WEBVTT 00:00:07.400 --> 00:00:11.036 Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the 00:00:11.058 --> 00:00:14.796 Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have 00:00:14.818 --> 00:00:18.424 interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation 00:00:18.472 --> 00:00:21.932 around the subject of inclusion, belonging and 00:00:21.986 --> 00:00:25.260 generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. 00:00:26.320 --> 00:00:29.636 To join me in the future, then, please do drop me a line to 00:00:29.778 --> 00:00:33.620 jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:37.748 That's S-E-E Change Happen dot CO dot UK. You can catch up 00:00:37.754 --> 00:00:41.316 with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places. 00:00:41.338 --> 00:00:44.600 So plug in your headphones, grab a 00:00:45.260 --> 00:00:46.916 decaf and let's get going. 00:00:49.500 --> 00:00:53.288 Today is episode 86 with the 00:00:53.294 --> 00:00:56.780 title"Voices Uniting For Our Planet"and 00:00:57.360 --> 00:01:00.616 I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Nicola Peel. 00:01:00.648 --> 00:01:03.676 Nicola describes herself as a solutionist, 00:01:03.698 --> 00:01:06.904 environmentalist and a speaker. 00:01:06.962 --> 00:01:10.684 And when I asked Nicola to describe her superpower, she 00:01:10.732 --> 00:01:14.476 said, being an inspirational speaker also, she's told 00:01:14.508 --> 00:01:18.060 and getting shit done. 00:01:18.140 --> 00:01:21.156 So, Nicola, welcome to the show. 00:01:22.680 --> 00:01:25.030 Hello, Joanne. It's nice to be here. 00:01:26.600 --> 00:01:30.260 Nicola, voices uniting for our planet and 00:01:30.330 --> 00:01:33.610 getting shit done. I've got to hear more about this. Tell me more. 00:01:34.300 --> 00:01:37.832 Well, it's exactly what we need right now. We need 00:01:37.886 --> 00:01:41.656 to see change happen. We need to get together 00:01:41.758 --> 00:01:45.532 and see our differences, not our. Sorry. 00:01:45.586 --> 00:01:49.340 See our similarities, not our differences, because we're really good 00:01:49.490 --> 00:01:53.292 at finding ways to divide us, this, us 00:01:53.346 --> 00:01:56.984 against them. And we see it so much in the environmental 00:01:57.032 --> 00:02:00.816 movement. And for me to even say that I'm an 00:02:00.838 --> 00:02:04.384 environmentalist, the first thing is, oh, what, you just stand there and 00:02:04.422 --> 00:02:08.176 protest, do you? It's like, no, I don't. I do a lot more. 00:02:08.278 --> 00:02:11.700 And, yeah, and that's what I do. I get shit done. And that's real stuff 00:02:11.770 --> 00:02:15.428 with my hands, building infrastructures and helping people 00:02:15.514 --> 00:02:19.348 that most need it. So, yeah, that's really, I suppose, a little bit 00:02:19.354 --> 00:02:23.064 of an intro. So you picked up on 00:02:23.102 --> 00:02:26.936 the stereotype, the image that people have in the head of an 00:02:26.958 --> 00:02:30.612 environmentalist, the hippie, the tree huggers 00:02:30.676 --> 00:02:34.404 that chained themselves to railings. That's the 00:02:34.462 --> 00:02:37.564 media trope. And media create these 00:02:37.602 --> 00:02:40.444 tropes to dehumanise, to 00:02:40.482 --> 00:02:43.928 disenfranchisE, to divert attention. 00:02:44.104 --> 00:02:47.392 So why is the media latching on to 00:02:47.446 --> 00:02:50.896 environmental concerns as a 00:02:50.918 --> 00:02:54.096 negative and creating these negative tropes, not 00:02:54.118 --> 00:02:57.648 amplifying them in a positive light? So I'm a big 00:02:57.734 --> 00:03:01.312 media hater, if you like. I like to bash the media because they influence everything 00:03:01.366 --> 00:03:05.076 we do. So why do you think environmentalists have this bad name, if 00:03:05.098 --> 00:03:08.852 you like? Well, I suppose we have to like anything. Look 00:03:08.906 --> 00:03:12.692 behind who owns it, who has to benefit from it? 00:03:12.746 --> 00:03:16.388 I've got a good example, actually, with National Geographic. And 00:03:16.474 --> 00:03:19.496 I made a film, Blood of the Amazon, many years ago. I went from the 00:03:19.518 --> 00:03:23.208 headwaters in Ecuador, all the way down the Amazon river, and I made a 00:03:23.214 --> 00:03:27.036 film. And they were interested, but they said to me, yes, but 00:03:27.058 --> 00:03:30.632 you can't name any names. And the name was Chevron, 00:03:30.696 --> 00:03:34.172 Texaco. They were the ones that created this 00:03:34.226 --> 00:03:37.724 massive legacy in the Amazon. But they were 00:03:37.762 --> 00:03:41.456 interested only if I didn't name the. You know, 00:03:41.558 --> 00:03:45.344 it never occurred to me. I thought, well, National Geographic, they're all about nature. They 00:03:45.382 --> 00:03:49.072 love nature. Of course they're going to be interested in the real 00:03:49.126 --> 00:03:52.740 story of what's happening in the Amazon. But then 00:03:52.810 --> 00:03:56.176 I picked up one day one of the magazines, 00:03:56.368 --> 00:04:00.116 and I'd never realised, I'd never really noticed it before. All the 00:04:00.138 --> 00:04:03.380 advertising from BP and from Shell 00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:07.384 and Big Oil who advertised in Nat Geo. And 00:04:07.422 --> 00:04:11.064 so it's like that with most media. If we look behind 00:04:11.262 --> 00:04:15.096 who owns it, where's the money? Follow the 00:04:15.118 --> 00:04:18.876 money. And that's why, really, it comes down to 00:04:18.898 --> 00:04:22.300 the same old story, why they don't want to give us a voice. 00:04:23.840 --> 00:04:27.584 There's a few American presidents ago, I can't remember which one it was. 00:04:27.702 --> 00:04:30.690 You probably know the story where the whole 00:04:31.060 --> 00:04:34.800 concept of climate change was almost, 00:04:34.870 --> 00:04:38.704 like, buried as a non thing. You probably 00:04:38.742 --> 00:04:42.356 know the story, but we were talking about climate change, the impact of the 00:04:42.378 --> 00:04:46.084 planet, the global warming. All these things were being 00:04:46.122 --> 00:04:49.956 scientifically proven and evidenced until, I guess, they 00:04:49.978 --> 00:04:52.150 got lobbied by the oil companies or 00:04:53.660 --> 00:04:56.984 the car manufacturers, whoever that may have been. And 00:04:57.102 --> 00:05:00.680 suddenly it all changed, didn't it? There was a couple of American 00:05:00.750 --> 00:05:04.384 Presidents ago, if I remember rightly well, Al. Gore 00:05:04.452 --> 00:05:07.310 was the almost president, vice president, 00:05:08.560 --> 00:05:12.312 and if you haven't already watched his inconvenient truth, 00:05:12.456 --> 00:05:16.024 it says what it is on the can. It is an inconvenient 00:05:16.072 --> 00:05:19.250 truth to everybody. Nobody wants to change. 00:05:19.940 --> 00:05:23.772 And, yeah, he really clearly laid it out. We've known. 00:05:23.916 --> 00:05:26.832 Well, definitely the oil companies have known since 00:05:26.886 --> 00:05:30.484 the. What they're doing. So it's of 00:05:30.522 --> 00:05:34.100 their interest and their shareholders interest to make sure 00:05:34.170 --> 00:05:36.740 that they can just carry on business as usual. 00:05:39.480 --> 00:05:43.012 Oh, cool, you're right. I remember that now. Yeah. Wasn't that around 00:05:43.066 --> 00:05:46.736 Ronald Reagan or just after Ronald 00:05:46.768 --> 00:05:50.216 Reagan? It was that. It was around that era, wasn't it? We don't think it 00:05:50.238 --> 00:05:53.656 was that long ago. I think you might be talking about the Kennedys back then 00:05:53.678 --> 00:05:57.416 when he put solar panels up the White House. And then they were told they 00:05:57.438 --> 00:05:59.868 had to take the solar panels off of the White House. I mean, this is 00:05:59.874 --> 00:06:02.910 like way ahead of their time. And 00:06:03.440 --> 00:06:07.216 we're still talking about whether or not it's a good idea to get power from 00:06:07.238 --> 00:06:10.748 the sun. As you say, we're 00:06:10.764 --> 00:06:14.080 invested in the status quo and the world 00:06:14.230 --> 00:06:17.984 is financed and run by 00:06:18.022 --> 00:06:21.648 these big global corporations based on oil control 00:06:21.734 --> 00:06:24.324 and power, isn't it? And even if you look at the dynamics of the Middle 00:06:24.362 --> 00:06:27.936 east, what's going on in the Middle east right now, a lot of the troubles 00:06:27.968 --> 00:06:31.350 in the Middle east all around power dynamics around oil and energy. 00:06:32.360 --> 00:06:35.812 When I say power, I mean power in both senses of the word, political 00:06:35.876 --> 00:06:39.684 power, as well as environment, production of electricity, 00:06:39.732 --> 00:06:43.400 et cetera. It's a tough thing to change, isn't it? 00:06:43.470 --> 00:06:47.048 Especially you look at the American car manufacturers 00:06:47.224 --> 00:06:49.740 have huge, great employment, 00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:55.772 often in the least employed areas of the US, 00:06:55.906 --> 00:06:59.696 the Rust Belt, where poverty and employment is really tough. That's where 00:06:59.718 --> 00:07:03.328 a lot of the manufacturing is, and making these kind of 00:07:03.334 --> 00:07:06.370 changes. Advancement isn't good for politics, is it? 00:07:07.060 --> 00:07:10.550 No, definitely not. I mean, it's not good for a lot of things. 00:07:12.120 --> 00:07:15.860 And I kind of wonder if we need to change 00:07:16.010 --> 00:07:19.700 our names. We call ourselves still Homo sapiens, which was 00:07:19.770 --> 00:07:23.224 sapiens wise, and we don't seem to be acting very 00:07:23.262 --> 00:07:26.824 wisely at the moment. I think we could be. It's almost like, how about we 00:07:26.862 --> 00:07:29.560 change our name to Homo Petrolius? 00:07:29.980 --> 00:07:33.060 Because our whole reality 00:07:33.220 --> 00:07:36.204 revolves around the stuff. And 00:07:36.402 --> 00:07:40.252 absolutely everything we do, we get up in the morning and 00:07:40.306 --> 00:07:43.996 we'll plastic thing of milk and then we drive to 00:07:44.018 --> 00:07:47.744 work. And then absolutely everything we are surrounded by is 00:07:47.782 --> 00:07:51.104 made from it. So to change the 00:07:51.142 --> 00:07:54.976 industry means changing everything. And 00:07:55.078 --> 00:07:58.908 that's just inconvenient. People don't want to change. It's so much easier to jump 00:07:58.924 --> 00:08:02.708 in your own car, fly away on holiday and just keep on living the 00:08:02.714 --> 00:08:06.512 good life. And this tiny minority 00:08:06.656 --> 00:08:10.496 of us that are able to do that are not prepared 00:08:10.528 --> 00:08:14.052 to stop just because a few radicals are 00:08:14.106 --> 00:08:17.364 saying that it's not good and we shouldn't be doing it. There's not the evidence 00:08:17.412 --> 00:08:21.176 of why. If everyone else is doing it, then why should I stop? 00:08:21.358 --> 00:08:24.616 Which perpetuates the problem of 00:08:24.798 --> 00:08:28.648 mostly it's all doom and gloom and, oh, if you become an environmentalist, you're 00:08:28.664 --> 00:08:32.408 going to be running around in a tatty old shirt and like, flip flops 00:08:32.424 --> 00:08:36.124 or something, instead of thinking, which is where I come into 00:08:36.162 --> 00:08:39.908 it. I don't want to talk about the doom and the gloom 00:08:40.024 --> 00:08:43.868 and climate change and the woes of how bad it really is. There's 00:08:43.884 --> 00:08:47.584 enough people talking about that. I want to talk about what the future could 00:08:47.622 --> 00:08:50.836 look like. If we move towards the 00:08:50.858 --> 00:08:54.452 ecological age, where we actually work with 00:08:54.506 --> 00:08:58.164 nature rather than against it, then what would the world look 00:08:58.202 --> 00:09:01.716 like? Talk about ages like that. 00:09:01.738 --> 00:09:05.364 And again, I think I saw something on the news recently that we've 00:09:05.412 --> 00:09:08.984 entered a new age of the planet, because 00:09:09.102 --> 00:09:12.552 you will now be able to detect this era in 00:09:12.606 --> 00:09:16.216 the striation to the Earth's core and crust when you do 00:09:16.238 --> 00:09:19.996 things. So that's how the Jurassic, mesotric, all these kind of 00:09:20.018 --> 00:09:23.448 layers are built up. We've now got one that shows our environmental 00:09:23.544 --> 00:09:27.100 impact as an age, haven't we? Yeah. The Anthropocene. 00:09:28.720 --> 00:09:32.144 Yeah, that's it. It is the age of the human. You 00:09:32.182 --> 00:09:35.856 cannot get away from our impact. Whatever corner of the 00:09:35.878 --> 00:09:39.592 globe, you can be as remote as you like. In the Arctic, 00:09:39.676 --> 00:09:43.332 in the middle of the Amazon, you cannot get away from 00:09:43.386 --> 00:09:46.948 micro particles of plastic. You cannot get away 00:09:47.034 --> 00:09:50.724 from contamination, which is what the human legacy is right 00:09:50.762 --> 00:09:53.860 now. You talk about micro particles. 00:09:55.240 --> 00:09:58.536 It's in toothpaste, isn't it? It's the little tiny abrasive things in 00:09:58.558 --> 00:10:02.052 toothpaste, little plastic balls that we're cleaning our teeth. 00:10:02.116 --> 00:10:05.916 Inevitably, we're ingesting them, being part of our. In all 00:10:05.938 --> 00:10:09.784 of our internal organs. Everything we eat has got micro particles 00:10:09.832 --> 00:10:13.212 of plastic in it. We're going to be 00:10:13.346 --> 00:10:17.144 oxygen, nitrogen, water and plastic before too long. Aren't we been born 00:10:17.192 --> 00:10:20.896 with plastic in us? Yeah. I mean, you kind of remind me there 00:10:20.918 --> 00:10:24.748 of the spaceship analogy where the Earth, it's 00:10:24.764 --> 00:10:28.240 a bit like a spaceship flying through the universe, 00:10:28.740 --> 00:10:32.500 and we're all these passengers on the spaceship, and 00:10:32.650 --> 00:10:35.510 all the red lights are flashing. Water, 00:10:35.960 --> 00:10:39.584 oxygen, waste, biodiversity 00:10:39.632 --> 00:10:43.032 loss. The lights are all flashing and we're just hurling through 00:10:43.086 --> 00:10:46.308 space, actually not taking any notice 00:10:46.404 --> 00:10:49.960 whatsoever of these flashing lights. And, 00:10:50.110 --> 00:10:53.816 well, actually, what does this mean for humans if we 00:10:53.838 --> 00:10:57.212 carry on like this? And I've spent 20 00:10:57.266 --> 00:11:00.940 years working alongside indigenous people in the Amazon, 00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:05.068 and I spend time with them where they have 00:11:05.154 --> 00:11:08.864 so little, but they're always laughing and they're always 00:11:08.902 --> 00:11:12.240 happy. It's very, very rare to see anybody 00:11:12.310 --> 00:11:15.756 depressed. And when I come back to the UK 00:11:15.948 --> 00:11:19.420 and I hear about the amount of depression and suicide, 00:11:19.500 --> 00:11:23.312 teenage suicides, and I look at these two realities 00:11:23.376 --> 00:11:27.190 where I've had 1ft in each reality, and the difference, 00:11:27.800 --> 00:11:31.604 it's just incredible. And it just reminds me over and over 00:11:31.642 --> 00:11:35.368 again that money does not buy happiness. All the stuff 00:11:35.454 --> 00:11:39.048 that we continually fill our lives with, thinking 00:11:39.214 --> 00:11:42.984 that it's going to somehow bring us happiness. It just won't. And what we 00:11:43.022 --> 00:11:46.444 desperately need is to reconnect with that which is 00:11:46.482 --> 00:11:48.510 real, the world around us. 00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:53.390 Is it because we haven't managed to 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:56.910 sell the problem, sell the pain, to 00:11:58.160 --> 00:12:01.916 mean we see David Attenborough, see Blue Planet, 00:12:01.948 --> 00:12:05.712 we see all these programmes and we see the impact of 00:12:05.766 --> 00:12:09.516 us as humans on animals. We see turtles covered in 00:12:09.558 --> 00:12:13.236 plastic. We see you cut open birds and as you see 00:12:13.258 --> 00:12:16.884 Their stomachs full of fishing nets and plastics, and 00:12:16.922 --> 00:12:20.324 we're seeing that impact on animals or on 00:12:20.362 --> 00:12:24.116 creatures. We look at the rivers, 00:12:24.228 --> 00:12:27.876 the water companies pumping untreated sewage into our rivers. 00:12:27.988 --> 00:12:31.736 We see the environmental impact of it being covered in 00:12:31.758 --> 00:12:35.496 algae, the fish diet. It took almost a generation to 00:12:35.518 --> 00:12:38.520 clean the Thames up, didn't it, for all the pollution that was in the Thames. 00:12:38.680 --> 00:12:42.204 So we know when we impact water, 00:12:42.402 --> 00:12:46.092 how it kills off animals and creatures live 00:12:46.146 --> 00:12:49.856 in the water. We can see that impact all the time. Is it because we 00:12:49.878 --> 00:12:53.424 don't see enough people dying in the 00:12:53.462 --> 00:12:56.972 air? Because the air looks clean. We don't detect 00:12:57.036 --> 00:13:00.864 dirtiness in the air. Probably our noses, our mouths, our lungs are 00:13:00.902 --> 00:13:04.470 probably used to filtering it and accepting the taste of air as it is. 00:13:05.480 --> 00:13:09.268 We got people complaining about the UlEZ in London. UleZ is sort 00:13:09.274 --> 00:13:12.896 of like, let's get this down to 20 miles now. Let's have a UleZ 00:13:12.928 --> 00:13:16.324 zone, people. Go, oh, that's going to make me go later for work. What about 00:13:16.362 --> 00:13:19.988 all the children are dying? We talk about lead in petrol. We got to unlead 00:13:20.004 --> 00:13:22.936 it. We got lead in paint, we got rid of that. Sorry, I'm talking too 00:13:22.958 --> 00:13:26.348 much. Go. You're the expert. You're just totally there. 00:13:26.514 --> 00:13:30.236 It's very, very true. If we could see the CO2 coming out of 00:13:30.258 --> 00:13:33.420 exhaust, if we could see carbon dioxide, 00:13:33.760 --> 00:13:37.544 the trails of black left by aeroplanes, the trails of black 00:13:37.602 --> 00:13:41.244 left by all the shipping and the transport. 00:13:41.292 --> 00:13:45.072 But we can't see it, it's invisible. So that 00:13:45.126 --> 00:13:48.864 would be different if we could see this lingering. And there are 00:13:48.902 --> 00:13:52.356 actually cameras, which are fascinating, where you can 00:13:52.458 --> 00:13:55.924 actually witness what air pollution looks like 00:13:56.042 --> 00:13:59.860 visually. So that is part of it, is that? Yes. We can't see it, 00:13:59.930 --> 00:14:03.480 so we kind of know about it. There's been loads of information. 00:14:03.630 --> 00:14:07.256 People are in a state of denial. They don't want to 00:14:07.278 --> 00:14:10.984 know. It's too uncomfortable. So the 00:14:11.022 --> 00:14:14.792 imagery that we see know floods and 00:14:14.926 --> 00:14:18.572 everything, which is just these atrocities that are happening around the world, 00:14:18.706 --> 00:14:22.348 but still. In England, for example, we're in a little bubble here. We're in 00:14:22.354 --> 00:14:26.204 Goldilocks land. Nothing too bad. Has happened to us, we 00:14:26.242 --> 00:14:29.468 can just Carry on. Hey, it might be nice, climate change, because it might get 00:14:29.474 --> 00:14:33.232 a bit hotter in the, you know, we can come up with all 00:14:33.286 --> 00:14:37.120 sorts of ideas about why we don't really want to talk 00:14:37.190 --> 00:14:40.688 about it. And then it's this other divide, 00:14:40.784 --> 00:14:44.516 it's getting bigger. Are you a climate denier or 00:14:44.538 --> 00:14:48.308 are you a Greta Thunberg follower? And it's actually 00:14:48.394 --> 00:14:52.084 really becoming very toxic. The world of. On what 00:14:52.122 --> 00:14:55.928 side do you stand so often when people ask me, oh, 00:14:55.934 --> 00:14:59.396 do you speak about climate change? No, I don't. I'm a solutionist. 00:14:59.508 --> 00:15:03.156 There's enough people showing you the graphs and talking about climate 00:15:03.188 --> 00:15:06.076 change. I want to talk about the solutions. I want to talk about what we 00:15:06.098 --> 00:15:09.212 can do rather than what we can't do, because there's not enough 00:15:09.266 --> 00:15:12.876 airtime given to that. We don't have a 00:15:12.898 --> 00:15:16.508 vision of the future. Most people can't see it 00:15:16.674 --> 00:15:20.336 and if we can't see it, we're never going to get there. So, yeah, I 00:15:20.358 --> 00:15:23.330 think that's part of what my part in the jigsaw is. 00:15:24.900 --> 00:15:28.464 It's showing, painting that realistic picture, isn't it? And you say it's the 00:15:28.502 --> 00:15:32.130 solutions around, not just telling us what the pain point is, 00:15:32.500 --> 00:15:36.310 it's giving us the ideas and the way out of those. 00:15:36.840 --> 00:15:40.068 If you do nothing, this is the picture. If you do something, this is the 00:15:40.074 --> 00:15:43.860 picture. If you do lots, this is the picture. I think you're right. 00:15:43.930 --> 00:15:47.732 Seeing pictures of polar bears having their environment 00:15:47.796 --> 00:15:51.528 shrunk, or the fact that you've got seals who used to live on 00:15:51.534 --> 00:15:55.336 these ice flows now are more vulnerable to killer whales because their ice flows 00:15:55.368 --> 00:15:59.128 are dissolving too quickly. You see all these pictures of animals, it's 00:15:59.144 --> 00:16:01.790 so detached from reality because it's not in your back. 00:16:05.280 --> 00:16:08.524 Mean, was it? Recently, the Rishi Sunak and 00:16:08.562 --> 00:16:12.080 co decided to put back our pledge on electric 00:16:12.150 --> 00:16:15.964 vehicles by another five years, saying it was too tricky to get the infrastructure 00:16:16.012 --> 00:16:19.810 in place. I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but 00:16:20.180 --> 00:16:23.030 unless you're committed to a path, it's always going to be difficult. 00:16:23.640 --> 00:16:27.252 Absolutely. And there is no silver bullet. And even 00:16:27.306 --> 00:16:31.136 the idea of all going on to electric vehicles, that's 00:16:31.168 --> 00:16:34.804 not what we want either. We fundamentally need 00:16:34.842 --> 00:16:38.184 system change and that means public Transport, it means car 00:16:38.222 --> 00:16:42.036 sharing. The idea of everyone giving up their fossil fuel 00:16:42.068 --> 00:16:45.396 car and getting an electric car, it's just never going to happen. A We don't 00:16:45.428 --> 00:16:49.260 have the resources to mine what is needed to build 00:16:49.330 --> 00:16:53.036 an entire fleet of electric vehicles, but we can learn from 00:16:53.058 --> 00:16:56.236 other countries. I've spent a lot of time in South America where it's all 00:16:56.258 --> 00:16:59.916 minibus. Everyone gets around by minibus. We have these massive 00:16:59.948 --> 00:17:02.640 buses that quite often drive around empty. 00:17:03.380 --> 00:17:06.944 But maybe that's not necessary. Maybe we need to look at our 00:17:06.982 --> 00:17:10.704 whole infrastructure of how we get around. We've been talking about 00:17:10.742 --> 00:17:13.844 carpooling for a long time. Nobody does it, though. 00:17:14.042 --> 00:17:17.264 So how do we create the change? We know what's 00:17:17.312 --> 00:17:21.124 needed. So how do we get from where we are to where 00:17:21.162 --> 00:17:24.968 we need to go? And is it enough for people 00:17:25.054 --> 00:17:28.792 to see the visuals? And I think when you have 00:17:28.926 --> 00:17:32.760 your own first hand experience and you see it yourself, which 00:17:32.830 --> 00:17:36.452 I suppose really made it even more real 00:17:36.526 --> 00:17:39.916 for myself. When I first started in 2000 in the 00:17:39.938 --> 00:17:43.676 Amazon, I didn't know that there was these massive oil spills in the 00:17:43.698 --> 00:17:47.484 Amazon. But it wasn't just seeing the rivers 00:17:47.532 --> 00:17:50.576 running black and the effects on the 00:17:50.598 --> 00:17:54.290 creatures. It was when I started to see the children 00:17:54.660 --> 00:17:58.050 that were covered in skin lesions. And 00:17:58.820 --> 00:18:02.276 the highest rate of childhood leukaemia in the 00:18:02.298 --> 00:18:06.004 world is the children in the Amazon. Now, why 00:18:06.042 --> 00:18:09.316 don't we know about that? Because it's much 00:18:09.418 --> 00:18:13.012 easier to talk. Oh, yeah, nature's being 00:18:13.066 --> 00:18:16.776 contaminated. Yeah, it's the oceans or it's the 00:18:16.798 --> 00:18:20.632 forest, but the people, it's a different thing. If people were to see what I 00:18:20.686 --> 00:18:24.536 see of how sick the people are that live in 00:18:24.558 --> 00:18:27.550 the forest because they drink the water, 00:18:28.240 --> 00:18:31.916 then you say, well, hang on, this isn't right. Why are all these 00:18:31.938 --> 00:18:35.676 kids in the middle of the Amazon so sick? Oh, 00:18:35.698 --> 00:18:39.376 so I can just drive to Texaco and go and fill my car up. How 00:18:39.398 --> 00:18:43.024 does that make us feel? So that's where I feel 00:18:43.062 --> 00:18:46.684 like we need to actually feel what's 00:18:46.732 --> 00:18:50.400 happening in a real way. This isn't just 00:18:50.550 --> 00:18:54.260 some know, it's real life, it's actually happening 00:18:54.330 --> 00:18:58.036 right now. I think maybe if you haven't seen it, you can't really understand 00:18:58.138 --> 00:19:01.856 it. But it still 00:19:01.898 --> 00:19:05.512 doeSn't impact me. And 00:19:05.646 --> 00:19:09.208 I don't feel that pain. No pain, no change sort of 00:19:09.214 --> 00:19:09.770 thing. 00:19:12.780 --> 00:19:16.010 Maybe as an individual, I'm worried about. Well, not worried, but 00:19:16.380 --> 00:19:20.056 what difference can I make if I put this plastic bottle in the 00:19:20.078 --> 00:19:23.884 recycling or put it in the general waste? What's the impact? It makes no 00:19:23.922 --> 00:19:26.348 difference to any. No one's going to care, no one's going to notice. It'll just 00:19:26.354 --> 00:19:29.490 go into landfill. Who cares? So 00:19:30.180 --> 00:19:34.016 how can I understand the personal nature of this so 00:19:34.038 --> 00:19:37.536 that I can be on board with it, rather than just theory? How can I 00:19:37.558 --> 00:19:41.316 be personal responsibility for change? How can I do 00:19:41.338 --> 00:19:44.470 that? Well, I do it because it makes me feel good. 00:19:45.560 --> 00:19:48.932 So whether we do it from a self centred doing the right 00:19:48.986 --> 00:19:52.484 thing actually gives you better mental health. 00:19:52.682 --> 00:19:56.368 And we can come at it from many, many angles. And I 00:19:56.394 --> 00:19:59.944 hear this all the time, I'm just one person. Whatever I 00:19:59.982 --> 00:20:03.556 do is not really going to make a difference. It's up to the government, it's 00:20:03.588 --> 00:20:07.244 up to the corporations, it's up to the politicians. We're very good 00:20:07.282 --> 00:20:11.064 at pointing the finger to everybody else, apart 00:20:11.112 --> 00:20:14.892 from, you know, what would happen 00:20:15.026 --> 00:20:18.860 if know started that the bottom rung 00:20:18.940 --> 00:20:22.492 is just putting the recycling in the right bin. 00:20:22.636 --> 00:20:26.480 There was recently I was chatting to a young Japanese girl and she 00:20:26.550 --> 00:20:30.052 said, I didn't know that England was a third 00:20:30.106 --> 00:20:33.844 world country. And I said, well, why 00:20:33.882 --> 00:20:37.524 do you say that? She said, well, people here still don't know how to 00:20:37.562 --> 00:20:41.296 recycle. And I thought, yep, that's 00:20:41.328 --> 00:20:45.156 right. If you lived in Japan, you would peel the label off 00:20:45.178 --> 00:20:48.584 of your wine bottle and put the label into paper. You'd put the bottle into 00:20:48.622 --> 00:20:51.960 glass and you take the lid off and you put it into metal. They 00:20:52.030 --> 00:20:55.880 recycle everything. They have very little waste. 00:20:55.960 --> 00:20:59.388 They have a very intelligent system, which means 00:20:59.474 --> 00:21:02.652 that by really separating and 00:21:02.706 --> 00:21:06.412 recycling, it costs less in the end. So 00:21:06.466 --> 00:21:09.980 it's not even just the environmental impacts, financially, 00:21:10.060 --> 00:21:13.616 economically, it makes sense. So we start 00:21:13.718 --> 00:21:16.380 on the rung of that personal radical 00:21:16.460 --> 00:21:20.196 responsibility of there is no 00:21:20.218 --> 00:21:23.524 such thing as away. This idea of I'm going to throw it 00:21:23.562 --> 00:21:27.396 away, where is that? We just move it from our 00:21:27.418 --> 00:21:30.644 house to somewhere else. So 00:21:30.762 --> 00:21:34.504 then the bigger picture of systems change. 00:21:34.622 --> 00:21:38.328 And for me it's everything. It's not just kind 00:21:38.334 --> 00:21:41.956 of individual, it's social, it's economical, 00:21:42.068 --> 00:21:45.836 it's political and it's legal. So we can pull the strands of 00:21:45.858 --> 00:21:49.676 each of those. Sorry, I'm just chuckling under my 00:21:49.698 --> 00:21:53.436 breath here about what you said. When you throw something away, there 00:21:53.458 --> 00:21:56.760 is no away. And I had this vision 00:21:56.840 --> 00:22:00.348 of tidying up my cupboards. 00:22:00.524 --> 00:22:03.824 What you end up doing is just rearranging stuff or putting the stuff you already 00:22:03.862 --> 00:22:07.244 had somewhere else. So away is actually somewhere 00:22:07.292 --> 00:22:10.896 else. It's not actually away away anywhere, it's just different. 00:22:10.998 --> 00:22:14.848 You just moved it from place A to place B. You've changed 00:22:14.944 --> 00:22:18.756 its position in time and space, not its actual status. Absolutely. 00:22:18.938 --> 00:22:22.352 The time where we move it, we don't see it because it's not in England, 00:22:22.416 --> 00:22:26.264 because we haven't got any landfill sites anymore. So we just ship it away to 00:22:26.302 --> 00:22:29.976 another country and have no responsibility or no idea 00:22:30.078 --> 00:22:33.636 if you ask most people, hey, when you chuck your stuff in the rubbish bin, 00:22:33.668 --> 00:22:35.980 where does it go? We just don't 00:22:37.360 --> 00:22:40.700 mean. We saw in the recent by elections 00:22:41.120 --> 00:22:44.716 that the UlEz in London became a 00:22:44.738 --> 00:22:48.332 political wedge issue where one 00:22:48.386 --> 00:22:52.204 party decided that they were going to campaign against it and get 00:22:52.242 --> 00:22:55.216 their person elected, which turned out to be true. Whether it was over the 00:22:55.238 --> 00:22:58.236 Ulez, is it becoming a political 00:22:58.428 --> 00:23:01.924 football? The more left leaning you are, the more 00:23:01.962 --> 00:23:05.350 environmental you are, the more right leaning, the more 00:23:05.960 --> 00:23:09.796 capitalist you are, the more like you're less likely to care about the 00:23:09.818 --> 00:23:13.556 environment. Is that kind of a truism or is that kind of a generalisation? 00:23:13.748 --> 00:23:17.592 I think it is true, sadly. It seems to be 00:23:17.646 --> 00:23:20.360 where we're going and it seems to be getting worse. 00:23:20.940 --> 00:23:24.536 And the rise of fascism in this 00:23:24.558 --> 00:23:27.820 country as well, and the rise of climate denial. 00:23:28.240 --> 00:23:31.900 So I've been confronted at a few events where I've been speaking 00:23:31.970 --> 00:23:35.784 at with people that are absolutely, totally in denial 00:23:35.912 --> 00:23:39.676 of climate change. And I say, well, okay, if you don't agree with the maps 00:23:39.708 --> 00:23:43.424 and the graphs and what the scientists say, do you agree that 00:23:43.462 --> 00:23:47.104 there is air pollution in cities? Do you agree that 00:23:47.142 --> 00:23:50.656 there's rubbish and plastic in the oceans? Do you agree that we're 00:23:50.688 --> 00:23:54.324 losing biodiversity at an unprecedented state? We are 00:23:54.362 --> 00:23:58.070 actually in the 6th mass extinction right now. 00:23:59.160 --> 00:24:02.736 We're causing it this time. So we know that that's 00:24:02.768 --> 00:24:06.484 happening. And so I'm trying to find the things which actually unite 00:24:06.532 --> 00:24:10.280 us, the things that we agree upon rather than 00:24:10.350 --> 00:24:13.796 what we don't agree. And at the moment, because it's 00:24:13.828 --> 00:24:17.676 also siloed, you've got people that do amazing work 00:24:17.778 --> 00:24:21.628 socially with people that have absolutely 00:24:21.714 --> 00:24:25.464 nothing to do with the environment. And then you've got environmentalists 00:24:25.512 --> 00:24:28.400 that have nothing to do with social projects. 00:24:29.060 --> 00:24:32.496 But the Vesica Pisces, the bit in the 00:24:32.518 --> 00:24:36.144 middle, which is, well, we've got to remember that 00:24:36.182 --> 00:24:39.884 humans are nature. We're not separate 00:24:39.932 --> 00:24:43.748 from it. We're not as important as a worm. I 00:24:43.754 --> 00:24:47.396 mean, the Earth really needs worms. It doesn't need humans. But we 00:24:47.418 --> 00:24:51.236 are just another species on this planet. I think sometimes we have 00:24:51.258 --> 00:24:54.984