 I talked before about the sadness that I felt and especially my wife Stella felt upon looking at the narrow river estuary and the places where there used to be so much life and it's not there anymore. And our sadness was not because we made some kind of mental calculation that that location no longer sequesters as much carbon and that therefore our future is going to be a little bit more in peril because of the lost carbon contribution just as the sadness that you feel when you see your childhood woods bulldozed or when you hear of a species going extinct or when you look at the pits and quarries and the tailing ponds of a strip mine or of a mountaintop removal operation or the devastation caused by tar sands excavation or those birds covered in oil struggling up onto the shore from an oil spill that hurts and it's not because you make a calculation that oh boy this is going to add more carbon and according to the models in 30 years or in 50 years that's going to mean this this and this there's a more visceral impact of these things. We are sad and in pain from the damage because we love these beings and I think that that this is a much more potent invitation to environmental action, to action to protect and restore the places of this earth than appealing to a theoretical projection of what's going to happen in 10 or 20 or 30 or 100 years that's not as motivating for a lot of people and it requires them to buy into a politically charged politically loaded position on climate change. I ran into somebody a few weeks ago whose brother is like this conservative Trump supporting anti-immigrant whatever whatever you know he like doesn't believe in climate change actually I'm not sure if he's anti-immigrant I'm just kind of elaborating here embroidering it but what what this woman said is that he does not believe in climate change and he's a rancher and he's transitioned to using Alan's savory methods of holistic grazing and building huge amounts of topsoil and he's not motivated by climate change he's motivated by the health of his cattle and the health of the land and the soil is getting better and springs that have been dry for 30 years have been returning and and the songbirds are coming back and he's using less chemicals and he's actually doing better economically and like he doesn't need to believe in climate change to do probably more than everybody listening is put together to draw down carbon so this just illustrates that maybe attaching so much to the global warming narrative to the greenhouse gas narrative may not be necessary and may actually bypass what actually motivates people to do things that are in service to life and this is not to say that the theory of global warming is wrong I'm not saying that and if you are making a mental calculation of which side I am on can I trust this guy is he on the denier side or is he on the side of right and reason then you're missing my point and missing the larger point of the perils of war thinking and of the first question being which side are you on because maybe as I said before maybe there are hidden agreements among all sides among both sides of the polar spectrum that need to be challenged so one of those assumptions that I want to challenge is how do we motivate people to care and to take action and to answer that you might ask what motivated you to become an environmentalist if you are one maybe you don't identify that way but if you are one as I believe myself to be what what brought you to that what was it that you became afraid for our future or is that an acceptable reason on top of something that's much more squishy maybe the truth is that even if our future weren't at stake you would still want to save the amazon you would still want to stop the new road and stop the bulldozers and protect the fish protect the trees why because you you are a tree hugger you are a bird watcher you're a butterfly lover you like to touch turtles and look at turtles what if we embrace that what if we recognize that what motivates people is an experience of love and connection and an awareness of beauty and of loss feeling grief for what's being harmed right now and not to persuade them to trust the scientific authorities to believe what's going to happen in x number of years if this invisible substance called carbon dioxide and methane etc increases in its concentration that's a relatively hard cell compared to the tangible damage that's being done here and now people make sacrifices for what they love if you know that your actions are harming one of your loved ones then that's going to weigh heavy on you and you're going to want to change and many people do make courageous choices putting themselves at risk for the sake of their loved ones we are going to have to make courageous choices everybody in order to come into alignment with the healing of this planet we have to recognize that where does courage come from the word itself suggests the answer courage meaning heartfulness it comes from love we have to understand that that politicians that energy company executives that that lumber company executives I mean everybody is going to have to make brave choices it is brave for a corporate person to try to push their corporation to be a little bit more ecological like it's brave for the corporation to make that choice when it seems to conflict with the bottom line what's going to happen to our market share what are the shareholders going to say and so on so this is an important question that we have not been asking the question being where does courage come from and it comes from connection to what we love so yeah the the the a lot of the climate strategies are they do have some understanding of this that's why they use pictures of polar bears and stuff like that but then divert that energy into something that is global and abstract and long term and I think that on some of the people don't really believe it they might say that they believe it but most people don't believe it because their lived experience is not telling them that the climate is really getting worse life still goes on it has not affected them in the ways that they can recognize you can ideologically say that forest fires and droughts and hurricanes and floods are caused by climate change but that requires buy-in to to theories that I have to say are overhyped I can't say whether they are wrong but as I said before a lot of what is blamed on global warming is caused by more local and regional disruptions in soil water forests and so forth so do we want to peg our hopes to convincing everybody about climate change when there is another way a way that coincides coincides a lot more with with what actually motivates us tree hugger what motivates you what happened it was probably an experience you fell in love and that love and the potential for its awakening lives in all people we need to provide conditions for its awakening and then avenues for its expression and not let it get sidetracked by various ideological positions but there are there are things that people can do on a small scale on a local scale on a regional scale that then contribute to change on a global scale and I'm not saying that global level change is unimportant or unnecessary we do need global agreements to so that we can cooperate you can't have everybody withholding from polluting the earth in one in everywhere except for one place that's doing all the pollution and then exporting their things everywhere else that's not progress so we do need global agreements which we do not really have at this point the global agreements we have are mostly free trade agreements which actually run counter to ecological health that allow corporations to sue governments for harming their profits if they institute environmental regulations and these cases are adjudicated by unelected commissions with industry representatives appointed to them and stuff it's pretty dark so I'm I I just you know when I call for local action and care for the places where we are and and the nourishment and protection of the organs and tissues of Gaia that are this forest and this river like I do want to invite us to put our energy and attention to that but it's not to say that we then should completely ignore political engagement that's important too but the political engagement needs to come from a recognition of the importance of the local and allow us to act without external interference in the ways that serve each place