 The overarching theme of this book, Climate and New Story, that I wrote is really the living planet view of the world. From that place, the priorities of an environmentalist become a little bit different than they are in the dominant narrative. And in the book, I listed something like 17 or 20 different priorities, actions that we can collectively take to serve the emergence of a more beautiful world, of a healed world. And I can kind of boil them down to four things, actually, four priorities, and maybe one more. Yeah, so I'll do four and one more. Top priority is to protect any pristine ecosystems that still remain on this planet. Especially the Amazon and the Congo, and many other places, too. But these places that are still intact, these are the reservoirs of biodiversity. These are where Gaia's deep memory of health still resides. And if we have these, then there will always be hope for help to radiate back out from these oases, from these, what's the word? There's a word that I wanted to use, readouts, but that's not a very common word. It's like a base camp of health. So that's the top priority. Whatever still exists in relative health, pristine forests in wetlands, old growth forests, those things, those are much more important than we could possibly imagine through a carbon reductionist lens. That's top priority. Second priority, nearly as important, is to regenerate and restore and heal all that has been damaged, particularly soil and water and forests. So this is the regenerative agriculture. This is the watershed restoration. This is the caring for forests, the deep ecology work, to bring health back to where it has been damaged. So first priority, conservation, preservation, protection. Second priority, restoration, regeneration. Third priority is, so the first two are kind of on the organ level. The third priority is more on the tissue level. It's to stop dumping poison into the world. I haven't really talked that much about this. These issues have kind of taken second seat to emissions right now. But the pollution through toxic waste, pharmaceutical waste, agricultural runoff, pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, et cetera, et cetera. These are poisoning the planet in ways that we can barely even imagine. You know, sunscreen, washing off our bodies and getting into the coral reefs. Estrogen mimicking chemicals from, or estrogens from birth control pills, antibiotics that are passing through our urine into the water, into the ecosystem. These things have unimaginable effects. Fourth priority is to cut fossil fuel use. I haven't emphasized that because it is very well emphasized elsewhere. But a planet that has lost so much of its resiliency, has sustained so much damage to its organs and tissues, is not resilient to the rapid rise of greenhouse gases. Can't handle these challenges very well. So I think that is important too, and not as important as the other three, but important. But you know what? It is a side effect of the other three. There's no way that we can protect ecosystems and regenerate land and continue to mine and drill and frack and pipeline and do all those things. It's impossible and to risk oil spills and to... So really the fourth priority emerges from the other three. And I want to say one more thing that is also often kept in a separate silo from environmental issues, and that is peace. As long as humans are at war with each other, not only are we consuming vast resources, maintaining a war machine, and vast human capital, creativity, scientific work, all going toward killing each other, but also our psychic energy of conflict that radiates out into the world and maybe beyond. It's part and parcel of the war on nature. The whole idea of evil originated as a war on nature and overcoming of the wild. So the template of war is part of ecocide. And as long as our... In a war, your top priority that trumps everything else is to defeat the enemy. When we're bombing Iraq or bombing whatever, we don't worry about the ecological effect of the bombs. Because first priority is defeating the enemy. So generalize that. The war economy, the war machine is based on a different priority than the healing of the world is. Where do we put our priorities? If we hold conflicting agendas as an individual, we create conflicting results. We have to decide what are we serving here. Practically speaking, as long as we're incinerating so much of our energy fighting each other, distrusting each other, judging each other, hating each other, we're never going to come into the coherence necessary to, I'm not going to say save the world, but to serve the world. Because we're in service to something else. Part of the transition, part of the initiation is into service to life. We have to come together. We have to come together as a species. We need to unify. This is obvious. One of the good things that's come from the climate narrative is that it is uniting people around the world toward something that we all hold in common. And that's a positive step. I don't think that's really happened before on Earth. It's a new stage in the curriculum of interbeing, which is the new story, the new and ancient story of who we are. That we are a relationship. We are interconnected, interdependent and inter-existent. What we do to the world, we do to ourselves. What we do to the other, we do to ourselves. We enact violence in another country and we suffer domestic violence at home. All these things intimately connected. We're beginning to understand that. That's what we're being initiated into. So that would be, we can't even list it as a priority. Without that, without peace, there will be no healing. So my gratitude to the peace workers trying to stop war and to the peace workers on a more subtle level. And to the peace work that maybe you're doing. Every time you put down a grudge or let go of a judgment or stop seeing someone as the enemy and really try to understand them and ask, what does it like to be you? Then you're waging peace. You're changing the field, the morphic field. And you know that any outbreak of peace anywhere contributes to the field of peace. The question, what is it like to be you? Why did you do this thing? What are the conditions that brought you to this? What are the conditions that brought you to drive that SUV, to fly in that airplane, to build that oil well? Instead of just making you into an enemy. That so often happens in the environmental discourse. Those bad people. How could they? But to ask why? What system are you lodged in? What pressures are you under? What story do you live in? That's called peace, asking that sincerely. And maybe you still fight with a lawsuit, with a direct action. Maybe your understanding of that person does not lead you to be able to change the situation, to change those conditions. But at least the possibility is there. At least you're not addicted to fighting. Not defaulting to the fight as the only way to solve the problem. That's part of the same mentality as finding the cause. What's the thing to go to war on? And this is what I've been talking about. Understanding the interconnections of all things. Ending the war on nature. So without, I'll say it again, without peace there will be no healing. Any act of peace is an act of healing. All the way to the ecological level. So again, maybe one more thing. The peace needs to extend to ourselves too. If you are in condemnation of yourself. That's not peace. But maybe have some compassion for yourself. What brought you to do the things that are harming life? In what ways do you feel helpless, powerless, in pain, hungry for something you don't even know what it is? I'm not going to answer those questions. I can't answer those questions. Maybe you can't answer them right away either. But they are loving questions. They're based on there must be something. Because who I really am is somebody who loves the world so much. Who loves life so much that so desperately desires to serve life, to be part of this magnificent emergence. That's what I really want. I know that of myself. And what if you try knowing that of all the people you condemn, not just yourself? That's called holding a story that invites people into it. Holding a story of peace. Holding a story of a healed world. That includes the story of who people are. It's not to ignore, to dismiss the things that are causing harm that people are doing. But it's to believe that's not really who you are. And to hold that, not as an ideology. Not as a delusion. But to try to see it. And maybe sometimes you don't see it. But you can look for it. That's peace to look for it. And so here we can see just the relatedness of every level of suffering in this world and every level of healing. As I said near the beginning, I think I said, global climate and the social climate and the psychic climate and the internal climate. All of these are related. The war on nature. The war on the self. The war on each other. All related. So thank you for accompanying me through all of these thoughts and stories for joining me as a peace worker. A love servant. A servant of life. Imperfect, though we all may be. I can feel, I mean what sustains me in it is the service of others. That reminds me that I'm not crazy. That inspires me too. Like yeah, I can do it too. That's what I think when I see a brave person. I'm like thank you for showing me what's possible. For showing me what a human being can be. Maybe I can do it too. Even if I never see you. I can feel you. You can all feel each other. That's how we build the field. So thank you.