 Good day to you. I'm Steve Lobb, sailor, fisherman, and boat builder, now living in Montpelier. I want to know more about the natural environment of Vermont and also how our natural environment is changing. So today we talk with Charles Johnson. He is former Vermont State naturalist, a 20-year veteran of the Coast Guard working out of Maine, and author of several books and articles on the natural history of Vermont and New England. He has worked with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, the Smithsonian Institution, the Explorers Club, and many other well-known environmental organizations. He holds PhD in environmental studies from UVM. So welcome to the conversation, Charles. Thank you, Steve. As a sailor and fisherman of oceans of the world, I'm especially interested in phenomena relating to Vermont's waterways and also recent trends in water quality and wildlife. You have written a lot on northern ecosystems, on biological clocks of plants and animals, on new critters to Vermont, an article on what is the world coming to with the greenhouse effect. I want to read from your book, The Nature of Vermont. This is an introduction and guide to a New England environment written, I believe, in the 90s. First edition was 1980. And then there was a reprint. 1998. And now we are trying to bring it up to date, in a sense. Because I remember in your introduction you mentioned in this edition that 20 years ago you wrote the book. And then you made this edition. And now I guess we're roughly 20 years beyond that. Ready for another one. So that's what we want to pick your mind about what has happened in these last 20 years. In the introduction to The Nature of Vermont, you say, Vermont is dotted with almost 600 lakes covering almost a quarter of a million acres. It is crisscrossed with waterways nearly 8,000 miles of streams and rivers. It has more than 200,000 acres of wetlands. Perhaps only half of what were here prior to European contact, representing less than 4% of the state land base. Then you go on to say, in the section under ponds and lakes, many outside influences can change the course of development of a pond or lake. The rate of sedimentation, water quality, base in depth, and the speed of water flowing through them are all important factors. Great quantities of fertilizers coming from agricultural runoff and phosphates from detergents have resulted in abnormally fast and luxuriant plant growth in many lakes, causing clogging of shallow bays with water weeds and premature aging of the lakes. This is a great problem in portions of Lake Champaign and other water bodies. You also mentioned here about zebra mussels and Eurasian water mill foil that has spread to over 38 lakes, and then you speak of acid rain. The modern phenomena of acid rains turning our rainwater into mild acids by the reaction of industrial air pollutants, particularly sulfur, with atmospheric moisture, has altered the basic water chemistry of many lakes and adversely affected the wildlife populations within them. The problems are most severe in the Adirondacks where lakes have become acid baths and entire fish populations have been wiped out. So I'm interested to know about the balance or unbalance of fish and bird species in Lake Champaign. So talk about, to start with, invasive species. Well, big subject. Over the 40 years of this book, it's amazing, and over my life here, I came to Vermont in 73, I've seen amazing changes. Not about Lake Champaign, right, per se, but, well, there, of course, elsewhere across the state, and I was thinking, as you were talking, about one animal in particular, when I first came here, there were no moose in Vermont, zero. Then their numbers built up to where they were not only relatively abundant, but they were huntable. We, you know, now have a season on moose. But in the last decade or so, the numbers have been going down due to a variety of reasons, so that once again, you know, they're uncommon or headed that way. So over a long span of 40 years or more, you can begin to see these things happening. I've seen, in Lake Champaign, I've seen the clogging of many shallow bays with algae and blue-green, blooms of blue-green bacteria. They've been in the news a lot in the Sisquoi Bay, St. Albans Bay, the south part of the lake, where they've actually had, you know, closed beaches, had actually deaths. Two dogs died in the 90s from drinking the water where blue-green bacteria were blooming. So we saw these blooms before, but they've been coming more and more frequent. And if you've sort of followed legislature the last couple of years, you'll notice extreme attention being paid to water quality of Lake Champaign, deterioration, and also what can be done about preventing pollution coming in from the watersheds. So it's a big deal. It's a big problem. And because of the change in climate, the change in acidity, there have been a lot of changes in the fish populations as well and other organisms. Forty years ago there were no zebra mussels. Now they're so prevalent that they've changed the water quality. Some people say for the better because it's cleared up some of the sediments that would obscure underwater vision, but now the waters are clear in areas where zebra mussels are abundant but different. I've seen Eurasian water mill foil absolutely shut down some harbors such as Lake Bombazine. There are new things coming in all the time. Most recently, one of the most recent is the little spiny water flea, which is a crustacean, which was apparently introduced from ballast discharge in the Great Lakes. It's made its way here in the last couple, three years, and now it's everywhere. And that's detrimental to native fish. They get stuck in their digestive tracts. Fishmen get their lines all snarled up with this little creature. So it's a real... And it happened within a couple of years, this incredible... I understand that the Great Lakes are inundated with zebra mussel. And I've seen pictures on documentaries where literally the whole bottom is covered. You can see that in Vermont. A few years ago I went to the water treatment plant outlet at South Burlington, and where it goes into the water, you can see where just tons of zebra mussels, they've clogged the intakes and the outfalls. And in the Great Lakes, which is more open to the sea ways where the ships come in, I read that they have as many as 28 new invasive species every 28 days on average coming in. We have a new fish in the lake, the alewife, which is a native fish, but in the ocean on the coast. And it was introduced here as now become a real problem with predation on other native species. So what I've seen over my career and my life here is this seemingly accelerated influx of endangered species, not only aquatic, but terrestrial as well. Buckthorn, the Tarterian honeysuckle. Now moving north is the garlic mustard, which is a very invasive species. And on and on it goes. So interstate, if you drive toward Burlington in the summer, you'll see these beautiful swaths of white flowers that go on for miles. This is the wild chervil. It's a new invasive that's choking out native grasses and forage grasses on farms. So there just seem to be more and more and more frequent. As you speak about the Great Lakes and the shipping, we must consider that Lake Champlain is connected with the whole world and the oceans of the world and the vessels transporting goods and creatures from everywhere in the world. Lake Champlain is part of the water system. We might mention something about salmon, farmed salmon in pens, which I'm told 80% of those fish have disease. And that if you went to any local supermarket and took that farmed fish to the laboratory, you would need it. And this is super scary on many levels. But the salmon from Norway to East Coast in Canada to West Coast and British Columbia where it's sort of the center of salmon. And now Chile last year lost two billion in money because their whole salmon industry of diseased fish, parasites, went under. And so when we try to compare Lake Champlain with many other places in the world, which water-wise it's a part of, there's a lot to consider there. Absolutely. And not to belabor a current point, but we're not going to build walls around Vermont. We are. We're all connected. If the modern era teaches us anything is that we're not an island. We're connected to our air, our water, our land is all connected to the rest of the world. And that's been one of the big reasons why I think that invasive species have come in so rapidly and so in an accelerated way is that we have, you know, we communicate very quickly at all levels. We travel at will. We ship our goods here, there and everywhere. So it's unrealistic for us to expect that we're not going to be affected by our actions. So it's a huge issue that you raised and, you know, how do we sustain ourselves at the same time as sustaining the wild world? And to me, you know, population increase, increasing, it's doubled in my lifetime on earth, the human population. And everyone needs a place to stay, food to eat, place to live. Where does it come from? It comes from the earth, obviously. So we keep trying to figure engineer our way out of it. So we farm fish at the expense of wild fish because we've taken all the wild fish for food. I'm being a little hyperbolic here. But we don't consider the consequences of engineering our way into this, like you mentioned with the salmon. Also, with many other, you know, our farms, our Midwestern farms, for example, monocultures of corn and wheat bringing with it pesticides and all the problems that come with that. So it's a huge, huge issue and one that we can't cover. Let's think about acidification. Here in your book, Boggs of the Northeast, you mentioned, acidity is a major reason fish are unable to survive in ponds, pools and streams. Low pHs are toxic to fish in several ways. In water with a pH below 6.1 level of pH, the eggs of most species become severely deformed. Below a pH of 4.0, eggs fail to develop. The acidity also impairs calcium metabolism of the adults and the oxygen absorbing capabilities of their gills. In Boggs, this is a basically natural phenomenon. But what about Vermont and Lake Champlain? This brings a question to me. One night in late November of 2016, I was sailing on Lake Champlain and hit a rocky shoal when the lake was down in depth by around eight feet. The boat came to a halt. I instinctively jumped into the relatively warm 60 degree water to push off the shoal and then crawled back aboard in 30 degree air temperature. Amazing how the water seems so warm in comparison to the air and made me wonder sailing back to Burlington that night how this warm winter water could affect the lake environment. Acidification due to CO2 rise and warmth, warmer oceans is drastically affecting the marine environment and food chain globally. So my question to you is, do we have a problem with acidification in Lake Champlain? Well, I think it depends on where you are. The Champlain basin is within a very rich limestone region. Marble and limestone geologically going back to when this area was part of a shallow ocean. So it's got a lot of limestone that in effect produces calcium, which is a buffer for acid precipitation. So on the Vermont side in particular where the limestone tends to run up and down north-south, the limey sweet waters tend to buffer acidification. In areas which are less so, over toward New York perhaps, there are regions which you could probably detect some increasing acidification. In recent years the topic of global climate change, global warming and regional warming has taken over some of the conversation from back in the 70s and 80s and all the talk was about acid rain, acid precipitation. But they work in tandem obviously that the warmer temperatures in Vermont, it's undeniable that it's getting warmer, the freezing over of the Lake Champlain is less and less frequent and if it does freeze over the duration is less, that obviously changes what's going on in the water with the water circulation. The temperature is rising, that changes when plants die and start to decompose, that changes the rate of decomposition, changes the fish population. So there's a whole dynamic going on here that is in concert with the acidification in some parts, but also with warmer temperatures and particularly in the winter because that's when you get the lake sealed off and there's not this atmospheric interchange. So it's all part of this complex sort of mosaic of environmental issues related to climate change. Alright, that's very interesting about the limestone. Yeah, that's one that the ponds and lakes in the Adirondacks have been acidified so dramatically because they don't have limestone. And so the granite there has no buffering capacity so any input of this acid precipitation will have a dramatic effect. There is no buffering effect from the surrounding bedrock. Wow, that's very interesting. Your book called Ice Ship as a sailor, this is one book that I really like. Ice Ship is about the Fram, the most famous research vessel ever which did research in North and South Poles and there's nothing since the 1800s that has done so much original work as the Fram and I'll read just one section here and then I'll let Charles tell us more about the Fram. This book is so detailed, so well done that it's kind of like my current Bible sitting right there beside the computer. Anyway, here we are. Nansen, that's Friedhof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, knew that Greenland had no real trees of its own and that the coastal dwelling Inuit used indeed dependent on great quantities of tree-sized driftwood. He determined that the driftwood was from Siberian origin. He determined that the mud that was frozen in the ice that reached Greenland on the east side was similar to the mud from Siberia. He found seeds that came from Siberia to Greenland and then he studied the best he could because there was so little knowledge about the polar currents and then added in a little Earth rotation and came up with his idea that if he started far north of Alaska and got frozen in to the ice, then he can travel with the ice on his research ship as a research station all the way around to eastern Greenland and remarkable feet. And I think we discussed that in 2019, the polar stern of the German ship will be doing the same repeat of that in modern era. With a lot more knowledge. With a lot more knowledge that is based on his stuff. So anyway, talk to us about the Fram and Nansen. Well, the Fram still is. It's a museum in Oslo right now under its own roof, its own building. But it was a ship built in the late 1800s on Fridjof Nansen you mentioned, the famous Norwegian explorer. His idea that at the time no one knew what the Arctic was. No one had been there. No one had been beyond trying to poke into the ice fringe. So it was all supposition. By the way, the Arctic is a vast area. It's like five million square miles. And no one had explored virtually any of it except at the fringes. So the debate went on. Was the Arctic this region a continent? When you get past the ice? Or was it as a lot of people thought an open ocean, somehow that they felt that the Gulf Stream may have gotten up and gone through this ring of ice and then melted. So once you got past the ice, you could sail right to the pole. This was a very prevalent idea. Nansen, on the other hand, based on the evidence you just read, plus in the 1880s, an American ship, the Jeanette, was trying to discover the North Pole by way of Siberia. It went up through the Bering Strait, got frozen in above Siberia. Their idea was to try to make it through this fringe of ice and then sail up. And then if they hit the continent, then they would take dogs and sleds and go up to the pole. So they never got that far. They were frozen in off of Siberia. The ship was over a period of a year and a half. It finally sank. It's a dramatic story of some of the men dying, some not. But the interesting part from Nansen's point of view was that the remains of the Jeanette showed up three years later in Southern Greenland. And they knew it was from the Jeanette because Inuit seal hunters had found these articles on the ice. Southern Greenland, names of clothing, or clothing that had names of the sailors sewing in, log books, a checkbook, wreckage. So Nansen said, well, obviously this material drifted over the pole and they knew about the currents on the east side of Greenland. It came down the east side and that's where they found them. So the only way for him to prove his theory was to make himself a human guinea pig. So he had this idea of building a ship that could be frozen in the ice. And instead of being crushed, it would either be, it had a round hull with nothing protruding. The hull was two feet thick, double hull really. The bow and stern were four feet thick reinforced iron. Wow. The propeller and the rudder could be withdrawn into the ship. So when they were frozen in, they wouldn't get crushed. That was Achilles' heel of the ship. A whole bunch of things that were to make it. If the ice came to bear laterally, it would be squeezed up like a, the image was like a watermelon seed being squeezed between your thumb and forefinger. But if it happened to get caught, or then the ship would ride on the ice and then go where the ice went. If it happened to get caught, it was built so it could withstand these lateral pressures, which are incredible. I mean, they're immense pressure. So the inside was made insulated for a crew to live comfortably. And then in 1893, they sailed from Norway along the northeast passage trying to find where the Jeanette, trying to put themselves where the Jeanette had been frozen and they didn't quite make it that far. But they got frozen in, and in 1893 began, in the fall of 1893, began this drift. And they had no idea where they were going, how long it would take. They had provisioned the ship for five years. But to make this long story short, it took them three years of drifting with the ice, sometimes backwards, sometimes reversing, sometimes going in circles. Again, not knowing where, they knew where they were, but they didn't know what was in store. So three years later, the ship popped out of the ice above Norway and it made it back safely. The side story here is that Nansen got bored in the middle of the, in the middle of the, quote, crews and he decided he knew he was not going to make it quite to the north pole. The ship was on a track to go 400 miles south of it. So he was going to make a run for it to try to find the pole, first man ever. And he had another man built kayaks, two kayaks, and they took the 28 dogs that were on board and they made it, tried to make it to the pole. Never intending to rendezvous with the ship again. They didn't make it, but so they beat feet south to get to the ice before it frees up, which is in September, usually. When you say they didn't make it, what? It was too difficult. The pressure ridges and the weather was too difficult. And they were eating the dogs as they were going. They took provisions, but they were eating. The plan was they would eat, but they'd get to the pole and they'd get to the edge of the ice. All the dogs would have been eaten. They would jump in the kayaks and make it to somewhere, Spitsbergen or somewhere. And the two of them. So they made it to the edge of the ice, but it was too late for them to try to kayak. They knew that they needed to stay put. So they found an island, a stockpiled game. They shot polar bears and seals and walruses. Stockpiled, it's an incredible amount of flesh. And then built a cave out of walrus hide and they stayed in this thing for nine months. In one sleeping bag for warmth. And they were eating the food they'd stockpiled. They had one little seal oil lamp, but it was so dark and sooty inside that they had kept diaries, but they gave up on that because the pages got too black. And they said, well, we didn't have anything to say anyway. Can't be true from hell. The next summer they finally got off the island, made it to another island where they heard a dog barking. And they found a British team of explorers on this island. It turns out they were in France, Josephland, which is now a Russian archipelago. And the man who was on this island, his name is Frederick Jackson, a British explorer, who had applied to be on the from, but was rejected because Nansen wanted only Norwegian sailors. So now Jackson rescued Nansen and Johansson, the other man, and took them in their supply ship, took them back to Norway. And the irony is that the Nansen and Johansson had arrived there six days before the Fram arrived in different ports, but nonetheless... What a small world. Thirteen men, none died. And because of that, the ship and Nansen became famous. First, and they proved that the Arctic was an ocean of frozen ice. Wow. And so that's the first, that was its first story. The second one was the man who was second in command who took to Nansen, who took over when Nansen left the ship. It's Fairdrip, Otto's Fairdrip. Two years later, took the Fram on another extended voyage to the Canadian Arctic and mapped an amazing amount of new land off of Ellesmere Island. They spent four winters in the ice, not just three. And then during that time, they did sledging and surveying over an immense area. And then the final voyage was south to Antarctica by the famous Norwegian explorer, Raul Dammonsen, who ended up discovering the South Pole on that voyage. It's a long story. How he took the ship under false pretenses, pretending to go north. And then when he discovered, heard that the two Americans, Perry and Blanking on his name, had claimed to discover the North Pole. He decided, why bother going there? I'll take the ship and go south. So he ended up going to Antarctica. And in 1911, discovered the South Pole. So the ship had, in its 25-year career, had sailed or drifted 84,000 miles. It's still the ship that has been a wooden ship. It's been the farthest north and farthest south of any vessel. And as I said, it's residing in Oslo now for people to go visit inside in warmth and comfort. Well, as a boat builder, this is a fantastic story. Let me ask you. You were sailing recently off of Ellesmere Island. Tell us about that experience. Yeah, I wasn't sailing. My wife and I took two trips to Baffin Island, which is south of Ellesmere. It's due west of Greenland. But it's a 600-mile-long island that straddles the Arctic Circle. And we spent both times a couple of weeks with Inuit Guides and a small group. We would explore, we would go in there, wouldn't transport canoes down the major river, the Soper River, and then camp at night, and then we'd hike during the days. And then the next trip, we went further north. We went to a place called Panganertong, which is right south of the Iowa Weetook National Park, and hiked in there or something. So it's still a considerable distance south of Ellesmere, but nonetheless it's in that general vicinity. Being in the Arctic for me in that environment, not out on the land, it was probably the most remarkable experience I've had in traveling and seeing other parts of the world. For me, it made me feel totally insignificant and totally important all at the same time, this polarity of feeling. You're out there in this immense landscape and you're so vulnerable and so you depend on each other so much to survive. And the atmosphere, the knowledge that you're that far from human settlement, it really is like being on a long ocean cruise by yourself. But you had the intimate people with you. Right, and they were remarkable. Yeah, that's quite an interesting experience to be able to go there and see that part of the world. Is there anything else that you can think of concerning the Fram that we should know? Let's try to relate the purpose of building and discovery of the Fram. Let's try to relate that to today. And we know that in Vermont our weather comes from mostly Northern Canada, the Arctic, and the North Atlantic. Sometimes a bit from the south, but mostly our weather in Vermont is from the Northern Latitudes. So when we're considering weather phenomena in Vermont, we have to consider where it comes from. And the Polar Stan, the research vessel that will be going in 2019 for one year floating or encased in the ice traveling with the ice flow, they're one of their main observations and research is about the polar vortex. So maybe you could explain to us a little bit about how today with a changing climate how that polar vortex affects Vermont. There's been quite a bit of attention paid recently about the opening of the Arctic ice in the summer now to the extent where there are cruise ships going from east to west. And something, Amundsen, the fellow we just talked about who discovered the South Pole, was the first man to take a ship through the northwest passage going from Eastern Canada to Alaska. And many, many people had tried that before and failed and died, including Sir John Franklin, whose ships they just discovered a few years ago. So that incredibly difficult voyage, which then was for, you know, possible looking at trade route, shortened trade route to China, now is becoming a reality, not just for trade, probably less so for that than for pleasure. People talking, even kayaking to the north pole. So it's possible, there's some predictions that the Arctic may be ice free in the summer in 30 years, which is kind of a scary proposition. And what that does, opening of the Arctic, in effect, it accelerates this phenomenon of the vortex of the open ocean, affecting the atmosphere, creating, you know, more storms and more melting from the darkness of the water compared to the whiteness of the ice, which would reflect sun, whereas dark water is going to absorb it and keep melting, accelerated. So the Arctic itself, the land of the Arctic, is probably the most vulnerable of all places on Earth because there's, with the permafrost, with peatlands locked up, you know, millions of miles, square miles of peatlands. As soon as you raise the temperature a little bit, this partially decomposed material is going to start to decompose. When you say a little bit roughly... Well, over the last 50 years, what the temperature in the Arctic has gone up 2.5 degrees, thereabouts. And every increment that goes up, who knows? I mean, there's been a lot of melting based on that. And when the permafrost, and as the permafrost starts to decompose, which it's doing now, it adds, and the material starts to rot, it adds great quantities of methane and CO2 to the atmosphere, which, of course, is our greenhouse gases that can sort of exacerbate the problem. Some scientists are indicating that, particularly Siberia, but Alaska as well, that the melting permafrost allows CO2, methane, which has way more harmful effect than CO2. But large quantities are being released as we speak to the atmosphere. And it's kind of a scary possibility there. It's very scary, and what's equally disturbing to me is the willful ignoring of this and of other facts about global climate change by politicians, for political gain, whereas we're watching this catastrophe unfolding, and now's the time to deal with it, if there is ever a time. We should have dealt with it at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but we didn't know, obviously. But now we do. At least most people do. And it's time to do what we can and not ignore the problem. Right. Well, I personally find it hard to conceive of how anyone in their right mind can be like what they call a climate change denier. And there's different levels and different interpretations of the data. But somehow I have a sneaky feeling that the big corporations that want to continue with the fossil fuel, that is partially the problem behind what we're talking about, they probably know what everybody else knows, but they are more interested in the money than the earth. Absolutely. I didn't mention that one of the big looming issues about an opening of the Arctic is more exploration for oil and gas, and that this will allow, you know, there's already a lot of competition, you know, countries angling to take advantage. Russia, for example, is now investing huge quantities into new icebreakers, nuclear icebreakers, to get up there to pave the way for more exploration for oil and gas. There's sort of a fighting about who owns the Arctic and below the sea, because that's where they're going to start going after the resources. So, yes, it's about money and it's about continuing as we have been, as long as we keep making money and people have jobs, then we can ignore this problem, but we won't be able to. And to me, you know, knowing what can happen with oil spills, to me, this is a frightening prospect and how you not only have a warming Arctic with all its attendant problems, but you have us coming in there with great risk of oil spills and transport problems. Yeah, the shell drilling rig, it went on the rocks and somewhere near the Bering Strait is a good example of the latest and the best and before they even got there, they were already aground. Absolutely. And if we were, you know, in our younger days, we remember the Exxon Valdez, still feeling it. That's one ship, you know. And I understand that there's not really a backup, cleanup, organized crew to even try to salvage a oil spill. Yeah, especially in those latitudes, in those conditions. I mean, the Arctic's still a pretty formidable place. Even under a warmer scenario, it's still a brutal place. It's still hard and so any catastrophe there is going to be magnified because of the distance from every place, cleanup help in adverse conditions, the long nights. And I'm always wanting to listen to the local, which in this case will say Inuit. And from my understanding and readings, most Inuit people don't want oil exploration, even commercial fishing, at least very well regulated commercial fishing, except the ones who have money invested. And it's the same thing with the salmon we were speaking of in BC, British Columbia. The only native peoples that don't want to get rid of all the fish farms or bring them inland where they can be totally kept under control. But the only people of native background that don't want that are the ones that own the farms. So it's again, no matter who you are, money talks. What's that expression that money isn't the root of all evil, but the greed for it is. And yeah, I mean, it runs our lives. Yeah. And it's a pity that we're even thinking about exploring further north for a product, whether it's liquid or gas fossil fuels that we need to stop using. And so the whole thing doesn't seem to make a whole lot of good sense for the earth. For the earth, absolutely not. But if you look at the infrastructure that's been built up around fossil fuels, the number of jobs, sometimes if I'm driving through a city or something which I try not to do anymore, or even through Vermont, if you look at the number of businesses that are related to the auto, go on the Barry Montpelier Road, and add up the number of businesses that are related to the automobile, tires, glass, gasoline, maintenance. It is just for that. Then you look at all the other businesses that are related to the infrastructure dependent on fossil fuels. It's enormous. Yeah. And we hear so much about, and even from our Bill McKibben, you know, one of our most heroic Vermonters with the 350.org, he points out, as do many people who are intimately acquainted with this issue, that changing human behavior in our lifestyle is just a biggie that you almost cannot depend on. And like you said, go down the Barry Montpelier Road and you see everything about automobiles. Yeah. It's our sacred cow and more. Yeah. I've often said the big brain hasn't really solved all our biggest problems. And there's a favorite writer of mine, an education writer, David Orr, who has a quote which I always remember, which is about education. He said, and he's talking about, well, there are two quotes. One is that it's worth noting, I'm paraphrasing here, it's worth noting that the only people who have ever lived sustainably on the earth for any length of time have been illiterate. And the other quote is that the most highly educated people of their times were the Nazis. So it's what we do with our education or not doing that matters. And at some point, we are biological creatures, subject to biological laws. At some point, that's what's going to control us. I don't think we're going to have the ability to think our way out of this or the will that the change will come when we have to. Yeah. I have actually, in my lifetime, worked with many people that couldn't read or write. I developed a certain observation that there are certain benefits to not being able to read and write and that your mind is not formed and cluttered with a preset of conditions that you see the world through. And also those peoples that didn't read or write were connected to the land. Big time. That's how they lived. Yeah. And I fished and dove with people in South Pacific that couldn't read or write, and they would read every creature under the water, everyone. And they would, and like I say they, the average fisherman would really intellectually outdo our best scientists as far as detail, knowing the habits of everything under the water. Yeah, because they lived with it and depended on it. And I was thinking when you gave a talk about Indonesian navigators. Exactly. How they, millennia before white people and all our navigation equipment could navigate across oceans without any equipment or charts. Just from the knowledge of the stars, the sun, the waves, the currents. So that intimate, we're losing that intimacy. And as a consequence I think, if you're not intimate with something, you don't care as much about it. You don't respect it as much. We keep looking at the earth as a quote, bag of natural resources. Yes. For us to use. Whereas what we need to do is look at the earth as the earth, what is best for the earth. So we do what we can. That brings me to another thought in this discussion of the environment and the weather. I know that indigenous people around the world have some things much in common, which is an appreciation for the environment, Mother Earth. There's actually indigenous people all over the planet today that are leading the way philosophically, we could say, toward sustainability. And a good example is in the Dakota where the pipeline is being resisted by the Sue Indian peoples. This is big time. And that's one example in modern nowadays of indigenous people fighting for the rights of Mother Nature. I just read, I know Bolivia put into their constitution human rights along with nature's rights. And bringing Mother Nature into a human perspective legally. To give the United States its own credit in some ways that we have over the last 50 years instituted laws that are about giving nature rights. The Clean Water, Clean Air Act. The Endangered Species Act. Those are examples, I think, of where we're saying, okay, there are some things that we've got to put them first in a second. Whether those will last under the current administration, I don't know. I was thinking as you were talking, too, that this is way back in the 70s when Hydro Quebec was being fought over, resisted. One of the major groups that resisted it were the Cree Indians who lived up there because this would flood their homeland. And the fight went on. It was a long and bitter fight. And then, of course, they lost. Hydro Quebec was built. And now, I kind of smile sadly to myself when Hydro Quebec has labeled green energy renewable because it's hydro, you know, it's water. But I think without that history of what went on there, how can we possibly call it green? Some other term, maybe. But it wasn't green. It didn't arrive by that way. So we have to have that long history. And yes, a lot of the indigenous peoples, we could learn an awful lot how they treat their land and how they have sustained themselves over these thousands of years. Yeah. Well, I know that here in Vermont, there are Aberdecky people. And I believe not that many. Or because of past governmental policy, not that many would admit they are Aberdecky, maybe 20 years ago. There's a pride. But now, it's more coming to our understanding that what they had to offer is hugely valuable. So is there anything sort of in this state about, we'll say indigenous peoples, Aberdecky, working. I mean, we know of their lifestyle and philosophy of life and their stories of creation, et cetera. But is there, I don't know. There's a strong Aberdecky movement and pride that I think, again, we need that long view of history how our native people had suffered from our treatment. In effect, we had destroyed a way of life and asked them to accommodate to our way, which if we think about ourselves, how, if someone said you're going to change your lifestyle, how easy is that? So since, you know, European contact. Yeah, you're making a good point here. They have been marginalized and have suffered and it's taken a long time for this to, you know, for them native peoples to regain their pride and regain their identity and make an influence. And they were doing that. So there is a strong presence in Vermont and New England. And I hope that will influence how we operate and look at the land. As a matter of fact, I was thinking that it would be good for this show to talk to some Aberdecky people and get their view of the same subject because I'm looking at it from the outside. Absolutely. I agree with that and I'll be looking for that contact. All right. Well, it has been really enlightening speaking with you on the subject of the natural environment. And I hope that the people watching this program that this will encourage the public to think more, study more, work more toward the Vermont environment and all the many things that we can do as individuals to keep Vermont as good as it already is. But we have to be careful because Vermont is in the middle of a whole big world out there. So we need to keep going strong toward keeping the Green Mountains green, keeping Lake Champlain the most beautiful lake on this continent, and all of those things. So thank you very much. We need 100 copies of you out there. But thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. I'd add to your encouragement to people to study and learn more. I'd also encourage them to make contact with the land that they live on more. One little last story is that I was driving through Montpelier a couple of years ago in the summer, and I was sort of daydreaming and I was coming up around a hill in town. And there were a couple of little girls playing by themselves out in the yard, playing with sticks and cans and rocks. And I did a double take because I said, oh, I don't see that very often. I don't see kids out just playing outside. That's what kids are supposed to do. Maybe they're in organized sports or activities or on computers. So to me, that was remarkable that I took note of that. Because when I was a kid, that's nothing remarkable about that. So anyway, I would encourage... That's part of our habits that need to be worked on. Absolutely. So to maintain and increase that contact with nature so we can have that affection for it. I think that's another thing we can do. However, I might make an observation on that line is I live on Main Street by the roundabout and the kids from the middle school there go to school in the morning and come home in the afternoon right by my window. As a father of six kids, it makes me want to start a whole new family just watching the kids. That says everything to me. Their behavior. And I watch them very intently. Because I notice just no argument or fussing or bad stuff. Just such good kids. There are some good things coming. And there is an ethnic mixture there that goes along with such good kids. And you don't see any of them being later picked on or anything like that. And I watch for this. I think this is a very good point as we look at the things that are going wrong, we also have to look at what's going on. Absolutely. And there are things that have improved over time. And I do feel like the teachers care and that these kids I'm looking at from first up to eighth grade that go by my window are our future. And it looks like that's something that is a lot more optimistic than when they look at us old people. I totally agree. But thank you very much. Well, good then. So we'll wrap this up now. And thank you audience for following along with us. And I certainly hope that you have some information here that helps you carry on in this world of climate change.