Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Building Baby Steps: How Small Goals Lead to Big Changes in Ocean Conservation and Climate Action
Transcript
- 0:00really cool video that I saw. It was a teacher teaching kids. It looked like boys at
- 0:04a school. And they looked like elementary school level. The teacher set
- 0:08out these different pieces of paper along the floor. And
- 0:12so those were the only things that this child could step on. He
- 0:15said, your goal of this exercise, give me a high five by only
- 0:19stepping on the pieces of paper. Pieces of paper were really short and
- 0:22close to each other. And there were numerous ones. It was like five or six. The boy stepped
- 0:25on each piece of paper as he got closer to the teacher. And
- 0:28when he got to the last one, he gave the high five. now he kind of put it
- 0:32to all the other kids like how do you think friend will do if
- 0:35i take out a piece of paper so he takes out a piece of paper which
- 0:39lengthens the space between each piece of paper and so
- 0:42the child does it again he has some that are easier and then he has to make a large leap
- 0:46at the end he makes it High five. And then he does
- 0:49it again. He takes out another piece, but this time he takes out two pieces of paper. So now
- 0:52there's only like three pieces of paper. There's one at the beginning, one in the middle, and
- 0:55one at the end. So the kid jumps. He barely makes it to the middle, barely makes it
- 0:59to the end, but he still makes it. Boom. High five. Now he takes away
- 1:02the middle. And he's like, look at how long you have to go before you
- 1:06can reach the goal of giving me the high five. And there's a
- 1:09big space. There's probably about five feet of space, which is really difficult to
- 1:12jump from the beginning to the end without running up. So it's really difficult
- 1:16to jump five feet. I don't know if I could jump five feet. There's no way I could. The moral of
- 1:19that story was if you want to get to the goal of giving your
- 1:23teacher a high five, whatever that goal might be, it might be a big house.
- 1:26It might be playing in the NBA or playing a professional sport.
- 1:30It might be a music career. It might be a family.
- 1:34All those goals are great goals. But they're the end
- 1:37goal. That's the prize. It's really hard to
- 1:40get to the prize when you don't have other goals in
- 1:44the middle. Those are the pieces of paper. Each piece of paper signified
- 1:48the different goals. So as you started to hit the
- 1:51smaller goals you started to build towards the
- 1:54larger goal at the end. But if you don't have those small baby steps, it's
- 1:58really difficult to go from the beginning to the end, to the solution,
- 2:01to the goal, to the prize, without hitting those
- 2:05baby steps. And I think that's the same thing we have to think about with climate
- 2:09change. It's a great lesson for kids to learn, great lessons for adults to
- 2:12be reminded of, that you need to build up to get to
- 2:15that final goal. You need to take those steps in order
- 2:18to do something. Welcome back to another episode of the How to
- 2:21Protect the Ocean podcast. On today's podcast, we're going to be talking about how
- 2:25lost some of us feel when we look at ocean conservation, especially
- 2:29when it comes to climate change. As I'm recording this, New York City
- 2:33Climate Change Week is happening. Also, there's
- 2:36a hurricane that's barreling down on Florida, category
- 2:40four record storm surges apparently, lots
- 2:43of wind, there's gonna be a lot of flash flooding. I
- 2:47hope people in the Florida, Georgia and Carolinas are
- 2:50gonna be okay. If you were told to evacuate, please evacuate
- 2:55as quickly as possible and be safe. But
- 2:58with that said, a lot of us feel lost and when we see storms like
- 3:02this happen, we see climate week happen and we're saying like, what are
- 3:05we doing? to actually reduce climate change. We
- 3:08hear from governments. We hear from people. We talk about
- 3:11it. Some people are still denying it. When you talk about how
- 3:15do we pay for it, how do we get everything done, it's very, very
- 3:19confusing. And who do you believe? What kind of opinions do
- 3:23you believe? And where do you go for information? So
- 3:26we're going to be talking about all of this stuff, and how to get over it, and how to
- 3:29get more informed on this episode of the How to
- 3:32Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
- 3:39everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
- 3:43your host Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean,
- 3:46how you could speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean
- 3:50by taking action. And for the past nine and a half years,
- 3:54I've been producing this podcast. At first it was Speak Up for Blue, then it was
- 3:57Speak Up for the Ocean Blue, and now it's How to Protect the Ocean. so that
- 4:00you can get more information on the ocean so you don't feel this overwhelm
- 4:04that sometimes we feel when we see massive storms like
- 4:07the Hurricane Helen that we're seeing right now. When we see
- 4:11these massive solutions or
- 4:14supposed solutions like the Paris Accord or we see these conferences like
- 4:18Our Ocean and New York City Climate Week, And
- 4:22we wonder, what's actually being done? Are we doing enough
- 4:26to ensure that we are reducing climate change, to ensure that
- 4:29we are addressing climate change, and we are adapting to
- 4:32climate change, especially those who are most vulnerable? And that is
- 4:36the difficult part. That's where a lot of people get lost. They
- 4:40watch stuff or they listen to things and it's really depressing and
- 4:44you get a lot of doom and gloom type of material out there. And then
- 4:47you're just sitting here and you're just like, I don't know, I give up. I have no idea.
- 4:50There's nothing I can do from an individual perspective
- 4:54that could really help. And I don't agree with that. I
- 4:58feel as though if everybody just stopped and said, hey, you know what, we just
- 5:01got to forget it. then it's not worthwhile. I
- 5:05think that's a lot of problem. And I think the first thing we have to address when
- 5:08we feel lost is misinformation. There's
- 5:12a plethora of misinformation online and wherever you
- 5:16can look for information, whether it's on TV, depending on the
- 5:19station, whether it's online, whether it's on Facebook, Instagram,
- 5:23TikTok, YouTube, these podcasts, like all
- 5:27these other podcast shows that have this questioning
- 5:31of conservation and climate change and whether it's
- 5:34really worth to actually do anything. And a lot of the misinformation in
- 5:38the past has happened and started with fossil fuel
- 5:41companies. They would hire these PR firms, they
- 5:44would have a strategy, and they would spin this narrative that
- 5:49would be easy to understand and get in the minds
- 5:52of people, whether it be through newspaper back then, or radio,
- 5:56or TV, or celebrities, and say, hey, you know what? And
- 6:00politicians especially, climate change doesn't really exist. We're all
- 6:03just kind of freaking out. All these scientists are freaking out. Some politicians are freaking
- 6:07out. But really what it is, it's just the natural changes
- 6:11in the climate. It's happened for years. We've only really been studying
- 6:15for 100 years, so we only know what's for the last
- 6:18100 years, which is false, because the studies that have been done have
- 6:21dated back millions and millions, hundreds of millions of years,
- 6:25and we're able to see how the climate and
- 6:29how the planet has changed over time. That's the beauty of
- 6:32science. And to be honest, a lot of
- 6:36people don't have the time to look up all the science. A
- 6:39lot of people don't have the ability to even understand
- 6:43some of the science. Because some of it's really complicated. Sometimes I
- 6:46look at climate models and I'm just like, I have no idea what this is about. I'll
- 6:49look at the primary literature. I'm like, I have no idea what this is about. And I've
- 6:53studied science for a long time. Some of it's really complicated. But
- 6:57others, it's a little easier to understand. And to be honest, one of the reasons why
- 7:00I started this podcast was to help take that complex information, the
- 7:05ones that I understand, and be able to explain it to you so
- 7:08that you are more informed about the ocean, so that you can make better
- 7:11decisions surrounding the oceans and speak it up to other people. that's
- 7:16really the point and so the goal of what
- 7:20you should be looking for is you should be looking for sources
- 7:24of information that you know you can trust and by trusting
- 7:27is that people are providing evidence whether it's be
- 7:31through speaking to experts like scientists or
- 7:34whether it be providing information that provides evidence you
- 7:38know like that's what you're looking for journal articles and so forth that
- 7:42have been peer-reviewed have been gone through the the most strict
- 7:46criticism process that you've ever seen it's ridiculous
- 7:49how critical scientists can be of each other because
- 7:53we're taught to be critical that's what we're taught to do because
- 7:56you have to to be. You have to question, you know, when you see a
- 8:00scientific study in front of you, you got to question the scientific study to make sure that
- 8:03it passes the vigor of what the scientific process is as we
- 8:07know and love and learn when we're in school. And
- 8:10so that is a pretty rigorous process where
- 8:14you, you know, when the final product comes out, you
- 8:17know that's the product like the study has gone through the criticisms gone
- 8:20through people looking it over not just the editors of the of
- 8:24the magazine that it's in the journal article but also other colleagues who
- 8:27have looked it over and if they don't agree they write a response in
- 8:31the next issue and then there's a little bit of a beef going on in
- 8:34terms of the science not personal but it's in science sometimes it
- 8:37spills into personal But there is information that continues to
- 8:41go back and forth to make sure that we're bettering the studies, we're bettering the science, and
- 8:45we're bettering our understanding of the science. And
- 8:48that's how the scientific process works in today's world. The
- 8:52problem is when it gets outside the scientific community and it gets into sort
- 8:56of the places where you and I consume information. And
- 8:59that could be on social media, that could be on TV, that could be on radio. There
- 9:02are a lot of places that it could be. And it just depends on
- 9:06who is providing that information. The source of that information
- 9:10really is important here. Right? It's important to
- 9:14start to look at, you know, somebody all of a sudden comes up with a
- 9:17new scientific process to explain something. You
- 9:20need to go through that scientific process in your mind. Like, where's
- 9:24the evidence? Where are they gone? Has it been accepted into the wider
- 9:28scientific study? Now, there are times where scientists get
- 9:31it wrong. Doesn't happen all the time. So when
- 9:35you look at a study or you hear stuff and you hear scientists speak on
- 9:39something, it's usually because it's been out in the literature for quite some time
- 9:42or it's a new study or a new discovery that's happened and that we need to
- 9:46get it out into the open. But talking to scientists, listening
- 9:49to scientists on podcasts like this and other podcasts out there
- 9:52that have to do with marine biology or science or anything like that is
- 9:56really important. It's really important to get information straight
- 10:00from sources like these, not just podcasts and videos and stuff, but
- 10:03also articles and nonprofit organizations and
- 10:07so forth that are reputable, that have the reputation to say,
- 10:10hey, you know what? They provide really great information. They
- 10:13provide really great programs, governments, and so forth. You need
- 10:16to trust in them that they are giving you
- 10:20the right information. And I know there are some of you who have a little bit
- 10:23of the conspiracy theorists in you, but not everything is a conspiracy
- 10:27theorist. The theory, it is science, a lot of it
- 10:30science, a lot of it is science based and some of the decisions are science
- 10:33based, not all the time. We just covered an episode last episode
- 10:36about the cod fishery and how politicians weren't getting it right and taking
- 10:40risks where we should be conservative in a scientific opinion,
- 10:44not just mine, but also the own government scientists who
- 10:48do the information, work up the information. So, getting
- 10:51back to my point and not getting too much on the tangent, when it comes
- 10:55to misinformation, making sure that you are looking at sources that
- 10:59are correct, sources that can be trusted. And you should be questioning
- 11:02each and every one of them. And if they provide evidence, then you can
- 11:06be like, okay, now I'm starting to get to know this thing and
- 11:09now we're starting to get somewhere. So that's important as well, right?
- 11:12So misinformation, tackling misinformation by going to
- 11:16the right sources is extremely important. Trying to tell the right sources, you
- 11:19look for evidence-based, evidence that's given when somebody's trying
- 11:23to put something together. If there's no evidence and it's just conjecture, that's
- 11:26exactly what it is. It's just conjecture. Somebody proposing their
- 11:30theory of what they think happens, but it's not always right. So
- 11:34the source matters, the magazine matters, the website matters, all
- 11:38of it matters to make sure that it's a reputable place that puts out
- 11:41good scientific information and people as well, like myself. I've
- 11:45been called out before on covering some stories and I've come back and I'm like, you
- 11:48know what, you're right, like I never thought of it that way. Here's some
- 11:52evidence to back it up. And this is why I was wrong when I first said
- 11:55something. And I think that's really important to understand and
- 11:58take the responsibility for putting out misinformation by
- 12:02accident or not understanding an issue properly and being transparent with
- 12:05your audience. If you have that, then you're looking at a really
- 12:08good source. And I think that's really important. The
- 12:13other thing is that you're taking in so much doom and gloom that
- 12:16you just feel apathetic towards a
- 12:20topic, say climate change. We hear the doom and
- 12:23gloom. We hear about the hurricanes. We hear about the flooding. We hear about the droughts. We
- 12:26hear about the wildfires. What else do we hear? Increased
- 12:30storms. a lot of And
- 12:50it's very dire out there and it's something that we need to continue
- 12:54to get on and act. But we can't have people who
- 12:58are listening to information on doom and gloom always just feel
- 13:02so apathetic that they're just gonna stop listening to the information. They're gonna go
- 13:05somewhere it's happy. After listening to things that
- 13:08are really bad, it really affects your mind. And
- 13:11I'm gonna give you a bit of an analogy. of something recent that
- 13:15I've kind of come up on my social media feed. I'm
- 13:18a big hip hop fan and the news coming
- 13:22out of Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Diddy, whatever
- 13:25his name is, the allegations that are coming out
- 13:30about him and the lifestyle that he's led and the disgusting things that
- 13:34he may or may have allegedly done, It's
- 13:38taken up a lot of my time. I'll tell you what, it's taken up a lot of my time
- 13:41listening to interviews, listening to conjecture, listening to rumors,
- 13:46and you're just kind of like, wow, all
- 13:49this negative talk really makes me look at the world differently. Some
- 13:54of the stuff that's come out could change the way we view musicians
- 13:58that have been some of our favorite musicians in the past, as well as some of
- 14:01our favorite actors in the past. This goes pretty deep, if everything is
- 14:04true, and it makes me think, This
- 14:08is really bad. This is horrible stuff that's coming
- 14:11out. The way some of these people have been treated is absolutely awful.
- 14:16and it affects your mindset. That's all you think about.
- 14:20It's like another, that's a real life situation, but it's like
- 14:24some of the times when we watch a TV show like Criminal Minds or Law
- 14:27and Order SVU, if you got into that a little bit and
- 14:31you start to watch it on a daily basis now with the ability to
- 14:34binge, you start binging things and you're just like, the
- 14:39world is a little messed up. Even though these are stories, the
- 14:43world is a little messed up. And it's affecting the way I think about
- 14:46life in general. Well, that's the same thing that happens with doom and
- 14:49gloom stories constantly being told to you by
- 14:53different types of media and by different types of way you consume information. And
- 14:57so you're always hearing the doom and gloom of the ocean, the doom and gloom of climate change,
- 15:00the doom and gloom of plastic pollution. Well, there are optimistic
- 15:05and there are good news stories out there about the
- 15:08ocean. And it's up to us like the communicators
- 15:12to get that information to you and it's for up to you to consume that
- 15:16information. It's okay to consume good news. And
- 15:19there are a lot of creators out there, especially on TikTok I've seen where
- 15:23they're sharing, like they've got this post and it's like you swipe across to
- 15:26a couple of different images and they just summarize these
- 15:30stories, these good news stories about climate, these good news stories
- 15:34or climate reduction or action and these good news stories on ocean action
- 15:38and you just kind of feel good about yourself. You're like, oh, there are some good projects that
- 15:41are going on in the world. I may want to know a little bit more, so I'll dive deeper
- 15:45into it. But for the most part, it's pretty cool that
- 15:48there are some good stories that are happening. It's pretty cool that there's some
- 15:52optimism that's happening. And to be honest, a lot of the times I
- 15:55find those stories and I put them on this podcast. It's one of the reasons why
- 15:58I started this podcast was so that we can get information to
- 16:02you, the audience, you who are listening to this, who are looking for that information,
- 16:06not always doom and gloom. And you can see that there are fishing villages that
- 16:10put a climate bank together, their own climate savings, where
- 16:14they You know, they contribute a certain amount of
- 16:17money per month or however it works. And then so
- 16:20that when there's something that catastrophic that happens where they
- 16:24fish, marine protected areas destroyed, they have
- 16:27to wait to rebuild that. They can't fish until they
- 16:30rebuild that. But in the meantime, they can draw money
- 16:34from the savings that they've been contributing to, taking a little bit of
- 16:37money from their portions, and they can contribute to until that area
- 16:41rebuilds and is OK and safe to either, not
- 16:45the protected area, but around the protected area to fish again. Story
- 16:48like that are happening and there are organizations all around the
- 16:52world that are working with communities to make them more resilient
- 16:55against climate change, more resilient against these massive storms, more resilient
- 16:59against plastic pollution, sea level rise, all these things
- 17:03that are happening around the world that we don't know about because the
- 17:06mainstream media doesn't think it's important enough to
- 17:09actually put out. But that's the beauty of the internet is
- 17:13it democratizes the way we put out information. So if
- 17:16we want you to see projects that are happening around the world
- 17:19that are good news and that are building towards something bigger, we
- 17:23can do that. And that's what I try to do partly on
- 17:27this podcast is bring you the good news. Now, I have to talk about the
- 17:30doom and gloom stuff, right? Because it's important that we know and
- 17:33we're aware of it. But I always like to finish it off with ways we
- 17:37find solutions. with ways that people are working towards
- 17:41building a rapport, building a relationship with
- 17:45local communities, building a way that they can work together without
- 17:49being invasive, without being overbearing, and without
- 17:52taking information and not sharing it with that local community. Seeing
- 17:56that ocean justice being served, making sure people have a
- 18:00voice, making sure that conservation is not just
- 18:03about science, but it's about people as well. Mostly
- 18:07about people and how people manage their slice of the
- 18:10ocean. And that's the hope that
- 18:13it gives me. When I put out a story like that or I've just finished an
- 18:17interview where I talk to somebody about doing that, I
- 18:20feel great. I feel wonderful. And so what I
- 18:24do is I go out, I tell my wife, I tell my kids, I
- 18:27tell friends, I tell my mom, I'm like, hey, There's this cool project out
- 18:31and I want to talk to you about it. And then I put it out on the podcast and then people
- 18:34are like, wow, I didn't know this was happening. I'm so happy that it's happened. Now
- 18:38I'm in a happier mood and I feel good about the ocean. When you feel good
- 18:41about something, you get all this optimism, not all the time, but when you get this optimism,
- 18:45you start to want to chip in. You start to want to feel good
- 18:49about helping out and where you can do, maybe volunteer with
- 18:52an organization, maybe volunteer with like a marine life center
- 18:56or volunteer at a museum or volunteer in an educational facility
- 19:00to teach other people how they can protect the ocean
- 19:03or how they can protect the planet, how they can reduce climate change
- 19:07either on an individual level or on a volunteer level. Get
- 19:11involved with local organizations where you organize
- 19:15or work with people who are organizing riverside cleanups
- 19:19and coastal cleanups and beach cleanups where you're taking away plastic
- 19:23pollution and any kind of pollution that is solid that you can take away
- 19:26to ensure that those areas are clean. Those
- 19:30areas can go through their natural processes and we can see
- 19:34a healthy, nice ocean coastline or river coastline
- 19:37or lake coastline. Those are really important,
- 19:41not just for sort of the vanity of
- 19:45it all, but also for the healthy functioning of those ecosystems,
- 19:49of those habitats. That's extremely important. We don't get
- 19:52enough of that. We get a lot of bad news. We don't get a lot of good news where we
- 19:55can take action. We feel like we want to take action. That's
- 20:00what we hope here on this podcast, what I hope to inspire you
- 20:03to do is to take action. whether it be on an individual level
- 20:07or whether it be on a level where you vote or you work with organizations to help
- 20:10other people vote, or you start to get out and work with,
- 20:13uh, volunteer with, you know, politicians who are doing great
- 20:17things for the ocean and for the planet. That's what I hope that
- 20:20this podcast does is inspire you to, to go out there
- 20:23and change the way you think of the ocean and change the way how
- 20:27your lifestyle affects the ocean or
- 20:30influences the ocean. That's the goal. And
- 20:34that's what I hope you get out of this podcast. Like the first thing, like
- 20:37you've already done the first step. Anytime I talk to
- 20:41an expert, I have a guest on, I always ask them like, what do you think people can do? And
- 20:45the big thing people say is educate yourself. Find
- 20:48out what's happening with the ocean. Find out the cool things that are happening and
- 20:52find out some of the not so cool things that are happening. right and
- 20:55inject yourself where you can to be able to
- 20:59provide value for the ocean whether that be in a donation to
- 21:02support a charity or support a non-profit organization whether
- 21:06it be to volunteer your time to do so whether being a board of
- 21:09director or actively going out and doing cleanups and
- 21:12making sure your area or local area is really good. I
- 21:16think that's making sure that you participate and feel
- 21:20good about the ocean so that you can participate to be like, hey, you know what? I
- 21:23know we have a problem, but I want
- 21:26to make sure that I'm doing my
- 21:30part to get it cleaned up, to get it fixed. Yeah,
- 21:33you're only one person out of eight billion, but if more people feel this
- 21:37way, then that's great. That's
- 21:40what's really important. The other thing I want to cover, the last
- 21:44thing I want to cover is I saw this post on
- 21:48LinkedIn. And it was someone who had just attended a
- 21:51couple of sessions at New York City Climate Week. And
- 21:55they were saying how they saw this project, a couple of projects that were being
- 21:59sort of exposed or being shared at one
- 22:02of the sessions during Climate Week, the New York City Climate Week.
- 22:06And there is saying that a lot of times when we get caught
- 22:10up in climate change, and this is one of the reasons why I did this episode today,
- 22:14is when we look at climate change, there's a lot to handle. It's
- 22:18a big issue with multiple layers of consequence, and
- 22:22it's complex. So we always think
- 22:25about climate change globally. And when we think about globally, we're like, what can I
- 22:29do as one of eight billion to help out globally? But
- 22:32that's a hard pill to swallow. But
- 22:37this post was like, it's good to really think about when
- 22:40climate change first came out, it was like, think globally, there
- 22:44was a saying, think globally, act locally. That
- 22:48was a saying. It was like, if we want to make an
- 22:51impact globally, we had to take baby
- 22:55steps. We can't reduce climate change on a global
- 22:58level unless we start reducing it locally. And
- 23:02that means everywhere. I've got, I've have the opportunity to
- 23:05speak to people every episode who are all around the world,
- 23:09many different countries over, I think 90 to a hundred different
- 23:12countries have listened to this podcast over the last 10 years or
- 23:16nine and a half years, almost a 10. I
- 23:19have that opportunity to sort of influence you and help
- 23:23you think about the ocean by providing you that information and all of a sudden, you
- 23:26can start acting locally that will take those baby steps towards
- 23:30going to our final goal which is thinking globally. There's
- 23:34a really cool video that I saw. This is the last point I'm going to make. It
- 23:37has to do with this one but there's a really cool video that I saw. It was a teacher teaching
- 23:40kids. It looked like boys at a school and they look like
- 23:44elementary school level, maybe grade 6, maybe grade 7, maybe
- 23:47even younger. And the teacher set
- 23:51out these different pieces of paper along the floor. And
- 23:55so those were the only things that this child, the child that was going up,
- 23:59could step on. And what he did, he said, your goal
- 24:03of this exercise is, and the teacher stood at the opposite end
- 24:06of the pieces of paper of where he was. So there was probably about four or five different pieces of
- 24:09paper. So the kid stood at the beginning, and the teacher stood at the
- 24:13end. Your goal is to come over here, give me a high five by only
- 24:16stepping on the pieces of paper. So the pieces of paper were
- 24:19really short and close to each other. And there were numerous ones, there was like five
- 24:23or six. And so the child stepped on each,
- 24:26the boy stepped on each piece of paper as he
- 24:29got closer to the teacher. And when he got to the last one, gave the high
- 24:32five. Great, no problem. So now
- 24:36you kind of put it to all the other kids, like, how do you think The
- 24:40boy will do, your friend will do, if I take out a piece
- 24:43of paper. So he takes out a piece of paper, which lengthens the
- 24:47space between each piece of paper. And so the child does
- 24:50it again. He has some that are easier, and then he has to make a large leap at
- 24:54the end. And he makes it. High five. No problem.
- 24:59I keep hitting the mic when I give myself a high five. Sorry about that. And
- 25:03then he does it again, and he takes out another piece of paper. This time he takes out two pieces of paper.
- 25:06So now there's only like three pieces of paper. There's one at the beginning, one
- 25:09in the middle, and one at the end. So the kid jumps, and he barely makes
- 25:13it to the middle, barely makes it to the end, but he still makes it. Boom. High
- 25:16five. Didn't hit the mic. Nice. Now he takes away
- 25:19the middle. And he's like, now do it.
- 25:24And he's like, look at how long you have to go before you can
- 25:27reach the goal of giving me the high five. And
- 25:31there's a big space. There's probably about five feet of space, which is really difficult
- 25:35to jump in space, like from the beginning to
- 25:38the end without running up. There's no room to take a run at
- 25:42it. And this is a younger child, so it's really difficult
- 25:45to jump five feet. I don't know if I could jump five feet. There's no way I could. So
- 25:49he's just said, the moral of that story was the fact that
- 25:53if you want to get to the goal of giving your teacher a high five, whatever
- 25:56that goal might be, it might be a big house,
- 26:00it might be playing in the NBA, or playing a professional sport,
- 26:04it might be a music career, it might be a family,
- 26:08and having a, marrying your partner and having a family.
- 26:12All those goals are great goals, but they're the end
- 26:16goal. You could have multiple goals, but that's the end
- 26:19goal, that's the prize. And it's
- 26:23really hard to get to the prize when you don't have
- 26:26other goals in the middle. Those are the pieces of paper. So
- 26:30each piece of paper signified the different goals.
- 26:34So as you started to hit the smaller goals, you started to
- 26:37build towards the larger goal at the end. So
- 26:41as you started to hit that, basically
- 26:45climb that ladder to get to that final goal, that's
- 26:49how you do it. But if you don't have those small baby steps, it's really difficult
- 26:52to go from the beginning to the end, to the solution, to the
- 26:56goal, to the prize without hitting those baby
- 26:59steps. And I think that's the same thing we have
- 27:03to think about with climate change. It's a great lesson for kids to learn, great
- 27:06lessons for adults to be reminded of, that you need to build up
- 27:10to get to that final goal. You need to take those steps in
- 27:13order to do something. So the first step you would take as You
- 27:17know, someone who's new to ocean conservation and climate change
- 27:20reduction is to look inwards and look at
- 27:24what you can do on an individual level. And it may not have an impact on
- 27:27a larger scale, may not reduce climate change, may not be your final goal,
- 27:31but that would be it. That would be what you need to look
- 27:34at when you are looking towards your final goal. You need
- 27:38to start with yourself. Reduce plastic pollution, your
- 27:42own plastic pollution, right? Go to, you know, multiple
- 27:45use plastics or stay away from single use
- 27:48plastics, right? Start to look at reusable stuff. Like,
- 27:52you know, all these things can be done. There's so many ways we could talk about
- 27:55this in other episodes. Then you start to look at the next step
- 27:59and that could be like, who can I volunteer with that will have a bigger impact? Who
- 28:02can I support? Whether it be a monetary value or volunteer value,
- 28:06right? Your time. Whether it be on a board of directors, or like
- 28:09I said, on the ground doing some field work or doing some
- 28:13cleanups. Then you build bigger, like who do I vote for? Who represents
- 28:17protecting the ocean that are my values? I want them to
- 28:20have the same values. Those are the people I'm gonna vote for, or that's the person I'm
- 28:23gonna vote for, depending on the election and what level, what scale
- 28:27the election's at, state, federal, or local, right? Then
- 28:30you just keep building from there. Maybe dedicate part of your career to it. There's
- 28:36so many things you can do. before you get to that level,
- 28:39before we get, and then everybody has their own journey. And nobody's
- 28:43the same, and it doesn't have to be the same. There's no right or wrong way
- 28:46to go about doing it. But those steps, you've
- 28:49gotta take those baby steps to get to the final goal. Understanding that
- 28:54is a huge deal. And I want you to really understand.
- 28:57If you feel lost, just realize it's not gonna be solved tomorrow.
- 29:02It's not gonna be solved 50 years from now. It's gonna take a lot of
- 29:05time. And I hope we start to see that reduction happen,
- 29:08but it takes the baby steps to get to that point. And
- 29:12once we get there, then progress is going to continue to make. We don't stop there.
- 29:16We continue to do it to start to see and chip off those pieces to
- 29:20see that end goal happen, especially when you want to reduce climate change and
- 29:23protect the ocean. That can be done, but we need to take small baby steps.
- 29:28And that's sort of the lessons that I have
- 29:31kind of seen and observed and taken throughout my journey
- 29:37to live for a better ocean. That's the goal. So
- 29:40I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. This is something that we're
- 29:44building a community here. It's not just an audience listening to this podcast. This
- 29:48is the start of a conversation. I would love to hear your
- 29:51thoughts and continue that conversation. So please feel free
- 29:55to reach out. You can comment on Spotify on
- 29:58this video podcast, or you can go to YouTube and you can put your
- 30:02thoughts in the comment section below. or if you're
- 30:05listening on Apple podcast and or like an audio version of
- 30:09your favorite podcast app don't worry about it you can go and
- 30:12you can't get a hold of me don't worry about you can go to Instagram and
- 30:16you can just DM me at how to protect the ocean it's the
- 30:19name of this podcast all one word I would love to
- 30:22hear your thoughts on how you're protecting the ocean and the baby steps that
- 30:25you're taking to get there and and where you think you need to go next because
- 30:29that's what we talk about when we talk about as a community share
- 30:32those ideas so that other people can benefit and you can learn something as
- 30:36well that's it for today's episode if you want to learn more
- 30:39and and you're right at the beginning of your journey and you want to learn more Sign
- 30:43up for my newsletter. Go to speakupforblue.com forward
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- 31:11want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to
- 31:14Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll