Speaker 1: I had a woman one time on a panel I
Speaker 1: was on say something to me in a quite snide manner,
Speaker 1: like we can't eat our way out of climate change,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, you know it's not. You know,
Speaker 1: we kind of can. It's not the only solution. Plant
Speaker 1: By's diet is not the only solution to climate change,
Speaker 1: but there's no solution that doesn't include that.
Speaker 2: Oh fucked.
Speaker 3: Welcome to I'm Fucking the Future. I'm Chris Turney, a
Speaker 3: climate scientist based in Sydney, Australia. I have a bit
Speaker 3: of a reputation for being an optimist, but in this
Speaker 3: day and age, with all the bad news, even I
Speaker 3: can't help but think we're fucked. But that thinking is
Speaker 3: not going to get us out of this mess. There
Speaker 3: are people out there who have got some really big
Speaker 3: ideas for how to turn things around. They inspire me
Speaker 3: to keep going, and over this podcast series, I want
Speaker 3: them to inspire you too, or at least make you
Speaker 3: feel a little less terrible about our future. So in
Speaker 3: each episode, we're going to hear the story of a scientist,
Speaker 3: an entrepreneur, an activist, or someone else who is fighting
Speaker 3: the climate crisis in a surprising but positive way, We're
Speaker 3: going to learn how they got started, how they're making
Speaker 3: a difference, and perhaps most importantly, how we can make
Speaker 3: a difference too. I still believe that together we can
Speaker 3: fix this all mighty mess. So let's get started.
Speaker 2: We're fucking future.
Speaker 1: I feel very grateful to be a woman right now.
Speaker 4: I feel very proud, and I want to thank my
Speaker 4: mom for being truly the best mother that I could
Speaker 4: ever ask for, and thinking never for herself and only
Speaker 4: for others.
Speaker 1: Every day I want to be more like you.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. That's a clip of Billie Eilish speaking
Speaker 3: at the twenty twenty three Variety Power of Women event.
Speaker 3: She's being honored for a song from the Barbie soundtrack,
Speaker 3: and the woman she's thanking her mom, is our guest today.
Speaker 3: Maggie bed is not only the mother of two of
Speaker 3: the most successful musicians on the planet, she's also an
Speaker 3: accomplished actor and writer and a longtime climate activist. Even
Speaker 3: Billy is impressed by that.
Speaker 4: I'm so proud of her every day and I want
Speaker 4: to dedicate everything in this to my mom and everything
Speaker 4: you do for the world. I'll buy you anything you want.
Speaker 3: Maggie is the founder of Support and feed and nonprofit
Speaker 3: that aims to combat the climate crisis and increased food
Speaker 3: security by advocating for a plant based diet. And the
Speaker 3: reason I wanted to bring Maggie on in this first
Speaker 3: episode is because her radical idea for changing the world
Speaker 3: is actually relatively simple. Maggie says that we can make
Speaker 3: a real difference tackling the climate crisis by just making
Speaker 3: small changes to our diet. The rest of the world
Speaker 3: has only recently come round to the idea that meat
Speaker 3: agriculture might not be the best thing for the environment.
Speaker 3: But that's a conclusion Maggie came to early in life.
Speaker 1: We didn't have much a lot of money. My dad
Speaker 1: was a school teacher. My mom worked in various jobs,
Speaker 1: so we didn't have much money, and we lived in
Speaker 1: this beautiful place in western Colorado. But I was outdoors
Speaker 1: all the time, and I started even as a child,
Speaker 1: I did not want to eat meat. I just immediately
Speaker 1: saw that it was an animal, and I did not
Speaker 1: seem like an edible substance to me. So it was
Speaker 1: originally animals that brought me into that world. But I
Speaker 1: have very clear memories of I read a book like
Speaker 1: there's two different things, but I written because two books
Speaker 1: that Diet for a Small Planet Diet for a New
Speaker 1: America Francis Morler pay books when I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: and they talked about the effect on the environment of
Speaker 1: animal agriculture.
Speaker 3: These books from the seventies and eighties are absolute classics.
Speaker 3: They've influenced a lot of people to switch to plant
Speaker 3: based food, which brings us to a segment we like
Speaker 3: to call what the fuck are you talking about? What
Speaker 3: the fuck are you talking about? What Maggie just mentioned.
Speaker 3: Animal agriculture is simply the farming of animals for food production.
Speaker 3: As you may already know, there are big climate consequences
Speaker 3: for it. Sure, you've probably heard about the me fame
Speaker 3: produced by those belching, farting cows, but it actually goes
Speaker 3: a lot deeper than that. It all starts from a
Speaker 3: simple fact that there's a limited amount of space on Earth.
Speaker 3: For Fortunately for those of us who enjoy lamb or
Speaker 3: a ribbi, animal proteins require far more space to grow
Speaker 3: than plant based proteins. It takes almost one hundred times
Speaker 3: as much land to produce a gram of beef protein
Speaker 3: as it does to produce a gram of tofu protein.
Speaker 3: But that's not the only problem, because, of course, in
Speaker 3: order to raise animals, you have to feed them. Roughly
Speaker 3: a third of all farmland on Earth is used solely
Speaker 3: to grow food to feed livestock, and in order to
Speaker 3: clear land for livestock to graze on, you have to
Speaker 3: cut down trees. Meat production is the biggest cause of
Speaker 3: deforestation in the world's tropical forests to clear away for
Speaker 3: Brazilian cattle. More than eight hundred million trees in the
Speaker 3: Amazon have been cut down just in the last six years.
Speaker 3: And trees, as we know, sub carbon out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: When trees are cut down, two things happen. First, once
Speaker 3: they're dead, they can't suck carbon out of the atmosphere anymore.
Speaker 3: That's bad. Second, these dead trees release a carbon they've
Speaker 3: been storing all these years. That's really bad. All this
Speaker 3: extra carbon in the atmosphere is causing climate zones to shift,
Speaker 3: making it more difficult for the world's great farming regions
Speaker 3: to remain productive. And finally, animals produce emissions of their own.
Speaker 3: According to the United Nations, livestock are responsible for about
Speaker 3: fifteen percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. What this means
Speaker 3: is that if we all reduce the amount of meat
Speaker 3: that we eat, it could have a big impact on
Speaker 3: the climate.
Speaker 1: If every American eight no meter or cheese just one
Speaker 1: day a week for a year is equivalent to not
Speaker 1: driving ninety one billion miles or taking seven point six
Speaker 1: million cars off of the road.
Speaker 3: So that's what the fuck we're talking about. What the
Speaker 3: fuck are you talking about? All right? Back to Maggie.
Speaker 3: As a teenager, she made the connection between what we
Speaker 3: eat and its impact on the environment, and so she
Speaker 3: became a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: I think to most everyone I know, I was pretty
Speaker 1: annoying because I was I've been a vegan for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: but you know, vegetarian for since nineteen, like seventy six, right,
Speaker 1: So I was talking about it all the time, and
Speaker 1: I was, to be honest, a little bit of a
Speaker 1: apologetic for it. You know. It was the era of
Speaker 1: like don't mind me, I'll have a salad, don't mind,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's kind of apologetic and like, you know,
Speaker 1: not trying to make waves. But I was living that way,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was carrying my own grocery bags
Speaker 1: and my reusable water bottles, and then.
Speaker 3: You know, ahead of a curve.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the seventies. You know, everything was
Speaker 1: turned off, the lights, you know, concern.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. I mean, my dad was a forester and
Speaker 3: we used to travel all over the UK, live in
Speaker 3: really quite remote places. And I was born in the seventies.
Speaker 3: We grew up in the eighties. But mom and dad,
Speaker 3: because we were living in such remote places, we're in
Speaker 3: the like a nineteen seventies time bubble. So we listen abusing.
Speaker 3: We had this basis stainable livestile and there was just
Speaker 3: that moment in time where there was this realization that
Speaker 3: things were changing and there was this amazing connection with
Speaker 3: major in the environment, and looking back, it was actually
Speaker 3: just quite a magical time. But things could have changed
Speaker 3: so dramatically.
Speaker 1: When things were you know, still Christine or still beautiful,
Speaker 1: and you were more concerned about like our I was
Speaker 1: more concerned about like not wanting to lose this beautiful area,
Speaker 1: preserve this whatever.
Speaker 3: For a lot of people, Maggie included, the seventies were
Speaker 3: really optimistic time. The environmental movement was just starting to
Speaker 3: take hold. Nineteen seventy was a year of the first
Speaker 3: Earth Day. People took to a street demanding that government's
Speaker 3: pay closer attention to protecting the natural world. It felt
Speaker 3: like you could truly make a change and preserve the
Speaker 3: nature around you.
Speaker 1: But that changed quickly, because very quickly, you know, then
Speaker 1: we saw things happening around the world related to climate.
Speaker 1: But you know, in your own little world, you're worried
Speaker 1: about the trash at your favorite campsite as opposed to
Speaker 1: like an entire community being destroyed by flooding.
Speaker 3: Right by the end of the nineteen nineties, environmentalism has
Speaker 3: become a highly politicized issue. It's no longer Rah Rah
Speaker 3: Earth Day. It's more like heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, massive
Speaker 3: hor spills, and Amazon deforestation. And now Maggie's a mum,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, her personal interest in the
Speaker 3: environment takes on a different meaning. It isn't just about
Speaker 3: her anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it doesn't change you, I don't know
Speaker 1: what would you know. I feel the urgency, very passionate.
Speaker 1: I think that's true for many people, and I'm happy
Speaker 1: to say that. I hear people say it was their
Speaker 1: children or their grandchildren or something that woke them up.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Actually, my kids are basically saying age as yours
Speaker 3: as well. And I think it's an amazing time when
Speaker 3: you actually have children and you suddenly have that greatest
Speaker 3: sense of the natural world and your place in it,
Speaker 3: and they your responsibilities, and then you've got this background
Speaker 3: of this existential threat which you've as you're saying, it's
Speaker 3: just suddenly becomes really focused for you.
Speaker 1: And if you can't look at your children as they
Speaker 1: face this future and say, I have really been trying,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm really doing something. I think that we
Speaker 1: all owe it to them to be focusing on this
Speaker 1: and doing as much as we can, and that we
Speaker 1: can look them in the eye and not feel that
Speaker 1: and we you know, I'm still going to feel that
Speaker 1: I failed them.
Speaker 3: That's another story anyway, but you know.
Speaker 1: That I can at least say I really did try.
Speaker 3: Anyway. Maggie and their husband Patrick made it a priority
Speaker 3: to stilling their kids a passion for the environment, and
Speaker 3: in part that meant raising them vegetarian.
Speaker 1: We decided to raise our children that way because I
Speaker 1: wanted to give my first of all, what I believe in.
Speaker 1: And I'm responsible for their physical and moral health really
Speaker 1: until they're a grown person, right, so I want to
Speaker 1: provide them what I believe is the most a responsible
Speaker 1: way of living and the healthiest way of living. So
Speaker 1: it's the single most effective thing you can do personally
Speaker 1: is change the way you eat right, because you can't overnight,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I guess, I guess if you're
Speaker 1: a person who flies on a private plane every day,
Speaker 1: you could stop. That would be that would be very act.
Speaker 1: That would be good. You know, children, if if you
Speaker 1: explain what animal food is, they generally don't want to
Speaker 1: eat it. The truth is they don't generally understand what
Speaker 1: it is. But the great thing is watching my kids,
Speaker 1: like you know, you know, come to it on their
Speaker 1: own and understand it on their own, and you know,
Speaker 1: process it and it's a journey. And I think we
Speaker 1: are responsible for our children's morals and ethical health. And
Speaker 1: we know that young people's brains are not fully formed
Speaker 1: till they're twenty six. Now you're not going to be
Speaker 1: telling it, you know, twenty one year old what to do.
Speaker 1: You can you can barely, you know, tell a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old what to do. But as far as instilling values,
Speaker 1: you know that that is your job.
Speaker 3: And something I'd love to sort of explore with you
Speaker 3: a little bit more of that is this love of
Speaker 3: the environment in your children. But the other thing you've done,
Speaker 3: of course, is you've even stilled disappreciation of music. And
Speaker 3: I'd love you to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 3: what role music plays in your family.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I just love music myself, right, and
Speaker 1: I was an amateur songwriter my whole life. And my
Speaker 1: husband loves me music, and so we just always had
Speaker 1: a lot of music in our house. You know. We
Speaker 1: we live in a small house. We have two bedroom house.
Speaker 1: We had three pianos in it.
Speaker 3: Really, we had.
Speaker 1: Two pianos because what happened was we got my my
Speaker 1: mother had died young, and then my father sadly died also,
Speaker 1: and I had my childhood piano. And then we had
Speaker 1: someone that we got off craigslist. It was like a
Speaker 1: baby grand like took up the entire room that it
Speaker 1: was in. And then we had a keyboard, so we
Speaker 1: had a piano everywhere in the house. Really, it's like
Speaker 1: a fireplace for some people that they you must have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's that, and then you know, just out of
Speaker 1: the blue, like they just learned to play. Phineas asked
Speaker 1: my husband to teach him how to play one song
Speaker 1: to impress a girl, and he taught him what a
Speaker 1: chord was and what an inversion was, and that was
Speaker 1: the extent of his lessons.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And then he asked me, like, what's a chord on
Speaker 1: a guitar? And I show him And that was literally it.
Speaker 1: Every every other bit of it came from YouTube or
Speaker 1: him just figuring out.
Speaker 3: And then the.
Speaker 1: Exact same thing happened with Billy. She just did it herself.
Speaker 1: So you know, I guess we had given them this
Speaker 1: exposure to like constant music and this music program, but
Speaker 1: it really just the main thing we did was just
Speaker 1: kind of allow them to do what they wanted.
Speaker 2: We're on fucking the future. We're on fucking the future.
Speaker 3: All this discussion about music might seem like a bit
Speaker 3: of a tangent for a show about the climate, but
Speaker 3: I promise it's important because what Mackie understood is that
Speaker 3: music and art can be a powerful catalyst for social change.
Speaker 1: You know, I certainly grew up with you know, Joni
Speaker 1: Mitchell and Bob Dylan and Joan Bias and you know
Speaker 1: Peter Paul and Mary and you know, those are the
Speaker 1: songs my parents put me to bed too, you know,
Speaker 1: And now they were political and social, you know, so
Speaker 1: they were certainly impactful to me. I think you have
Speaker 1: an opportunity as a musician to reach a very large
Speaker 1: audience and have a more direct connection to people. People
Speaker 1: really feel connected to songwriters because they've expressed what they
Speaker 1: feel and it's a rare and special you know. And
Speaker 1: I've felt it myself with songwriters, and you feel so
Speaker 1: connected to them. And then if that songwriter decides to
Speaker 1: write about climate change, or not write about it but
Speaker 1: talk about it at their concert or be on an
Speaker 1: Instagram post about it, it really makes a huge difference.
Speaker 3: In twenty sixteen, Maggie began to experience his first hand.
Speaker 3: Her fourteen year old daughter Billy, released a song called
Speaker 3: Ocean Eyes, and it launched into pop stardom.
Speaker 1: That just took over my whole life, right because I
Speaker 1: had to protect her, I had to be with her,
Speaker 1: I had to make sure everything was okay. And so
Speaker 1: then I found myself in this new world. But but
Speaker 1: I couldn't leave behind my other world, right, so constantly
Speaker 1: I was why are we using plastic water bottles backstage?
Speaker 1: Why do we have this kind of merch Why is
Speaker 1: the vinyl thing? What is the packaging thing, just constantly
Speaker 1: asking questions about the music industry in terms of climate
Speaker 1: change and sustainability. So I and in the beginning, to
Speaker 1: be honest, I was pulling my hair out. It was
Speaker 1: so stressful and it seemed like no one was doing anything. Now,
Speaker 1: I was very lucky that I got introduced to Chris Martin,
Speaker 1: and Chris Martin introduced me to this company called Reverb,
Speaker 1: and then I started to get this support and feel
Speaker 1: this community in the music industry of people who were
Speaker 1: trying to make change. Then Billy at the same time,
Speaker 1: Billy and Phineas got powerful, you know. And so in
Speaker 1: the beginning, nobody was listening to me. I'm just again
Speaker 1: the annoying person saying like, you know, why are we
Speaker 1: doing this? So why can't we We've been there, just
Speaker 1: annoying people. But then you know, my children have this power,
Speaker 1: and people started to listen. And when people started to listen,
Speaker 1: they realized, oh, this actually really matters, and it's really
Speaker 1: affecting us, and it's affecting our whole industry, it's affecting
Speaker 1: our whole world.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, Maggie's kids had a platform and
Speaker 3: they realized it. Together they could use their influence to
Speaker 3: make a positive impact on the climate. The first and
Speaker 3: most obvious way they could do this was by helping
Speaker 3: make plant based food seem cool, because for decades, veganism
Speaker 3: has being portrayed as anything back cool.
Speaker 5: We're with mankind for ethical animal treatment. Poplars are living creatures.
Speaker 5: You gotta stop harvesting them for food or what? Or
Speaker 5: will boycott fishy jos?
Speaker 3: You're vegetarians?
Speaker 1: Who cares what you do?
Speaker 6: Shut up?
Speaker 3: Animals eat other animals. It's nature, No, it isn't. We
Speaker 3: taught a lie and to eat tofu. That's a clip
Speaker 3: from a show Futurama, and it's emblematic of how vegans
Speaker 3: have been mocked in pop culture, so much so that
Speaker 3: Maggie says, it's almost become a dirty word.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're referring to the study that I was
Speaker 1: quoting to you that referred to vegan as one of
Speaker 1: the most hated words in the English language, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the reason is in the article I was
Speaker 1: quoting to you makes the point that it's about cognitive dissonance, right,
Speaker 1: so that most people, when confronted with the facts of
Speaker 1: animal agriculture, the way animals are treated, the way they're killed,
Speaker 1: the environmental impact, the degradation of our soil, the loss
Speaker 1: of biodiversity, the amount of greenhouse gases, the health most everyone,
Speaker 1: if they see those facts in front of them, are
Speaker 1: going to think it's a good idea not to be
Speaker 1: participating in the system of animal agriculture. But if you
Speaker 1: don't do it, then you have cognitive dissonance. And so
Speaker 1: people who do it and have taken on this word vegan,
Speaker 1: you know, become kind of an antagonistic feeling in your body,
Speaker 1: so you kind of hate that.
Speaker 3: What Maggie is saying is that even though people might
Speaker 3: support all the benefits of a vegan diet, because that's
Speaker 3: a negative association with word, they tend to shy away
Speaker 3: from it, and that has real consequences.
Speaker 1: If you label a food item vegan, something like I
Speaker 1: should get the real step for you, you know, like
Speaker 1: only twenty percent of people will choose that item, but
Speaker 1: if you say it's you know, plant based, it could
Speaker 1: be sixty to seventy percent. You know, when ordering off
Speaker 1: a menu with plant based food. You've got to get
Speaker 1: people to stop. You've got to change that culture from
Speaker 1: vegan being a bad word or plant based being a
Speaker 1: bad word or being the butt of the joke right
Speaker 1: in TV and movies, all the environmentalists is a tree hugger, right,
Speaker 1: and that vegan is you know, annoying and whatever.
Speaker 3: Getting people to choose a climate friendly diet is partly
Speaker 3: a cultural problem, so it definitely helps if one of
Speaker 3: the world's most influential pop stars is a public supporter.
Speaker 3: Maggie's helping her kids use their platforms to reflect their values,
Speaker 3: starting with how they run their concerts.
Speaker 1: When the pandemic happened, we were on tour with Billy's
Speaker 1: then world tour, and we were super excited about this
Speaker 1: tour for the sustainability factor. You know, we had done
Speaker 1: all these things. We had all plant based food for
Speaker 1: three meals a day for our whole crew.
Speaker 3: But then disaster struck.
Speaker 1: We had this very sustainable backstage and all these things implemented,
Speaker 1: and then we went home because of COVID and then
Speaker 1: within like five days, I was sitting with Billy. I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, people are going to need food.
Speaker 1: Plant based restaurants are going to go to business, and
Speaker 1: small businesses are going to suffer, and you know, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, let's get food and we'll feed people. Well,
Speaker 1: very quickly, we we were doing that. We were delivering
Speaker 1: meals to people, but we realized that there were very
Speaker 1: few organizations that were feeding people were taking into account
Speaker 1: the quality of what they fed people and the environmental
Speaker 1: impact of what they fed. So we were like, wow,
Speaker 1: massive amounts of food are going out to people with
Speaker 1: no regard to the health of the people receiving it
Speaker 1: or the climate impact of that pid It's incredible, it
Speaker 1: is right when you think about it, it was like it
Speaker 1: was like a hall moment of like bad, like oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, right, gigantic amounts.
Speaker 3: Of food really really yeah, you think.
Speaker 1: About major major food organizations. We were lucky enough to
Speaker 1: get calls with some of these, you know, and they
Speaker 1: did not have an awareness of the impact of plant
Speaker 1: based food and what they're feeding. They had often no
Speaker 1: plant based option, and they might even have like a
Speaker 1: kosher option or but then no plant based option. It
Speaker 1: was like, you do know that environmentally we need to
Speaker 1: reduce our animal agriculture, and some of them would say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, like we do. Like so that's when we realize.
Speaker 1: We also realized that if we directed our work toward
Speaker 1: communities in food apartheides areas that were cut off from
Speaker 1: access to nourishing food. We could multiply our impact.
Speaker 3: But as the other piece of base, which is which
Speaker 3: is really terrifically important, that's food equity. And for listeners
Speaker 3: who don't know what this is, how is that connected
Speaker 3: to climate?
Speaker 1: Well, food equity speaks to the fact that we do
Speaker 1: not distribute food equally in our society, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that is due to systemic racism. We have policies
Speaker 1: within our government. I'm speaking specifically about the US, but
Speaker 1: it's not just true for the US. We have policies
Speaker 1: that have been created which literally deprive communities of access
Speaker 1: to nourishing food by policies that don't allow grocery stores
Speaker 1: within certain areas or prevent the recreation of grocery stores
Speaker 1: when those grocery stores close, lack of green spaces, and
Speaker 1: at the same time, these same communities are often most
Speaker 1: impacted by climate change. Right, So you've got a community
Speaker 1: where say there are absentee landlords, no green spaces, no trees,
Speaker 1: That temperature in that community could be one to two
Speaker 1: degrees higher, right, so, already suffering from the effects of
Speaker 1: that second of all, lack of proximity to nourishing food
Speaker 1: through either economic reasons or transportation access. So climate change
Speaker 1: is disproportionately affecting people who are the least responsible for
Speaker 1: climate change.
Speaker 3: This is a point you'll hear a lot about on
Speaker 3: this show. Well, thatverage in the US produces about sixteen
Speaker 3: tons of CO two a year a person in India
Speaker 3: not even one that half. But yet developing countries are
Speaker 3: often more vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather than
Speaker 3: rich countries like the US. Food is another place where
Speaker 3: this inequity exists because people in wealthy areas tend to
Speaker 3: have more access to healthy, sustainable food.
Speaker 1: The meal is wonderful, but if a meal that's extra
Speaker 1: nourishing can be served to a community member who may
Speaker 1: not generally get that kind of nourishing food, and we
Speaker 1: can make a climate friendly, we could like triple our impact.
Speaker 1: We still purchase our meals from community restaurants and so
Speaker 1: support the local economy. We pay a fair and equitable
Speaker 1: price for those meals to support that. You know, restaurants
Speaker 1: are so important to communities, and you know the workers
Speaker 1: at a restaurant are you know, from the farmer to
Speaker 1: the serve are such an important part of that chain. So,
Speaker 1: you know, combining all these things into one the intersectionality
Speaker 1: of this mission, which is really what we have to
Speaker 1: look at in everything we do. If we're going to
Speaker 1: address this issue, and why not why address this issue
Speaker 1: without adding on all the issues that touch that.
Speaker 2: We're on fucking the future. We're on fucking the future.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty, Maggie's passions for plant based food, equity,
Speaker 3: and music all came together. She founded a nonprofit called
Speaker 3: Support and Feed. The organization provides narishing meals and education
Speaker 3: to historically marginalized communities, driving global demand, acceptance, and accessibility
Speaker 3: of plant based food. And they're using a call to
Speaker 3: action at concert tours to each new places and inspire
Speaker 3: more people to embrace a plant based diet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Support and Feed and the name is like been,
Speaker 1: I think it turned out to be more more accurate
Speaker 1: than we ever dreamed, you know, because we really are
Speaker 1: feeding people. But we're supporting community organizations, we're supporting small businesses,
Speaker 1: we're supporting activists, we're supporting the work. We are very
Speaker 1: much an all boats rise organization. We are trying to
Speaker 1: get this word out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now we're bigger than ever. We are in eleven cities
Speaker 1: in the country in a regular presence and that means
Speaker 1: regular food deliveries and regular education which means community conversations,
Speaker 1: cooking classes, experiential. We were able to have Support and
Speaker 1: Feed be a presence on that tour, and you know,
Speaker 1: when we were in Australia, we were able to partner
Speaker 1: with oz Harvest to add fifty three thousand plant based
Speaker 1: meals to their amazing work already. We also did the
Speaker 1: same with Paramore's tour, and we've been festivals for Pharrell,
Speaker 1: Something in the Water and Lallapalooza, Dave Matthews Band, Coldplay,
Speaker 1: plant Based Food Drive. So getting the word out with
Speaker 1: Support and Feed, you know, we have a large impact
Speaker 1: with the you know, the people we're feeding and then
Speaker 1: also people who are here to learn about how what
Speaker 1: they eat impacts climate change and how what they eat
Speaker 1: is impacting someone across their town, across their state, across
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: I had a.
Speaker 1: Woman one time on a panel I was on say
Speaker 1: something to me in a quite snide manner, like we
Speaker 1: can't eat our way out of climate change, And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's not you know, we kind of can
Speaker 1: It's not the only solution. Plant based diet is not
Speaker 1: the only solution to climate change, but there's no solution
Speaker 1: that doesn't include that.
Speaker 3: It's easy to feel powerless in the face of a
Speaker 3: problem as big as global heating. But what I love
Speaker 3: about Maggie's story is that this shows us but there's
Speaker 3: something meaningful we can do as individuals right now, which
Speaker 3: brings us to our final segment, which we call what
Speaker 3: the fuck Can I Do?
Speaker 2: What the fuck can I do?
Speaker 3: Okay, Maggie, I thought we could end the show by
Speaker 3: highlighting something our listeners can do to help stop the
Speaker 3: climate crisis, And so I want to ask you about
Speaker 3: the thirty day Pledge. What is it and what's the
Speaker 3: idea behind it.
Speaker 1: We want people to understand that what they eat matters,
Speaker 1: and it affects people. It affects not only their personal health,
Speaker 1: but their community and people all around the world. The
Speaker 1: Support and Feed Pledge is to eat at least one
Speaker 1: fully plant based meala day for thirty days. And get this,
Speaker 1: that one small action makes such a huge difference. For example,
Speaker 1: if we were all to take it together, say ten
Speaker 1: thousand people eate one plant based meala day, for thirty days.
Speaker 1: That is seven million gallons of water saved. Is that incredible?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is incredible, That really is.
Speaker 1: And then support feed will offer you resources and support,
Speaker 1: recipes and guidance as you do it till hopefully this
Speaker 1: one meal a day that you're eating will become second
Speaker 1: nature and you can add more and more plant based
Speaker 1: foods to your diet and really make an impact on
Speaker 1: the climate crisis.
Speaker 3: Look, plant based diets are the gold standard. Someone with
Speaker 3: a plant based diet has less than seventy five percent
Speaker 3: of the emissions from that of a heavy meat eater.
Speaker 3: But for a lot of people, me included, it can
Speaker 3: feel impossible to make a full switch in one go.
Speaker 3: But the good news is eating a low meat diet
Speaker 3: can have a similar effect because for difference and emissions
Speaker 3: between a low meat diet, say around forteen ounces a week,
Speaker 3: which is about two chicken breasts and a vegetarian or
Speaker 3: pescatarian diet is pretty nominal. In fact, low meat diets
Speaker 3: around half the emissions of a heavy meat eater, the
Speaker 3: same as a vegetarian diet. Hal's to say, we don't
Speaker 3: need to change a f every thing about our diet
Speaker 3: right now, but Maggie says, we can make small steps
Speaker 3: today to get on the path towards an environmentally friendly diet.
Speaker 1: The Support and Feed Pledge has gone worldwide. We've been
Speaker 1: at concerts, arenas and stadiums around the world with musical
Speaker 1: acts and at live events getting people to sign up
Speaker 1: to take this pledge to know that what they do
Speaker 1: every day makes a difference. It's that kind of change
Speaker 1: that is really going to be impactful.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. So if you're interested, head on over to
Speaker 3: Support Andfeed dot org and sign up for the thirty
Speaker 3: day Pledge. And that's one thing you can do right
Speaker 3: now to help fight the climate crisis.
Speaker 2: What fuck can I know?
Speaker 3: Since Maggie founded it back in twenty twenty, Support and
Speaker 3: Feed has become a hugely impactful organization. They've distributed over
Speaker 3: four hundred thousand plant based meals and pantry items.
Speaker 1: I'm not the first person to say this, but I
Speaker 1: think the antidote for egoings it is action. Knowing that
Speaker 1: you're doing something is what keeps me going. And hope
Speaker 1: is in the people that join with you, the people
Speaker 1: working alongside of you and caring. A lot of people say, well,
Speaker 1: young people, give us hope. But you know, there's enough
Speaker 1: people out there, and there are enough technological advances and
Speaker 1: enough people really working towards this, and it gives me
Speaker 1: hope to you know, if nothing else, we're not in
Speaker 1: and alone.
Speaker 3: And I often reflect on the fact that it's not
Speaker 3: really the science it gives me hope. That's actually the opposite.
Speaker 3: A lot of time, it's people. It's what people can
Speaker 3: do and what they are doing, and that gives me
Speaker 3: real hope. And I find that inspirre and just talking
Speaker 3: to you, Maggie about hearing what you're doing and how
Speaker 3: it can scale a level you know, actually, gosh, we
Speaker 3: can make a difference.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really that's really why food is so
Speaker 1: special in this category, because it's like, you can do this,
Speaker 1: this one you got right in your hands. You know,
Speaker 1: we can do it.
Speaker 3: We certainly can't.
Speaker 5: Fucked.
Speaker 3: That's all for this episode. Next time on I Fucking
Speaker 3: the Future, we'll be speaking with comedian, writer and director
Speaker 3: Adam McKay. He's been doing his part to fight the
Speaker 3: climate crisis in his own unique way for storytelling. He's
Speaker 3: the director of a twenty twenty one film, Don't Look Up,
Speaker 3: which is an environmental allegory and a comedy.
Speaker 6: We're dealing with just a gargantuan force, you know, changing
Speaker 6: the livable climate, and it's amazing how much it just
Speaker 6: bats you around emotionally. So yeah, it's a wild, wild experience,
Speaker 6: there's no question. And the number one thing I've been
Speaker 6: trying to do through the whole thing is just keep
Speaker 6: my sense of.
Speaker 3: Humor, spreading climate awareness, food humor. That's coming up on
Speaker 3: Fucking the Future. I'm Chris Turney. See you next time.
Speaker 2: Fucking the Future.
Speaker 3: I'm Fucking the Future is produced by Imagine Audio and
Speaker 3: Awfully Nice for iHeart Podcasts and hosted by me Chris Turney.
Speaker 3: The show is written by Meredith Bryan. I'm Fucking the
Speaker 3: Future is produced by Amber von Shassen and Renee Colvert.
Speaker 3: Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carral Welker and Nathan Chloke are
Speaker 3: the executive producers from Imagine Audio. Jesse Burton and Katie
Speaker 3: Hodges are the executive producers from Awfully Nice. Sound design
Speaker 3: and mixing by Evan Arnette, original music by Lillly Hayden
Speaker 3: and producing services by Peter McGuigan. Sam Swinnerton wrote our
Speaker 3: theme and all those fun jingles. If you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 3: be sure to rate and review Unfucking the Future on
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts or whether you get your podcasts