 So, welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for today's community conversation with Sierra Club main and our guest speaker and author Trevor Cohen. My name is Marina Bach I'm the communications and outreach manager here at Sierra Club main and I will be facilitating our webinar today. As I started I just want to go through some quick zoom logistics live transcriptions have been enabled if you'd like closed captioning. We ask that you please keep your microphone on mute to help with any background noise. This webinar is being recorded for folks who weren't able to join us so you can feel free to be on or off video. Lastly, we ask that you put any questions in the chat. I'll be monitoring the chat and we'll have some time at the end for some Q&A discussion with Trevor. And then I'd also just like to take a moment to acknowledge the indigenous land that we're on here in Maine. So we are in the homeland of the Wabanaki the people of the dawn. And with our respect and gratitude to the many indigenous people and their ancestors, whose rich histories and vibrant communities include the abanaki, malice, mcmack, passamaquati and Penobscot nations, and all of the native communities who have lived here for thousands of generations in what is known today as Maine, New England, and the Canadian Maritimes. Maine is really honored to work with the Wabanaki as they share their stories and we thank the Abbey Museum for their leadership in decolonization efforts and their work to create effective land acknowledgments. I would now like to introduce our guest speaker Trevor Decker Cohen. He's a writer who's passionate about a better future for the planet and seeks to move beyond doom and gloom. He's worked as a content strategist, marketer and has edited two books, Health Care Without Corruption provides a nonprofit vision for the US health care system and thermo info complexity establishes a new theory on the way evolution works. And Trevor I'm so excited to have you on so thank you for joining us. I'll now pass it over to you to get started. Thank you so much. Thank you for that kind introduction. And I will just share my screen right now. And then yes, I also appreciate the land acknowledgement as well. We acknowledge the Nissanan tribe, which is in the area that we're in. And we actually contribute some of the proceeds from the book to a research project and advocacy advocacy project, led by the Nissanan tribe in the California to preserve knowledge and their history as well as advocate for reinfederal recognition which was taken away in the turn of the century. Cool. Just present now. Thank you so much for being here. I'm truly honored and I've spoken with many different Sierra Club groups and it's every every time I do I'm like I'm just blown away with how you are able to empower people to participate in creating a better and advocating for the planet and providing that outlet to folks all across the country it's it's really really amazing to see. Because you know sometimes I feel like in the in the climate world, we're a little bit like the hopeless romantics of the activist world. We have the seas rising, the land is drying out, we have a firestorm in one season and then a polar vortex and the next. But instead of tuning it all out, instead of watching Netflix on the couch at the end of our busy days. We stare straight into the heart of the seemingly hopeless situation. Um, but you know we're determined to fix this mess, we believe that not only can we stop the destruction of our planet, but at the same time in the process of working on this build a better world than the one we live in now. And you know to people outside this movement, I've gotten this a lot that, and somebody actually said to me that it seems like your idealism is a little like planting flowers in a hurricane. But I really don't think that what we're doing is foolish at all. I think our secret as climate environmental activists is that we think differently. We know that we can't solve the climate crisis with the same thinking that caused it. And so we view the future through a different lens. I think the way that we conceptualize a crisis defines how we respond it, respond to it. And so I would like to ask this group of question to learn from your wisdom as activists and environmentalists, and to under better understand the idea that you see the future. And so I would like to ask what types of thinking you can go to the next slide. Do you feel we need in order to break free from our fossil fuel economy and envision a truly sustainable society. Can you open it up for anyone who wants to share their thoughts on kind of the thinking changes that we need in order to envision the sustainable society we want to create. Well, I mean I think what we do is we tend to focus on problems. And if all we focuses on is problems that's what we're going to get is more problems I mean energetically speaking that is. The law of the universe right so what we have to do is shift to focusing on solutions. Right on yeah you're speaking my language. My language. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the problems we face are just incredibly overwhelming but if if that's where it stops, if that's where our thinking stops. We'll never have a chance to actually build the future we want to live in. And rather than solely just kind of avoiding what we, what we don't want so yeah you're spot on with that. I think that we have to think community, instead of individual and that's a really really hard thing to change to I think. Some groups do think community they think about their neighbors and more. And in the business world, instead of thinking about stockholders we should be thinking about stakeholders which is community. And I thought just for a really long time, and worry that too many people now are sitting completely alone and think well I can't personally do anything and don't think they have a community they can do it with. But of course the Sierra Club is part of that community now so. As you mentioned, so. That's good. Yeah, yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, that's like also spot on like thinking about how do solutions benefit our communities and how can our communities be leaders, rather than kind of passive actors in the larger economic system and solely as consumers and like as citizens in a community in both the place we live as rather as well as the larger community of our, you know, country, our state or global society. Yeah, I think that's extremely important. I see a chat from Matt as well about cradle to grave reuse recycling and not endless extraction and so yeah that's like moving a moving to cradle to cradle from cradle to grave and thinking about things as as in cycles rather as linear one way. The same way systems in which we extract, we extract something we use it and discard it, but instead we're thinking about it in a almost like a nature based way, or we're thinking about how do we regenerate everything in our system. Yeah, that's really great. Any other thoughts. So we have to think long term instead of short term and unfortunately our short term thinking often leads into, you know, problems and issues in the long term. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's we're definitely have this short term goal oriented focus of like the next quarter being the thing that matters most. But that's not always how people have have thought of things and you can see that through like seven generation thinking and a lot of a lot of other more kind of long term multi generational approaches to problem solving. I think we need to be willing to make investments for the long term, not just for short term returns and in that way changing the way we do business, we have to have to get off fossil fuels for example and that's going to take investments electric vehicles. He pumps weather weatherization energy conservation that has to be done at every level. Yeah, yeah, I mean, come at all. I mean, a lot of it comes down to putting our, our money where our mouth is and I think we're a little bit, we're in, I feel like we're in a phase where we're starting to move in that direction like these, a lot of renewables have become more viable. And people are starting to talk about sustainability across society, but we're still a little bit in that lip service phase where we haven't fully committed our resources to transformation to a sustainable society. Any more thoughts. Keep thinking my big interest is energy and my second big interest is plastics but I think you pointed out in your book I almost finished your book I haven't gotten the agriculture part done yet but in a lot of countries in Africa well a lot of places in that are away from everywhere in Africa and India that they've jumped over the carbon based energy other than when they used to burn trees and stuff to solar power to provide energy. And this is also sort of community based the great great thing about solar power is that it doesn't have to absolutely be part of the net and I, I love your story about community based distributed solar energy, which really got me thinking about the entire my community I'm living in here that maybe we could do something like that here, but, you know, India is in the cup 26 insisted that they couldn't possibly manage energy without more coal. Yeah, on the other hand they have all these villages that they could, you know, go directly to solar power instead of needing coal. I've been to India once my one exotic world trip, and the air was absolutely horrible everywhere, because they were burning trash and they were burning coal. We have to really get people to be able to use renewables to jump over the coal and go immediately to renewables like solar, and India's got a lot of sun. Yeah, yeah it's definitely important to think about, like what, what is powering the growth and development of the future. Is it, is it fossil fuels, is it renewables, how do we make that work and how do we make it work in a way that benefits communities. Any other thoughts before we move on to the presentation. Alright, well thank you all for your insights. I, a lot of these are really spot on there's obviously many different really important ways of thinking that can help us move towards a fully sustainable society. In the last five years, interviewing hundreds of different practitioners and sustainability, including experts and leaders in renewable energy the circular economy, transportation, city planning regenerative farming, and I combine this their wisdom into this book Bright Green Future. And the goal of the book is to provide a glimpse into what a fully sustainable society might actually look like, and how we might go about building it. And so I hope in this presentation to add to your obviously already robust repertoire of sustainable design thinking. So these are these three types of thinking that kept coming up in my conversations with folks in interviewing them for the book. And I found that these were essential to creating a holistic vision for a sustainable future. So we're thinking our number one systems thinking, which is all about finding the deeper patterns that are hiding in plain sight. And so looking beyond the surface level of how we see the world, and looking at how multiple. Action can affect multiple different things in a system, rather than looking at one, one solution on its own as as trying to do have one outcome. Secondly is community thinking which Bonnie and others brought up, which is all about bracing local people as beneficiaries of change. And lastly, we have regeneration thinking, which is all about creating both systems and communities that grow stronger and healthier over time that rather than with each year degrade and become less less strong, become more resilient and more robust and more able to adapt to crises and respond to crises as well as prosper from different opportunities that come come about. And so, if you could go to the next slide please. One of the types of type of thinking is systems thinking in a nutshell systems thinking is all about looking at things as being interconnected rather than disconnected about looking at cycles, rather than solely looking at a linear trajectory of progression to point B but instead of seeing seeing the end of one of one cycle beginning the, the, the, the start of another cycle. It's about looking at things rather than in silos as emerging all at once. And it's, it's ultimately about looking at the whole rather than solely all of the parts within it. If you could go to the next slide please. I'll share a story from an experience I had that I like to call the parable of the techie and the farmer, and it highlights the difference between traditional reductionist thinking that looks at optimizing one thing, which is often the predominant that we go about creating solutions versus what what is a systems thinking approach look like. And this, this experience this conversation hat was with a was one back when I lived in San Francisco, I had this memorable conversation with a quote unquote tech genius. And in this particular conversation, we were sitting on the grass next to the ferry building. And he was an entrepreneur, a thought leader and the futurist, and some somewhere in the conversation, we landed on climate change. We had like a dozen solutions for how to fix climate change easily. And one thing that came up was he, he really considered organic and regenerative farming or permaculture to be pointless. He argued that if we wanted to capture or sequester carbon in the ground, it would be much more effective to use giant carbon capture machines rather than grow plants. He said for every acre of biodynamic farm or ecosystem restoration, we could capture double the carbon by putting a machine on the land instead. I mean of course he might have been right about we could capture more carbon with that but you can probably also see how totally wrong he was. I tell this story because it lays bare how silly the predominant way of reductionist thinking looks when taken to the extreme. Because when we only focus on one metric, we become unable to see the larger system in which our actions operate. If we looked at that same argument using systems thinking, we would see that the only benefit of a carbon capture machine is carbon capture. However, a regenerative organic farm not only captures carbon, but grows nutritious food improves biodiversity holds water holds water in times of drought absorbs water to prevent flooding. And maybe even that farm provides a community gathering space for people to learn new skills reconnect with nature and experience the system of food production that sustains us. So, when when looked at side by side you see that the benefits in a whole systems sense of organic farm far outweigh any of the benefits of a carbon capture machine, even if that machine can maybe technically capture more carbon. So, if you go to the next slide please. So, stepping back when we, when we look at kind of the society we built on a whole, we start to see what the pattern of reductionist thinking looks like when replied applied at a massive scale. So, the carbon farms are designed as monocultures to maximize one metric at a time will maximize residential housing in one area, commercial businesses and another industrial zones and still another. And we really do it at the expense of creating a vibrant neighborhood with all the benefits that come from mixing these elements in different ways. Now on the cut in the countryside, we maximize the cultivation of soy corn and wheat in a sterile growing environment at the expense of the soil and ecology. We sacrifice the benefits of interdependent systems for the sake of a handful of metrics. And if you go to the next slide please. When we set instead design for the larger system, rather than solely its parts, we end up solving multiple problems at once and creating something far better than we could have ever planned for. This is an example of a neighborhood in called agritopia in Gilbert, Arizona. The developers residential property developers wanted to turn the johnston family farm into a subdivision. The farm owners urged them to do something different. They ended up instead building a mixed use neighborhood around a 12 acre organic farm. They built a household farmhouse into a restaurant and converted the tractor shed into a place for small businesses and craft makers. And then they built a residential community around it with an elementary school multiple types of housing, and even a senior living facility to mix, mix together multiple ages and and incomes within one one area. And they really combine these overlapping social benefits of both a mixed use neighborhood with the ecological and health benefits of a biodiverse organic farm. Residents can walk to the local restaurant and coffee shop and then access fresh organic produce on the farm. It was built really in the heart of kind of suburban sprawl, and the neighborhood ended up becoming a destination in the area where people visiting the breweries and craft makers and couple couples even getting married at the orchard on the farm and you have kind of all these other benefits that that sprouted out of really looking at how do we design a system in when we create a neighborhood, rather than how do we like maximize one one aspect of living. And so you can go to the next slide please. And so the second type of thinking is community thinking. And that's all about looking at communities as the agents and beneficiaries of change. If you could go to the next slide please. Because we're in the middle of a great transition from an economy run on fossil fuels to renewables. And we don't have to replicate the same inequality and how wealth is generated from energy production. You know in the traditional relationship, the vast majority of profits flowed to a handful of energy companies utilities. But as we can, as we transition we can also shift the benefit to the community. California is one at one example. Half of the electricity comes from what's known as community choice energy providers and what these providers do is they reinvest profits back into community projects and preference they give more preference to creating local jobs, and these can actually advocate for the type of energy that they want. And many of these community choice energy providers have reached 100% renewable or are on track to reach 100% renewables by 2025, while actually offering electricity that's 10% cheaper than the utility. So I actually went into meetings with the like executive board of my community choice energy provider. And I, there's like a group there that I met that was advocating to expand, expand the amount of money that goes to community projects there. Yeah. And there's so many different ways as, you know, as, I believe, Bonnie pointed out with with renewables being more decentralized. We have the ability to create decentralized benefits from them through a variety of different models whether it be community solar and wind co ops, or community choice providers, or a number of different ways or even on like an individual level with with how people can benefit from solar. We have this opportunity to really shift the benefit away from solely the profits flowing to fossil fuel companies and utilities and the big energy companies to to the community and having creating that system that community community benefit in the change that we create. So if you go to the next slide please. Another big part of community thinking is really adapting solutions to local needs and visions. This is an example of a data of a project that is transitioning coal country away from dependence on coal as this one fossil fuel commodity powering what the economy of West Virginia and transitioning to a renewable future. This is an example of Cofield development, which is a an organization in West Virginia that trains laid off coal mine coal miners to transform surface mines into food forests, and then generate jobs and train people in agriculture. So created a number of different social enterprises. There's they've created a construction company that builds affordable housing and trains people to be contractors. They've created a like a a furniture making company, they've acquired a sustainable t shirt company that makes t shirts out of recycled out of recycled plastic for major league baseball. And then they've also created their solar company that install solar panels as well. And they actually had the biggest installation of solar panel on this one factory that they created where they train people in a variety of different different businesses to create a more diverse economy. And one of the inspiring models to is that they, not only do they look at the unique, unique needs of people in the area to create a to create jobs for after the fall out of coals decline. They also draw on the strength the unique strengths in that area and really basing everything they do on Appalachian values of gumption grit and grace. As part of as part of like as part of their philosophy and they really see these Appalachian values as as crucial to building a sustainable future of, you know, people who've survived in the mountains for for generations. Through their own through their own determination using how to figure out how to reuse things how to grow their own food and learn all of these these skills that we're going to need if we're going to create a sustainable society. And so not just not just looking at all the problems that that are in front of us but also like what what are the hidden strengths that exist in our communities and how can we also learn from learn from from those and in in the work we do. If you could go to the next slide to So this is another example on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It's an organization called Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation. They train youth in construction and farming and a variety of other different skills to address both a food shortage, a, or sorry housing shortage, a food crisis and unemployment that gets as close to 70% at sometimes. And what they're doing is they're combining both community and systems thinking at the same time. They're looking at not just trying to solve one problem I one quote I from somebody I talked to there is a lot of the traditional aid approaches was just to see like okay we're lacking food or people are lacking access to one one item and so we just need to provide that one item and his his quote was like we don't want to hand out propane and Pampers anymore. We know that people need that, but at the same time it's not systems change it's it's not allowing people to create the better future for themselves. And so they created this, this initial this like multi multi element initiative that addresses both housing lack of lack of employment, as well as helps heal from multi generational trauma from colonization and the history that happened in in that region. And providing both. They created a community center that provides education in the Lakota language and food and traditional foods and provides a place for ceremony as well. And the entire place is also commute powered by solar, all the housing and all of the farm as well. They've also from this to provided a kind of an example of a platform where 70 other indigenous communities reached out to them, saying like how can we do this in our reservation like how do we, how do we take this kind of same learning from what you've done and apply that there. And so they actually created a separate organization that's focused on national indigenous empowerment, called the end the end collective that was started by the founder of Thunder Valley CDC. So you can go to the next slide. And so the third type of thinking is regenerative thinking and regeneration can be thought in many different ways. So the next slide. It can be thought about regenerating land. So, we're all familiar with regenerate where many of us are likely familiar with regenerative farming, which is all about healing soils and, and making the land stronger over time with every harvest rather than degrading it. So as an example of the regenerative Ag Alliance, which is an organization based in Minnesota that has developed this farming system, a permaculture system that uses a combination of, of chickens and trees to fruit and nut trees to recharge the soil battery, as, as their founder Reggie has let Marokin puts it, where the combination of chicken manure and leaf litter adds to the soil so every year it gets stronger and stronger, so that every harvest you have. It becomes more bountiful or more plentiful rather than slowly degrading and what he does is he actually trains migrant farm workers and farm laborers and their families to start their own businesses. And using this, this permaculture model, and using a combination of chickens and fruit trees and nuts can actually be quite, quite lucrative for people starting these businesses. Next slide, please. So we can also think about regeneration from a material standpoint to, and thinking about how does, how, how does the cycle of our, what is the cycle of our materials look like. This is Ronin eight, which is a, this particular example, a company that regenerates e waste and lithium ion batteries to supply the next generation of electronics. And I think in kind of our modern high tech society, we, we, we focus a lot on like how do we develop the next gadget, like how do we create the next big thing. We're not really thinking about what happens when something becomes obsolete, where do all those, all those gadgets and computers end up and often they end up in somebody else's backyard if we don't have a way to process it. A lot of it ends up in India, Bangladesh and Africa, where people that kind of the toxic materials end up in these neighborhoods where people are processing them under very, very hazardous conditions. And so what this particular technology developed by Ronin eight does is it actually uses a really interesting process of sound energy. They, they grind up all the materials in our e waste, and they've repurposed this old piece of mining equipment that used to be used to separate tailings in, in, or separate materials from mind tailings. And they've used that to, to use the frequencies from this kind of massive tuning fork to separate the fiberglass and all the different types of metals into their own, their own categories and from it have actually kind of extracted like a, a periodic tables worth of different elements from our electronics, and down to things, you know, the major things such as copper, tin, silver, lead, gold and palladium to things like rare earth metals which currently take a ton of energy and are very destructive to mine. And they've been able just just using sound energy to think about how, like, how do we look at our economy as cycles of gold as cycles of copper as cycles of steel and tin and fiberglass, rather than solely as cycles of trends and gadgets that end up being discarded. And so if you go to the next slide. And so regeneration also comes down to regenerating people and regenerating communities and cultures. And ultimately, the society we, we want to live in is is one where we all feel the confidence to be our best selves and have the skills in order to make that happen. So this is an example of soul fire farm in Albany, New York that trains black and indigenous farmers in permaculture in construction in a variety of different skills to regenerate to regenerate the land and then also go back to their own communities and start their programs to provide opportunities for people for for youth to get involved in in farming and have a connection with nature, and then see how, how they might also be part of part of this, this great project of regenerating our, our society and creating really the world we want to live in. And yeah, that is if you go to the next slide. So, all of these, all these examples are stories that are in the book. And I would love to offer you all 50% off the book if, if you are interested in it with promo code, Sierra. Yeah, before I open it up to Q&As also wanted to say if you want to get in touch, you can reach me at Trevor at brightgreenfuture.com. I'm always happy to discuss any collaboration ideas or just to chat if you have a comment about the book or just like any idea you have about sustainability I love, I love connecting with folks. And I mean it's, you know, it's sadly it's quite likely that the current reconciliation bill won't be enough to really prevent warming over 1.5 degrees Celsius, which means that there's we still have a ton of work to do. In order to make up that difference. And I really believe that it's important to start articulating what our vision for the future really looks like, so that we can make sure that our, the desires and the needs of our communities are empowered in the, the world we end up creating. I wrote, I wrote this book really with the goal to show real world examples of how we might make the sustainable society of our dreams or reality. So, thank you all for listening to my presentation, and we'll open it up to questions I don't know if Miranda if you had any specific questions or if you wanted to open up to group questions. Yeah, so Trevor thank you so much that was wonderful and just like your book educational and inspiring to. I think we all have some ideas or at least I do what I can do in my own community to try to take some action here. One thing I wanted to ask you is your book talked about so many different efforts from ordinary people around the world what they're doing the actions they're taking. Is there one in particular that either you have taken in your life that you would recommend we can work on today or just something that we can try to implement in our own communities to get started. Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I think, I think the, the, I did I shared this example the one that really blew me away when I got to visit Thunder Valley in South Dakota. That I think really clicked for me in terms of seeing like really the process they that they went through to create that like they started by basically just interviewing people in their community about what they wanted and you know it was really hard like it took like hundreds of community meetings in order to figure out like what what do we create like what what is a society that we want to create look like and then how do we go about building it and like they started first with just like a small project to really build their confidence, it was really just building like a, a house out of sustainable materials, it was like a ceremony house. And then from there, they started to get more interest and confidence and say like hey we could actually do this and actually do something. And then built like kind of an office space at a portable buildings, and then started building houses one by one, and then built built that that chicken program that they have where they give fresh eggs to people who need them. And anyway, that that's obviously an example of like a lot of work and it was kind of like the ideal. But in terms of like what what's like actually like the the, I guess, more of a smaller entry level thing and I would say, you know, I was everyone in this room is probably doing it. You've already gotten involved with with Sierra Club, or, or other organizations that are working on like articulating what a better future might look like. I think one, one thing that that I ended up doing was getting involved in organization that kind of reflected kind of the values of the community that I've been living in and helped people create or start to envision what the future they wanted to look like in their community might look like and so I did. I do have a follow up activity brainstorming activity to this to kind of get the creative juices flowing to sketch out a design for your own sustainable initiative, kind of putting these different practices and combining them with like a brainstorming of the needs and strengths in your community. And so that's that's something that I did for myself. Yeah, I mean, there's, there's, yeah, many different ways to get involved, but yeah, it was a roundabout way of saying like, find find what vision speaks to you, and then find people who are already working on that and then join in community with with people to do the hard work of actually making it a reality. Thank you, Trevor. That's awesome and I have that last slide if you want me to put that up to about the project or maybe after the Q&A or. Yeah, I can send it send it all to you if you go to breakgreenfuture.com slash and vision. You can access this. Perfect. We do have a question in the chat from Marina. I'm just asking about your thoughts about the animal agriculture. Oh, Marina, go ahead. Yes, so. Okay, so it's. So I have a question about animal agriculture, agriculture, because in Brazil where the country where I'm from. We have the Amazon rainforest that's being completely devastated and in the majority of the reason for the first to be destroyed these two is both for pastures for cattle. Because because of the high demand for beef throughout the world, and, and to grow crops that to be fed to the animals. So what do you think about the whole situation with animal agriculture. Yeah, that is animal agriculture is is one of the, as you pointed out one of the biggest contributors to climate change. And, you know, I mean, the third to one half of all land on earth is used to either grow food for it for livestock or be pasture land. So I, I personally feel that, like in my own life, we need to be eating a lot less meat. I eat, I don't eat very much meat I eat, I'm not I'm not a vegetarian, but I eat, maybe meat once every two weeks to once every week. So yeah, I think we do need to be eating a lot less meat. I don't, I don't know if if we could get to a situation where everyone's going to be vegetarian and eating no meat. But I think that we should be considering meat as as like a delicacy and as something that is, you know, in the past, you know, people didn't eat meat for every meal. And it wasn't it wasn't really something that was seen as ubiquitous. And so really thinking, I think it is really important to consider what, like what what meat is doing to the planet as well as the welfare of animals. And that when if we do have animal agriculture, we're not really, we're not, we're trying not to stress the planet too much by just the sheer quantity of animals needed to provide meat for every single meal. And then the animal agriculture we do have thinking about how it can be integrated into a farm system that adds to the fertility of the soil and adds to the nutrients and thinking about it from a nutrient cycle perspective. So I guess like reduce but then reduce and integrate into farm systems. I think that the problem here is that a lot of people are just thinking that I think it's the subsidies. That's what makes meat so much cheaper. But the farmers are not going to, but a lot of farmers are not going to be willing to end the subsidy. And they just have the obsession that with protein. So that's also something that's contributing. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. Like we through subsidies we create the incentives and the market and the economy to make it both affordable for consumers as well as viable for the producers. At first I was really skeptical about veganism. But then, but they went once they did research and then I saw that it's a sustainable diet. I made it, I made the switch. So, so I just think I just that at least as my belief that we should be going in like that direction. Yeah. Definitely. Any other questions for Trevor feel free to put them in the chat or you can just unmute yourself since we're a small group and go ahead and ask. Anybody else has something something that worries me a lot is how a carbon industry petroleum, whatever discovered that we're using less petroleum for energy for transportation and stuff and that will be the future. So putting up more plastics factories to produce more and more plastics. I was very fascinated in your book about the people who had figured out a way to create plastics. And CO2 that reduced CO2 plus. I think it was that one or so. And actually made plastics. Have they or have you done any thoughts about how to convert the plastics industry, the big enormous plastics industry from petroleum based car to systems like theirs which they claim can end up being compostable or whatever. I don't know more about it than I do. I'm really worried about all these enormous plastics factories, particularly down in the south and where it is Mississippi or something that. Anyway, can you talk about that. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's definitely something I've seen around like plastics providing a guess a second life for the fossil fuel industry after we stop using fossil fuels to generate energy. An example that Bonnie highlighted from the book is of a company called mango materials, which is using methane capture from landfills and waste treatment plants. And they are they have basically they feed it to this bacteria that from the methane, it naturally produces this compound, which is a, I guess they call it a biopolymer, which is, it's been in nature for 200 million years. So nature has developed ways to break it down unlike plastic which has only been around for not even 100 years. And so it, the type of polymer or plastic that they can create from this process is much more biodegradable than even like our, what we think of as our current biodegradable plastic that you that you'd get. It's currently on the market. And it also is more rigid to so it can serve a variety of different purposes, including like casings for televisions and computers, as well as like can be a thin film for plastic bottles and is can be composted in like a home compost system doesn't necessarily need a industrial scale system and also can biodegrade in the ocean. And that is the like tech on the technology side like these kind of things exist on on the like scaling side of like how do you know how do you compete with a giant industry plastics industry that has already set up billions of dollars worth the factories. I think that's that's a whole different beast. And how you do it. I mean, the methane is there, like we have probably 2000 landfills and wastewater treatment plants that could be, could capture methane and, you know, prevent it from going in the atmosphere, as well as turn it into this bioplastic so kind of doing to two solutions at once. And the methane is there, some of the technology is there, it really does come down to like, we need to put our resources into developing this more like this company is only one of maybe two that's working on this, and they have maybe a few kinds of funding. Like, we need to think about like, how are we incentivizing things in the market, and how are we, you know, allowing these people who are outliers initially, which have these great ideas to and become into the mainstream so it requires more resources. That's obviously a whole, whole other thing about how do you, how do you make that happen but I think I think the first step is realizing like how what we could actually do and how awesome the variety of different solutions are available to us, available to us are, and then going through the hard part of thinking about like, Okay, what are the policies that would enable it, what are the resources that would have to shift to make it happen. It's hard to have an easy answer to that. Thank you. Any other questions for Trevor. All right. Trevor, do you have any closing words or anything you'd like to add before I do a couple of closing slides. Yeah, just I mean, just really a big thank you to you all. I really appreciate your contributions, both to this conversation, as well as to Sierra Club and through your own activism. Yeah, again, like, feel free to reach out if you ever want to get in touch at my address is Trevor at brightgreenfuture.com. And yeah, and also I mentioned that sustainable design activity follow up I've also, if people are interested would be happy to lead it like facilitate a workshop on on doing that particular activity. If that's something anyone is interested in. And yeah, thank you all and I'll just turn it over to you. Awesome. Thank you, Trevor. And I'm going to be sending a follow up email to you all and I'll link to Trevor's website and also that activity of envisioning a sustainable society I'll link to that so you all have those resources. And before we go I just want to share a couple of closing slides with you all. So thank you so much for joining us and a special thank you to Trevor for taking the time today to talk with us and share all of these awesome actions that are building a better future for all of us really. So it was great to have you Trevor thank you, and we invite everyone to stay updated on our work here at Sierra Club main, you can follow us on social media and also subscribe to our newsletter on our website Sierra Club.org slash main. Before we go I do just want to invite everyone to our next community conversation, which is December 7 at noon. The topic is mining so acid mining is really a serious threat to water quality in an area specifically in Maine that not only provides clean water to cobscook Bay, but there is also a potential source of water to the possum a quality reservation located in what we call today as pleasant point. So I hope you'll all join us for that. I'll send a link in the follow up email to register for that as well. And that's it for our presentation today thank you all so much, and thank you Trevor and I'm sure we'll talk more soon. Yeah, thank you guys thanks for joining. Yeah, thank you so much. Have a good day everybody.