 Hello everyone and thanks for joining us tonight. I was already introduced, but I am a graduate student at UC Davis and I study geology, specifically I study paleoclimate or the history of earth's climate. So the debate on climate change has been raging since before I was born. As someone who is most comfortable with herself when she is outside I have always felt a strong pull towards environmentalism. The preservation of wilderness is a logical extension of self-care for me. Listening to this desire, I took environmental science classes in college. I vividly remember the first time I was struck by the importance of managing climate change ironically sitting in a cold lecture hall. We were viewing maps of the east coast of the United States that had been altered to show the landscape and coastline when glaciers had melted enough to cause one meter of sea level rise. I was shocked to see the Potomac River flood over the region where I grew up the greater Washington DC metropolitan area. Rock Creek Park with the bunnies and squirrels that scamper away from me as I ran the trails, the flowers that I loved to pick and even the poison ivy that irritated my skin would all be underwater. Those furry animals would have to move and the flowers and ivy would be fish food. I realized that because of climate change, parts of the world that I grew up in would be gone within my lifetime. So I decided to study climate change. I got rid of my car and started taking the train or carpooling. I began eating less meat and carrying reusable bags. I work every day to reconstruct how the earth has previously coped with drastic climate changes in the hopes of discovering some part of the climate system that we might be able to pull and reverse or at least slow the warming of our planet. I dedicate my time to educating students and others about climate change and try to pass along useful tips to individuals for how to reduce their carbon footprint. Nevertheless, our planet continues to warm. In my lifetime, 26 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have risen over 50 parts per million. This rate of rise to parts per million per year is unprecedented in earth history. The natural feedbacks that mitigate rises in earth's temperature have never before responded to this rapid of a change. The geologic record does show us that life on earth is resilient and will continue through a dramatic change such as this. However, the life that occurs after this change will be like my drowned park, very different from what existed before. Humanity must cope with this change. We must take action, like all of you today, to educate ourselves and mitigate climate change. And with this, I am pleased to introduce nature author, public speaker, and environmental advocate, Kathleen Dean Moore. She's a distinguished professor and emeritus of philosophy from Oregon State University who recently retired to devote more time to climate talks and her writing. In 2010, she co-edited a collection of essays by 100 world visionaries entitled, Moral Ground, Ethical Actions for a Planet in Peril. She will offer her perspective on just what our work is as we stand on the cliff edge of climate chaos. I, for one, will be listening for what one person can do in the world that we have now created. Because sometimes I just don't know. It is my hope that her speech for us, as well as our conversations afterwards, will help us figure out how to cope with the drastic changes that come with a rapidly warming planet. As a scientist, I think that life on Earth will persist, but the question is whether humanity will be part of the new ecosystems that emerge. Let's hear what Kathleen Dean Moore has to offer us. Wonderful. Do you know, Davis, how lucky you are? You know, I'm usually speaking to people who are in absolute despair. They are panicked. They are being bullied by the oil companies. They're defending their land. They're harassing absolutely impotent politicians and they come to me not saying, what is it that I can do but how are we going to live through this grief? And here I come here and I'm getting a neck from shaking my head at all you're able to do. You guys shouldn't have brought me. You should have brought a brass band. You should have brought the Hallelujah Chorus. I mean, the things that we're hearing from all of you about what you're able to accomplish just make my heart race and soar. And I can't wait to go home to Corvallis and tell people, you know what, it can be done. It's happening. And we are getting left behind. I've given up on this notion of a grassroots movement. I think it's time when I listen to what's happening here. I think it's time for us to move away from this notion that we are blades of grass. I don't have a clicker so this is kind of a virtual clicker. Thank you. That's what I needed was the grass. You know, for a while we had this metaphor about what the climate movement was about that it was a grassroots movement and that we were all standing there and standing straight up and reaching for the sun and our roots were reaching for the nourishment and sharing nourishment but if you think about it, grassroots movement doesn't make very much sense. You know, grassroots don't really move unless they get ripped somehow out of the soil and when I hear what's happening here, it just makes me realize that we need a new metaphor and so today what I do want to offer you a metaphor that is like more honest about what's happening. I hear energy and I hear joy and I hear speed and sudden change. I hear rifts and uprootedness and floods and convergences and power here in this room and so we need a metaphor that is more hydrological to match that. Click. Maybe I should just say click instead of being so imperious. I have been actually thinking a lot about rivers lately I was the writer in residence at Denali National Park in Alaska two years ago in June and I lived in a little cabin with my husband on the east fork of the Toklat River. It was June, it was Solstice, it was Alaska, it was murderously hot. At midnight on the porch of our cabin it was 104 degrees now I don't know what that feels like to a Californian but to an Alaskan 104 degrees feels like hell. It was an all-time record and it was drawing this new spike on the graphs of these increasing records being heat in Alaska and even the doll sheep had come down from the mountains those blazing mountains and they were standing in the river. Now also they were record breaking not only heat but record breaking mosquitoes. So I'm the kind of person who would rather be bitten than hot and my husband is the kind of person who would rather be hot than bitten. So I'm lying there half naked swatting mosquitoes and he's lying completely covered by a white sheet. He looked dead and worse than that all the doors and the windows were open to let in whatever breeze there might have been coming by but those very doors and windows were also covered with spikes to keep the grizzly bears from pawing their way and clawing their way into the cabin. So my job was if I heard a snuffling I was supposed to jump out of bed and slam the door shut on the bears nose. So here's the deal. I had come to the Toklat River to think about global warming and it really wasn't going well. Yeah that's what I want good. So the thing that is occurring to me is that we are caught up in a river that's rushing towards this hot and stormy and a dangerous planet and the river is powered by huge amounts of money that are invested in mistakes that are dug into the very structure of the land, the very structure of our buildings. It's a tangled braided river of fearful politicians and preoccupied consumers and reckless corporations and bewildered children and all of us feeling in some sort of way helpless. So the question is how are we ever going to change this current? There wasn't any way I was going to fall asleep that night of course so I went and pulled some clothes on and went down to the river and I walked along the bank there. The currents were just sloshing from all this melt water from the glacier and they looked completely unpredictable and chaotic. But there were patterns. Now I'm a river girl and I grew up and I'll bet you did too along rivers throwing stones in and making dams and disrupting the course of the river so we know that any disruption of a river can reshape the current and where the water piles up against an obstacle it loses energy and it drops its load. So whenever water curls around an obstacle in the river the current's own force turns it upstream, yes? And when there are so many obstacles and so many islands that a channel can't carry its water and its sediment anymore it crosses a stability threshold and the river finds a different way. We knew this and so there I was at the river and sure enough a root ball fell off the side of the river and it ran down the river, rolled down the river and jammed up against a stone. There were pocket eddies that curled around behind it. The force of the river turned itself in a different direction. With every disturbance the river turned itself in a different direction. Disturbance creates more disturbance. Islands create themselves so I shoved a rock into the river and that change in current made me just begin to grin because I realized then that we do not have to stop the river. Our work large and small collective and individual is to make one deflection and complacency, that's what you people are doing here, to make one obstruction to profits to invent a better way to heat our homes without burning stuff up, to move ourselves around without burning stuff up, to make a blockage of business as usual, to make a stoppage to the lies and another and another to change the energy of the flood. And as this river that we're caught in swirls around all these snags and subversions, the current is going to slow, it will lose power. It will eddy in new directions and create new systems and structures that change the course forever. So this is the work that you all are doing that has me so astonished. These are the alternatives that you're creating that make it harder for that river to maintain its energy. This is the work of creative disruption I call it. And what I'm seeing in this room is the work of radical imagination. Imagination that tears at the roots of what has been done and creates something different. It's the work of witness. It's this all these beautiful things you're doing which are so much better than standing by a river and stewing in the night. So actually that's my message tonight is that all of us are called to choose our stone and chuck it in. Skip in a bunch of stones or get together with your friends and roll in a boulder. I'm seeing this happening. Heat in a log or the rib cage of a drowned sheep. It doesn't matter. Get in the way of the old way and create something new. And we all need to learn this word evolution. And I think California is going to see an evolution before any of the rest of this country does. Evulsion is a hydrological term for the very moment when the stream bed has so many blockages, so many different ways that it can't carry its load and it flips overnight and it carves a new direction. So that's how I like to think about the work that we're called to do. But there are many questions and tonight I want to ask three. Can we have the three questions? Here they are. The first question is why? Why me? Why any of us? Why do we have to do this work to keep the growth economy, the extractive economy from wrecking the world? The second question is what is standing in the way of this work? What makes it so hard to get going? And the third question is what are we going to do about that? So okay, question one. Why bother? Why are you here tonight? Why am I here tonight? Will all be dead before the worst parts of this hit the fan? What does it matter that a hundred years from now salmon are still coming to the streams? What does it matter that healthy children will still be humming themselves to sleep? What does it matter that sandhill cranes will be burbling in the meadows? The answer that I would bring is that it's an issue of moral obligation and what's clear to me is that although climate change is a scientific problem, it's a legal problem, it's an economic problem, it's an engineering problem, it's surely a national security problem, but it's fundamentally a moral problem and it calls for a moral response. It's not just stupid to wreck the world, it's wrong. To take whatever we need for our profligate lives and leave a ransacked and destabilized world for the children, that's selfish beyond imagining. Or to let it slip away, the song in a frog's throat, or the evergreen hill size, the snowpack on the mountains, the chances of the children because we're too busy or because we don't care enough to let it slip away, that's a sin. And one more thing, when the big oil executives to increase their already unimaginable profits to increase their profits, they knowingly take down the great planetary systems that sustain human life and all the other lives on earth, that's moral monstrosity on a cosmic scale. But then the philosopher in me kicks in and I say, I can't just say these things. That's pontificating, like a pontiff. I have to give reasons for these claims that I'm making. I have to give reasons to support my views. And I am committed to moral reasoning, this reasoned public discourse that allows us to affirm our deepest beliefs and check them against our actions, our own actions and other actions. The scientists have this wonderful overwhelming consensus about the facts of climate change backed up by evidence. What we need is a corresponding consensus about the moral urgency of climate action backed up by a clear idea of our values. So I want to think about the logic of this and in order to do that, I have to take you back to Aristotle to the practical syllogism. Can we have that, Bill? I'm sorry, I told you one more. Okay. I am a philosopher and that's what you paid for. So here it comes. Any argument that reaches the conclusion about what we ought to do is we have to have two premises. The first premise is a factual premise based on empirical evidence. This is the way the world is. This is the way the world will be if we continue in this fashion or this is the way the world will be if we change our ways. But you can't get from a statement of fact to a conclusion about what we ought to do without another premise, the second premise. And that premise is a evaluative premise. It's an evaluative premise. It's a moral premise. And it says this is good and this is not as good. This is just and this is unjust. This is beautiful and this is profane. This is what I really care about. This is what I would give my life for. This is what I value. This is what I want the world to be. If we know the way the world is and if we know the way we want it to be then and only then can we reach a conclusion about what we ought to do. So what I'm calling for is the work of the second premise. This is our calling now is to be clear about the second premise. What do we dream? What do we cherish? What do we seek? If we're not clear about that then we don't know where to aim. The environmental activism can't just be against things. The question is what are we for? So now at this point a lot of people say to me oh you know you are such a philosopher and so unrealistic. Of course you think it's a moral issue. That's what your work is. But actually be real. Ethics doesn't change anything. It's not about people's vision of the good. It's all about the economy stupid. But I say that that's a misreading of history. And that every major change in US history has been the result of a rising wave of moral affirmation. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal. A ringing affirmation of a beautiful moral principle and the monarchs in Europe fell like dominoes. Or all persons held as slaves within any state shall be then thanks forward and forever free. And against all the economic arguments history reversed its flow. Or I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up. It took many many years. It's a still process still working through that process. But the troopers and those growling dogs stumbled back. Hell no. I won't go. And a stupid war ended. What if we stood up for what we believed in? What if we came up with a new declaration of independence? All beings have a right to a healthy and life-sustaining planet. And this right overrides the presumed right of the few to plunder the common heritage and destabilize the earth's future without restraint. What if we had a new dream? Earth shall be healed and whole again. So because I wanted to with my colleague start this conversation about the second premise we wrote to about 100 of the world's moral leaders and we asked them in 2,000 words or less to answer the question do we have a moral obligation to the future to leave a world as rich in possibilities as our own. We got back incredible responses and we put them together into the book. Can we see the cover of the book Bill? No we can't. Okay. They came back and we put all of them together into categories and they were basically 15 different reasons why we have to stop climate change and I want to read them all. Why do we have to stop climate change? For the survival of human kind for the sake of the children for the sake of the earth for the sake of all forms of life on the planet to protect human rights to honor our duties of gratitude for the full expression of human virtue because all flourishing is mutual the stewardship of divine creation because compassion requires it because justice demands it because the world is beautiful because we love the world because we honor earth and earth systems and because our moral integrity requires us to do what's right note the pluralism note that the parallel we're not looking for one big fat reason we can all buy into we're saying it doesn't matter what value system or what world view you bring to this table there is a good reason based on your values for working to protect the world it's about fundamental human values so I thought for tonight what I would do is pick out two of these values that speak particularly to me about the love for the earth and the love for children so could we have yes I want to say that if we allow climate change to take its course it will be a failure of reverence wonder at the extraordinary chance that we find ourselves in the senozoic era where evolution has achieved its greatest fullness of flowering the theologian Thomas Berry called it the most lyric period in world history imagine our good fortune to live in the time of thrush song and 30,000 species of orchids a time of microscopic sea angels with tiny wings and whales that teach each other to sing a time of crocodiles and butterflies with curled tongues Thomas Berry went on to say it's our generation that's witnessing the end of the era that we evolved in my generation has done what no previous generation could do because they lacked the technological power and what no future generation will be able to do because the planet will never again be so beautiful or abundant the earth has seen extinction before at the end of the Jurassic period an asteroid killed 89% of the living beings including the dinosaurs is it possible that we are now living through an event of equal power in the last 40 years 39% of terrestrial wildlife is gone 39% of marine wildlife gone 76% freshwater wildlife gone in our lifetimes in the poor countries the extinctions are even greater because of course we export our environmental degradation there the losses are 58% we can start tearing out the pages of our field guides what is the cause that's not hard to know deforestation a dramatic loss of habitat harvesting of the oceans poisoning of land and air agricultural expansion but most of all ocean acidification and climate change and what causes that a way of life a constantly growing all consuming culture driven by extractive industries that have few moral or legal constraints it's madness the trades we make deforestation unless something stops us we're going to keep on converting living creatures into dead commodities we trade deep mossy forests for uselessly large garages we trade wide-winged albatrosses for plastic six-pack rings we trade meadows that are miraculous with butterflies for industrial parks to manufacture plastic toys dear god it's mad marsh for another kmart parking lot it's madness this consumption this eating up we trade rhinoceros horn for male sexual potency we trade bare spleens for sexual potency we trade Tibetan red deer for sexual potency what is this overriding need we trade fence rows and goose slews for yet more golf course grass seed our cars we're happy to give up monitor flies for one more fitness center we give up the spring course of frogs for oil terminals we give up the salmon it's a frenzied mad auction of what is of ancient value for what is cheap and desperately sad it's a mad rush to the end of the world and the most terrible trade is the transmogrification of plant and animal they're into human flesh Daniel Quinn says that since 1970 the biomass of the human species has gained 50 million tons it came from other members of the community of life as a result the world is losing 150 species a day we are turning 150 species a day into human fat and gristle so the point that I want to make and I probably have already made is that it doesn't really matter whether you think that the world was created by God or whether you think it was created by the beautiful urgent creativity of the universe either way the world is irreplaceable it's essential it's beautiful and fearsome and beyond human understanding to me that's the language of the sacred I would say that this destruction is a desecration and that climate change is a failure of reverence if we let climate change blow up we will have betrayed our love for the children according to a new letter of consensus from 500 scientists that are led by a team from Stanford unless we take concrete immediate action by the time today's children have grown to middle age the life support systems of the earth will be irretrievably damaged who are these children I know one of them her name is Zoe and she is my granddaughter and in the evening she lies in bed and she sings herself to sleep when she's middle aged the earth's life support systems will be irretrievably damaged unless we stop fossil fuels they'll live as best they can in a world of violent weather nor the least spreading disease water shortage collapsed agricultural and fishery systems wars for resources massive movements of people driven from their homes by flood or wildfire or starvation that's a betrayal of the children here's Brian Doyle my poet friend from Portland I said put this into words for me Brian and he said we may not betray our children because we swore and vowed to every God we ever imagined or invented or dimly sensed that we would care for them with every iota of our energy when they came to us miraculously from the sea of the stars because they are the very definition of innocent and every single blow and shout and shiver and fear that rains down on them is utterly undeserved and unfair and unwarranted and because we used to be them and we remember dimly what it was like to be small and frightened and confused I want to read from moral ground a little section just a couple paragraphs from a piece that I wrote for the section about our love for our children if I may in the spring when our granddaughter was born I brought her to the pond so she could feel the comfort I had known there for so many years kill deer waddled in the mud by the shore but not so many as before ahead of the coming heat butterflies fed in the mud between the cracks unrolling their tongues to touch salty soil I love my granddaughter in my arms and sang to her then an old lullaby that made her soften like wax in a flame molding her little body to my bones she fell asleep in my arms unafraid I will tell you I was so afraid poets warned us writing of the heartbreaking beauty that will remain when there is no heart to break for it but what if it's worse than that what if it's the heartbroken children who remain in a world without beauty how will they find solace in a world without wild music how will they thrive without green hills edged with oaks how will they forgive us for letting frog songs slip away it isn't enough to love a child and wish her well it isn't enough to open my heart to a bird-graced morning can I claim to love a morning if I don't protect what creates its beauty can I claim to love a child if I don't use all the power of my beating heart to preserve a world that nourishes children's joy loving is not a kind of la di da loving is a sacred trust to love is to affirm the absolute worth of what you love and to pledge your life to its thriving to protect it fiercely and faithfully for all time ring the angelus for the salmon and the swallows ring the bells for frogs floating in bent reeds ring the bells for all of us who did not save the songs mother of god ring the bells for every sacred emptiness let them echo in the silence at the end of the day forgiveness is too much to ask I would pray for only this that our granddaughter would hear again the little lick of music that grace note toward the end of a meadowlark song meadowlarks they sang like angels in the morning Katie are you out there Katie Katie said tell us what to say to people who say it's not urgent tell us what to say to people who say you know don't worry about it and here's what I wanted to say in response to that question Katie ask them what they love what did they love more than anything else in the whole world what would they give their life for and then ask them to imagine how the object of their love will do in a world that's wracked by storms and when they start to put those two ideas together then tell them you know your love is a call to action if you are a person who loves then you are a person who will act on climate change because no matter what it is that you love climate change is going to kick it in the teeth but anyway it's tougher than that isn't it Katie because there are more there are things that are blocking us from acting and Bill can we see my question slide again what's blocking action what's blocking us from what we're doing what we need what's blocking us from what we need to do I want to mention a couple false hoods that I think we need to deal with before we'll be able to make any progress and the first one is from Pogo it's this idea that we have met the enemy and he is us this idea is a killer it stops action the idea that unless you are pure unless you don't drive a car then you can't say anything against the pollution and the destruction of the destruction of the climate this is a mistake here's what I want to say that it may be one of the biggest triumphs of big oil to make us blame ourselves for climate change even while the corporations are spending billions to transform us into mindless consumers of self-destructive but cheap consumer products and fossil fuels to make us blame ourselves even as they leverage their bribes in congress to be sure that we have no alternative ways to heat our homes or travel to our jobs or find some way to ease our grief so when I hear people say we've met the enemy and he is us I want to think about it really carefully because of course we should spend and invest and work and travel more thoughtfully of course we should dramatically cut our use of fossil fuels of course we should be doing all the things that you're doing in Davis to make the system work better that said the big oil companies are very happy to claim that they're simply responding to public demand when in fact they are manipulating public demand to increase even now increase our uses of fossil fuels I'm not the one who builds and maintains infrastructures that force consumers to use fossil fuels I'm not the one that convinces politicians to kill or underfund alternative energy or transportation initiatives I'm not the one who increases demand by advertising I'm not the one who hires bogus scientists to try to create confusion about the harmful effects of burning fossil fuels I'm not out there using my money to influence elections to defang the regulatory agencies we have met the enemy and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it isn't me but while big oil is externalizing all its other costs on us I'm not going to let it externalize the moral shame of its attack on the earth mistake number two okay so I'll read this to you because it's a cute little cartoon and up on the whiteboard there's this bulleted list of all the things that can be accomplished if you address climate change and you know this because you're doing this in your community independence preserve forests sustainability green jobs livable cities healthy children fresh food environmental justice renewable fuels clean air quiet clean water and then down there do you see that guy he's saying yeah but what if climate change is a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing the thing is there's something really important missing from that list and if we can fight back against the forces that would corrupt our democracy in order to preserve the hegemony of big oil then we can put reclaimed democracy up on that list too you already know the dollar figures I'm not even going to bother I will just remind us all of the Koch brothers pledged of $889 million for the next elections cheap at any price if it lets an industry continue to make the kind of profits that we're talking about there so let me just talk about Plato because way back in ancient Greece he had it figured he was not a fan of democracy was frightened of democracy because he said you can always buy votes and there are always people who won't care enough to think carefully the Greek word for those people who don't involve themselves in careful thinking about elections is idiotes that's useful to know they didn't they knew that everyone could buy all of the politicians could buy votes and so it was a natural progression inevitable progression he said from democracy to plutocracy the government of the few and the rich and every plutocracy he said devolves into anarchy those poor people will only put up with so much injustice so have we moved from a democracy to a plutocracy and if we have will we be able to return to a democracy or will we devolve into an anarchy to me it is that serious of course you know that Plato's solution was the philosopher king to make the philosopher kings I think that's about the worst idea in the universe mistake number three if you would yeah I want to be careful about this because I tend to rant I am very very worried that we have moved quickly away from mitigating climate change that is to say pushing back against oil and fossil fuels pushing back against the companies pushing back against the harm and have moved very quickly towards adapting to living in it you know in a world that is not as rich and it worries me if we take energy away from the stopping the harm putting it towards adapting to the harm even though I know that we're already in a position where we will adapt in many ways so I want to offer you a quiz because professors do offer quizzes so here's the question it's multiple choice so don't worry when your house is on fire what should you do A not one damn thing B defame the people who called 911 to report the blaze C debate whether the fire is caused by humans or natural fluctuations in temperature D write a grant to study the effect of fire on children E formulate a business plan to corner the market on corrugated metal roofing for hovels F appoint a commission to study how to adapt to life in the burnt out husk of a house or G for God's sake put out the fire while there's still something to save and I know that whenever you give a multiple choice quiz the students always want a hint so here's a hint imagine that your children are in the house and not only your children but 109 billion other children imagine that this house is beautiful beyond imagining that you have been happy in this house that it's a sheltering nourishing place that provides water and warmth and food imagine in fact that this house is the only possible source of everything your life and happiness depend on and imagine there's still a chance to save the house or at least large parts of it but it's a narrow perilously narrow chance and it depends on throwing everything we've got at the fire so what are we going to say to Rex Tillerson who is the chairman president and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil who says as a species we have spent our entire existence adapting so we can adapt to climate change our primary obligation is to stop the reckless destruction and to the extent that adaptation takes away from that effort I worry about it a great deal particularly in places like New York where the adaptation is designed to protect a way of life rather than designed to be truly adaptive in a natural way but the worst of the three of the four mistakes that I've isolated is this one that's about to come there is no hope it's too late let's face it our options are limited our cities and our homes and transportation systems are disgracefully designed destructive ways of living are tangled in skeins of profit immense profit and power around the world corporations many of them are behaving like psychopaths and we have run out of time the most conscientious person is going to have a very hard time making change Gus Speth says all we have to do to destroy the planet's climate and ecosystems and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today and there's new polling and I'm happy to report that I don't see it here at all they say that the people who are concerned about climate change made 81% feel sad 79% feel angry 76% feel disgusted and 61% feel hopeless what impresses me so much about the last six hours is the way in which you folks are showing that the antidote to despair is action active hope it's beautiful but to lose hope is really a problem and the problem is that we build a society that's based on the future and that we measure everything we do by its consequences and so we built a society that can be disempowered both by hope and by hopelessness so blind hope everything will be how does that song go? everything is going to be alright and so I don't have to do anything it's fine blinding despair no matter what I do everything is going to be awful so I don't have to do anything moral abdication on both sides but the point is that that's a false dichotomy it's a fallacy and in this broad area between hope and despair is this moral ground that we call moral integrity it's this whole essential middle ground that's acting not because you hope to make a difference or because you despair of making a difference but because you want to do what you think is right so integrity is this matching this oneness this wholeness of what you believe is right and what you actually do so a person lives a life of integrity who lives gratefully because he believes that life is a gift or acts reverently because she believes the world is sacred or lives simply because she doesn't believe in taking more than her fair share or acts lovingly toward the world because they love it and this means a fierce and tireless and maybe tragic defense of the world against those who would wreck it so we come to the last question Bill so what are we going to do? you're doing them three things and we have to do them all this list comes from Joanna Macy there are three kinds of rocks we're going to push into this river the first one and if I could have the rings on the water thank you the first thing she says that we need to do is stop the harm we need holding actions to slow the damage to earth and its beings we have to stop making it worse which means we have to stop releasing greenhouse gases we have to leave the ancient carbon in the ground so this is the question each of us asks individually and collectively what destruction can I stop what oil terminal what parking lot what coal train what poison spraying truck what pipeline what corrupt politician can I stop choose one move fast hold your leaders to account if they sell out to the culture of destruction throw them out if they stand courageously against it stand with them not another tundra plane not another rainforest not another estuary not another canyon land or Oregon farm not another mighty river can be traded away for cash these are not industries to take or to sell they belong to the future of the everlasting earth number two number one stop the harm number two radically reimagine our life ways and livelihoods to match our vision of a sustainable and thriving world you people are number two you are doing number two trying to create new ways new ways to live lives that are sustainable and beautiful and joyous you are trying to radically reimagine how we can feed ourselves and catch and share energy without burning stuff up and then you are imagining those new life ways into existence it's thrilling to me to see this Brian Doyle again says have we gone stale and dim as a species let us send our wild holy imagination into the future yes let's do that I'm sick sick sick of an ethic of regulation how much destruction can I do and profit from before some sort of rule shuts me down that's not a moral standard I yearn I yearn for an ethic of affirmation and aspiration what is a good corporation what is a thriving city what is an honorable harvest what is a good life if capitalism can serve us save the earth show me how how can I make my life into a work of art that reflects my deepest values and then finally the third step is to create a paradigm shift in our understanding of ourselves and our place on this planet we are soft bodied mortal imagining creatures who are woven into beautiful interdependent lives of wildly creative life so let me just end by reading you from Clarissa Estes and here's what she says she says do not lose heart we were made for these times yes for years we have been learning practicing been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plane of engagement I recognize a sea worthy vessel when I see one there have never been more able vessels in the water than there are right now across the world and they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind there will always be times when you feel discouraged I too have felt despair many times in my life but I do not keep a chair for it I will not entertain it it is not allowed to eat from my plate I hope you will write this on your wall when a great ship is in harbor and moored it is safe there can be no doubt but that is not what great ships are built for cool Davis you are a great ship the currents are shifting under your hull and you are under sail congratulations to you and thank you thank you so much I am always reluctant to answer questions because I have already told you everything I know or have ever thought of but there is one more thing I want to say and as that we will be resuming this conversation in the morning and perhaps you could tell people when and where and the other thing I would like to do before we close is ask each of you to turn to a person near you whom you have not already met introduce yourself and tell that person what you love too much to lose will you do that now? was it that just amazing let's say thank you again just as a word of closing the information for where to go tomorrow is in your program if you don't see that check with one of the cool Davis board members myself or we will be around out in the lobby I wanted to say one more thing, well actually two more things one is that we have this key that belongs to someone it doesn't say Tesla but it is probably a very cool bike or something like that so we pick that up outside if it belongs to you see me right afterwards the second thing is to mention in response to the comments that when I was at Copenhagen for the UN conference a few years ago and I was standing in a very cold line in the snow waiting to get my ticket to get in and to get my credentials there were people from all over the world there and I mean really being that people from Africa, Asia, all mixed in line having great conversations with each other and of course they came around to asking where are you from and when I told them I was from the United States there was quietness and sort of well you know what you guys aren't doing very good but when I told them I was from California they all came back and we could be friends and I feel the same way today but so much more and for Davis too, for cool Davis these are challenging numbers here but this is something that we each can do and it's positive and it's a good thing and it's good on so many levels as we heard tonight and in this respect cool Davis is about action, California is about action, the work that I do is about action, the work that's done at the CEC is about action, California is not sitting on its laurels, California is doing things and the gift we give to our nation when we do that is not just about Davis, when we show that these things can be done, that we can have liveable great homes that don't use very much energy at all, that we can reduce our water that we can have a great vibrant community that we're generating more jobs than anywhere else in the nation, when we show that and we're still improving our environment and moving forward than we are doing something not just for ourselves but for the nation and the world. The UN meeting that just finished in Peru had a, they talked about sub-nationals, they're realizing that at the nation level it's very hard to do something about climate change but where's the action? It's at the regions, the counties and the cities and it's possible in Paris there may be a separate place for those organizations simply because that's where the action is and that's where it's happening and I imagine that we will have some people from Davis there at the meeting that's going to be in Paris at the end of this year talking about what the world, the world conversation moving past the nations where we know our nation is having a difficult time with this crazy time, it's just crazy what's going on in DC, the conversations but I come back to California and I see positive things going on and every one of you are doing that and I very much appreciate that. So from Cool Davis thank you very much for coming tonight, I hope this has given you a lot to think about