 My name is Ashlyn Rose, and I am the General and Artistic Director at the Theatre Center in Toronto. Thank you so much for joining us for Field Notes from the Future. You can join our conversation on Twitter via the hashtag FieldNotesTC. Tonight, we're going to be talking about the future of our global carbon crisis and climate justice. But before we begin, I'd like to introduce two beloved Theatre Center co-conspirators. Why not Theatre's artistic director Ravi Jane and award-winning science journalist Alana Mitchell. Hi, Ravi. Hey, Ashlyn. How's it going? Alana. Good. Welcome, Alana. Hi. So before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge that the Theatre Center, our gatherings, our offices where we work, are situated on the traditional territories of the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Anishinaabe, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. And this is now the home of many nations, many First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. As a settler with Irish roots, I am grateful for the welcome that was offered to my parents when they arrived in what we now call Canada. And I hope to reciprocate the generosity that was offered to them. I'm also grateful that I am able to make my home here in the dish with one spoon territory. I was reminded at an event earlier this year that we as settlers have all been added to this covenant, and that it predates any other agreement in which we've since engaged. And in the spirit of the conversation we're about to have, I wanted to share with you some of the language of that covenant. The dish, or sometimes it is called the bowl, represents what is now Southern Ontario. We all lead out of the dish, all of us that share this territory with only one spoon. That means we have to share the responsibility of ensuring the dish is never empty, which includes taking care of the land and the creatures we share it with. I work with an incredible team of humans who all strive to ensure that the theatre centre continues to honour through our actions and our attitudes, the past, present and future stewards of these lands and waterways. And of course there is always more work to be done as we steward the resources of our organisation and prepare them for those who will come after us. Hi, thank you so much for being here tonight. Six years ago, Franco Bonny, who's at Push Festival in Vancouver, and Ravi and I worked together on a play called Seasick, which was based on a book that I wrote about how the carbon load in the atmosphere is harming the ocean and setting the stage for another NASA station. At the end of the play we ask, how does this story end? Today, the answers to that question are different than they were even just 13 weeks ago. Our world has fractured in ways we couldn't have imagined. COVID has killed people. It's locked us at home, afraid of getting sick or getting dying or infecting others. The economy has tanked and people are having a hard time feeding their families. And the supremacy has reared its horrific head and people are taking to the streets in righteous anger against the systems that have let it live. Scientists, doctors, theatre makers, artists, journalists, everybody is in revolt against this old system that makes us unsafe. That tells me that the story or the mythology that our society tells itself about what matters is fraying. That fraying carries great opportunity and great danger. It means that we are able to see how all these stories connect to each other and imagine a new future. What if things could be different? What is possible today that wasn't possible before? This is a time begging for a new mythology to be born. And part of building a new mythology means we need to face an old and insidious reality, racism, and the dehumanization of black, indigenous and racialized peoples for centuries and its impact on people today. The senseless deaths of black and indigenous men and women continue in broad daylight at the hands of police in Canada and the United States. And in this moment we are being asked to think about our fear, our silence, and our complicity in white supremacist systems. White people are awakening to the new reality that many of us experience every day. Racism sees throughout society and has been upheld and supported in institutions like the arts and culture in Canada. But you know, we've been here before. We've seen all of this before. You have been awoken before. And in the past, white people, when they make their calls of sorrow, they may call it solidarity, but then the moment moves on. Social media moves on. And then we all have to move on. But it comes at a great cost. So what will be different this time? What will cause lasting change? What will it take for us all to say that black lives matter and mean it? If you can understand racism, you will understand that every day black, indigenous, and racialized people are told that they don't belong, that they are not equal. And to all the white people calling for solidarity today, I'm reminding you that we are not equal in this moment. We are not in solidarity unless you are willing to do the work. Because it will take work to dismantle white supremacy and anti-blackness in ourselves, in our communities, in all the systems that govern us. Yes, in the arts too. And in order for this moment to be meaningful, white people need to see what we see. They need to see themselves as the upholder of the system. See yourself in the police officer you want to protest against. Scream at your racist self. Change your racist self. Looking at yourself will hurt. And it has to, because only then will we truly be in solidarity. The police officer had his knee on the neck of George Floyd for almost nine minutes. The whole time people were asking him to remove it. They told that police officer that if he didn't remove his knee, he would die. And that police officer, he didn't have to listen. His hands were in his pockets. No fear of consequences, supremacy. And you too, you've heard these cries before, and you too have had your hands in your pockets. The question now is, are you really listening? Will you do the work to remove your knee? Speaking to Alana in the last couple of days has given me a glimmer of hope in what has felt like a very hopeless time seeing the hopeless future. Because I've been let down before, and it comes at a great cost. So Alana says that it's more difficult to choose to have courage and to choose hope in this moment. And I believe her and I will. But I'm counting on all of us to face ourselves, fight ourselves, scream at our racist selves. Maybe you will listen the next time that a black person or an indigenous person or a person of color tells you that you and your system are racist. That you and your theater is racist. Will you give up your power and finally let someone else lead this conversation? If you do nothing, the results will be devastating. They would be unforgivable. So what will it take to create lasting change? How will we write a new story, build a new mythology? Acknowledge that we can't have climate justice without first addressing the interconnected systems of white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism. We've got to find a way to heal this world of ours to make it safe for all of us. Mistakes are high. We've seen a lot of things during this pandemic that many of us didn't think were possible even a few months ago. Some of the most low paying and precarious jobs being named the most essential. A serious national conversation about universal basic income. Mainstream conversations about defunding the police. Governments changing policies on the dime telling businesses what they can and can't do. Pledging to make the post pandemic recovery green and people not hesitating to stand up for what they believe in. This evening we're talking about a future that's been blown open. And there will be work, and there will be a cost, and there will be a future to build, and it's going to take all of us. These times of chaos have given us permission to think in new ways to ask different questions, to mourn resolutely, but also to feel the joy that comes with creating something new with healing the world that we live in. So here tonight with you, we're exploring the new edges of the possible. And Kai Chan and Alia Noa Rougeau are going to help. Kai is an ecologist and sustainability scientist at UBC in Vancouver, who specializes in thinking outside the box and across disciplines. He was the lead author on the very first international study to map out exactly what it will take to keep the world safe from too much carbon. It came out last year, and Allie is the coordinator of the Climate Strike Group Fridays for Future in Toronto. She's going into her fourth year in economics and public policy at the University of Toronto. She's been a human rights and environmental activist since she was 10 years old. So here are the questions that are assessing me. And maybe we could start with you, Allie. It's just, what do you think is possible in this moment that wasn't possible before? Well, first of all, good evening, Alana. Hi, Kai. It's great to be here. I mean, I guess in a way you're asking what has changed, what's possible now. I'll be honest at the very beginning of the pandemic when it started, I felt the opposite. It fell down. It felt like the momentum that had come from the year of climate strikes was shut down. And it honestly felt pretty violent because all of a sudden, you know, we got our energies from strike. I got my energies for being in class and like talking to my peers. Oh, there's a strike next week. They come and all of a sudden that got shut down. And so at first it felt like it was blocking. But then the few first things that made me think actually this might be the window of opportunity that my public policy professors talk about all the time. And that was the moment where governments on screen and even governments like Doug Ford's government said, this is a historic moment. And how we react will define how we will be seen in history. And I thought we could have heard that for another crisis and same when government said acting now saves lives. And I thought that that's something I could reuse later. And so I started seeing how we could actually draw parallels. And all of a sudden it felt like I think what can change is the public opinion. All of a sudden I think public awareness can be kind of change and brought back to climate where it was. It was harder before because we were in our everyday lives that hadn't been stopped for a while. Okay. And what about you, Kai? What do you think? Oh, I totally agree. I mean, I think that we're at this moment of opportunity where we have collectively grappled with this problem of COVID-19 in a way that so many of us as individuals and as communities have given up things that we are used to and doing it not only for ourselves but also very much for others. Right. Looking out for those who are most vulnerable. And the hope is that rather than being a distraction from the climate crisis, maybe this moment of opportunity and this kind of solidarity with everyone around this world where we all clearly recognize that this phenomenon of COVID-19 is affecting us all. That hopefully we can see the parallels of that to climate change and recognize that it's going to take the same kind of sacrifice and more. Maybe it's at least longer lasting. It's going to take the same kind of working together, the same kind of selflessness. And I'm just hoping that we're ready to do that in a way that rethinks the systems that brought us to this place, that brought us the climate crisis, the ecological crisis, and this crisis of oppression of marginalized and minority communities. The thing that amazes me is just what the governments have been able to do. I'm seeing them pass policies that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago and do it with all this determination. And I'm thinking to myself, what helped them back before? Do you know? It's amazing. I mean, the amount of money that has been spent on this crisis that is really in the grand scheme of things smaller than the climate crisis by far. And yet the amount of money that's been spent in this one budget year and the impact on our economies is going to be so much larger than what climate scientists have been asking for decades to invert this massive global catastrophe. Right? So it's quite amazing the kind of turnaround. And it's obviously it's because it's an acute problem. We can clearly see it. We can trace that people are actually dying of this disease. Whereas climate change has this diffuse, diffuse this problem where it's so much easier for people to explain a way to make excuses. And so hopefully, though, we'll be able to bring that kind of a recognition of the interconnectedness and recognize that climate is just as big a problem if not bigger. Right? What about you, Allie? What do you you've been lobbying governments for, you know, more than a year saying, you know, and you've been asking for much less than they've given in a sense in the last 13 weeks. What do you think was holding them back? Yeah, seriously, I mean, you know, I think that's frustrating, right? It was kind of frustrated, you know, I thought, wait, now industries are being asked to like produce what we need. Essentially, we've been asking that for years. But in a way, what it what seems to have triggered it is maybe, well, you know, this is maybe like the youth voice thinking, but the people most affected were a lot of the people that are often in power or close to power. So older folks, in some cases, it was also a crisis that was so simple. You know, Kai said it was it was an easy external threat. It didn't come from our internal politics. We weren't questioning capitalism at first, at least, or we weren't, you know, it wasn't COVID didn't emerge from our banking system or anything. It emerged from somewhere else and it's like in a war. It's easy to have your external enemy and have the whole nation come behind. But then when you have to look at yourself like Ravi so eloquently said, you have to scream at yourself. Yeah, I feel like that's where governments they just they just can't get around it because I mean, it would be admitting their own failures for years and I think they're they're they're they feel like they're too deep, not knowing they're digging themselves deeper every day, but it's just at the same time there's it's been this amazing response. I think we also need to keep checking and she keep questioning that response. There's a real danger that in this moment of opportunity that the spending that we do that governments do to prop up industries that that some of that will actually hold us back from tackling climate climate crisis and other linked crises right take search, for example, travel. We I used to be flying around Canada US around internationally across oceans, once a month if not more often half those trips seemed kind of unnecessary if I thought about it from a collective sense. Now that we're in these times of COVID we have shut those many of those trips down I haven't traveled and I've been able to keep up so many of those work obligations through just virtual connections. It's amazing, but people are rushing to get back to that the airline industries are clamoring for bailouts that will enable them to grow that demand back for that travel that we arguably don't even need. Right and it's we've got this moment to transform our systems and the real worry is that instead of transforming that system we're going to bail out these companies in industries that really ought to be scaling back and thinking about how to do things differently to supply what people really need rather than what they think they need and what they want on a kind of superficial but frankly many of my colleagues didn't even want to travel like that you know we just wanted an excuse to be able to do it in a in a virtual way. Yeah, that's interesting you know the thing that strikes me so much is that is that we have. Let's pull together and that that is the thing that I find so fascinating because it's a cultural shift it's not we're all, you know doing what climate activists have asked, you know for decades really they've been saying look let's pull together and look at the future and make our planet healthy for future generations for ourselves today and, and that that seems to be one of the one of the things that has just taken hold without without too much trouble we all knew we have to do something and we did it and. But what what climate activists have been asking for is actually a lot less in a lot of ways, in terms of, you know one's own personal habits in terms of what you, what you want to do so it's that it's that shift in what we think we're for that I find so interesting. Do you see that. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's quite amazing. There is a difference right and there's an important element to that where the thing that we're asked to do was to to shelter others from from our disease risk right, but that exact same action paid serious dividends for all of us in terms of avoiding our own risk of getting sick. And the benefits to individuals from avoiding the risk of them getting sick, it's actually greater than the benefit to others in many cases, whereas with climate it's the opposite way around right we yes absolutely by reducing our admission. We all enjoy a benefit, but most people benefit more than I benefit as much right most of that benefit is externalized. So we, you know, we've really got to kind of where that mantle of selflessness, even stronger for the climate crisis. Hopefully we can do that. Ali you think we can. That's the that's a really good way to put it. It's what the youth I think doesn't have as much is this thing that we're not going to get the benefits of solving the climate crisis because we know we're going to, you know, we're internalizing much more the cost because we see it over a lifetime. But I agree it's always how do we have and I think the arts and all the arts really have a huge role to play in this is making us feel as if the benefits were more tangible than they might actually be right now. Going back a tiny bit to what Kai and you as well I know we're saying before about kind of like what could happen after this COVID if we do go back to normal or if we go back to worse than normal. What scares me a lot is more concentration of power, more big tech, now having all our, all our, you know, data and having all of us hooked on this and not paying attention, more of the small companies being bought back by the big ones. So I think when we're having this conversation it's like, are we going to fight for a new normal, or are we fighting against the worst normal as well at the same time it's I think that fuels me twice as much as we also have to avoid a roll back on some progress we had made in the past decades. Definitely while we're listening fear as I'll name some more of mine, I'm afraid that people are going to be afraid to take public transit and that they're going to be in their cars along more. I'm afraid that people with this experience of the lockdown who are those who are stuck in cities that dense living that we, you know, are told is more sustainable and I believe that entirely that those people are going to feel like it's a better existence out in the countryside where and then it happens you can still get out and go for a walk you still have your backyard right like, I'm worried that we're going to change this kind of smart planning of cities and that people are going to rebel against that and everybody's going to want their own backyard I don't have a backyard but I can feel the pull of that you know I'm worried that we're going to get to this more isolated place more car dependent more kind of distance from each other in a way that is contrary to sustainability. And so what will it take what will it take for us to shift that narrative because that that's the key this is this is a moment when things could go one of two ways. They probably go both, I think, but I mean how do you how do you steer it. You know to go the way we want. I think there are different answers on the two sides right so that one is the kind of systemic structural stuff that Ali was talking about and then there's the more personal reactions and obviously they're they're closely linked. I think that the personal reactions probably will fade away I think that will you know, a year or so after a vaccine, you know, it's amazing how quickly we got used to being physically distance when it felt so do you remember how. Yeah, it felt those first couple of days and then within a week, even thinking about not being physically distance felt so awkward so I am not actually so worried about that I think that we'll get back to the place where we remember the joys of physical proximity with other human beings. That I think we're, you know, what it takes is really looking at those systems really staring them down really dissecting really thinking about are these systems working for us in this century. All of our institutions more or less were designed for less centuries problems, and they are not fit for purpose in this century. Yeah, that's the thing that strikes me too is just you know how will we, how will we steer it that's that's the thing that's been just obsessing me to you know and I'm wondering what you think Ali how will we as a society get there. I mean I think it to me it's about using this moment of this calm like we have a break in business as usual and kind of what we've been dreaming of and we were doing it by blocking streets but guess what someone knows blocked it for us. And now it's about not falling too much into the I'm at home and I'm going to introspect and I'm going to become and and I mean it's it's lovely and it's great to take time for yourself and for a bit but at the same time. I had this moment after a few days of social distancing and being mostly alone at home of saying, well you know I can focus on being the perfect citizen at home or I can focus on trying to get those like online fun courses you can get to get a next thing on your LinkedIn but in the end I was thinking you know who's not doing that eggs on mobile, you know who's not doing that all these big, big guys that are still in the political space but digitally. And so I think it's about realizing that we could be wasting time by kind of doing nothing at home. And obviously if you, you know some people don't have the luxury to think about this right now some people have rent to think about some people who are frontline workers but those of us that do have the time and the energy, really starting to strategize right now, as if you know we're strategizing. And we're doing that at the university level by we're doing so much more intake than ever before we're doing more training calls, we're actually kind of lobbying our own student unions into getting them to have a to declare real strikes as if it was like labor strikes but for climate which hasn't actually been done before, despite the fact that we call them climate strikes so I guess it's just kind of telling yourself. Okay, like this moment is is not only it would be nice to act like crucial. So, kind of power mapping and kind of a campaign in a way at this point. Yeah, I think we need to pay attention to what the systems that we have in place are bringing about I think we need to recognize that those systems actually made us critically vulnerable to this current pandemic disaster, in ways that also make us vulnerable to the ecological crisis to the climate crisis to this crisis of inequality and systemic oppression. This short term is a short term thinking this infatuation with economic growth, right, both of those, and this kind of over connectedness as well this, you know, need to be so connected with everything all the time and not to be able to take a step back, not to be able to think about the need for resilience and buffers. That's what produced this madness right it's what produced the pandemic in the first place the zoonotic disease getting into humans. It's what produced escaping from China because people, the nations were not willing to shut down their borders. Before we knew that the disease was in our country, why would we wait, it just doesn't make sense. And then once we knew it was in get within Canada. Yeah, and just the same as in every other nation, every nation waited until there was clear evidence of community spread basically within their own nation before they're willing to take physical distancing better. Why wait, right. So this like lack of preventative action is just a systematic problem. And it's partly also that obsessive that obsession with economic growth where the real economic impacts that we knew would happen if we shut down flights, right, the concern about the couple of weeks of doing that that might have been prevented prevented us from doing it and saving what is going to be now years of a much larger shadow. So it's just crazy short term thinking that we have institutionalized throughout society. Are we just not capable as a species of thinking to that degree to that long term plan do you think is it is it a fatal flaw in our species I just have to ask. Do you think I don't know what you think Ali I mean I was going to say you know, maybe if anything this crisis has proved how not ready we were for climate catastrophe and chaos. So it goes two ways either we think we just really are bad at this whole planning ahead and like whatever or it's it's that lesson that we have been waiting for but I think we are capable I think we plan ahead in many ways. The indigenous cultures do it very very well by rooting it in in the way they tell stories by talking about the seven generations but you know, talking about what kind of ancestors they want to be so I think we knew how to do it at some point, and some of us still do. Yeah, no I mean that's a great point right like many indigenous cultures have shown through their sustainable management of their resources that absolutely it's possible to plan ahead right. But I think there is a crucial difference at this moment in time and that is through our global connectivity and the massive growth that has happened in just a few generations, such that we can't say that we understood the phenomenon of pandemic is really you know until this moment right. Most nobody had really had lived through almost nobody had lived through the Spanish flu from over 100 years ago right just very few people and they didn't have a memory of it. And so you know we were lulled into this position of thinking that oh it can't be worse than SARS or murders right and and and with that notion we didn't take actions that would have been appropriate given the uncertainty that absolutely it could be worse. You know, and so I think the real test Elena is for us to have having our lack of preventiveness and the mass, the massive problem that that produced be revealed now that that's been revealed. Can we then look to the climate crisis and say look, we need to be prevented about that to the ecological crisis which is so closely linked to that we need to prevent these in a systematic and systemic way. That we you know have not yet been doing. The other part of this that has been so striking to me is to look at what happened to carbon emissions during these weeks of pandemic so during April I think it was emissions went down something like on a day on a day comparing day to day from a year and that was when billions of us I think 4 billion were shot at home and still emissions only went down 17%. So it just speaks to me of this whole anguished debate or discourse that we've been having in our in the public space about, you know, how my personal actions affect, you know, affect the carbon crisis and to me it talks about systems that are, of course connectedness that what you've just been talking about kind of also other systems of how we run our economy that are the things that need to change it's not just all of us sat at home, you know, eating our kale, you know, you know it's it's much more profound than that and I think this was a great example, it was just, it was stunning to me to see that the drop was just that low. I saw so many disappointed people on Twitter, you know, messaging like, well, what do we do like, I mean, we cut it completely. No, but I and I don't know if this is just me sometimes I feel pessimistic saying that but I feel like sometimes we struggle. And I've actually noticed it a little bit more in North America than even when I was in Europe. We kind of struggle admitting when something is very wrong and we struggle staying in some sort of sadness for a long time or we struggle dealing with. Wow, we're really in big trouble we struggle with that because we right away. The first thing people tell me is, it's so negative give me a solution right away. And I want to give solutions but first you need to stay in the problem and get the problem and be okay with it and just like Robbie was saying with with white supremacy and racism you have to stay in it to understand it until you can. So I feel like we might, that might be playing into it, you know, we, we don't accept to be in that discomfort for a while. You mean discomfort with changing big systems is that what you're talking about as opposed to, because it's easy to recycle right I mean that that that stuff, that's the really easy stuff. The hard, the hard work is the stuff that Kai you've written about in that in the, is exactly the roadmap that you wrote is precisely what we're talking about here. It's the contradiction of the environmental movement as people have received it versus as you know systems theorists think about it right so so the way that people have received the climate crisis, just because most of the people who talk about it then relate it in terms of what can you do as an individual. So the perception is oh as an individual I need to recycle I should drive a little less I should fly less I should meet once a week, you know, or whatever. Right, it's like some collection of these things, and there's two issues right with the statistic that you mentioned, which are really troubling. It was so worrying to me Ali just as you noticed that many people thought oh so all that they said to do was only ever going to be this helpful. And it's like well hold on a second that's that's not quite true right so the first bit is that there are timelines to these things. Right, so, for example if you live in Alberta, your energy is mostly coming from coal fire power plants. Those coal fire power plants are not going to be shut down, because there's a dip of 30% of, you know, of electricity, for example, right, they're going to keep going at full capacity because it takes a long time to scale them back and all these timelines in the system that mean that it you'd have to cut your actions for say a year or more before you would realize the benefits of that. But the second part is that it is not mostly about the little things that we can do as individuals, it is about the systems in place. Have you guys taken a global foot and ecological footprint calculator, and if you ever look to see what happens, if you say that you know, I'm a saint basically like I do nothing wrong, I do everything all the best. And if you live in Canada, the calculator will tell you that you're still using up more than, more than the resources that you should use up as an individual in order for us to collectively all be sustainable. It's so disheartening to people, but it's because we need to work as individuals to change these systems. That's the reality, right? We need to take seriously that kind of the fact that our federal government and provincial government spending effectively subsidizes the fossil fuel industry in a way that is just built into our economies that is propelling both this massive climate crisis. We need to take that seriously and despite the pains, we need to figure out ways to change that, right? And there will be pains, and there will be people who are put out by that in a major way and we need to compensate them and be willing to do that if we're not the ones who are suffering. And it's not just Canada. I mean, this is the global situation is that those exact changes need to ripple through. It's so interesting to me that some governments have said, we're not sure whether it's going to happen, but they've said that they will take this moment in history to this unique moment, you know, when people are already shut down, when people are already thinking about the future and thinking about safety and thinking about working collectively, at least in some parts of the world. They're saying governments that they will use this moment to move forward on a green agenda. And I'm just, should I believe that? Good question. I mean, there's parts you can believe. For example, you know, all of a sudden our world was focused on lives. Imagine if every day governments came out and said, so the GDP is, and instead of saying the number of cases or death, people would be like booing them and saying we don't care about that. But you know, I think there was a reaction. We can believe that maybe new indicators will be put more forward, especially if we show that the public cares about it. I do believe governments might might see the advantage of being so transparent or as transparent as they've ever been for me at least so I've never seen my elected officials communicate so much with me as in the past few weeks. I've been reciprocating in a better energy instead of just writing them when I was angry. I was also just saying thanks for the update, you know, and so hopefully these things, I feel like I was kind of hoping to, you know, like reinforce their good behavior. So hopefully that kind of had an effect. You know, I think that we can believe them to a degree, but we also need to remember the scale of the spending that is going into that clean energy transition. Sure, absolutely some of the funding that is that has gone towards pandemic recovery has gone just as requested by many environmental groups towards this rejuvenation of the economy towards a clean energy economy and that's super. We need to remember the scale of that spending in relation to the scale of the spending for fossil fuel companies and for airlines and and the rest right and and and the conditions that are attached to those bailouts right that that is absolutely crucial. And so without those there's a real danger that whatever spending we go we put in towards the clean economy transition will be absolutely dwarfed by all this spending that blocks us into the current economy. Absolutely. You know, I guess I guess where I'm really going with this is I wonder, what power do we have as citizens to force change or to press change. What do you think. I feel like the first one, and that people might have realized with the past protests and even riots is that the idea of democracy where we just voted every four or five years in some countries and then forgot about it was really not democracy it was like a really, really run down version of it. Because I keep seeing these people, especially my age that are like, wait, people have protested for a week and changed happened. And so I think we realize we have power when we're really loud and insistent, and not just politely asking for change every four years, which can can be upsetting because you think I actually have to put in a lot a lot of work. But I think we should be honest about that may sometimes the environmental movement is not honest about that we try to always make it seem like the transition is going to be all happy and really smooth and so easy and we're just going to send a few letters to our amp and tomorrow we're going to be fine. But I think it is going to, I honestly think it's going to take massive massive protests and and some unrest and, and we're kind of ready for that the youth knows that it's kind of, it might happen and it's okay if it does, that's what's needed. Even beyond. So even thinking about the electoral cycle, there's still more, much more that we can do, you know, that because historically, many of us have just accepted the kind of suite of offerings that we have. And then frankly, in many cases, none of those are really sufficient for attacking the climate crisis and the ecological crisis and the rest of it right there. They're not going far enough. And so we just need to expect more and when it's not offered, we need to be willing to step up, you know, and and to and to really show what it is that it would take and so hopefully Ali when she's done will will run for office and we can I was going to ask if you were running if this is a way of announcing your candidacy right now. Oh, we're not doing that. But yeah, I mean, I really think that's absolutely crucial and for, and what it's going to take is also I think, for these crucial structural issues that really mean the difference between a happy, sustainable planet and one that is really unsettled unsafe, insecure, and, and deeply unjust, that we put those key priorities as ones that Trump all the rest, right? It's not can't be like economy or the environment. No, no, no, it's got to be, we have to get certain things right. And the rest of the stuff that makes a marginal difference to people's lives. Absolutely. We'll do the best that we can within those parameters. I guess I wonder whether, you know, why we haven't expected more I mean we know we we are not. It's not a surprise to us that the stakes are really high not just us here here viewing and you know but people in the world generally know that really we've got a big mess this is not a big surprise. And so why haven't we expected more why haven't we insisted. The world is, it's, it's a complicated new world that we have not we were not evolved to deal with, you know, where, historically, we evolved in context of groups of, you know, up to 100 mostly, where most of our actions that affected the environment would be experienced by that group of 100 people could witness it they would experience it they would resent those who did raw, right, and it was so very tangible and immediate and direct. And now we're in this context where every day we buy products that are coming from countless nations right in terms of the raw materials and the component products that get assembled and then, you know, just shipped over to one place and then you know, held by a retail like all of these different nations are affected every day by our consumer actions, and we just don't have the means of ensuring that that consumer action has a net positive impact on plan. And that's crucial right historically we could do that we could make sure that we were having a net positive impact on our local environment in terms of both what it meant for nature possibly and also for the people there. And we can't do that right. And so countries that are there I mean you've got to say look at New Zealand look at Iceland I'm going to say, you know, Scotland Finland I think are are part of what's known as a well being economy and they they that's their metric are our people doing well is the environment doing well all our citizens actually thriving. But it seems like it's such a fledgling movement. Yeah I know but it's more than that so I'm talking about individual purchases, right so it is just it is so normal within our current economic system to externalize environmental and social costs and it's just worked into the system such that everything that we buy comes with negative environmental and social consequences. You know the shrimp that you buy may may come on the backs of slave labor in, you know, in various less developed countries. It also comes with, you know, every pound of shrimp come served with a four to 10 pounds of sea turtles and albatrosses and, you know, in other ocean creatures right and so we can't help but have those negative effects on the planet but but we could conceivably right. So what I like to imagine is a world where every time you made a purchase like that at the moment it would have these negative effects, but imagine that every time that you made a purchase like that you also out small amount of money from that purchase went towards citizens groups and community organizations and NGOs and and even some of the you know the government in order to mitigate those negative effects right so imagine that when you buy on a shrimp, you've also got a payment. Yes, it does mean a risk to see turtles and albatrosses but you've got a separate payment that goes towards installing turtle excluder devices in shrimp fishing nets or even in tune so that on the whole when you add it up and this is not perfect right it's an offset on the whole you could still have a net positive impact on wildlife and the ocean right it would be a solution for the transition right so that you start to use that pressure to bring about better practices in the first place so that the turtles are not getting caught in the first place. But you know, it would be one way that we could have new social norms right that we could say. Yeah, you're talking about there is is is breaking some of the, again, the stories that we're telling us about how we are here on the world and that's what I'm wondering about. When I look at this moment that we're in this historical moment with the pandemic with the with the protests with with things that, as I said before that the story seems to be fraying and I'm wondering, is this the moment when we can rewrite those those elements of this story that we live by. Allie, what do you do you think I don't. So I try, I feel like I'm always a pessimist but I try to never romanticize them any moment, because then I feel like we deceive people and I don't want to do that. I don't want to say, we're going to bring all of this and about the end of this pandemic we are going to be better people because we might not be we've seen racism research during the pandemic we've seen a lot of things. I do think we can and we should be ourselves and especially if you're, you know, as content creators as creators as people that have some sort of voice or recenter you know saying what Kai is saying we used to be in communities where we could see everybody and now our individualism is pushed much more through the media we consume through everything we have we're being told at the same time I feel like we're also being squeezed of a lot of things you know and we're being told you have to fight for yourself in this world like you have to kind of a competition you have to get others out they tell us that in university because we're always ranked compared to each other they tell us that. And so I think, you know, for example, if there's you know like professors thinking of this they can change so in all of our roles, changing the culture the values behind it, that might help and that's what the pandemic might allow because we maybe have the time to think about it, have the chance to think about it. I'm still on the fence about how much will fully be changed by the end of this. But I do think it's a momentum to see. So I do think it's not going to happen automatically, but, but people that have any position of power and I do think you know teacher is a position of power in many ways. Any leadership position is, they have the power to use this pandemic to do it. I think any moment can be the moment you know for for any individual person it's not going to be the moment for everybody at the same time but for me it was a few years ago where I think the climate crisis was just so pressing that I just for me it was just a pivotal moment when I just said look, I, I'm going to do two things. I'm going to I'm going to mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions as best I can. It's not perfect through carbon offsets but through the best ones that I can get not the cheap ones on market. And for my heating my home and for driving my car and I'm just going to I'm going to tell everybody that that's what I think that we should all be doing if we can. For me that's a new social month. The second thing that I'm going to do is I'm also going to work towards reducing those right because reducing my flights and reducing the rest in intangible ways. And so I've been campaigning to stop traveling so much for work and for other purposes and and we'll continue to try to push for that. And actually there's three things. The last one is that because it's not just climate and because we are also affecting the ecological world through other means through land degradation and through direct harvest and all the rest of it. I'm also going to work to make it possible for people to have that positive impacts on all of nature, not just through climate. I think what Kai is showing is just exactly what I think we're all dreaming about is that every person in their role and in who they are, find the pathway to changing things. And so, you know, people will ask me what should I do and I'm like I don't know I've never had your job in my life. I really don't know what an electrical engineer should be doing right now. But you know, you know yourself best you know who in your family can change seeing my own parents change. My dad who, you know worked more in the finance sector and now changes and will call up people saying that's not even real investment in SDGs. You know things like that my mom who worked in communications and now wants to work in communications for the climate, you have the power to change but only what you know and what you are in, you know. So what Kai was just kind of exemplifying is whatever your specialty is whatever your role in society is. That's the one thing you can really really change. But how do you change the systems within which we work, because it is more than just changing one's own personal footprint. It's, you know, as the 17%, you know, however we look at it. As that showed it's it's more than that and that's where that's where I'm taking hope from seeing people taking to the streets on on, you know, on white supremacy saying look we're just not going to stand for this anymore we were done. It seems to me that that's what I'm seeing and I'm seeing a lot of, I'm seeing a lot of recreation I'm seeing. I'm seeing art is actually what I'm seeing I'm seeing people even now in these early days making meaning from all of this with art and I, I just feel like there's, there's the potential here. Now because we're so mobilized because there's so much energy out there saying look we are not going to stand for this anymore and you know in my life, I have not seen this precise thing. I mean I guess maybe it happened 5060 years ago but I haven't seen this and so I'm, I don't think it just ends with the pandemic I don't think that that energy just just goes away and becomes, you know, neutralized I think that there is a residue here and I think the residue will show up I hope in the stories that we're able to write about what our society means and and what we're here for that is that that's what I'm thinking that that I know it's not a guarantee but I just I just feel like this might be that this can't have all happened for nothing in a sense. I mean I agree that the arts tap into this part of us this like emotional self that is so key for those transformative moments in the way that like statistics never was right not for most people anyway. And so yeah I mean what is it going to take to change those systems I mean so it's those political pressures that we were talking about before as well as the pressure on companies right because it we really can expect more from companies we can boycott and and those boycotts can actually mean something so you know across the system, it is a kind of call it's for activity, you know to really put pressure where pressure needs to be put and to demand more not to say except no for an answer. We're going to start accepting questions in a few minutes just just to let you know so I just want to prepare our audience for the for that thrilling moment when you can enter questions on our hashtag which is hashtag field notes. TC is I have to check that but but I guess I guess what I want to before we go right there I just want to say do you think it's. Do you think it's going to take all of us I mean is there. What is the critical mass that's that's needed to really I mean you both have thought about this a lot I just. You know it feels like we're all together now and I'm just wondering if it's enough. I think there's that number going around of like 3% of the population is enough to create a revolution or something I have no clue where they found that but we like to say it a lot in our calls because we counted how many university students we had just in Quebec and Ontario, and we have more than 3% so that's that was, but I think you know I think it's seriously will take all of us and it will take a lot from from many of us at least. And that sometimes a little sad to hear, but at the same time it's, I like this, I like to think about it because it's telling you you can all be activists. Once again in the roles you play, and it's no longer a big word to be an activist. I think an activist just means standing for something you believe in, and you can be. I love to see doctors coming to climate strikes because they have that position society that people trust them I love to see people artists especially saying you know my art is activism but not in a way that should be controversial activist just means we're going to push all of us and each other towards the white way. And I think it might also take all of us holding each other accountable, which is a bit of a hard part but it's. I don't know maybe I'll and I told you this before but I have this one friend and sometimes when either of us feel like we're getting less radical we say like when the things every day life just gets us tired, we call each other and you know I'll say, I need you to radicalize me again, I'll start saying stuff and get to be angry and I'm back. And so I think we need to do that for each other, maybe in a less formal way but we need to do that. I don't think it's going to take all of us. Honestly, I think they're going to be laggards and I think that's going to be fine. I think that, you know, there's enough power in convince convicted minority and then you know, hopefully it'll be a majority I think it, it'll probably just take a majority, and that there will be some folks who who just are never brought on board who are grumbling but who learn to live with it learn to accept it. And, and, but I think, you know, to get it rolling so that 3% figure that Ali threw around for it comes from the literature on what has brought about social transformations in the past, mostly around kind of human And so social issues through disruptive activities through nonviolent disruptive activities. And that's the 3% figure and that's the logic of extinction rebellion, etc. But for, for those of us who aren't willing to, you know, sit on a bridge for 14 hours and get arrested, for example, then, then you're, you know, you're not counted in that 3% you're in the rest of it but you can still play a really crucial role in facilitating that. I totally agree with Ali's point that that all of us can play a crucial role even though it won't need to be all of us in order for this battle to be one. And they'll all be different roles probably we all won't be doing something. We have a question from Twitter this is from Sean McManus. And it's maybe age nine is asking us, what should kids do to help climate change, should we do more climate strikes. I'm super biased, but no, no, stay home and just Yes, I think we all agree. Yes, definitely. And even more than that, I would say explain very well to especially your parents or anybody that, you know, deeply cares for you in your life why, because when you start explaining why it, it, I think it hit my parents very hard when I told them I strike because I'm so scared that my degree is going to be worthless because we're just going to have to deal with, you know, this chaos. I'm scared to think about having a family and as a as a young woman that's a really weird question, not because of you know population control reasons at all but just because I don't know if I want to impose that on a new person coming on earth I don't want to impose the same worries I have so yes I think you have to strike and say why like shamelessly Ah, okay, what about you Kai what do you I totally, I totally yeah I know I don't have anything useful that just resounding yes absolutely. Okay, here's another question from Alexis Liana. How do we help the people who will lose their livelihoods as we transform the system. Is that a myth, or will jobs be replaced by new work created by the change. That's a Kai question. Yeah, sure I'll take that we have to attend to this front and center it is really crucial. When we think about an economic transition, it is going to mean new ways of working, and that is going to be harder on individuals than it is on companies. For companies individuals are substitutable right and they use that logic unfortunately individuals are tied to the skills that they have and to the, you know the places that they live and they have so many other constraints that are imposed upon them. And so it is incumbent upon us as a society to be really attentive to those who whose jobs are getting squeezed out as as we think about the kind of economy that we need for the next 50 years next 100 years. And that means being really serious about retooling retraining programs, and then also about compensation packages for those for for whom that will not work. It is true, absolutely that a clean energy economy will likely yield more jobs in total. Eventually, it may they may also be equally paying jobs at the moment fossil fuel jobs in the fossil fuel industry are generally better jobs in the sense of, you know, higher benefits and higher salaries, although there are many more jobs in the clean economy, clean energy economy. So, you know, there are some real differences and we have to be willing to make that possible for people who are going to suffer because some people will. The reality is that we need the skills of the people who are in those jobs now it's not we, you know, our, our society will need those skills, read it, you know, diverted into some other types of jobs, I guess, is this is about justice isn't it it's about climate justice ultimately it's not just about forcing everybody into some little, you know, doing the exact same thing at the same moment. We have time for one more question. This is our final question before we end this is from Mike calling. Does the panel have any concrete ideas about how we can leverage our new degree of community mindedness as a result of coven 19 in order to address climate change. Are there any practical steps we can use to leverage this new political reality. Great question. One thing that some communities have done is to make a pledge for carbon neutrality within a decade or you know it'll depend on what the community is as to what time horizon makes sense but, but there are communities around Canada that have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050 or earlier, and they're tracking and they're making amazing progress to do so absolutely, we can do that. You know when when we break it down the steps towards that are varied, they're different. Right, I mean, it has everything to do with changing the electricity supply, you know, providing incentives for people to have solar panels and wind farms in in that vicinity. But lots of different steps and then there are tools that are available that I'd be happy to help point people towards if they're interested. Okay, what about you Allie, what do you say. I mean I fully agree I think it'd be amazing. I know there's a lot of groups communities that have gotten together and closer during coven to help each other. And it'd be great that you formalize this new relationship you have to each other by becoming a just recovery group but a group that cares about not only during coven but after coven and you decide that as a collective. And I mean, I, I love community led initiatives and I love the very grassroots and I'm not saying that because it sounds good by I've noticed that that's where there's the most creativity actually that comes from and big groups in the environmental movement are awesome for resources for like having tools for us and things like that but where ideas come from where really a lot of energy, a lot of diversity of minds is is usually those community groups that kind of come to us or join us or. So I, I hope that people can kind of make that transition to we cared for each other now during this time. How do we maybe like formalize it like pledge to as kind of saying pledge to caring after. Okay. I have one last question for for us to consider here and I and then we'll we'll have to say good night but I, the question is, is just how do you think this is going to end. I don't I don't want to predict the future yeah what I want people to do because I think that like really it's up to us right and that's where I want to end it I want to end it with people thinking about how you know just as you did with that amazing McLean's article that you wrote about 13 months ago. That thought about what the world could look like in 2050 if we actually address these problems and I think that that's, that's what we need to do in this moment we need to envision what that world looks like. Right now, not to imagine all the negative scenarios like yes, those might come about but we have the power to bring about that better world, a world in which we are actually, you know we have a well knitted social fabric that you were talking about is becoming that we are not contributing further to climate change and actually starting to already reverse to decrease the atmospheric concentration of pollutants that we're solving these problems that we have clean water and abundant life in forests and rivers and lakes that we have, you know coral reefs, still on our planet right like let's imagine that planet and living happily within that and let's be convinced by that conviction to work towards that every day. Yeah. I don't think I could top what I just said but I do agree that just like we could not have predicted what 2020 had in mind for us and so much happened. I didn't try to predict it because we might be more pessimistic than we, than we might actually end up. So, maybe it's more thinking, where could we possibly end up like what's the, what's the best case scenario and how do we get there, but really dare dream about it now just say, Oh, it'd be nice to be in a just recovery not know what it means. Like, I want to imagine myself in a city where there's never a car and there's all these things and there's, there's green everywhere and you know I want to imagine it and be able to say it and say it and no one laughs about everything are you crazy so it's more like where do we, what Kai said where do we want to be, and what's the best that could happen, really. Right. For me it's, you know for me I have to go back to the arts because that's what feeds me and I'm thinking of a, of a note I got the other day from a poet who was writing about this time his name is Paul Kings north he's British. And he sent this note and he said he had that he has the sense that we have all gone into a folk tale in which we have drunk a magic potion and his magic potion has brought out in us the things that we most need and least want. And I thought, you know it's going to take art to explain to us that those are both the same things, and, and to try to figure out how it is that we maneuver how we write a new ending to all of this because I do think that that's what's needed a new, a new story to our society of what we're here for, and, and what we really truly want in our lives. I'm sensing a new play here. I'm sensing a new play coming on. I'm excited. That's that's hilarious. And so, with that I think we will, we will end in this moment I just want to say in this moment it really feels like anything is possible if we really if we dream about it if we envision it if we, if we write it if we if we make it make meaning out of it. Somehow with art forms with with our words and our emotions and our, and our, our hearts, our love and so I wonder from our audience, can you tell us, let us know what you think about that what anything is possible in this moment what do you think we should do with it. I hope you tell us on social media. Good night. Thanks for being here. Thanks you guys. Thank you, Holly. Thanks Kai. Take care. Good night. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.