282: Rethinking Our Relationship with the Planet and The Real Solution to Climate Change with Paul Hawken

Most of us want to do our part to help the environment. We recycle, we conserve energy, we bring reusable bags to the grocery store. But does any of that actually make a difference?

Paul Hawken, one of the world’s foremost environmentalists and author of Carbon: The Book of Life, says that the way we think about climate change is all wrong.

In this episode, Paul breaks down why fear-based climate messaging hasn’t worked—and what actually inspires people to take action. He reveals why carbon isn’t the villain we’ve been told it is, how nature is communicating in ways we’re only beginning to understand, and why reconnecting with the natural world isn’t just good for the planet—it’s essential for our well-being.

Paul also shares surprising insights about soil, the intelligence of plants and animals, and how we’ve been conditioned to see nature as something separate from us rather than as part of us. If you’ve ever wondered whether small changes like cutting back on plastic or choosing organic actually move the needle—or if there’s a bigger, more impactful way to contribute—this episode is for you.

Tune in for a mind-expanding conversation about the interconnectedness of life, the role we each play in shaping the future, and why the solutions to our biggest environmental challenges start with shifting how we see the world around us.

Transcript

PH: “If you think right now, where we are today, if alerting humanity to what it was doing on earth and thinking about ways to modify it, change, transform that so that we can stay here, simply stated, stay here, and we look at the narrative that was created 50 years ago and propounded to this day, pretty much the same way we'd say, well, that was a real failure. Like, who is your agency? You haven't sold a single product. Are you, People weren't sold on it at all, and the reason is because it was about less, about fear, about threat, future existential threat was the term used way back. So that narrative is what has to change. And the narrative is really about more, we are moving into less and less and we are deceived into thinking that it's more. Now, are you dependent on your job, on your spouse, on income, on whatever investment, yeah, you are, that you're caught, just like all of us, into this web of capitalism. But the way to move out is first to become aware and touch that part of yourself that actually understands, and to understand that sometimes what we do is relatively small.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Most of us want to do our part to help the environment. We recycle, we conserve energy, we bring reusable bags to the grocery store. But does any of that actually make a difference? 

Paul Hawken, one of the world's leading environmentalists, and the author of Carbon: The Book of Life says that the way that we think about climate change is all wrong.

And in this episode, he breaks down why. Why fear-based climate messaging hasn't worked. And what actually inspires people to take action. How to reconnect with nature in a way that actually feels natural, even if you live in a city. And the surprising truth about carbon and why it's not the villain that we've been told that it is.

If you've ever wondered whether small changes like cutting back on plastic or choosing organic actually move the needle or if there's a bigger, more impactful way to contribute, this episode is for you. Let's dive in.

[00:02:11] LW: Paul, welcome back to the podcast. It's good to see you again.

[00:02:14] PH: Good to see you, man. I would love to talk to you anytime.

[00:02:19] LW: Yeah, I was, I'm always so excited when your people reached out and said, Hey, would you like to have Paul back on? He's got another book coming out on carbon. And I guess to pick out where we left off the last time for anyone who hasn't listened to the 1st episode or doesn't know about your back story we'll get to that a little bit. We'll do a little synopsis on that. But the last time we talked a lot about regeneration and biodiversity and so I feel like we're zooming out even more now with this. This body of work, which is something you've obviously, as you didn't just wake up three months ago and start thinking about carbon.

This is something that has been at the core of the other stuff that you've been talking about 

[00:02:58] PH: I think that it, that the books follow, there's Drawdown, and there's Regeneration, and there's Carbon, the Book of Life. Maybe I should have called the book just the Book of Life, actually. Because,

[00:03:10] LW: an oxymoron, isn't it?

[00:03:11] PH: Yeah, it is, and people don't realize that though, they think carbon is something, a thing you fix and manipulate, and then there's life, and I'm saying time out.

I think it's really It's about observing the solutionism that's taken over in the world in a small level, but nevertheless for sure, like about verbs, the very male verbs about combating and tackling and fixing, all this stuff. And I think people's motives are incredible and wonderful. I don't question that, but I do question.

The emergence of a sense that climate, atmosphere, global warming nature itself is other than us. It's like, and we're going to talk about it like an object,

[00:04:00] LW: Yeah.

[00:04:01] PH: And using With all due respect to our gender, male verbs, combating, tackling and fixing, but I, I wanted to like, yeah, and you did it properly, just get back a little bit further from the specificity of doing things that, reduce emissions and sequester carbon and regenerate life on earth, and see if we could get to a point where we People would use, if you will, the news about climate and the loss of living species and the degradation of biodiversity as an entry point, as an entry point to understanding themselves and their relationship to the world in a different way. As opposed to, this is happening to me. And there's that old thing, no, it's really for you, but you can't really think things are happening for you if you have objectified them because you've listened to the climate narrative for, a year, 10 years, 20 years. It hasn't really changed that much. And that's always So embedded in our way of thinking that there's a problem that our carbon's like the bad boy, like a culprit, like if we just can get that thing right, somehow we're going to be able to go on as we are today. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Well,

[00:05:19] LW: If you had to paint a picture of the person who you're mostly speaking to, like, when I write my books, when I post my content, there's a type of person that I have in mind, someone who's struggling to understand how they relate to spirituality while paying bills while doing all of the regular stuff of Planet.

And so that's the filter through which I'm communicating who's this person. You're not even just in this book, but in your entire body of work. Because this book is laid out similar to the previous books. Who's that person you're talking to? And what is their life like?

What are their pain points? And what are their challenges?

[00:05:58] PH: I actually, I've written ten books, but the two that preceded this one were do books. Like, hey, open a page, there's a spread, there's a beautiful photograph. The photographs were as much as for young people as for regular readers. And so the books have been taught in fourth and fifth grade.

Because, when you're young, you respond to the imagery, not to the whole bank of, twelve hundred words. And this is not a do book, so it's actually a real break. It's a B book it's a C book, S E E. And trying to provide the conditions. Conditions, the conditions in this case are prose, obviously the narrative.

But the conditions Where people might see the living world in a new way, which allows them to see themselves in a different way, because they're absolutely interconnected. They're not separable. And yet we've separated it here, and been taught to separate it, and it's pounded into us on a daily basis if we read and yet this is not true. And so it was more about creating the conditions and for example, if you go back to regeneration or just any activity that restores life, we as human beings, we create the conditions for that. We do not actually restore life. It does it itself. So what would be the way as a writer, you're a writer, to share? Out of curiosity and research and your own sense of wonder and to people that would Light that up for them, and so this isn't a book about, I know you don't listen up, which is a lot of the books out there about climate, listen, I got the solution or this is the way to go or, if we only do this and so forth and, praise be to those books.

I'm not, but I just feel like they don't work. It's a narrative that doesn't work. so I wanted a narrative that was inclusive and surprising. Also, in other words, really? Who knew? I didn't know that. I didn't know that. And I can give you some examples, but so that you understand there's more life underneath the soil than there is above the soil on Earth, there's more life in the oceans. Beneath a thousand feet than there is above a thousand feet. In other words, where it's completely dark. Completely dark. And nothing can see. And you can only communicate, say, with light. It's bioluminescence. And that is the largest way that creatures communicate on Earth is bioluminescence.

By number, because that's what's down there in the oceans. There's more down there beneath a thousand feet than there is up here. On the land. So just trying to look at these dynamics, that we've taken for granted, and that fish have feelings, they have emotions, they recognize each other, they differentiate themselves, from the fish next door.

We look at them as coming out of a net and hitting them and killing them and eating them. Well, the real deal. they have language, they speak, they make sounds. And they're intelligent in a way which we've really never thought about because we weren't taught that, not because we're stupid, but because we were just never, that was never shared with us.

So those kind of things like, where you start to step back and go, Huh, okay, we take two billion of these fish out of the ocean every year to eat. How do we take them? And what are we doing to the ocean? Not just by fishing, but by global warming and atmospheric carbon dioxide, making it acid, acidifying the ocean, changing the ability of the ocean itself to regenerate.

So, it starts to connect and what I'm trying to do is connect myself just The way I want to help other people, get connected to the place they live. And, if you don't know where you're living and I dare say, and this may be a flat out declarative statement, I don't think people know where they live at all. They don't, not their fault. By the way, we just don't know. And as we start to peek in and see things, and go, Oh my gosh, I live here. Am I a part of all the other things that are living here? Are they like. Virtually miraculous in their capabilities and communication. There's a 3. 4 trillion creatures on land, communicating every single day. Huh. What are they saying? Well, we're starting to find out. It's that kind of thing, and again, to give dimensionality to what it is we want to quote unquote save, we talk about saving the Earth. Well, okay.

Let's talk about it, what on earth are you thinking about, is it just a thing, is it just like a jungle somewhere? Is it just, a forest? Or is it a extraordinary complex world of intelligence and interconnection? Of which we are an inextricable part, no matter how we act.

[00:11:08] LW: I have a philosophical question for you when it comes to the human race. What do you think explains why we are so destructive compared to all the other species and organisms on the planet? Do you think that's by design or do you think there's something else that's at play? Maybe perhaps spiritually or karmically?

Do you buy into all of that?

[00:11:29] PH: So that's a good question. I remember talking to somebody, indigenous person, using the first person plural, which I think is the most dangerous pronoun there is. And he listened very politely, and he said, who's we? And so when you ask the question, the we is really those people who came out of Northern Europe and were part of the so called Enlightenment scientific revolution and, that began to look at the world in extraordinary ways, as scientists and as observers, but out of people. Out of that, the science that emerged was about identification, about naming things, as opposed to thinking it was supposed to be one big nature, and naming, to name something you have to differentiate, and so you have to separate, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that. If you're going to study something and you're studying snakes, you don't want to study an owl. You're studying a snake. What kind of snake? This kind of snake, so, we have this extraordinary language, the English language particularly, but, and other European languages, that have divided the world into millions of pieces. And what's happened is we've been all educated in that. And if we love science and love nature, we're, we know our binomials. My daughter went to Yale School of Forestry and I can't go anywhere. She knows the binomial of everything there is. Well, what is the binomial? Well, it's a Latin term, from Linnaeus, and sometimes.

Often named after really terrible human beings, by the way, but that's put that aside but that identification, that knowledge, and so forth, reinforce the sense that nature is a thing, made of lots of things, and instead of and what amplified that, of course, was that once the, from starting with the Portuguese and the Spanish, and of course later the French and English and so forth, sailing, Columbus for sure, but, starting to reach out from that place in ships and discovering people and places and vast resources. And, the doctrinaire popes and out of Rome, said, basically, if you're a Christian, it's yours. These are heathens, and so not only could we take people, which we did, we, I'm saying us, Indo Europeans, the Europeans take them as chattel, as things. We could take anything else around there too, it could be minerals, it could be trees, it could be, gold and, so that was the beginning of this extractive economy people talk about, now it's, the world is there to take. And take it back to Europe in various and sundry forms, or the products that slaves created, cotton, sugar, tobacco, and take that to Europe, and fabulous fortunes were made, and and fabulous areas and peoples were destroyed. And that still has, that still is happening today. So, when we say we, we have to understand it's a plural.

A type of understanding that was inculcated into us as children and students. That basically dominates to this day, are thinking the rhetoric, you go to the IPCC, you go to COP 29 in Azerbaijan. Misunderstanding and assumption is what runs the world.

[00:14:58] LW: You've, You've described. Social media as a disease and you've talked about how it's actually disconnected us. Can you elaborate?

[00:15:09] PH: Well, the illusion or the offer or the promise is connection. And in that sense, wirelessly it has, but in so doing. It has disconnected us from place and from identity of our identities were for a long time, prescribed by culture by friends and family, by place by religion and colonist settler world.

And I think the world, that's true in other worlds too, indigenous worlds too, and so forth. And then all of a sudden we had a, the ability to connect to anyone, everywhere. And what that did is keep us on our screens and on our phones. And we Spent less and less time, we, that is to say children and other people spent less and less time outdoors and more time indoors and indoors connected in a way that was like a fantasy at one time, a complete science fiction fantasy and we're living in that fantasy.

But it didn't bring us together, as is obvious. And it's. It doesn't mean we can't use those tools to further and, excuse me, further and community. We can, but that's just a small fraction of its use as we can see. And so, yeah, it's media, right? I don't think in the, and when we look back, whatever, and look at it as really social, it wasn't social in the true sense of the word.

[00:16:44] LW: The way I've come to terms with forces like social media, and I would see it as a force of nature, digital force is in relationship to your insistence that we're being othered in a lot of, we've been, you've been using that term for a long time. We've been othered in a lot of different ways and now putting that term or associating that term with.

With carbon is that these are all symptomatic of what you talked about just a moment ago, which is the colonialism slash capitalist agenda of the, European empires and we're seeing how it all plays out and. While one may have intentions of, again, the way normal people see it, saving the environment, right?

Seeing themselves completely separate from the environment. It's great, but I've got to keep up. I got to pay my bills. I got to, my wife needs X, Y, Z. My kids need X, Y, Z. My husband needs X, Y, Z. So all this is great. I'm not going to use Plastic straws anymore. That's my contribution

[00:17:49] PH: Yeah.

[00:17:50] LW: the environment.

I'll bring a tote bag with me when I go to the grocery store.

[00:17:55] PH: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:57] LW: What would you say to those people who have the best intentions and they're just on that treadmill of, trying to keep up as the prices are skyrocketing. Inflation's going up. Interest rates are going up, housing prices, rental prices are going up.

So it's like you have to. Keep your focus on what you think is the most important thing, which is just making money. I

[00:18:23] PH: of environmental movement were very much about this tokenism, these little gestures, and not that they weren't good things to do, but the enormity of the problem versus, this thing, well, this is what you can do kind of thing, was so, This is a gulf between the two in terms of being effective.

And so people obviously, and who care, want to do something about it today. Let me step back and rather talk about, the bag, taking your bag into the grocery store and not using paper. I want to talk about it in a bigger way because I feel like the narrative, if you and I 50 years ago say, Hey, like, let's get together and let's figure out how we can create a narrative that gives people a way to understand what's at what's afoot and what the implications are and what makes sense at this point in time to do to avoid.

A catastrophic collapse of humanity and nature. Okay. So you and I would get together and we think okay, let's use the words fear, threat, loss, reduce and let's scare the shit out of people. If they don't do something. Do we know what to do? Not exactly. We know they shouldn't drive their cars as much and things, but no, we're not there yet.

But we do know that we want to wake people up. And so we're going to wake people up by basically making them either turn off, turn away, or go into fear. And what goes with that? And that's what we did. So if you think right now, where we are today, and you think if alerting humanity to what it was doing on earth and thinking about ways to modify it, change, transform that so that we can stay here, simply stated, stay here, and we look at the narrative that was created 50 years ago and propounded to this day, pretty much the same way we'd say, well, that was a real failure.

Like, who is your agency? You haven't sold a single product. People weren't sold on it at all, and the reason is because it was about less, about fear, about threat future existential threat was the term used way back and so, so that narrative is what has to change. And that narrative, the narrative is really about more, we are moving into less and less and we are deceived into thinking that it's more.

Now, are you dependent on your job, on your spouse, on income, on whatever investment, yeah, you are, that you're caught, just like all of us, into this web of capitalism. But. The way to move out is first to become aware and touch that part of yourself that actually understands, and to understand that sometimes what we do is relatively small.

Okay. But then that's where you live. You live in that place, but you don't stop there. Like I, before this podcast, I have a a building inspector come because we changed the pathway outside. He wants to come in and check to see if I have carbon monoxide smoke detectors. Okay. They're very expensive.

And I took out natural gas. I don't have any natural gas in my house. I have, it's cut off down by the street. There's nothing here. Carbon monoxide is for natural gas. And you can't create it any other way in the house except by combusting a fossil fuel. And yet, there I am. So the, the inertia of the present, and I'm going this way, and solar on the roof and all that sort of stuff.

Now, can everybody afford to do what I do? No. Okay. So it's not like, okay, I'll do it. You can do it. But what can you do? And one thing you can do is to become literate about where you live, the sounds you hear. If you're living in the city, go someplace, where they are. There is the natural world, even, it could be along the river, it can be in a park, it can be, who knows, but wherever you are, find out where you live.

It's so important because only then will you value it. When it's objectified and it's just a noisy freeway and it's just, whatever you then do the opposite. You escape, you want to closet yourself, you want to protect yourself, of course, and you live that way. And we're. Almost all urban people are in that situation and most suburban people as well.

And we did that, but the way out is not top down. And I think this is really important because nature is not top down. It's not a top down system, so we have top down systems in place, our governance and so many other, corporatocracy, in other words, the control corporations have over our lives, and then we try to solve it with these huge institutions like the, Conference of the Parties, 30s coming up in Brazil.

In 29 in Azerbaijan, they were actually making deals, the fossil fuel companies were making deals at the conference of the parties by cell. And whether it's a biodiversity conference last year in Cali COP 16 for biodiversity and so forth. I love those things. I think they're good for people to meet, talk and share, but it, you can't solve it from the top.

You can't solve it by coming with, Oh, we're going to do direct air capture. We're going to make 20 million machines, all over the world, they're going to suck down the atmosphere, take out the carbon, liquefy it and put it into geological formations, this is it. If it wasn't so stupid, it'd be hilarious.

[00:23:49] LW: wanted to play something for you.

[00:23:51] PH: Yeah.

[00:23:51] LW: It's a video. We're going to see if you can hear it. I

looked this up after you talked about the sound of soil, because your book reminds me of the secret life of trees, that book, which brought more awareness for me to the sentience of plants, which It wasn't like it was completely unrealistic, but I just never really thought about it before.

And I think that's what I hear. You saying is people just haven't really thought about this interconnectedness before. There have been some wonderful documentaries, like the fantastic fungi documentary where they show how the trees communicate with each other. And I thought that was very cool and enlightening. And even though I'd seen all that, I had no idea that sound that soil has a sound. And so that makes you have a new appreciation, even for just the soil. Like, I live in a very urban area of the 5th largest city and in the world but there are a lot of trees and bushes and a lot of dirt around and it just gives you a new appreciation for whatever around.

And I know that word also comes up. It's the. And it's the antidote to othering is presence. You keep saying presence, be present with where you are, be present with what's around you. And maybe understand that everything is sentient.

[00:25:19] PH: Absolutely. And I think what's so interesting about, we talked about the scientific revolution, science separation, but there is a raft of scientists in the world today, mostly younger, who are looking at the world and discovering things that are really quite extraordinary. About this world we live in and Merlin Sheldrake, Toby Cares with Fungi Adam Adamatsky at the Royal Society and I can name them, Zoe Slander's book, Light Eaters is just a beautiful book, eight years, just really.

Spending time with botanists and all over the world. And she's the one who said, talking to the botanists who actually don't dare publish this because they don't think it will get peer reviewed. But they're saying the only way we can understand a plant, given all its 20 senses and its abilities and capabilities in communication, is to look at the whole plant as a brain.

And these are serious scientists and saying, there is no other explanation. We have no other model for what every single plant does in the world. And so that's a mind bender. And another mind bender is a scientist who tried to just figure out, well, how many roots do a plant have? And so he took one seed of rye, ryegrass, which in a lawn, that's usually ryegrass.

Not always. But, and then Howie did this, but meticulously counted the roots and the hair roots in this one seed of grass. There's 14 million roots.

And every one of those roots is connected to the hyphae, which is connected to mycelia. And there is this thing going back and forth, communication between the roots, the hyphae, and the mycelia.

And it's really about nutrients. The mycelia wants carbon, wants sugar. It was plants make about 30 percent of the sugar that plants make, they send down below to roots and in exchange for phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, zinc, selenium, whatever, and the mycelium are like down there and they can get it, have it, whatever, because they need the sugar, they need the carbohydrates, so, but that process, You think of one ride costs 14 million, and you look down and where you're standing on the ground and going, what's going on down there?

And Adamasky has studied mycelia noise. That is, they make a clicking sound. I don't know if you've ever heard the beautiful language of the San people in Botswana, they were called Bushman, which is a really terrible, colonialist name. They're the sun people, and they have a very clicking, beautiful clicking sound and way of communicating.

So do whales by the way. And Mycelia have a clicking sound and he started record. He's been recording it for years, and what he's seeing is patterns that is, which he's calling words, and then he's seeing patterns that like words connected to each other, repeating themselves. And then he is saying, these are sentences.

In the largest sense of communication, and they're just as complex as the sentences you and I use, Indo European languages. Now, people object to that, obviously, not obviously, but they do, so no, they reject his findings. But that's what's going on right now, is that the edge of science the, is really Going in and seeing the world not as an object, not as a thing, and as a living entity.

And then, okay, what are they saying? They, it, what's being communicated? How is it being communicated? What is the function of the communication? Do fish have feelings? Huh. Like, really? Huh. Like, well, how do fish talk? And you can hear it too, just like soil. And the reason soil makes a noise is because it's an organism.

It's an organism. People think it's just dirt. You use the word dirt, but and they're different things. Soil is the biggest organism on the planet and every culture has, Referred to soil, the earth, as mother, without exception, all 7, 000. No one ever came up and said, yeah, it's father earth, so they all knew life came from the earth and nothing's going to change that.

Everything we have, we eat, everything in your room, whether it's a taco or whether it's a wallpaper. comes from a plant. Everything. All fossil fuels comes from a plant or an organism, right? Everything comes from the earth. And so the way we've treated soil is like dirt. We've treated it like dirt.

It's a medium. It's like sand. It's something we put plants into and then we grow the plants, and take the plants out and sell them. And so we have an agricultural system that for the last hundred years has said, Oh, we're so clever. We're just going to skip that. We're going to feed the plants.

We're not going to feed the soil. We're going to feed the plant. We have N, P, K, and the plants aren't as strong, and then they get infestations, and there's weeds growing because we've killed the soil, and then we have pesticides and herbicides. But man, we get a lot of corn, a lot of soy, a lot of this, and we can sell it.

And when in fact every culture until 1920s knew, or didn't know, but didn't do it otherwise, New that you have to feed the soil. The soil is what you have to feed. And the soil creates healthy plants. Healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy people, healthy animals. So, this is not,

What, rocket science? Is that cliche? This is just plain common sense. That we have abrogated. Rejected.

[00:30:57] LW: And usually farming soil doesn't make any sound. Is that right?

[00:31:03] PH: Yeah, you play the sound, and you go to especially untouched soils, in reserves, where there's never been any and the sounds are all different. If you take the same probes and put them into, say, a corn soy farm, 5, 000 acre farm in Iowa, that's using glyphosate and neonicotinoids, which are pesticides coating the seeds of the corn or soy and you stick it down there, it's dead silence.

It's absolute silence. There's not a sound. It's dead.

[00:31:29] LW: So what does that mean for the food that we get from that soil?

[00:31:33] PH: It's denatured. In other words, it's missing nutrients that we don't even know yet. This is interesting because the Rockefeller Institute is doing some interesting studies on food composition. What is in food? And we generally see, 16 or 17 different, minerals and vitamins, lipids protein and identify them, and this food's this, and this food's that.

Well, in chard, there's 10, 000 ingredients. What they discovered is in kale, there's another 10, 000, but there's only a 10 percent overlap. Again, not only do we not know where we live, we actually don't even know where we're eating, in that sense, and so when you grow soil, grow plants in medium, which is just simply soil NPK then you get a denatured plant and it will still grow, and you can grow it in solutions and warehouses and have basil, and parsley, but you're missing something.

And the reason is because the origin of plants are the roots go down, they go down and out and they go down. What are they doing down there? Well, they're drawing up nutrients and moisture, of course but to do so they're also emitting the sugars we talked about before, and those sugars are feeding bacteria and those bacteria are enzymatically breaking down the rocks and the sand that are deeper down.

in the soil and producing nutrients and minerals for the plant that goes back up to the plant so this is symbiotic relationship and so when you put MBK on to fertilize plants and so forth you just put it on top it's a top dressing really it doesn't go down. So the roots of the plants go, ah, got all we need.

It's like sugar, fat, and protein. If we had those three things, we can survive for a certain amount of time, and then we get sick. And so the plants are the same, NPK. We've got what we want. The roots don't go down. And so this rich, beautiful, extraordinary symbiosis between plants and subsoil and minerals and rocks, and the soil itself, it's basically interdicted. It's cut off. And so, we don't know. We're starting to realize that nutrient density is a real thing. That there is a density potential in plants that you don't find in commercially grown varieties.

[00:34:00] LW: And how does all this relate to carbon, especially with the idea that the environment is becoming too unsustainable for us? Is that a carbon problem? Is that an, is that some other problem? 

[00:34:12] PH: Yeah, the problem with carbon is, and I'm the culprit, that we think it's a thing. Like, it's carbon. And we emit carbon, we sequester carbon. And, regenerative farming, we should do it to, put more carbon in the soil. All that is actually pretty simplistic and incorrect.

Carbon is a flow. You can't find it by itself, first of all. And, it's really the flow of life. And we say carbon is the basis of life, but then, what does that mean? When you understand it as a flow, the whole purpose of Carbon, the Book of Life, and it starts out right away talking about it, is that we're talking about flows. And you have in your one cell 1. 2 trillion carbon atoms in one cell. You have 32, 34 trillion cells in your body. That's just one cell. What is it doing in there? It's an amazing chemistry experiment called the human cell. Or many other cells, types of cells too. And so again, we have no idea what's going on there.

It's too many things happening at the same time. There's 10 trillion cells altogether in one cell. Not, excuse me atoms in one cell. So, we have to just be humble and say, well, gosh, we've just begun to understand what life is and how it works and how disease starts and how, what is healing, what is going to make us stronger, better, healthier human beings.

And one of those places is to start with soil. Because that's where it comes from. You can't have a healthy plant without healthy soil. And so, this continuity is always there. You can go eat McDonald's and french fries and coke. Sure. And you can go for quite a long time in that way. But, your body is also being, in a sense, deracinated.

It's actually being Extracted. Things are going from your body into the digestive process to help you stay alive because the food is crap, and, will you stay alive? Yeah, you got so, you got protein, you got fat, you got carbs, but you will be like America, which is the sickest industrial country in the world, which is what we are.

[00:36:33] LW: So again, like if I'm just a regular person out in the world and I hear this and I agree with you is this one of those vote with your wallet type of situations where you want to start to support people who are doing regenerative agriculture? How would you even find those people? If you don't live in a place like, Ohio or somewhere where there's lots of farmers markets, say you live in Detroit or Cleveland or Birmingham, Alabama. 

Give us an action plan if someone's listening to this and they want to do their part.

[00:37:03] PH: Yeah, it's really, all regeneration is place based because you can't regenerate some other place far away from you. And actually Detroit is one of the strongest places to find food that's being actually grown in Detroit. It's an amazing movement in Detroit because it has all this land.

From buildings that were just either destroyed, fell apart, and so it has a lot of abandoned land and citizens there are growing vegetables and food and making organic and so forth and making it available. Almost every community now has some place that if it's of a certain size where farmers come and meet once a week with customers, and you can get to know your farmers and get to know.

The food that is takes extra effort for sure. It's not like going to the supermarket, 11 PM at night, but it starts to connect you to your place, and to varieties of food. You might not have seen a known taste. You might not have had for a long time, a real tomato and crunchy lettuce, better carrots, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But There is no other way than to get out of the American food system other than to go local. There's some things you'll buy at, your supermarket for sure, but, that you can't get elsewhere or at that right time. But step by step, it's making that connection to people like you who care.

And they're acting it out and then preparing things, farming things, so forth in a way that they can sustain their self themselves and also sustain you. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:41] LW: So they have the designation on the produce. If you look and it starts with a four, that's conventionally produced produce. And if it starts with a nine, that's supposedly organic. Even at farmer's markets. Like I used to go to the Hollywood farmer's market in Los Angeles, massive farmer's market, really cool scene, great vibe.

But it turns out not all of the produce was. Organic, right? And you have to literally ask, is this, do they use spray or not? Not spray. So it could be a little bit deceiving for sometimes.

[00:39:09] PH: I've seen that too, even here where I am in it just virtually everybody at the farmer's market was organic in some mode or fashion, and now. I think just small farmers who don't do that have said this is a great income source to go there on Saturday or Sunday or whatever day the farmer's market's at.

And you really do have to ask now. There's just local farmers, who use pesticides and herbicides selling their produce. And And I'm happy for them as farmers. I really am, because small farmers get shafted in this culture, but you still have to make, you want to make a connection to somebody who's thinking the same way you are in a sense of what should I do?

And how do I want my children to grow up on this farm? Yeah. Well then stop spraying. Okay. How do I do that? Talk to somebody who's done it, that's farmers learn best from farmers. And so the number of, or the amount of organic acreage in California is increasing, and so forth.

But so it is all across this country. And and it's not just for you, the customer, it's actually for the family who is growing the food, and so that connection. connection. I know people, farmers here who I've bought from for a long time. And they're the same people. Same person, they're older, so am I.

But those are relationships and relationships are what bring us to life too. That connection and the mutuality of it, you give money, they give, This and their food, their work, their labor, their care. And that's where it all begins. That's where it all starts. It's what it's got to be if we're talking about a world that we're saving.

Well, what is worth saving? What's worth saving is humanity's best impulses, best qualities. And so go to where that exists and not just on farmers markets, by the way.

[00:41:04] LW: And you're saying the carbon will, does it, how does it relate to the carbon in our, that is our body? Does it feed it? Does it,

[00:41:12] PH: You don't even want to think about that. That's just abstract.

As I said, carbon is ubiquitous in all living things in, in numbers. That are staggering, like I I gave you the number of the carbon atoms in a single cell, right? So imagine, like I imagine everything else and so forth.

So it's not about carbon, regenerative farming is not about sequestering carbon, it's about creating life. And you create more life so there's more carbon, right? So carbon is the outcome, not the purpose. I'm going to be a regenerative farmer because I want to, save, put more carbon in the soil. No, you want to be a regenerative farmer to produce better quality food, better soil.

And by the way, what happens is that there's more carbon in the soil for sure, so it's not like I want people to think about carbon. What I want them to think about is the flow of life itself. Are you enhancing, are you increasing life for yourself, for your children, for your family, for your place?

Or are you, and if you're not, what is it that you can do and be and become? That will change that and it's not just on the individual because all change, Light starts with one person. No question about that, if you read the biography of Martin Luther King. Which I have, and I worked with him, he was nothing. He was a nobody. Happened to be very eloquent. But, he just grew up into that. He read, and this and that, and so forth, and one thing after another, and he became MLK, and changed his country. Everything that makes a difference starts with one person. And I'm not saying to be a hero or a heroine, and say, I'm gonna change the world.

No. These people didn't start out that way, they started out caring King's case, being very devout, actually. And so, that's why, to me, the book, Carving the Book of Life, is trying to create the conditions for people to realize that, that, That interconnection that awakening, to life itself, and its magnificence and its beauty and its complexity and its mystery is right there where you are.

If you go out, if you have a garden, go out with an ultraviolet flashlight at night, and go look at the moths, it's like, oh my God, it's a light show. Bioluminescence, but there's to UV, not to regular light. And so, it's, what's out there, only beyond the wall of your house, not any further than that is quite extraordinary and we are quite extraordinary, so it's not like I'm trying to say they are, it is, we're just observers now.

that is us, and so when you see the moth going, jumping around, like herky jerky, why does it fly that way? Doesn't know how to fly. Yeah. It's doing that to avoid bats, and swallows too, so the stoner can't get it right onto the moth. And so it can live, and you get this beautiful flight.

Just simple.

[00:44:07] LW: I interviewed the director of my octopus teacher. Did you see that documentary?

[00:44:13] PH: Oh, amazing. Amazing.

[00:44:14] LW: And she was talking about how. She learned how to track the main guy, Craig Foster had been tracking underwater for many years and he first got exposed to this in the Kalahari desert in Africa, South Africa working with master trackers and they talked about how tracking.

Different species was the first human language. They don't have to say a word. They just use their fingers and gestures and a good tracker can track, some hundreds, sometimes thousands of different animals and they can know exactly, what just happened or what's about to happen in a certain environment based on what they can see and observe.

And so what she got from that experience working with Craig was this idea, and this is their ultimate takeaway from the documentary, was you don't have to go out and find an octopus, go into your backyard and look at the moth, look at how the moth moves, and if you just observe it for, five or 10 minutes a day, eventually you'll start to see patterns.

And you'll start to see what's normal. And then eventually, just like one of those magic eye puzzles, you'll start to see what's abnormal

[00:45:25] PH: Right,

[00:45:25] LW: environment as well. And that's an experiment that I'm hearing you suggest as well, when it comes to this idea of presence and being in, being in nature so that you can understand these things are not just arbitrary. There's a pattern happening here and you can't be aware of it if you're not willing to be present with it.

[00:45:44] PH: We have technology now that is so light and thin you can attach it to a butterfly or moth's wing and then track that moth wherever it goes and you can even track its sound. You can listen to it. So the technologies now that exist for us to Track, by the way, the living world are extraordinary and it's happening.

It's happening. And then the sounds are being recorded and the flight patterns and and the amount of new information is just exploding in the world today about where we live. It's just a glorious time in that sense, coming at a time when. We're losing many species and ecosystems for sure. And my prayer is that the knowledge and understanding and discoveries that are emerging, like Zoe Sanders about a plant, but that wasn't her discovery.

That's the botanist saying that together collectively will start to permeate our cultures, in a way that changes how we see plants. our place and what we do and who we are and where we live and who our brothers and sisters are, and We're pretty challenged right now. We don't even see it and if somebody has a different color of skin or you know where it's like, oh, wow, they're different It's like Everybody's different.

So let's put that one away, and then let's look at what's shared, And and where the shirt is so exquisite. And I just think a lot, I know it sounds like a cop out, but I don't think there's any other way to reimagine, to restore, to regenerate. The world then to start with self first, and it's not like you want to compare yourself.

Am I doing enough? Am I, just do the best you can with what you have in a way that feeds you too. It has to feed you if you won't do it, if it doesn't feed you, don't do it out of guilt and shame, do it out of love, do it out of, a sense of enchantment, that is possible. As you mentioned talking to that director and it's just there right in front of us.

It's outside everywhere, and if you live in a high rise, go out, go for a walk. You can't do it there, but, the discoveries that are being made and that are there for each of us and for science is right now is exploding in a really good way.

[00:48:15] LW: Yeah, you mentioned Dr. King and there's this documentary that I watch every year called King in the Wilderness and it was about his final years of his life. Did you see that documentary?

[00:48:24] PH: Now, I haven't.

[00:48:25] LW: But anyway, it talks to you. You obviously are aware. I wasn't born at that time, but how he wasn't very popular. In the last several years of his life, especially after he came out against the Vietnam War and, he developed his legacy was that he had this extraordinary patience and he saw the good in other people.

And even though he's held firm to his beliefs and he saw fracturing happening within the movement. He still continued to maintain that nonviolent resistance was the way to, ultimately liberate black people from Jim Crow laws and to bring people together, ultimately. And and I think for anybody who's very passionate about something and who's been captured by an imagination of what's possible, you've said, as a civilization, we have, good 11 years left before we reach the point of no return.

How do you stay? Present. How do you stay positive? How do you stay optimistic? Knowing everything that you know about what's happening and how most people are just completely unaware. I won't even say ignoring it. They just don't know. They're just, they just, they're caught up in social media and keeping up with the Joneses and other things That are probably way higher.

The environment is probably number 92 on the list of the most important things as far as they're concerned. And yet for you, you see it as, not a nice to have, but a must have in order for us to keep doing what we're doing. So talk a little bit about. Your own personal relationship with that struggle and writing these books and having these conversations

[00:49:53] PH: yeah, I wouldn't wish my life on anyone because I spend two, three hours a day reading and latest research, latest data about this planet and us and what we do and our ignorance and the damage that we cause. The humans are causing or something, but and also,

[00:50:18] LW: making up their own facts based on what they want to believe

[00:50:21] PH: Yeah, complete distortion of of physics, the laws of science are being just like thrown out.

And so for me, I have to take that in for two reasons. One is I want to know the state of the art in terms of science and in all the areas we've discussed. But I also want to know the zeitgeist. I want to know, what is the zeitgeist of the world in different places. Of course, it's not the same everywhere, but there is an underlying one, about where we in the largest sense of the word are really with our fears and with our concerns and with what we think is knowledge, because I'm always writing to that.

I want to write to that. Time this time, not to some other time. I don't write books that are I don't want to write books that are just so full of facts. I'm really looking at stories, what are the stories that You know, startle, awaken, surprise, enchant. And they're not my stories about my life, although I did put things about my life in this book for the first time.

It was interesting. But I'd never done that before. But I want to do that in a way, but I feel like you don't want to be me. I wake up in the middle of the night and I, it hurts. It hurts. I feel. I feel the grief and the loss and, with all due respect, the absolute absurdity of our political system.

And feel helpless, just like other people do. And then wake up and get to have some tea. This is my tea from this morning. Have some tea and maybe go outside in the garden. And then think about, well, okay, now what can I do? Got it. Thank you everybody for sharing. Now what am I going to do?

Today, and so I don't think there is a, like a passage or some door you can open where it's going to be, Wine and Roses, if there's not. And I do feel like, that grief, that, fear, yes, but grief, that I think if people allow themselves to grieve at, I'm bringing children into a world that is going to be really difficult for them, okay.

By all counts. And, but that grief is really only possible from people who feel love. Grief is the expression of love. You don't love something, you can't grieve it. And love arises from the heart, and the heart is the only thing that we have control of that actually always tells the truth.

Your heart never lies. It never could be convinced by a politician. And so we all have that. And so it's really about going back to that place within ourselves. That is just extraordinary and true to life. Always and and who we are and yes, it's, it can be a daily, we can ignore it, get busy and so forth, but sooner or later, the news comes to us, that this world is in deep trouble and we've caused it and we're the cause and there isn't a climate crisis.

There's a human crisis causing the weather to change, and to stop externalizing these crisis, the poli crisis, the meta crisis, all these terms, forget all that stuff. I'm not saying they're not true. Does that help you though? I don't think so. Just be aware of it. And I think sometimes in students, I say, look at, put your arms around all the problems in, poli, meta crisis, whatever.

Get a really good understanding of it, and then just say to yourself, Got it. I understand. Now, I'm going to go to work. And that's what you have to do. But you can't carry it around like a big sack of stones on your back, because that just slows you down, and you're not fun to be around.

[00:54:20] LW: Yeah, I I agree that the heart never lies. I feel like a lot of us are so disconnected from our heart because of the way we live our lives and our disconnection with nature. And obviously, I'm a big proponent of practices like meditation, gratitude, etc. But I think also, what's just as powerful, if not more powerful is going into nature and just spending more time in nature.

Off of your devices, even for just, a few minutes a day, or just going for a walk, going walking, maybe walking around nature, right? Not even in nature, but just around nature to help recalibrate that heart because the ego is very clever and making it seem like it's your heart talking to you, but it's really focused on the outcome, whatever the outcome is.

And convincing you that you need to be, going after this goal or that goal. And the heart doesn't really do that as much. The heart's more about going after what feels aligned, what feels expansive for you as a spirit. And, and that's oftentimes not predictable. It's oftentimes a bit scary and uncomfortable, right?

Because it may require you to put yourself out there a little bit more than you would otherwise

And like how you're doing right now. And you just admit it. You wouldn't want to be me because, you find yourself on this mission or calling. Obviously, you've been talking about this stuff for a long time and different iterations.

And that's it. Tail Tail sign of someone who's captured by something that's bigger than their individuality, but it doesn't always feel great to be on that kind of mission. And it takes a lot of courage to keep waking up every day and saying, okay, I'm just going to do a little bit more, but that I can do.

It's so easy just to say, you know what? These people aren't listening anyway, screw it. I'm going to just mind my own business and, live my own life and whatnot, but it takes a lot of courage to, to do what you're doing. And

[00:56:21] PH: Yeah, well you, if you care, which you do, and I'm sure your listeners do, it doesn't give you a whole pass to happiness.

[00:56:31] LW: but there's a fulfillment that comes from that as well,

[00:56:33] PH: Yes, it is 

[00:56:35] LW: could do at the end of the day, you sleep better at night, knowing that even though it was hard, you did your part. You have some more to do tomorrow. If you wake up, you're lucky enough to wake up tomorrow and keep the movement going.

[00:56:46] PH: but then the other hand is you're lucky enough to have something meaningful to do in the tomorrow, isn't that amazing? That's a gift. That is a privilege. That is extraordinary. We're here for a very short time. So, and we can take nothing away. So, what are we going to do? Given what we know, given where we are, given where, the, our collective activity has taken us to this point, it's like, to live a life that actually has some meaning, it may not have any meaning.

Lasting meaning, in a sense, would be revered like Martin Luther King or something, it won't, it probably won't. But it will have it will take you, it will, it will take you forward, and it doesn't matter how old you get, or even if you get infirm, or this and that stuff, it takes you in the meaning.

You stay there with the meaning because what I mean, I think what you know, I Haven't calculated but I think you look at the jobs and look at what people are doing all over the world to keep this capitalist system going There's no dignity There's no meaning to it There's no purpose They do not benefit And yet they have to do it, to earn enough money to buy food and take care of themselves and family. So in a way, the world is at a threshold because what gives us meaning is each other. And what gives us meaning is acts of kindness, acts of restoration, acts of, of of, I wouldn't say charity, of giving oneself to something and that's where meaning and dignity arise from, having a purpose, and the capitalist system has made it almost impossible for most people to feel that they have a guiding purpose and meaning in life.

Yeah.

[00:58:34] LW: not only that, but we've become so indoctrinated to strive for success. And ultimately, I think what that really means is striving for comfort. We're striving for comfort going to be comfortable. And now that we have social media, which is essentially a showcase of a highlight reel in order To achieve status markers, right?

Who's the most comfortable? Then we're incentivized to go for whatever we can in order to show that we are the most. We're on the private jet, we are in the nice restaurant, we're on the fancy vacation, et cetera. And I talked, well, I listened to another podcast with this guy named Mr. Beast, who's the most successful YouTuber in the world, and he does all these really crazy challenges and competitions and, giving away money for people who bury themselves alive for a certain number of days or do all these other extreme things. And occasionally he'll do these philanthropic. Challenges where he'll help a thousand people, correct their cataracts or something to help them see or give them a prosthetic limbs to help them walk.

And he said in the interview, if you want to be disliked, try to do something good for other people. And then they'll come after you and start talking about how you're privileged. You're doing this for likes and for attention and, et cetera, et cetera. He says, when I do stuff, that's just like buying people mansions and Lamborghinis.

You don't hear any of that. All you hear is praise and adulation, but when you try to do something good for the world, you get all this criticism. And, you have to really strong within yourself to keep going. And he said, I still do it because it makes me feel better. It's a paycheck for my soul.

And ultimately, I'm not doing it for. The things that people are accusing me of doing it for and I've seen some of that in my own work and I'm sure you see a lot of that in your own work as well, the more you popularize these kinds of more altruistic, well, we see them as altruistic, but actually they're, as you say, they're necessity, you just, you're just going upstream further and further to the source Of the disconnection, the source of the disease, the source of the, dismantling of society and saying, look, guys, this is where they're throwing the people in the river.

We don't have to spend all these resources trying to pull people out of the river to use, that, that analogy of I think it was Desmond Tutu or somebody.

So is that been your experience as well?

[01:00:51] PH: Well, my experience is, I'm not unsocial. I'm not, I don't, if that stuff happens, because I don't even see it. I don't see praise either, by the way. And so I'm just not interested. What interests me is, goes back to childhood, which is, I'm just curious. So curious about where I live and how I got here. I feel like a, in the Irish myth of a changeling. You know, Where the fairies came into town and then They exchanged a fairy child for a human child, and so people ended up raising a fairy, but a fairy being, right? And then that child, as they get older, can't understand who their mother and father is and where they, the whole world seems weird, because they're not a human being.

And I feel like that, I'm a changeling, there's no question about it. My parents were terrible. I can't imagine worse parents. And I'm a parent and I have children and so, but from a very early age, I was trying to figure out who I was and where I was and who I was with and how does the world work.

Because it just didn't make sense, like, it's just like, and people, and then even in school when, bullies would beat you up, and like, well, why, not just weather, and all that, but also is about where I felt safe in my life because it wasn't safe to be inside my home or house.

I spent as much time as possible outside because that's where I felt safe. And so outside is, I didn't know the names of things. I don't know what was going on. I, it wasn't, it's not simple. I talk about that in the book, about, being so, enamored by frogs, and then one night hearing frogs on the roof and finding out the next morning it was a mockingbird, but the frogs came very early, you know, I mean, when I was Four years old, five years old, I used to put horned toads in my pocket and walk around and bring them out and tell people these were dinosaurs, and so just, but it came from being there in the creeks, in the butt, and playing out there and feeling safe. Like nothing's going to hurt me outside. It was always my feeling, even when I was a teenager, lived in the Sierras and we had forest fires and floods, I never felt threatened.

I never felt that something bad was happening, or that I was going to be hurt, or I should have fear. And that's just the way I grew up, I think people who've been very cosseted lived very protected lives, maybe with great parents, too, for that matter. But, in the city or the suburbs, then, could feel more threatened by being outside, my uncle was a herpetologist. He learned it because he escaped the Japanese in World War II, and then In the Philippines, and ate snakes, that was his food stuff. And then he taught me how to hold snakes, and rattle snakes, and not to be afraid of them, and so forth. So, again, just having those kind of influences about the outside world, were very powerful, but they still to this day, I'm still, I'm curious.

Like, how does it work? How does it all connect? How does it, are fish really talking? Yeah. Do they say the same things? No. Do they talk the same? No. They're all different, there's all 33, 000 fish and they talk differently. It's like, I'm just a kid, I'm a 4 year old when I find facts like that, you know. what are they saying? Why are they talking? And, so, I That's my joy. It's my love, and I did drawdown because nobody had done it, not because I was some expert, like, hey, we got to get on this here, nobody knew what the solutions were, and so I'm going to continue to do that and again, I feel like it's there available to everybody, the sense of curiosity, discovery and wonder and because the world is begging you to be in touch with it. 

[01:04:50] LW: Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people will excuse themselves from following that curiosity based on different circumstances that were out of their control, such as their parents, the way their parents treated them, etc. I've always held the belief that we have everything that we need in whatever environment we grew up in and you said it yourself, being outside felt safer than being inside. So that was you. You actually, your spirit or whoever organizes curated the perfect conditions for you to very organically spend a lot of time outside. And, those. To people who you've said couldn't be worse parents.

You can't imagine worse parents. They played their role to perfection of evidently to get you outside and to make you feel safe in nature. And now. You follow your curiosity and I've written, you don't ever have to look for your purpose. Just follow your curiosity and your purpose will eventually find you.

that's it to a tee. Exactly what you described. Keep allowing yourself because every kid is curious. And I would even say every adult is curious, but we get that snuffed out over, yeah. Years and years of indoctrination that the goal is to get to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.

And really, it's about the process. It's about being there with the moth. It's about being there outside and looking at the frog and wondering, is that sound coming from the frog or coming from the mockingbird or where is it coming from? Like, that's the goal in the journey. And you've had. Nearly eight decades now life experience to sort of tie it back to your childhood, and I'm sure you would agree that when you look back, there have been no wasted moments. There have been no throw away experiences. Everything is coming to play at some point.

[01:06:31] PH: Absolutely. I mean, I even got to work for Martin Luther King and, but it'd just be the fly on the wall in the room. I wasn't reporting to him directly at all, but, Jesse, a lot of other leaders, Adam Athee and so forth, and just watch them play at the March on Montgomery, and deal with what was coming at them from the police and sheriff and the violence. But just to be there, be to be the veritable fly on the wall, and so forth in those meetings, was like, talk about a teaching. Oh my god. To be at the church, cause that's, everything was around the church, that's where Command Central was for the March on Montgomery and to listen to the preachers, and the singing, and watch the people, and so forth. I'm just so grateful that they even let me in, so to speak, they didn't need me. And I needed them. I needed those people in Selma. And they taught me more than you could learn in four years at the University of California Berkeley

[01:07:28] LW: Did you ever have any run ins with Stokely Carmichael,

[01:07:31] PH: I saw him, yeah. No, I never talked to him, never met with him, but, and so forth. And yeah, he was, a big fan of, of white people helping out in the

no, No, that was snick. That was, that was snick and there was slick and snick and core and there's all these different, and I think, sense. He's Marcus Garvey, in a sense, you know, he was, so we don't need, you guys, we're going to do it ourselves. This is our liberation.

We were the ones, who got, the Atlantic passage, we are the ones who were treated like crap and it is our culture that we're going to restore, and so he's pretty effective, really powerful speaker. But no, he, no, he didn't need white people.

[01:08:16] LW: Let's talk about conscious. Let's talk about the last chapter of your book. You mentioned describing some of your personal experiences. And I'd like to tie it together, tie this idea of carbon and life and community to the concept of conscious. What did you mean by that?

[01:08:34] PH: Well, conscious is awareness to me, and it's a bad word for it. I think conscious is better, but it's also diffuse in meaning for people. Consciousness and, conscientiousness and But actually. In that chapter, there's a few things, there's some other things in there too, but some other things where it's just about those moments of, I would say, coming fully awake and aware, where you weren't thinking about what you're thinking.

transcendent in a sense of being. present to an experience with something or someone in a way that was transcendent of the garble that our minds throw at us, 30, 000 times a day. And so I entitled the last one, which is because I'm just giving some examples Of other people, myself too, in that chapter and so forth, even Barry Lopez and Robin Wall Kimmerer and others, but just to take it to a place where it had no finality, like, here's the conclusion of the book, I had the introduction, lot of books, you introduce the book, there's what I'm going to say to you, then you say to them, and then at the end of the book you say, this is what I said.

It sounds stupid, but that's what books do. They do. and I didn't want to go there. If you hadn't read the book to that point, then you hadn't. That's your problem, not mine. You missed a lot. But, the last chapter was just about, examples from myself, but others, of, like I said, seeing the world, of being in the world and and the last sentence is that, is really the tell, and so about what the whole book's about, what that whole chapter's about, the last sentence 

[01:10:25] LW: And what jumped out at me is this idea that where you are is where you're supposed to be for your, your unique contribution to this,

[01:10:33] PH: That's one thing that was in there for sure because that's presence.

[01:10:36] LW: which I love that you said that, because again, I think we have this, we could call it an excuse. I'm not, I don't have the right conditions, the right amount of money to be able to really go all in on this. You're not telling anybody they have to go all in on this. You're just saying, start where you are and start with what resonates with you.

Take what you find that's useful. Right. And see yourself as bigger than just your limbs and your family and see yourself as the ground that you're walking on. See yourself as the air that you're breathing. See yourself as the sunlight and the entire, alchemy of how things grow and how we are as a society.

[01:11:17] PH: Yeah, there's so much there for every person and it's in their mind and that inseparable connection that has been cut off and educated out of us, and then we're bombarded with, messaging and this and that and so forth. And, we can barely get into bed at night for the pummeling we've gotten, from our jobs, you know, our neighborhood or city or people, media, et cetera.

And and just like, things get buried, things get, over way down, and so, look at, I just wrote to her. And, And I said, literally sometimes I will go watch some silly movie on Netflix. And the reason is, cause I don't want to think I've been thinking, it's just like some goofy plot, romance, comedic ideally and so forth.

But I just want to escape. I just want to escape. So we all have that, you know what I meant? It's thing. I have no virtue. I'm not virtue signaling to anyone about who I am and what I do and how I live and so forth. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to say that in conscious, it's like there is that gift that's there within and without.

Because they're not different. They're inseparable. It's always there for us at all times. And especially now. Oddly enough, because of the awakening, really, of the possibility of loss, things we took for granted, took our

future. 

[01:12:52] LW: mentioned reciprocity too. So, which to me translates as the attention and the appreciation that you give to your environment, you get back in seeing those patterns, seeing those themes, expanding your creativity and your idea of what's possible within yourself, as well as whatever's happening around you.

and that could inform so much that we're just missing right

[01:13:16] PH: Yeah. Yeah, I mean.

[01:13:17] LW: of myopically focused on getting to the next place.

[01:13:21] PH: Reciprocity is a hallmark of every enduring indigenous culture. That's why they endured and why they're still here today.

Despite efforts to poison and, kill and take away their language, cut their hair, indoct into them, into Catholicism, all those kind of things and so forth.

[01:13:40] LW: them. 

[01:13:41] PH: Right. Civiliz lives. Yeah. But yeah. But I think of that, you know, I think about, the lag passage and women putting rice seeds into their hair. Like, get outta here. This sense of , they knew when I started, and eventually I was. Gonna get organic rice, and I was in Arkansas, and it was a white farmer, Karl Gerich Czech farmer.

 but his, the people who grew the rice were black. knew how to grow rice better than black people in the South because they grew it in Africa. And that, so that understanding was, they brought it with them. They planted it, they grew it first for themselves. And people said, Oh, well, we can sell this. And then they made big farms, that's just. I don't know, that's just attention to detail and the worst possible time in their life when they've been kidnapped and they're being enslaved and put at the bottom of, it's just, you can't read that stuff easily and hear what we did, we being colonists, settlers, and and yet there is this sense of life that was, carried with them yeah.

And then implanted and, black culture today is just extraordinary, you know, last night. I wanted to watch the basketball team at the Olympics, Stephen Curry and LeBron James and everybody, so forth. And it's like these beautiful human beings, almost, almost all black.

And but the repartee, the conversation, the, just the, it is so, Not white, put it that way, I want to say, and it was so much fun to watch, and to see and and I'm just like, oh yeah, right. And so the resiliency of people, like to see that today, and see where it started from, and the suffering and terrible things that happened.

and Yet this is what's emerging and I, that carries with me. You look at the world today, and it's like the whole world is enslaved by capitalists, and really, it's enslaved. We all are, and some benefit a lot and can cosset themselves and build castles and buy cars and, pretend, they're aloof from it all.

But it doesn't matter, we're all enslaved. And things can come out of enslavement. Even in the worst situation, there is human creativity, heart. belief, and so we're going into that situation. We are going there. And if we want to be wise, look to those people who have done very well over thousands of years, not just in Africa. Australia, Greenland, Chile, you know, the Salkland people and so forth. There's teachers everywhere. There's teachers everywhere. and no, they don't have an iPhone and they're not going to text you.

[01:16:37] LW: When the student is ready that's what you have to do, is make yourself into a worthy student and you'll see the teachers all around you.

[01:16:42] PH: I agree. I

agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:16:46] LW: My octopus teacher,

[01:16:48] PH: My teacher, I have a person who takes away my garbage. There's very little of it because there's so much recycling and many in a week. I just turn the can sideways with the lid off so you can see. There's nothing to get, but Miguel. And then after 28 years, this is his last pick up is on next week, okay? And then he's moving back to Mexico. And he's my teacher. We talk. I just learned so much from Miguel. And I see him on the road, we wave, we talk, he stops the truck, we talk, tell people too many people get behind us, and he's like, oh we're gonna see you later, and so forth, I just feel like the teachers are everywhere. They really are. And he's indescribably wonderful as a human being, as a human being. I've watched him long enough now to see, and, and so, yes they're there right in front of us, and they never call themselves a teacher,

[01:17:46] LW: Beautiful. Well, Paul, thank you so much again for coming on and sharing your story and your perspective. The book is called Carbon, the Book of Life. You mentioned you weren't on social media much. How would people connect with you digitally? If they have questions, if they want to invite you to come onto their podcast or to come give a talk somewhere,

[01:18:07] PH: this is the book. Where is the book? I just got one.

[01:18:10] LW: the book of life. Yep.

[01:18:12] PH: Yeah, from my publisher, that was nice of them to send one to me. And it comes out on the 18th of March. You go info at paulhawken. com. I will see it. I don't mean you'll get to me. I will see it and read it. And so I may or may not respond because, like I've got this week four people who want me to blurb their book, which, I've got so much to do, but you'll get a response and you'll be seen and, and so I'm not cutting myself off that way. It's just that my son and my wife do the social media, I don't do that I yeah. Thank you so much for what you do. I want to hear your story sometime.

[END]

Thank you for tuning into today's episode with Paul Hawken. If you'd like to follow Paul's work on environmental regeneration and climate solutions, you can find Paul on the socials @PaulHawken. That's H-A-W-K-E-N. You can visit his website at paulhawkin.com. And of course, his latest book, Carbon: The Book of Life, is available now everywhere books are sold. 

If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to check out Paul's first appearance on my show, which is episode 69, where we talked about how reconnecting with nature can help solve the biggest challenges that we face.

 If you know of someone else who's out there making the world a better place, please send me your guest suggestions at light@lightwatkins.com. And also please take a few seconds to rate and review this show. I hope to see you next week for another inspiring story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.

Until then, keep trusting your intuition. Keep following your heart. Keep taking those leaps of faith. And remember, if no one has told you lately that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you so much and have a fantastic day.