am not a botanist, I am.
(50:37):
I am not, you know, uh, good atidentifying birds.
I was part of national audubonSociety.
On the board I was like theworst birder on the board, I am
sure, and the Board of.
Conservation International andsome of the.
We had some of the bestnaturalists in the world that we
(50:59):
worked with, and so forth.
So I've been alongside thosewhose skills in this area are
just incredible, and for me it'salways trying to find the story
, and the story is the narrative.
You know, that is prevalent oris in some ways taken for
(51:21):
granted, but for me, in my books, I'm trying to tell stories,
and what I learned is that for astory to have meaning and
impact, it has to have two feeton the ground, and and that
usually is science there may beother, and if it's not standing
on the ground, the story is justblah blah.
I'm sorry, but it's like, andthere's lots of blah blah around
(51:43):
right now, and that's for sure,and so always the the pleasure
of writing is actually, you know, discovery, you know, and the
realization that there's justsome brilliant people out there
and doing amazing things, youknow.
(52:04):
And so, as opposed to what Ioften do in the morning, which
is to sort of do a scan of theworld's zeitgeist, and I'll read
the Guardian, I'll read thePost, I'll read the Times, I'll
read Financial Times and otherthings, and scanning, scanning
like what does the world thinkit's thinking, or what are
(52:26):
people hearing, seeing, readingthat is altering their sense of
you, know where we are, what'shappening, and so forth.
So I want to write to thezeitgeist, but at the same time
I do that in the morning.
If I did that at night Iwouldn't sleep because the news
is so despicable Children inGaza right now.
(52:49):
It's just like unimaginable atthis time in human history that
one country would do that tochildren.
I mean, just like, it's justmind-boggling.
So it's always so.
I don't want to exclude that.
It's not my job to write aboutthat conflict.
That's not the subject of mybook, but it's really important.
That awareness of it and myfeelings of just remembering as
(53:12):
a child what it was like to behungry, what it was like to be
unsafe yeah, unsafe, but that'sa nice way to put it resonates.
You know, not to the degreethose children are being harmed,
not at all.
So it gives dimensionality tothe stories and most of the
stories are really about heartand brilliance and science and
(53:36):
discovery.
But what are the discoveries?
The discoveries are how thingsare connected.
Western science has beendisconnecting things since the
Enlightenment and saying this isa this and that's a that and
those aren't the same things youthought they were.
They're not Okay, and we'regoing to name them.
And so, to this day, we have350,000 names for different
(54:01):
chemicals.
Good to know.
And so what we're seeing todayin the sciences and quote marks
because I think there's manyscientists in the world today
that don't have degrees is nothow things are distinct and
separate and have names, but howthe world is connected in such
(54:25):
vast ways that it's unimaginable.
And in that, I think that's whatwe're seeing now is an
awareness of what we don't knowas opposed to what we do Because
we were taught we know this, weknow this, we know this, we
know this.
Here's a book.
It's two and a half inchesthick.
Read it, I mean.
They test at the end is youknow like, and we had to
(54:46):
memorize and make thosedistinctions and know what is
and not a which and so forth,and what I feel like with
Western and indigenous knowledge, traditional ecological
knowledge are starting to meldand merge and interact in such a
way, with great respect to anunderstanding of what is unknown
(55:12):
, what we don't know, what wenever thought could be, the way
the world quote, quote works.
We will never know for sure, ofcourse.
But when Zoe Slander writes abook, or monica galliano also,
you know that plants speak,communicate, and they're of
(55:33):
course laughed at by botanists.
Not zoe so much, because she'sjust a journalist, but certainly
monica then, all of a sudden,the the anthropological work
that has been done over theyears, you know, and been
dismissive of indigenous peoplewho said oh, why do you use this
?
Why do you do that?
The plant told me and I'm goingyeah, right, the plant did tell
(55:55):
them.
It's like oh, wait a minute,you know, they're absolutely
truth tellers and it just didn'tfit within our bounds of
analysis and reason.
So that's an opening that'shappening all around the world.
It's quite amazing.
Yeah, it is.
But that's why I'm writing abook, because that's what I get
(56:18):
to swim in.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
Yeah, not my discoveries.
AJ (56:26):
Speaking of the zeitgeist, we're at a time in the States
that's really interesting on anumber of levels, different
since when we were togetherwalking these paths 15 months
ago.
We've got an administrationthat currently looks like we'll
succeed in getting food dyes outof foods to a large extent,
maybe some other things like it.
(56:48):
Yet the cuts to the epa and theusda and so forth and the
watchdogs on chemicals in ourfood system and so forth seem to
be a much grander scale.
So I know there's all sorts offractures happening with Magga
and Maha and across all theselines it's not playing out in
(57:09):
any kind of clear fashion.
Let's say it's interesting tohave listened to people all over
this country and to beobserving this that's happening
now and thinking I mean youmentioned Big Pharma before what
seems to be true is that theway things were maybe the fire
wasn't intense enough.
(57:29):
If I'd drawn the analogy, beforebut it wasn't gonna shift those
big locks and while thisobviously isn't addressing it
either, it is breaking thingsapart and all.
Let's use the fire analogy itis burning things, and it makes
me wonder how you feel about allthat that's playing out right
(57:51):
now in the context of what we'vebeen talking about.
How are you seeing things?
Paul (57:56):
Well, um, like in terms of Maha Make America Healthy Again
, headed up by Robert Kennedy Jr, and taking out synthetic dyes
of food, that's some victory.
It's been taken out of foodsthat never should be made in the
first place.
AJ (58:14):
Yes, that's the thing, isn't it?
There's a bigger fish in thesense.
Paul (58:18):
Exactly.
In other words, m&ms andcandies, fruit loops yeah, just
fruit loops and cereals,breakfast cereals and all that
sort of stuff.
All these things are extremelydamaging to our children or to
anybody who eats them.
And we're seeing taking thesynthetic dyes out as some sort
of victory.
It's not even a pyrrhic victory, it's a fault, it's a delusion.
(58:39):
And even then the companies whomake these ultra-processed
foods are fighting it.
You know, I'm trying toprohibit that prohibition,
trying to stop it using theirpolitical power.
I see these bones that weretossed.
I know a lot of people whoabsolutely would have voted
(59:02):
probably did vote for Biden.
The Democrats who voted forTrump because of Robert Kennedy
yeah, and make America healthyagain and this and that and so
forth.
So I don't know what they werethinking, but that's their
problem.
So I mean, what we're seeing isa Hitler's playbook and 2025
(59:29):
understood it very well.
And there's a lawyer named RoyCohn who was Trump's teacher and
who knew the playbook very well.
And flooding the zone is one ofthe things you do.
AJ (59:41):
Yes, this was a film, too that depicted this tutelage,
didn't it?
Before the election last year?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul (59:47):
And you know which is.
So many things come at you thatyou can't handle them all and
they don't make sense, or theyall don't make sense, but it's
the same thing.
So we're in, I don't know wherewe are.
I don't know what's going tohappen.
I don't know where it's goingto emerge.
(01:00:09):
I mean, trump has sort ofseized the reins of executive
power.
That flies in the face ofbalance of power.
You know the United Statesinitiated in 1776, you know the
different forms of governanceexecutive, legislative and
(01:00:32):
judicial and so there was acheck and balance on power and
he's just smashed it and so itvery well can be that there
won't be any more elections, orit won't be midterm elections,
you know, or the nextpresidential elections, even
though in terms of statutes hecannot run again.
But he obviously doesn't careabout a precedent or meets and
(01:00:58):
bounds.
So I just don't know what'sgoing to happen in this country.
I really was thrilled to seethat you didn't fall for it in
Australia.
You know you're pretty much thesame playbook, maybe not as
articulately expressed, and Ithink other countries are
(01:01:19):
pushing back.
Now You're seeing in the UK,you know, I mean Farage and the
Reform Party making a Trump.
Go, if you will, at the politythere.
I don't think the UK is goingto go for that.
They did Brexit.
That was stupid.
Same people.
So I don't know Whateverhappens is going to be.
(01:01:44):
I don't think electing aDemocrat in three years as the
president is going to make asignificant change.
I wish I could say otherwisebecause, I haven't seen that
Democrat and I haven't seen theDemocratic Party that doesn't
have its head up, as, whatever Imean it's been, it's a
(01:02:07):
gerontocracy.
There was a vote on thedecision this is just a
technical term about the Househaving to pass something that
was passed in the Senate a $9billion decision and three
members Democratic membersdidn't show up because they're
so old and they couldn't getthere.
So it's a gerontocracy, youknow.
(01:02:27):
Rinse and repeat.
It's been a really weak party,you know, in terms of leadership
and in terms of responding towhat people really want.
You know.
AJ (01:02:37):
Yeah.
Paul (01:02:38):
And so you know you always deserve what you get.
The United States deservesTrump.
AJ (01:02:47):
You know, I saw signs around the country of what we've seen
in Australia, where communitiesdecided they deserve something
else and made it happen outsidethe two major well, to some
extent now inside the democratequivalent party as well, and
but certainly outside the twomajor parties, originally, with
the independents that weregetting elected and more elected
(01:03:09):
just in the election a fewmonths ago, and I saw a bit of
that around the states as well.
What did you see?
Younger people in particular,uh-huh, organizing right and
training people to run and tosupport those who would run.
Yeah, in whatever, in a party oras independents so that you
reform the parties as well toget the whole system being more
(01:03:32):
representative and yeah, not thegerontocracy as well.
And, and you know, a bunch ofthem won, yeah, even even in
those prevailing wins thatyou've described.
Paul (01:03:42):
Yeah, no, I, I see that at lower level down ballot.
Yeah, no, it's again.
It's like five-triggeredsuccession, you know yes, if
you're 2024 and you're going.
What are you people thinking?
And that's to both parties, notjust to the Republicans.
And like I'm going to, you know, I'm an OBGYN, I'm a this, I'm
(01:04:04):
a nurse, I'm a school teacher,I'm a whatever, and I'm going to
run.
AJ (01:04:08):
Yeah, yeah.
Paul (01:04:09):
Against this incumbent who's been reelected, you know,
17 times every two years, that'sright, you know and shows up at
the county fair and stuff likethat, but you know, so there is
that arising and I think that iscertainly caused by the
outrageousness, you know, ofwhat's happening.
The playbook trump godfors in2025, too, you know.
(01:04:33):
I mean, there's a document andeverybody said, oh, look, look
at this, he's using this.
He said, oh, I've never seen itbefore, I've never read it.
It's absolutely by the book andthe author of the book is part
of the administration.
It was a very clear descriptionof how to wield the executive
branch in such a way that it hadpowers it never knew about or
(01:04:58):
could exercise, or wouldexercise, or never thought to be
exercised by the president.
And so, yeah, it's here, andthat playbook applies to other
countries as well.
You know, I mean differenttypes of governing institutions,
but the basic techniques arethere.
AJ (01:05:22):
Yeah, because from the Australian experience it does
make me wonder.
Conditions on the ground, ifthey change enough, if
communities come together enough, listened enough, it can take
the sails, the wind, out of thesails of the ones who would
divide.
Paul (01:05:39):
Sure, I mean.
I think the outrageousness ofthe activities are definitely
waking people up.
Yeah, to like what you know, inthe United States I don't see
People usually vote topocketbooks here for every
presidential election.
Am I better?
AJ (01:05:54):
off.
That was said in Australia too,yeah, but it's sort of shifted.
Paul (01:05:59):
They don't vote issues, they vote money.
Yeah, so who's to say whetherthe nation will be done?
AJ (01:06:06):
So you know, the other thing I mentioned to you the other
day is just really sitting in me.
I mentioned that there are abunch of podcasts and I might
write a piece on it, like thepodcast that I discovered in
going across the country thatreally stood out, and one of
them was Dolly Parton's America.
Paul (01:06:24):
Yeah, yeah.
AJ (01:06:26):
And you'd heard of it, but you'd not listened to it.
Paul (01:06:28):
Definitely.
AJ (01:06:28):
And we listened.
We're halfway through theseries right now.
We just listened to episodefive.
It's already moved meextraordinarily.
And episode five Wow, it'salready moved me extraordinarily
.
And episode five wow Becauseessentially Dolly was asked.
Well, her sister even came outand said Dolly should be
speaking up.
And so the producers of thispodcast were saying to her you
know what's your thinking?
(01:06:49):
Where do you stand?
You're sort of you're seen asthis great unifying figure.
You sort of don't get up andendorse one candidate or another
and clearly people love youacross the political spectrum,
but some would argue, like yoursister now, that in this time
you should be speaking.
Yeah, and, and and the producerasked a really astute question.
She said, in the context ofpeople hurting with this
(01:07:14):
administration, do you everthink am I hurting more people
by not saying something now?
Paul (01:07:22):
what did she say to that?
AJ (01:07:23):
yeah, I was on tenderhooks it's a really good question and
she said she referred to andsort of this had been the
backdrop of it the, the, was itthe emmys?
A bunch of years ago 2017,trump's first term when they got
together the crew, because theywere each winning emmys for one
thing or another.
So they got together jane fonda, lily tomlin and dolly parton
for the first time since nine tofive was filmed, you know, 35
(01:07:46):
years prior or whatever.
So it's this extraordinaryoccasion they're on stage.
Jane fonda tees off becausethere's this famous line in the
film that we won't stand foryour bigoted, hypoc, hypocritic,
sexist, you know whateverbrilliant line there was in 9 to
5, I can't remember off the topof my head and she said and
we're still not standing foryour chauvinistic, bigoted and
(01:08:08):
she's aiming it at Trump andDolly, depends on how you see it
but diffused the situation.
She made a boob joke and movedon and got the crowd laughing
and she said I can always turnto the boob joke, but then she
said you know what I reallywanted to say?
I wanted to say let's pray forthe president.
Paul (01:08:29):
Oh yeah.
AJ (01:08:30):
But I thought I'll get slammed for that too.
So boob joke, it is yeah.
And I thought wow, that's whyshe's loved universally.
She's not out to get anyoneright.
Right, and in a way, what morepowerful thing is there to say
or do that came up for?
Paul (01:08:50):
me in a different way.
I did a three-month retreat.
It wasn't really a retreat, itwas caretaking of a empty
buddhist refuge center and itwas way off in the wilderness
and there was no electricity, noradio, no phone, no mail, no,
nothing.
You're cut off.
So I was in silence for threemonths.
(01:09:12):
Um, wow, no one to talk to you.
You know, I mean, it was easyto be in silence.
And when I came back to Taos,new Mexico, in the truck and I
went to a natural food store,first thing starving, and it was
(01:09:35):
just like a cacophonyEverybody's talking, you know, I
thought, oh my God, look, it'samazing, people just talk and
talk, and talk and talk.
It's like, of course, but forthree months if you're in
silence, it is really quite anunusual experience.
And these two women walked byand they had, I think, a small
child girl, and the mother wassaying, oh, she is such a bitch.
(01:10:00):
She was like criticizingsomebody else.
What I noticed was that thelittle girl was listening and
hearing this and my first was tocriticize the mother, you know,
saying you shouldn't have.
And my mind is going that way.
And then I listened morecarefully, or recounted what I
(01:10:22):
had heard more carefully, and Irealized that woman is talking
about herself.
If you're saying she is such abitch, who are you talking about
?
There's something in you, somepain, something.
And then I realized you candisagree with me, but everybody,
whatever we say, is about us.
(01:10:43):
It's who we are.
That just comes out, doesn'tmatter, it's you.
And I thought about that withtrump.
Um, he's talking about himselfand in from a buddhist
perspective.
He lives in a Vajra hell.
There's seven levels of hell.
He lives in one of the very,very most painful, worst ones.
(01:11:04):
But out of that came a sense ofcompassion, because everything
you hear him say, he may smile,he may look crowing glamorous,
it doesn't matter, he issuffering.
Every sentence, every post onTruth, social, everything is his
mind.
He lives in that mind.
(01:11:26):
That's the hell realm, that'swhere he lives.
AJ (01:11:29):
Up in the envy.
Paul (01:11:30):
Yeah, it doesn't mean you're going to put up with it
and not try to change things.
What I'm just saying is that itactually elicited compassion
for that human being like why,who would want to be born that
person in this lifetime andspend a lifetime living there?
AJ (01:11:47):
so I agree with dolly, yeah.
And then, conversely, whenyou're dolly, and that's what
comes out of your mouth, likeshe really has attained
something.
Because what the show alsopointed out is that her songs
have never shirked these sortsof issues, from nine to five and
on and prior right, aboutminorities, women loving a
(01:12:10):
country as a whole what shemight have to say she is saying
as well.
She's clearly doing it in sucha way that reaches everybody,
even though she's saying it insong form.
And then she says that, orwould have said that and said
that in this moment on thatpodcast I agree with it.
Paul (01:12:29):
I think everybody's a teacher to oneself, but I will
say that I do think that peoplewho call themselves teachers and
say I'm a teacher are lessinteresting to me than people
who don't know they're theteacher.
AJ (01:12:42):
Right on, that's it.
Paul (01:12:43):
Yeah.
AJ (01:12:44):
And even then as a, I guess, celebrity she wasn't
grandstanding.
Yeah, she didn't say what shewanted to say.
Paul (01:12:50):
Yeah, she's one of our teachers.
AJ (01:12:51):
Yeah Well, Paul Thank you yeah.
We're full circle back to yourhouse.
Come back again.
100% Going to miss you, mate.
It's been magnificent to comeback and be with you again.
Paul (01:13:03):
It's amazing that you know more about this country than I
do Far more.
You've been to more places.
You've experienced more people,communities, events.
I am astonished at what youguys have done in 15 months and
25,000 miles in your Honda.
It is unfathomablyextraordinary in terms of an
(01:13:28):
accomplishment.
You guys seem bright and perkyand ready to go, so it didn't
take anything out of you, but itsure must have been a learning
experience the likes of whichyou couldn't have devised a
better learning experience.
AJ (01:13:43):
Exactly, I've got your words in my mind right now of not
being the teacher.
Yeah, we learned in spades andmate right back at you, nearly
80 years so far.
Paul (01:13:53):
Yeah.
AJ (01:13:53):
What a life, what a journey I'm learning from you.
Thanks a lot for having alittle walk and talk with me.
Paul (01:14:00):
Yeah, this year is the first time I realized oh, next
decade is in the 80s, Crept upon you.
It doesn't creep up on me,because it doesn't mean anything
.
AJ (01:14:09):
Yeah.
Paul (01:14:09):
It has no meaning.
The meaning is what you do,your mind, your life, what you
give what you do, what you loveyour mind, your life, what you
give, what you do, what you loveyour body, of course.
And my body is remarkablyunscathed yet by disease and so
forth.
And so I just feel like I'm sofortunate and I don't think of
(01:14:32):
it as like, oh well, now you're80.
Or next year.
No, I'm not, I'm just here, I'mdoing the best I can, looking
into the next, around the nextyear.
No, I'm not, I'm just here, I'mdoing the best.
AJ (01:14:39):
I can Looking into the next around the next quarter.
Yeah, yeah, on you, mate.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, yeah, that was PaulHawken at Home Among the
Redwoods, with great thanks toyou, generous paid subscribers,
for making it possible.
Special thanks this week fromAJ to SJ, new paid subscriber,
(01:15:01):
doing great work of his own inJapan, with some common ground
too with Aussie legend Leunigand an old favourite film,
baghdad Cafe.
Thanks too to Paul Vergnot andNikki Thompson for being paid
subscribers for three years now.
I can't tell you how grateful Iam for you sticking with me
over those years.
We'd love you to join us if youcan get some exclusive stuff
(01:15:24):
like discounts to a series ofupcoming events and help keep
the show going by heading to thewebsite or the show notes and
following the prompts.
The music you're hearing isRegeneration by Amelia Barden.
My name's Anthony James.
Thanks for listening.
And do you know where we get all these plants?
We get them by the side of theroad.
Really, yeah, yeah.
AJ (00:07):
The wild verges.
Paul (00:09):
Yeah, we didn't buy any of them.
AJ (00:10):
Yeah, G'day Anthony James here for The RegenNarration,
your independent,listener-supported podcast
exploring how people areregenerating the systems and
stories we live by.
Paul (00:22):
Not too close.
Yeah, you'll have something tosay.
AJ (00:25):
That's right, and we've got top secret discussions.
Paul (00:29):
It's much too young to hear this stuff.
AJ (00:33):
Back on Earth Day in April 2024, we started our journey of
the Americas with friend of thepodcast, legendary best-selling
author Paul Hawken.
It was just ahead of therelease of his latest book,
carbon, the Book of Life, so werecorded a podcast in his
incredible garden about it.
Later we thought it could begood to record a pod just
(00:59):
walking and talking around thesteeply sloped streets of his
local neighbourhood among theredwoods.
See what this tallest of treespecies had to say too.
Alas, with both our travels atthe time, we didn't get to it.
But, having managed to returnto Northern California a few
weeks ago ahead of flying backto Australia, we did on our very
(01:20):
last day at Paul's place and,as it happens, paul's next book
is in full flow Working titleUpstream why the climate
movement failed and where to.
From here, given this is by thebloke who compiled best-selling
volumes, drawdown andRegeneration.
That seemed as good a place tostart as any after the Redwoods
(01:43):
introduced themselves and later,after arriving at a powerful
analogy for the times, weconverge at the end.
Well, on the wisdom of DollyParton Well, mate, we're doing
it.
Yeah, we're walking.
This is great, yeah.
Paul (01:59):
I'm glad you're in my forest.
AJ (02:01):
Yeah, and I tell you, leaving this today, I'm just
soaking in every smell of itevery smell of it, every sound
of it.
Paul (02:11):
A redwood forest is not a typical forest in the sense that
typical forests are a hotbed oflife, you know, because even
non-deciduous but lots ofdeciduous trees and seeds and
things for bark insects to eat,birds to eat them, sounds of the
(02:35):
birds, and redwood forests areunusually quiet because the bark
of the redwood is inedible toany insect.
Is that right?
Yeah, and so that's why itlasts so long.
Right, it's used because it'sresistant to infestation and rot
, but you don't hear any birds.
AJ (02:55):
No, and we were wondering why that was true.
Yeah, no, yeah, like when wewere up north in the really big
stands that were left, that areleft, and it was so quiet and we
got where no people were and itwas so quiet.
Right, it was delicious, but itmade us wonder yeah, it's like
a beautiful tomb in a way yeah.
Paul (03:17):
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, so what made themimpervious insects made them
extremely valuable to settlerswho cut almost all the redwoods
down, you know, in California.
Yeah, like 95% on top yeah yeah, for housing primarily, but
also for any use where it neededto be resistant to insects, rot
(03:41):
or water.
So we're walking by a fenceright here and it's redwood.
AJ (03:49):
Yeah.
Paul (03:50):
So it goes on for several hundred feet.
AJ (03:54):
It's unusual.
It's not a common sight to havethat sort of wall up here.
Paul (03:58):
Actually it's against the city regs, Is that right?
Yeah, all the neighbors aretalking about it.
AJ (04:02):
Oh, there we go.
You can't do that here it'sunusual, it looks weird in that
sense.
Paul (04:09):
But there are a lot of animals here in Marin County.
I mean, it's not like I'm insome Indian desert or something
like that, I'm in the Shropshirehawks and red tails and gosh
hummingbirds.
Of course I have the garden too, too, but hummingbirds and the
robins come in swoop in everyspring and, you know, sprinkle
(04:30):
the whole place with music, yeah, and song.
And then there's uh gray foxwhich actually slept in our
living room during COVID.
There's something about COVIDthat it seemed like animals.
I read about even kangaroos,you know, in Adelaide and going
(04:50):
down the main street, Well ithappened here too.
Animals just sort of came out ofthe woodwork, who were always
here, but you didn't really seethem, and they just felt I don't
know.
It's like, oh hi, I'm yourneighbor and we leave the door
open this summer the back dooron the deck and we turn the
(05:12):
light on.
And there was a fox Two of them, wow, yeah, just sleeping Like
hey.
AJ (05:17):
That's cool.
Paul (05:18):
Why don't you turn the light on Like, hey, they get up
and then sort of go out, isn'tthat awesome?
Okay, if you're going to botherus, I They'd get up and then
sort of go out and go like Isn'tthat awesome.
Okay, if you're going to botherus.
I mean, it was so cute, it wasso charming, you know, and now
it is said or it has beenreported, there's about a
120-pound black bear in thisneighborhood.
(05:40):
Really, yeah, and obviously not, obviously, but not
understandably.
Uh, some people complained, youknow, out of fear, of course,
because it was tearing upgarbage cans, you know, for
looking for food, what else?
And the county, to itseverlasting credit, said because
(06:03):
people ask what are you goingto do?
And they said nothing.
Oh God, yeah, thank God she'slike nothing.
And so when I'm driving home oreven walking, so often you'll
see a garbage can is justshredded, not the can itself,
but everything that's in it, yougo oh, she or he, I don't know
(06:29):
what sex it is, but it's hereAnyway.
It's a lovely place to live,obviously, and it also makes me
reflect on the climate movement.
We've been talking about that,but, as you know, the subtitle
of the book I'm writing rightnow is why the Climate Movement
Failed, which sounds like I'mnegating the activity and
(06:54):
actions and insights that everyone of your listeners has, and
that's not what I'm saying.
Not at all.
When I'm talking about theclimate movement, I'm really
talking about the narrative thatis used and goes around and is
repeated endlessly, both on thenews and social media and
(07:19):
articles and NGOs and so know,and there's a singularity about
the narrative that is completelythe opposite of what you and I
are seeing right now.
We're not seeing one thing thatrepeats itself.
We're seeing extraordinarydiversity, even if we don't know
(07:40):
it.
Or hear the bird sounds andidentify them.
Or you know, look in thestreams and rivers.
You know, uh, for the salmoncome in, uh, our eyes are
telling the truth, which is findone thing that is repetitious
yeah you can't.
And it is also a narrative, butit is a narrative from whence
(08:06):
both solutions and brilliance,insight emerge.
This is where it comes from.
It doesn't come from librariesand books.
This is where it comes from inall of history.
And so when we think of theclimate movement, what we're
thinking about or not we'rethinking about, what we hear is
(08:28):
you know, fight, tackle, combat,climate change, climate crisis
you know, all these different uhvariations on, there's a thing
that we have to remedy change,alter, fight, you know, and in
that process, unknowingly orwithout necessarily
(08:50):
intentionally, we bother thenatural world, we just other.
It's like something else outthere somewhere and we've gotta
do something about it, otherwisewe're screwed.
And that singularity is theopposite of what the living
world tells us, teaches us,what's in our bodies, too.
You know.
(09:10):
The extraordinary complexityand beauty of everything that's
in nature is disembodied ordistanced in the climate
narrative.
But people say, oh, we've gotto save nature, save the earth,
you know, and talk about theliving world as nature Again, as
if, well, that's nature and wehave to really be careful and do
(09:34):
something about it.
Well, yes, of course, but thenwho are you?
If that's nature, who are you?
I mean it's easy to say, oh, weare all nature and so forth,
hello, but it's deeper than that.
I think it's like there's athreshold.
(09:55):
I think possible for everyone,easy for a child, because
they've never seen the thresholdor created the threshold or
been taught the threshold.
Seen the threshold, yeah, orcreated the threshold or been
taught the threshold, but athreshold as adults.
That is about emergence, likethat moment or time or
experience where you realizethis is me, not in an egoistic
(10:19):
sense, but this is me as much asany other me I've ever imagined
, and then you look at it withnew eyes, you know, and that is
the source of real remediation,of transforming the world that
we live in today, which is sodestructive and so harmful and
(10:43):
so degrading to animals, tobirds, to nature, to ourselves,
to children, you name it.
AJ (10:55):
We are harming it Even that word jumps out at me the
degrading bit, Because thenyou've got a hint at some of the
language and some of themeaning that what about the
opposite of degrading?
What would that look like?
Paul (11:10):
revitalize, regenerate yeah, I mean, these words are
coming into prominence right nowespecially regenerate they are
yeah yeah, yet.
AJ (11:17):
Yet you're seeing it still embody the same narrative to a
large extent.
So that's interesting.
The language shifts, the wordsare sort of being gravitated to,
but where is the meaning?
Paul (11:30):
Well, where is the consciousness that uses the?
AJ (11:33):
words.
Paul (11:33):
I mean you think of Charlie Massey or the Haggardys
and so forth and say, oh, you'reregenerative farmers.
Well, yeah, but the experienceof being them, those farmers,
many, many, many others, is notone like.
I'm gonna wake up this morning,go regenerate, I mean, you know
it's like thank you for thepraise, you know, but what?
(11:56):
I'm gonna go outside and I'mgonna look, see, feel, walk,
touch, look at texture of thesoil, you know.
Look at who's showing up interms of wildlife, the call of
the reed warbler, you know, yeahcharlie massey's uh book title
which is so exquisite, it wasn't.
I'm gonna save the world, or howfarmers can save the world,
(12:16):
even right, yeah or how to makebetter soil, yes, and out of
that comes, you know, obviously,insight and practices.
That is a relationship with,again in this case you know,
soil and everything that dwellsupon and within and under it.
So again, the language keepssort of slipping into a kind of
(12:46):
simplicity or oversimplification.
And then that's why I go backto the climate narrative.
The climate narrative is a vastoversimplification on where we
are and what to do about it.
And out of that you get theseyeah, every so often there's a
(13:16):
car, yeah, on this road, hey, hi, of where we are.
And I want to, I don't want tocall it a problem, just like
where are we?
Well, let's talk about that.
That's a really goodconversation to have.
But the reason I called thetitle the book is upstream is
like we're still trying to solveproblems downstream.
And they're problems, for sure,you know, but, and they need
(13:38):
tending, they need remediation,all that sort of stuff, but
we're not going upstream tocause.
And if you don't look at cause,then the cures are simply
symptomatic and our wholemedical system is about
downstream.
Really.
That's why the pharmaceuticalbusiness is huge.
(14:01):
20% of our economy is in theUnited States.
You know, it's the medicalpharmaceutical industry.
It's over 20%.
And well, why is everybody sick?
And there's that Bishop Tutu'shomily, which he repeated many
times.
I kind of rephrased it slightly.
But you know, we keep pullingpeople out of the river and
(14:27):
instead we should go upstreamand find out who's throwing them
in.
And we're throwing ourselves inthe river, you know, by
thinking and seeing the worldthe way we do.
AJ (14:35):
Well, you had an acute representation of this hay the
other day.
You told me about the 1.7billion dollars just being
invested in the.
You can describe it.
Yeah, this is like, but this isjust indicative too, right,
it's not the only one.
Paul (14:51):
Yeah, I mean this was 1.7 billion from Microsoft.
They do have a lot of money.
That's in a company that'sgoing to take food, waste and
literally poop, okay, okay fromsewage systems and liquefy it
all and bury it 5 000 feet underthe earth.
(15:13):
That's a, that's a carbonsolution.
In other words, we're going totake this carbon that the living
world is producingphotosynthesis, you know, it's
eating sunlight all day long youknow producing sugars in this
carbon dioxide when they arebreak down and digested or
(15:34):
whatever and then getting rid ofit like well, can we go
upstream and say, well, why dowe, you know, sequester carbon
in the first place?
Why we need to do it actively?
It happens automatically ofcourse.
Well, it's because we're burningthe lights out in terms of
(15:55):
fossil fuels and coal gas.
But that's upstream, Like well,why and to what end?
And we have to be realistic inthe sense that, well, why and to
what end.
And we have to be realistic inthe sense that what I mean,
human beings, for as long as wehave any history record
understanding, anthropologicallyor otherwise, have always
(16:20):
sought the most intense orconcentrated form of energy at
the lowest price.
Yes, no exception.
So we're doing that today, youknow.
I mean I mean coal, gas and oil, right?
AJ (16:36):
and that you can.
You can then extrapolate.
Well, I extrapolate two thingsfrom that.
I go okay, we're not evil, thisis just the way we've always
been.
No, it's wired, and it's whyit's hard to change.
Yeah and then b.
It's why we are still growingemissions.
It's why, even with renewablescoming on, they're more
(16:56):
additional than replacement.
And is that just our fate then?
Paul?
Paul (17:02):
Well, so far.
Yeah, I mean that's what we'redoing.
AJ (17:12):
We're clearly capable of well, at least in thought,
transcending it.
And in part, like there's apart of humanity that is
transcending it or attempting to, so it's in us Of course.
But not as a whole narrative,not as a larger narrative.
Paul (17:24):
So it's in us, but not as a whole narrative, not as a
larger narrative.
Well, that's also part of, Ithink, the delusion of the
climate movement is that we'rein an energy transition.
I mean that is used from theWorld Economic Forum, down to
the IEA, down to the World Bank,down to the Conference of the
Parties, you know COP, etc.
And you say no, not really, andmaybe we will at some point.
(17:52):
But right now, as you just said, I mean the incremental energy
from solar panels and windturbines has barely kept up with
the growth of energyconsumption.
So we are using differentenergy to grow with, you know,
grow energy consumption, but wehaven't touched the amount of
(18:13):
energy we actually combust andconsume on an annual basis.
Haven't touched it after 20years of solar becoming more
practical, more affordable, moreavailable, and it is, I mean no
question about that.
But even if tomorrow we couldmore affordable, more available
and it is, I don't have aquestion about that.
But even if tomorrow we could,you know, transform all
electrical use to solar and wind, that's 19% of the energy we
(18:35):
use.
What about the other 81%?
That's coal, gas and oil.
And we're walking on a road,glad we have it.
How do you make this road withelectricity.
It's crushed rock, it's asphalt, it's tar Slightly different,
(18:59):
and it's laid down with bigtrucks, steamrolled and made to
last for decades.
Well, okay, how do you do that?
With electricity you can't.
And so there's a greatenthusiasm about the conversion
from, obviously, fossil fuels toelectric cars, evs.
Yeah, understandably, we have amuch lower footprint in terms
(19:22):
of their daily consumption ofenergy.
But they're also talking aboutthere being 3 billion cars in
2050, they being the IEA and allthese other economic
organizations project growthgoing to the future.
Well, where are the cars goingto drive?
What roads are these?
(19:43):
And the prediction is that by2050, new highways will circle
the earth 600 times For our EVs.
AJ (19:57):
This is and little of where they're going to park.
Paul (19:59):
Yeah.
AJ (20:00):
This is the sort of thing that, again, has been talked
about for decades, yeah, yeah,this is the sort of thing that,
again, has been talked about fordecades, yeah.
Yet on we go, which seems tocome back to that predisposition
, or just habit, over a long,you know, a couple hundred
thousand years, of just takingwhat you can in energy
availability, and we justhaven't come up against this
(20:21):
sort of conceptual need, theseleaps that we're being asked to
make now.
We haven't.
Paul (20:29):
Yeah, and again I mean, that's the tesla going by us.
I'm not criticizing theconversion to evs at all.
What I'm saying is what's thethinking here about the cause?
And the cause is incredibleindustrial growth and
consumption fed by the largestextractive industry in the world
(20:51):
, google.
It's taking every bit ofinformation you deposit on the
web that it can get its hands onand selling it to people who
are advertising, creating socialmedia.
I mean targeting you, makingsure your life is satisfactory
(21:12):
and less.
Yes, you get you know some fastfashion from Shane in China.
You know and look like.
AJ (21:18):
All that EV that just passed us.
Paul (21:19):
Yeah, the cool girls in school.
AJ (21:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Paul (21:22):
You know, frumpy, I mean, this is where we have to go,
which is what's the anxiety, theinsecurity, the vast
disconnection that infiltratesour life, that makes us almost
reflexively go to consumption?
You know, and again, I knowI've listened to all your
(21:42):
podcasts.
I know I'm not talking to yourlisteners, okay, I've listened
to all your podcasts.
I know I'm not talking to yourlisteners, okay, and so I'm not
trying to hello, this is not ademonstration or critique or
anything like that.
No, I'm just looking at thewhole, at the thing the so
called climate movement is whatI'm using and saying we failed
(22:04):
we failed, so this is the nextbit of your subtitle.
AJ (22:07):
There's more, there's a second half to your subtitle.
Paul (22:09):
Yeah, it's like where to go from here yeah, and I look at
I again think a lot of yourlisteners are going there, have
gone there or are there.
So again, I want to make surethat they don't think I'm being
sort of you know a jerk how tosuck eggs, as we say.
Yeah, exactly, not at all, youknow, but I jerk how to suck
eggs, as we say, yeah, how tosuck eggs?
Yeah, not at all, you know.
But I'm looking at the climatenarratives of the climate
(22:29):
establishment, you know, andit's like the conference of the
parties, you know.
It's like somehow we have cometo believe, or came to believe
that if we got all theseimportant quote-unquote people
together from as many countriesas possible, because I've just
looked up this expanse of grassleading into a house and the
(22:51):
goats.
AJ (22:52):
What I thought were sheep.
Oh, they're sheep, but they'renot real.
They're statues on lawn that'sbeen mowed.
There's opportunity in that.
Isn't there A lot about realsheep?
Because there's grass left.
So what do you think the sheepdo?
Well, that's it.
What are they doing?
I think about this a lot.
Right, because I I see it a lot.
The representations of ourinnate connection, ongoing still
(23:15):
, with the living world, and Imean, you may be even longing
for it, but certainly connection, yeah, that you see manifest in
ways like that where we stillwant it to be present.
Even though it's not Pristine,it does say something.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, what ifyou did have animals on that
grass, not?
Paul (23:33):
just statues which you should have.
AJ (23:35):
Yeah, well, exactly, why not ?
Paul (23:36):
We're in a fire-prone region.
AJ (23:39):
All the more, yeah, but anyway, sorry to interrupt.
We're going into another COPsoon enough, aren't?
Paul (23:45):
we yeah, conference of the Party.
And then you have all theseimportant people and delegates.
In the blue zone there's agreen zone where all the NGOs
are.
You know you separate them.
Yes, the activists you overthere.
AJ (23:55):
Yes.
Paul (23:56):
You know, the people who have been elected and are not
going to be re-elected if theyactually do everything the cop
wants to do are in this zone whokind of argue and fight and
stay up all night, you know,trying to pass these resolutions
that mean nothing, becausesince cop 15 in paris and so
forth, you know, nothing hasreally changed.
(24:18):
The only two countries thathave met the guidelines, uh, are
britain and costa Costa Rica,and that's because they have so
many forests, not because theydid anything special, but the
point being is that theunderlying belief and this is
part of the climate movement isthat it has to be solved
top-down.
We have to get the top together,or at least the representatives
(24:41):
, and work us out.
Well, work what out, if I mayask yeah.
Is it energy source?
You know?
What are you burning?
What are you consuming?
Interesting?
Are you going to set targets?
Great, nothing wrong with thetarget, but who are you?
(25:02):
You don't set targets forindividuals.
You don't set targets forcountries.
You don't set targets forcountries.
There's not a country in theworld, hardly, that actually
pays attention to the targets.
They try to adhere to the goals,for sure, but domestic politics
and votes, you know, which areusually quadrennial, if not
every two years, you know,overrule anything that could
(25:24):
come out of that, because peoplewant to be re-elected.
So you're taking people whowant to be re-elected to make
decisions that are far-reachingand to adopt practices that most
people, especially the 5billion people who need more
energy, frankly, you know, notless, to adopt, and so, and then
(25:45):
we look forward to that every.
Well, I don't know if we lookforward to it, but, but in other
words, we think, well, what'sgoing to happen?
You know.
Well, this one, you know, Imean, it's going to be different
.
Well, it'll be different, allright, but it won't be
intelligent in terms of howchange arises.
And it's not that change arisesfrom the bottom.
(26:06):
I'm not saying it doesn't comefrom the top, but that idea that
there's a top and a bottom isactually mistaken, because in
our forest here, where's the top, where's the bottom?
That's not how the living worldfunctions, and it's vastly
interconnected, complexrelationships that are beyond
(26:29):
mysterious, of which we knowvery little and intuitively.
Indigenous cultures who livedon the same land for hundreds
and thousands of years had muchbetter sense of what was going
on in the living world thanWestern scientists, because they
lived there and they dependedon knowing the living world,
(26:52):
without which they would die.
AJ (26:53):
Well, this is interesting because that was a very clear
dynamic.
Then it's still the dynamic.
It still is, but it's not clearto us that we are so dependent
on this ability to observe andknow where you are, even in a
body, as we were talking aboutthe other day.
Let alone on land, yeah, andthis comes to our
(27:16):
conceptualization then, andnarrative.
This is why, well, it's alwaysfelt important to me, but I
guess it's interesting lookingat you saying even the people
like that would listen to me onthis podcast, who are doing
awesome stuff in one respect oranother yeah, you know, one
thing that's often been said ishow much do we need to
(27:37):
understand what we're doing, aslong as it's a good thing.
But it sounds like you're saying, actually we really do need to
understand and to speak the alanguage and a story or a set of
stories that makes sense to theliving world.
Paul (27:54):
I mean, look, I'm a, a white boy, you know, with a
genetic mutt, you know fromEurope.
And it's not for me to start toexplain or romanticise
Indigenous cultures and so forth, but the fact is we know
certain things.
(28:14):
Indigenous people knew wherethey lived.
AJ (28:16):
They knew where the water was is what they said to me.
Paul (28:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AJ (28:21):
Never forgot where the water was is what they said.
Paul (28:23):
Careful observation passed over generations and
generations and generations.
You know and we don't knowwhere we live.
I mean I'd say we beingbasically the dominant cultures
in the world today and they comeout of Western science and
industrialism andcolonialization and settler
(28:43):
mentality and the extraordinaryuse of fossil fuels to power
those cultures.
But I would say I mean thefollowing things one is we don't
(29:07):
know where we live.
We do not know, and we, I oftensay, the most dangerous pronoun
in the world.
The second person plural,because who's we?
AJ (29:16):
but I'm just saying first person plural, you mean oh well,
first person plural.
Paul (29:21):
I said no, yeah, you got it right, cut.
AJ (29:25):
Make me sound smart, I'll waste you.
Paul (29:27):
Let's put some blur on his .
AJ (29:29):
Paul's greatest hits only.
Paul (29:30):
Oh my God.
Okay, end of subject, butanyway, yeah no point, though.
No, we don't know where we live.
There's more life under theground than above the ground,
literally in terms of biomassand life living creatures.
We don't know.
I'm talking about land now, notthe sea.
We don't know what's underneathand the car coming, I think, oh
(29:54):
no there's a wind.
There's a deer yeah, and thebody, our body.
AJ (30:01):
Look how they move.
Paul (30:02):
It's so amazing, complex, but most people don't know
they're in one.
AJ (30:07):
Yeah.
Paul (30:07):
Because they don't treat it that way.
What they eat, what they think,what they do, how they move,
you know what they breathe?
I mean just check, check, check, check, check, check.
Do you actually know you're ina body?
AJ (30:19):
Yeah.
Paul (30:19):
And do you know?
And if you want to be good togo tomorrow and next week and
next year and towards the end ofyour life, you know, let's pay
attention, but those principlesor those activities or those
sensibilities are identical towhat we need to become, be
(30:47):
express in order to addressglobal heating and catastrophic
loss of life on Earth.
The consonant.
It's not like we're a differentcreature than blue whales or
turtles.
We're not.
So, again, where to go fromhere?
I hesitate to use the wordsolutions, but the activities
(31:11):
that fully inform a vibrantculture that is renewing,
restoring, revitalizing,regenerating, are right in front
of our nose.
It's not like, okay, I'm goingto do this technology or this or
that, I'll get that.
Or you know, I'm going to bury,you know poop 5,000 feet under
the ground, a mess, and I'mgoing to get paid for it because
(31:34):
Microsoft needs these carboncredits, you know, to justify
this huge amount of energythey're using in their AI,
artificial intelligence plants.
You know it's like what I mean.
It wasn't that long time ago.
If you had sort of written thatscenario out, somebody would
have just laughed at you andsaid that's ridiculous.
(31:58):
Well, bang hoot for AI.
Like I'm sure Dare, I say shitin, shit out.
No, I won't say that, I meanit's like it's not that simple.
AJ (32:04):
But AI Dare, I say shit in, shit out.
No, I won't say that I mean.
It's like that's not thatsimple, but yes, point made.
Paul (32:12):
Yeah, yeah, and there's many other, by the way,
technologies, quote, quote andproposals to do direct or
capture, you know, in otherwords, capture carbon, like it's
a thing you know we're going togot it and got that one.
You know, when the whole earthis using that verb, it's
capturing carbon everymillisecond.
(32:32):
Look at what you're looking atExtraordinary amounts of carbon.
AJ (32:36):
You've just made me think of something funny.
What's that?
Remember the old Ghostbustersmovie?
Yeah, catching the ghost.
It's almost you could make thatanalogy to it, that trying to
catch the ghost.
It's not carbon, but we thinkit's carbon, we're trying to
catch it.
I know calling in the expertsto catch it and put it through
the machine.
Paul (32:53):
Yeah, we'll be right, mate .
That's what I'm saying.
That's downstream thinking,yeah, downstream, and good luck,
you'll be there forever, yeah,until you die, until the culture
dies, till the civilizationdies, until all that is harming
perishes, because they willperish.
And that realization, of course, is really growing and
(33:14):
spreading, especially, maybemore especially, with younger
people.
Older people tend to sort oftuck in, you know, like I want
to be safe and have enough money, yes, before I die.
Yes and uh.
I'm not seeing as muchleadership as I am in people who
(33:34):
are 20 and 30 years old and soforth, but it doesn't matter.
Comparison is useless, thepoint being the growth of
understanding about what istruly the activity a human being
should engage in to reverseglobal heating and the
(33:56):
catastrophic loss ofbiodiversity and water and many
other things is here, and youknow the analogy I use.
I think I shared this with you,but when I was a lad and lived
in the Sierras, I was acaretaker.
I didn't have a home, actually,so I loved being a caretaker
(34:17):
because I had a home, but we'dhave in the fall.
This California, just likeAustralia, it's fire season, you
know, opposite time of year,but like Australia it's fire
season Opposite time of the year, but in Australia it's fire
season, of course, why it'sdried out, no rain, doesn't take
much to start a fire andthere's all that dry brush and
grass, so it didn't take muchfor the fire to spread.
(34:41):
Where I lived there was veryfew fire people.
I couldn't afford them.
The population was not dense,you know, spread out all over
the place, and so everybody knewevery young man and boy at that
time women weren't on the firelines as they are now, but was
(35:03):
expected to volunteer, yeah,yeah.
And then when you did, you weretaught the basics.
You know, don't fight the fireif it's upwind, things like that
.
I mean, you know it soundsstupid, but people you know
whatever.
But after the fire we would tampit down with our boots, and the
(35:26):
boots had metal soles and thepurpose was to make sure there
was no manzanita embersunderneath the ash, and
manzanita is a hardwood, growseverywhere in California and it
will stay red hot for a longtime.
And so you had to make surethere was none there and if it
was, you had to get it out, andso because the wind could come
(35:50):
up and blow that ember into thenext area where there hadn't
been a fire, okay, and then thefire was out, mission
accomplished, in the spring,then you would see, same as
Australia, luxuriant growth ofgrasses and I think, wildflowers
(36:13):
too for Australia, butcertainly for California, you
know Like just you know poppiesand lupine and it's just like so
beautiful.
Okay, but there was a big firehere in Berkeley, in Oakland,
near the University ofCalifornia.
It was all eucalyptus actually.
AJ (36:32):
Yeah, sorry about that.
Paul (36:33):
Yeah, which people brought here in their infinite wisdom
to make fence stakes that thentwisted into little hook screws
into little hook screws, do yourhomework first.
And a really hot fire, as youknow, given all the oils, and I
(36:55):
think it destroyed 300 homes.
It was a big deal getting itout.
Nothing seemed to touch itHelicopters.
AJ (37:04):
When was this?
Paul (37:05):
Oh gosh, this was about 35 years ago 30 years ago yeah,
Still remembered because it madesuch an indelible mark on that
area and impression.
But it was near the Universityof California and botanists were
all over it in the springlooking at what was growing and
(37:26):
they were identifyingwildflowers that hadn't been
seen in California for 50 or 100years.
AJ (37:33):
Extraordinary.
Paul (37:34):
Yeah, and anyway, that's called fire-triggered succession
, and there are seeds withcarapaces that actually will
just stay sealed until a certainamount of heat touches it and
then it'll break open andgerminate.
Okay, and so I believe where weare today, as opposed to being
(37:55):
sort of linear, we're screwingup.
We are, things are gettingworse.
They are, but it's that thefire and the fire-triggered
succession are happening at thesame time.
So we're well aware of what Icall the fire.
You know this relentlessassault on people, place.
(38:18):
You know the living world, onthe atmosphere, on water, on the
seas, on the.
You know, just check off thelist.
You know there's no place thatisn't being assaulted and
extracted and degraded and soforth.
Okay, and we take in that news.
We try to take in small doses,because it's overwhelming and it
doesn't really change.
It just changes in magnitude.
(38:41):
place, you know, but what Ithink, the podcast and the
people you've chosen are aboutthe fire-triggered succession
which is that in the world todaythere is an amazing bloom, if
you will, of people andcommunities and farms and NGOs
(39:02):
and volunteer organizations andmore.
Nows you know that arebasically, like I say,
revitalizing, restoring,renewing life on Earth, and
they're not seen incontradistinction at all.
They're ignored practically bywhatever all the press everybody
reads, because they're toosmall.
(39:22):
Yes, yes.
Too small.
They're like, well, yeah, butthat's nice.
Or if there's a human interestthing there, I'll do that.
Or maybe this famous movie starhas a regenerative farm, oh
great.
But they won't really look atthe diversity.
I mean even like, look at theHaggerty's, you know, okay, they
get the award, but look attheir community.
(39:47):
Look at the how what they doextends out into communities,
other places and other peopleyou know, and uh, into
universities, to studies, tostudents, to, you know, farmers
who already are facing the samesalinization issues you know
that they confronted in WesternAustralia.
(40:08):
I mean, it just goes on and on.
You can't really map it, youcan't see where the boundaries
are from who they are, what theydo and what their impact is.
But that's true for literally amillion organizations on Earth
today.
AJ (40:22):
Yeah, I want to come back to that because you're a man who
can say, literally because ofblessed unrest, that was written
yeah 18 years ago and there'salmost.
We were talking the other dayabout this book being a form of
blessed unrest, a redux.
Let's come back to it.
But just to hold that fireanalogy for a while longer,
because when we talked aboutthat I mentioned that bruce
(40:44):
pascoe's farm back in Australia,the author of Dark Emu.
For those who haven't sort offollowed the story, Great book,
by the way.
Great book and really changedAustralia and really put him in
the gun, by the way too, ofpeople who were threatened by
this sort of story coming tolight.
So there's a there are layersto that story for those who
(41:04):
don't know.
But he found on his farm afterthe black summer fires
extraordinary I mean again forthose who don't know that was
upwards of 60 million acres, Ithink it was three billion
animals dead.
Uh, extraordinary damageobviously is essentially a whole
flank of australia flames.
That's five years ago now.
(41:24):
And out of that on his landthey, partly because the canopy
was gone and partly because ofthe heat and intensity of the
fire, that there too wasgermination, but in this case of
ancient plants that theyremember in story, but only in
story, they'd been gone for solong they had germinated again.
(41:45):
So not only is your analogypertinent, but that's with the
most intense fire, right, andthat hits me.
It's like, okay, well, keep inmind, it's almost no matter how
intense things get, you justdon't know what it will
germinate Exactly.
Paul (42:04):
I mean it feels ironic or strange to say that our
ignorance of the living worldand how to live upon it and with
it is actually precipitatingits eventual restoration.
Yeah, it's like.
No, no, you're destroying theplace, uh-huhhuh yeah, and
(42:27):
you're doing it ignorantly andit's not like you want to,
you're just doing it, you know.
But the damage, you know, whichis sort of a hard-witting thing
, um, and I'm putting asidechildren for a minute and women
and people, okay, putting thataside, I'm not taking taking
that that's inexcusable, in myopinion period always, ever.
(42:47):
But in terms of, you know, theso-called natural world, you
know that is the living world.
We're creating the conditionsfor a massive renewal,
regeneration, revitalization ofthe world, and the only thing
human beings can do is theycannot regenerate the world.
Human beings can do is theycannot regenerate the world,
(43:08):
they can't restore.
That's the point.
They create the conditions, yes, or the conditions for its
demise.
That's what we can do.
We create the conditions, andit's how we talk, it's how we
relate to each other, it's howwe live, it's what we choose,
it's what we honor.
I mean, these are things thatare deeply, I think, within the
human character.
You know, no matter what youread, and the divisiveness and
(43:30):
the stupidity and theproto-fascism that's arising.
The fact is, and I think allgreat religions recognize that,
that within human beings is thisextraordinary beauty of
character, of heart.
And people ask me, you know, youknow, like, don't you feel
grief, aren't you grieving?
(43:51):
And I said oh yeah, oh yeah.
But what is grief?
Loss, sense of loss, personplace, sense of loss, person
place, any number of things.
But grief can only arise fromlove.
If you didn't love something,you're certainly not going to
(44:12):
grieve its passing.
And love originates in theheart.
That's where it comes from, andthe heart is the organ in human
beings that always tells thetruth.
So grief actually is an openingto.
AJ (44:29):
To a deeper truth.
Paul (44:30):
Yeah, yeah, which is within you, not somebody's book
or me or someone.
No, it's within you, and that'swhy where to go from here?
Ah, well, here, hmm, I mean I'mpointing to my heart, yeah,
where'd it go from here?
But then what the book istrying to do is give examples
(44:56):
and stories and narrative.
You know about how that's beingexpressed in the world.
You know, in ways that are verydifferent than you know, the
litany of climate solutions.
Look, I did draw down.
I know what solutionism is, butin a deeper sense, you know the
arising of human beings who maywell be forgotten they never be
(45:18):
honoured but who are actuallythe seeds of new life on earth.
AJ (45:25):
When we're talking about blessed unrest and this redux
version we sort of both haveobserved you in a very direct
way from blessed unrest, havingliterally researched the
proliferation of the movement inbroad terms, if you like, and
in those 18 or so years sinceyou've observed an ongoing
(45:47):
proliferation which I feel likeI'm witnessing too.
And I said to you, I'vequestioned hard are you really
seeing that?
Is this true, or is it mylittle slice of reality?
But it's coming up so farbeyond my purview again and
again and again and again andagain, and that's as my
knowledge, and that purviewbroadens and increases, right so
(46:09):
, but it's, it's like way out infront of it and around it and
above it, and so thisproliferation continues.
And, yeah, you felt, by ordersof magnitude potentially, and
that's interesting too, isn't it, that it seems to bear some
kind of evidence to thatgermination out of out of the
intensity of the fire, and whenyou can despair at the
proto-fascist governments and soforth coming in around the
(46:32):
world as many do, that there isstill this thing growing on the
ground, if you like.
Paul (46:40):
And we can ask ourselves and Bruce, I think, would be the
first to agree there'srejuvenation, regeneration,
that's happened that he doesn'tknow how to recognize yeah, yeah
, hey in other words, he's onlybeen here for what?
(47:02):
80 years, I forget, and you knowonly, and he's only had his
experiences, and he's brilliant.
But we might not even recognizethis emergence completely,
because we have our own beliefsabout what is or isn't, or
what's going on and so forth.
I just feel, like you know,there's something happening that
(47:25):
is we can't see oh yeah, I'mexamining myself, as you speak
for for the form of conceit.
AJ (47:33):
That might have expected me to be able to answer the
question am I?
Am I to judge?
There is, in fact, aregeneration happening or not?
Yeah, the form of conceit, evenin that yeah to think of
everything you're not not seeingyeah and wondrously, so type
thing yeah it's interesting,paul, when I think about your
trajectory through the booksyou've written, and of course
(47:56):
it's far from all you've done isthe writing, but just taking
those books as sort of snapshotsin time and and the trajectory
of your life, in that way thathere you are, almost 80 yourself
and still inspired to do it, towrite, and in a sense, despite
(48:20):
the fact that you know that'sthe first part of your subtitle
the climate movement's failedstill motivated to write.
So there's something in you,there's a spark in you out of
the fire, and I know you feltthe fire.
You briefly alluded to itbefore.
Yeah, you felt that reallydeeply and in fact you know you
say the work, yeah, it does, itcomes out of that.
(48:40):
Even just writing books hard,it comes out of the fire.
But I'm really curious aboutthat, as someone who's here
lived a brilliant, long life,why there does feel like there's
something left to say thatburns so strongly that you still
(49:00):
write a book about what you'refeeling yeah, I mean, I think
its origins are a littledifferent.
Paul (49:08):
The origins are curiosity, you know, as opposed to like
seeing an arc of my you knowover the years and so forth.
To me.
Each of them arose fromcuriosity, like I wonder you
know, how does this work?
Or how could this work better?
You know just differentquestions.
(49:30):
But that arose from childhoodwhere, as I mentioned to you,
like, I lived in a home thatwasn't safe at all.
I mean, I mean it is a shitshow.
And so I went outside wheneverI could.
And when I went outside it wasa completely different world,
(49:51):
because inside I could identifywell threats.
Of course, leave my parents,but you know everything.
You know the plug, the lightswitch, you know the
refrigerator, all those kind ofthings.
You know you can master a houseif you're two, three years old,
in 30 minutes or less.
But outside I had no idea whatI was hearing, seeing and, just
(50:15):
like you can't, you can spend alifetime actually trying to
figure that out as a goodscientist.
Even so, for me it arose thenwhich?
Which is like where do I live?
What's going on, what'shappening?
You know just why, why, why andwhat, what, what, and so that
is still there.
I am not a botanist, I am.
(50:37):
I am not, you know, uh, good atidentifying birds.
I was part of national audubonSociety.
On the board I was like theworst birder on the board, I am
sure, and the Board of.
Conservation International andsome of the.
We had some of the bestnaturalists in the world that we
(50:59):
worked with, and so forth.
So I've been alongside thosewhose skills in this area are
just incredible, and for me it'salways trying to find the story
, and the story is the narrative.
You know, that is prevalent oris in some ways taken for
(51:21):
granted, but for me, in my books, I'm trying to tell stories,
and what I learned is that for astory to have meaning and
impact, it has to have two feeton the ground, and and that
usually is science there may beother, and if it's not standing
on the ground, the story is justblah blah.
I'm sorry, but it's like, andthere's lots of blah blah around
(51:43):
right now, and that's for sure,and so always the the pleasure
of writing is actually, you know, discovery, you know, and the
realization that there's justsome brilliant people out there
and doing amazing things, youknow.
(52:04):
And so, as opposed to what Ioften do in the morning, which
is to sort of do a scan of theworld's zeitgeist, and I'll read
the Guardian, I'll read thePost, I'll read the Times, I'll
read Financial Times and otherthings, and scanning, scanning
like what does the world thinkit's thinking, or what are
(52:26):
people hearing, seeing, readingthat is altering their sense of
you, know where we are, what'shappening, and so forth.
So I want to write to thezeitgeist, but at the same time
I do that in the morning.
If I did that at night Iwouldn't sleep because the news
is so despicable Children inGaza right now.
(52:49):
It's just like unimaginable atthis time in human history that
one country would do that tochildren.
I mean, just like, it's justmind-boggling.
So it's always so.
I don't want to exclude that.
It's not my job to write aboutthat conflict.
That's not the subject of mybook, but it's really important.
That awareness of it and myfeelings of just remembering as
(53:12):
a child what it was like to behungry, what it was like to be
unsafe yeah, unsafe, but that'sa nice way to put it resonates.
You know, not to the degreethose children are being harmed,
not at all.
So it gives dimensionality tothe stories and most of the
stories are really about heartand brilliance and science and
(53:36):
discovery.
But what are the discoveries?
The discoveries are how thingsare connected.
Western science has beendisconnecting things since the
Enlightenment and saying this isa this and that's a that and
those aren't the same things youthought they were.
They're not Okay, and we'regoing to name them.
And so, to this day, we have350,000 names for different
(54:01):
chemicals.
Good to know.
And so what we're seeing todayin the sciences and quote marks
because I think there's manyscientists in the world today
that don't have degrees is nothow things are distinct and
separate and have names, but howthe world is connected in such
(54:25):
vast ways that it's unimaginable.
And in that, I think that's whatwe're seeing now is an
awareness of what we don't knowas opposed to what we do Because
we were taught we know this, weknow this, we know this, we
know this.
Here's a book.
It's two and a half inchesthick.
Read it, I mean.
They test at the end is youknow like, and we had to
(54:46):
memorize and make thosedistinctions and know what is
and not a which and so forth,and what I feel like with
Western and indigenous knowledge, traditional ecological
knowledge are starting to meldand merge and interact in such a
way, with great respect to anunderstanding of what is unknown
(55:12):
, what we don't know, what wenever thought could be, the way
the world quote, quote works.
We will never know for sure, ofcourse.
But when Zoe Slander writes abook, or monica galliano also,
you know that plants speak,communicate, and they're of
(55:33):
course laughed at by botanists.
Not zoe so much, because she'sjust a journalist, but certainly
monica then, all of a sudden,the the anthropological work
that has been done over theyears, you know, and been
dismissive of indigenous peoplewho said oh, why do you use this
?
Why do you do that?
The plant told me and I'm goingyeah, right, the plant did tell
(55:55):
them.
It's like oh, wait a minute,you know, they're absolutely
truth tellers and it just didn'tfit within our bounds of
analysis and reason.
So that's an opening that'shappening all around the world.
It's quite amazing.
Yeah, it is.
But that's why I'm writing abook, because that's what I get
(56:18):
to swim in.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
Yeah, not my discoveries.
AJ (56:26):
Speaking of the zeitgeist, we're at a time in the States
that's really interesting on anumber of levels, different
since when we were togetherwalking these paths 15 months
ago.
We've got an administrationthat currently looks like we'll
succeed in getting food dyes outof foods to a large extent,
maybe some other things like it.
(56:48):
Yet the cuts to the epa and theusda and so forth and the
watchdogs on chemicals in ourfood system and so forth seem to
be a much grander scale.
So I know there's all sorts offractures happening with Magga
and Maha and across all theselines it's not playing out in
(57:09):
any kind of clear fashion.
Let's say it's interesting tohave listened to people all over
this country and to beobserving this that's happening
now and thinking I mean youmentioned Big Pharma before what
seems to be true is that theway things were maybe the fire
wasn't intense enough.
(57:29):
If I'd drawn the analogy, beforebut it wasn't gonna shift those
big locks and while thisobviously isn't addressing it
either, it is breaking thingsapart and all.
Let's use the fire analogy itis burning things, and it makes
me wonder how you feel about allthat that's playing out right
(57:51):
now in the context of what we'vebeen talking about.
How are you seeing things?
Paul (57:56):
Well, um, like in terms of Maha Make America Healthy Again
, headed up by Robert Kennedy Jr, and taking out synthetic dyes
of food, that's some victory.
It's been taken out of foodsthat never should be made in the
first place.
AJ (58:14):
Yes, that's the thing, isn't it?
There's a bigger fish in thesense.
Paul (58:18):
Exactly.
In other words, m&ms andcandies, fruit loops yeah, just
fruit loops and cereals,breakfast cereals and all that
sort of stuff.
All these things are extremelydamaging to our children or to
anybody who eats them.
And we're seeing taking thesynthetic dyes out as some sort
of victory.
It's not even a pyrrhic victory, it's a fault, it's a delusion.
(58:39):
And even then the companies whomake these ultra-processed
foods are fighting it.
You know, I'm trying toprohibit that prohibition,
trying to stop it using theirpolitical power.
I see these bones that weretossed.
I know a lot of people whoabsolutely would have voted
(59:02):
probably did vote for Biden.
The Democrats who voted forTrump because of Robert Kennedy
yeah, and make America healthyagain and this and that and so
forth.
So I don't know what they werethinking, but that's their
problem.
So I mean, what we're seeing isa Hitler's playbook and 2025
(59:29):
understood it very well.
And there's a lawyer named RoyCohn who was Trump's teacher and
who knew the playbook very well.
And flooding the zone is one ofthe things you do.
AJ (59:41):
Yes, this was a film, too that depicted this tutelage,
didn't it?
Before the election last year?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul (59:47):
And you know which is.
So many things come at you thatyou can't handle them all and
they don't make sense, or theyall don't make sense, but it's
the same thing.
So we're in, I don't know wherewe are.
I don't know what's going tohappen.
I don't know where it's goingto emerge.
(01:00:09):
I mean, trump has sort ofseized the reins of executive
power.
That flies in the face ofbalance of power.
You know the United Statesinitiated in 1776, you know the
different forms of governanceexecutive, legislative and
(01:00:32):
judicial and so there was acheck and balance on power and
he's just smashed it and so itvery well can be that there
won't be any more elections, orit won't be midterm elections,
you know, or the nextpresidential elections, even
though in terms of statutes hecannot run again.
But he obviously doesn't careabout a precedent or meets and
(01:00:58):
bounds.
So I just don't know what'sgoing to happen in this country.
I really was thrilled to seethat you didn't fall for it in
Australia.
You know you're pretty much thesame playbook, maybe not as
articulately expressed, and Ithink other countries are
(01:01:19):
pushing back.
Now You're seeing in the UK,you know, I mean Farage and the
Reform Party making a Trump.
Go, if you will, at the politythere.
I don't think the UK is goingto go for that.
They did Brexit.
That was stupid.
Same people.
So I don't know Whateverhappens is going to be.
(01:01:44):
I don't think electing aDemocrat in three years as the
president is going to make asignificant change.
I wish I could say otherwisebecause, I haven't seen that
Democrat and I haven't seen theDemocratic Party that doesn't
have its head up, as, whatever Imean it's been, it's a
(01:02:07):
gerontocracy.
There was a vote on thedecision this is just a
technical term about the Househaving to pass something that
was passed in the Senate a $9billion decision and three
members Democratic membersdidn't show up because they're
so old and they couldn't getthere.
So it's a gerontocracy, youknow.
(01:02:27):
Rinse and repeat.
It's been a really weak party,you know, in terms of leadership
and in terms of responding towhat people really want.
You know.
AJ (01:02:37):
Yeah.
Paul (01:02:38):
And so you know you always deserve what you get.
The United States deservesTrump.
AJ (01:02:47):
You know, I saw signs around the country of what we've seen
in Australia, where communitiesdecided they deserve something
else and made it happen outsidethe two major well, to some
extent now inside the democratequivalent party as well, and
but certainly outside the twomajor parties, originally, with
the independents that weregetting elected and more elected
(01:03:09):
just in the election a fewmonths ago, and I saw a bit of
that around the states as well.
What did you see?
Younger people in particular,uh-huh, organizing right and
training people to run and tosupport those who would run.
Yeah, in whatever, in a party oras independents so that you
reform the parties as well toget the whole system being more
(01:03:32):
representative and yeah, not thegerontocracy as well.
And, and you know, a bunch ofthem won, yeah, even even in
those prevailing wins thatyou've described.
Paul (01:03:42):
Yeah, no, I, I see that at lower level down ballot.
Yeah, no, it's again.
It's like five-triggeredsuccession, you know yes, if
you're 2024 and you're going.
What are you people thinking?
And that's to both parties, notjust to the Republicans.
And like I'm going to, you know, I'm an OBGYN, I'm a this, I'm
(01:04:04):
a nurse, I'm a school teacher,I'm a whatever, and I'm going to
run.
AJ (01:04:08):
Yeah, yeah.
Paul (01:04:09):
Against this incumbent who's been reelected, you know,
17 times every two years, that'sright, you know and shows up at
the county fair and stuff likethat, but you know, so there is
that arising and I think that iscertainly caused by the
outrageousness, you know, ofwhat's happening.
The playbook trump godfors in2025, too, you know.
(01:04:33):
I mean, there's a document andeverybody said, oh, look, look
at this, he's using this.
He said, oh, I've never seen itbefore, I've never read it.
It's absolutely by the book andthe author of the book is part
of the administration.
It was a very clear descriptionof how to wield the executive
branch in such a way that it hadpowers it never knew about or
(01:04:58):
could exercise, or wouldexercise, or never thought to be
exercised by the president.
And so, yeah, it's here, andthat playbook applies to other
countries as well.
You know, I mean differenttypes of governing institutions,
but the basic techniques arethere.
AJ (01:05:22):
Yeah, because from the Australian experience it does
make me wonder.
Conditions on the ground, ifthey change enough, if
communities come together enough, listened enough, it can take
the sails, the wind, out of thesails of the ones who would
divide.
Paul (01:05:39):
Sure, I mean.
I think the outrageousness ofthe activities are definitely
waking people up.
Yeah, to like what you know, inthe United States I don't see
People usually vote topocketbooks here for every
presidential election.
Am I better?
AJ (01:05:54):
off.
That was said in Australia too,yeah, but it's sort of shifted.
Paul (01:05:59):
They don't vote issues, they vote money.
Yeah, so who's to say whetherthe nation will be done?
AJ (01:06:06):
So you know, the other thing I mentioned to you the other
day is just really sitting in me.
I mentioned that there are abunch of podcasts and I might
write a piece on it, like thepodcast that I discovered in
going across the country thatreally stood out, and one of
them was Dolly Parton's America.
Paul (01:06:24):
Yeah, yeah.
AJ (01:06:26):
And you'd heard of it, but you'd not listened to it.
Paul (01:06:28):
Definitely.
AJ (01:06:28):
And we listened.
We're halfway through theseries right now.
We just listened to episodefive.
It's already moved meextraordinarily.
And episode five Wow, it'salready moved me extraordinarily
.
And episode five wow Becauseessentially Dolly was asked.
Well, her sister even came outand said Dolly should be
speaking up.
And so the producers of thispodcast were saying to her you
know what's your thinking?
(01:06:49):
Where do you stand?
You're sort of you're seen asthis great unifying figure.
You sort of don't get up andendorse one candidate or another
and clearly people love youacross the political spectrum,
but some would argue, like yoursister now, that in this time
you should be speaking.
Yeah, and, and and the producerasked a really astute question.
She said, in the context ofpeople hurting with this
(01:07:14):
administration, do you everthink am I hurting more people
by not saying something now?
Paul (01:07:22):
what did she say to that?
AJ (01:07:23):
yeah, I was on tenderhooks it's a really good question and
she said she referred to andsort of this had been the
backdrop of it the, the, was itthe emmys?
A bunch of years ago 2017,trump's first term when they got
together the crew, because theywere each winning emmys for one
thing or another.
So they got together jane fonda, lily tomlin and dolly parton
for the first time since nine tofive was filmed, you know, 35
(01:07:46):
years prior or whatever.
So it's this extraordinaryoccasion they're on stage.
Jane fonda tees off becausethere's this famous line in the
film that we won't stand foryour bigoted, hypoc, hypocritic,
sexist, you know whateverbrilliant line there was in 9 to
5, I can't remember off the topof my head and she said and
we're still not standing foryour chauvinistic, bigoted and
(01:08:08):
she's aiming it at Trump andDolly, depends on how you see it
but diffused the situation.
She made a boob joke and movedon and got the crowd laughing
and she said I can always turnto the boob joke, but then she
said you know what I reallywanted to say?
I wanted to say let's pray forthe president.
Paul (01:08:29):
Oh yeah.
AJ (01:08:30):
But I thought I'll get slammed for that too.
So boob joke, it is yeah.
And I thought wow, that's whyshe's loved universally.
She's not out to get anyoneright.
Right, and in a way, what morepowerful thing is there to say
or do that came up for?
Paul (01:08:50):
me in a different way.
I did a three-month retreat.
It wasn't really a retreat, itwas caretaking of a empty
buddhist refuge center and itwas way off in the wilderness
and there was no electricity, noradio, no phone, no mail, no,
nothing.
You're cut off.
So I was in silence for threemonths.
(01:09:12):
Um, wow, no one to talk to you.
You know, I mean, it was easyto be in silence.
And when I came back to Taos,new Mexico, in the truck and I
went to a natural food store,first thing starving, and it was
(01:09:35):
just like a cacophonyEverybody's talking, you know, I
thought, oh my God, look, it'samazing, people just talk and
talk, and talk and talk.
It's like, of course, but forthree months if you're in
silence, it is really quite anunusual experience.
And these two women walked byand they had, I think, a small
child girl, and the mother wassaying, oh, she is such a bitch.
(01:10:00):
She was like criticizingsomebody else.
What I noticed was that thelittle girl was listening and
hearing this and my first was tocriticize the mother, you know,
saying you shouldn't have.
And my mind is going that way.
And then I listened morecarefully, or recounted what I
(01:10:22):
had heard more carefully, and Irealized that woman is talking
about herself.
If you're saying she is such abitch, who are you talking about
?
There's something in you, somepain, something.
And then I realized you candisagree with me, but everybody,
whatever we say, is about us.
(01:10:43):
It's who we are.
That just comes out, doesn'tmatter, it's you.
And I thought about that withtrump.
Um, he's talking about himselfand in from a buddhist
perspective.
He lives in a Vajra hell.
There's seven levels of hell.
He lives in one of the very,very most painful, worst ones.
(01:11:04):
But out of that came a sense ofcompassion, because everything
you hear him say, he may smile,he may look crowing glamorous,
it doesn't matter, he issuffering.
Every sentence, every post onTruth, social, everything is his
mind.
He lives in that mind.
(01:11:26):
That's the hell realm, that'swhere he lives.
AJ (01:11:29):
Up in the envy.
Paul (01:11:30):
Yeah, it doesn't mean you're going to put up with it
and not try to change things.
What I'm just saying is that itactually elicited compassion
for that human being like why,who would want to be born that
person in this lifetime andspend a lifetime living there?
AJ (01:11:47):
so I agree with dolly, yeah.
And then, conversely, whenyou're dolly, and that's what
comes out of your mouth, likeshe really has attained
something.
Because what the show alsopointed out is that her songs
have never shirked these sortsof issues, from nine to five and
on and prior right, aboutminorities, women loving a
(01:12:10):
country as a whole what shemight have to say she is saying
as well.
She's clearly doing it in sucha way that reaches everybody,
even though she's saying it insong form.
And then she says that, orwould have said that and said
that in this moment on thatpodcast I agree with it.
Paul (01:12:29):
I think everybody's a teacher to oneself, but I will
say that I do think that peoplewho call themselves teachers and
say I'm a teacher are lessinteresting to me than people
who don't know they're theteacher.
AJ (01:12:42):
Right on, that's it.
Paul (01:12:43):
Yeah.
AJ (01:12:44):
And even then as a, I guess, celebrity she wasn't
grandstanding.
Yeah, she didn't say what shewanted to say.
Paul (01:12:50):
Yeah, she's one of our teachers.
AJ (01:12:51):
Yeah Well, Paul Thank you yeah.
We're full circle back to yourhouse.
Come back again.
100% Going to miss you, mate.
It's been magnificent to comeback and be with you again.
Paul (01:13:03):
It's amazing that you know more about this country than I
do Far more.
You've been to more places.
You've experienced more people,communities, events.
I am astonished at what youguys have done in 15 months and
25,000 miles in your Honda.
It is unfathomablyextraordinary in terms of an
(01:13:28):
accomplishment.
You guys seem bright and perkyand ready to go, so it didn't
take anything out of you, but itsure must have been a learning
experience the likes of whichyou couldn't have devised a
better learning experience.
AJ (01:13:43):
Exactly, I've got your words in my mind right now of not
being the teacher.
Yeah, we learned in spades andmate right back at you, nearly
80 years so far.
Paul (01:13:53):
Yeah.
AJ (01:13:53):
What a life, what a journey I'm learning from you.
Thanks a lot for having alittle walk and talk with me.
Paul (01:14:00):
Yeah, this year is the first time I realized oh, next
decade is in the 80s, Crept upon you.
It doesn't creep up on me,because it doesn't mean anything
.
AJ (01:14:09):
Yeah.
Paul (01:14:09):
It has no meaning.
The meaning is what you do,your mind, your life, what you
give what you do, what you loveyour mind, your life, what you
give, what you do, what you loveyour body, of course.
And my body is remarkablyunscathed yet by disease and so
forth.
And so I just feel like I'm sofortunate and I don't think of
(01:14:32):
it as like, oh well, now you're80.
Or next year.
No, I'm not, I'm just here, I'mdoing the best I can, looking
into the next, around the nextyear.
No, I'm not, I'm just here, I'mdoing the best.
AJ (01:14:39):
I can Looking into the next around the next quarter.
Yeah, yeah, on you, mate.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, yeah, that was PaulHawken at Home Among the
Redwoods, with great thanks toyou, generous paid subscribers,
for making it possible.
Special thanks this week fromAJ to SJ, new paid subscriber,
(01:15:01):
doing great work of his own inJapan, with some common ground
too with Aussie legend Leunigand an old favourite film,
baghdad Cafe.
Thanks too to Paul Vergnot andNikki Thompson for being paid
subscribers for three years now.
I can't tell you how grateful Iam for you sticking with me
over those years.
We'd love you to join us if youcan get some exclusive stuff
(01:15:24):
like discounts to a series ofupcoming events and help keep
the show going by heading to thewebsite or the show notes and
following the prompts.
The music you're hearing isRegeneration by Amelia Barden.
My name's Anthony James.
Thanks for listening.
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