145. Paul Hawken
On Regeneration - A Year On
Paul Hawken won’t need an introduction for many of you. But for those unfamiliar, Paul is a multiple best-selling author, entrepreneur, and advisor to heads of state and CEOs on climatic, economic and ecological regeneration. Paul and I last spoke for the podcast a bit over a year ago, on release of his latest best-selling book, Regeneration: Ending the climate crisis in one generation. That’s now the most listened to episode on this podcast. It also marked the launch of Project Regeneration, what’s billed as the world’s largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis. This week, we got together again, to talk about some of the big shifts underway, and some acute edges at play right now – both on a very personal level, and globally.
Paul Hawken (supplied).
“When you can say simple things like really, we just have to create more life on Earth. Not just, I mean that’s huge. But just imagine the beauty, the magic, the employment, the worthiness of that, because there is no other way to bring the climate back to a more stable level. ”
We start in a very personal mode, on matters of living in the world today (including Paul’s next book!). Then we move through the extractive paradigm’s inevitable slide towards ever greater geo-engineering, on to more extraordinary stories of regeneration. This includes a focus on gender, place, healing from trauma, and other keystone aspects of regeneration. Along with examining contentious areas like offsets, carbon, methane, so-called green ammonia and the like, and how we might turn those into more holistic win-win-win approaches.
This conversation was recorded online with Paul at home is California on 15 November 2022, Australian time.
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Please note this transcript isn’t perfect, but hopefully serves to provide greater access to these conversations for those who need or like to read.
Anthony 00:00
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Paul 00:54
When you can say simple things like really, we just have to create more life on Earth - not just, I mean that's huge. But just imagine the beauty, the magic, the employment, the worthiness of that, because there is no other way to bringing the climate back to a more stable level.
Anthony 01:13
G'day, my name's Anthony James. This is The RegenNarration and that was Paul Hawken. Paul won't need an introduction for many of you. But for those unfamiliar, Paul is a multiple best selling author, entrepreneur, and advisor to heads of state and CEOs on climatic, economic and ecological regeneration. Paul and I last spoke for the podcast a bit over a year ago, on release of his latest best selling book, Regeneration: ending the climate crisis in one generation. That's now the most listened to episode on this podcast. It also marked the launch of Project Regeneration, what's billed as the world's largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis. This week, we got together again, to talk about some of the big shifts underway, and some acute edges at play right now, both on a very personal level, and globally. We start in a very personal mode on matters of living in the world today, including Paul's next book. Then we move through the extractive paradigm's inevitable slide towards ever greater geoengineering, on to more extraordinary stories of regeneration. This includes a focus on gender, place, healing from trauma and other keystone aspects of regeneration, along with examining some contentious areas, like offsets, carbon, methane, so called green ammonia, and the like, and how we might turn those into more holistic Win Win Win approaches. Generously joining me again from his home in California, here's Paul.
Anthony 03:05
Greetings, Paul.
Paul 03:07
Hi.
Anthony 03:08
How are you going?
Paul 03:09
Well, you know, I mean we have a nervous system for a reason. And I think everybody's nervous system picks up a lot more than just their immediate experience, you know, and the world is in so much stress and anxiety and pain and confusion. And I think we're all picking that up to one degree or another. Some people are very sensitive to it. Some people are not but but I think the whole Zeitgeist reflects that sense of apprehension and worry. And so I don't think I'm any different than anybody else. And so I have my work, you have your work, our work is very similar, but this is the same thing. I mean, that's similar, but and so that's what we do, then it's amazing. I get definitely very inspired by listening to the people, your guests and the quality. It's not just the intelligence or the dialogue, we can be smart, but because in itself isn't a moving thing. You know, it doesn't really move you. But if you hear a kind of a grounded intelligence with heart and depth and humility, then that I think that's what people hearken to. And I think this what shifts in this one out of I think, the darkness that is overwhelming the world.
Anthony 04:34
Yeah. So well said. And you know, of course, right back at you. I was just in the last week, looking forward to speaking with you thinking how grateful I am. That not just the book of regeneration, of course exists. And in that sense, not just your back catalogue either. But the project and the ongoing development of the team in the background and the web portal, obviously that we talked at length about last time, the email bulletins and I know you've got other plans and other things coming down the line. So is the gratitude for that? Yeah, to be feeling the spirit because I'm feeling it too. I even talked in the last episode explicitly. It was with Kieran O'Brien actually. So someone you've had things. Yeah. And we talked about, we started off in the same place as it happens about how we calibrate while you really feel the depths of the bad stuff that's going on.
Paul 05:28
Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I think it was Jung, and I'm going to mangle the quote, but said something like we don't make a breakthrough by focusing on light beings, we we do so by entering in through the darkness. And the darkness is there for a reason. It's really our Totem. It's, it's our guide. It's the the entry point for transformation.
Anthony 05:55
Yeah, that's a very good reminder. And for you, I know we ended last time, because you put in the big burst to get everything out about a year ago, a bit over a year ago. And we ended last time, with you saying that you had got a lovely, personally regenerative routine, prior to all that, and that you'd like to recover it. So in terms of how you manage yourself, and do the work, in the way you've just described, have you managed to get that routine back? And what does it comprise? What do you do?
Paul 06:29
The answer, honest answer is no. But not without qualifications. I think after the book came out, there was this even prior to publication, but post publication, there was a lot of demand, you know, virtual demand at that time, it was still very COVID-y, which is a blessing, in terms of no travel, but there was a lot of demands. I remember one day the publisher, I had 18 radio stations in one day, you know, I it's just like, and the thing is that I think everyone who does any form of speaking to an assembly or the public or you know, whatever, if you take it seriously, it takes something out of you in a good way. I don't mean in a bad way, it does take something out of you. It's not like you just they're going blah, blah, blah. And so if you do that repeatedly, over days, and days and weeks and weeks and weeks, I think there I achieved the level of depletion, which I hadn't, I thought I'd already achieved by finishing the book, working seven days a week, but then elongated it and made it more pronounced. And so it took quite a few months to recover, really, and to just to restore myself and I said something to a group earlier today, not a podcast or any like that just people I was talking to you and said, I mean self care is at the heart of regeneration, and you don't do that then it's not going to really work out so well for you and others and so my self care level has gone up and up and up and up - so I mean, my fingernails are all dirty. You know, I've been outside until a little - I set my alarm for Anthony you know. In fact, when I was out there, I just wanted to play this for you, which is going on outside. And what happens the corvids gather in my canyon at night, and I don't know what they're doing there is 100 or 200 of them. And they're talking to each other. Communicating of course. It's crazy sometimes.
Anthony 08:48
It's great to get a sense of you in your place. And yeah, you're answering my question perfectly well, we get a sense of how you go about calibrating.
Paul 08:56
Yeah, and that's, that's what - I mean that's where I was, you know, in that soundscape in my native garden, and that's just joyous for me. I'm really not fretting and I mean I can obsess I can think obsessively, and it just all sort of evaporates in that kind of situation.
Anthony 09:15
I feel like I want to ask you about where you've just been like where your wife is setting up here Health Project
Paul 09:24
healing spa, yeah. On an eight acre organic farm. Well, it wasn't organic when we bought it but it is now and it's quite poisonous down there. They grow serrano chilies and basil and just spray the heck out of it. But we have very beautiful loamy sandy soil that just grows anything and we sit on top of an aquifer that comes down from the east side of the mountains, the Sierras and so we have abundant water it's maybe a block and a half from the beach. And you have to come there AJ - you gotta you gotta come. Damon's coming. Damon's coming. I talked to Damon last night
Anthony 10:04
Is he? we might have to talk. We'll get that - I see there are ships now that are setting up sails. So maybe it's nearing. But yeah, so that health project is that something - to me, my wife's in Health too, complementary health services, they call it - holistic health services we might call it or something along those lines. I feel like we are, you know, each one side of the same coin, we're doing the same work just through different portals. And I mean, from what you're saying here, and, and I agree, you guys are in the same boat?
Paul 10:39
Well, she has been doing that for 30 years. And so she's always wanted to have her own place to bring in seven or eight or nine people no more than that. And fasting, sometimes. I mean, that's her expertise is fasting. And she does it very well. She does it often. But there are other modalities there. And she is actually building the building herself. I mean, she designed it. She's got 19 workers she works with every day, they're all men of course, in Mexico, that's you don't see a woman at a construction job. And I don't think you could go on a construction job here in America with 19 men who wouldn't be scoping her. In Mexico, they honor their mother, they honor women. And so just none of that, none of that. And you notice the difference. You're so used to it here, like Sly glances, whatever. But they're just so straight up and worthy, you know, and what it's like to be in that situation, at least in that context. Something where there's a kind of a gender healthiness about difference instead of our sort of I speak for America now but it is sort of the the leering kind of lurid ads we have, you know, with too many just beautiful women hawking everything in the world. As if some way, if you buy it, you're in touch with a model. And I just felt so good with her being down there.
Anthony 12:12
It's a real point of reckoning, and obviously a point of regeneration - that gender stuff - and just getting to healthier - speaking of health, healthier forms of regarding each other. Yeah, this has been a big topic of conversation of late, there's been a woman over here called Jess Hill, who wrote a book, which swept all the awards called See what you made me do. And you can gather by the title, all about domestic violence, essentially, gendered violence. And it's been interesting, because she said, when I started researching the book, she has a podcast now, which is just fascinating, called The trap. And she said, when I started researching the book, I didn't care about the perpetrators, I couldn't care less about them. I was here for the women. And through the project, she learned that it was all about trauma, really, and fear of abandonment, and all that just damaged, and I say emaciated masculinity advisedly - just stripped of our femininity, and my inference then, holding contempt for it, where we see it in our partners that ostensibly we love. And that there it plays out. And so by not caring about the perpetrator, she realized she too, would be perpetuating the dynamic. And it became something well, holistic, let's say. And she said, the women are constantly sort of reminding us and other women for that matter, this doesn't set up excuses. This sets up understanding and actually finally, getting to the nub of it, because yes, it's so part of our culture, but I feel it personally like, when I hear them, and Jess talking about this stuff, I actually feel a personal sense of, Well, a) my own story in it through my upbringing, certainly, that that sort of, whip any sign of femininity and feeling and just, in otherwise is a neglectful situation, have it be just not tended, but then b) a sense of relief and care, I suppose coming from them - oh we're included in this. I'm not a bugger for being a bloke, I'm actually included in this care, and we can care for each other.
Paul 14:09
I was very fortunate I have a twin sister. So we grew up, you know, basically didn't give a hoot about what gender we were. We're siblings, you know, we didn't even think in terms of that - and so it was always this, it was a real surprise to me when I finally went to school and boys were acting like boys instead of brothers, you know, and there's a difference. And yesterday, somebody asked me about, you know, the book and said, Well, I notice you know, at the very heart of the book is a thing on people, but all the people are basically women and indigenous people. And I said, Yep, that's right. And they said well why? And I said because in the beginning what I said is you if you don't know what to do, if you want to know what to do, ask the people who've paid the highest price for where we are today. And that would be the women, that would be children, that would be people of color, that would be indigenous people, and they know what to do. You just have to listen. It's not like, Oh, what am I going to do? They know exactly what to do. And then I got pressed on that and I said, Look, I'm not into - gender fluidity is normal. It's been that way for as long as we know, 1000s and 1000s of years, and so forth. So that's just one of the things that happens, you know, with mammalian breeding. So put that aside, but the fact is that a woman, and I didn't get this until a friend of mine showed me a photograph of her son going off to school, and he was towering over her. And I've known her for 20 some odd years, and when she had the baby, this little boy and all that sort of stuff. And you know, he was going away from home to college on the East Coast for the first time, you know, and they were just like, locked in this embrace. And I didn't get it until I saw that photograph, because I know her so well. I knew Kai when he was just a lad, that Kai, he's like 6'7", you know, she's like, 5'9". He came out of her. She created him, he came out of her tissue, her cells, her body, her blood. And I just thought, Oh, my God, I'm a man, I have no idea what that feels like. I've had sons and daughters. And I mean, I love them dearly. And I'm absolutely devoted to them and their well being. But that visceral sensibility is something that I mean, with all due respect to men, they cannot understand because they can intellectually understand it, I can talk about it. And I said, That's why People is on women, because if we're going to come through these things it's going to be because of the leadership of women. And it doesn't mean men don't have an important role to play, of course they do, in every which way that men can be good men. But I mean, it's going to be led by women, because the way they see the world is fundamentally different. And it's about connecting, as opposed to disconnecting. The overwhelming and pathological individuation of people by advertising and social media and by all the other messaging we get, has made us into kind of idiots in a way because we think we're an individual - which there's no such thing. And we have lost that sense of wanting to be connected - in the sense you have lads and men and women too now you know, thinking they have to be something instead of being some one with others. And so I feel like, what do I know about being a woman? Nothing - but I do know what it's like to grow up with a sister who came out the same time I did. And that sort of fluidity, you know, that we had.
Anthony 17:47
Beautiful. So much of what they they find with - so in Jess' work - about men so much of it is so on the one hand, often a heavy hand from father who of course, probably and certainly in my case experienced it in turn in his case. but the fear of abandonment from mother or perception of not being protected by mother and it all comes back that bond you've described there. it's so it is it's so it's the source of it all.
Paul 18:15
Well Gabor Mate, now in his new book. And I used to read and listen to him before, but this time there's something about his work on trauma that is just piercingly timely. I mean, it's always timely, but accurate and stunning. I think. He just tells the truth about his own hitting his child when the child was three years old. I mean, you know, I mean, to me, I find that just unthinkable to ever hit any mature children, but, but he just said he did and then why and then getting mad at his wife because she didn't pick him up at the airport. And these are. And he just is very open about, you know, his failings, but really ties it back to the trauma of being passed to another set of parents during the war as a Jew, and they knew the parent, the parents knew they were they can take care of him. So they pass them on to another couple. And that sense of I mean, what what's that about? Never seeing your parents again, you know, and I forget how old he was two years, two years doesn't matter. What does matter, but I'm just saying very, very, very, very young. And his work to try to uncover discover, recover is something I think is basically a lesson to us all. And I just, you know, listening to that, Anthony, I mean, I feel like I skimmed over my trauma like oh, yeah, that happened. You know, I kind of handled that one. No, I haven't. And then what's happened recently because I've listened to him. I actually have like, as a gone into a deeper they say when you get older which I'm doing Believe it or not, that you lose some of your short term memory, but my long term memory is like reading Dostoyevsky. I mean, it's like this huge novel things. I never I thought I remember them. Well, now I remember them in detail in a way that I never recalled. So the things that I passed over as being Yeah, that was a bummer, I got that happened to me. And this happened to me. And she did that and he did that. And yeah, they should, nobody should ever do that to anyone kind of things. Now, I have this granulation, you know, of the emotional experience, you know, and what it felt like to be that person at that time. And it's just been sort of stunning and shocking. And, and beautiful. In its own way.
Anthony 20:42
Well, thankfully you're in a position where you can interpret it in that way and and move in. Yeah, where we started - move into the darkness. I don't suppose Paul. I mean, of course, if it's all not for public consumption, we'll just move on. But is there an aspect of it that you can share?
Paul 21:00
Well, I have several other I mean, one is that I had asthma from six months old, the youngest recorded case. And then when I was 15 months old, I used to turn purple and rushed me to emergency and I don't know what they gave me at that time, probably some sort of amphetamine thing, you know, opens up your alveoli in your lungs. But at 15 months, I was taken to the hospital, and they said, We're keeping him and we're putting him in oxygen tent. Okay. So I was there for six weeks, and they wouldn't allow my parents to see me during that time. And wow, because I got too crazy in the tent. And I was strapped down, of course, you know, in the first place, but I would just go, so they say you cannot come you cannot come you cannot come. And so after six weeks, they are well, you can come get him. They told my mom that he's gonna die, you still have a twin, you haven't assumed he has a sibling. So you're very fortunate, but he's not going to live. But I did. And then when my mom came to get me, I didn't recognize her. I didn't know who she was. And they they say you go to the you know, the all the stages of grief, you know, and anger and denial and acceptance. And even at that age is the same to Kubler Ross fear. And so that was that one, you know, was told to me, and I always thought it was kind of wow, you know, I mean, that was how game of me to be in an oxygen tent for six weeks. Once I had a child, not me. I mean, my wife was, but once we had children, I thought, Oh, my God, I could just, we didn't leave our children once in the first five years, ever, not with a babysitter, not with you know. And only then when they were 6, then one of us could go and but we would not leave them until they can understand why we were gone. And when we would come back and a sense with their approval. And we just got all that from the really the deep literature on bonding and what happens when you unbond Yeah, and that's why you see in other cultures, yeah, the children are on the front or the back of the woman for a long time.
Anthony 23:12
And then on the back of each other, I would witness.
Paul 23:15
Oh, yeah. It's like, they understand its innate wisdom. They know exactly what to do. Yeah.
Anthony 23:23
Wow. That feels
Paul 23:24
That was one anyway.
Anthony 23:25
Yeah, yeah. It's being affirmed for me that it is indeed right at the heart of regeneration. In that sense, it feels like it we could talk this whole hour about this stuff. But I'd like to cover a few other things and indeed explore how they weave in because I think we're going to come around to see those links. But it seems like a nice, immediate segue. The other thing that we left on last time, was talking about the writing that you had hoped to be doing over summer. And I say it's a segue because it was the love letter to life was how you were talking about it at the time. How's it progressed?
Paul 24:02
It's called The book of carbon a love story. Yeah - it's actually the first of three books. So the first book is called the book of carbon a love story. The second one is called Making Starlight and the third one is called Upstream. And I might do a fourth one called Impossible goals, but they're very clear in my mind and and I'm thoroughly enjoying the book a carbon - which is really all about falling in love. It's about trying to resuscitate carbon's reputation - carbon pollution and carbon negative and decarbonisation and you know all these stupid silly ridiculous ...
Anthony 24:42
Even carbon neutral, right? Dead!
Paul 24:44
oh yeah. carbon neutral. We're dead! You know Anthony there's 120 billion carbon molecules inside you.
Anthony 24:55
We should offset that.
Paul 24:56
No. Inside every cell of your body.
Anthony 24:59
Oh, geez, that's gonna cost a fortune. We can't do that then.
Paul 25:02
Times 40 trillion cells. That's - the first line of the book, I don't know if I shared that with you, is carbon is the element that holds hands and collaborates. And the second sentence is, this is not a scientific statement. The third sentences is it's just true.
Anthony 25:24
Beautiful. Let's go to offsets next, because I do want to go here. It's a lovely platform to do it too, because it does remind me of John Oliver's skit that you you shared about this, where there were offsets for breathing - really - offsets for breahing. This is how silly it's getting. But but in a very serious way, it's getting silly, we have to give it some attention. But just what can we look forward to with these books? How far away are they from coming out?
Paul 25:51
There supposed to be done by December. It's about 60% done. What I'm trying to do besides complete it is show up. And what I mean by that is just to be there in the book with the reader. Obviously, I'm writing, you can say, well, that is being with the reader. But that's not true. It's about candidness and on honoring self, you know, but being present with the reader in a way that is I don't know how to describe it. I know it when I read it in other writers and I know occasionally when I achieve it in the book, but I really want it to feel like I showed up as opposed to I did a lot of research and I'm sharing it with you in a way I try to write as you know, I think I think the climate literature is an awful lot of books that in a tacit way the underlying narrative is I know you don't listen up. And so what I tried to do is create spaciousness for a reader to make up their own mind. Because you can't change somebody else's mind. And it's a fool's errand, if there ever was one, because you can't even barely change your own mind. So how do you think you're going to change somebody else's, and so I do that, but but I want to be there in the book, not an egoistic way or something like that. But just in a way that really creates intimacy with the reader so that I'm in there with you not sort of making something and offering it, which is really the last few books for sure. So I think it'll be done in the spring. And then I don't know if they'll make it by the fall or not, they being Penguin.
Anthony 27:32
Look forward to it Paul, look forward to it. So offsets. Let's go there, because I want to go to onsets too, right? So John Oliver's skit was a good laugh - where there were offsets for flying, which we're increasingly familiar with, going to private hunting property in the US. And yeah, like I said, there were offsets for breathing, which really did say at all, in that sense that we'd be paying to live. But essentially, that's the whole confusion and incoherent frame around carbon right now. In all seriousness, we are in a context of increasing greenwashing. There have been a number of whistleblows here in Australia alone, even that are just staggering the way the system's working or not working, particularly around fossil fuel claims of net zero. They're extremely contentious and funny in some ways. But of course, it is serious. And you've got a nice statement around it, where you say offsetting a loss is not again, real emissions reductions are required right now. And you shared an incredible story, one of your special bulletins through the year, you've got these beautiful bulletins, the waggle that you call them coming out every week. But there was a special bulletin about the women led onsets in Africa. That feels like a really important story and a hell of a good story.
Paul 29:00
Well, again, as I said earlier, about gender really about women, and that is that - I don't like generalizations, and I'm sure women don't like to hear men generalize about who women are. The fact is that women create community and their community extends further than their just family or the next door neighbor, they see the world that they live in - especially where they're not rich, you know, upper middle class or middle class, but where their life depends upon the whole of their environment, and the relationship to and so forth. So it makes total sense to actually restore it, to recover it - to be, you know, the tree huggers in India were women, you know, they weren't men, interestingly, and then Wangari Maathai, you know, obviously, and the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, again, just I don't believe men were excluded, but I don't remember any men being part of the movement. So that sensibility to me is is more intrinsic to the feminine than the masculine. But I'm actually blanking on this story six months ago, was is really embarrassing but was it the co op?
Anthony 30:10
Exactly, yeah the cacao grower's Co Op
Paul 30:13
Yeah, the first women's owned Co Op that was in Congo, but as far as we could tell in Africa, but I could be wrong, but certainly in that part of Africa. And what was so beautiful about it wasn't the words, but just the picture of the women and their children. And just like so many women in Africa, in Chad and other places, they dress to the nines during the day, you know, it's not like they're in rags, and this and you know, go home and change their clothes. They're in these beautiful clothes all day long, these prints. And that was set up though, by my friend Philip Kaufman in in Holland. And he has a really, really great, great chocolate company, Original Beans.
Anthony 30:59
What's really interesting - or another angle that's really interesting out of all that is the onsets idea that you raised in the book Regeneration, that it puts some flesh on the bones for what that idea can mean, where it's basically, it's not creating value, because the value is there in the real life, what it's doing is putting that value in financial terms, so that we get an economy, a financial system and economy that that works for real value on the ground, and with people, and so that you've got these metrics, for example, to restore social systems, gender inequality, women's rights, as in turn almost the Keystone elements for the rest of the systems and all the SDGs, for example - and that they created a standard for that - a W+ Standard, they called it, this was an organization called Women organizing for change in agriculture and natural resource management. So they did that to quantify and verify the benefits to women through the use of a results based financing approach. So it's super interesting to understand through that lens, how it changes the flow of money, and the whole ethic around carbon, you know, that it can do this in a way that actually does make sense.
Paul 31:01
I mean, what's interesting about - Rachel Vestergaard, has created this process where she takes in money from other women, but she pays women in these countries - pays it forward, she pays in advance for activities that they undergo and achieve in their community. Not just forest regeneration, or soil regeneration, but also social regeneration. In other words, it's a whole gamut of regeneration. And one of the things that's happened with regeneration, it's sort of got typecast with agriculture and soil, which is fine. But it's not limited to that - it's just one expression of it, and a very important expression, of course, and probably the most important in some ways, but if you're not doing the social doesn't matter what you're growing on the fields, or how you're growing it. And so the thing is, it's based on trust, you know, because then the women report back and said, This is what I did and so forth, and then they get paid for it again. In other words, they're just like regular people, you get paid for your work as you're doing it not after you finish this job. And so that is just respect. And the colonial thing of like, Okay, how much carbon are you sequestering? Okay, here's your cheque, you know, after all the other people have, you know, taken some out of it, is just, it's a different type of colonialism. And obviously, people from the North and the West don't see it necessarily, and certainly don't intend it. But that's what's happening. No question. In a sense, you know, the North, that basically destroyed much of the forests, and the habitats in the global south is now paying the Global South to restore them to offset their emissions in the Global North, you know, I mean, it's like, you want to pull out your hair and scream. Instead of paying for it because it's gonna make a better life and a better world for you. And we got to we have our own job of cutting emissions and getting our shit together in the north. But in the meantime, we want to in a sense, that's another type of onset, but you know, make up for the losses and the damage and the suffering that we've caused for the last 500 years. but that's the beauty of onsets because we really need to not just pay for forward, but we need to restore and the only way we can restore if we're doing this math - this carbon math - if that's what we want to use. Then we have to double down, triple down, quadruple down and double down. I do 10x. My very few airplane flights now but I do 10x. And that doesn't even come close to making up for my past air flights. But that's that's my measure. That's my metric - and everybody can choose their own, but one to one is no metric at all.
Anthony 35:02
And I mean this project, particularly then, to expand and meet market demand, which of course is coming is really ramping up, they created a company to do that. When you say you go 10x, like, where do you look to channel that - do you just channel it anywhere? And I guess the second part of that question is for big investors, where do they look?
Paul 35:22
Oh big investors look to big companies, you have big brokerage things that - and for a long time, it was pretty scandalous. It's really cleaning up now. I mean, it really is, the whole field. Because, you know, the Microsoft's and some of the big companies, you know, with their net zero commitments have really been very careful to not get caught out greenwashing in these things that are - I mean, the Nature Conservancy, the largest NGO in the world, at least in terms of the capital they have, I think they have $4 billion in the bank or something like that. I mean, when we started writing, I started writing offsets in the book Regeneration, I was so angry, because everything I was writing about was so deceptive and dishonest. And the Nature Conservancy was selling, I think for $15 a ton you could get offset would go to the Nature Conservancy. Well, what it was, was a whole forest area in Pennsylvania that had been set aside long time ago. I mean, it's it was already set aside, it was there it was standing. And I wrote it up and had the photograph in the book and all the photographs of that forest looked very dark, which was sort of appropriated in the fall, like Spanish Moss coming down from the trees. it looks kind of spooky. And so but I decided that I didn't want to out somebody on this, I just wanted to really speak to the principle of, we need to onset - we need to pay it forward, we need to double triple quadruple down, to make up for what we've done in the past and what's needed in the global south primarily, but not only there, certainly in the boreal and other places, we need to accelerate the restoration of land in the world. And not just to pari passu, you know, with ok we've destroyed this, we're going to create that. And I feel strongly about that. I do think that if the billions and trillions really that are wasted, really in the developed countries, if we could channel that properly, to Earth Systems, ecosystems, forest systems, grasslands, ocean and coastal wetlands, the amount of good and change we could create in a short time would be astonishing - not only in terms of the system itself, but with the people because the people in those places will be having jobs that give them a sense of purpose and meaning and dignity and living wage jobs that really, completely change their sense of self in their connection to a, whether it's a mangrove, or whether it's to a wetland, or whether it's to grasslands or forests or whatever. And that one change would be just so astonishing. And would make such a difference so quickly. Because I've been saying that, you know, people - what I say is you cannot fix the climate, you can't fix it, because first of all it's not an it. Second it doesn't exist. Climate doesn't exist. It's the name of a dynamic, it's a it's a convenient, adjective, it's nice, but you can't touch it, photograph it, you can't measure it, you can't hold it, you know, I mean, it does not exist, everybody. And what does exist is the dynamic between warmer air and warmer oceans. And that creates this thing like a pornographic climate movie, you know, about basically jet streams gone wild. And that's what's going on with rain and heat and drought and all the different things that they carry in terms of volatility, but the only thing we can do is create more life on Earth. That's it. That's the only thing we can do. So every climate system is a social system. And so we go right to, are we destroying life? yeah. why? to what end? What, to make more money. More money, for what, to what end? oh, I'm gonna invest it in ... What? So we're in this really tragic gerbil wheel of transferring and extracting, you know, natural systems and mining and soil and land and people for that matter, and making capital out of it. And what we need to do is so different than that, and so it's really important to - I think bake down the climate language down to really clear, understandable language. And I think the climate movement in air quotes because it's not a movement, but so many people involved with it up to now, in many cases has really muffed it because the language is so bizarre. 1.5C you know, I did a man on the street thing with a microphone - fake thing - and I asked people you know, what do you think of 1.5C, this is America of course, where C means nothing but - so it's probably better in London. But, you know, what do you think of 1.5C? And they look at you like, are you? Who the heck are you? And why are you asking? What do you mean 1.5C? And then finally you say, well that's the temperature Celsius or Centigrade, whichever you prefer. And they'd say, what does that mean? And I'd say well about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. And they'd go, What about it? And then, so that's being bandied about - as if the climate movement expects every citizen in the world to become a pseudo climate scientist and understand all this jargon, all the acronyms, in order to do something. And that's not the way people work. So when you can say simple things like really, we just have to create more life on Earth, not just, I mean that's huge. But just imagine the beauty, the magic, the employment, the worthiness of that because there is no other way to bring the climate back to a more stable level. And so you can play technology on your violin all day and end of the day, it's really missing the point.
Anthony 41:13
This is the nub of it, isn't it that - I noticed even The Economist inevitably in a sense with the frame they carry, which of course isn't to dismiss it entirely. I read it. But the headline recently was, it's time to give up on 1.5C - for what it's worth - and it was all about geoengineering, we have to pull out the big geoengineering.
Paul 41:34
Yeah, the big guns.
Anthony 41:35
The opening statement was human ingenuity is the best defense against a problem created by human ingenuity. With no sense of irony. I had to look twice, but no sense of irony in that, actually. We 're so great, that yeah we've created a mess. But we're so great, we're gonna fix the mess. It's so - anyway. So that being what it is, we know that this is yeah, this is the nub of the issue. And so getting back to this, I guess, real life manifestation of it, where you can channel resources, funding, attention, offsets, onsets, to the regeneration of country, to stewardship of lands and oceans and atmosphere for that matter, that involves people - and the people that we're talking about, the people who know what to do, not the machines, or the fantastical technologies or the or even the detached corporate management. So yeah, just on that where to look, I mean, there's part of the lens, where to look and where not to look. But I guess there's two questions in that - where to look? And perhaps in that sense, Paul, where you go with your 10x? Where do you send that money? And I guess the second part of of it is, how are you perceiving the state of play, when you have that call to arms for geo engineering, and what we're talking about?
Paul 42:09
Well, I send my money to Earthshot, an organization where when they do offsets, so call offsets, or onsets, a good deal of the money, almost half the money goes to the people there instead of the trees - supporting the culture and indigenous cultures. So they don't make that separation and so forth. And they're very, very good. And they're down the street, which is very convenient. In terms of geoengineering - again, it's just like, what in the ... you fill in the word here, you think we've been doing for the last 200 years? We've been geoengineering! And now with this, this is where we got. And so the idea that we have to start geoengineering is so amazing an insight, if you can call it that, or a conclusion.
Anthony 43:52
Yet, here it is, isn't it? It's the frame going to, just continuing on to its logical fruition
Paul 44:00
Yeah. But then what? So then what - what if it even worked? Then what? What I say to people is look, the conversation about climate has been about fossil fuels, for very good reason, 81-82% of the greenhouse gases every year come from fossil fuels. And so well Yeah, I mean, focus on coal, gas and oil, you know, and the combustion thereof, makes total sense. However, we could swap out every energy system in the world. And tomorrow morning like Tinker Bell - and you know, our wand and boom - and it's all regenerative wind, solar, and otherwise and hydro, and we'd still be going right over the cliff because the Earth is dying. And that might have been an apocryphal statement not so long ago - it's not now. It is going - and so we can cut down the Amazon with renewably powered lithium battery chainsaws just as easily as the ones we have now - the fact that we are basically destroying the world with fossil fuel machines and trucks and airplanes and all this other stuff is irrelevant to what's happening on the ground. And what's happening in the ground is we're extracting life. And we call that an economy - it's an extracted degenerative system. So it's not that we want to take our eye off the energy ball, we don't. But to just skip it over then to geoengineering means that these people don't know where they live. The person writing it doesn't know where they live, and when I say that they may know they live in Leicester, this town or this suburb of London. That's not where you live. That's the name that somebody put on it, like, you know, pasted on. And the brilliant and enduring gift of many, from indigenous peoples, there are 5000 indigenous cultures - is that the reason they're still here today, and we're on their land - prior to that for 2000 5000 10,000, over 40,000 years in Australia, is because they knew where they lived. And, and the thing is, it wasn't like, oh, I kind of know where we live. And we're cool. No, the knowledge of being there, and it's embedded in the songlines, of course, you know, the knowledge of living in place was captured in stories and narratives and rituals and song. And it was passed on, but it was - it changed. It wasn't like frozen, like a book. It changed. It was adaptive, it grew, it morphed. So until we really figure out that this is where we live, and how does it work, we're going to come up with sort of really crazy solutions. Climeworks just raised $650 million for direct air capture, you know, machines that suck the - and they do that one in Iceland with direct air capture, you know captures four parts of 10,000 of basically co2 and then only about 1.2 parts of that is actually carbon but - and they absorb it, take it in and then they have to then of course liquefy it, heat it up. They have to extract it from the absorbers but then they have to liquefy it, then they have to pump it somewhere. Where does it go? Has to go down in geological formations, you know, that will not release it anytime soon. So if the technological wet dream of direct air capture is we'll get to $100 a ton. Okay, we're at 600 Right. but if we could do that, we would have spent $2.3 trillion to offset the emissions in 2021 alone, alone, alone. And if it's $200 a ton, you can do the math, it's $4.6 trillion. And just - and we're running in place - that's running in place, you know, it's like, and so, I just feel like, can we just step back and understand how this - the Book of carbon is an attempt to, in a kind of sort of dropping into different ideas and things you know, to sort of say, do you have any idea where we live? It is so amazing, so astounding, so awesome. So mystical, well it's so mysterious but in a mystical way that people did understand - they did. And they were in a sense, these people we call them indigenous means the original inhabitants of the land. But they were dismissed out of hand by you know, people who were literate because they were illiterate. And so, I just speak of Turtle Island and what happened in America, you know, I don't know Australia's story very well. But I do know enough of it to know it's similar to America in the sense that the way of knowing was dismissed. And that would be a kind word, actually, it was exterpated, tortured, it was killed. It was enslaved, it was I mean - and all during that time, you know, because we saw them as illiterate, therefore illiterate equals ignorant in, you know - we didn't see, didn't hear, didn't understand that that way of knowing was completely different. And that way of knowing comes from being in place and being outside most of the time. And the thing about outside is nothing ever repeats, nothing repeats and Western empirical science is the opposite, which if you can't repeat it, it's not true as an experiment. And so you have two different ways of knowing the world. I'm not invalidating the Western way so much as I'm just saying, we still on a kind of larger level, we still don't understand who was here and what they knew. And it is incredible. And that was an iterative process that was knowledge based that built up over centuries and centuries and centuries, 1000s of years. And so people knew this. And what we don't understand is that the extraordinary capacity to remember because they didn't have a written language, right? So they couldn't turn to, you know, books or Google or something, and oh, it's here somewhere - the information. It was in here, the hippocampus and their hippocampus, their hippocampi were so so extraordinarily developed. And so in 1947, there was a ethno botanist, who was with the Dine people, and they told him 700 different stories that identified insects. Well, where were those stories? They weren't written down anywhere, yeah. How did they generation after generation after generation, I don't think there's many entomologist that can identify 700 insects, but I'm sure there are, you know, geniuses out there, but, and that's insects, and it wasn't like insects played an important part in their existence. But it did in their mythology in cosmology, in the sense of place that they occupied and shared with other living creatures.
Anthony 51:27
Oh it's staggering
Paul 51:28
It's staggering.
Anthony 51:29
Yeah. And it makes me I don't know, it makes me want that - to know that we've got that capacity as people. I want to join that club.
Paul 51:38
Yeah. Yeah. And you have to start over when you're youth and don't read. But now these things are combining and you know, the best of both.
Anthony 51:48
Well, exactly.
Paul 51:48
Yeah, I mean, so it's really good. I'm not, I'm not decrying Western science, I'm just saying it has limits.
Anthony 51:53
Nor are they from what I hear, it's like let's bring our knowledge systems together. Imagine that.
Paul 51:59
Yeah. And that Economist piece you just read that first line of the piece is like, so emblematic of Western science
Anthony 52:05
Yeah. When it doesn't bring it together. Yeah. You were just in Europe, launching another edition of Regeneration, I believe, a Dutch edition? How was that? And how has it gone in the year since - how many languages are we talking about it in these days?
Paul 52:25
I think eight or nine right now, so far, I think, drawdown went to 14 - eight or nine right now - it's in Korean and Cantonese, Japanese, German and French and Dutch. And I'm blanking on some - it's in Australia, it's in Strayan!
Anthony 52:45
Very good.
Paul 52:46
No. But it's in Australia. There's the UK edition.
Anthony 52:49
How did it go In Holland? There's been a bit of talk well, a lot of talk through some circles through this year, about the government decree that - I think it was all around that Agriculture had to eliminate nitrogen, nitrous oxide, basically, as a greenhouse gas. And they did it in the old top down decree, thou shalt And it didn't go well. Did you get a sense of how that's traveling at the moment?
Paul 53:16
It hasn't come here. And New Zealand is the one where it's really farmers are pissed off, and then it's feel like, and I do feel like that when we recognize something like methane's power and as a greenhouse gas, I think it's 25% of warming right now. It's come from methane and but, but you can't take a country like with a dairy industry like New Zealand and just say, hey, you know, cut it out. So, you got to talk about asparagopsis terms of things that the cows can eat that radically reduce methane emissions coming from the burping, indigestion really, and lack of digestion, but also work with them in terms of just transition. There are people too you know,
Anthony 54:02
yeah, well that's it, it misses the point, doesn't it? Of paying attention to humanity if you want humanity to pay attention to the issue - the whole precept of Regeneration?
Paul 54:10
Exactly right. That's what I said, yeah, if you want humanity to pay attention, they better feel like they're being paid attention to, and they're not. And so when we enact climate, things like that, which are eminently sensible, from a scientific point of view, no question about it. That doesn't jive with social cultural points of view. And so we want to bring ourselves together so that those farmers do things over time and adjust in an affordable way that preserves their livelihood, but makes them feel proud that they're contributing to a significant reduction in greenhouse gases, you know, and still providing nourishment and food that is clean and great for other people, you know, I mean, that's what farmers are trying to do.
Anthony 54:53
And they're telling us per the stories that you found, too, and that they can do that and take care of the - well, in fact, they can do away with the nitrogen fertilizers.
Paul 55:15
Yeah
Anthony 55:05
They can do this all together. But they have to be given the opportunity to show us that be supported in doing that. So to say do away with it, the farmers that are talking to me are saying, yeah, that needs to happen. The way it can happen is back us in with the methods we know that actually work to take care of it the nitrogen and the methane and the carbon all of it.
Paul 55:23
Nitrogen, nitrous oxide is more powerful, twice as powerful as methane, even more so depending on the measure used, but NPK, no one's telling farmers not to use NPK. And so there's like, a disparity there, you know, which is farmers see it and know it until victimized by something, and that makes people - brings them into denial.
Anthony 55:51
That's right, it gets defensive, then doesn't it? And then you just get Clashes. I was just at another farm, you listened to the podcast - at the Haggerty's - trying to decipher our Australian language out there. And they're at scale with none of that.
Paul 56:08
Well the Haggerty's are amazing I mean, they're in a class of themselves.
Anthony 56:13
Yeah. But of course, they do it in semi arid area, there's so the saying, we're no heroes, we've just learned over 25 years, we want to show you and more people can do this. And so I get this prospect of win win win from them, which of course, again, is the very theme of Regeneration, which is that you don't need to have the political showdown, we can achieve our mutually desired objectives with these things. And we can do it in a holistic fashion that brings people and community in places along and to thrive in much bigger fashion than they are now - much bigger fashion than our emaciated Wheatbelt communities at the moment out of the neoliberal tradition. That this can all happen. And this feels like a real pointy edge for me Paul and it touches on what we were talking about with with indigenous stewardship. That right now, for example, there are ammonia fertilizer plants being approved in Murujuga, the Northwest shelf of Australia, which is the place with the million plus petroglyphs, the largest rock art site in the world. And going back 40-50,000 years. Yeah. And they're literally doing things like moving the rocks. I mean, just astonishing. As if we're in that linear world where there are no song lines, and it doesn't matter, you just just a rock, and there's still just the first human face on it. And all this - let's just put it over there. And it's just it's so out there. But I feel like to the extent we want to be making decisions about this stuff, that obviously are politically palatable and can be made. It feels like there's such win win win on offer, because what if we don't need any more ammonia based fertilizer? What if those companies can put their intention into what we do need - other minerals for different needs? And so what if we can actually avoid that clash there, we can listen to First Nations, empower them over their own country, learn from the song lines, and all that that come out of that country, which is such origin stories for the whole continent of Australia for a start. And because we don't need any more of that stuff. And then governments don't need to decree to get rid of nitrous oxide, because we're not producing any more nitrogen based ammonia, and even with the green ammonia, like, again, so what if we do it with renewables? Do we even need this thing that wipes out lands - wipes out microbiome, let alone First Nations culture that is at the heart of everything we need to learn right now. So this just feels like a real another really key flashpoint for us, Paul, and I wonder what you think where one way you've still in those old political clashing paradigms? thinking you have to do this to maintain growth or to keep the food production going? And then on the other hand, there seems to be a way forward that if we come together - sure, we're going to we're going to need to change, but it can work. How are you observing all that?
Paul 59:21
Yeah, there's so many facets to that. I mean, you know, the haber bosch discovery in 1910 was really a turning point in agriculture. We knew about macronutrients before that from Leibig in Germany, but it was really 1910 That was the turning point. And and that's when the NPK revolution, if you will, in agriculture began.
Anthony 59:44
And for those who don't know, that's nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium
Paul 59:49
Potassium, potash, yeah, yeah, sorry. And you know, those are macronutrients and every plant needs them. And so, gosh, it must have been amazing to be a farmer on played out soil in Europe and United States or wherever in the world and you're sprinkling this stuff on or spraying it on or whatever. However you're applying - and boom, you know, plants, bright green and stuff and growing fast. And you're going this is just the cat's pajamas, you know, for a farmer. So that was the birth of industrial chemical AG. And the thing is that what we can certainly see is that, in a sense, we're putting plants on IV, intravenous systems, that means the macronutrients that the plants require, can be obtained in a very shallow system. And they didn't need to go down the roots because they had everything they needed above. So that was in labile soil, and that soil mix the - you know, things turnover, they can go in, they go out, they go in, they go out, you know, carbon doesn't really stay in labile soil. But gosh the yields were there, the increments were there, tasted fine and away we go. And so what happened, of course, is that because the plants weren't fully nourished, you know, two things happened. One is that the insects are on to it, which is ah - and the reason plants have phytonutrients is because they're stressed. That's why - so distress is UV rays, it's drought, heat. It's insects themselves, and so forth. And plants keep changing. You know, the average vegetable has 10,000 different molecules. And we don't know what they do.
Anthony 1:01:33
And just, I guess Paul just with phytonutrients. Again, this is a dialogue we're having for extended period of years. But for those who don't know, I talked with Fred Provenza at length about this in another episode, so they can clock in there for details. But yeah, vital, I mean, the rest of the picture, basically, in nutritional terms.
Paul 1:01:50
Once the plants were weakened, the insects are going - And then they're in fields that go forever. It was like, Hey, come on over this field. And you know, it's just a bonanza. It's like the world's biggest buffet. And so then obviously, insecticides came to the fore that weren't needed before, or to that degree, if at all. And so then insecticides, well, you're fertilizing the topsoil. And so when else you're fertilizing? Weeds, which then were competing because they're both shallow rooted, because they're both getting their nutrients from the same six, eight inches of soil, maybe nine inches. And so then we've gotta do something about the weeds because it's cutting down yield and so forth. So then you have herbicides, right? And then you know, someday somebody figures out what if we make a plant that isn't hurt by herbicides, you know, and so forth? And we'll you know, and that's Monsanto, of course, you know, GMO resistant, but underlying the narrative there is look, we have to kill more and more life in order to make life - because that's what industrial chemical ag does, it kills life, it kills the mycelium, kills the microbiome. It obviously kills pollinators who are in the crosscurrents and eat the pesticide laden plants, the birds eat the insects dead or alive, the birds die, biodiversity collapses, and it's just a mess. But in a narrative - when I started Erawan when I was 20. It was natural Foods - all organic. And I can't tell you how many times in debates at MIT and other places that I was told again, and again, again, if the world farmed organically the way you want it to farm people would starve. And that's been trotted out. And actually, it's upside down and backwards, because the way people are going to starve is if we continue to use industrial agriculture. And that's what's going to make people starve because it's not working and starting to fall apart in the seams. And even where it's not falling apart The inputs have to be increased in order to maintain yields with commodity prices that are suppressed by too much and too little. And so the farmers are in trouble just economically - it's not a viable place to be. That whole thing is just like a lesson. I always say that all the things that are happening on Earth right now are basically, we're being homeschooled by mother earth, by mom's homeschool - because you were - the land was the medium, of course. But I mean, basically, it was a chemical experiment.
Anthony 1:04:23
Well, that's it.. And there's the punch line, isn't it? I mean, as you're talking, I'm thinking, Okay, so we've been walking around half blind or more. Let's just go with the cliche, walking around half blind. And then we made the world match our blindness, as opposed to seek to see.
Paul 1:04:40
Yeah, well look at the food - what was the food that came out of it? I mean, this is not nourishing food. I mean, and then we then said well, we'll ultraprocess it, you know, we'll biohack people's tastebuds and make it salty, sugary and fatty. They'll eat more and more of it because they're always hungry.
Anthony 1:04:57
And this is what I mean about the Win Win win on offer.
Paul 1:04:59
Yeah,
Anthony 1:05:00
that we won't need those big industrial plants - those big industrial processes. But let's feed the industrial processes we do want like, the Haggerty's use the big rigs out there. So let's ensure they can keep going, you know, that's no given if we keep digging down into the half blind scenario. Geez internet's - what we're doing is no given - nothing's a given. If we keep going down this line, hey? We talked about the very real prospect of collapse in these large industrialized systems. If we don't get them in sync,
Paul 1:05:28
they will, there's no question about it. I mean, a gift of last year, from my point of view, every moment in life is a gift. But the gift of last year was the extremity of the weather all over the world in terms of heat, and floods and drought, we're in a 1200 year drought where we are. But the gift of that really is just that, we can see - we're on an extractive road, it's been that way for a long time. We learned it, we accept it, it's innate, embedded in everything we buy in everything we produce, not necessarily the listeners, because you have to make a real conscious effort to not buy that stuff. But most people do, even the services and the way we transport ourselves, and you know, the way we build our homes, the way we clothing, etc. And the thing, the gift of 2022 is we can see the end of that road now - that road ends, but it doesn't end with a fence line, it ends with a cliff, you just go over, that's called collapse. because the system is coming apart, and the world is coming apart, and I say that with respect, I mean, and it has to deform in order to transform - we think of deformity maybe as an aberration, but actually deforming actually is what is happening. And it will continue to happen. Until people places companies practices actually get the message - the homeschooling from mom, which is, you know, taking life doesn't go much further, you've taken so much for so long, in such an extraordinarily wasteful way at that - so what is it like to be alive right now and to see that and to know that there's gonna, there's gonna be great, great suffering. And within a pretty short time, because warming is linear, but the changes and weather are not and so even if we get 1.5C you know, the mythical barrier, which is just made up, you know, it's not, Nature doesn't know anything about that. But when I told you that story about, you know, man in the street, and asking people what they thought about 1.5c, the problem with 1.5c, is that nobody knows what the average temperature is on earth - it's 14C. Ah, now 1.5 looks like, oh, that's significant. That's more than 10%. Right? And so, but when you think of it as 1.5, you go, I can handle that - no you can't.
Anthony 1:07:15
Same with tonnage of emissions, too. It's like, what does it mean to say a million tonnes?
Paul 1:09:32
Exactly. It's making something abstract that should be visceral.
Anthony 1:08:12
You know, it also makes me think about methane, Paul, because - I mean, speaking with a guest recently, Matthew Evans here, he wrote a book called Soil. And he talked about Methanotropes. So the actual organisms that come up in all that beautiful tapestry, that eat methane, what do you know, they digest methane. If you've got that living soil developing. And it makes me then wonder about asparagopsis - the seaweed derived idea to reduce methane emissions from from livestock. A friend said to me last week, he's really concerned about the ideas that create an industry that requires the problem to exist. I related to that message. It's a very systemic insight. You know, we could say the same things about renewable energy, you said it before, we could create renewables and think we've solved it, but we won't have solved anything, electric cars, I mean, the list could go on - to have your eye on what you're actually trying to address. And so to what extent if soil is equipped with the right management, to take care of, you know, not need the nitrogen put on, take care of the carbon, take care of the methane too To what extent do we need to get a form of geoengineering and bring in seaweed to inland cattle stations? I mean, I asked Fred Provenza this, is that going to screw with the microbiome and all those phytonutrients that it's connecting with country on - the soil and their guts and our guts? And, and he said, I don't know. Maybe - it's a good question.
Paul 1:09:45
Yeah, he's so right.
Anthony 1:09:46
How much stock do we want to put in - pardon the pun?
Paul 1:09:48
Well, I mean, yeah, we want to put band aids where what needs to be cauterized. And so asparagopsis is a band aid. The fact is, and I think You would agree that there has been no conclusive studies on methanotropes. Because it's very hard to do a control study outside. I mean, the wind is blowing, the cattle are moving. it's a point well taken, and it's been around for a while, like, Nature doesn't just get rid of the methane actually is recycling it - but nobody can provide a basis for understanding that. And is it in NPK fed pastures? Or is it a natural pastures? You know, that's a question I think that there's some understanding and research as well. But the fact is that we had billions of animals grazing all over the world before they were ours, our particular chosen animals - and the earth can very easily be in balance, you know, with respect to carbon being emitted, which it does by natural systems every year and then being sequestered by natural systems on a yearly basis. So we just don't know, we just don't know. But my hunch is that if ruminants were grazed on, you know, regeneratively, with really brilliant pasture management techniques, that we would see a very different output of methane than we do, obviously, in CAFOs. But I wish the data were there. I don't think they are.
Anthony 1:11:27
I think you've said it well there with the band aid. It's okay to use a band aid. But remember, it's a band aid. You got to get the body Right.
Paul 1:11:34
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony 1:11:36
Yeah. And of course, remember that fugitive emissions from coal and gas. I think they're even the lion's share of methane emissions. Are they not? Or at least half?
Paul 1:11:45
Yeah. Oh, no, I think they are.
Anthony 1:11:47
They are the lion's share?
Paul 1:11:48
Yeah.
Anthony 1:11:49
Great, Paul. Alright. To close up, what music you're listening to right now?
Paul 1:11:55
I'm listening. It's on my phone. Can I look at it?
Anthony 1:12:03
Yes you can cheat.
Paul 1:12:05
It's beautiful. It's beautiful music to me anyway. And it's my alarm. It's what I listen to, when I need it.
Anthony 1:12:18
Yep. Relate to that.
Paul 1:12:20
Yep, and it's by Beautiful chorus. And it's called Hymns of spirit - just beautiful. harmonics. I mean, harmonies, really. But this a hymn. But when they sing together, they just come in one after another. And they're African American. And as you can see more and more voices singing, just so you see.
Anthony 1:12:59
You're gonna get you're gonna get me busted for copyright. If we keep playing that.
Paul 1:13:04
Yeah, I know. Cut that part out.
Anthony 1:13:08
That's right. Paul, can't thank you enough, you know - thanks for your support ongoing over those years. And of course, your friendship now. And, and for everything you and the team and your wife are doing. It's, it keeps us all going.
Paul 1:13:22
Well, vice versa. And just the fact that we met four years ago, and then to see the emergence and growth and it's just - It's my happiest place on my podcast list - I have a list of podcasts. And that's my happy place. And anytime I want to feel happy, you know, positive, optimistic, and then learn too, I mean, I learn from it. I turn to you. I'm not kidding. And I can show you my list of podcasts, they're all very brilliant, wonderful people but you're home for me, so thank you.
Anthony 1:14:05
That was the legendary author, entrepreneur and activist Paul Hawken. For more on Paul, Regeneration the book, and project, see the links in our program details. Stay tuned for a little extra with Paul too out next week, which will double as my official sign off for the year, potentially with a podcast update or two. And if you'd like to hear our conversation from last year on release of Regeneration, still the most listened to episode on this podcast, head to Episode 96. And finally, a reminder that if you're interested in getting along to the December tour of another previous podcast guest Zach Bush, you can find details on The RegenNarration podcast website. There are still some tickets left for events in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. There's not long to go now so I'm looking forward to seeing some of you over there very soon.
Anthony 1:15:01
And of course that’s with thanks as always to the generous supporters who've helped make this episode possible. As usual, if you're enjoying what you hear, please consider joining this community of supporting listeners so I can keep the podcast going. Just head to the website via the show notes RegenNarration.com/support. Thanks again. And if you feel like it, share this episode with someone you know who you think might like it. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden off the Regenerating Australia soundtrack. My name is Anthony James. Thanks for listening.
Find more:
Stay tuned for a special extra to this episode, out next week.
More on Paul Hawken, including his full catalogue of books, on his dedicated website.
Tune into last year’s conversation with Paul on episode 96, ‘Regeneration: Ending the climate crisis in one generation’.
Music:
Regeneration, composed by Amelia Barden, from the soundtrack of the new film Regenerating Australia, available for community screenings now.