 Regardless of climate change, helping people to understand how to stay in control of their emotional mind, not dismiss it, but stay in control of it, allow it to happen, but understand it and be in control of it, and then let your rational thinking and your actions be guided by your intellect and your rational mind. That's being a big journey for me throughout my career really, but obviously it's really come to a fore in the last few years while I've been really thinking about it myself, and it's a fascinating field of research that I know that a lot of people, psychologists in particular, delve into, and that is a challenge that if we can get that across to more people and I think it'll help us with the communication process. Dave Borlase is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by Innovator's Magazine and 1.5 Media. Born just four months before man first landed on the moon back in 1969, Dave has been conscious of environmental issues since studying for a technology degree with the Open University in the late 1990s. In early 2017, Dave read a seminal book called A Farewell to Ice written by the Arctic Research Scientist Professor Peter Wattons. That book was an epiphany that set Dave off on a quest to create climate communication videos that aim to decode the sometimes overwhelmingly complicated and confusing scientific information around climate change with the objective of explaining the concepts in the sort of plain English that everyday folks can understand. He does it so well. His YouTube channel, just have a think, now has over 100,000 subscribers through his weekly videos. Dave seeks to understand the issues that face our civilization in the 21st century and focuses on the potential solutions that will save as many lives as possible and hopefully bring about a greater level of equality in the world. You can visit, just have a think channel on YouTube as well as support Dave through his Patreon site, just have a think. Dave, thank you so much for being here. I could go on and on about your biography and past but I want to get into that as we speak today. You give us a little behind the scenes look at how your journey has been. Welcome. Thank you, Mark. Great to be here. So not only do you have over 100,000 subscribers but you have wonderful video that says nature has learned how to eat our plastic. It has about a million views. Congratulations. It's a wonderful video. Nuclear fusion, revolutionary new breakthrough. It has about 412,000 views. Also amazing. One of my favorites is the one on water and meat where you actually give us a little clip and you go out to your garden or your backyard and you start hauling in water and showing us how much water is in chicken embedded in chicken, how much water is embedded in sausages, et cetera. Fabulous amount of work but just amazing results on what a well produced video. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. You're setting the example and a lot of people are noticing and coming to you for these type of things. I believe we're aligned in many things regarding climate and the 21st century, the road that we're going. So we're going to have a lot of opportunities to go down some rabbit holes into deeper dive dialogue and that's really my hope today. I don't want to tickle or scratch the surface too much. I really want to get in behind the scenes, pull back the curtain and see your journey. That brings me to the first question. You started with a book but how did that journey go? I see the evolution a little bit because I've watched the videos but can you give us a little inside of how that went? Yeah. Someone said that once you know these things you can't un-know them and I think that's probably a good summary of where I started and why I'm continuing really. So I did the degree in the 90s with the Open University. That was a technology degree. Even back then we were looking at renewable energy and those days wind was kind of where it was at and we studied the Danish example of the way the Open University put it was really trying to teach us how that all solutions aren't necessarily final and complete and they can't be brought to governments or corporations as perfect entities. They have to be developed and the great example was in the early 70s we had the oil crisis as you know and wind power was offered to the United Kingdom as a great opportunity because we're the windiest country in Europe and it was the obvious thing to do and because it was in its nascence and it wasn't fully developed and because the UK government had just discovered North Sea oil of course they rejected wind out of hand and just went full on into the North Sea. The Danes had a similar opportunity and they understood that it wasn't a completely finished article and they divulged it. I think that's the right word to their farmers. They basically said to their farmers look you've all got sort of windmills of some sort develop them and see what you can come up with. We'll put a centre of excellence in Copenhagen bring your ideas to the centre of excellence and we'll see if we can build an industry out of it which is exactly what they did and by the time I was studying for a degree in 1996 the Danes had cornered the wind market it was worth about four billion pounds I think in those days 20 years ago 25 years ago and so that taught me something at a very young age about about you know not necessarily looking for perfect solution but getting something and working with it and then so I was interested in solar more recently I bought a house 10 years ago or so and I've got this cabin that I'm sitting in now this is where I do all the videos and all the work and I wanted to put some solar on here to make it a bit more sustainable and to learn about you know solar installation and I'm a bit of a you know gadget boy anyway so I wanted to get my hands into the wires and find out how it all works and how to convert 12 volts from AC into DC or DC into AC and inverters and all that so I put that on the cabin and while I was researching for how to do that that led me towards you know how the internet takes you down all sorts of rabbit holes and that's how I found the book from Peter Waddams so what I thought at the time I thought well climate change is happening and it's apparently a little bit of a problem and it'd be quite nice if I put some solar panels on my roof and wouldn't that be that probably be about as much as I need to do by the time I'd done research and then by the time I'd finally read the whole of Peter Waddams book I was like oh my god we are really in trouble in a way that I had no idea really no and I thought of myself as a fairly well informed kind of guy I had no idea of the magnitude of the trouble that we're in and as I say once you know that you can't unknow it and so that really pushed me on and so I wanted then I then I wanted to start talking about it I'd reached the age of nearly 50 I'd done kind of 30 odd years in in a career I'd done my striving to do you know corporate stuff and and I felt I'd reached a point where I could start saying useful things and talking in a useful way and most of my working life had been managing people understanding what makes people tick and and looking at good managers and bad managers and and I'd learnt quite early on that that you know to get people to to do things you obviously you have to tell them what to do and you have to tell them how to do it but you really need to tell them why and and that's that third thing is missed by so many managers they just say this is what you need to do and this is how you need to go do it now you know go away and do it and don't come back till it's finished not a good way to manage people not a good way to get people to do stuff unless they understand why they're probably going to either not do it at all or do it in a half-hearted way so I wanted to produce videos that tried to explain why obviously the what now but why we need to do these things and in words that as you said earlier words that people like me can understand and I so I read through these so many scientific papers and there were weeks when I was almost in tears with you know trying to understand these papers or just trying to bring out of these papers the salient information that you can give to a member of the public in 30 seconds or a few minutes in a reasonably engaging and entertaining way that will keep their attention and help them understand the point because they're never going to trawl through a thousand pages of a scientific peer-reviewed report with all the technical language that you've got to go and look up and understand people aren't going to do that so that was really that was the mission nice short sharp videos 10 to 15 minutes hopefully in length engaging little bit of video work and animation hopefully a fairly upbeat optimistic and sometimes humorous presentation from me and you know maybe it'll work and and I just started you did a fabulous job that's really turned out to be something and I know you you kind of touched upon it that there's been an evolution or a journey there that for example I'll give you the example most recent you just released a video on Sunday or was it Saturday Sunday and you had it yeah yesterday you had to read I think there was a minimum four reports there major reports and they're between 70 and 200 pages long some of those reports and they're very complicated very scientific very a lot a lot of things in there I've also read the reports but that is a lot of work and then to summarize that to get it into executive summary something that's understandable it's extremely hard and complex to do but I think if I'm wrong can you tell us a little bit more about the the journey so you started out and you're like oh no I'm getting into a rabbit hole I've just read this book now I want to do a video this is extremely complicated and then as I watch your videos over time they just it's actually it's just not only did the videos get better the producing and the quality of the post production and animation but the content and the you know did you use tools like critical thinking systems thinking sense making what can you give us that more insight on that how you evolved and what maybe some aha moments or some specific videos that you did say wow this is one of my favorite I learned the most ever there yeah I mean the first few videos were really just the intention was for folks to come along with me on my journey from relative ignorance through to knowing a little bit more and it was really I suppose the real idea was what can I do in my life to affect change and what can I change in my lifestyle to try and reduce my carbon footprint and make myself a bit more environmentally friendly if you like so that was the first few videos and the from a production point of view it was it was just that was really I figured the first year would be my apprenticeship on learning how to you know make videos I'd used Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro and After Effects a little bit for work in the past so I kind of had a passing acquaintance with them but not much more than that so so I was learning how to use the tools of the trade if you like and you'll see that if you watch all the videos you'll see a progression from you know quality the production standards as you say have generally improved more and more and as I've got better equipment better camera you know that's that's improving all the time but the the journey the transition from what can I do in my own personal life through to the realisation that it was it was a bigger more global issue and I needed to I felt I needed to start talking about more global issues particularly collective action and pressuring governments to start to put incentives and stimulus carrot and stick if you like be more proactive in the world I was seeing that more and more of that as I as I went to it coincided quite nicely with the XR and Greta came along in it in 2018 so I started in 2000 early 2018 and then those movements began not long after that so I think public awareness was already being picked up by those people as well and I went I went and followed the XR occupation of London last April and that was a very interesting experience and that you know that showed me a lot about the power of collective activism two weeks after that event the the XR people were in a room with Michael Gove who's the UK who was the UK Environment Secretary and his team and he was asking them what it was they wanted to see the government do and and some of their demands he he meant declaring a climate emergency is a good start at least it's a public declaration so I saw all that happening and so that that's kind of led me more and more towards videos about more global things technological and and not so much political but collective action action if you like you know getting people to get up and stand up and do something and so there's been there were more and more at the end of the videos there were doing more and more sort of just brief summaries from me that talked about you know this isn't just a video for you to watch and a bit of eye candy it's you can do something here and if you you know if you feel you can interact in any way in your local environment or whatever you can do don't sit by and watch it happen because it's happening now get up and do something so so it sort of it drove me meet my my ambition to drive others kind of drove me as well at the same time in terms of I don't know whether there are any seminal videos I did interview Peter Waddams I did I did I went to see him at Cambridge in his offices and I cut that into four videos and he spoke very eloquently and very compellingly about the issues not just in the Arctic which are of course very grievous but about the implications of what's happening in the Arctic for the rest of the world including particularly down in the Middle Attitudes we spoke a bit about famine and hunger and and floods as well and that's going to affect those regions more than anywhere else in the world and that was a learning curve for me as well so that opened my mind a little bit to it's not just putting solar panels on your roof or getting wind power in your country it is the entire global interlinked system that we've got now particularly with with getting food and products from one place to another is really destroying huge swathes of very complex and fragile and vulnerable ecosystems and biodiversity in ways that you know you just we just don't seem to understand and appreciate as human beings because we've got away with it for so long it's inconceivable to us that we can't keep going away with it some people still don't think it's possible for the human being to have an sufficiently large impact on the planet that we would you know that we could start destroying things which of course is completely wrong so um so I think that's that's been my journey from what can I do as an individual to what what we can all do I'm just a drop in the ocean but we all constitute we're all drops and oceans are made up of drops and we all make up an ocean so that's kind of been the journey if you like thank you yes I I see that journey and that that's why I wanted to ask about it I also see that it's not just you reading the reports and the light going on with you you're actually installing the solar panels you're out saying okay how much physical water does it take to put into these chick this chicken I'm going to get ready to grill and you put that in a video and so the where possible I mean nuclear fission you're not building a reactor or anything in your backyard but you're trying where possible to build that sustainable that resilient lifestyle you're also you know changing different things that you read and say okay how can I apply that to little old me my life and and into my situation now where possible and if not what do I need to do to maybe get a further step in the right direction and I see that kind of with I look at your videos with a different lens so to say and so I definitely see that and I I really like that and that's what I also hear heard with you just telling us kind of behind the scenes how it's developed that goes into what we've just experienced this whole pause this pandemic the COVID-19 the Black Lives Matter the the unrest the kind of crazy distancing and and things that we're still experiencing around the world in some sense haven't fully come out or don't know if we're going into a second wave but I want to know by having the sustainability mindset by having a little bit of resilience those things that you've learned over the past two years or more or since you've done this well it's four years now almost hasn't it been nearly yeah yeah so has that helped you weather this time a lot better be more prepared and feel like wow okay and tell us how and why what what how how does it look for you well it's an interesting it's a good question and it's an interesting one I think the two things do do crossover climate change if you like and and living more sustainably and this pandemic they do crossover and I suppose one before I say but one caveat I would interject just right here is I do take care not to be I don't want to sound like you know well at least things I've done and I you know the great I am so that that's not how I I intend my messages to come across and I hope they don't come across that way but the fact remains I have made quite a lot of changes in my life that have actually ironically been quite useful in the pandemic so for example seven years ago I stopped driving a car I don't have a vehicle a long time ago I stopped drinking alcohol when I was 35 stopped smoking when I was 30 three years ago I went vegetarian and then about six months later I went vegan excuse me and again not because I not because I have a passionate abhorrence of of of man eating flesh I understand a lot of vegans do and that's their motivation and I I I'm not a big fan of killing animals I've now learned that there's no need for an animal to die for me to eat and be sustained so I'm more I'm more practical if you like I looked at the land use of of animal livestock farming in the world the big agribusinesses I'm talking about not I'm not talking about small holdings up in Aberdeen or somewhere the big agribusinesses and I thought that yeah I don't need to be part of that and that's that's why I went vegan and I found it was really easy to do and made me feel more healthy so those sacrifice not sacrifices those changes I made in my life I made because I wanted to not because anyone told me I had to solar and wind or solar power certainly on my house has been a help so in the pandemic little things like the the lack of mobility that has been inflicted upon us and you're not supposed to drive you know long distances to do any this than the other well I wasn't doing that anyway because I'd got used to a lifestyle that was slightly more constrained and I haven't got kids so I don't need to take the kids to school I understand some people have need to have a way of doing that I get that but in my life I'd learn how to live in a much more constrained way I walk once a week I walk to the supermarket which is a mile from my house with a buck with a backpack and I buy you know as food as environmentally sustainable as you can from the supermarket I guess but it's vegan food so it tends to be quite well sourced and I try to buy food that's sourced in this country rather than flying it in from all over the world fill up my backpack and I walk home and that's good exercise so that keeps me fit I'm not using a vehicle I'm not you not even using public transport in that respect and in the pandemic that I've been able to just continue that way of life nothing I haven't really had to amend anything in my life to cope with the pandemic so it hasn't been a wrench you know like I think it perhaps has for some people and I think the pandemic shows us that living more within your means and a more contained lifestyle is how we will need to live in the future we just will I mean we can start getting used to it now in our generation and maybe the generation after us or the world will change to such an extent that these the ability to live in a less constrained way won't be there because nature will have done the job for us so that's kind of the choice in my opinion that's kind of the choice we've got so that I think what the pandemic I think is starting to sow that seed of thought in a lot of people's minds and that can only be a good thing so I was lucky in a way that I'd already kind of maybe started on a little bit of that journey and I hope a lot more people are beginning to think about it in that sense now as well well I really figured that you weren't out hoarding toilet paper or disinfectant or no I've not been injecting the out doing the mask making craze I there there's a unique thing that happens when you start to think more sustainable you also usually start to live more sustainable and apply the things that you see because you see that they're a little bit better operating system that it's more efficient it's nicer you feel more secure there's a little bit more resilience there I had the opportunity to interview an Oxford professor from Jesus College I believe that is where he teaches to Moss David Barrett and he does a show called the human beasts and in one episode of his his show he he interviews a zoo designer that does big zoos and they were calling our homes and places we live these human zoos and when you you have the sustainable resilient mindset if you're already thinking in that way you tend to have the technologies the innovations the things in place where you live to make it comfortable to make it efficient to make it so that you can sustain yourself and so your home human zoo actually is as a place you feel comfortable to do your work and live and and you know there's some cartoons out there that are really funny so I can't remember do I work from home or is this my you know or is this my office am I at the office I can't you know distinguish the two and it's really kind of a construct of how we design our lives and I think from what I've seen from your videos there's evolution and not only how what you explained in the beginning it's you've created a nice place and a nice system so that you have a little bit more resilience and others and and that's really what I hope to hear because the the biggest cause for people not to transition or to move to something as they think it's hard or it's difficult or they don't understand it or it's scary or costs a lot and in the long run it's actually just a much better system and so I see that with you and and I heard it in your response and so that's a very beautiful that was my first question and really kind of for the listeners to see what what how do other people do it because some people that I know really never applied it they talked about it a lot didn't apply it and they were the ones out holding toilet paper they didn't know what to do they didn't have the technologies ready to be able to work from home or to to survive the and so it's good to have that that speaks to the I didn't mention it then but we can perhaps get into it as well is that there's the system thinking that the fast and slow thinking or I sometimes call it the emotional mind and the intellectual mind and the emotional mind is the knee jerk reaction to what's in front of you which is the people buying dozens and dozens of toilet rolls they just reacted didn't they didn't show any acumen for projecting forward with their intellectual rational mind as to what do I really need 157 toilet rolls you know that they just reacted and and so that's perhaps something we can we can delve more into because it's an interest it's a very interesting area and I think it's one of the reasons why climate change is so difficult to communicate because we're talking to people who generally do use their emotional mind and not this slow intellectual rational system to critical thinking I suppose you might say to project forward into into the consequence that was my next question so we could dive into it right right now it was about critical thinking and and you know for me for example I'm not worried if there was a shortage of toilet paper I have a bidet I have a way to do it I can use rainwater recycling or other methods a little five euro adapter to the toilet and I can have a bidet you know and yeah try to think differently of you know how to do it and it's not going back to neanderthal times it's actually thinking just you know how can I be a little self-sufficient and so yeah but that's a paradigm shift the mindset a critical way of critically thinking of the situation you're in instead of hitting that doom and gloom of panic or hoarding mode you do you think different so let's go down that rabbit hole because I'd like to hear more what you've discovered sure heard so um um sorry are you gonna I do you want to start with the question or do you yeah go ahead you mean you I can start it with a question or you can go ahead and jump right in okay I can stop it either okay well your thoughts because you were actually started to go that way and then maybe I got you off track yeah we'll edit this out later it doesn't matter okay well just on it's yeah the the the pandemic and as you say that the hoarding of toilet rolls and it's just a very small example but but it's another thing that that that I've learned I suppose and again I've learned this through my career um about thinking and and emotional intelligence and I I've always called it the emotional mind and the intellectual mind and it's a it's something you learn in life of course but and relationships are a good way to learn it and um but but I've I've learned that emotions arrive whether you want them to or not and you know the instinctive thing to do is to simply react to them yet the emotion the emotion feels very real when it arrives and you know from an evolutionary point of view it's there for a reason if you know if the if the and wild animals coming at you from the left field and you haven't seen it you you need that emotional instinctive response to kind of get out of the way quick without having to go through the the system of working out whether it's rationally correct to do so you just need to react and so I get why to a large extent why emotions are there and so they're really important but we've reached the apex we're at the you know with the top of the food chain we don't need to worry too much about you know threats other than ourselves so I think our development as a species is is to is to learn to use this intellectual side of our brain the rational side so embrace the emotions when they arrive understand why they've arrived and then but being control of them to a certain extent don't don't you don't have to be they don't have to be in control of you that's how I've always perceived emotion and intellectual and then as I've talked to more people like yourself and John Cook who does skeptical science who is a psychologist by training I interviewed him last week okay cool so he talks about system two thinking and and this fast thinking fast and slow is a book I can't remember who wrote it but it's up there behind me um that's quite a meaty book actually I haven't finished that one yet but it's all the same sort of principle it's it's it's the it's the rational thought against the emotive irrational thinking and from a climate change point of view the challenge I think of climate change communication is really that we're talking to perfectly decent normal hardworking people who who just want to get to work each day make enough money to look after their families I always talk about this bell curve and in the middle although John tells me it's skewed towards concern and alarm which is good but generally speaking these people are just they react to the day to day and we all do it and the problem with climate communication is although it's getting more and more obvious by every day goes by in the last three or four years it's become you know the extreme weather events have become clearer the fact is the long-term consequences of climate change are not emotionally obvious to the average human being they need to be rationally considered and rationally accepted by the average human being and that's a really difficult thing to do to tell someone that you know driving a car today means that we could have three three or four degrees of warming maybe even after you've died but perhaps when you're a very old person but you still need to stop driving a car today because there'll be people alive then that need you to do what you're you know need you to change your ways today most people are like yeah I get that but it's just not like it's not tangible enough and I therefore I don't care enough you know them they'll they'll work it out you know you can you can always go down any there's any number of reasons why not to do something and and it's very easy to do but but finding the motivation to do something that is inconvenient to you now because you know it's the right thing to do for someone's existential you know safety in the future is is an incredibly difficult communication message to get across and I think that's where the critical thinking and these two systems of thinking teaching people how to do them in the first place is a good life skill so if it got regardless of climate change helping people to understand how to stay in control of their emotional mind not not not dismiss it but stay in control of it allow it to happen but understand it and be in control of it and then let your rational thinking and your actions be guided by your intellect and your rational mind that's kind of the that's a big and a big journey for me throughout my career really but obviously it's really come to a fore in the last few years while I've been really thinking about it myself um and it's it's a fascinating field of of research that I know about a lot of people psychologists in particular um delve into and uh and that is a challenge that if we can get that across to more people and I think it'll help us with the communication process I don't mean to put you on the spot but I'm going to put you on the spot to go even deeper in what you said whether any tips or tricks or things that made it easier for you anything that helped you change habits or or grasp that emotional say realize it give it it's merit and then say okay but now I've got to I've got to do it a different way because I've just read this report I've just seen this and and is there any helps or things that for you that made it easier because you did apply some of those things I mean you said your smoker drinker you know you did all these things so what what was was it easy those are the things in fact and and so one of the one of the things that I've learned is to confront an issue but I've learned that through not confronting issues every twist and turn through my earlier life and realizing eventually that this just doesn't it just doesn't work if you so um I can give you any number of examples but relationships certainly you know the learning to live with loss is part of is part of learning to make a change and and the intellectual mind is well I've found it to be extremely powerful in that process so splitting up with a girlfriend you know I've had several um really people who I've really regarded as being you know this is this is definitely this time this is definitely the one we've all had those moments um and and you know coming to the end of those relationships um I again in my younger days I try both ways we'd all I'm sure we've all done this we've tried to sort of let's stay friends or drag on a little bit and maybe you know keep opening the you know wound every now and again and and that's the emotional response because it's emotional you don't want to let them go um and it's the same with frankly it's the same with cigarettes and it's the same with alcohol because they're drugs that and and to a certain extent relationships are crutches that you rely on in a good relationship of course that's a symbiotic crutch you're relying on each other so you're you're the combination of the two people is is a stronger than the some of the parts and that's a good healthy relationship so there's nothing wrong with that but in terms of other things drugs and and things that you take to try and replace that sense of of belonging they are only going in one direction and that's a destructive direction and you can and you can apply and people do generally apply the same emotional response to trying to quit the same with food actually diets people who go on diets all the time trying to quit by thinking I'll just quit for a certain length of time isn't quitting you're just you're just holding your breath and you have to I've had to learn in my life that leaving a relationship is is is like a loss um and you have to grieve and you have to go through all those stages but you have to you have to stop and move on you have to change your mind and that's where the intellectual strength of mind gets bit starts to become in charge of the emotional mind you have to change you have to say that one that is gone it's put it away it's finished same with six so with sick I'll give you a little this is really stupid but with cigarettes this is when I was 30 I played a game with with nicotine so I was smoking 20 cigarettes a day and in my mind to help my intellectual mind make it into a really to get me through the first month actually because that's what everyone said was the hardest I kept score so every time I had a pan for a cigarette and I didn't have a cigarette one nil to me and pretty quickly it was two nil to me three nil in the first day it was 20 zero to me and I was winning I was winning the guy I'd made I'd completely turn the cigarette about face from being my ally to being my enemy or my adversary and now I was now it was a game against me against that and that's just a little I'm not suggesting everyone uses that technique but it was a it was a technique that I helped helped me to get through the first month and then after the first month it was simply changing the mindset to say that now is finished it's gone and it was the same with alcohol so I mean I wasn't an alcoholic but I did reach the age of 35 and in the UK the government have a recommended consumption a weekly consumption which was 21 units in those days it's less now but in those days it was 21 units which is 10 pints of English beer a week kind of thing and I realised at 35 that I am based on that number of weekly intake I had already drunk my lifetimes worth of alcohol because I was drinking 100 units a week something like that so I so it was beginning to I never drank through the day I never wasn't in one of these people who got up and drank in the morning I would just like to have a drink in the evenings but I start I realised it was beginning to dictate the structure of a day you know my working day was kind of well I'm just getting through till half past five when I can get home and you know crack open a beer living for the drink living for the smoke yeah not good yeah so you have to so you have to again you have you can't you can't say I'll cut no for me anyway cutting down wasn't an option it's not it's not that's not changing your mindset and so I learnt to confront the issue that way to change you just have to accept that it's gone put it away it's finished for my gamification almost you know the way you kind of yeah kept score I truly believe there's multiple you know not just the one you said I think that we're all individual and there's multiple different things that work for different people male female child youth you know different age groups of cultures and things that that that are the the way but there are so many tools available out there to grasp at and what when you're done saying that your your comment that you want to make I want to kind of maybe run through and exercise with you a tool that we can give our listeners of the kind of shift from a habit or shift our mindset on on the way to do something mm-hmm I just gonna well it was just gonna to finish on the the benefit of doing that way because it that all what I've just described sounds oh christ you know what a nightmare actually the I cannot begin to describe adequately the huge benefit of of applying that discipline to your life because once you've once you've done it and and the the crutch you've realised you don't need the crutch and you've reconstructed the way you act and and operate on a daily basis without that crutch the benefit the the liberation if you like is amazing it I mean I'm not just saying that it is it is surprising how how much better things are when you you know when you realise that these things aren't helping you they're just hindering you that's that's the benefit but again you need the critical you need the ability to see past the here and now to understand that's what's going to happen and that's the difficult part but I having gone through it in my life and realising come through the other side with those examples that I've just talked about I realised that that's what's that's the goal that's the that's the the prize that's available to you that's the last point I was going to make with um addictive substances or habits that are really bad for health this is probably not the best best method or example of how to do it but just another simple simple kind of not only an analogy but example of how we can change our habits I want to run our listeners through it so those who are listening on podcast kind of follow along I want you to fold your arm fold your arms together and then I want you to look down at your wrists and for me my right wrist is up I don't know what which wrist is up for you Dave my left wrist your left wrist okay now that's because it's comfortable that's how we've always done it it's the way we've you know been learned it's just comfortable we don't even have to think about it now I want to drop your arms for a minute I want you to recross and fold your arms and again for me it's always pretty much the right I don't you know do it different but if now did you do it different I try to deliberately and it feels extremely uncomfortable exactly so what happens if now we were to do it a third time but to do it the different way it goes slower it is possible but just like I saw in the video with you you had to think about it you kind of you know you're like okay well how do I put the other one up so one you have to think about it you have to physically think and how do you do it you could tell that it wasn't comfortable it wasn't what your habit was but it is possible if you practice it probably you know 30 40 50 times then it might become a habit or very natural once we do it and it's just something that we kind of have to consciously think about with a lot of habits with a lot of changes not so much with addictive ones if we have a bad day and we don't want to get up and do our diet or do go to the gym then we we have you know one day where we sleep in but if the majority of your days are the ones going to the gym and doing the workout or the majorities of the ones are changing your habits moving in the right direction over time not building a habit and building that change and it really helps to to turn on that light because you see the benefits of health and weight and surrounding in your environment you see that it's actually a better system that works better for you and you know there's so many tools to use to apply to to change that that are mixed with the mind and body not just the emotional and the mindset but it's also physically getting into a habit of doing something and it's just a it's really a freeing thing and I I appreciate you going down that rabbit hole and sharing that with me your last video that you released yesterday was a mixture between the sustainable development goals the Sophie report which is the state of food insecurity security nutrition that was just released and you had to read a couple I believe it was the Irina report and a few other reports on that it was a fabulous video but I you know I'm an advocate for the sustainable development goals I want to know your view after reading that report and doing that podcast do you believe that the sustainable development goals are a roadmap a plan for 2030 to get us there are they achievable in your mind can you tell us a little bit your thoughts and feelings on that what you learned my yeah I can I mean I I think they so I think they are a roadmap I think they I think some of them are more achievable than others of course they are interlinked there's no question about that the 2030 target do I I hope we get there but I'm not sure we will that's the honest answer and the reason is in my mind that was a few I suppose but but the first let's go back to 2015 the Paris Accord yes my my concern with the Paris Accord or the agreement was that some some national governments may have seen that as an end point rather than a starting point and there was a collective sigh of relief that we'd reached that agreement and was a big cheer in the room and all of the rest of it which was great and it was there's no question it was a great achievement but I I you know whichever way you look at it you we haven't seen the progress in the in the ensuing five years that we need and national determined contributions are a perfect example um they're nowhere near where they need to be even the ones that they eventually put in take us to three degrees of warming by 2100 not 1.5 so I suppose if the it depends what the specifically what what we hope will achieve will we achieve keeping our global average atmospheric temperature below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels no in my opinion I think that's already baked into the atmosphere I think there's enough CO2 already that we're probably going to get there anyway with the delayed effect of of the of the reaction is there but does that make them useless no of course not so there's two ends you know there's two ends of the spectrum and there they are definitely a focal point I don't think there's been enough because that's point one point two the you know fossil fuel and and agribusiness and big pharma have done everything everything in their power to stop those things happening to protect their financial interest everything I mean incredible so that's not going to stop at least not in the near term but it's been a massive break on progress in my opinion so that's political inertia commercial inertia if you like and and all the corporate lobbyists have helped with that and then communication so a perfect example I I started a I did a presentation at my work to try and start us on a carbon footprint audit of our business if you like and I presented and I used this the sustainable development goals as a starting point a bit like I did in yesterday's video because that's where I think it should be this is let's start everything frame it with this because it's it's all there and none of them none of them had heard of this sustainable development no one not a person in the educated you know well paid middle managers and senior managers you know in a London you know young quite young switched on people none of them had heard of it so that's and that's not the UN's fault and it's not the fault of the sustainable development goals somewhere in the middle it's got the messages certainly in this country anyway I can't speak for everywhere in Europe but or America in this country that message hasn't got to the public so I I'm gonna have to disagree with you okay so I think it is the UN's problem for presenting it to us in the wrong way I don't think many people have no clue how to look at the sustainable development goals they don't know if they're for countries corporations if they're for cities at who they're for and they're actually the biggest project everyone they're for every the open source transparent and they're for each individual and they have to do with us it's our future you know yeah and and when we were presented with them we we didn't understand a few things and if you don't mind me just interjecting and kind of getting so because I want it I want to maybe go deeper into why that is and and ask you some secondary questions in regards to that first off it was a historical global precedence before the Paris Agreement the 2030 agenda September 24th in 2015 the sustainable development goals were launched and 193 plus countries agreed on them as goals and a roadmap to to keep us at that time it was two degrees of warming so that we still have that that the two degrees and then at the Paris Agreement in December COP 21 they kind of set a little bit more ambition and dropped to 1.5 and we had to make some adjustments in the goals but also in the plan and the roadmap which was fine because we'd already run out the scenarios and and looked at that well before we even started because the way the sustainable development goals and the Paris Agreement were done was with a back cast from December 2030 to 2015 saying okay this is what our temperature would be and it was started at two degrees right here and this is the steps the roadmap the plan the goals that we need with targets and indicators to be able to reach this is what we need to do and so there was back casting involved systems dynamic modeling and mapping there was foresight a little bit of foresight modeling involved in that and then the World Bank the World Trade Organization the the UN the World Economic Forum and many and many others came by and said how much monies are needed to achieve them by 2030 and at the time it was 90 trillion US dollars to do that so six trillion US dollars a year and now it's about 95 trillion in order to reach maybe even a little bit 96 trillion because we're behind and then there was many many other factors involved in that whole thing but when we were presented with them where it's like the kids carnival almost you know here's these colorful 17 goals and when I tell people I'm an advocate a lot of the time they say oh I like number one no poverty it's red it's my favorite color that's the one I'm working on it and it's virtually impossible as you said to work just on one sustainable development go and not touch on all the others if you were to try to just work on no poverty you would touch on zero hunger quality education well-being industry infrastructure innovation you would touch on life on land life below water clean water and sanitation climate change and many many others so there's 11 sustainable development goals that are intrinsically tied just to food and all 17 of them are tied to food as well and many many other industries because they're a system and so I feel that one we were presented them wrong but more importantly than that we didn't understand what a historical precedence that was and that it's actually a roadmap and plan for a better future that once we reach them what does it look and feel like once we've reached them and that it creates a secure infrastructure we'll still have climate change and some issues because the pollutions we put in today are usually not seen for another 10 years and you know going back in history as well the same thing and and we're obviously a little bit off of target but had we begun right at 2015 had we have known how to understand them and apply them and what that means for us more of a vision of what that looks like to be standing December 2030 there what it feels like what the world looks like how to envision it so that we have even something to work in strive for so that we can engineer create innovate and design for that outcome I think we we drastically failed and the next thing before I touch on the follow-up questions to that is I don't think before was the millennium development goals but there is no other plan globally for the entire world out there no so even if we said forget about the SDGs what is it the new the new green deal what's what's the other plan that we have and I think one of the problem well the problem we have of course is that is that nationalism is taking the place of globalism to a certain extent and once that's happened and again you've got a pendulum swinging I guess it's this is not new in history we've you know I taught my brother-in-law's father's 94 years old and you know I talked to him about these things he's like yeah I remember this and that and the war and you know he's kind of seen these these political pendulums swing throughout his lifetime but there's no question that in the last five years the pendulum has swung very far in a way that we all know we all see it on the television you don't need me to describe it but it's it makes nations retrench into their silos and become very defensive and you know keep them it gets to them and us keep them out so that's one thing and you've got and you've also got other political agendas and the main one of course is China's ascendancy and towards the being the dominant economy in the world and the United States are very unhappy about that understandably the the UK went through it with the empire you know does decades ago and it's a painful process and the incumbent does obviously not want to become second best to anybody because they've been used to being at the top of the tree that is happening and mr trump is exacerbating that in a way that no one could possibly even have imagined and let's hope in November that situation changes without wishing to be too political but I think for the good of mankind it's important that he's not the leader of that country for the next four years because he's done enough damage in the last four or that that dynamic is happening and then you've got the European Union you've got the UK coming out in brexit these are all big important and you know super blocks of power that govern more or less how everything works in the world and it's interesting when he talked one more or hear from people that write the IPCC reports there were these you know the seminal reporters you know the SR 15 in 2018 which is the one that really hopefully woke us certainly woke me up another seminal moment in my time on the video making process was to cover that in quite some detail in four very detailed programs but the comment that you got from the from the authors of the reports was that we you know we bring all the information in and then we spend months dotting eyes and taking one word out of a sentence because it's not allowed by the all the international lawyers and has to be agreed by every single political nation involved in the process and their lawyers it's got to be legally binding all of these things makes it almost impossible to really give a strong message and what they I mean even though it's a very terrifying document it's still probably been reduced down to the lowest common denominator that's acceptable to all and I think in a similar way the SDGs have suffered from that barrier in terms of getting a global consensus what we need is global consensus what we need to understand is that this is one life support system in the vast emptiness of space never mind Mars or the moon that's a nonsense we might get there but it probably will be a an expectation rather than something useful we are living on this planet we've always lived on this planet we are supremely adapted and evolved to live only on this planet and we need to make sure we look after this planet and that means one one goal one ambition one drive coordinated action by every country on the on earth not retrenching into our silos and becoming nationalistic and well as long as we saw our country out you know don't let anybody in and then we can have our little ecosystem in our country it's so short-sighted and the people that think that that might work and billionaires going into their bunkers or whatever it might be they think they can insulate themselves from nature they are insane insanely deluded yeah um so again as I said earlier we can either we can either buckle up and understand and confront the issue globally as a as a global collective or nature will just do it for us it's happening whatever however much whatever doesn't matter what anybody says nature all sorts it out we can work alongside nature and get it right or we can try and battle nature and probably be our demise eventually if we really if we really pig it enough to let let it happen so that's the I think and that's the problem I think with the SDGs that they need to be and again um just to finish talking about the the thing that gives me hope uh one of the things is this pendulum mechanism that's that's already moving in the other direction in my opinion and so I think we will see in the next four years I'm very hopeful about this we will see a movement back towards that global consensus um and so that's why I'm still hopeful and I think there's still a chance we've still got nine years left needs to be a busy nine years though there there's a lot of chance and hope um out there I wrote the sustainable development goal manifesto for the United Nations and the reason I wrote it was to give people a vision and idea of what that world looks like so they could envision themselves standing in this world in December 2030 because we're we're both kind of both these trekkie or kind of nerdy technolust type of guys we like the technology and the editing tools and things but if we don't have a media or a vision what to envision the future then we can't create design or engineer we can't reach it and if you don't mind I'd like to to read it to you and then give you um the one disagreement that I have and it's not that major of a disagreement um with the with the SDGs but I I touch upon it in the manifesto and I'll explain it but I'd like you to maybe close your eyes or envision what it would feel or look like to when I'm reading this manifesto it when we reach it in December 2030 imagine a world where there is no poverty and zero hunger we have good health and well-being quality education and full gender equality everywhere there is clean water and sanitation for everyone affordable and clean energy has created decent work and sustainable economic growth our prosperity is fueled by investments and resilient industry innovation and infrastructure and that has reduced inequalities we live in sustainable cities and communities and responsible consumption and production has healed our planet climate action has stopped and reversed the warming of our planet and we have flourishing life below water and abundant diverse life on land we enjoy peace and justice through strong institutions and have built long term partnerships for the goals now that's a future that I'd love to to live in that's kind of this global citizen this globalized world in some respects where we everyone everywhere has all these basic universal and alieable rights and it creates a nice infrastructure to spring board off into it now the two areas that I disagree with and it's really only one but it's two one is instead of just decent work and economic growth I I under the word sustainable growth economic growth because I think capitalism and economic growth they're just like the book 1972 the limits to growth there is a limit to growth and if we have sustainable economic growth one that's good for all humanity on this planet that's good and then the second one that I added was resilient industry innovation and infrastructure there is industry innovation and infrastructure that's not at all sustainable or resilient and it's just out there to to take the resources as quick and fast as possible and yeah and it's this cradle to grave mentality and if we change those two things and and build that vision and boy what a what a beautiful future that truly can be and I wanted people to have that vision the added caveat to to knowing how they work in a system to understand the monies the the roadmap that's been there the historical precedence is also as humans we're unaware that of the exponential function we under don't understand exponential at all so how quickly that goes how it works how it's working in our lives and things in the bad and ugly in our world already is growing exponentially climate change and pollution and many other things there's a flip side to that exponential function and it can be used for technology and computing but it also can be used at solving the problem we're in and in this pandemic world economic form is calling it the great reset but this pause has helped us in some respect but more so to see that the entire world can pivot on a dime on a penny and and start going in a different direction even if it's kind of a lockdown not willed or or you know not everybody's totally on board with you know there's all sorts of debate and different things there but and we've seen it before with industry in america were during the wars that they pivoted up entire industries to making war machines from other things are to you know you know from producing cars to producing other things so we we have unimaginable abilities to to use that function to use it for good to make some change and the beginning of this year was really for me started out where we placed both our feet on this exponential roadmap then covid happened and everybody's just thrown off off kilter and doesn't know what's going on and is is looking for solution understandably so it's a deep respect and and humility needs to be taken with what's happened but in that we saw some positive things come out of it one earth overshoot day last year was july 29th the day we went beyond our finite resources this year three or four weeks ago now they released the new date for earth overshoot day august 22nd we've gained 24 more days and that pause the other thing is quarter one of stocks and interest and investment we have seen that those companies that have invested in sustainability and sustainable development what they're calling esg investments environmental social governance investment portfolios and divestments that those companies have all weathered to storm very well weathered it better than their conventional counterparts and so there's that capitalism that other type of factor in there that's all as well it's expensive it's not doable what's the result and the results are there we've been able to see them in many respects and so there's always going to be that balance that yin and the yang and in our world worse and i don't think it'll ever be perfect it won't and nor should it be in some sense because the human the human spirit needs to needs to flourish we don't again i've said this before we don't just want to survive the 21st century we want to survive and flourish as a species and we want to make sure that as far as we possibly can we allow all the other species to survive and flourish as well and species come and go all the time of course i you know we need to be not not not too really very stinted spectacles we need to understand we live in a real world and it's tough and and all the rest of it but we have we have characters and personalities and those need to be allowed to to you know to come to the fore within within the context of sustainability and sustainable living one of the things i think to to your point that also the pandemic has showed us is similar to the wartime effort that how on a dime again a government can at least i can take the example of the uk government can find a way to put in our in our case a furlough system in for example that's paying the wages of you know millions and millions of i think it's nine million or something or more um workers in the uk you know were furloughed and paid by the government to 80 percent anyway now that's money that they they you know they plucked from thin air but we can do that because ironically because of the crazy nature of our currency systems around the world governments are able to generate ways of of paying for things that that they buy frankly by manipulating their currencies because they can so we put some you know we've we've done bond bond sales and and quantitative easing and and borrowing money on on on markets then as a as a country because we can afford to do that and we've got good credit rating it's all money that we owe someone somewhere in the deep and distant future they'll probably never get repaid but the point is governments can make that pivot if they need to if the if the consensus is there and they realize that the the immediacy of the problem and that's where i think the opportunity is for climate change when governments realize that that's the same problem we've got with climate change and that we need to put these pivots in place um marshal plans for the world if you like uh and and communicate that properly to them to the masses and support them so we need public private partnerships to get us to that 2030 or even if it's 2040 but whatever to get us moving forwards we need the government to impose support to put in support mechanisms financially but also to impose the sanctions on on players that don't want to cooperate and don't want to commercial players that think they can see some sort of advantage in in a in a in a in a system where they can they can not play by the same rules as everyone else and then score a bit of an advantage as a result we need to make sure they are sanctioned so that the incentive isn't there for them to do that um and the government we need governments to do that and i'm not saying we need to go to you know everyone's immediately goes oh you're a socialist communist pinko whatever yeah i'm not saying that i'm not saying i'm not saying government should dictate you know i read animal farm and i know how bad it can get when you know all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others that's not a world i want to live in either and there are examples there are examples of how that works elsewhere in the world and i don't like the look of them so but we but we need the government to be there as a strong and stable central resource that can at the same time apply um resource financially and support mechanisms for those less fortunate and apply sanctions to big corporate powerful players who don't play by the rules and right now i don't think we've got that but certainly in in arguably in the states and other areas what you know none of us are none of us are paragons of virtue that balance is wrong i think um and i'm not absolutely sure how we fix it other than by changing the the administrations in those countries i'd like to try to convince you maybe to do some more videos about the sustainable development goals to raise some awareness to help people figure out how to apply them in their lives and to to view them no pressure but i would love to to see that happen because i believe there are so much around them that if people realize that they are a new operating system a new roadmap it's not a couple tweaks on business as usual so we're not just infusing sustainability and business as usual or doing greenwashing which is also a video that you've done um if you truly get into the meat and potatoes of the sdgs you'll you'll realize it's a total new global environmental social and governance operating system model there's no way that um no matter what nation uh no matter what city uh culture can keep their same operating models in this nationalistic these closed environment they have to kind of step it up to a new global operating basis model they can still have nations and borders and division that's okay but the global operating system the model that keeps us sustainably within planetary boundaries is one such that is well laid out in the sustainable development goals as this paris agreement agenda 2030 to to get us there and i i'm fortunate enough to be on on a project called resilience frontiers it's the roadmap what happens after 2030 after we've reached the sustainable development goals a roadmap from 2030 to 2050 uh could be the resilience development goals the resilience goals because what we're seeing we're seeing it now is that even once we have businesses in the life of this great sustainability we're already beyond the limits to growth and we don't know what kind of climate calamities pandemics or things will come in the future and we really need to build resilience into our infrastructures so that we can um have food and energy and things for tomorrow because the the best example although it was already a bad system was in portarica hurricane maria hit portarica portarico and um in one day wiped out their entire infrastructure and all the and more than 90 of their agriculture farming and food supply and that doesn't grow back the very next day when people need energy and resources and food and water and so if they had had resilience or even some form of sustainability which was a very political thing and all sorts of other factors then they would be in a better situation now and that's something that takes four to six years that i don't think they've even fully recovered to today um those are the type of things that we're looking for in the future and it's it's not the resilience where we're saying okay today we're wearing face masks the resilience in the future means we're wearing oxygen masks or gas masks or spacesuits no it's the resilience that we've fixed living within planetary boundaries to be able to enjoy whether resources are nature and harmony with nature and and that's the secondary questions on the sustainable development goals to you what does it take uh what would in your mind what would it take or for people more people to jump on board to apply that do you think it's just a curve like you've made in your progress to know more about it to to understand it more or is there um how how can we do that or do you think that there's going to be you know a re scrapping or a restart of that somehow are there other ideas just i know i'm putting you on the spot but we can move forward with that well as i say i mean i my my view is that that you've got this bell whatever you do you've got to take the masses with you and there's 7.6 billion people on the planet today and there's we're now here this we thought that we're going to be 11 billion by 2100 but now the UN tell us it's 9 billion so that's interesting that's gone down by 2 billion nevertheless there's growth still even though the fertility rate's coming down the point is you have to find a way i think if we're going to move a global operating system to a new paradigm then you've got to take everybody with you and some of them will be more reluctant than others and that's why you've got this curve but so most people in here are will need to be will need to be taken they won't go there on their own um once they're there they'll just carry on with they'll just accept the new system and and get on with it because people do we're remarkably adaptable but asking them to go there voluntarily is problematic in my experience and so you do need to explain the the what how and why and as best you can you need to explain why we're going to the place we're going to and those people at least in a democratic society get to choose who leads that that that direction um but once a government is in place there are certain things i think that governments need to do to to make things happen they just need to make things so for example 480 billion dollars of subsidy to the fossil fuel industry each year we just need to take it away i know you can't just take it away we need to put in place mechanisms that say that is being removed over a period of time even if it's going to take 10 years to remove it the markets will see that and react immediately they're already doing that anyway coming and taking their investment out of fossil fuel and putting it into sustainable projects so you need to the people need to be taken with you and and collective action and activism is helping to adjust public perception so that's that's this level if you like so public perception is definitely changing exxon people like grattertonberg and others in the u.s and what have you they're changing public perception that public is then putting pressure upwards to their elected representatives to change the way they interact those representatives are then realizing okay so i don't need to be quite so scared of changing things these people are a bit more adaptive than i thought so therefore i can start standing up to the lobbyists and corporate powers a bit more than i have been because i'm less i'm less scared of getting voted out by these people because they're telling me it's fine then you're starting to get some kind of loop there and these corporate lobbyists who who want to maintain the status quo which is not sustainable begin to get less and less power in that loop and that's a virtuous circle and it's starting to happen already today at least in you know in western democracies even in the united states it's happening i mean there's still 20 i think it's 23 states that are still very much signed up to the um the paris agreement so states and states are doing it most or nearly half the states are doing it and it's going up all the time and i think probably at least half the population certainly 59 percent of americans are aware and or concerned or alarmed about climate change um so they're in the majority already so you've got public you've got a movement towards greater and greater public consensus all the time which is giving more political strength to our leaders um to oppose the lobbying and the money that's coming into politics so that's the only way it's going to change in my opinion if that's not too garbled a message but no that's that's a great message so i also ask a question do you feel like you're a global citizen in any respects even though you're in the united kingdom and what if the future held the world where we had removal of walls and borders and nations how would you feel what what are your thoughts on that have you read anything or done anything in that respect and your your videos or your research well again this is a double-edged sword as well i think mark because you've got i suppose you've got near term and long term consequences of what you're describing um and some of those will be brought about by climate change as well so um from a global citizen point of view my own personal view is if we had more global integration of uh and interracial integration as well and and more people moving and starting to understand each other's cultures and maybe even into breeding and we start getting a global species if you like that's a little more homogeneous um i'm not averse to that at all because i think that will that will build in greater empathy around the world of each other's cultures and again you can still keep national identity but the the near term worry that i have is that climate change is going to do that anyway because the damage we're causing in many parts of the world will mean people have to migrate away from areas that are simply in a in inhabitable they can't grow food anymore and they're going to have to move so that's going to be forced upon us so the urgency to to knock down these walls and to become more acceptance of others into your space is growing every day because the climate changes is causing that to happen so in and in the short term this is why i say it's a double edged sword in the short term my worry is that that's going to cause a lot of destruction of life as well as property there's going to be conflict take Bangladesh is a good example i think there's 160 million people in that country the bottom of it's pretty much almost underwater and they get huge storm surges every year as you well know destroying vast tracts of agricultural land and people's livelihoods and many of those people ideally would move northwards away from the lower lying ground and they're not being allowed to do that by restrictive practices particularly by India yeah literally put up a wall there's a bigger wall between India and everywhere else in China in the south of in the south of America so a lot of people are going to die those people can't get in anywhere else they're just going to die millions of them and that's my great sadness about the near term and i'm not sure there's i'm not sure we're going to avoid that in the 21st century millions and millions of people dying prematurely and i have to accept that and and perhaps look to the longer term when this integration that you talk about in this greater globalization the project of this global reset of a new operating system i my personal view is it's a bit sad but i can't see that happening by 2030 i can see it happening and i don't think we're going to go extinct in the meantime i just think it's almost inevitable that we're going to do ourselves quite a lot of damage and in so in so doing we probably will realize that we need to embrace this new system whether we like it or not and then once we've embraced it life will go on and the world will be certainly a better place i won't be around to see that i don't think but i'm still hopeful that that and i still i'm very aware that what i do today affects the outcome of that journey and the more i do today and the more you do and the more everyone else does the better chance we have of proving me wrong and achieving that results maybe in my lifetime or even you know who knows by 2030 or 2040 that would be amazing but that will take i think that will take a change of of public collective action and philosophy probably the like of which we haven't ever seen in our in our history so that doesn't mean it's impossible but i think it's very very tough ask so i've led you on a path to two of my most difficult questions to answer for a lot of people and i want to caveat it a little bit because you've done in some respects you're you're telling me you're not 100 optimistic you're you're not sure we're going to make it or think you're definitely going to be some human suffering and things or that you might not live through it but you've also reported on for example the batteries and aviation or different type of hydrogen fuel jet fuels for aviation and in that report which is a small glimpse into the future of air travel we're seeing numbers of 2022 to 2024 2026 at the latest for an actual total different vision of of just that one sector which also has a huge social and environmental and also impacts on nations and borders on how we travel and get around and and how that looks for the future so that's a kind of a vision in the future and you've you've researched it i don't know how you've seen the numbers lately but there are hundreds of thousands of companies working on this moving towards that ilium as prepared to do a five autonomous five passenger taxi by 2024 the latest and many many others that you that you did so that's a glimpse of the future um and it's fairly quick if you were to ask us even 10 years ago would say no way in hell that's the crate that's science science fiction right uh just the same way most people speak about the internet or autonomous driving vehicles would say never happen it's science fiction because we misjudge the future and that exponential function how quickly we can achieve that the the second one that's important about about that vision of the future is also you do a lot about renewables batteries and those trends which are growing exponentially yeah for sure that sustainable innovation yeah so with all that in mind i i'm going to ask you the burning question wtf and it's not the swear word it's what's the future and i i don't i don't want to know what it is for everybody else i want to know what it is for just have a thing for you dave that's what i'd like to know so you're right all those things are absolutely true and i will continue to the future for me is to continue to champion those people who are working on these innovative technologies that will this is we're really talking about the energy system here rather than the food system and the two things are so closely interlinked but from a purely energy system point of view the future for me is is distributed smart grids across nations and even across continents um and that's happening in europe at the moment that's being implemented as we speak people are getting smart meters and if you if you can if you know your viewers and listeners and we can envisage a world where let's take the uk for example there's 27 million homes in the uk um if each one of those homes had a vehicle electric vehicle that had vehicle to grid capability so that's a basically a battery with four a wheel each corner charge it up at night it's ready it's full in the morning you go to work you do whatever you need to do on electric that electricity comes from a grid that's supplied by renewable energy wind and solar and maybe hydro and maybe a little bit of nuclear in the short term that's another we won't go down that perhaps but um and but there's 27 million of them and in the home you've got an electric boiler that also has a battery that has a battery to grid technology that's those of being built today as well um and homes can be converted very very quickly as you say across to these technologies all of a sudden the problem that most fossil fuel and and deniers tell you is this problem of of of spikes and and baseload energy for for grids all of a sudden that that problem is almost in almost eliminated not quite but almost eliminated because the spikes don't exist and there's so much micro input coming from so many millions of different sources the only challenge is managing it in in the central hub of the grid which is just an algorithm and they've got those as well because the computers can cope with that kind of data input nowadays in the way they couldn't 10 years ago as you say the technology is there to do that um and then suddenly you've got a whole energy provision system that isn't reliant on fossil fuels in any way so that's a massive step and energy storage is the answer to that as you said um and it's not just lithium ion battery storage there's all there's any number of energy storage systems that are being devised around the world now that are incredibly innovative use lateral thinking very logical just looking at the the problem outside the box and thinking what we need to do is to create some kind of stored thing here that we can let go again at later time to cause you know movement across a generator effectively to cause electrical electrons to flow that's really in essence that's what electricity is doesn't have to be an electrolytic process across you know across a battery it could be moving a stone to the top of a hill and you know letting it roll down the hill and tying a string to it and the string drives a generator and that's what pumps hydro is kind of thinking but there's buildings that that raise on crane's big huge weights up the top of the building and use gravity you know gravity systems to allow that potential energy to be enhanced liquid air batteries that I looked at a few weeks ago by freezing the air using renewable energy storing that frozen air cryogenically frozen down to incredibly low temperatures and then you can allow it whenever you need it you can allow it to go back out and warmed up by the atmosphere backups and normal temperature that makes it change state from liquid to gas the gas flows across a generator hey pressure you've got electricity these are just things we didn't think we needed to do it wasn't that we didn't know how to do them we just didn't think we needed to 20 years ago could we just had we just burn some more oil and coal and stick that across the generator and boil water with that the impasse wasn't there to do these things and now it is these ideas are coming out of the woodwork as you say really it is really exponential and the change in in how that system is being implemented is exponential and again communicating that to the general public and making them realize that this change is happening beneath their feet without them having to go to sackcloth and ashes and become neanderthal man again almost without any perceptible change in their existence and all we're asking you to do is maybe cut down on the amount of food you eat from Portugal or Spain and you know try and buy local and accept seasonality of food maybe you can't have strawberries in the winter because that's not where they grow in your country but is that really a big deal pick something else to eat in the winter and start doing the way my grandparents lived before the war great grandparents they had seasonal food because that's what was available to them at the time they couldn't fly something in from China or the Maldives or somewhere they just had to accept what they what they had and they ate perfectly well not a problem so the there is hope I am pragmatic really Mark I'm not pessimistic and I'm not a sort of blindedly optimistic I am pragmatic these things won't happen by magic they've got to be done by and from an energy point of view it's pragmatic hard-nosed engineers you know girls and boys engineers who are doing these things today all over the world as we sleep almost and and these systems are being put in place so that that does give me huge hope but but most of that activity is taking place to be fair in the western industrialized world and I really would love to see more of it taking place in the developing nations so that we can leapfrog this this reliance on fossil fuels to get them up which is what they're doing really to get them up to the level of a development that that's somewhere equitable to us they are to accelerate that process there's a there's a temptation to use fossil fuels in China are not helping in that the China are shipping a lot of their coal across to Asia and Africa as well to fund projects that are that are not you know not being made in a sustainable way so again I see great progress in the in the in the western industrialized nations and through no fault of their own we're not sharing that progress with our with our friends and cousins in the developing nations and I can I put you on the spot and say can you give us a paragraph what's the future that was the question you asked me wasn't I digressed what's no you didn't digress you answered it in many respects and I kind of set it up a little bit because of that but is there any way for for you it's not for it's for you Dave you need to answer the question what's the future Dave and if you could do it in a paragraph I'd love that since you you're so good at this with your videos I know I'm putting you on the spot but I the future for me is is freedom freedom to behave the way I want to behave with the knowledge and the wisdom to use the resources available to me in a wise and sustainable way understanding that everybody around me is doing the same thing so we're all in together I'm a Liverpool football fan soccer fan Bill Shankly was the manager when I was a boy and he said the socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other and everybody having a share of the rewards it's the way I see football and it's the way I see life thank you wow that's that's absolutely beautiful now this is probably my last hard question for you and it's very similar to the burning question with a little bit of a twist because I want to I want to put you in the spot of someone who's thinking differently critical thinking what does a world that works for everyone look like for you you might have already answered it but I think works for everyone a lot of women don't like football so that's why I think it's a different answer right fair point I think a word I think for me personally so let's see what am I I'm a middle aged middle class white male living in comfortable suburbia in one of the richest countries in the world so necessarily the future for me has to involve what some people would call sacrifice because because if we're going to if we're going to do that then I can't stay where I am and just hope everyone else comes up to here because as we all know from the charts if if we get everyone up to my level of diet and consumption then we'd need five planets to do that so that's not going to happen so these people need to and this is a developing world and this is the you know developed world if you like these people need to be raised out of poverty and have a decent standard living and and we are going to need to accept some sacrifices I am going to need to accept some sacrifices in my life to facilitate that consume less I need to I consume less than I did five years ago but there's way more than I could do I'm personally happy to do that but not everybody has got to that point in there in their life yet so my my future is a bit more a bit a bit more sacrifice in in in consumption which I think I can do and with the with the the joy of watching other people coming up to a similar level of living perfect I can't answer that question for you but I want you to know that we we live in in a world of abundance and just like the future and innovation in many respects some of those things have been around for a long time and I've already existed if we applied them we would just say oh my goodness there are so much abundance and availability here even though this earth overshoot day this world of resources you say if everybody lived like Americans we'd need five planets worth of resources that comes from a number so there's one point I believe it's eight seven global hectares per person which is replicable which means if we each had that global hectare we could all live a ripe old age have enough food water energy shelter security to live a ripe old age as long as we had good stewardship over it and used it wisely but per person on this earth we're using two point eight seven or eight nine global hectares per person which is this resource overshoot that means we're using more resources than we have a lot of a lot of that is if we even though we're all here at the you know are not all there's the developed world that's I hate to have the inequity to say we're up here living the good life is up here if we all lived equitably with and I believe to have enough food to have a house to have all that is available for everyone if we change one major thing and that's how not the brands of the future not the new autonomous flying cars change how we produce if we go totally off of fossil fuels and we change how we produce that it doesn't harm human health and our environment in the process I believe that we can stay within planetary boundaries and through that way we produce with renewable energies with new sustainable innovations with things that are infinite and non-fine they're non-finite resources one thing that's very negative with with climate change is at our weather's hotter there's more moisture or heat in the air which puts more moisture in the air which makes the storm stronger and more impactful what if we took that negative thing that's creating all these things and we took all that moisture in the air and we use that as the the the ocean that's surrounding us not just the real ocean and we did ambient water harvesting or rain water harvesting or we found innovative sustainable ways to take that which is also a twist on geoengineering which might get us back into that balance to use those waters for resources to plant to grow if instead of producing something that the minute we produced it 10 seconds later we throw it in the garbage when we were on a planet that there is no throw away it all remains here if we found a way to say the way we produce things doesn't have harm on human health on the trash environment and so on that we find better ways to do that and the last way is really that when when we think about that global hectare we're only think that number comes from arable land that is clean and healthy and able to do something but if we think sustainably innovative we can go vertical with that we could go cease studying with that we could find other ways to increase that global hectare another global virtual space that is a whole different system and so I I I I really think that some of the messages you've given the videos you've given the things you've talked about that's in there it's it's doable and there is that possibility but as I am very much a realist I I I'm not a tree hugger environmentalist in that respect and I'm more so a social entrepreneur a businessman and and try to do the best and most efficient business operating systems and I've realized over the years from a standard business model to a resilient or sustainable or esg business model it's a much better operating system you reduce the cost of goods sold you increase your profits you are able to pay your employees over time you have resources but it's a a much different business model it's a platform infrastructure business model that's resilient and it helps people in all different walks of life and that's kind of the view I take and the shift I'd like us to see I've seen it um in the last five years that all top 10 major corporations in the world have all shifted to a platform business model where esg is deeply ingrained in that their model even if they're a computer company has a food section a sustainability section an energy section that you know they are doing the complete system because it's an organization an organism that's working homogenically or holistically together that really solves these global grand challenges I appreciate you bearing with me with my my my answer or my little addition to your what does a world that works for everyone look like that's great to hear do you have any questions or thoughts or ideas that you want to ask me before I give our last wrap-up question um I obviously I'm it's very interesting to see how your careers mapped out and I know you were you were trained by um Al Gore initially on the on his program and and you know we talked about the the Michael Moore film that was released recently and it was a little bugbear for me and I did a little response video to it as well and one of the things that um that Michael Moore threw at several people in the climate activism movement um including Al Gore was this this suggestion of somehow properteering or collusion almost with with the fossil fuel industries to and then it was all some kind of sham which is not an opinion that I share and which is what I made very clear in my response video um but I wondered if and I didn't really touch on Al Gore in my response video really I was looking more at 350.org um but I wondered if you you might it'd be interesting for me I've never had the first hand opportunity to talk to someone that's been so deeply involved in that organization for you to really you know help me understand I hopefully why that's not the case and and and what your perception of that is I'd love to so that Michael Moore uh video your video response to that was eloquent and that's initially how we came into contact and I thank you for clarifying that because I sent that out to everybody in the climate reality project um because of the very negative things they said about Al Gore and mainly about renewable energy it's just a distorted view the and you mentioned this it was like taking such old footage and then twisting it in the wrong way um there are a lot of bad things about the renewable energy transition and some things that have occurred so uh there's there's a stark learning curve and Al Gore addressed this the especially biofuels and these um you know what's what's that how negative that is even though at one point he was just like 350.org um you know came out at one point said how great it was and then said oh this is not really what it was purported to be I was fortunate enough to be one of the early people to be trained by Al Gore as a climate leader a speaker a mentor and I've I've taught many people with him along this climate reality project to become a climate leader which is a three-day course where um basically Al Gore gives his presentation three different ways to give people an education on how to understand the facts how to present climate issues and then empowers everyone with his own presentation and uh to become part of the climate reality project to go out and educate and and spread the word about what's going on in this respect with climate change he Al Gore uh was for a long time a politician but he's always been very involved in the climate because of a professor he had when he was going to university that was his mentor and inspiration um he what a lot of people don't know he's also vegan and um up until just recently didn't speak a lot about food and and agriculture um because yeah he just wasn't felt he was ready and also because even though he was vegan uh he didn't didn't always reflect it but he is also with Generation one of his companies an Apple investor a Tesla investor he's involved first and foremost he's a businessman and he does a lot of around sustainable investing and investing in in our future um the big way where he got a lot of money was Al Jazeera he used to own the company Al Jazeera and sold out a big media outlet which is seen as also very controversial the type of things they did and and that and so um one thing that's come up for for us both uh recently that we've always had to deal with is that we're not Greta Thunberg and what I mean by that is Greta Thunberg is not only young but she's innocent she in some respects she's not a true child but yes she's true child with a little bit of a disability and has that innocence and she doesn't have the age and the wisdom and the experience of a world because and by all rights that's fine but she grasped the message in an early age Al Gore you know used to be a politician and governor and then he used to you know as a businessman and so there's yeah if you want to find something wrong by all means you're going to find something wrong because he's had a lot of life and and he came from a his family ranch as a tobacco farm at first and then went to an Angus cattle cattle farm and so uh and that was just where he lived and how his family grew up and how it evolved and and so that's also so you could say well he's talking about food but he used to be a tobacco farmer and then he's an Angus beef farmer and you know uh there's so many things where if you want to point a finger say he's not perfect you can the message is as clear he's been around at all the conference of the parties the cop initiatives forever he's a member of the world economic form and a fabulous voice for for climate change and so I think that if you want to cherry pick which John Dr. John Cooks talks about in his misinformation Cranky Uncle book um you can cherry pick and make anybody look bad you can make me look bad because I'm hairy old and I did things before but um that that's not the point the overall message the general direction the things that he's done for the climate has been absolutely fabulous the people he's trained in the awareness and the amount of monies he's put into uh helping us progress to to get a better future is there and it continues and he I don't think he'll ever give up that fight but he has a lot of baggage just like I do I'm sure like you do as well yeah we're not rosy we don't have that innocence and so it's a little bit harder for someone especially with pre-built in biases or noise uh it's just going to look for something wrong and and they're going to find it because we're fallible non-perfect humans um that brings up something that I want to touch on as well so I mentioned Greta Thunberg fabulous but I want our world to know that there are um many other youth climate activists that have been around for a long time first well not the first but one very big one was Severin Suzuki she spoke in front of the not it wasn't the cop then but it was the Rio conference which is a pinnacle conference for the United Nations and she spoke in front of the entire General Assembly Congress at the at the Rio summit and gave a very eloquent and hard-hitting speech to them and she is still to this date her and her father staunch climate activists and have led movements of indigenous peoples and actions around the world in Germany there's a Felix Finkbeiner there's a fabulous climate activist yeah he has a plant for planet in his organization plant for the planet planted almost millions hundreds of millions of trees already I think it's in the trillions already of trees and and uh done these fair trade chocolate bars for every chocolate bar that's bought uh under fair trade one tree is planted all sorts of fabulous things and he did stop talking start planning movement within the UN he has trained more climate leaders to speak about the climate than Al Gore he's trained 82 000 youth climate leaders and you know planted all sorts of trees so hard action for the youth and there's many many more out there I could speak about yeah remember is the rock the pinnacle she's moved millions of people and um you know also written a book and done some fabulous things but this climate issue is not a new thing and uh Al Gore's a proof of that it was around before him it's been around for a long time we need to quit talking about it and start acting and making these changes and yeah that leaves perfectly I don't know if I answered in your your question did I kind of answer it yeah yeah and it was kind of where I was at anyway I mean I've watched a video of Al Gore in Congress in 1985 I think and the same year James Hansen gave his testimony to Congress and you you're unlikely to see a more passionate and fired up an honest man who's angry about what he sees before him than that than that video and it's on YouTube people can go and find it um and and they'll understand what I mean when they watch it so I don't think I ever had any doubt about the fire in his belly and actually I watched another video from maybe six months ago at the age of forty seventy one seventy two now same fire same passion same anger really um I think he was in front of something like the world economic forum yeah um so you know that was the man I see uh you know the passion in the man I see and I was just just wanted to hear from you your personal you know he's given several TED talks he spoke of the world economic forum he's spoken in front of the UN he's been doing this a long time and he is passionate but he's also a fallible human I'm sure he has made some investments that uh he thought at one time we're very good and then turned out to be not a very good project or step in the right direction and he's quickly learned from those mistakes and pulled back and changed those investments or things he's doing but there's definitely no ulterior motives or anything in his all his climate reality trainings that he's done are all free to those who attend you just have to find a way to get there and attend and now they've switched it to an online version and it's a really good start to to kind of get the basis to be able to talk about the message I used to be the Germany and Austria country manager for our country coordinator for his climate reality project and trained numerous climate speakers and leaders how to speak on that and so um there's you know it's hard press for me to find too too bad of things there but I do know about his his history and his past and his his reputation and it's really beyond uh approach so yeah well thank you for that I appreciate it that leads me to the the last question is there for our listeners is if you could go up to every individual in our world individually and one on one give them Dave's message or one sustainable takeaway that would empower them or change their life or give them your vision of what a key thing to do would be what what would that be what's Dave's message to those if you had that captive audience to go up to each individual and say hey I want to tell you this one thing and hopefully it's a fact it'll affect you like it has affected me can I tell you two things sure quickly tell me four things I well it might be three compromise it three number one kind of front issues and as I said earlier that's a thing I've learned probably more than anything else in my life James Baldwin who was the civil rights activist in the 60s said not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced that really those are words that hit home to me that's number one confront issues don't shy away from them they never go away they just get worse confront them now early as quickly as possible number two don't be don't let success or failure define you and again I'll give you another word from another phrase from a poem by Rudyard Kipling in 1909 which he wrote you know the poem but he wrote it for his son it's called if and he wrote it as a synopsis for his son and it could have been his daughter it doesn't matter about gender and it's the one that starts if you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you in the middle of that poem it says if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same and those are again very powerful words from me we we we tend to oscillate too much in life we get a bit too happy when we get a success and a bit too down when we get a failure and those two things are necessary in life the line is here and the trick is to not get to don't dwell on the successes too much because next week you might have one of these it doesn't matter it's all part of life and and that's a massive lesson I've learned so and social media and the internet are very good at telling people they've always got to be up here and you're absolutely absolutely useless and failure and worthless if you're down here and this is where I think a lot of mental health problems stem from particularly in our younger generations so that lesson there don't don't be guided don't be defined by success or failure you will have both in your lifetime and then I suppose the third one just very quickly is show empathy you know just think about things from someone else's point of view if you're about to rant at someone in road rage just think about how their day might be going their dad might have died or their kids might be sick or something so my mum taught me that just just have a bit more empathy for others there you go beautiful thank you I agree with that and I also adhere to similar wisdom you know the golden rule treat people and planet the way you would like to be treated and let's leave this planet better than we found it one for multiple generations to come whether we have children or not I am in your last video on the SDGs you had a couple books on this on the desk behind you last you usually always do it was Voklov smells growth book which I haven't read that yet the other one is Voklov smell energy and civilization which talks so much about you know it's a book on energy and do you know what the first half of it is is nothing but agriculture food and beverages seafood because no matter how far we've distanced ourselves from from food it is our main energy source it's yeah renewable energy it's that is our source of battery power food is our energy our caloric intake at what's regulates our body temperature and it's the only thing that during this pandemic did not get put on lockdown it still traveled over nations and borders and saw lots of things occur and so with that I hope to see many more books behind you during your videos and I know you'll always bring us wise wisdom and super critical thinking things I haven't seen one video even then the beginnings that I that disappointed and I thank you for your stewardship and what you're bringing to the world of educating people and empowering them with more knowledge to change our futures Dave thank you so much and I look forward to maybe speaking to you again in the future and maybe we can collaborate some way that'd be great thanks mark appreciate it thank you so much to you