Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #020_ The Purpose: Chasing the Pacific Crest Trail!

Transcript

#020_ The Purpose: Chasing the Pacific Crest Trail! · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: All right, man, you're ready to do it, ready to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: roll do it.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: We were just saying before before hitting record that it's
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: a tricky challenge to try to figure out how to
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: embrace the fact and enjoy the fact that it's like
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: eighty five degrees out on November. What, No, November February fifth, Yeah,
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: it's insane, and at the same time recognize the fact
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: that it's bananas.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, trying to be present to the moment
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: and at the same time recognized that the moment is
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: kind of fucked up. Is like a dynamic tension. So
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: if I'm trying to be in the moment and not
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: be too conscious of what's causing this moment, and yet
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: if you don't, it kind of feels like I have
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: my head in the sand if I'm doing that. So
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's it's an odd tension, right, and
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: we're living it most aspects of our lives.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: So maybe we can canvas exactly what is going on
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: that is contributing to this. Assume somebody who's listening has
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: only the most rudimentary basic sense of global climate change,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: and perhaps we could do like a laundry list of
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: what exactly is going on and contributing to this situation
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: that we currently face.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So human civilization we like to think of as progress,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and much of it has led to incredible technological revolutions.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: It really has transformed the way that we live, that
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: we relate to each other. But about two hundred years ago,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: when the Industrial Revolution started, we found that there was
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: this incredible resource, this energy in a liquid form gasoline
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: that basically is very very condensed organic matter that from
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: the time of the dinosaurs has been sitting there gaining
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: more and more energy. And when you put it in
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a car or a factory, it runs things. It's like
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a miracle, incredible, right, So it's pretty cool. It runs
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: nearly everything that we think of. The ships that are
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: coming across from China bringing goods, the trains, the buses,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: the cars, the homes, the factories all run on fossil fuels.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: The reason they're called fossils.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Is because that's what they are exactly.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: So when you burn them, they produce carbon dioxide and
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: we breathe out carbon dioxide. So people who are cynical
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: or don't believe in climate change oft and say, wow,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: this has happened for millennia we've had changes in the climate,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and that's true. What's different now is that we're causing
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the change in the climate, which sits uncomfortably with people,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: especially people who have faith, because they think, how could
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: we insignificant humans really be changing our climate, but we are. Really.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: The most monumental aspect is the pace of change. When
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: we've had climate variations in the last one hundred thousand years,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: they've happened very slowly. This is happening very dramatically. So
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the release of greenhouse gases, they're not just they're not
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: just carbon. There are other things, like your refrigerator has
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: free on and other coolants that also Actually they do
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: it much much quicker. They're about seventy to one hundred
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: times more potent than CO two. So all these gases
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: are going into the atmosphere and they trap heat. So
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: when you think about the rays of the sun coming
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: to us right now, nice and warm in this room,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: when it bounces back up, what used to happen is
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: it bounce back up into space and a lot of
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: that heat would dissipate into space. Now what happens because
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: these gases trap the heat, is that it's getting warmer
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and warmer, and it's leading not just to global warming,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: which it used to be called, but climate change, a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: lot of variability. You see the hurricanes that we had,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Hurricanes Urma, you see what happened from Dallas to Puerto Rico.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: But it also leads to a lot colder weather. So
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: weather variability is going to become the new norm very
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: much hotter summers and in some places colder winters.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the frequency of these crazy climactic climatic you know,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: weather related events that we're seeing with just more and
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: more regularity. Yeah, these crazy storms and the impact that
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: they're having on cities, and we're putting band aids on
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: these problems.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: By my observation, Well, the thing is, rich people don't.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: We don't want to confront one of the biggest things
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: in our own lives we don't want to confront is death. Right,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: people don't talk about death. It's not you know, even
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: my parents who are in their a we're talking to
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: them about doing a will, and they're like, why would
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: we do a will. We've got years to go, So
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: no one wants to confront their own death. So if
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: we're not willing to confront our own death, it's hard
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: to confront something as big as the death of the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: planet or the death of our ability to live on
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the planet. So it's a scary it's a scary thing, right,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So I understand why people don't want to talk about it.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: We also don't want to believe that we have that
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: level of control over our planet, and that if we
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: did have that level of control, that would mean we'd
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: have to take responsibility, and taking responsibility is tough for
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: many people.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're in the midst of a political climate
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: where there's never been less political will to really wrestle
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: with this in a meaningful way. So, like what is
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: going on at the EPA right now with Scott Pruitt
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: and the Trump administration and the rollback of all these
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: initiatives that you were integral in of, you know, fostering
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: and working on during your tenure.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So it's a dark time at EPA. I really want
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to give a shout out to all the people who
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: are still there in the trenches day after day doing
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: amazing work. We need to send them our support and love.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that thing where do you stay in
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: and work for change or does that make you, you know,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: part of the problem, like it's a difficult thing, Like
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: I have compassion for somebody who's got to be working
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: there right now, thinking why am I employed by this
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: administration that stands for everything that I've devoted my life
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: to combat, and yet leaving isn't the solution either.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's about temperament. You know, people need
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: to enjoy what they do. The people that I talk
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to that like staying and fighting and doing their job,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: which to me is an active resistance, and that people
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: who are just so depressed they want to cull up
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: in a ball and you know, hibernate for the next
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: three years. So depending on your dispos if you're a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: fighter and believe that you can make a difference and stay,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: you should stay. If you're just miserable, you should probably
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: move on. But what's happening on a larger scale is
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: that there's been this fight that the Republicans started way
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: before Trump. Within the years of the Obama administration, the
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Republican Congress had already cut EPA's budget by twenty five percent,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: so huge, huge budget cuts. So by the time Trump
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: took over, they were already at kind of a very
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: minimal budget and he now wants to cut it back
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: to really nothing. So that budget is one. The next
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: which you pointed out, which is even more troubling, is
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the rollback of standards. So more than fifty different standards
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: have been rolled back. Some of them it's just a
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: press headline and they're not going to actually materialize because
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the courts and the legal system is going to stop
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Trump in his tracks. But he's definitely pandering to his base.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: His base feel like, but for the EPA, but for
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: environmental regulations, everything would be good. We have jobs, we'd
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: have all these burgeoning manufacturing you know. Unfortunately, what's been
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: ignored is automation, which is the number one job killer
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: in our country. And then the second which Trump has
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: focused on is outsourcing that manufacturing to other places. The
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: environment and environmental regulations has had a net huge positive
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: on the American economy because worker productivity is one of
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: the number one things that you look at in terms
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: of the health of the economy. We're sitting here in California.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: California has the strongest environmental regulations of any state in
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: the Union. It also has the strongest economy of any
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: state in the Union. So this kind of bullshit argument
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: that you know, what, environmental regulations are killing jobs. We're
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: like at four point three percent unemployment rate right now.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: But it's this sense that I mean, Prude has said
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: sort of famously that the bounty of the earth is
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: here to feed us and fuel us, and anything that
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: stands in the way of that needs to be eradicated.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: And it's really a default to this situation in which,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: you know, he would like to see the industries that
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: are meant to be policed by the EPA self regulating
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: each other. We'll defer to them, and we'll let them decide,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: you know, what's right in our best interest. And it's
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: just amazing to me that word that this is, this
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: is sort of you know, getting by right now.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: It's a wake up call. I think we sat on
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: our laurels too long. We had an abundance of confidence
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: that the system was working, and the fact that you
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: could have someone like Pruitt, which is really the fox
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: guarding the chicken house, be the head of EPA, I
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: think was shocking enough. He's very, very skilled. He's like
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: you and I. He's an attorney. He knows what he's doing.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: He's like a trained assassin. He isn't a bungling fool.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Like in Oklahoma, you spend a lot of time pursuing
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: the EPA, right, Like, he's very well versed in the
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: mechanics of how it functions.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: And yeah, he sued EPA fourteen times over numerous different regulations. Yeah,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the state that we're at is that people when you
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: poll them, when you do public opinion surveys, they say, yes,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: we want more environmental protection. We want our air to
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: be cleaner, we want our water to be cleaner, we
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: want the land to be free of toxins. When you
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: then ask them, do you think it's government's role to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: put more regulations in place? They say no, absolutely not
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: rich we don't want that. So you've got this bizarre
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: dichotomy between on the one hand, you want more protection,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, there's a complete lack of trust
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: in government institutions. So he's you would think that the
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: person in the role that he is in would care
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: more about the institutions and the rule of law. So,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you know, this has become a very partisan issue. Unfortunately,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I have a lot of Republican friends that don't agree
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: with what he's doing. There's a lot of fishermen, there's
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of hunters that are like, you know what,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: we need national parks. Why are we shrinking national parks
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: as Trump has proposed to do. So the whole litany
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: of things that are happening, I think is going to
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: lead to a backlash. It hasn't happened yet. I would
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: have predicted it would have happened a little sooner, but
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I don't think you were kind of in uncharted territory
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: when it comes to this administration.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: What's interesting is that the history of ron environmentalism was
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: initially a Republican idea. I mean, it was Nixon who
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: who created the EPA, and my sense is that it
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: was sort of born out of perhaps an elitist idea
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: like we want to preserve where we fly fish and
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: you know, we like the views out of our windows.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Where the Liberals were coming from a place of thinking,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: look we need to use this line and for you know,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: building lower income housing for poor people. So it was
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: really a Republican ideal that initiated this, and it's interesting
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: how that's flipped. And maybe that has to do with
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: you know, when did that occur, Like was that when
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Al Gore became vice president?
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Or I think it's when Al Gore came out with
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: an Inconvenient truth.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Originally became politicized.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, originally I was looking at this. He was originally
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: slated to do the movie with John McCain, and at
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: some point it became just about.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Alcoholically unle for John John to do that.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you remember back in the day, even
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: when McCain ran for president, it was still a fairly
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: bipartisan issue. So I think we have a lot of
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: work to do as a movement, and I actually I
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: blame myself and the movement in no small measure for
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: getting Trump elected. I think the tone of the environmental
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: movements real kind of shaming of people, especially in the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Rust Belt, for those people's roles in environmental pollution, which
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: they really have, you know, as an individual, people in Michigan,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: for instance, or Pennsylvania, I think felt like we're being patronized,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: We're being talked down to by these elites from these
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: environmental groups. If we don't have a prius, if we
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: don't live in a green home, if we don't you know,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: eat a vegan diet, then we're not good people. And
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: we think we are good people and so inspiring people
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: as you do and I'm trying to do around health.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: This is about health. This isn't about telling someone they
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: should be doing it for a greater cause. Let's start
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: with individual people and what they care about. And we
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: need to just change the tone.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the elitist veneer that washes over notions related to wellness, environmentalism,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: you know, living green and all of that is not
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: serving the greater good, you know, I agree. And it's
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: the people in the rust belt. It's the blue collar
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: you know, workers that are well intentioned and just trying
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: to live their lives that ultimately, you know, sort of
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: need these ideas the most, or are suffering the most
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: as a result of a lack of understanding or policies
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: that could enhance their day to day you know, sort
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: of general well being.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this whole vote against self interest is a bizarre
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: place that we're in. I mean, many of the people
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: who voted for Trump, it's not in their self interest
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form, and yet they did
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: it because of a belief that the current system was
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: not helping them.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the idea that he was going to look out
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: for them, that he was going to bring jobs back
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: from these old sort of outdated sectors. Was pushing a
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: button that you know, they needed to hear, and I
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: don't begrudge them for that. Like they're suffering and they're
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: having a hard time and somebody comes along who's breaking
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: ranks and someone who they feel is speaking to them directly.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: That's going to activate that, you know, that sector for sure.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: To me, it's about getting back to grassroots. That's where
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: that's where politics and environment and all this needs to happen.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: It's been so focused on Washington, DC that it's become
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: an abstraction when we are talking at the beginning of
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the hour about what climate change is. To most people,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: it's only real when you equate it back to their situation,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: if their kid has asthma, if they're you know, subject
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: to hurricanes that hit more frequently. But making it this
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: big concept of global climate change that doesn't really mean anything.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So we've abstracted notions of the environment to such a
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: degree that it doesn't mean anything to any person. And
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: we need to get back down to a place where
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: people care about the hills in Malibu because they hike there,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: people care about Santa Monica Bay because they fish. They're
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: not some abstracted notion, and I think EPA is partly
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: to blame. We've become so specialized as a society that
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: individual scientists understand individual parts of much bigger problems. No
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: one's sitting there explaining this is what's going on, this
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: is how we need to move forward.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not necessarily communicators in the broadest sense. That's
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: not that's not their job. And it seems like there
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: needs to be a new way or a reframing of
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: the vernacular around these ideas so that people can understand
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: and embrace them outside the context of partisan politics.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: And I think you're right and to a logic scent
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: that is happening. Boy Scout groups still collect bottle and
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: buddles and cans and get their redemption value. Community groups
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: still clean up pollution in rivers, lakes and streams in
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that park. So at the groscy roots level, there's an
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: enormous amount of good stuff happening. And I would encourage people.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: That's to me in all, in all my life adventures,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: That's what I've gotten back down to, which is it
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: is about you, each of us as individuals, and the
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: more it's about large policies that are driven by science
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: that people don't understand that could work for a while
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: while there was a reverence and respect for science. I
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: still have that reverence and respect, but most people would put,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: you know, a Nobel laureate scientist on the same pedestal
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: as Kim Kardashian.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but what's interesting about that is, you know, this
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: notion of personal responsibility that's a conservative, a traditional conservative
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: ideal like take responsive, make your own bed, you know,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: and the greater good is elevated by the result of you,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of mining your own p's and q's.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I don't believe in minding my own p's and q's
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: in that. I think what we've lost is people knowing
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: who their neighbors are, people building community and valuing community
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: as opposed to the individuality that exists with my relationship
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: with my iPhone. That's not community. Watching TV is not community.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: So getting I was just gardening the other day and
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I met every single one of my neighbors because I
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: was out on the street talking to people, as opposed
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: to in my home and just sitting on a stoop.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: People don't do that. So we may never get back
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: to that place. But I'm not suggesting that this ideal
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: of retreating into oneself. But basically, if we are the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: way that we experience the planet, the planet is incredibly
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: special and unique and it's a gift, and we can't
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: act firstly as if we're different than the rest of
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the planet. I mean, to me, this myth of human
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: superiority is kind of the beginning of the end. Once
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: we think we're better than and different than everything else
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: on the planet, we then have as you described as
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: belief in our capacity to have dominion over nature, which
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: is insane.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Well in history tells us well that every time we
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: try to outwit nature, nature ultimately, in the long run,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: gets the best of us. And longer do we have
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: to yeah, exactly, like, when are we going to finally
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: get that and try to, you know, live in a
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: way that's more copasetic with the ebbs and flows of
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: what the planet requires.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: I don't think we will, and I don't mean that
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: in an human doom.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Are you pessimistic? That speaks to your overall perspective on
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: whether we can win this war or not.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I I like to think of myself as an optimist.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: I now I mean both those terms optimists and pessimists
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: kind of have a inherent in them, a belief in
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a in a eventuality that's something either positive will happen
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: or negative. For me, I don't see a lot of
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: evidence that. You know. I started doing international environmental law,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: so I thought the way forward was these big treaties
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: like the one that Trump pulled out of, the Paris Agreement. Right,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: So when you look at those agreements, most of the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: countries we had one. We had the Kyodo Protocol, which
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: was meant to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. It had strict
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: criteria and reduction targets. They weren't met. When you look
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: at nearly any treaty of its kind, they you know,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: they're they're not that they don't have a good track record.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking for what are the the signs of
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: positive growth for me? Me our areas like the organic
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: food movement, for instance, where it relates to people's own
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: individual health and well being, where there's a direct nexus
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: between them and the environment. That's where I see improvement.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: That's where I want to focus.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like changing habits and human nature or
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: attitudes around these issues are going to be best driven
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: by changes in people's specific environments that contribute to making
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: the better choice as opposed to the easy, lazy choice
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: that is creating harm.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, I saw that your wife did a
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: book on dairy free cheese. Like, I'm lactose intolerant, so
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: when I eat or consume milk, I feel crap. I
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: feel terrible. So it isn't you know. I became kind
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: of an accidental vegan because my wife when we moved
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: in together, was a vegetarian, and I just started not
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: eating meat. If you try and eat meat five years later,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: it really your system can't do it right. So I
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: never made any particular choice to go down this path.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: My daughter then became gluten freeze, and now I'm like, wow,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: how did I end up doing all this?
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: But these are decisions that are consistent with your values, though,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: because when you look at the impact of animal agriculture
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: on planetary health, it's pretty dire.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: But so rich. This is exactly the conversation that so
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: if we analyze this conversation, I don't think you're going
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: to convince more than five percent of the population to
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: stop eating meat because of the massive impacts that dairy
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and other agriculture have on you know, just industrial agriculture
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: generally have a devastating impact on the planet. That's not
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: going to convince anyone. But if you say, look how
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: good rich looks, you know, look how good I feel,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and you help someone do that, I think are going
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: to change and keep that change. Like I'm not going
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to ever go back to drinking milk because it makes
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: me feel terrible. Now I'm not supposed to drink milk.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So allowing people to one understand how they feel, and
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I think many people have lost touch, have just become numb, cynical,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: unable to understand and really value how they feel. And
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: then you start eating fried food with that knowledge, and
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: it just tastes fucking nasty, so they don't do it anymore,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: as opposed to you should not eat meat because it's
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: bad for the planet.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I get that. I get that distinction. But I
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: think environmentally we can create you know, how do how
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: do we foster the organic food movement so that it
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: can impact more people and the people that need it
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: the most, which is the lower socioeconomic class that either
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: can't afford it or access it right now. And to me,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: that happens through you know, local urban gardening and programs
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: that start with kids in schools and education and all
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: of these things that get people interested and in a
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: communal sense. You were talking about, like being gardening in
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: your front yard, Like you know, it seems like every city,
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: you know, every urban landscape should proliferate with urban gardens
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: where people can grow their own food and have access
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: to organic produce and create an opportunity for their kids
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: to learn about that connection between the foods they're eating
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: and health, because these are the people that are suffering
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: the greatest from these chronic ailments that are just killing
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: millions of people.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: One hundred percent agree. A huge advocate of community agriculture,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and I once had the cool job of being the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: director of the San Francisco Recreation in pos development, and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: the number one thing that people came up to me
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: thanking me for was not how great Golden Gate Park looked.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: It was thank you so much for having that community gotten.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I was sitting six years on a weight now I'm
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: in just getting your hands in the dirt, all those microbes,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: just the feeling of being out and doing what we're
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: supposed to do, which is be connected to nature, and
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: then being able to show the kids that connection. The
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Green Schools movement is an amazing positive example of what
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: can be done tearing out the asphalt and putting in
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: community gardens for flowers, for food. In my kids public
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: school in San Francisco, they did that at rooftop and
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: they had a garden teacher and she was amazing, and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: it just motivated the kids to even though they're in
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the middle of a dense city, to think about nature
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: in a different way. So for all the people out
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: there who are doing that, keep doing it. You're awesome.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. But the idea that you would have
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to be on a wait list for six years, that's insane. Right.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: It should be something that's accessible to everybody, especially in
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: densely populated areas. And I know there's some cool stuff
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: happening in Oakland with this.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: It's cool stuff. Yeah, in La in Oakland, all over
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: all over the country, cool stuff is happening. But it
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: takes okay. So this is exactly the emphasis that I
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: think is important, which is we are so frigging distracted
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: by Trump and national politics, which does not bear really
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: on how many community gardens they're going to be. And
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: yet you go to these meetings as I did, to
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: suggest that they'd be more community gardens in poorer communities.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: No one from national environmental groups shows up. No one,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: five or six members of the community show up because
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: they're all watching Trump on some you know, crazy Fox
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: News thing that they're not there in the community. So
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: we need people to put down their TVs their phones,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: give up this idea that they're going to be able
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: to change Trump, get less anxiety in their life by
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: doing so, and go to these community meetings and say, yeah, yeah,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: we can transform our community. One of the great ways
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: of doing it is by putting in community gardens.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Right. In other words, stop spending so much of your
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: time and resources and energy in things you can't control exactly.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Let's take a look at what we can actually change.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So how did you get interested in the environment
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: to begin with?
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I grew up in a small village in England called
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Gronchester with two American parents. So my number one question is,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: how could you be an EPA if you have an
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: English accent. I'm like, okay, you can. You can grow
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: up in another country and be a US citizen. And
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: every morning the cows would go in front of our
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: house to the meadows and for me, the most liberating
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: thing was the bicycle. So it's the very flat part
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: of England. Me and my friends from like six years
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: old would just go out into the fields on our
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: bikes on these farm roads and go for miles and
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: miles and that sense of liberation and freedom connected to
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the environment was really important.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: And so that that triggered something like did you know then,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: like this is what I want my life to be about?
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Or when did the lights go on like this this
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: is a career that I could pursue.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: So the next thing that I did was take photographs
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: off trees. So that was my passion when I was
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: maybe eleven through sixteen. And then my grandmother was this
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: very very boisterous, feisty lady and she I would argue
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: all the time and she was like, Jerry, do you
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: should go to law school. I'd never even thought about
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: being a lawyer. She was a child psychologist and maybe
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: she was just kind of pushing me, thinking reverse psychology.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: But I ended up going to law school and doing
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: human rights law and.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Went to Berkeley for law school.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and at Berkeley at the time, it just leading
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: up to the nineteen ninety two Rio Earth Summit, which
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: was the first time, the largest gathering at its time
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: of heads of state that had ever happened in human
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: history to come together for the environment. And George Bush
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Senior was there and even signed the Climate Change Convention
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: at the time. So it just shows how much has
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: changed even since ninety two. Anyway, they asked me and
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: this friend Laurie to do a report for the Sierra
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Club Legal Defense Fund on the relationship between human rights
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: and the environment. If your environment is so destroyed by
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: an oil company or logging, do you have a cause
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: in an international court to say that your human rights
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: have been violated? And what it showed was that every
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: constitution new constitution that had either been written or changed
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: since nineteen seventy six included this clause of a right
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: to a healthy environment, So as is one of the
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: few constitutions that doesn't have any rights to a healthy environment.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: So that leads you into ultimately into city politics in
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: San Francisco.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I never thought I'd become a city bureaucrat. I'm
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: kind of accidental vegan and an accidental bureaucrat, So I no,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I ran.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: An accidental podcaster.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Now exactly. Now you're you're forcing me, Rich Ritten has
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: me tied down. I've been in this cabin for four weeks.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: The only way I could get out was to do
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a podcast. No, so I started just in terms of
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: people listening. I wouldn't recommend going right into city government.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: If you care about the environment, think about what you
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: can do locally. I work for environmental groups. The first
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: one was this group called the Natural Resources Defense Council,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: and then this group called the International Fund for Animal
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Welfare and the funnest biggest campaign that we ran. Well, actually,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: the last time I was in Malibu was with Pierce
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Brosnan in like ninety eight or something. We ran this
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: campaign to stop Mitsubishi from building a salt factory twice
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the size of Washington, d C. In this beautiful place
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: called Laguna San Ignacio. So fighting corporate evils was how
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I kind of got my teeth sharpened. And then and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: then they got this job in San Francisco with Willie Brown.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a character of that guy
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: he is.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: You need to get him on the show, Rich.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: I would love to. I actually worked in his law firm.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: My first job out of law school was at a
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: firm called Littler Mendelsohn in San Francisco, and he was
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: a named partner. He wasn't around that much at the time,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: but I had a little bit of interaction with him.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's got that guy's got a lot of swagger.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: He's amazing and if you shake his hand. I saw
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: him a few days ago, he's got a hand of steel.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: He works out every day two or three hours. He
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: told me. He keeps a very strict diet. I mean
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: he's in his early eighties, but he looks in his
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: late sixties, so.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: He's sort of a man born out of time too.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: I feel like he would have floor furished in you know,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties. Or he's a very much a bon vivant.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I love Willie. He's a classic.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: So he appoints you and you got to work. Like
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: you made a pretty significant impact on a lot of
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: measures in San Francisco, Like I read like recycling went
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: from forty six percent to somewhere in the high seventies
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: or something like that.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: So yeah, well, we think about environment, so cities. So
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, for the first time in
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: human history, the majority of people on the planet live
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: in urban areas. So as a civilization, as a species,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: we've spent most of our time as farmers in wild places,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: then in farms. Now we live in cities. So fifty
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: percent of the world's humanity lives in cities. Eighty five
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: percent of the world's pollution comes from cities. So some
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: of these legal instruments that I had kind of looked
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: at and studied in law school, they don't really apply
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: to cities, and yet where the action is at. So
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco, we basically came up with this theory
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: that if we can't come up with environmental ordinances and
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: regulations in San Francisco, where else in the world are
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: they going to be able to do it?
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got to start there.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: They have a commitment, an obligation rather like so were
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: kind of zany. So we came out with this goal
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and one to get to zero waste
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: by twenty twenty. The people, the people who are implementing
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: it a phone me the other day. They're like, Jared,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: what the fuck? How could you come out zero waste
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: by twenty twenty? Were you nuts?
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: We needed a goal, right, we shouldn't be sending stuff
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: to landfill or incineration. Waste to me is a design flaw,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Like why do we have waste as a society. We
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: don't need to if we designed things better. So we did.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: We were the first city to do curbside collection of
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: food scraps to turn into compost. So more than five
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: hundred tons a day of food scraps that turned into
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: organic compost in San Francisco.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Didn't it didn't composting become like a legal mandate.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So once you set a goal, which I'd encourage
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: everyone in their life, in their business, in their cities
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: to do so, zero waste to landfill by twenty twenty
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: means you need to work with everyone, the businesses, the
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: recycling companies, and come up with a plan. How are
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: you going to do this? So what we realize is
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: at some point, voluntary efforts they'll get you pretty far.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: They got us to seventy percent recycling, you're not going
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to get to eighty percent. So we went to Gavin Newsom,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: who then became the mayor. So, Gavin, we need to
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: get to eighty ninety percent in the next ten years.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: We can only do it if we make these things mandatory.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: And people kind of freaked out. We also then looked out,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: what is the stuff that's still going to landfill that
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: can't be recycled, So plastic bags diyrophoam, we like, we
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: need to ban that, and I'm not you know you
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that don't need to be banned,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: but some things do. Plastic bags are one of them.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: We had a huge fight with the plastic bag industry,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: but it kind of inspired people to if we can
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: do this rich in these communities and now as a state,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: then the rest of the nation can say, you know what,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: it is possible, we actually can do it. The same
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: has been true with solar power. The same has been
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: true with many different initiatives. If California can do it
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and make it affordable, the rest of the nation will follow.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: It's been true of electric vehicles.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it's certainly true of plastic bags. I mean, as
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: audacious as that may have sounded at the time, I
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: mean you guys were the first to put that in motion,
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: and now there's a cascading effect of that, Like that's
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: now everyone sort of understands and accepts that plastic bags
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: are bad. And you know, I don't know how the
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: laws look across the country. But you know, you see
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: fewer and fewer them for sure.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: And people always say, you know what, Jared, this is absurd.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Why focus on one little thing like the plastic bag.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: But we want to be able to show that we
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: can make a difference. No one needs plastic bags, and
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: it's important to have those victories. As an environmental community.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: We're very, very focused on these are the problems. The
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: victories we also need to save and realize. You know,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: for instance, in San Francisco, we had legislation they're all buildings,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: every single building have to now be LEAD which is
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: a green building standard Gold.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Wow, every new building that's built, or all buildings that exist, all.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: New buildings that are built. And if you level the
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: playing field, people sign up. They say, you know what,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: we want to build green and we have to build green,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: so we will. So people are just looking. When it's
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: back to the pruit example, you know what, We're not
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: here to make sure the industry can make more money
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: by polluting. We're here to make sure that industry knows
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the rules and regulations that are set to protect public
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: health and the environment. And that balance has coexisted for
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: a long time, and I met with industry upon industry
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: when I was the EPA, and most of them, I
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: would say, ninety to ninety five percent want to do
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the right thing. But if you come to them and say, Rich,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: we can cut all these environmental regulations, are you in,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: They'll be like, sure, yeah, we're going to make a
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: bit more money, but it's not sustainable in the long term.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: And the sustainability movement in large corporations, even large corporations
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: like Walmart and Apple, they're here for to stay. And
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: they when Trump was suggesting that we pull out of Paris, like,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: why would you do that? Are you crazy? So industry
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: by and large is for environmental protection.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in their long term interest. I mean, you
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: can make short term profits, short term gains by cutting corners.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: But you know, I think we're in this very transparent
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: culture now. The Internet has afforded us the tools to
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: really understand how how you know, corp America functions in
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: a way that wasn't possible, you know, ten fifteen years
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: ago even, And I think we have a maturing generation
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: of millennials who care very much about these things, and
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: they want to patronize the companies that they know are
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: paying attention to these sorts of things, so to the
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: extent that a company can be a little bit more
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: profitable in the short run. Ultimately, you know, we can
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: trust on the flow of information to let people know
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: who's doing well who isn't. And I think we have
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: a groundswell of interest in the consumer base that really
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: wants to patronize the companies that are doing well and
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: reward them. So I think it is in you know,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: is it is very much in an entity's capitalistic long
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: term interest to get on board with these ideals.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: A great example of that is the no GMO label
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: or the fair trade label, which haven't been legislator.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: It's voluntary, yeah, it.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Is voluntary, but when you read it, one, do we
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: want to eat food that has GMOs in it?
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Not?
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Really? You know, the labeling I think has actually gone
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: beyond most people's expectations. It would have been great if
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: we could have outlawed some GMOs and really given a
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: boost to fair trade. But those labels are doing a
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: great job in consumers, as you said, they want to
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: buy into those values and know that the products that
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: they are consuming have a value proposition that they can
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: buy into.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: Right back to the plastic bag thing. The plastic bag
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: to me is sort of symbolic. It's as a representative
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: of single use items in general. And this seems to be,
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: you know, really one of the biggest problems our sort
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: of disposable culture. Whether it's a bottled water or a
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: plastic bag or you know, a cup at Starbucks, whatever,
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: whether they're recyclable or not, plastic paper, whatever, we're just
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: indoctrinated that we can just buy something, use it once,
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: and throw it a way. And we're just sitting on
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: top of just just inconceivable amounts of waste. So how
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: are we, you know, how can we move forward from
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: this gigantic problem? I mean, the bad thing is is
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: a huge victory and you're seeing that, but like what
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: about bottled water for example, or what are the other
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: things that are contributing to this problem? And you know,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: the gigantic Pacific garbage patch, and you know, all of
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: these issues that we now have to contend with.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of insurmountable. But the way to do
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: it is small piece at a time. So back in
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, the environmental movement was kind of founded
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: on the three oh's reduce, reuse, recycle. We focus a
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: lot of our attention on recycling. So when you go
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: and meet with Arrowhead or Nestley, they'll tell you the
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: single use bottles rich they're recyclable. The problem is that
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: a billion of them a year end up in landfill
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: in beaches in California, so they're not. They may be recyclable,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: but do you need them in the first place? So
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: we kind of have become slaves to this concept of convenience.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: If you know, if you get takeout food, you're going
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: to get the straw, You're going to get the cutlery,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: You're going to get all these things you really don't
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: need because you have them in your house, and yet
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: they keep coming. So I think the next big trend
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: is for ordinances. Alameda County, which is where Berkeley and
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Oakland are up in northern California, just passed an ordinance
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: to have an opt in for straws, So rather than
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: getting a straw that's plastic with a wrapper on it,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: you have to ask someone for a straw, And just
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: that single act of rather than being giving it given
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: it automatically, asking someone is actually I think a really
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: positive move. The other thing that San Francisco is looking
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: at is both fees. If you want to get a
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Starbucks cup and you can't be bothered to bring your own,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: you should maybe pay more. And then the last thing
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: is requiring some kind of reuse option. So if you're
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: getting food for a delivery service like Caviat, they should
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: probably provide an option one that you have to opt
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: in for the straws, the cutlery and all that stuff,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: but more importantly that there's an option for a tray
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: that you put the food in that they take back. Right.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that would be great. I mean, and it
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem like that big of a deal to kind
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: of put that in motion.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I'm working on it.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: You are. That's good. So there's some really cool things
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: happening with the zero waste movement right now. I was
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: meant to just last week have this woman on who's
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: who goes by trashes for tossers on the internet and
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: I like it.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah's school, she's you have to know, you have to
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: have grown up in England.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: And yeah, although I don't think she's not British though
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: she lives in New York and she's got four years
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: of her waste in one mason jar.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: You could also have waste as for wankas.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: That would be good too. That would be the male
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: version of her. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, So she like has
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: four years going and all of her waste is in
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: one mason jar, and you know, sort of blogs and
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: vlogs about like how to live a zero waste lifestyle
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: and open this store in Brooklyn called Package Free Shop
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: where you need to bring your own you just everything
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: is in bulk and in bins, right, so you bring
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: in your own stuff and you can refill and you know,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: all of that, and she shows you how to make
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: your own shampoo and all that kind of stuff. And
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: that's another thing that I think.
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: It's very cool, and it's it's very much a millennial thing,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: I think, but it's also goes back to that point
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: you referenced earlier, which is to expect that.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's inspiring to see that you can do that,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: and it makes you think more about the waste that
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: you generate. But how many people are actually going to
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: adopt that lifestyle which most people would look at as
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: very ascetic and challenging versus creating, whether it's regulations or
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: just simply an environment that's more conducive to creating less
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: waste and disposing of less waste.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, regulations have gotten a bad name. I just think
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: of them as as standards or rules that help reduce pollution.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, I spent a lot of time looking at
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: the Pacific garbage patch. I flew out to Midway Island. I've,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: you know, talked to scientists in Hawaii. Is twice the
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: size of Texas between here and Hawaii.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Twice I heard it was the size of Texas.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Now twice twice the size of Texas. And you know,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the plastic gets smaller and smaller and smaller, and it
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: ends up in teeny little beads that replicate plankton. The
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: fish then eat the plastic. The plastic not only is
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: just there, which is bad, but with in the ocean
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: it creates kind of a magnified impact and sucks in
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: toxins within the ocean, so they become very toxic. The fish.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: When you do the liver samples, it looks like, you know,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: they've been drinking whiskey for the last sixty years. I mean,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: they're in really bad shape. And for what So that
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: we can have a straw in a PEPSI could we
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: just not drink it in a class that can go
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: into a dishwasher? I mean, yeah, I agree with you,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: we're not The movement needs people like the No Packaging
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: store in Brooklyn because we need to understand what's possible.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: But it isn't going to be the whole answer.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: Right. Have you seen the patch yourself? Have you flown?
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a myth in that it's
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: like a goo, right, It's not like no, it's very
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: very different sized pieces of plastic. If you can imagine
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: a tide bottle. You know, the first year you have
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: a tide bottle, it's going to look pretty much like that.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: The next year it's going to go into a few pieces.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Ten years from now, it's going to be a lot
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: of small, red orange pieces of plastic. And it's going
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: to continue going down into the water column. So you
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: can find pieces of plastic sixty feet down in the
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: water column all the way to the surface. So it
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: isn't a blanket surface of plastic that you can see.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: I work with NASA and this guy Pete Warden who
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: ran aims to is there a way of flying over
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: and getting UV or other infrared and bouncing it to
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: see where the plastic is and you can't. The way
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: that they measure it is by on boats they have
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: a pull basically a sieve that they drag along behind
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: them and you can see where the concentration levels are,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: and that's how they came up with trit the size
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: of Texas.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Is there any strategy for dealing with this thing?
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: So there's basically three strategies. One is upstream, So if
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: you think about how we design products, we're just talking
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: about it, how you design products that have less waste,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: less waste inherently in them, Like we've all received those
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: little sim cards in blister packs that are huge, Like
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: what happens to all that plastic? Why do we need
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: all that plastic? So design stuff with zero waste in mind.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Then second, actually LA is a world leader on which
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: is stopping the plastic from going from the streets into
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: the storm drains into the ocean. That's kind of the
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: number one inflection point. If you don't stop it going
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: down the drain, it's going to end up in the ocean.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: So LA is put in all kinds of cool devices
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: to capture the plastic. And then the third is to
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: go out and actually collect it. And there's some noble
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: efforts going on. There's a young Dutchman who's working on this,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: so there's some cool efforts. There's a lot more money,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: unfortunately being spent on the idea of cleanup than there
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: is exactly.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: Isn't there some really young kid I was just reading about,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: like sixteen year old kid who figured out some wizard
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: who figured out how to decompose this, and.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: A yeah, we love inventions and cool stuff, and so
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: he's attracting a lot of Boran Bork I think his
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: name is. Anyway, it's very cool. I wish him all
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the best luck. There's about ten million tons of plastic
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: a year that's being added to the Pacific garbage patch.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: So our main goal should be doing all three. It's
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: like in all of the above strategy, if we just
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: focus on cleanup. You know, a terrifying thing that I
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: found when I was in Taiwan is that they built
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: all their landfills right on the ocean front, and now
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: with raising sea levels because of climate change, these huge
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: landfills are being washed into the ocean. So another thing,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: which I think is fairly common sensical is maybe we
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: should have an international agreement to not build landfills within
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: a mile of the ocean.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how does that even happen? That's amazing? Well, I think,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: you know, in a broader sense, it speaks to human
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: beings kind of default, default, kind of expectation that that
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: technology is going to innovate us out of all the
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: problems that we create for ourselves, whether it's Elon Musk
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: getting us to Mars so we can just punt on
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: this planet, like like the idea of terraforming Mars, Like, oh,
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: that's awesome, Well, why don't we terraform the Earth? Like
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: if if we have that technology, can't we use that
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: here and like protect what we're actually doing rather than saying, well,
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: we're just gonna we're just gonna rifle through all of
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: this and we'll figure it out later, is like, you know,
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: this is not working for us.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I have a very complex relationship with technology in that.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: For instance, if you look at older cells back in
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, it cost eighty dollars to produce a
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: what of energy? Now it's about fifty five cents. So
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: technology has allowed us to capture this renewable resource the
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: sun and wind and battery storage is going to allow
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: us to keep it in our homes and use it
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: when we need it. So are there are elements of
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: technology which are really useful. Electric cars, for instance, they
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: are a complex one. I live in San Francisco. We
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: can't have any more cars. It doesn't matter what you know,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: if it's a hydrogen fuel cell car or hybrid, it
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: doesn't make any difference. There's no room for cars. And
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: those cars take a lot of energy to produce, a
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: lot of energy to deconstruct, and they kill a lot
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: of people. So maybe walking like I was always like,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: why is no one promoting walking and bicycling and cities.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: That's not as sexy as a tesla us.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Exactly, it isn't. But you get sexy by doing them right.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: And you I read you walk five miles or you
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: were walking five miles to and from work every day.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: When I, yeah, I decided to do this to leave
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: work and do the Pacific Crest Trail. I needed to
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: practice practice. You're walking, Yeah, we do. I mean we
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: were designed to walk, right, I mean we're not designed
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: to sit on our ass and get fat. We're designed
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: to walk that basically, that's why we stand on two
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: feet unlike other animals. So we're designed to walk. I
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: love walking.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Why isn't solar more ubiquitous?
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: There's I was reading yesterday that there's one hundred trillion
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: dollars excuse me, all right, there's one hundred trillion dollars
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: of stranded assets that the old status quote energy companies have. Namely,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: they built power plants that are running on coal even
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: natural gas. That solar, if it were as ubiquitous as
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: you and I would like, would mean they are paying
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: for a stranded asset that doesn't get money in. So
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: these big utilities that you hear saying lots of good things,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: even in our state, they have a very strong interest
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: to continue their power plants going. So you know, the price,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: the price of new power. I don't think anyone in
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: the United States, no matter what Trump says, is going
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: to build a new coal fired power plant. Coal is
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: just too expensive. And the reason it's too expensive, unfortunately,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: is fracking. So fracking. You know, the upside of fracking
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: is that it put coal out of business. The bad
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: size is that has very significant environmental impacts. So solar
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: now is competitive and that's a fantastic thing. Unfortunately, Trump
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: put tariffs on Chinese imports of solar panels. There are
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: more people involved in installing solar now in America than
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: there are coal miners.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: So irrespective of regulations, I mean, this has to be
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: the future.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: It is the future, whether whether the coal and gas
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: companies like it or not. Solar is the future, as
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: with other renewable energy like wind.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: And I would imagine with the advances in the batteries
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: that we're seeing right now, that it's got to be
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: even way more effective now what they're capable of doing,
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: even compared to a couple of years ago.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I was just in a new Chevy Bolt. They have
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: the Vault and the jolt and the bolt. They get
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: kind of confusing. It's actually a cool little car, and
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: it has a three hundred and twenty mile range right
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: a few years ago the first one, the Vault, had
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: like a sixty mile range. So the battery technology is
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: taking it.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy. It doesn't make sense to me at all,
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: Like why anybody would build combusting engine cars at all anymore.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't seem to be it's not the future.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The head of GM went to China. I think
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: she was expecting to be able to convince them that
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: internal combustion engines the normal gasoline engines were still part
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: of a future mix. She came back and said, no, right, yeah,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: electric vehicles for GM. Everyone else is here to stay.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: It's our future.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: It seems that in certain respects China is sort of
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: leading the way.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: They are, and they aren't. I mean, they have a
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: very disciplined central command government. So when they decided to
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: do something like high speed raila just gets done. When
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: we decided we're going to do high speed rails we
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: did ten years ago in California, nothing gets later. We're
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: still exactly which is unfortunate. I wish I could have
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: taken the train down here in two hours. So the
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: thing that they're doing right is they're moving in the
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: right direction. They still have a very very high reliance
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: on old cheap coal, which burns, you know, very dirtily.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Most of that coal is in manufacturing products that we buy.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: So one of the things I thought would be cool
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: at some point is to have a label that shows
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: you the energy source of the product that you're buying.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: So you know, we kind of buy it blindfolded and think, oh,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not exactly sure where this is made.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: But I'm sure if I bought it on Amazon it
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: must be good. It's probably coming from China, made in
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: a factory with a lot of coal energy shipped here.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: You know, a huge amount of California's pollution still is
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: from cargo ships coming from China that has very, very
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: high sulfur fuel.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like there should be the equivalent of
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: a nutrition facts panel on every consumer product that explains
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: to you the carbon footprint of the creation and distribution
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: the shipping of that product.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Let's do it rich. Yeah, I mean the cool thing
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: about California. So we have Jerry Brown, an amazing guy.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: I love our current governor. I think we're likely to
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: have Gavin Newsom as our next governor. And if you
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: put those standards in place in California state, with forty
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: million people and the fifth largest economy on the planet,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter what Washington, DC says, It doesn't
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: really matter what Trump says. If you can get it
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: done in Sacramento, it's going to happen around the country
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: because they're not going to put that They're not going
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: to take that panel with all that environmental information off
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: it on the ones that they sell in Nevada or
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: North Dakota or Massachusetts. It's going to be the same
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: same exact product. So I think a lot of thinking
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: needs to be done about how we leverage California even
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: more than we have already to get environmental change in
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: the entire country.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Right, because California really is the submit test case for
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: not just the rest of the country, but the rest
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: of the world, because there is so much sensibility around
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: these issues.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I mean people live in this state because
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: they like the outdoors, because they want to spend time
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: nearly year round being able to run and hike and swim,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: and so that's a certain group of people. Those people vote.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Those people are going to vote for more environmental protections,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: and that's why you have the state. People often ask
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: me why is California so green? It's a self selecting
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: group of people that live here, and you know, I
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: love living here.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: So you after your tenure with the city, you're appointed
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: to the EPA by Obama to basically run what is
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: it called Region nine, Section nine.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, District nine, District South African, Yeah, the Dystopian Sea. Yeah.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: That's why I told close friends and family had been
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: in the District nine. It's region nine. Yes, yeah, it
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: was California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, and Pacific Islands.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: And what was your charge? Like, what was that job
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: all about?
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: So that job if you go back to something you
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, So back in the seventies, Richard Nixon unbelievably
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: created the Environmental Protection Agency.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: It's wild it was Nixon, isn't it.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: What was going on? What motivated him to do that?
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: A lot of it also reflecting back on what we
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: just said, came from California. So California was going ahead
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: and saying, particularly La, the air is so bad, we
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: need to do something about this. And people around the
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: country it was a grassroots movement. They're like, screw this,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Like unless DC does something, we're going to do it ourselves.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: And they were doing it themselves. And it got to
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: this point where the president, you know, we had the
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: first Earth Day rally in April twenty second, nineteen seventy.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: There were demonstrations around the country. This was a big,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: big political issue and actually it's kind of relates to China.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: In China, this is a very big political issue. People
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: cannot breathe and then Middle class is growing and growing
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: and growing, and they're like, this will become such a
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: big issue that the Chinese politicians are worried that it
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: will topple them. So that's why they're tackling. And the
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: same was true in the US in the nineteen seventies.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: So the job really was to implement the big environmental
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: statutes that Congress passed. So Congress and the President passed
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: the Clean Air Act. It's then up to EPA working
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: with in this case the state of California or Nevado, Arizona,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: to implement it. And that means, you know, one of
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: the most important things is getting the science right. So
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: science is not a belief system, right, it is the
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: world outside that can be measured, and that measurement can
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: be repeated. You'll get this answer. So science is incredibly
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: important to the environmental protection of our planet. We need
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: to know exactly how good is the air, how good
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: is the water. If their contaminants going into the air
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: and water that we can't see doesn't mean they're not
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: going to hurt us. A lot of what we can't
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: see hurts us very badly. So we would do enforcement actions.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: We would take actions against polluting companies. We're involved, for instance,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: in the big case against VW, who had a whole
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: scandal of you know, their emissions testing requirements. You know,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: so we kept people honest. I always saw us as
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: the environmental cop on the beat, and that cop is
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: no longer on the beat, and that that's something that
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: worries me. So, whether it's a big oil refinery in
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Torrents that might blow up has blown up. If it's
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the big gas leak that you had just
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: a few years ago in southern California, EPA and other
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: agencies are there to one stop it, two clean it up,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: and then three hold those polluters accountable. So the rule
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: of law, science and transparency were kind of the most
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: important things to me. And that's when you asked if
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: I had heartburn, that's what gives me heartburn. Now we
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: have no idea what EPA is doing. It's all behind
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: closed doors. They're not talking to the scientists, the people
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: with real knowledge. There was recently a pesticide that had
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: gone through years and years of review. Claude Periphos and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: the staff brought it up to prou It and said
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: we should delist this and he's like, no, we're going
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: to keep it on the shelves.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: Right, it'd been established that it was.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Harming children exactly, but and not. I mean people need
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: to realize that by science, we're talking about peer reviewed science.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: This isn't one study that one person did. This is
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: academic studies that have been done, replicated in many cases
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: by very prestigious universities, and then are reviewed by an
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: independent federal panel and then go to EPA. So by
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: the time we got them, this wasn't so yes, and
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: it's not conjecture at this point. It's not I never
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: saw it as really any discretion. I wasn't there to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: say I'm a better scientist than they are. I mean,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: prud is not a scientist by his own admission, and
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: yet to just throw that science away and say, yeah, yeah,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: maybe hurting kids, maybe hurting kids rich. But we really
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: need to look out for the chemical companies. I mean,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: what about them? I mean it was so absolutely inshideous.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, he built like he built this crazy sound proof
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: first for twenty five thousand dollars. I mean, this guy's bananas.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he also spent two hundred thousand dollars on a
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: contract to go through EPA. Employees emails to look at
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: those that weren't disloyal to Trump.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: I mean if you read about it in a in
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: a dystopian, you know, novel, you'd be like, I mean,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: they get no one's going to do that kind of shit.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's crazy town. So thank god we're here
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: in Malibu.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, all right, So you're at EPA and
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: you're you were very much, from what I understand, like
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: a boots on the ground guy, like you're you're showing
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: up at the wetlands with your boots on. You're, you know,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: at these mines. You know firsthand.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I love the outside. Yeah, yeah, I didn't want to
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: be in the office.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: What was the the sort of you know, craziest thing
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: that you saw that even you thought like, I can't
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: even believe this is happening.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: There's so much Oh my god. Actually I spent a
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: lot of time at the US Mexico border, and because
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: we're Americans, we generally think that things run from north
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: to south, but all the rivers on the US Mexico
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: border run from south to north. And I was in
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: there's this border town Colexico and MEXICALI so MEXICALI. It's
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: about town of a million people that they had abatoirs
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: having pure blood affluent going into rivers that then went
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: into the US, then went into the Saltan Sea. Just
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: I have these pictures of these flows of blood.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: And like like animal blood, I mean from their cattle
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: industry or from runoff from slaughterhouses.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: A slaughterhouse, Yeah, so a slaughterhouse. So this is a
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: big flow of Just imagine like future blood coming out
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: of a pipe going to a river. And then talking
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: to the congress people on the US side and saying,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: you know what, we need a joint task force to
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: look at how we can do this. They're like, why
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: would we care about what's happening in Mexico. Well, the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: Mexican pollution is coming into the US. But you know
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: the other the other big things. Just looking at mining,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: the mining operations. That gold ring that we have on
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: our fingers takes tons and tons and tons and tons
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: of digging and or just the footprints. The scale of
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: these mining operations is just mind boggling.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean what about the minerals in our iPhone?
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, God, you don't even want to go there because
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: they come from like the Congo, and you know places
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: where if you ever saw the Blood Diamond movie, yes, yeah,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: it's not a pretty picture. And frankly, you know, to me,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: if you look at San Diego and then Tijuana, that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: is the difference that environmental regulation makes. That's the most
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: graphic example that I've ever seen. There's a border. The
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: thing that makes America great is partly our environmental protections.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: That's what the quality of life that we enjoy, that
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: we can the air, that you can turn on the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: forest and get water that you drink. We have spent
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: billions of dollars to allow that. So back to the
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: earlier point. If you can drink this incredible water out
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: of the tap, why are we buying a bottle of
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: water covered in plastic that's I'm sitting in a shelf.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: That water quality is terrible.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because we've been led to believe, through some very
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: convincing marketing tactics, that it's pure, that it has a
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: special mineral content that's better for us, or any number
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: of factors that would lead us to purchase a bottle
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: of water that's in a plastic bottle that comes from
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: some Polynesian island that had to travel you know fifty
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: five hundred miles to get here.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so just realize it.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: Can we trust it? But there's there's I think there's
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: a there's a public mistrust of tap water. You probably
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: know more about tap water than almost anyone.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: I know a lot about that point. So let's talk
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: about tap okay tapwater. Other than federal highway system, the
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: second number, the second largest investment of federal dollars is
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: in our drinking water infrastructure. So the standards for drinking
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: water are set scientifically. They are very very rigorous, and
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: there are communities that don't meet them, and EPA takes
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: action against those and the state of California and other
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: states also take action, so it's very highly monitored. The
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: standards are very high. When it comes to bottled water,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: that isn't true. So unfortunately tests have been done and
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: the Food and Drug Administration oversees bottled water, not EPA,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: and the standards that they use are much lower. So
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the thalate, the PCBs, all the issues that we would
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: of plastic that we wouldn't want to leach in our
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: drinking water if it sits there for a long time,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: can become an issue BPA. So I am always much
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: more comfortable drinking tatwater than I am bottled water. And
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: we've paid for that system. If someone told you that
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: you could get a glass of water for a fraction
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: of one cent, or you could pay two dollars for
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: that same glass, just from a fiscal responsibility, you know,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: the drinking water companies want to sell you on this.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Like twenty years ago, people would have freaking laughed in
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: your face, which I'm going to sell you this bottle
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: of water. You'd be like, what a bottle of water?
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: You're trying to sell this to me?
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: But I think it speaks to an erosion of trust
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: in government. And when I see what preu It is
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: up to, and I see how he just sort of
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: allowed this pesticide that's been established a harm children, he's
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: made it permissible for use. Well, those pesticides, you know,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: are in our farmland and then there's runoff, and then
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: you know that runoff leads to our water table and
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: our rivers and ultimately our drinking water. I just had
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: a guy here on the podcast last week who was
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: talking about the extent to which glyphisate is is basically
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: ubiquitous everywhere because its use is so profligate that it's
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: in our it's in our rain, and then even on
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: organic farms, it's raining into the soil and then this
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: ends up in our drinking water. And so there's a
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: like and me not knowing anything. I'm like, all right, well,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: how much of these pesticides are actually ending up in
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: our drinking water? Is my drinking water laced with glyphosate
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: even you know, to the smallest extent, or some other
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: cocktail of pesticides. And that lack of knowing and distrust
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: that's compounded by you know what I'm seeing going on
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: in government right now? That motivates me to buy balled water, right.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's a lot of people pushing you in
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: that direction. Just from a marketing perspective. I mean, there's
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: billions of dollars that are spent on marketing beverages and
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: none that's on telling you the benefits of drinking water.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: So it's it's not an even playing field. And there
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: I completely agree with you that the erosion of trusting
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: government has made people think, you know what we had Flint,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: Michigan government was there and that drinking water was completely
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: contaminated and it was still no it's still not solved.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: And in California, a million people today will go without
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: access to water that meets federal drinking water standards. They're
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: mainly in the San Joaquin Valley in the Coachella Valley,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: but those people deserve the same level of drinking water
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: that all of us deserve. So yeah, there's a lot
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: of it's complex being alive in twenty eighteen because there's
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: so many confounding and often contradictory pieces of information and
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: no one knows what to do with it. And to me,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: the only answer is to just live more simply. You know,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: you from a drinking water perspective, you do need to
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: know what's in it, and you can find out because
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: we live in a country where that data is available.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: So you can find out from your local warter utility
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: are there any issues of concern that I should be
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: aware of? And they will tell you. And if you
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: know your warter utility is doing a good job, they
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: should be telling you anyway.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: So what were some of the victories that you had
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: during your time at EPA.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: I think the main victories were getting people to believe
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: that the system was there for them, especially poorer people.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: There's this concept unfortunately, of environmental injustice. So when you
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: do a search by zip code of where people live,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: where poor minority people live in our country is where
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: all the worst environmental contamination is. And really the only
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: ways to address that is one focus on enforcement and
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: make sure the companies clean up their act, and secondly,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: give money to those communities to help them become the
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: next solar leaders. So there's a belief that's kind of compounded,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: unfortunately by the facts that if you're poor and you
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: want to get into solar or you want to get
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: a job at Tesla, you're going to be the last
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: one to do it right. And so helping the next
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: generation of people who need the help most get it
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: first was really I think the biggest victory is helping
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: empower those communities.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know you worked a lot with various tribal communities, right, Yeah,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: what was that about?
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: So under the federal under our constitution, tribes are separate
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: sovereign nations. We you know, the first and probably worst
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: genocide that's happened in our country before settlers came on
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: the Main Flower. There's one hundred million Native Americans living
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: in North America. Now there's about one point five million,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: so that genocide was really brutal. It led to people
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: being herded into reservations. Those reservations were then given rights.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: It basically means that tribes don't need to and don't
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: are not subject to state jurisdiction. So in many states
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: that's why they can have casinos. Those states do have
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: to apply federal environmental laws. So we were basically there
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: to support those sovereign nations do They had community gardens,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: they had water treatment systems. So I decided to go
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: and meet with all one hundred and thirty five tribes
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: and go to their every single one of them, every
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: single one individually, individually. Yeah, So I got in. I
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: rented vehicles and criss cross over seven years met with
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: all one hundred and thirty five. Amazing, amazing experience when
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: you think about resiliency and what it means to be
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: human and to keep a language intact, to keep ceremonies
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: and a sense of self when you're barrage killed, you know,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: annihilated by an incoming unfriendly community. Is incredible to think
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: that in twenty eighteen we.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: Still have that.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: So it was it was a pretty it was a
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: profound experience meeting with them.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: I would imagine, you know, delicate as well, like you're
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: coming in as a representative of the United States government
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: into territory that is theirs, and you know, without knowing
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: more or who you are specifically, there's going to be
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: a reticence like, oh, this guy's going to come in
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: and tell us what we can and can't do. You
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: have to overcome that first of all.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: I had to overcome it personally, because that legacy is
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: hideous and it isn't a distant history I spoke to.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: I was recently hiking down in the Havasupai Reservation and
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: I met with this guy, Clay Bravo, who's a member
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: of the Wallapie tribe, and he was like, his parents
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: were taken to what he called concentration camps fifty years ago,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: so this isn't like ancient history. So yeah, it was.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: It felt really weird to be a representative of from
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: their perspective and his history, historical perspective of an occupying force.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: I'm Jewish, so I kind of always thought, you know,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: if the Nazis had won, that's me knocking on the
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: Jewish home store, like wow, this is intense. So yeah,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of suspicion, which is healthy and warranted
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: and on their part. And you know, of all the agencies,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: EPA was the most trusted, had the best relationship with
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: the tribes. I think there's some other great agencies and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: then some other less good agencies. So yes, it was always,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: it was always. I never took it for granted that
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: I would be welcome, And you know, it took time
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: to build trust.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: And what are the fruits of those meetings, those encounters, like,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: what did that translate into progressive reform or anything like that.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: So I think as a movement, I certainly don't take
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: credit for this, but as a movement, what you saw
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: at the Dakota Access Pipeline was a coming together of
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: different tribes and that hadn't really happened to that extent
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: before the last time it happened was in Alcatraz in
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, when tribes came together and you had
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: the American Indian Movement. So the Dakota Access Pipeline, which
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: had a horrible end with Trump, but the positive part
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: of that was really people realizing exactly that cohesion and
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: sense of community and shared destiny amongst different tribes.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: So you ultimately decide to part ways with the EPA,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: you had like seven months left on your term or
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: something like that, whyse you decide to leave?
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: So I at the time, I thought that Hillary Clinton
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: would win, as many of us did, and I knew
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: that I didn't want to get reappointed, that I'd done
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: my job. And as I said earlier, I kind of
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: I never I never felt like a bureaucrat, and yet
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: I was becoming one. And so I knew I just
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: needed to kind of get out. And I didn't really
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: know what that escape hatch looked like. But when I'd
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: always dreamed of doing the Pacific Crest Trail that runs
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: from Mexico to Canada, and so when I talked to
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: my wife about doing it, about me doing it, she
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: was like, I want if you're going to do it,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: you need to do it this year, in the year
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: that I left, as opposed to after Obama leave. So
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, And I did really want
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: to do it. So it was kind of a for me,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: a kind of difficult act of just jumping off the
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: precipice and saying, you know what, I'm not I don't
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: have another job, I don't have anything lined up. But
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: I know that I'm pretty far away from who I
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: used to be and think I still am.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: So you decide you're going to do this, I mean,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: that's a monumental undertaking. I can't begin to understand the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: intricacies of what it would require to tackle something like that.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: My only my main frame of reference is probably, like everybody,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: you know, the Wild Book and the movie that followed.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: But what was it like to prepare for that and
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: undertake it?
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: Well, I was saying to David earlier. You know, ultimately,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: I think I must have been and still kind of
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: harbor this like an accomplishment junkie, because why couldn't I
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: have just taken a nice walk in Yosemite? Like why
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: did I need to go and do a two thousands you're.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: Talking about here?
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: Like I so excited to Rich. I was like, why
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: did Rich need to do five iron Man's in a row?
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: Because it had to be done?
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I'm not Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. Like, yeah,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: it beat the shit out of me to do the
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: Pacific christ Trail, and I know that I needed that.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: I needed to, like the Baptism by Fire. I was
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: kind of in a rut and I think I judged
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: success according to very narrow parameters, and those parameters told me,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: you know an ever, basically that the more scale that
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: you had in a job, if you had more people
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: to help do more good things, you would get more
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: good things done. And it was a little bit of
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: a myth that I perpetrated against myself. So I am Yeah,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: the main thing. I became a planner, so planning for
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Crest Trail. So it's twenty six hundred miles
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: basically a marathon every day, four hundred days, and that
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: requires a lot of logistics around food, especially being vegan.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: You're not going to get it at a seven to
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: eleven at a chevron station, you know, in the middle
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: of nowhere, so you have to send it to yourself.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: I became pretty pretty much a gearhead, and the goal
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: was to get the gear as late as possible.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: So how many like what are the intervals at which
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: you could mail stuff to yourself to pick up along
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: the way?
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: I had thirty one thirty one different Yeah, so other
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: people had that, people who did it and had six.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: If you don't, how many days would you have to
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: pack out for it?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: So that whole planning. It is really bizarre because you don't.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: You basically have to work out how many miles you're
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: going to walk, and then you can see how far
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: the drop places are between. So, for instance, if it's
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: one hundred miles apart between A and B and I'm
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: only walking ten miles a day, that would take me
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: ten days. So then I'd need to pack ten days
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: of food to get.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: There, But you're looking at four or five days maybe, Yes,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: so you had to have enough. That's the amount of
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: food that you had to be able to carry with
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: you at all times.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, And so what was the.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: Food that you brought?
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: So the food that I brought I read this old
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: school book that was written in the seventies, and I
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: kind of very intentionally didn't want to be inundated by
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: other people's adventures. So the book that I read, So
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: you didn't read Wild, No, I didn't read Wild. I
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: read this book by REI Jardine called Like a Guide
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: to the Pacific Crest Trail. He was like the first
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: person that really had done it, and he suggested that
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: I only bring corn pasta, which turned out to be
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: a very bad idea. One I didn't like corn pasta two.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: The unfortunately the learning experience. The first seven hundred miles
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: of the Pacific Crest Trail is the desert, so there's
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: not a lot of water, and the water that you
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: cook the pasta in you have to throw away. So
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: it was a complete the worst possible thing. So I
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: immediately switched to ramen, which isn't super healthy. I ended
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: up eating like the mountaineering food, backpackers pantry and those
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: kind of foods. They actually have some really good vegan
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: options amazingly, and my favorite one ended up being pad tie.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: Just tastes so good. I'd have peanut butter, a lot
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: of peanut butter, a lot of trail mix that I
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: made for myself. That probably was the lifeblood. But I
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: bars ridiculous number of bars that I then could never
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: eat again. They're so revolting to like, just look at them.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: I have a reaction like, can't. I can barely eat
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: bars anymore for that same reason.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: Disgusting. Yeah, so yeah, you get to a point you're
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: just like, please do not show. So there are people
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: who do the Pacific Crest Trail that eat out of
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: the hiker boxes. So they're these boxes. So at Post
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: offices or wherever you get them. There's a box and
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: you put the stuff that you don't want. So as
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: the trail went on, I see I put more and
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: more of the bars in and people were just like.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, exactly, So.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I probably. I think I I ate about two
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: and a half thousand calories a day, and I burnt
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: about five and a half.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: So you must have dropped quite a bit away.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah wow.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: And so you'd have to bring five days of water
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: with you.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: No, you get the water as you go, you do.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: You take it from the streams, you take it from
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: horse troughs, whatever is there. You clean it. Yeah, amazing.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: There's a thing called a Sawyer filter.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: The filter thing, Yeah incredible.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, this thing is revolutionized. It weighs maybe three ounces,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: and you have a little plastic bag you collect the
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: water and then you squeeze it into your bottle.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: Right, So, all told this took you?
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: How long it took me? A month and five days?
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: Four months and five days. Yeah, yeah, that would be
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: a world record.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: Idn't know that you were like running? You know three
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: hour marathons are yeah? Yeah wow. And I have sort
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: of two things I want to know. The first thing
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: is the obvious question, which is you know what was
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: the hardest part or did you have a breaking point
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: with it or did you you know, have any kind
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: of hair raising, you know, scenarios that arose every day.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: I had both. I mean, like just to know that
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: it was an emotional, much more emotional rollercoaster than a
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: physical one. So the physical stuff really happened in the
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: first two weeks. So your feet, you're getting used to it.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: My feet went from a size ten to a size eleven.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: They'll never go back. And unfortunately, like the shoe sizes,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: so I lost toenails and all kinds of stuff. But really,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: after two weeks, you're pretty good.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: All right. So my daughter came home from school and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: just flicked on the ac and it caused a buzzing.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: So we took a break. But we're back. What were
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: we talking about. We're in the middle of you explaining
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: just the overall harrowing nature of the entire thing.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: It was fun, I mean, I don't I it was
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: a challenge every day. Every day at around five o'clock,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: I was just like, I want to fucking go home.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: I hate this. And it was mainly around food, like
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: food becomes was my the thing I thought about the most,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: the biggest distraction. It wasn't missing family. It wasn't I
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: wish it was. I wish I could say, yeah, I
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: just missed my kids and wife so much. I do
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: love them, But I didn't miss them on the trail.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: I missed food, Like I wanted scrambled eggs, I wanted
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: French toast, and I wanted pancakes with blueberries and I
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: could eat like like when the PCT hikers come to town,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: to these teeny little towns where we got the resupply.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: So you I didn't. I'm not sure how I missed
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: this rich But so you have thirty one drops and
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: most of them are about ten miles from the trail,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: so you have to hitchhike. So yeah, I did, like
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: sixty two hitches and in very very very rural parts
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: of the state of the three states California, Oregon, and Washington,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: and universally the nicest people. I never waited for more
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: than ten minutes.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: I'm sure they're used to it because everyone's doing that
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: all the time there. Yeah, it was still really but
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: aren't you in towns where you could go to a restaurant? Yeah,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: so you could eat, you could look.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's every seven days. Yeah, so that's when
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: I would. But then the rest of the time that
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: you just dream of the next time you can eat food.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: But what about like contending with weather and wild animals
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: and all of that. It was all fine.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: So the weather, the worst weather was in Washington and
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: in southern California. So I'm just not used to dealing
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: with like one hundred and ten degree heat. So I
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: had an umbrella, a UV umbrella that for me was
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: a lifesaver if there's piece of equipment other than you know,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: my shoes and the usual things umbrella and walking sticks.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: So did you you hold an umbrella or did attached
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: to your head?
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: Neither, So I kind of jerry rigged it into the
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: breast pocket on my I had a shirt with a
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: breast pocket on the right, and and then I pulled
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: the backpack the top back pack strap over it.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: So I kind of kept yourself.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: But anyone who's hiking in the desert, there was a
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: number the number one issue of I saw maybe five
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: or six helicopter rescues. It was all from being overexposed
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: to the sun and dehydration. So when you're out there.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: It's serious. The sun so powerful places like the Mohave Desert,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: you need an umbrella.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No mountain lions or anything like that.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there were all kinds of a lot of snakes,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of rattlesnakes, bears, the coyotes, a few mountain lions,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: but you know they generally want to leave you alone.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, on a bigger issue, I think I'm interested
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: in hearing a little bit about what it's like to
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: spend that much time alone, Like the self reflection, Like,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: especially you being at this point in your life where
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: you've left this one career, you're trying to figure out
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: what you want to do with yourself next, Like how
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: did that that rumination like kind of impact your life
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: and sense of self?
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: I mean at first I thought I was going crazy
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: because there's all these voices in my head and I
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: felt completely schizophrenic. I had like the Jared I thought
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: was normal Jared, and then I had like teenage Jared,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: And you know, I had like fifteen voices in my
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: head the first week, and I was like, oh my god,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: I'm never going to make it through because you're spending
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: all this time by yourself and my only practice was
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: to work out what I was thinking about, and they
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: would go on in loops, so I'd be thinking about
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: just the most bizarre shit, like, you know, things that
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: I would never think I thought about and wouldn't want
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: to admit to, like my competitive side, like am I
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: walking more miles than the person I started with? And
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: like that was kind of an early obsession, like how
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: many miles am I doing? You know, you get given
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: a trail name. What's my trail name going to be?
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: And they all revolved early on in the hike around
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: like how strangers saw me. And I thought of myself
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: as someone that didn't give a shit about what other
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: people thought. And I suddenly realized I care a lot
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: about what people think. And these aren't people I know,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: these are just random people, and I'm thinking about it
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: all day long?
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: So I had to answer that question kind of. So
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: that's how I kind of proceeded on the hikers. I
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: would work out what the hell I was thinking about
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: because it would just be driving me bonkers, and then
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: I'd try and analyze why I thought about it, and
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: so like I realized that, you know, I spent a
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about expectations guilt and disappointment, and
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: how expectations are kind of the parent of both guilt
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: and disappointment. And I got to this place where I realized,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: you know, society has very strong expectations of us. We
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: have expectations of ourselves, and they're generally unspoken and different
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: from a goal or an ambition, the things that we
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: don't check in again regularly with ourselves and say, am
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: I equipped to even meet this expectation? You know, do
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: I want to? Is this something that I care about
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: or is it just something that TV commercial thinks I
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: should care about? And so, you know, I realized that
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: for me it sounds kind of bizarre, but like, in
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: order to get to my true nature, I could only
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: do it in nature, and nature is very very non judgmental,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: but at the same time brutal. Right, It doesn't give
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: a shit about death. Nature does not care about my whining,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't care about where the next water is. It just is.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: So as a partner walking with nature, Yeah, it was
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: tough at the beginning. It really, It kind of broke
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: me and I need it. Frankly. I don't know if
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: this is similar for you, but I just I didn't
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: I would never have admitted this to myself, but I
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: needed to be broken. I needed to reach that breaking
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: point where I was just desperate, and then I needed
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: to keep going because basically, I think my issue psychologically
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: neurotically was I was afraid of being abandoned, right, And
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: what you realize by being in nature is that you're
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: going to be Okay, I'm completely by myself with nothing
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm fine. I'm fine. And that teacher told me
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: that that was kind of like a childhood. In childhood,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: you can be abandoned because you need other people's help.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: But now I'm actually going to be fine, So that
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: was like less and number one, yeah.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: That's profound. I mean, I think the idea is almost
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: like you're on this four month silent meditation retreat, right
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: and initially the looping, you know, patterns of the thinking
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: brain are attacking you because you're so acclimated to living
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: however you were living, and ultimately creating some awareness around
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: that and becoming the observer of that and engaging with it,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: you know, on a subject specific matter, to get to
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: a point where you then kind of graduate to a
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: greater awareness of your pitfalls and your hang ups et cetera,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: to kind of culminate in a more meta, you know,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: perspective of what's important and what's not. It's beautiful, it's
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: like this, it's this sort of compacted hero's journey.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it didn't. It felt like survive a designed by
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: either Young or Freud. Oh fuck, I didn't sign up
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: for this rich Yeah, but you did.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: I get at some level, unconsciously or not, like, this
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: is what you wanted, right, You were seeking this, like
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: and on some level perhaps you needed it. You're at
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: a crossroads in your life and there was something beckoning
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: you to do this and you had to know that
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: that this was going to be part of the deal, right,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: that you were going to be meeting your maker, so
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: to speak, along the way. And that's part of the
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: allure as much as it is, you know, the fear
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: that surrounds doing something like that.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: I wish I could say that that was true, But
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: for me, I think I was so fucking oblivious to
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: where I was at and so numb and frankly just
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: cynical that I don't think I was self aware enough
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: to realize what it was that I was engaged in.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: And somehow I think there was a deeper level.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: That must have known that, Yeah, there must have been
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: a compulsion to at least cultivate a deeper level of
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: self awareness.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I knew I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel comfortable being the person I was, and
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: I knew that I needed to go through some kind
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: of cathartic process. I thought it would be physical. So
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: that's kind of That's the part that surprised me is
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: that I thought, you know, and I looked at everything.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: I did have these little matrix matrices that I gauge
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: different aspects of the walk along, just because you have
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: nothing else to do apart from make this shit up.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: So one of them, one of them was around, for instance,
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: journey versus death, the nation. Am I thinking about getting
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: to the next food? Or am I actually present right now?
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: Another word physical? Mental? And I think I thought it
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: would be about eighty percent physical twenty percent mental, and
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: it was completely the inverse. Yeah, it was definitely eighty
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: percent mental, and it definitely tested me. And I hadn't
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: done meditation before, and the meditation practice that I do
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: now really is to get me back to the peace
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: and being present that I felt on the hype, and
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: really it's like ready made being present. Just add nature
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: and you get present because it is so grounding, you know,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: just sleeping outdoors every day, seeing the stars, breathing the air.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, it gets back to the earlier point of
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: that's where we come from. We are part of nature.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: Nature is part of us. That was kind of the
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: epiphany I had was really around if we had a creation,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: If we created a creation myth, it would be very
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: different now than it's in the Bibles that we read,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: and it would be about actually facts, and the facts
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: are you know, eleven and a half billion years ago
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: there was an infinitesimally dense atom that expanded and created
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: time and space. And so Stardust is in us, and
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: we are in Stardust. We are all part of this
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: same endeavor, which is life and the universe.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: That's beautifully putt I like that. So armed with that,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: when you return, how do you then reframe your life
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: and figure out what the next chapter is for you?
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: What about that experience then colored the decisions that you've
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: made about what you're going to do next.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: It was really, really, really hard coming back, much harder
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: than the acclimatization process of going from civilization to nature.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: Going from nature, I'd be really fascinated. I've talked to
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: other people who've done these long distance hikes, and none
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: of them have really ever acclimatized back. I've done a
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: lot of more hiking since. Because so if you imagine
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: the process is we experience the world through our five senses,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: that's it. That is the reality we call reality is
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: only through our five senses. And in nature you are
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: allowed to open up your senses. So the most shocking
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: one was smell, because smell is so beautiful and natural
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: and harmonious, and it's like a blanket. You go from
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: one smell to another, whereas in cities the smell is
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: really nasty. And the same is true of sound. So
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: here it's very quiet, but I live right in the
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: middle of the city, and so so in nature I'd
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: opened up all my senses. That was the progress I'd made,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: is to allow myself to be vulnerable and open up
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: the sensors. The city required me to shut it all down,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: and I didn't want to shut it down. And so
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: I get headaches from the sirens and the noise and
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: the smell, and it's really bright. The lights at night.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: It's like a synesthesia.
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, So it was really And I don't think
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: I've still recovered, and I'm not sure I want to
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: fully recovered because living in a manufactured we live in
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: a manufactured environment. I don't want to be in a
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: I realized from the hike. I never want to rush again.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be in a rush like life
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: is here to savor. And I don't want to be
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: in a place where i'm you know, in a in
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: a building where the air is piped in where I'm
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: looking at a screen all day. I don't I don't
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: want my relationship with this precious life to be through
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: a computer an object. So yeah, it has taken me
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: remarkably longer than I ever would have imagined. I actually
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: hired a I love life coaches, and I hired a
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: coach to help me when I got back think about
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: I want to do my job now, I want to
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: do the next job. And three months into it, her
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: name was Mona. She was late charit. Have you ever
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: thought about the fact you might just not be ready?
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I'm not ready. I'm absolutely
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: not ready.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: So I spent while your wife's like all right, so
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: what are we doing? Yeah, what's so?
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: What we're doing is spending my four oh one K.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: So I spent like four Yeah, no, I've spent it all.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: I have like seventy five grand left in my four
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: oh one K, and it will all go, I'm sure.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: And you know, Oscar Wilde said that youth is where
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: on the young, Well, retirement is wasted on the old.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: So my retirement savings would be wasted on the old.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: So I was like, yeah, so for all of you,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: those those people who are out there like how the
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: fuck you just can't do this? Yeah you can. You
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: can absolutely do it. You just there's some sacrifices and
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: trade offs. And I love getting those checks from Prudential.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I didn't even know I had this money.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: Now I can use it.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: So so yeah, well, what I love about that is
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: that you didn't technically experience some kind of crazy, you know,
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: life crisis or even professional crisis, like you seem to
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: have been fulfilled and what you were, what you were
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: doing professionally. It's not like, oh my god, you know,
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: my life is going down the tubes. I need to
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: like hit pause now, like it was, you know, you
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: were on a trajectory that that was that was good,
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: that you were enjoying, and yet you still had the
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: awareness to recognize, like, I need to take a break
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: here and connect in a different way in order to
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: really understand myself well enough to figure out what the
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: next you know, a couple decades are going to look like.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: I was pretty lost. I was fulfilled. I loved doing
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: the work at EPA, But at the same time, I mean,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: how can we do these jobs of protecting the environment
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: that we care and love with never being in the
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: environment that we care and love. So I felt really
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: detached and unconnected from this world that it.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: Becomes an academic enterprise despite the fact you were this
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: boots on the ground guy, Like from what I understand,
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: your predecessor wasn't doing that kind of stuff, like showing
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: up actually on all these all these sites.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I love I'm going to bring that
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: emphasis and I wanted to meet the people, I wanted
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: to see the places. But even even that, it, yeah,
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: I definitely felt the sinism part and the calcification and
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: the numbness to life definitely felt very tangible and and
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: just being judgmental, and it felt very heavy like the
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: biggest before I left on the trail, the biggest kind
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: of thing that I looked at was the the difference
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: between letting go and holding on. So with nearly anything
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: that you look at in life, you could put it
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: through that lens, and you know, I think I was whole.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: I was like white knuckling it and holding on so tight.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: And even to the people that we love, I think
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: we have this concept that if we hold them, they'll stay,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: but really what we do is suffocate them. So I
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: just I came to a place where I was like,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: I just need to let go and just be happy,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: free for and actually I did jump out of a plane.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: It was terrifying, but no, but literally just allow myself.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: And that's what the Pacific Cris Trail did for me,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: was just allow me to get back to a place
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: where I was realizing this is who Jared is, and
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: really the epiphany is this is my life and I'm
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: living it. And a lot of times I realized looking back,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: I couldn't say yes to both those things. Sometimes I
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: didn't feel like my life and I wasn't always sure
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: that I was living it. So now that's basically the
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: mantra that I live by is like, this is my
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: life and I want to live it.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: And you've been able to hang on to that, yes, sensibility.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: I'm never going to let go of it.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: That's cool. That's cool. And you've started a podcast I have.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: See there's there's one thing that you've done.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: I've done a few.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, well you have this consulting practice and I
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: still like that.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, so, but that both of those again were just
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: kind of letting the universe, you know, being receptive to
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: things that felt close to my heart and you know,
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: so for instance, the consulting thing with people that had
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: so for instance, as this guy who wants to you
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: can you can you'd like this guy he he wants
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: to stop microfibers from like Patagonia and other kind of fleeces.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: He's come up with a device that you could put
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: in washing machines and it basically we like a lint
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: trap for micro fibers. So cool idea, and he wants
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: me to help him, like how do we make this
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: into a statewide initiative? So those are kind of things
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: that I love doing. It's like, or how do you
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: ban straws? When people come to me and say we'd
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: like to pay you to do that. I'm like, I'd
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: love to do that. That's fun. And the podcast came
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: through my cousin David just saying Jared, no one's really
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: talking about environmental issues, and to a large extent, everyone's
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: talking about environmental issues because the world around us is
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: a big sphere. But like, I like exploring these issues.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: And as you know, I spent a huge amount of
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: time by myself and so for me, getting to talk
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: to people and be in conversation and experience their wisdom
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: is a gift. I love doing it. So when someone
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: said you could actually do this, like hanging out talking
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: with you, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. This is
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: so cool to be able to do it.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: It's cool. And we were talking before the before the
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: we hit record. You know, I don't I don't know
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: that anybody. Yeah, we all kind of generally talk about
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: the environment, but there's nobody with your experience in pedigree
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: who's doing, you know, an actual podcast around these ideas.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: And these are ideas that can be spoken about both
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: broadly and very specifically, and you're in a you know,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: the perfect you're sort of the perfect cipher for those
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: kinds of conversations. So I think it's cool.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: It's called Podship Earth, and so Podship Earth came from
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: Buckminster Fuller's book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. And I
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: had this wacky great uncle called Milton, who late in life,
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: you know, he was a jock. He was not a reader.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure what happened, but like in his mid
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: eighties he discovered Buckminster Fuller, and he, unlike me, he
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: didn't do the Pacific Rest Trail, but he turned his
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: savings in as meager as they were and bought hundreds
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: of copies of Bucky's book called Critical Path, in which
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: you're going to say you bought it down. I wish,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: you know. Unfortunately he kind of ended up in really
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: ceedy motels in Miami Beach. But no, he should have
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: been a different story. He should have bought a dome.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: He would have been much, much happier in a geodesic dome.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: But he did buy hundreds of copies of the book
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: and he handed me one, and my memory at the
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: time was like, what the fuck? He used to give
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: me one hundred dollars bills for Christmas, and now I'm
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: getting a Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller. But I eventually
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: got around to reading it and had a big impact
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: on kind of systems thinking. And it's like podge spaceship Earth,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: podge of Earth. So we are we are this teeny
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: little dot, my kids. I'd invite every every single listener
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: to look up. There's a YouTube video of this guy
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: talking about the Virgo supercluster, which our galaxy is in.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: And when you see the scale of the galaxy that
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: we're in and then this Virgo supercluster, we are a
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: teeny little spaceship.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: Is it that one that that starts with the Earth
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: and then slowly progressively zooms out. Yeah, I've seen that.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: I love that. I'll put a link on the show
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: not it is pretty cool. That's cool. That's awesome, man.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: So the first episode drops.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: Late February, February nineteenth. It's gonna have Gina McCarthy. She
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: was my boss at EPA, she was the head of EPA.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: She's now at the Kennedy School. She's she's been her
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: whole life a fighter. She was ridiculously optimistic about our
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: prospects of turning this around, which I liked. I'm looking
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: for optimism.
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: That's cool, good all right, Well, we got to wrap
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: this up, but I don't want to let you go
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: without two remaining questions. The first is if people are
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: listening and they're inspired to get more environmentally conscious and
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: active in their own lives, Like, what are some of
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: the most impactful things that the average consumer can put
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: into motion?
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: The most important thing is yourself and your family. That's
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: the most important unit we have than your community. But
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: within your family, little things like you know, being consumer
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: minded environmentally minded. When it comes to choices, I was
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: helping my son by a pillow the other day. You
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: don't want to pillow with brominated flame retardants. You want
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: a pillow that's made out of organic things. You're putting
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: your head on it. When it comes to you know,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: getting chocolate, if it has fair trade, why not get
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: the fair trade one? You know that it's coming from
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: a place where there's not slave labor used in the chocolate.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: When it comes to making a decision about buying a
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: case of plastic bottles for your kid's soccer game, or
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe buying five or six stainless steel bottles
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: that can be refilled, you know, make the smart choice.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: Those things will last forever, even just you know, kid's
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: birthday parties or your own birthday parties. Those styrofoam plates. People,
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: it's so much classier and nicer to use actual ceramic
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: and cutlery. People love it. So I enjoy life, but
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: be conscious that you can really make some pretty profound choices.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: You can put solar on your roof. You can decide,
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not going to go to the gym.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: I don't have the money, but I live five miles
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: away from where I work. I'm going to walk every day.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: You will be amazed. I walked every day and it
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: was so eye opening. I got to know people on
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: the street. I got a lot fitter, and I didn't
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: have to be cooped up in a car, which you know,
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: the air is bad. You get stressed. So if you
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: choose a life that is simple and honest to your values,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: and that really just means looking after your health and
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: your health of your family. The next thing is your community,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: things like tree planting, community gardens. The whole focus on
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: public policy and the things that really I don't think
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: matter quite as much as the individual action at the
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: local level. So I would say act locally, resist nationally
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: I like that, but.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: On the subject of policy, and this leads me to
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: my final question. If you did find yourself in some
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: parallel universe where you had been appointed to run the
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: EPA and you're in Washington in your nice office, what
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: do you do First? What does the policy agenda look
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: like if you were in charge?
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: So we kind of know what the policies need to
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: be in order to get out of the mess that
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: we're in. They need to be driven by science. So
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: with climate change, there's already a finding that greenhouse gases
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: are a pollutant. It's called the endangerment finding. That can't
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: be changed because the science hasn't changed. So really, let
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: science be our guide. And then secondly, the laws are
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: pretty clear that we need to protect human health and
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: the environment. Let's do that. So with climate change, we
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: had a common sense plan called a Clean Power Plan
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: that was in place. We got four and a half
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: million public comments. Now they're saying there probably wasn't enough
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: public comment. I mean, so, yeah, there's a lot of
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: public comment. It was a great plan. The energy companies
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: bought into it and realized they needed certainty, so moving
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: very quickly to renewable energy and in some cases. I
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: think the state of California can have a goal of
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent renewable energy. Cities need to move in
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: that direction so energy is move as fast and now
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: it's you know, from a fiscal perspective, we have an
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: obligation to do it because it's cheaper. With water. There's
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: a huge amount of savings. We're going to get into
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: another drought in the West, no doubt soon. We need
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: to think about the whole system of turning wastewater into
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: water that can be used for other purposes, from irrigation
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: to washing our laundry. So water is really important. Chemicals
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: there's eighty thousand chemicals in place that have no regulation whatsoever.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: We need to drastically reduce the number of chemicals that
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: are allowed into our environment until we know what the
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: hell it is they're going to do. We need to
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: make sure that communities of color and low income communities
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: aren't left behind, that they aren't the you know, bearing
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: the brunt of the pollution that makes our lives easier.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: And you know, we need as quick an acceleration towards
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: policies like organic agriculture. You know, the subsidies have been
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: helping large scale commercial petrochemical agg for a long time.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: So we need to get government's money, which you and
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: I pay, all of us pay. We pay taxes. Those
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: taxes need to go towards doing the right thing, as
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: opposed to continually paying for the polluters.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I agree with that whole horribly. If we could
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: shift some of the focus away from farm bill type
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: legislation towards incentivizing the organic farming community and the local
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: farming communities, I think that would be a step in
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: the right direction.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: I have a question for you. Yeah, so I had
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: a difficult time readjusting you're sleeping in a tent. Yeah,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: so I'm jealous, Like.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: Tell me you can sleep in a tent. I could.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: It's hot in Tarrancisco.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: We have a backyard.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: No, no, I was thinking the roof, flat roof.
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so, well, my chent was on the flat roof,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: but the wind was crazy lately, so I moved it
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: down to currenttic ground level. But yeah, I've been sleeping
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: in a roof in a tent for about a year
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: and a half before that, kind of periodically on and off.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 2: And I love it, you know, I love it. It's
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: a it was motivated initially by struggles with sleep that
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 2: I was having. And I like it cold, like the
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: colder the better, you know, get under a bunch of
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: blankets and I just sleep phenomen only well. And my
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: wife likes it warm, and so we would argue. People
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: are like, is there is your marriage? Okay, But it's
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: like it's actually better now because she gets it the
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: way she likes it and I get it the way
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: I like it. And I can't do anything if I
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: don't sleep well. And so a my sleep quality improved
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: like tenfold. Like I don't know how you were sleeping
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: on the trail, but you know, just being open air, Yeah,
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: it's amazing and I love it for that alone. But
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: I also think it it speaks to you know, I
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: have it right adjacent to this container space out there
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: that I have my office, and like my little world
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: is like that tent and that container, and I happen
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: to live in a beautiful home and I'm extremely grateful
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: and lucky, and you know I have My life is
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: an embarrassment of riches, but on some level it's sort
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: of a it's a it's a practice in stoicism, because
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: if everything went to shit and I lost everything, like,
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: I'm cool. Like I It's reframed my relationship with the
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: material world in a way that allows me to really
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: embrace and understand like I don't need that much, like
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 2: and my happiness and sense of self is not dictated
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: by those externalities and it's it's And then there was
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 2: a what you know, I was doing it for a while,
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: and then I wasn't saying anything publicly about it. I'm like, well,
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 2: what would people think. They're going to think I'm away.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: And then I'm like, I don't care. You know, I
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: don't care. Think whatever you want to think. But you know,
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: I like it, and it's been a cool thing. So
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 2: put that tent on your roof. I like it.
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: Just final point, I have never been happier than when
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: I was on the Pacific christ Trail and I had
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: everything that I needed in my back pank right.
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So happiness is not a function of the material
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: possessions that you lug around with you. It's more a
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: function of the experience that you choose to bring into
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: your life and the people that you surround yourself with
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: and your relationship to that environment and those people.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for inviting me today.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: Thank you a pleasure man. Come back anytime. Good luck
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: with the podcast.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to invite you. I need you as
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: a guest.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: Happy to come. I don't know what I could say
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 2: on the environmental issues, but anytime.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: You want to have me, No, you've I want to
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: hear all about your lawyering and how you made the
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: transformation and what you felt like when you did your
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: fifth iron Man in five days. And like this is
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: a promo for the show you're gonna You've already heard
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: it because he's talked about it on this ship.
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah cool man. All right, Well awesome. So if people
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: want to connect with you or hook up with you,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: what's where's the best place for them to do that?
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: Podship earth dot com Yeah all right, the.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: New website awesome, and subscribe on iTunes check it out
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. All right, chered, thank you,
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: rich Peace.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, mhm.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: Awesome. That great. M h mhm m