Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. Okay, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel powerless when it comes to
Speaker 1: addressing the climate crisis. And they do see stories about
Speaker 1: what's happening to the world and they say, well, I
Speaker 1: can try to recycle, I can try to drive less,
Speaker 1: but ultimately, what can I do? That's something that our
Speaker 1: next guest, Paul Hawkin, tries to address in his latest book, Regeneration,
Speaker 1: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. Paul Hawkins is
Speaker 1: an environmentalist and author. He's an entrepreneur, he's an activist.
Speaker 1: He's dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the
Speaker 1: relationship between business and the environment. And he joins us
Speaker 1: now on the phone from the San Francisco Bay area. Paul,
Speaker 1: it's really great to have you on the show. Congratulations
Speaker 1: on your most recent book, Regeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis
Speaker 1: in One Generation. How do we get how do we
Speaker 1: do it? How do we how do we get to
Speaker 1: the point where we don't feel powerless? Well, I think
Speaker 1: we feel powerless, and thank you very much for invite
Speaker 1: amount of the program. We feel powerless because it was
Speaker 1: being told to us. And the climate narrative is we
Speaker 1: can call it that has been for quite a long time.
Speaker 1: Uh fun the science point of view, which is future
Speaker 1: existential thread and we don't do this if things are
Speaker 1: going to get worse, and it's great science and they've
Speaker 1: been absolutely spot on in terms of their predictions. Um.
Speaker 1: And then what happened is that a tactic there was
Speaker 1: really adopted from tobacco, which was taken up by British
Speaker 1: Petroleum and there was individuated the problem, which is that
Speaker 1: we just drive, you know, oil wells and sell gas.
Speaker 1: You can calculate your carbon footprint, you know, as if
Speaker 1: you can solve the problem, you know, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: you can drive, Let's get a bike, recycle, use cold
Speaker 1: water and washing machine, put power strips in your home
Speaker 1: entertainment center. These are some of the solutions that are
Speaker 1: coming out, you know. And what happened is individuals will
Speaker 1: listen to that and understand that that makes sense, that
Speaker 1: did lower impact. But unless you had you know, i
Speaker 1: Q loder in the room temperature, you know that they're
Speaker 1: completely inadequate to the task at hand. Because you're reading
Speaker 1: the headlines, you know, right, it's like it's like sustainability theater, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you know, and it makes you feel disempowered
Speaker 1: as an individual, go oh man, this is worse than
Speaker 1: I thought. And so um and then people didn't turn
Speaker 1: the big government. You know, government is big b the factor,
Speaker 1: but I mean government and just said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you should do something, you know, but there's only certain
Speaker 1: things government can do and they should and they're not
Speaker 1: and they haven't been. But that's so I'm for that.
Speaker 1: Government is the slowest institution to move, not the fastest.
Speaker 1: And uh so to look the government to adopt policies
Speaker 1: you know that are complex, you know that actually would
Speaker 1: make a difference is kind of uh you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a prior wearing in a prayer. And
Speaker 1: so then people feel like, well, if you know, they
Speaker 1: think that the only thing that can happen is between
Speaker 1: the individual, the individuated he she by himself herself, and
Speaker 1: then the government in its enormity, and whatever the generation
Speaker 1: talks about is actually the gold, the juice is in
Speaker 1: the between those two. You know, it's not the two
Speaker 1: opposites at all. And I mean sustainability theater, I feel
Speaker 1: frustrated all the time. Whenever I get a paper straw
Speaker 1: in a restaurant, I think about all the carbon if
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. But Paul, I want to ask, where do
Speaker 1: we go from here? Because at the individual level there's frustration,
Speaker 1: Like you say, government can be slow to move. How
Speaker 1: do we ultimately get started and and fix this? Two things.
Speaker 1: One is um right now, there's no difference between our
Speaker 1: climate denier and somebody who understands the problem and does
Speaker 1: nothing from the most point of view of the same people,
Speaker 1: you know. And so you have four people who understand
Speaker 1: it and we're doing nothing. You have ninety of the
Speaker 1: world just disengaged. And no matter how you see this,
Speaker 1: you can't read this science and not under standard. This
Speaker 1: is the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, and probably
Speaker 1: will you know when you think about it. And so
Speaker 1: how do you become disengaged? And that's your question reverse
Speaker 1: you know, which is how do we become engaged? And
Speaker 1: the way we do it is we've talked about it
Speaker 1: in a very different way, and we talked about possibilities
Speaker 1: instead of probabilities number one. Number two, the rhetoric that
Speaker 1: came out of science, which was good, which is about
Speaker 1: existential threat, which occasion fear activists took that over, got
Speaker 1: to science. Then they blamed, shamed, you know, and pointed
Speaker 1: fingers and so forth. You know, you're the cause, you're
Speaker 1: the problem X and you're it, you know so and
Speaker 1: and then and then you then communicate to people with
Speaker 1: fear threat you know, shame, blame, you know, fingerpointing, and
Speaker 1: you know, cabin glaciers, and and then you expect them
Speaker 1: to do something. They're gone, They're off. That channel has
Speaker 1: been turned off, you know yet, Jaman, element is is
Speaker 1: very important. We're gonna talk more about it in just
Speaker 1: a few minutes. Paul Hawkins, Sit tight, because we're gonna
Speaker 1: be back with you after we do some news. Paul
Speaker 1: Hawkin is environmentalist and author, also the author of his
Speaker 1: new book, Regeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.
Speaker 1: Let's get right back to Paul Hawkin, environmentalist and author.
Speaker 1: He's also the author of Regeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis
Speaker 1: in One Generation. The book came out yesterday. He's also
Speaker 1: the author of other books as well. He joins us
Speaker 1: once again on the phone from San Francisco. Paul, I
Speaker 1: have the book in my hand right now and There
Speaker 1: are a couple of things that I noticed. One is
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's very visually rich. There are lots
Speaker 1: and lots of photographs, beautiful photographs from all around the
Speaker 1: world in the book. The other thing that I noticed
Speaker 1: is how collaborative of an approach this book was. The
Speaker 1: first page is just a list of staff, researchers, contributing writers, says,
Speaker 1: advisors to the book, to the project. Um, take us
Speaker 1: through your approach here, sure, because those books about climate,
Speaker 1: whether they're describing the danger, are the solutions, are pretty
Speaker 1: much somebody saying, look at I've done the research. I
Speaker 1: know you don't listen up, you know, and you you
Speaker 1: may want to do that for sure, and so forth.
Speaker 1: I feel like the conversations we need to have their
Speaker 1: constructive or or the we talking to we it's us
Speaker 1: talking to each other in other words. And so if
Speaker 1: we don't have the world inside our organization, inside our board,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, inside the creation of this thing, then
Speaker 1: how can we trust ourselves to create a voice that
Speaker 1: is going to reach as many people as possible as
Speaker 1: a very diverse world now and um, and so it
Speaker 1: works better, it's more fun. Um, we have the book
Speaker 1: it does have a lot of photographs, and the reason
Speaker 1: is that goes to a different part of the brain
Speaker 1: and it does show things that are quite beautiful. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons for that is to try to
Speaker 1: help people fall in love with the living world. Because
Speaker 1: they've disaggregated climate fund the living world. They think it's
Speaker 1: a thing. It's not a thing. It's part of the
Speaker 1: bias here. Um. You know, you hear in terms like
Speaker 1: we're going to fight it and battle it and combat
Speaker 1: it and mitigate it. And that doesn't work. Nobody wakes
Speaker 1: up in the morning since I can't wait to mitigate today,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And and so we're behind
Speaker 1: you to ReLit that together, that sensibility that the um,
Speaker 1: the climate is not wrong, it is perfect. It is
Speaker 1: responding exactly to the bias the biasor is creating climate.
Speaker 1: Nature never makes a mistake. We do. And what we're
Speaker 1: getting is homeschooling. We're getting homeschooled by the planet every day.
Speaker 1: And say, take a look at this. What do you
Speaker 1: think about this? Yep, that was a bad one. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not trying to minimize people's loss or something,
Speaker 1: not at all. I'm not laughing at that. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: is that when you look at from that point of view,
Speaker 1: then it's feedback, and any system that ignores feedback parishes.
Speaker 1: And so we're a system. We're called humanity, were called civilization.
Speaker 1: We live here on this beautiful planet and it's giving
Speaker 1: us feedback, and our response has been really inadequate, and
Speaker 1: we're trying to change that. So that regeneration, the term
Speaker 1: has big arms and enlarges, is what we are. We
Speaker 1: are regenerative. All of life we generate. It's what you know,
Speaker 1: All thirty chillion cells in your body right now, every
Speaker 1: now a second are regenerating. I mean, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: having this conversation as that wasn't true. So regeneration is
Speaker 1: innate to us as people, as families, as fathers and
Speaker 1: mothers and uncles and aunts. You know. It is like
Speaker 1: this is what we do every day, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I wanted to take the climate conversation and and
Speaker 1: not to dismiss the technological solutions. It was certainly not
Speaker 1: to dismiss renewal energy, which is vitally important, but to
Speaker 1: break it open to in a larger sense that people
Speaker 1: feel like that impetus they have innate to them. To
Speaker 1: regenerate life on earth not only creates more life, but
Speaker 1: it brings us ourselves back to life. And so, Paul,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the regeneration process. Because I'm looking at
Speaker 1: page two forty nine of your book. You've laid out
Speaker 1: a few guidelines. I mean, what principles should people be
Speaker 1: keeping in mind? As you know they try to regenerate, which,
Speaker 1: like you lay out, our bodies are doing every day,
Speaker 1: every minute. Well, the first principle is to understand just
Speaker 1: a working definition, which is mine and you can do
Speaker 1: it yourself, your own definition, but mine is to put
Speaker 1: life at the center of every act and decision. Nor
Speaker 1: harm life or does it increase life? Pretty simple question really,
Speaker 1: But but how do you answer a question like that,
Speaker 1: because you know, I think about it from the perspective
Speaker 1: of you know, what what I'm gonna do for dinner tonight? Right?
Speaker 1: I think We're gonna order pizza? Does does that hard?
Speaker 1: You know it's going to be delivered on to us?
Speaker 1: Um how in a bicycle? There you go? Which is
Speaker 1: which I guess? Is it? You know? But but does
Speaker 1: that harm life? Does it does it reduce life? Does
Speaker 1: it help? Should I have gone to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: Should I not have ordered groceries online? Should I go
Speaker 1: walk by foot to groceries? I mean, there are all
Speaker 1: these questions that we can try to answer with that
Speaker 1: checklist every day, and we don't necessarily know the answers
Speaker 1: to them. Of course not. Let's just turn the question
Speaker 1: around and say, do you want to degenerate lifeliners? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. That's not your purpose, that's not why
Speaker 1: you're here. And that's what the entire economic sector does.
Speaker 1: It extracts life. If you just go down a supply chain,
Speaker 1: you'll find when you get to it not very far,
Speaker 1: that it is taking life itself, you know, removing it,
Speaker 1: killing it, you know. And the fact is that that's degeneration.
Speaker 1: So the book of saying, well, that road doesn't go
Speaker 1: much further. We can see the end of that. That's
Speaker 1: the ocean of certification. That is extreme, whether that is
Speaker 1: fires we can't even put out, you know, not not
Speaker 1: not just the fire, is not just the northern hemispheres
Speaker 1: on fire. We don't even know how to put the
Speaker 1: fire out anymore. They're so big. And so we can see,
Speaker 1: like we don't want to go down that road any further,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. So we generation is just a
Speaker 1: one eight is a pivot, and it is step by step,
Speaker 1: bit by bit. But at least the question is there,
Speaker 1: for example, if it does it or does it not?
Speaker 1: And does it create more life or reduce it? Does
Speaker 1: it most importantly, does it steal the future or does
Speaker 1: it heal it? And we have this idea of the
Speaker 1: world economic system works the way it does and makes
Speaker 1: so much money for so many people, blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah because it works well, yes, and it is also
Speaker 1: stealing our future. If it wasn't stealing our future, there
Speaker 1: wasn't be all these headlines about what's happening to the environment, people,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so we pose the question as what
Speaker 1: would it look like to have an economy that heals
Speaker 1: the future. That would be a GDP two. That would
Speaker 1: be revenues too, that would be companies as well, but
Speaker 1: very very different orientation. And it is a question. But
Speaker 1: you have companies. The biggest food company in the world
Speaker 1: is nest Lee and tomorrow they announced that their motto
Speaker 1: going ahead is generation regeneration and and they're taking very
Speaker 1: seriously about Okay, we need to pivot the regenerative agricultural
Speaker 1: systems if we're going to continue to exist as a company,
Speaker 1: as a food company, in this world, in this at
Speaker 1: this time. Paul Hawkins is an environmentalist and also the
Speaker 1: author of Regeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.
Speaker 1: The new book came out yesterday. Paul joined us on
Speaker 1: the phone from the San Francisco Bay area. He's also
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur and activist. He's dedicated his life to environmental
Speaker 1: sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment.
Speaker 1: Paul Hawkins, thank you so much for taking the time