Paul Hawken on Reimagining Our Relationship to Carbon
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Alexis Madrigal. Coming up on Forum, bestselling author Paul Hawken joins us to talk about his new book, Carbon, the Book of Life. It's pretty miraculous that every breath you take contains carbon atoms that have cycled through dinosaurs, ancient forests, and even the deep ocean. Carbon atoms are the most important

Carbon isn't just a climate problem. It's the thread that connects every living thing. Hawken challenges us to rethink our relationship with this essential element. All that right after this news.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Alexis Madrigal. And for years, I covered the environment, you know, the rising temperatures, the wildfires, the species on the brink of extinction, basically a drumbeat of crises after crises. And after a while, all of that bad news really wore me down. I am now a health reporter for that reason. And

And in these headlines, you know, they painted this future of catastrophe and carbon was often cast as the villain in that story.

But what if the narrative was part of the problem? Paul Hawken argues that we're telling the wrong story about carbon and about life itself. And he joins us now to talk about his latest book, The Book of Life. Welcome, Paul. Thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here. So what did I get wrong as an environment reporter? What story is the media not telling and how are we framing it that is inaccurate? It's a really good question. I mean, the

The narrative is ubiquitous and told from high to low. I mean the highest levels of government or conferences, the Conference of the Party and other sort of international complications all the way down to grammar school. Extinction Rebellion in England is telling that to kids. So the problem with that narrative is that it is the thinking that caused the problems.

And the thinking that caused the problem is objectifying the living world as if it's the problem. In fact, the problem is if it's an it, it's not an it. The biosphere and atmosphere are inseparable. Climate cannot have a crisis. It's just the climate. It's like saying, oh, this lake is having a crisis. No, it's not. The crisis is us, our behavior to each other and to the world which we inhabit.

So that narrative is about fight, tackle, combat, those words, or fix. And with all the respect to my gender, those are very male verbs. And they presuppose that it's something you can basically conquer. The climate itself is something you can conquer. Yeah, you can conquer it. And instead of seeing source, instead of seeing cause. And so for most people, the climate narrative is,

riddled with jargon, carbon neutrality, net zero, decarbonization, I can go on and on, have no meaning whatsoever because in fact, and I can say this not as a scientist, they're meaningless. There's no such thing as carbon neutrality. There's no such thing as decarbonization. There's no such thing as net zero. These are just pipe dreams, you know.

And so that is why today, if you did some kind of polling around the world, and there's spot polls all over, you know, so we don't know exactly, but a fraction of 1% of the people on Earth do anything about the heating planet, which is really what we're talking about, global heating. Right. And that's it. And maybe 40% understand it or are sympathetic or, you know, nod their heads in agreement.

But they don't do anything either. And so that's where we are after 50 years. And so that narrative, to me, well-intended. I don't question people's intention or concern, but failed. And I don't think that narrative is going to take us any... It's not going to work any better, in fact, than the last, obviously, two, three months we're seeing the narrative flip in the United States. But put that aside, we need a better story.

If you could be writing the headlines of these stories by the reporters, or if you were arming the activists with a different story, what would those headlines be reading or what would those activists be doing? Well, that's a really good question, too. I mean, I think what we look to is basically top-down solutions, big solutions. Big government, of course, conference of the parties, as I mentioned prior.

where delegates from all over the world, scientists and NGOs and corporates and government officials get together for several days, last time I was in Azerbaijan, this year in Brazil, and talk about it. We had a 2015 climate mandate, basically the Paris mandate came out of the Conference of the Parties with Cristiano Figueres leading it.

We've gone nowhere since 2015. And what's interesting, because when I wrote my book, Draw Down, we had researchers go to Paris during COP15, and we asked people in the blue zone, the green zone, the blue zone is the official delegates, the green zone is the NGOs and environmentalists, and we asked them, what are the top five solutions to reversing global warming?

And nobody could answer the question. I'm not kidding. It's shocking. And furthermore, besides basically renewable energy and recycling, which is incorrect, by the way, as a major solution, they were all wrong. They didn't know. And so here, the top people in the world are coming together to create the Paris Mandate to hold temperature increases to 1.5 C, and they didn't know what the solutions were.

That's why I did Project Drawdown and then Project Regeneration for that reason. But the thing is that they, we don't, so my headline to your question would be things that really don't make the news cycle because the news cycle is very much about the amygdala and about click-throughs and things that create fear, you know, or threat. Right.

And actually, when I learned about climate was at Stanford Research Institute, you know, almost 45 years ago. And the narrative there was about fear and threat, future existential threat. So this is basically the words that the climate movement has used to rally support and to wake people up. But the fact is human beings don't move towards end games. They move to possibility.

And so our narrative has to be about possibility. I don't mean just recycling or this or that. I mean really in a community sense.

what people are gathering together and do all over the world. And it's extraordinary, but they're small. They don't make the news cycle. They're considered, oh, that's just Botswana. That's just here, you know, the headwaters of the Amazon. That's just here in Nebraska. So, you know, nice, good, pat on the head. You know, but we have a big problem. We have big solutions, you know, but we have a big problem, but we do not have big solutions.

Your book inspired a lot of awe and wonder. You talked a lot about the miraculous nature of life and carbon's role in it. Would you want to see a more positive story in the news about the planet? Or should we be focusing on these really horrific events, especially right now with our government acting, again, in a very destructive way? We can't ignore horrific events. But at the same time, what I like to see is more science.

Because I said the jargon is not science. Direct air capture is not good science. Some of these mega solutions are really bad science, bad physics. What I want to see is a narrative that really does

bring truth to the subject, you know, which is carbon is a flow, is the flow of life. And the flow of life is definitely being interdicted, interrupted, harmed, changed, or extirpated. No question about that. But it doesn't change what carbon is. And carbon is the flow of life. You take carbon out of the mix, there is no life whatsoever. We know that. But it's the flow of life within our cells, within our forests, within our seas, within our land. It's everywhere.

And we have 1.2 trillion carbon atoms in every cell in our body.

And so when you think of people saying, you know, carbon is the problem, like, hold on, hold on. Time out. Can we talk about it for a minute? And so, yeah, Carbon: The Book of Life is really to try to immerse people in the wonder of what's going on around us. I don't think we know where we live, really, in that sense. There's more life under the ground than above the ground on Earth. And we sort of think, oh, that's soil, dirt, or whatever.

we just have not been educated in a way that really brings us to a sense of like a child, you know, like, oh my gosh, is that true? Yes. Is this true? Well, look at that. And it may sound childlike, but I think we have to touch that part of us that actually does appreciate and becomes astonished

at how this world actually works. To then care about it? Absolutely. And the thing is, when we have that experience, it changes who we are. And fear, doom, again, I'm not arguing the facts, but I mean, fear, doom, the rate of destruction, migration, you know, crop loss, you know, drought, flood, hurricanes, all that, those are real experiences.

I'm not denying that, but I'm just saying is that they don't bring us to life. And so Carbon, the Book of Life is trying to just tease that out. You know, it's not that I'm an expert on that so much as I really rely upon extraordinary scientists, Monica Galeano, Robin Will Kimmerer, Zoe Slander, Will Leidy. I mean, there's just an amazing amount of new science that's emerging. And to me, it's kind of a melding of both science

traditional ecological knowledge from indigenous peoples around the world and western science, empirical science, and they're coming together and what we're discovering is what we don't know. We're discovering how mysterious it is. There's a humility in the new science that's emerging that's both observational and empirical and I feel like we're turning a page on the reduction of science that has, you know, sort of

penetrated every aspect of the world, including botany and biology and oceanography and the sciences of what we call nature. And even getting to the point where we're starting to see that the idea that people and nature are two different things. They're not.

They're also inseparable in an extraordinarily complex and mysterious way. We're going to talk more about that. We are talking with Paul Hawken. He is an environmentalist, an entrepreneur, an author. His latest book is Carbon, the Book of Life, about that relationship he was just describing. His other books include Regeneration, Drawdown, Blessed Unrest, and The Ecology of Commerce.

We want to hear from you, from listeners. What questions do you have about carbon? What have you done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? How are you playing a role? We'd love to hear about it. Give us a call at 1-8, excuse me, at 866-733-6786. Again, that's 866-733-6786. You can also...

Shoot us an email. Your comments and your questions can go to forum at kqed.org or find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram. We're at KQED Forum. We want to hear from you. You can also join our Discord community. We'll be right back after this break. Support for KQED's podcasts come from San Francisco International Airport. Did you know that SFO has a world-class museum? Get ready to be wowed by art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions throughout the terminals.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm talking with Paul Hawken. He is an environmentalist, an entrepreneur, and an author. His latest book is Carbon, the Book of Life. It really inspires. I think that the difference between this book and the book of life is that it's a book that is about the environment.

And another environmental book is it kind of shifts. It's not about the environment. It's about how you be with the environment. That's really the relationship part of it that I thought was unique. And I'd love to start this segment with you reading a passage from the book. This is on page nine. Yeah, I'd be happy to. This is the passage you chose. And so I printed it out. Thank you for doing that. I was trying to memorize it, but failed. I mean, that would be impressive. It would have been.

The human journey is the daily practice of gaining and sustaining life. We can do this selfishly or gracefully. Within and around us is a living, breathing sphere of consciousness woven by a billion years of evolving life. Sentience is underfoot, in the canopy, in the favelas, in the breath of a child, the intricate, masterful web of life beneath, above, and around us.

This awareness is always our story. A broken planet lies before us, but there is also a buzzing, thrumming, thriving sphere imbued with imagination, mystery, and courage. These pages are a journey into the realm of plants, the cosmos of insects, labyrinths of fungi.

droves of mammals, spinnies of trees, and convocations of human brilliance. The flow of carbon is a sacred dance that entwines and weaves through all our stories.

You said this was a unique passage. We were chatting before the interview. What did you mean there? I mean, I just thought it was beautifully written, and it had a very poetic relationship to what you're writing about. But why is it unique for you? I think it's because it comes at the end of the first chapter, and the first chapter is one where you're basically inviting people to read the rest of the book. And somebody asked me once, what makes a great book? And I said, did you want to turn the page?

That's very true. That's what you want. If you don't. Then you kind of messed up, yeah. Exactly. And so in a sense, at the end of the chapter is do you want to read the next chapter? And so the whole imitation of that part of the book is definitely about carbon, but it's

Somebody who had a PDF did a search and said, "Yeah, actually you don't use the word very much, carbon." I said, "No, it's not about that. It's about this flow of life itself, you know, which is infused, animated by carbon itself without which our planet is simply a rock in space."

Well, Stephen agrees with you. Stephen writes, "The so-called villain in climate change is not carbon, it's carbon dioxide. When it's released in the atmosphere, people have taken to casually saying carbon, which is an unfortunate shorthand." We'd love to hear from other listeners. What questions do you have for Paul Hawken about carbon or probably maybe about this moment on the planet we are all feeling, I think, a lot of pain watching this government take action in ways that may not feel in alignment with the environment?

What have you done to reduce greenhouse gases? What climate messaging would you like to see? Give us a call now at 866-733-6786. Again, that's 866-733-6786. Or shoot us an email, forum at kqed.org, or find us on social media. Again, we're at KQED Forum on Blue Sky, Instagram, Discord. Let's go to the phones. Cheryl in Petaluma, you're on the air.

thanks so much i just wanted to say i have five kids and my youngest nineteen and i've been really struck by how his response to so much of the uh... doomsday talk around climate that i think very real concerned is you know oh well we're just you know we're doomed we're kill you for different expletive but i'll use doomed um... and so you know i'm not even gonna try why should i do anything because you know we're just doomed whereas

recently here in Petaluma after a big rainstorm, there was a gorgeous rainbow and he looked up in the sky and was like, oh, you know, it's so beautiful. The planet's so beautiful. So I think there's something really important about making sure that we don't overwhelm

the next generation so much that they are paralyzed and in action, especially with what's happening with our government. And really, I think there's something powerful about that message of like, isn't this worth, you know, doing these small things for? Like, it's hard to get him to recycle if he thinks that we're all just doomed. So anyway, that's my comment. Thanks. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think, again, it goes back to narrative. That narrative doesn't work.

And it certainly doesn't work for what I call the new arrivals, that is young people. And they've just, like say, they're 10, they're 12, they're 14, they're 19, whatever. And relative to the rest of the world, older people, I mean, they're newer and they're looking around and going,

Why? Did you not do something sooner? What were you thinking? Right. How could you create this? This is not new science. This science goes back to Eunice Foote in 1856, a woman scientist who proved without question, you know, the CO2, carbonic acid she used. But anyway, CO2 would warm the planet. So this is something we've known for a long, long time. And we've overridden it. And then to...

Because again, the caller is just absolutely right. The narrative we use for our children is upside down, backwards. We can talk about facts. This is the fact. This is true. But then it's about really, got it. Whoa, thank you. Now, let's do something.

On that note, so Taya on Discord writes, the author, Paul Hawken, alluded to there being five actions that all the climate activists should know but didn't. It would be great if he would actually tick them off for us so we could know them. Gosh, I'm not sure what they are.

What would you want climate activists to be doing, to be focusing on? Well, that's a good question. Maybe I can answer that. First of all is to understand the science thoroughly. And one commenter said CO2 is a problem, not C.

No, CO2 is not the problem either. CO2 is metabolized by every plant to make sugar, to make food, to feed the soil, to feed the roots and so forth. So CO2 is innate. The problem is the combustion of fossil fuels and forests and other wood that is to say that emits CO2. It combines basically oxygen with the carbon and then you get combustion and you get CO2 and so forth.

So you don't want to break the CO2 and the O2 apart. You know, I mean, they're really instrumental to life on Earth. You know, it's the way carbon travels around and goes back and recycles again. So I think the most important thing is to know where you live. But before we go there, if we just stay on the science and the scientists. So government funding is slashing.

Right. Just this morning, I saw Trump wants to lay off a thousand scientists at the EPA. So with that funding getting frozen, getting slashed, how are the people who are working in favor of the climate, many who are about to be unemployed, what do they do? What would your advice be for them? Well, for the scientists, I just feel really bad because in NOAA and particularly, but in certain government areas and so forth, the scientists are quite remarkable people.

dedicated, and in many cases give up higher paying salaries or whatever to stay with the government to serve the citizens of the United States and in fact beyond that.

and so I can't imagine the grief and the loss and, and it's also loss of papers and work. And I mean, almost every scientist is doing something that's in progress. Right. That's going to be coming out in two or three or five or 10 years. Yeah. It's never finished. And, uh, to cut off that, uh, maybe something will come out of that in terms of a counter movement. No, that will not be government dependent or taxpayer dependent. I don't know. Uh, that would be the ideal thing. Um,

but that's not true in the rest of the world. So the United States is the outlier. But I feel the same thing. I know some of the scientists, and I know some of their work, and it's just unimaginable to me that that is happening, especially I know NOAA better, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, and what they do for science

to protect people in terms of weather, in terms of storms. I mean, it's extraordinary the monitoring they do around the world, and particularly in the United States and the oceans, is one of the leading indicators of what's happening with respect to human activity on Earth. Well, let's stick with callers. Robert in San Jose, since we're on politics, has a comment. Robert, you're on the air. Yeah.

Yes, hello. Hi, Paul. Fascinating discussion. I'm going to come at this from a little different angle, and I hope it makes sense to you. The problem that you have here with the science and the denial of science is based on the Christian background of the MAGA movement, and this is where I wanted to

let you know that we have a silver bullet here to deal with that. There's new discoveries that have shown that the religion of the Christians, the Christian religion, is based on an aberration of, or a plagiarization of, Gnostic teaching. So...

If we can overcome the MAGA movement's anti-science bias, we could really make progress. We are the outlier, and it's based on this falsehood of the Christian religion. It's something that I've been working on for years, and I just hope that people understand that we need to show that this is where this is all coming from. It's a denial of science based on this Christian falsehood.

And it's something I wrote about in my book, Misreading Judas. I don't want to promote the book. I just want people to know about it. Thank you so much, Robert, for that comment. Yeah. How do you think we overcome? Well, first of all, I wouldn't complain about Maga with Christianity. Christianity, like all religions, has done some extraordinary things and continues to do so and has done some really cruel and awful things as a religion. I don't think they're

It's so about the religions, so that's the need to it.

Christianity is based on compassion. I think of Jesus, I think of those teachings as the basis of Christianity. And so what I see is actually the opposite. I see Christians being very, very concerned about their home, about people, about children, about the future. Maga is something else. I don't think it's a movement as such. I think it's an identification to be sure that

And so I feel like we want to speak in a way that brings people together, brings people out, shows where we're connected and united instead of focusing on where we're divided. And it's not, with all due respect to the caller, it's not about being right. I mean, we're...

live in a world where so many people are saying they're right, they're right, this way, I'm right, you're wrong, and so forth. And that is not how we can come together. We want to come together as community, and community is about listening, accepting, respecting,

and I feel like the climate, true climate movement has to start in place, you know, in a village, in a church, in a town, in a farm, any association that people have, and it has to start with wanting to create a better life for people and children in that town, in that place, in that community, in that region, and go from there and grow from there. And that is happening. There is really...

There's 250,000 people, not people, but together, restoring life on Earth right now. And they're recorded on restore.eco, which is from the ETH University in Switzerland. You can see that, restore without an E, .eco, E-C-O. And so we need to see humanity as being extraordinary as opposed to being stupid, right?

And how citizens have been beguiled and betrayed and seduced into doing things that are not in their interest has happened before. And we are right in the middle of that. But I think it's really careful not to categorize people. I'm working with Benji Backer, and he is one of Trump's favorites.

But he has an organization called Nature is Nonpartisan. And he and I are writing an op-ed together because nature is not partisan. Well, we just saw, I mean, we're seeing in the headlines, I think good news. The Republicans are pushing Trump to maintain the Biden era clean energy tax cuts. I mean, that's showing some movement towards one another here.

If you had the ear of the Republican lawmakers right now, because we have this idea that the Democrats are on one side and the Republicans are on the other about environment, how would you make that bridge? I think one of the things we know about the Republican Party was actually it was a leader in the environment for many years. And Nixon and Ruckelhaus and many other Republicans were leaders in creating the laws and statutes we have today about protecting the environment.

And what's difficult now to Republicans is they just fall in line. In other words, they actually do what they don't necessarily believe in. They actually have to suppress who they really are, because if they don't suppress it, then they get punished. So we have a very different political system than the one that existed 30, 40, 50 years ago. Richard Nixon was one of the best environmental presidents, and he was also a liar. So...

So how would you build that bridge today? Or if you could say, you know, you're going to get punished. Yeah. What would you, what would you, how would you get their ear? I think it's going to happen because, and we've seen already, Congress people and senators have to go back to their home districts and talk to people.

And right now they're already seeing a real pushback from, you know, and the Republicans pushing back and Democrats saying, no, I didn't vote for you for this and this and this. I'm benefiting from that. Yeah. And so I think that's really the pushback. I don't mean...

burning down Tesla dealerships or spraying painting cars. I mean, really talking in dialogue with those people in power. And they have to listen at certain points. Let's go back to the phones. Clayton in Cupertino, you're on the air.

Hi Leslie and Paul. Really enjoying the conversation and I really like Paul's sort of beautiful appeal to Pothos logic, the appeal to emotion. But I think that at the end of the day to solve our problem we need the Logos appeal, we need the logic. And so my question is,

How do you use the Pothos appeal to the maximum benefit and then at the end of the day translate it into a logical solution, a physical solution that creates a better environment for us?

Thank you so much. I work constantly on logos myself. I actually work with technologies and companies that I think can make a huge difference and are making a huge difference. So I don't think that the left brain and the right brain should be so disconnected as they are in our culture. I think we need both.

and the right brain is synthetic and synthesizes and connects and doesn't see solutionism as the only way out. And right now, the logos part of solutionism is, I think, what sort of bedevils us in the sense that, you know, we can fix this and this is a problem, we'll do this, we'll do that, and so forth. I'm not going to argue for or against those so much as that it leaves out the, you call it emotion, but it leaves out

that sensibility that all people have that's actually, that integrates, that connects, that sees how things are inseparable. And we've been taught that basically nature and human beings are different, and they're not. I mean, for 200,000 years, Homo sapiens have changed, completely altered the planet,

who lives here, you know, the charismatic species. I mean, it's just astonishing. And when the settlers, colonists first came to North America and Turtle Island in South America, they were astonished at how developed the landscapes were, the farms, the food, the systems. And immediately with their smallpox, you know, wiped out 90% of the people in the Americas. But that

ignorance was just a tragedy because really people have been living here for tens of thousands of years, in some cases in Australia for 65,000 years that we know of and so forth, and have actually created a very, very, very, what's the word, fertile and abundant planet. And abundance was the name of the game. In our state here in California,

The Miwok ate lilies. And so what they did every year is basically harvest, eat one, plant two. So there'd be more food in the future for more people.

We're going to talk about food. That was a big part of your book, which I absolutely loved thinking about how that's going to make a difference. We are talking with Paul Hawken about his new book, Carbon, the Book of Life. His other books include Regeneration and Drawdown. We'll be right back after this break to continue our conversation. Stay with us.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Alexis Madrigal, and I am joined by Paul Hawken. He is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and the author of his latest book, one of many, Carbon, the Book of Life.

There's these amazing comments coming in. Matthew writes, "I'm struck by how the guest's views reflect on animist worldview, which is antithetical to modernity. The reductionist worldview, which still dominates most science, is so firmly entrenched. I wonder what will facilitate the necessary paradigm shift. Generally, it takes a preponderance of anomalies and a better paradigm for such a shift. Do we have time to make this shift before the worst-case scenarios occur?"

Don't you? Do you know the answer to that? Well, what I want to say is nobody knows the answer to that. And nobody knows what to do. Can we just put that stake in the ground? It's kind of relieving to hear in this way. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that human beings aren't extraordinary and brilliant. We are. And it takes time. There's a lag for people to really assimilate and understand where they are and what's happening. And we'll see. Yeah.

TK as they say, I'm a writer, and to come. So I don't try to be that person, I have the answers, listen up, I don't go there. Where I want to go and try to go in the book and in my own life is to ask questions, to be curious and more curious.

And that really goes back to my childhood, you know, which is just like I wasn't safe inside my home. I didn't have great parents. Don't feel sorry for me. Because what happened is I went outside and I felt safe in nature. I just felt included, held, that nothing really bothered me out there and so forth. And even rattlesnakes, because my uncle was a

because he had been captured by the Japanese and then escaped into the Philippine jungle and ate snakes for three years. And when he came back, he became a herpetologist and taught me how to hold rattlesnakes and other things and so forth. Someday I want to have that conversation. Yeah. More about that, but keep going. Yeah, well, just like I felt, I just felt the beauty of nature, you know, and the complexity and the mystery of it and so forth. And so I was very blessed in that sense. And I think that

We have, you know, our media, what we see, what we watch on TV and all that sort of stuff, it really just takes us away from actually who we are and what's around us and how... It's basically...

a miracle what's going on. I mean, one seed of rye, one seed, you know, like a grain, has 14 million roots. 14 million roots, you know, 4 million are hair roots, so 10 million roots, and they're all connected to mycelia with the hyphae, and the mycelia is talking to those roots, and they're exchanging sugar for phosphorus or nitrogen and potassium or selenium.

And they're communicating. How can those 10 million roots be communicating with fungi in the ground who are actually transacting? I wish everyone could see your face right now. Can you believe that this is so incredible? Let's go to the phones. Eddie in San Francisco, you're on the air.

Growing up in a Western society, we're taught survival of the fittest and only the strong survive. And lately I've been thinking a lot about just how wrong that is. And in reality, it's those that collaborate the most, those that share and work together. Those are the species that survive and last not only for decades and centuries, but millennia.

and that we as humans have the opportunity, we are capable of being the absolute best at sharing and collaborating. And I think it's something you've been speaking to that we used to do, and in today's society we just don't do much of anymore. And I think that permeates across all of our society. So I would love to see in our Western culture a shift towards recognizing that

collaboration and working together is what allows us to survive and thrive. Let's stay with the phones. Anise in San Jose, you're on the air. Hi, Monique, can you hear me? Yeah, you sound great. Okay.

Okay. I really enjoyed the conversation in the show. You know, I'm really eager to read the book, how it takes a fresh perspective. My question for Mr. Hawkins is, you know, when we come down to common people, like myself, you know, just regular citizens who can do something about climate change, as much as it's, you know, fascinating and motivating,

it does create this frustration where, you know, at the end of it, sometimes you take it so personally and you feel stressful that, can I really make a difference? So what I'm wondering is when this problem can be so difficult to address at the government level and the infrastructure level, does it even make sense to involve citizens? I mean... I'm going to let... Anis, your connection is not great. I think we got the nugget of your question. Yeah, Paul, go ahead. Yeah, it only makes sense for individuals.

That's what I'm saying. Nature is not top-down. I'm not saying it's bottom-up. I'm just saying it is very different than the structures of change that we have been taught to be effective and ineffective. But what we see is that when it's top-down, it's usually violent or coercive or forceful or harmful. And not always, but almost always. And so we just have to look at what actually...

informs us and it's nature, it's life. And we are a community. Our cells are a community. Everything starts with community. And we have 40 trillion microbes inside, outside, on our eyelashes and revolving around us every day. Without them, we're dead. So we are a community of entities. And so all change arises from community. And so one person is the beginning of community. One becomes two, becomes four, becomes eight.

So it's not like you don't want to isolate yourself as an individual. If you find ways, and the college thing, the first thing I would focus on is food and farmer's market and getting in touch with those people who really care about you because they care about the food and the quality and they don't get paid that much, frankly.

And yet, that is the source of life. And every culture in the world has always called it Mother Earth. They didn't call it Father Earth. And the reason they called it Mother Earth is because they knew life came from the Earth. So if people could just get in touch with the Earth by patronizing and supporting Mother

Those men and women who are really trying to grow food in such a way that regenerates the soil, regenerates human health, and so forth, that's where to begin. And you'll meet people and you'll connect to people that you don't know if they're unmet. I love going to the farmer's market on Saturday morning. A listener on Discord writes, I'd like to put in a good word for reductionist science. It is necessary to look at systems, but in the absence of good data about specific well-defined entities,

We can very quickly end up treating as real in the world things that map only to spooks in our heads like life, sacred, cooperation, competition, respect, good, and the like. All and any of which can mean whatever the most persuasive person in the room. Example, the...

Oval Office wants them to mean. When describing the world, we are talking about material objects and the forces between them. And anything which cannot at least conceptually be reduced to such can readily tell us more about human minds than about anything else. Let's go back to the phones. Al in Berkeley, you're on the air.

Hi there. I just had a comment. The United States is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, emitter of carbon dioxide on the planet. And we helped shape policy on this issue all over the world. And yet consensus in this country on this issue is far from settled. And scientists here and elsewhere frame this issue in terms of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius.

But most people in the U.S. don't use Celsius, maybe don't even understand it. And I wonder if we'd be having a different conversation in this country if people started saying 5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Even just you saying that, I'm like, wow, that's a big difference. Because when I think about two degrees, not so much, but five to six degrees is different. Paul? I absolutely agree. I once did a fake man on the street interview. I had a fake microphone. I'll give you a real one. Okay, I love it. And I went to people and said, what do you think about 1.5 C? And they looked at me like, are you a crank? But they could look at me. I wasn't. I was serious and so forth. And they said, what is 1.5 C? And I said, well, centigrade, Celsius, whatever you prefer.

I said, they just shrug and go, I've never heard of it. And said, well, do you know what that means in terms of Fahrenheit? And said, no. You know, it's 2.7, 4 degrees. But, you know, it's like there is this vast ignorance out there because of the way we put out the information. And the caller is quite correct.

And that is that that doesn't seem like much either because we think, oh, well, 70 degrees is fine. What's another, you know, 2.7 degrees? That doesn't make any difference at all. No, the ambient temperature on Earth is, you know, 16 C.

And so you look at 1.5, you know, that is a big, that's a 10% difference and so forth. So, yeah, again, it goes back to parlance, the communication about how we are exercising, not exercising, but I mean, the narrative around climate. And the call is quite correct. It absolutely doesn't touch people. Let's stick with the phones. Lisa in San Jose, you're on the air. Yes, can you hear me? You sound great.

Okay, great. Yeah, two things. Paul, I just wanted to say what an honor to hear you speaking on my way into work today and just super grateful. We're a family of scientists. We have your book, Drawdown. I think it's often on our coffee table. And I also wanted to mention how inspired I was with your conversation around listening and community and the importance of that, you know, especially in these times and

we hold that very dear as well and try to spread that. So thank you for sharing that. And my second thing is we just ordered the book, What If We Get It Right by Ayanna Johnson.

And I wondered if you'd heard of the book. I was attracted to the title. She was interviewed on NPR once. And if you had any thoughts on it, if you've heard of it, and just let the audience know that it looks pretty interesting. Thank you. It does. Ayanna Johnson's an amazing scientist, and it's an interesting title. What if we did? I think the

Some questions I have about the book are, what does right mean? And I think some of the things she talks about don't work or won't have a big effect. And she might argue against that to me and that'd be fine. I'd love to listen to it.

Well, I'll point out, she was on forums, so people can look her up and hear and then decide for themselves. For themselves, yes, absolutely, and so forth. And I'm just, I am quite skeptical of what have been put out as solutions, even of my own book, Drawdown. Now, the reason is because they measure global solutions. There is no global. There is no global solution.

So if you talk about all changing the CFCs and air conditioners, what does that mean to Botswana? Nothing. And so there has to be a granulation here in terms of where a solution applies and where somebody can do it and where it'll make a difference. And that's what the problem with the climate narrative is that there's some mega solutions, these big things like direct air capture solutions.

And my take on direct air capture, which is to suck air down, you know, four parts per 10,000, separate the sea from the O2, you know, liquefy the sea, pump it, the sea being carbon, pump it and then put it into geological formations and so forth, uses a tremendous amount of energy. The CO2 in the atmosphere is entropy. It's what happens when you combust coal, gas, and oil, and you raise the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that's what's caused global heating.

And then you're on land and you're going to, what, more entropy? More entropy? Because you're burning or using energy, whether it's wind or solar. And so you're saying, we're going to cure entropy with entropy. And that is like, we'll make a physicist faint. I don't think we want our physicists to faint. No, we don't. But I mean, in terms of how idiotic that is, it's like saying, all these cow patties are my pasture. I'm going to make a cow out of these cow patties.

Because the cow patty is entropy, right? You eat grass and take the nourishment away and then you poop. Okay. So I'm just saying, I am a skeptic of a lot of the things that are put out there as solutions because they just don't pencil out. But I'm not skeptical of human beings. What I do like about her book, though, is what if we get it right? Like even just that title, it's kind of what your book is doing. It's a lovely title. It's sort of spinning it and like, what if the world is not going to end? That'd be a nice thing to lean into. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Let's go back to the phones. Frank in Petaluma, you're on the air. Hi. I read several of the author's books, thanks to a friend of mine. But principally, I want to just reinforce the comment another recent caller made, where it's often portrayed survival of the fittest. But I think what's more legitimate is

is that when we work together, we're far more of a successful paradigm than when we are apart and measured as apart. You know, if you look to the military, it's essentially about communication and cooperation, everybody fulfilling a role. If you're on any kind of Navy vessel or civilian vessel for that part, everybody carrying out their role means the ship probably gets into a safe port.

And the other thing I wanted to say was, you know, when this thing about the survival of the fittest, you know, we forget that the individual makes a difference and we forget that.

We forget about this entirely. Absolutely. Paul is nodding there. Thanks for that comment of reminding us exactly what I think Paul is trying to illustrate is that each one of us can make a difference. Abby writes, I look forward to reading the book. I've participated in many protests against pipelines and wars, and I haven't had any success changing what others do. What I can control is what I eat and what I feed my family and friends. Animal agricultural contributes to climate change and pollution.

So I've learned to nourish my body, my mind, and spirit without animals or products. Many people have become very creative in their kitchens using more plants instead of animals so we can keep ourselves strong while we eat less destructively. If everyone turned to a plant-based diet, what kind of a change, significance would that make? Rather extraordinary, actually. And even if it wasn't total plant-based, but animal food was very marginal diet,

it would make a huge difference. Statistically, 50%, 15% of emissions are related to animal agriculture. I think it's actually much higher than that because, I mean, you look at the corn and soy production around the world. Why so much corn and soy? For ethanol, cattle, pigs, and chickens. And so, I mean, Iowa has the second highest rate of cancer worldwide.

in the United States, and it is corn soil capital in Nebraska, just glyphosate and pesticides covering the land and in the water. You can't even drink the water now in Iowa. You have to filter it and purify it. And that's from the kind of agriculture that we have. And if you sort of take animals out of that picture and say, look, we have super

so much food to feed people properly in this world. And we don't right now, and prices are going up, and people can't afford it. And so it's a compounding problem. We're killing the soil. And the soil is an organism. And again, going back to, you know, Mia Madre, you know, the Mother Earth idea that life comes from the earth. We are killing mom.

There's this great, I need it to be short because we're up against the end of the hour, but there's this scene at the end of, or middle of your book, in Cape Cod where you see this circle of animals that just blew my mind. Tell that story briefly. It was in the Wampanoag Territory, and I was just, I used to run a lot, and then I was just walking. I had run, and I came across seven animals in the circle, quail, turtles, and five others. I keep forgetting them and so forth.

when I'm on the spot. But they were in a circle and facing each other. And I came around the corner and there they were. And I was startled. What am I looking at? They were startled. They all went into the bushes. The turtle went away the slowest, you know, trying to get away. And what I...

What I mention in the book, I just wanted to say, if you spend a lot of time in nature, you will see things you can't understand. I have no understanding of what was going on. But it's like a council of animals maybe having a conversation. They were facing each other in a circle. And that's not possible, but it did happen. And that's why I shared it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

We've been talking with Paul Hawken, again, environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author. His latest book is Carbon, the Book of Life. It's a beautiful read. And if you want to know what to do, read his book Regeneration. Lots of ideas there. Thank you all for joining us. And Paul, such a pleasure. Thank you again. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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