We Are Climate Designers - Climate Designers: Recent Episodes
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In this episode, Sarah interviews Project Drawdown’s Jamie Alexander and Aiyana Bodi, digging into topics like…
how designers (and anyone) can integrate their passion for climate action into their job roles wherever they currently work, and…
pushing the companies they work for towards a higher standard of corporate climate action.
Today’s episode is actually a sneak peak into an upcoming workshop we’re hosting with Jamie and Aiyana on October 20 — find all of the info at climatedesigners.org/gps.
In this episode, Sarah Harrison sits down with climate communications consultant and climate activist Cass Hebron, founder and editor of The Green Fix newsletter.
Listen in to learn more about her work as a communications consultant for environmental organizations, and why it’s so important to talk about our climate crisis with the people in your life — and how to go about doing that in a way that is effective, not awkward.
Climate Designers will be presenting a workshop facilitated by Cass Hebron on Monday, August 15, called How to Talk About the Climate Crisis Without Alienating Your Coworkers, as part of our Global Party Series. This episode will give you a little sneak peek before the main event next week.
Find full transcript, links, and more info at https://www.climatedesigners.org/podcast/gps02
In this episode, Sarah Harrison sits down with Filmmaker Sanjana Sekhar to discuss a short documentary called Expedition Reclamation, which Sanjana co-directed as part of the Brave Space Project.
Listen in to learn how the film seeks to reclaim the outdoors for underrepresented voices, and how this project relates to creative storytelling and environmental justice.
Climate Designers will be presenting a screening of the film and a panel interview with the filmmakers on July 20 for our supporting members. This episode will give you a little sneak peek before the main event goes down in a few weeks.
Links Mentioned in this Episode:
- Brave Space Project
- Brave Space Media on Instagram
- Expedition Reclamation Film Screening & Panel Event
- Farmer Rishi on Instagram
Transcript[00:00:00]
[00:00:29] Hey, climate designers, Sarah here, and today I'm so grateful to be joined by an incredible filmmaker.
[00:00:36] We're going to spend this episode discussing their film and how it relates to creative storytelling and environmental justice. The film we're discussing today is a short documentary called Expedition Reclamation. The film seeks to redefine the term "outdoorsy" and decolonize outdoor culture. It was created by a multiracial women-led radically collaborative creative team called the Brave Space Project.
[00:01:01] Championing traditionally underrepresented voices, their work seeks to amplify character-driven stories that heal our human relationships to each other and to our planet with a focus on socio-ecological justice, ancestral knowledge, regeneration and compassionate living.
[00:01:19] Climate Designers will be presenting a screening of the film and a panel interview with the filmmakers on July 20th for our supporting members. Find all of the info at climatedesigners.org/GPS.
[00:01:33] And today I'm excited to have the opportunity to give you a little sneak peek before the main event goes down in a few weeks. Please allow me to introduce you to one of the three directors of Expedition Reclamation who has been kind enough to hang out with me today. Sanjana Sekhar is an Indian American filmmaker, climate activist and outdoor wanderer. Sanjana is one of the directors for this beautiful documentary. Thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:02:00] Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. I'm so excited to get to chat with you today.
[00:02:05] Yeah. So you're one of the directors of Expedition Reclamation, and I'll just dive right into my questions so we can talk about all of this. What was your motivation for making this film and for founding the Brave Space Project?
[00:02:19] Yeah, that's a great question and I love talking about that. So I actually joined out of the three directors, I was the last one to come on board. The way that the project came to be was my two co-directors Chelsea Murphy and Erin Joy Nash. Chelsea is a outdoor activist and talks a lot about representation in the outdoors for people of color and for women and specifically for black women and black girls.
[00:02:46] And Erin is a filmmaker who focuses a lot on social justice in her work. And the two of them both live in Leavenworth, Washington and came together around this idea of why in outdoor media, we really only see the stories of white men. And those stories often focus on this idea of conquering or bagging a peak or pushing a grade, doing the hardest scariest thing out there and and they came together on this idea of what about everyone else? What about all the stories that don't look like that the stories of women and people of color who exist in the outdoors really differently.
[00:03:24] And so they wanted to see what would happen if we started telling those stories. And so they put a call out for people on Instagram, just saying, Hey, if you are a woman of color and you. Identify as outdoorsy or enjoy outdoor recreation, let us know. And 55 women reached out. I was one of them and a bunch of people wanted to share their stories.
[00:03:45] I was like, I wanna be behind the lens. I wanna help you all tell these stories. And so that's how the project came to be. And how the community around the project came to be as well. So we have 12 of those 55 who reached out are in front of the camera as characters in the film. I am behind the camera and Chelsea's both, Erin's also behind the camera.
[00:04:07] And then the rest of the women who reached out are part of a community where we get to be in these spaces together virtually or in person.
[00:04:16] Awesome. So that's basically what the Brave Space Project is.
[00:04:19] Exactly.
[00:04:21] That's amazing. Diving into what you said about outdoorsy being white men and about conquering and all of that stuff.
[00:04:28] I know one of the things that the film gets into is the inclusivity of outdoor access. And for people who maybe hold outdoor privilege and aren't aware of the barriers to outdoor access, can you describe this topic from your point of view and from the other filmmaker's point of view for people?
[00:04:48] Absolutely. Yeah, I will definitely I can definitely speak a bit to how I've experienced it and what I've seen. And I know that Chelsea and Erin also have great points on this that we'll probably get into with the panel after the screening that you guys are hosting as well. But I think that when it comes to barriers to outdoor access, there's kind of two, two things going on.
[00:05:10] There's tangible barriers, like the price of gear or knowing about trails, even having the knowledge to say, I go on this app or this website to find trail information or trails near me. That's something that not everybody knows, like not everyone knows those avenues for For information.
[00:05:30] And then I think there's also a big safety component, right? So if I am a woman in the outdoors, if I'm a woman of color in the outdoors, I'm thinking a lot about where am I, in what part of the country am I, how many people are around me? What kinds of people are around me? Do I have any safety mechanisms to protect myself and things like that, because there are real concerns around around being a woman and around being a person of color outside, both historical and present day.
[00:05:56] And then I think there's some more intangible things as well. And I think that's where this idea of belonging and reclaiming belonging comes in and the intangibles are like, if I'm outside and I'm playing a certain kind of music, that's not, a folksy or blue grassy or indie rock band. Are you gonna look at me weird?
[00:06:14] If I play my music from my diaspora, South Asian music. Are you gonna look at me weird or if I'm cooking something that smells different than what you're cooking on my campfire. Are you gonna look at me? Weird. Are you gonna ask me questions? And so I think. There are those intangible things as well.
[00:06:29] And part of reclaiming belonging is validating those things to ourselves as people of color, and also in the greater mainstream outdoor culture saying it's okay that I listen to different music or I walk at a different pace, or I cook different things and eat different things. And. It's okay.
[00:06:46] That my nails are painted. It's okay. That I like to put on a little lipstick. These are all expressions of who I am. And even though they don't go with mainstream outdoor culture, they are just as valid. So I think those are some of the some of the barriers. And I know, for example, I was talking to some friends a few weeks ago and one of them.
[00:07:04] Had done a through-hike in the us a while ago. And he was talking about whether or not he had a safety GPS tracker on him and they were, all the guys were talking about oh, I don't always use those because what's the point in always being safe, sometimes in life, like you gotta be a little unsafe to make yourself uncomfortable.
[00:07:23] And it was such an interesting conversation to me because these are good friends of mine. And I was like, this. It's really revealing. That's a very white male perspective because in my day to day life, I'm not safe. So to me, if I go outside, I wanna be as safe as possible. It's not an avenue for me to explore discomfort because I experience discomfort on a day to day basis.
[00:07:43] So how do we actually make the outdoors more comfortable for people like me and people who have not always had the privilege of feeling comfortable anywhere that they show up.
[00:07:53] Wow. Yeah. I agree with you with that last bit. I, that's not the kind of adventure I wanna have.
[00:07:59] exactly right. Like when you always, you are always assessing threats as a woman or as a woman of color, like who's gonna, is someone gonna hurt me out here?
[00:08:07] Do I have to act a certain way to blend in? Do I have to act a certain way to make sure no one notices me, things like that. So it's really trying to. Strip those away so that when you're outside, you can just be, because when we're in community with each other outside, we are just there. We're just belonging.
[00:08:22] And there's no question of safety. There's no question of are these people gonna accept me? But as soon as you put that into context with mainstream outdoor culture, which is still very white male, then suddenly all those things arise. And suddenly, you do feel like the other, even though you and your ancestors may have been doing this for forever.
[00:08:40] Yeah, that's a great point. And when you were talking about in certain places, especially in the US, if you are listening to different kind of music or you look different or you're eating different food, like there will be people who will, make a big deal out of it. And that's not anything that I would've ever thought of because of my place of privilege and ignorance.
[00:08:59] And so I'm just so grateful for you and your team for putting this story out there in the creative and joyful and amazing way that you're doing it. I think it's just beautiful.
[00:09:11] Yeah. And thank you so much for being part of our community in that journey.
[00:09:15] Absolutely. I love it. I can't wait to see the film.
[00:09:17] Climate designers is all about redefining the role that designers and creatives can play in the climate action movement. So I feel like this is about using creativity to help ideate solutions and share information. What do you think about the role that creativity and design and art can play in the broader movement?
[00:09:37] That's a great question. I've been thinking a lot about this because when it comes to pushing the needle on justice, there is a role that everybody plays and everybody's role is different.
[00:09:49] So like you said, what is the role of artists and creatives? And I think about how with anything that is storytelling related. And I think design is storytelling. Art is storytelling. All of this — film, writing, speaking, this podcast, right? It's all about connecting with people. All you wanna do is help somebody or help yourself process ideas and maybe find somebody out there that can resonate in the electricity of an idea with you.
[00:10:21] And I've been thinking a lot about something my mom shared with me recently, which is that in our culture in south Asian culture there's an idea from some of our ancient texts that all suffering comes from separation. So if you think about storytelling as being rooted in connection, then it is inherently an antithesis to suffering, right?
[00:10:43] So it is all about trying to heal that. And so when storytelling is rooted in that concept and that power of healing, then when we look at a crisis like the climate crisis, or when we think about the ways in which the climate crisis and racial justice are inherently related and there's so much in there to to acknowledge and to heal.
[00:11:06] Then storytelling becomes a really powerful tool in that journey of connecting people, community, building, reimagining the world and thinking about, a lot of people will be like I don't really see how it could be any different. And I'm like why don't you ask that question really? Like, how can it be different? Let's not ask that rhetorically.
[00:11:21] So I think that's where storytelling comes in,is in all of those spaces to fill in the community and the imagination when we're addressing a really scary crisis.
[00:11:32] Yeah, I love what you said there. Storytelling, I think a lot of designers don't think of themselves as storytellers. And once you say it, there's like the light bulb that goes over our heads and we encourage them to become intentional storytellers. And instead of telling the story that they are given by clients or employers or just culture. Think about the story that they want to tell, think about the world that they want to imagine. Like you said, and make that real. We have the tools to make that real.
[00:12:02] Yeah. It's so true. And even with client work, it's like the client is coming to you as a designer because you're a storyteller because they know that the font you choose, or the color you choose or the layout that you choose and all the other things that you're choosing are subliminal messaging, and what is subliminal messaging if not a story?
[00:12:19] Maybe it's one that you can't really identify, but that's in a way even more powerful. And so I think that if clients are coming to you as a designer, because you're a storyteller, then there's so much power there to, when you tap into that power intentionally.
[00:12:34] Absolutely. And you know what, as you say that, subliminal, it reminds me that sometimes the reaction that I get, when I talk about designers as storytellers and being intentional about it, they start to think oh, isn't that manipulative?
[00:12:50] And the truth is. We're all manipulating our culture and our culture is manipulating us. So we might as well try and do it for the better.
[00:12:59] Totally. And I also think that idea of manipulation or that it's inherently manipulation can be a colonial construct too. Because that comes from this idea that anytime humans, exercise influence on something it's inherently negative and that's not true. We know that we've seen that same idea play out when it comes to climate solutions, quote unquote, where it's like humans need to really shrink themselves, shrink their impact. I learned a lot from someone named Farmer Rishi Kamar who talks a lot about, yeah.
[00:13:29] He talks about like increasing your footprint, right? He's for example, with the Amazon humans have gardened the Amazon. Millennia. And now we look at that as the lungs of the earth, and it's not an untouched wilderness. It's something that has been influenced by humans. And you could look at that as oh, humans were manipulating different plants to select one versus the other.
[00:13:50] And that has a really negative connotation. Or you can say humans were weaving, right? We were weaving a story in the Amazon in the same way you can weave a story as a designer. And it really depends on how you look at yourself and your place in the world. Are you somebody who whatever you do anytime you have an impact, it's a bad thing, or can that impact be a really positive thing.
[00:14:10] Yeah, Marc just sent me a Farmer Rishi, Instagram carousel recently. I'm so glad you brought that up.
[00:14:17] Yeah.
[00:14:17] Where he talked about, one of the colonial time explorers looking out at what he thought was wilderness and was actually an indigenous cultivated garden.
[00:14:27] Yeah, exactly. And it's been such a huge way of erasing the wisdom that indigenous cultures around the world have always had too is by looking at that as wilderness.
[00:14:37] But that is actually indigenous science. Embodied. And so I think, yeah, Farmer Rishi, he knows this. I always joke about the fact that anytime I reference my perspective on climate action, I have to talk about that because it really just shifted how I look at everything.
[00:14:52] Yeah. Me too. He's so influential.
[00:14:54] Yeah.
[00:14:56] So good. Okay. Taking it back to designers. How might we as designers take inspiration from your work in a way that is directly actionable? We always love to talk about action. Yeah. I would look at that in maybe a two-pronged way. One thing is when it comes to storytelling as designers or as anybody, one thing this project has taught me is they always say With storytelling, find your voice.
[00:15:21] And I think that's so true, but I've learned it's so important for us to use your ears and listen. And one thing that we did with this project, because there were 55 women that came came out and said that they identify this way and they wanna be a part of this is we held a series of community calls and we just listened and just heard what the people, whose stories we were hoping to tell.
[00:15:43] Wanted to tell as their stories. Cause oftentimes we go in saying, this is what I wanna talk about. And maybe that's not actually what needs to be talked about according to the people that you are talking about. So getting to listen was a really important part of. Storytelling with this project, I think.
[00:16:00] And just looking at storytelling as a method of community building, rather than just as here's this thing that you did and you put it out and you've got an accolade or something for it, and now it's done. So that is one thing when it comes to like process, I think when it comes to the theme of the film and the idea of decolonizing, the outdoors, one thing that, again, that this has taught me, that I feel is so actionable in my own life is looking at the way that everybody.
[00:16:24] Shows up in a space as valid, right? As long as that person's not doing something that is inherently negative, there's so much power that we have as fellow outdoors people or fellow designers or fellow, whatever you identify as community wise. If you're just looking up and saying "yes, and" to the people that come in and not trying to Impose a certain way of being on anybody.
[00:16:46] I think that it sounds intangible, but it's if you think about the next time you go outside and you see someone doing something that you've never seen before, if your response is huh, weird versus if your response is oh, cool. Like that to me is action right there because that's action on your own mind.
[00:17:02] And that's the process in your own mind of shifting the narrative that you're showing up with. And if action starts with yourself, then I think that action is really sustainable.
[00:17:13] Beautiful. Thank you. Yeah like I said, we're going to have a lot more time to chat with Sanjana and Chelsea and Erin, the co-directors of Expedition Reclamation on July 20th at 4 PM Pacific time. We're going to do a film screening. I can't wait to see the film and then follow that up with a panel discussion. So you'll be able to learn from all of the women behind the film and talk more about creative storytelling in the face of the climate crisis.
[00:17:43] Talk about their process of making this film and more of this inspirational perspective on approaching the climate crisis with optimism and hope and joy and love and all of the things that you have infused into this film. and I wanna ask before we wrap up what's coming up.
[00:18:01] Are there any new projects you all are working on or organizations you wanna highlight or anything? Where can we check this stuff out?
[00:18:09] Yeah. So you can follow along with all of our work at @bravespace_media on Instagram or on bravespaceproject.org if you are looking for our website, We are definitely excited about a few upcoming projects. You'll see all of that on those channels as we start sharing.
[00:18:28] Amazing. Thank you so much for spending those time with me.
[00:18:31] Thank you so much, Sarah. I'm so happy to be here.
[00:18:35] Yay. And once again, you can find out about the film screening at climatedesigners.org/GPS, and we hope to see you there.
[00:18:43] Yes.
[00:18:43]
In this episode, Marc and Sarah discuss the latest Conference of the Parties and whether the outcomes from that meeting matched our expectations, and, real talk, what we expect to happen next. This episode was recorded on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, on the 10th day of COP26.
You can watch this episode on our YouTube channel, or join us live when we record new episodes on our Twitch channel — Follow us there to be notified when we go live.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- NYT article
- Rolling Stones article
- Greta’s speech
[00:00:29] Sarah: I'm trying out using my phone as a webcam because it's better in low light. So there might be, I dunno, a delay. How do I look? Am I in sync with my words?
[00:00:39] Marc: There's a little bit of a delay. Yeah. And you got this cool icon on your leg.
[00:00:45] Sarah: That's the app I'm using. Cause I didn't pay for it.
Anyway, we are gathered here today to record another episode of the, we are climate designers podcast, the raising hell edition or series. This is about the eighth, I think, episode in this series. So we've got quite a collection recorded. We just released the second one today on our podcast. So if you'd rather listen slash watch while we are doing these live, instead of waiting for them to come out on the podcast, you can follow us on Twitch at twitch.tv/climatedesigners.
And following us there should give you a notification when we go live and you can hop on and watch right there. If anyone is watching us live, please say hi in the chat. Let us know. It would be great to hear from you, let us know if you had any questions, be part of the show. That's the whole point.
Today, we decided that we wanted to find out what the heck is going on with cop 26, neither Marc, nor I have been following the proceedings very closely. So we decided that we're just going to get ourselves caught up, live on stream and figure out what the heck is going on and discuss it. So it's new to us if it's new to you too, great, follow along!
For those that don't know, cop 26 is conference of the parties. I believe the 26 is how many meetings they have and they meet once a year. Is that right? So they've been doing this for 26 years.
[00:02:35] Marc: Maybe we should meet and other throughout the year as well.
[00:02:41] Sarah: Pretty sure it's an annual thing.
And this is the 26th year. And just thinking about that is just mind blowing in and of itself. We'll get into this. I am sure. But in actually in the second episode, which I mentioned that I did publish today, I was listening to it today or yesterday. And I remember that I had mentioned in that second episode my hopes and dreams, like my wildest hopes and dreams for cop 26, what could possibly come out of it.
And it doesn't sound like it's going that way. They still have two more days of. Conferencing. Oh yeah. I was going to say more about what it is. It's, the conference of the parties. So it's United nations, all of the countries in the United nations. It's what came, it's what brought forth the Paris agreement.
So I believe it's all of the countries involved in the Paris agreement. And it's basically delegates negotiators who get together every year to discuss what the heck they're going to do about climate. And that's why I'm. So my mind is so boggled by thinking that it's the 26th year, but when you dive into the history of all of the conference of the parties it's a long kind of exhausting series of negotiations between the countries about forming agreements and treaties and all this stuff.
Leading up to the Paris agreement. There were agreements that were going to go into place before the Paris agreement. And then usually it was the United States actually that pulled out. And then if the United States wasn't in a bunch of other big polluting countries would then pull out and the whole thing would fall apart.
So it's really been kind of a shit show for many years. And most of that has been the United States as well.
Including Donald Trump, pulling out of the Paris agreement and then bite and putting the us back in. And it's just, it's a humongous mess. It's a big mess. But I think most of us had high hopes that this time would be different because we don't have Trump in office anymore. We have fight in who put us into the Paris agreement again and has made some pretty big claims about intentions to do something about climate.
And yeah, in the second episode I had said my biggest, most wildest far-reaching dreams would be for all of these countries to come together and make an agreement. About like a whole new economy that doesn't rely on growth because the global economy right now relies on 3% growth. We've talked about this before, which means the entire world has to produce and therefore pollute more 3% more every year, which means even if we transform our entire energy system to non-fossil fuel, renewable electricity energy, and get rid of fossil fuels completely the amount of minerals and water and just deforestation to even create that much renewable infrastructure.
We have to do all of that again in about 30 or 40 years. And then again, in 30 or 40 years after that, like that 3% growth requires growth and energy growth in mining growth in deforestation growth in like a whole lot of destructive stuff. Okay. What we really need to do is for those countries to come together and renegotiate, that everybody knows everybody money.
At this point, the 3% growth goes towards paying back those debts. When the economy is not growing, we go into a recession and debts, don't get paid and new jobs are not created and people get unemployed and it's just bad news. And that is all by design. So what we need is a different system that aims to reach a steady state.
So we can just get off of fossil fuels, meet our needs and not grow anymore, not polluted anymore. Live within the bounds that this planet is physics require of us. Anyway, that was my big hopes and dreams. So that didn't, that doesn't look like it's going to happen. So where should we start?
Mark? You've read some stuff. I've read some stuff. We're going to read some stuff online and get ourselves caught up and up to speed with what the heck is going on.
[00:07:14] Marc: Yeah. I have no idea where to start. We could just break down exactly what you just shared in the last few minutes, and that could be the whole podcast right there.
[00:07:21] Sarah: Have you checked out any bad articles or videos or anything like that?
[00:07:25] Marc: Yeah, I've been trying to get a diverse set of sources on my feed and a variety of platforms. Social, obviously there's a lot of great Instagram accounts. I follow a ton of climate newsletters. For better or worse.
I try to read some of them. I can. I know you and I earlier talked about the New York times comment forward had to an update on this latest deal that happened just earlier today. Wednesday, I guess us
[00:07:52] Sarah: time. Yeah. And we're recording this Wednesday, November 10th.
[00:07:56] Marc: Yeah. So a few hours old that piece of news came in and I'm trying to find my notes.
[00:08:02] Sarah: Yeah. Let's dive into it to guess just to educate ourselves and I don't know anyone else. Cause I like as a designer, my whole life. We're usually pretty busy with the work that we're doing. In general design is pretty demanding of your focus and attention, and you kinda have to focus and attend to the projects that you're working on.
And so it's hard to also pay attention to the things that are going on in the news. Like some of the, be more hardcore environmental activists do. So I imagine that a lot of the people who might be watching or listening to this are in the same boat as you and me and mark were like, we're interested in this stuff, but it's just like the amount of time and attention that we have to put towards it is very limited.
So it's hard to keep up.
[00:08:54] Marc: Yeah. I'm so behind on my climate stuff this last semester, last few months.
[00:09:01] Sarah: Yeah. Do you want to start with the New York times? Yeah.
[00:09:04] Marc: Yeah, no. I want to go back to this deal that was released earlier today. It's basically a draft and not a deal, a draft that urges countries to revisit and strengthen in the next year.
Their plans for cutting planet warming, greenhouse gas emissions, the draft also urges nations to quote, accelerate the phasing out of coal and to stop subsidizing oil and gas. That's huge. If that actually does happen,
[00:09:30] Sarah: that's
[00:09:30] Marc: pretty good keyword if it actually does.
[00:09:34] Sarah: So where are you reading this
[00:09:35] Marc: from a New York times article that we mentioned earlier and it just refreshed, just I lost my
[00:09:41] Sarah: place.
I love it. When that happens. So what I have on my screen from the New York times is I guess I'll just share my screen here so that we can show some visuals while we're talking.
Okay. We headline says what happened at cop 26 on Wednesday, China and USA say they'll enhance climate ambition. And just the wording of that, like who comes up with these things "enhance." And I love that it's in quotes. What does that mean?
[00:10:10] Marc: Do you remember? One of the first video means years ago the enhance video.
That's what
it feels like, every time. I see that word, I think about going back to that main video of all the different clips and movies and TV shows of let's enhance that.
[00:10:24] Sarah: Can we enhance that? And it zooms in on this really blurry pixelated piece of camera footage, and then you just I don't know, click a button or something in the artificial intelligence, makes it to super cool, clear through their movie magic,
[00:10:38] Marc: it's like a nod to that, let's enhance the climate ambition, but that's how
[00:10:43] Sarah: I read it.
It's like a joke, right? Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Enhanced climate ambition. And then the second word there, that's a joke is ambition. Is it just me or I read ambition as not action, like aims, like wishes
[00:11:00] Marc: goals.
[00:11:01] Sarah: Okay. Anyway the countries vow to do more, to cut greenhouse gases in a, an agreement that commits Beijing to addressing its methane emissions. Here's what you need to know. China and the U S say, they'll do more to cut emissions this decade, the working draft calls for a faster end to coal and tells countries to stop subsidizing oil and gas.
That's the part that I do,
[00:11:24] Marc: Yeah. That's, like I said, if it, that actually goes through, that'll be huge.
[00:11:28] Sarah: And then there's something about sticking points. I don't really know what that means. Six big automakers and dozens of countries agree to phase out gas card sales. So that's actually pretty huge too.
I clicked on one of those and it said some of them, I think I do have this open some of the car makers were saying, they're going to phase out gas car sales as early as 2025 or 2030. So that's really soon. Which means you won't be able to buy a gas car, at least from that car maker. And then it said something like the US was not involved.
So any US car makers did not I don't know, like pulled out of that deal
[00:12:04] Marc: or something and. Transportation secretary mayor, Pete, his response was more or less. We're going to focus on our own problems
[00:12:12] Sarah: here at home.
[00:12:13] Marc: That fuck dude, it's such a political. Yeah. It's such a political line. It's
[00:12:18] Sarah: like this one wants to focus on saving lives rather than saving the planet.
What do you think we're doing
[00:12:24] Marc: exactly?
[00:12:26] Sarah: Where do you think that these lives
[00:12:27] Marc: live? And again, our climate crisis, the changing climate knows no borders.
[00:12:34] Sarah: I think that these people do not understand what it is that we're actually dealing
[00:12:39] Marc: with. I think they understand. I think that there's they have interests in other places.
They have people, behind the scenes, urging them, pushing them towards certain, goals or ambitions or policy.
[00:12:53] Sarah: Those things are true. And if you put something in terms of focus on saving lives, rather than saving the planet as if they are mutually exclusive. Sure. Yeah. I don't think you understand the situation.
[00:13:08] Marc: Yeah. Again, that's a, we can talk about that next time we jump on.
[00:13:12] Sarah: Yeah. I am just like making funny faces. I don't even know if my camera's up to speed yet. I'm just like looking at that, like.
[00:13:19] Marc: yeah. So I think the two big things that you and I pulled out of that bulleted list, that summary Yeah. So the draft thing about phasing out coal and to stop subsidizing or like that, I think that's a huge push now again, whether or not that actually happens who goes first who's going to lead that part of the draft that is still yet to be determined.
[00:13:41] Sarah: We both see the challenge of climate change as an essential and a severe one as two major powers in the world, China and the United States. We need to take our due responsibility and work together and work with others in the spirit of cooperation to address climate change. I like that too. Because I remember it, not that long ago, during the Trump administration, particularly there was a lot of delay ism or denialism of not doing any climate action.
If China's not going to do it, or vice versa. And so now it's like China and the United States are coming both coming forward together and saying, it's our responsibility to do this, blah, blah, blah, which is a completely different tone, note that they've been singing than before. So that's, I think that's a good, that's a good thing, right?
Like it's
[00:14:32] Marc: progress. Yeah. You can't do much without China.
[00:14:35] Sarah: Yeah. And to be fair, China has done a lot in the last, I don't know, even like 10 years as far as cutting back on coal, I believe. Yeah. And a lot of that is because the pollution, the air pollution, the air quality in some of the big cities where a lot of production is happening is, visibly and you can feel, you can smell it, you can see it, you can feel it.
So they have that felt experience and motivation to cut back on all that air pollution.
[00:15:07] Marc: So some other things that this article pulled out that happened today. Yesterday on Tuesday, speaking of yesterday the UN researchers released a report, same article Sarah. So I'm just still sticking with us. They released a report that found that under country's current pledges to reduce emissions, the earth is on track to warm by 2.5 degrees Celsius, 4.5 Fahrenheit.
So if we just stick with what we're doing now, because every country thinks they're doing the best, we hear this all the time. Like we're doing all, we can, all the other people that are the naysayers, they're like we just can't switch over to renewables tomorrow. Like we need to, the status quo.
If every country just sticks to the status quo, we are in big trouble. So it coming from the UN it wasn't new news, but it was like them saying, Hey, y'all seriously real talk. So I thought that was really interesting that report. It might have all this, but it's also one of those no shit.
[00:16:06] Sarah: Yeah. The,
I guess what I'm asking in my head about is the tangible actions that come from these things. So I'm looking at things like the document will be used as a template to strike a deal. Okay. Still a lack of firm deadlines and enforcement mechanisms. Is it all just empty words? It's really frustrating.
[00:16:30] Marc: Yeah. And it's two weeks, right? The last day is November 12th. You can do a lot in two weeks, I'm sorry, but you could do a lot in two weeks. And if by day 10, right now they have frameworks, they have a template, they have whatever it is that you just shared out. Like really, and I know this is big heady, complicated stuff, but maybe the, maybe cops should be 30 days into a whole month or just lock everyone in a, not let them out,
[00:17:01] Sarah: yeah. The original Bretton woods, the agreement where the countries and it wasn't all the countries, it was just like basically the UK and the United States and maybe a couple of other European countries where they decided that they were going to focus on an economy that grows 3% to repay each other for their debts from recovering, from world war II, basically.
That was all hammered out in 10.
[00:17:25] Marc: So if it took 10 days to create a system that more or less has destroyed the planet or is destroying the planet, we can spend 10 days cleaning up at least 10 days,
[00:17:39] Sarah: yeah,
[00:17:40] Marc: I want to pause you right there. I'm seeing your screen. I have this pulled up myself. Tensions have flared over what sorts of financial aid richer countries should give poorer ones to deal with the rising damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, and storms.
And while there is broad agreement that most nations aren't cutting their greenhouse gas emissions quickly, there's far less consensus about how to get deeper reductions. It's that the first sentence there really stood out for me. And I was talking to Rachel about this not to get too hippy dippy for those who don't know, I live in San Francisco.
Sometimes peace, love and happiness comes out in me and I'm all about it, but so cute, zooming out. I really do feel like as much as we're talking about cutting emissions, renewable energy, all that, climate stuff at the same time, I really do believe that we need to have a conversation around just being more kind and loving to one another, because all of this is going to take massive collaboration.
There's going to be a lot of sacrifice. We have to really understand how humans work. And so with that, we need to really work on ourselves and our relationships with one another. So when I read that tensions flared over was it's like, all these countries have representative from every country, the rich ones, and the poor ones are in a room.
And I can only imagine kind of their body language and just, if we had some fun with this, vision, you have the poor countries, trying to beg them, please give us, some help, please, do your part in. And the more richer countries are just like, nah, bro, we're good.
Like how fucked up is that? If you see someone on the street that is in need of help, in a dire situation and their life depends on it, you're going to help them. And so I feel like I'm not trying to do a broad stroke of that. We don't care for one another and we don't share love with people and all that hippy-dippy stuff.
I'm just wondering, how do we bring that into these types of conversations with politicians, with corporations? At the end of the day, they're all humans too, right?
[00:19:37] Sarah: It's actually less hippy-dippy than all of that. Like the example that you said, if you see somebody on the street who's suffering and you're going to want to help them in that scenario.
I think implicit is that person is suffering. And that suffering is unrelated to you in any way. Like you don't know that person, you have no relationship with that person. They're a stranger. There, there are scenarios completely separate from yours, but just human to human peace, love happiness.
You want to reach out and help them because you're human, they're human. And you share that we have a common struggle and all that stuff. That's the peace, love and happiness angle. But the truth of the matter is in this situation, that person that you see on the street, who's suffering is your like employee.
And you have profited off of their hard work and misery and suffering for 50 years or something. And now they're at a point where they need a little bit of I don't know, they need a loan. They're coming to you for a loan to. Expand their whatever facilities or production capabilities or whatever it is to modernize their production because they're sitting there, with bare feet in the mud making, whatever it is that you, their employer has, mandated that they make.
So there's actually between these countries the richer countries and the poor ones. There is a relationship there. They're not in their own little bubbles and they act as if, oh, you're struggling. That's on you, bro. I'm good. I'm gonna keep holding onto the money that I've made because I did it better than you did.
And that's just the way the cookie crumbles. But no, the truth of the matter is. The countries that are poor, have been providing resources, minerals, a lot of these raw materials that have then been manufactured into goods and sold for a profit by the richer countries. Like this whole planet is connected and the economy is global.
And so they're not operating in a bubble. They're not poor because they just didn't manage to do their thing. The richer countries are richer because they got a head start on industrializing their economies, and then they Put a system together in like Bretton woods and further world bank stuff where the countries that were ahead of the industrialization game made the rules and they made the rules such that everything benefited them and not the poorer countries that still need to catch up.
And so it's seeing one of your employees who you've been profiting off of on the street struggling and asking you for an advance on their payday loan or whatever. And you're saying, no, that's on you, bro. But thanks for all the hard work.
So I don't think it's as hippy-dippy as you you make it, it's actually pretty
[00:22:56] Marc: nasty. I like that. Diving deeper into their relationship. It's that last part of that first sentence that really stood out it's the fact that they're going to be the ones being affected by the things that they're not for one didn't create and second that they are not prepared for.
And for me, that is just, again, I just go back to, we also need to have the same conversations around yeah. How do we work with one another. How do we put ourselves in situations that we can empathize more and we can start to develop Yeah, more connections with people that don't look like us so that we understand where they're coming from.
And we perhaps might be able to change how we view them and the rest of the world. And maybe if we get more people to snap out of this individualistic me, my tribe kind of thing. The faster we can really, address this stuff because those people could bring their specific professional skills to the conversation.
Like maybe some of the delay zone that's happening is because those people just don't know how to connect to the stuff on a more personal level. And then once they do, then perhaps they can join the team. Does that make sense? Like maybe we have to start personal first before we expect them to share their skills and talents.
And in this in this fight, Yeah,
[00:24:18] Sarah: I think there's also a bit of the Malthusian element in all
[00:24:23] Marc: of this
[00:24:24] Sarah: and all this. This is the part that we put in our becoming a climate designer course. And when, basically when I see an environmentalist or a piece of climate communication saying poorer communities are going to have to deal with harsher effects from climate change, when they had much less like responsibility for creating the problem in the first case and the environmentalist or the piece of climate communication saying this means, wow, isn't that fair?
In the spirit of fairness or. Our shared humanity and just like ethics and what's good and justice, we shouldn't allow that to happen. But when you look at it from a Malthusian theory, point of view, Malthus basically said, if you help the poor, you're just going to get more poor. And it's a moral failing.
He was a Christian, Reverend, this was in the 1890s or whatever. And good old Christianity teaches us that. I dunno, somehow this, wasn't originally Christianity, but somehow it got twisted into something like this, where if you're poor it's because you've sinned and this is your moral punishment for your failings as a Christian or whatever which is, it's just awful. But basically what that means is if you empathize with somebody with a Malthusian point of view and you listened to that statement of the poor will feel the effects of climate change more than the rich, it sounds like more judgment being rained down upon you by God for your sins.
And the the judgment of the rich is that they get to avoid some of those effects of climate change and everything is the way that it should be. And we don't need to change a thing. It is the exact opposite. Then how the environmentalist's or the climate communicators want people to take it. And so they hear that I think it's the same thing that happened during COVID.
Everybody was like, oh my God, let's, deal with COVID until statistics started coming out that lower income communities and people of color were dying from COVID at higher rates than white people and affluent communities. And it was like the next week we saw Karen out on the street protesting against lockdown in America and people going to church and not masking and saying, I am protected by Jesus's blood or whatever.
Like they literally thought they were immune because of. Religion or something because they were white. I just you have to try to empathize with this point of view, even though it's madness and realize that the communication that you're putting out there about oh, this is unjust. This is unfair is actually backfiring against certain people or in the minds of certain people.
[00:27:40] Marc: And I think it also shows otherism. Yeah, in it's full form.
[00:27:46] Sarah: That is absolutely other ism. And you know what? I still have some more research to do, but I saw something today that apparently the whole concept of race was invented by the Portuguese in the 14 hundreds to justify slavery. So like this stuff goes way back,
[00:28:03] Marc: re we've talked about this.
I don't want to get into it because it's a different topic, but there's a great documentary that I really need to rewatch. I saw this a few months ago and next time around, I'm going to sit and take notes. Exterminate all the brutes it's on HBO. I've told you to sign me, Sarah, just to get like a two week trial and just watch that.
And we can watch other things too, but highly recommend everyone who's watching and listening to. If you have HBO max, or if you don't ,sign up for the free trial, highly recommend it. It's a, it's an amazing four-part documentary. Where Raoul Peck an amazing documentary filmmaker decades experience his latest documentary before this was, I'm not your Negro, which rave reviews.
He basically goes on a quest to to go and seek out the root, the roots of racism on a global, at a global scale. I really do wish you all were able to yeah. See it and bring your thoughts and ideas to these these Twitch sessions. We'd love to hear them. I think we might be having some technical difficulties. Sarah, are you there?
[00:29:10] Sarah: I'm here. Can you hear me? Can you see me? Oh,
[00:29:14] Marc: okay. Your video is super slow. So I didn't know if you were trying to talk over me anyway. Yeah. So what were we talking about? Yeah the Portuguese comment that you made, Sarah, it's mentioned in that documentary and I think you're right.
So it was basically made up to yeah. Create the idea that we are superior towards another, group of people that don't look like us.
[00:29:37] Sarah: . One thing that I read that really struck me. I know that we're on a tangent right now, but bear with us because I think it's interesting. It was, talking about Columbus and he was an idiot, but he was what contracted by Spain, the king and queen of Spain to go and do his little thing.
And his little voyage. And he landed in, I think The Bahamas and basically claimed that for Spain. So The Bahamas were then claimed as a Spanish colony and then he grabbed a bunch of indigenous people that he encountered, brought them back to the king and queen of Spain as a gift, as potential slaves, basically.
And the queen of Spain clutched, her pearls or whatever, and said, these are Spanish citizens. This is disgusting. So since they had claimed The Bahamas as a colony of Spain, they no longer saw the people from that place as others. And so therefore could not be enslaved. It's just arbitrary, I don't know if the king and queen of Spain sign a deal with the king and queen of France or whatever.
And now The Bahamas are not a colony of Spain. And so then they could be enslaved. I dunno, it's just, it just feels very arbitrary to me and ridiculous. Like people are, people just shut up
[00:30:56] Marc: and very not to put this lightly. I know there's tons of history and unfortunately millions of people have died because of this idea, but it's also very made up.
Yeah, exactly. And this goes to show that everything in life has been invented at some point in time in some form or another. And so this idea was invented, but even Hey, we should write up a draft an agreement and we both should sign it saying that these people should be, it's so if they just have the thought to make it up and do that, then we can have other things that we can make up and counter that to to invite.
Yeah. I just, I go back to this often, everything in life is invented and if more and more people saw that and realize that I feel like it'll spark so many new thoughts and ideas and questions and visions of the future, because once people realize that everything that is around them, that laptop, the iPhone the idea of a job everything in life it's invented.
If that's the case, then let's start imagining what's possible. Let's invent new things that, as I mentioned, just counter the old stuff. Yeah. I don't know, again, living in San Francisco, man,
[00:32:09] Sarah: No, it's real. And I think it was Antoinette Carroll, who said everything that you see around you has been designed and that means that it can be redesigned.
Same idea. Yeah. I want to share another thing if I may, did you have something on
[00:32:23] Marc: that note though? No, I have a new topic that go ahead.
[00:32:27] Sarah: I also came across this article in rolling stone. And it starts out. It's mostly about Obama's speech. People were talking a little bit about Obama's speech and it's pretty hard hitting and pretty real talk.
So kudos to Jeff Goodell, whoever you are. I like what you did here. I see what you did here. And I like it. So if you go through this article, he's talking about president Obama arrived at the climate conference in Glasgow, like a spirit from another time he wore a black suit gray shirt, tie, as a crowd of star struck delegates, parted, like holy water around him.
They all remembered the happy days with the Paris climate agreement in 2015, when he was the President and Donald Trump was just an orange haired has been reality TV star (he's orange skinned, by the way, yellow haired anyway). And there was for a brief moment, hope that humankind would take dramatic action on the crisis that was threatening the future of civilization.
Seeing Obama walking up to the podium to give his speech was reminder of a better time, one delegate emailed me. So right here, there's he's setting up the dichotomy that I think. I don't know. I don't know if you're aware of, but I've been noticing where people who are like vote blue all the way and just like 100% Democrats.
Yes. Love Obama, right? And of course Republicans hate him. But. People who are even further left than that, which confuses centrists and Republicans, because they think that the Democrat party line is the left, but environmental activists and the most of them were pretty excited about Obama when he was very first elected.
And then he had the really difficult job of having to recover from the recession that he inherited and Chose Obamacare as his thing instead of climate. And, that was his legacy basically. He did take some good actions on climate, but he just didn't do what environmentalist were hoping for.
And he's a really good speaker. He does really good talk. But for most of us, the actions just weren't there and we became very disillusioned on Obama and really like I've even seen some activists go to the point of when Obama gets involved. It's the whole thing is ruined because he does such a good job of putting a shiny bow on things with his talk and his words that people stop being impassioned about action, because they think that it's been taken care of because he's just that good at speaking, but not actually doing things.
So anyway talks about the speech but the heart of his remarks were targeted at young climate activists. He urged them not to give up on politics. You don't have to like it, but you can't ignore it. He told them it was important to reach out to people who are skeptical about the urgency of the climate crisis. It will not be enough to simply mobilize the converted.
It will not be enough to preach to the choir. He acknowledged the generational divide between himself and young activists.
You were right to be frustrated folks in my generation have not done enough to deal with potential cataclysmic problem that you now stand to inherit. That's an understatement. I want you to stay angry. I want you to stay frustrated, blah, blah, blah. Gird yourself for a marathon, not a sprint.
[00:35:39] Marc: Okay. A lot of what you were highlighting, some of his quotes is very much pointing the finger at the crowd is telling them to do this or like this and this. And when in reality, what really needs to happen is that he turns around and walks into these big corporate conference rooms and actually makes the people that are doing the work, destroying the planet making them change their ways.
It's, that's a great example of someone who like what you said in, Obama. Sure. He sucked a lot less than a lot of other presidents, but he still had his at his shit. And it's just another example of politicians those. In and around and from DC, that just, it's all lip service, they deflect, they have the shiny object in their hand over there, so we can all look at it while on the other side of them, behind them.
The work is still being done.
[00:36:34] Sarah: Yeah. So I really liked this part. We're now in the post speech era of the climate crisis, where words don't matter to the people who matter.
You don't want to words anymore. I actually want you to do shit.
[00:36:48] Marc: Did you see Greta Thunberg'sspeech?
[00:36:52] Sarah: No, but he does go into that here as well. Do you have a link to it? Is it on video somewhere? We can show it.
So then he quotes some, activists about what they thought of his speech. I thought president Obama's speech was out of date, to be honest. This was the speech Obama should have given back at cop 15 in Copenhagen in 2009, a dozen years later. So back to what we were saying at the beginning, like seriously at 26 years of this shit it's too late to be vague about why we're failing.
Yeah.
[00:37:22] Marc: Yeah. I will say I'm interacting with a lot of millennials or no, not millennials. What are they? Zoomers zoom people. Gen Z gen Z. Hold on
[00:37:33] Sarah: yeah. So this activist executive director of the sunrise movement, listening to Obama speech, I was reminded of all the broken promises made by leaders in America concerning the climate crisis.
Young and marginalized communities have been betrayed again and again by leaders failing to meet the moment that we're in a climate crisis that is destroying our homes, communities, and futures. This is real like the material conditions that are happening are real. We don't need words to say that we're working on it.
We don't need anyone to tell us this is a marathon, not a sprint. We need real material conditions to change.
[00:38:09] Marc: Yeah. And I was just going to say, the. Young kids, they can smell bullshit a mile away. Yeah. They can call out people. They have no problem calling out people, they demand transparency.
They demand authenticity. They demand people be real and authentic. And if you're not man, they can, they're like a shark when they, get a scent of blood a mile away,
[00:38:32] Sarah: cause we've all been bullshitted for 20 years. I love this one just before Obama took the stage Dominca Lasota, a 19 year old Polish activists tweeted a picture of activists holding up signs that said, show us the money. Lasota wrote nice words about the climate crisis without action mean nothing. $100 billion for climate finance is still missing. Show us the money, not empty climate concern, so that persons 19, and they are very aware of what actually needs to be done.
They're making real legitimate demands. Yeah, it's it's a much different story than the save the planet activists of the seventies. You know what I mean?
[00:39:16] Marc: Very different. I do have that clip of Gretta pulled up. If you want to pause real quick and do that. Let's do it. I won't play the whole thing, but you'll get the gist
[00:39:26] Sarah: politically. Correct. Green act, bunny hugging or blah, blah, blah. Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah-blah-blah net zero by 2050, blah, blah, blah.
net zero by 2050, blah, blah, blah, net zero. Blah-blah-blah climate neutral. Blah-blah-blah
this is all we hear from our leaders. Words. That sound great, but so far has led to no action, our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words. Of course, we need constructive dialogue, but they've now had 30 years of blah-blah-blah and where has that led us? But of course we can still turn this around.
It is entirely possible. It will take drastic annual emission cuts, unlike anything the world has ever seen. And as we don't have the technological solutions that alone can deliver anything close to that means we will have to change. We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible or not.
We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is. Hope is not passive hope is not a blah-blah-blah hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action and hope always comes from the people.
Wasn't that kind of Obama's message. When he first ran for election was, hope and that coming from the people. Yeah. Yeah. What happened
[00:40:55] Marc: to that guy? The person in the rolling stone article said, it sounded as if Obama should've made the speech back in 2009, so
one, one last thing I'll bring up before we close out another little tidbit from cop 26. I don't know if you've seen this Sarah more than 500 lobbyists from over 100 fossil fuel companies are in Glasgow.
Okay, your video's delayed. So I can't see if that was a sarcastic face or not. There are more obvious, there are more fossil fuel lobbyists at cup 26. Then there are delegates from Puerto Rico, Myanmar Haiti and the Philippines, Mozambique, The Bahamas, Bangladesh and Pakistan combined, and more than double the official indigenous consultancy that consultancy.
See that isn't that crazy? That is wild. And last time we chatted, last time we did this, we talked about trust.
[00:41:49] Sarah: Like it definitely shows who these negotiations are for. Yeah. Yeah.
A little bit more quoting from the rolling stone article. That's I think related to what you're talking about. To activists in the streets what's happening in the conference center is theater. Many are asking what it'll take for people in power to wake up Gretta set an SBH, but let's be clear.
They're already awake. They know exactly what they're doing. They know exactly what priceless values they're sacrificing to maintain business. As usual timber pointed out that the fossil fuel industry delegation at the Glasgow conference was bigger than the delegation of any single nation she tweeted.
I don't know about you, but I sure am not comfortable with having some of the world's biggest villains influencing and dictating the fate of the world. And then it says other activists were even more cutting inside that conference of polluters. The climate criminals are hiding behind barbed wire and fences and lines of police.
We're not going to accept their suicide pact. So I find that really, yeah, cutting and really telling, it's supposed to be the conference of the parties where like everybody negotiates, who's a party to this thing, but it's now being known among the activists as the conference of polluters. It's a conference of climate criminals.
[00:43:21] Marc: Conference of the puppets.
[00:43:23] Sarah: Yeah. Their suicide pact. And most of them, the generational divide and the age divide is really obvious where most of the people who are inside cop 26 are in their sixties.
And most of the people outside marching are, like average age, 20 years old. Yeah.
[00:43:43] Marc: Yeah. They're going down in a blaze of glory, they're not going to be around to see the devastation. So they're getting. Yeah they're just gonna coast until their time is up and, just say, fuck it.
Sorry, fam. Yeah.
[00:43:57] Sarah: So I'm no longer hanging my hopes on anything really beneficial coming from cop 26.
[00:44:03] Marc: And I was talking to someone the other day about cop and, I've always said this and I've always had this train of thought even before the climate space, but I've never held my breath for anything coming out of DC or any other state Capitol, or I don't put all my eggs in that one basket.
And I think there's at least in the U S a very long track record. If you do the research that shows you why you should think the same, because. Politicians are in bed with corporations. And when it's in spaces like this, where they're literally affecting the atmosphere of our planet to while extracting resources, to put more profit into their bank accounts, and they know that they're doing that, it's just crazy.
And then they have the puppets who are elected, who should be working for us, but not really. They have those puppets pulling the levers and writing the policy and doing their little squiggly stuff around all these slimy other politicians to get their take on or to get theirs, they're just working for them.
And so I think we really need to, this goes back to my earlier comment. I think we really need to focus on, communities and more at the local level, not to say that our local, that bumper sticker back in the day, think global act local. Yup. Yeah. Like I remember when I saw that as a kid, as a teenager, I was like, huh, that's interesting.
And I never really got it until much later in life. And I was like I understood the power of that mindset of really having a worldview, doing what you can for the people around you, because if everyone thought that way and did that, then we can really talk about massive positive change.
And so I really do feel like we need to work on us as individuals. We need to start understanding one another and seeing people for who they really are outside of their skin, color, political beliefs, whatever. Like we really got to get on that level because that's how change actually happens. Like we talk about drafts and agreements and deals and policies, whatever, but people.
Human beings on the, or on the other end of that. And yeah, I don't know. I just, we need to focus on the world around us and if we can get more people to buy into that and show them their place in that future world, I think we really do have a shot. Of course we'd still need government too.
So that's the thing, like as much as I want to put energy and focus on us to, to inspire people to, March up the streets and bang their fists on the doors of these large corporations that are polluting the planet. We also still at the same time do in fact need governments to contribute in some way they don't have to do all of it.
And I don't think they should, but I really do think that we can't do this without them. So how do we do both? How do we do that while at the same, also at the same time really. Change the makeup of those people that would be attending COP that should actually be attending COP.
[00:47:04] Sarah: Yeah, I think, the way that I would answer that and it's a non-answer, but it's something along the lines of building.
Building not building back better, but like building better infrastructure wherever we are. And what I mean by that is maybe looking at our local community and I don't know, encouraging community gardening or growing food for each other, finding ways to distribute money or food or needs to your neighbors.
You know what I mean? Finding some way to start building some kind of infrastructure in your local community, because relying on the government to take care of us is just not where it's at anymore. And whether that's volunteering for food, not bombs or, even meals on wheels. I don't know something, but like looking out for each other and.
Building co-ops and building communities and designing systems where we have power as a group, as a community, instead of just staying with the status quo, like to me, it's just whatever you create, wherever you go to work, whatever you work for, make sure that it's building. Something that shifts the power from me and my family to us and our community.
[00:48:19] Marc: And I'm really glad that you've used that, the food example in that, I think, on a more practical level, look at just what we're experiencing with our global supply chain, look at what's going to happen when wildfires destroyed parts of the interstate or flooding or whatever.
We're really whether we like it or not, we really are going to need to do that just because, we can't rely on these, semi-trucks deliver our food, halfway or all the way across the country. Like we, we need to be at that local level because it's, shit's gonna hit the fan and we really do need to rely on each other.
If we were. To survive.
[00:48:54] Sarah: Yep. I think it's time to start moving into, we live in a failed state mode. And if you start, preparing for that now and getting ahead, When the shit hits the fan, as you say we have the things in place. We know where to go in case of emergency. If we need food or we need firewood to keep ourselves warm, or if we need to get out an emergency message or, think about all the stuff that the preppers, my God, I can't believe I'm saying this.
Like it has been saying for years and start doing some of that stuff, start stockpiling and stop relying on the government to take care of us because they just can't respond quickly enough to the crises that are going to start happening. And when they do start happening, the government will start enacting change, but it's just going to be too slow and it's not going to save us.
It's going to be reactionary instead of proactive. And so I think we all need to get proactive and start taking care of each other and start building things that work. And then when you build things that work, sometimes the government looks at that and says, oh, let's just use that and start putting money towards it.
[00:50:06] Marc: Sometimes that works. Yeah. It's it's learning how to be resilient while we learn to adapt, like it's cause we're going to have to adapt, even if everything at COP happens tomorrow, all the positive things that everyone hopes for, we're still decades out.
We're not going to see the effects of all the awesomeness for a good while. Yeah.
[00:50:28] Sarah: It's all so much just talk and urges. And I don't know vows, there's nothing like real in it.
[00:50:35] Marc: So adapting to what's to come, I think is going to be key, which is also not really part of this conversation. Yes, there's climate adaptation, books and organizations, videos, and articles and all that stuff.
I definitely read them, but it's looked down upon because of people don't want to admit that they're going to be walking into this mess. I think it's, of course we all want to hope for solving it, but again, that's going to take time. So there's that like limbo state, right?
There's that awkward period that we no doubt will enter and for, and we don't know how long and sooner we're in it. Yes.
[00:51:09] Sarah: Yes. Like I was like I said, at the beginning, I was hinting that declaration on what comes out of cop 26. Cause this is the moment where we need like really big action and I don't see that happen.
[00:51:20] Marc: Yeah. Everyone was saying that this is the time and this is the cop. If it's not this just not going
[00:51:25] Sarah: to happen, like it's going to be lagging behind, is what I don't think, I don't think literally nothing is going to happen, but it's not going to happen fast enough. So we need to look out for each other now.
Yeah. So I'm, mentally shifting into more of that adaptation mode, more of that build the better world on our own from the grassroots up mode, instead of demanding, like I think we still need to demand from the government, what we want from them. And we need to be very clear about what that is.
I'm still very annoyed at activists who just demand climate action. I would rather, they start putting together real action plans and say, do this and this. Or we demand this, and get very specific But yeah, I think we really need to focus on taking care of each other and taking care of our basic needs.
And trying to build systems mutual aid ways that we can make sure that the most, especially the most marginalized people, who are thought of as disposable by the people in power, we need to start looking out for them. So if you happen to be white, like me or white presenting, like Marc notice that is a place of privilege and use that privilege to stand up for and protect people who are marginalized and thought of as disposable by our politicians and who think that, their lives don't matter.
Like it's awful. And if they're not going to do it, somebody has to we have to take care of each other.
[00:53:00] Marc: Yeah, I really want to build a campfire right now and get some people together and sing kumbaya.
[00:53:07] Sarah: Ah, I think that's a note to leave it on. I don't know if it's a good note, but it's a note
[00:53:12] Marc: singing kumbaya. The younger listeners even know
[00:53:16] Sarah: what that mean because gen Z have kumbaya. Do they have a gen Z version of kumbaya? What's that? I
[00:53:21] Marc: don't even know. I love to know that
[00:53:23] Sarah: gen Z listeners, please let us know what does kumbaya mean to you.
If anything,
[00:53:28] Marc: I'll have to ask my students, what
is
[00:53:31] Sarah: the gen Z equivalent of kumbaya?
[00:53:34] Marc: Love it. Maybe that's our homework. Maybe we look it up
[00:53:38] Sarah: so much to learn so much. All right. Thanks for hanging out, Marc. This has been real as always. All right. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye.
The media won’t speak truth to power. They can’t. The power in question is what keeps the media going.
Join us as we break this down and discuss why the mass media coverage of climate change is not the whole truth, what’s missing, and why they keep it from us.
We also talk about the result on society of this situation — climate anxiety, nihilism, and ultimately more consumerism, which is good for capitalism and the media machine.
And we don’t just leave you with that mess, we talk about what to do instead!
Episode Transcript: [00:00:29] What is up? So today we are gathered here to discuss. A very important topic. Marc, why don't you start by telling me what. Told me about, was it your aunt or somebody who was telling you or asking you for some advice? Yeah, a friend of mine emailed me and I'll just share this one particular story.
[00:00:52] There was a few people who messaged me right after Monday. Whenever the IVC report was released, the latest one. And this one particular person emailed me and shared with me that she has a son early twenties and throughout the whole week, he was super depressed, super sad, angry, pissed off just all the fields based on this report.
[00:01:17] And she just didn't know how to respond. She. She acknowledged the truth. And then she knew obviously the work that we do. And so she emailed me asking for suggestions and ways that she can maybe direct her son's emotions, feelings, anger, pissed off ness towards something positive. So I gave her a handful of suggestions and links and things like.
[00:01:38] And and then, yeah I think later that week, you and I talked about it and just sharing this particular story, and one thing led to another, and we started to have some really interesting conversations about where all this is coming from outside of the the science stuff outside of the IVC. Yeah.
[00:01:55] And marc, you say where all this is coming from? Yeah. The climate anxiety. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it's been interesting the last couple of days, since that report coming out, reading all these articles about people responding to not even just articles, but even people's personal updates on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter about just, oh shit, this is really bad.
[00:02:19] And so I think collectively we're seeing more and more people waking up and realizing what's going on. Yeah. And then what we wanted to talk about, like a couple of things. So there's a couple of things happening at the same time. One is the IPC report that came out on Monday. And then all of the media coverage that followed and.
[00:02:40] All of, people's general reaction to that is it's climate anxiety. It's a feeling of helplessness. It's a sort of mass depression. So we want to talk about that. We want to address that and the hard feelings and things it and what can be done about it. But it also led to a conversation that you and I started having about the media and what.
[00:03:01] Can expect from the media and what we can not expect from the media. So before we get into that, I wanted to share a little sound clip. I don't know if this is legal, can legally share a another podcast. It's like a little clip from another thing. The last four decades has been hotter than the one before.
[00:03:20] And they've all been hotter than any time in the last several. I think it's a hundred thousand years, maybe 125,000 years. It's almost a guarantee that the next decade, this decade we're in the twenties, it was going to be hotter than the one before for this one. And the one after that will be hotter. And that causes all sorts of other problems.
[00:03:41] It's the largest, most menacing source of rising sea levels. It means more of the world's ice is going to melt. We're warming at two to three times, the pace of the rest of the globe, those glaciers that are shrinking all around the world are going to shrink even more. In some cases they're going to disappear.
[00:03:58] There was nothing to stop it to accelerating retreat. The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are going to keep melting within a few decades. We might have an ice free Arctic, which is a really horrifying phone and both that and glacier. Melt. And just the rise of temperatures is going to keep the sea levels rising more and more, maybe five inches, six inches, seven inches, whatever, five to 10 feet before the end of the century.
[00:04:26] That's enough. Geez. I need a beer after listening to that. And this is what's. Inundating the entire world, in addition to the news about the war in Afghanistan, and I don't know, like a billion, other things that are just terrible, like the point is the news media loves to share when things are going horribly.
[00:04:46] You know what I mean? Like that to the media is good news in a weird twisted way, because it means that they get more views. And they have something to report and they have something to pontificate about and they have all these experts that they can then go and interview you and ask them about their opinion and like their take from it.
[00:05:09] And it just goes on and on. It's free content for the news and they love this. And so of course they are just digging in hard to the impacts of climate change of the climate crisis. And marc actually forwarded me this amazing article that helped us focus our thoughts on this whole issue.
[00:05:33] And it was a business insider or. , and it's the headline is the media frames, the climate crisis as hopeless, but that's because they're hiding the solutions. And so for me, that was the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, the climate news coverage is digging in hard on the doom and gloom.
[00:05:55] This is hopeless. This is awful. It's a code red for humanity, and they're not sharing anything that people can do about it. And so of course the impact of that is everybody feels helpless. Everybody feels like we're doomed. What they're saying is. This isn't going to get any better for at least 30 years, which is wrong by the way.
[00:06:21] It's false. We can do things about this, but they're just, yeah, they're just really the news media does not have what's the word? And incentive. Think about the long-term impacts of what they're doing. They also don't have an incentive on highlighting solutions, right? And there, and you made a comment a few minutes ago about the reason, like we only hear the best stuff and that's by design, they tap into emotional fears and all this other stuff, that, that drives us to want to learn more in this kind of what's the word I'm looking for this this really weird way of it's on the tip of my tongue.
[00:07:05] Like w we, we keep doing what we know is wrong, but we can't help it, and so in this case, we keep watching the news. We can't help it because that's just how we get our information. And if we are solely relying on certain media outlets that we quote unquote trust, we feel that whatever it is that they report is the only accurate thing out there.
[00:07:28] And that's a problem. That's a huge problem. It is a huge problem. One thing that I did in my immediate circle, anyway, as soon as I knew that the IPC report was going to come out I knew that what it was going to contain obviously it's not going to contain any surprises ah, climate change assault.
[00:07:48] We would know about that already. So I knew that it was coming out and It was going to probably be more specific. It was going to be more dire because, since the 2018 report I haven't really seen any major policy changes. So obviously we're not shortening the gap between action and the time limit that the 2018 IVCC report said that we had to act.
[00:08:15] So obviously. You can deduce that it's going to be sounding more red alarm bells and telling us that we have even less time to act. And so knowing that, and also knowing that the timing of the report coming out is before the next conference of the parties cop 26, is it which is supposed to happen in a month or two?
[00:08:39] September? Yeah. Yeah. September. So they're putting that this report out so that the negotiators who negotiate on international climate policy and plan international next steps have the latest information. And so of course, it's going to be code red and sounding the alarm bells because they want to influence the policymakers to do what's right.
[00:09:06] And act in line with the science and take it seriously. So in my personal sphere, which is basically like I told my mom, and then I posted on the climate designers network. I was like, Hey, so Monday, this report is going to come out. It's not going to tell you anything you don't already know, like you have been hearing from me for ever.
[00:09:30] And in the community's cases, all of us that the climate situation. And emergency and action. It needs to be taken. And all the stuff that the report is basically going to be trying to tell people. So you already know this. You don't need to pay attention to the news. I know that the news is going to be dire.
[00:09:49] I know that it's going to be grim. It's not for you. It's Jenner. It's to generate. The political the social will, that then leads to the political will to take bold and drastic action because that's what needs to be done. And in a way, I was looking forward to all of that coming out and then hopefully sitting back and waiting to see what the policymakers do with that.
[00:10:14] But, my warning was intuitively knowing that people would pick up on the headlines and feel pretty helpless and feel pretty anxious, in climate anxiety. And if you're not in the space, as much as we are. Then that makes sense, right? If you have your normal life raising a family, nine to five, nine to nine, overwork kind of thing, you're only focusing on what's in your immediate surroundings.
[00:10:46] And so the last thing you might want to take on as a hobby is learning and understanding the climate space. And so it makes sense that the majority of people are feeling this way. After this report came out because there's still, unfortunately a small percentage of people that are in this space. And even those that are in this climate space, they still subscribe to what it is that you're talking about.
[00:11:12] Sarah. And maybe this is the difference between, Us and them in terms of designers. Just one thing I like to say, and maybe this is a segue into the next topic is that as designers, I feel like we're optimistic by nature in a sense. Where we look at a challenge and we try to find ways to make it better, to find solutions to focus on what's working and amplify what isn't working.
[00:11:40] And so I think there's also your day-to-day worldview kind of thing in terms of how you would approach. What the report listed out, definitely. Yeah, there's a lot of people that don't have. That perspective. And I, I heard from marc what your aunt said. And then I saw this tweet just randomly from somebody who said, you have a climate misinformation problem and they're tweeting to tick tock.
[00:12:07] And she said videos saying, it's too late to do anything about climate change are going viral, which is leading to climate inaction and a lot of mental health problems. And so, I want to talk about two things I want to talk about why the media reports things the way they do. And why it's not it's misinformation. It's propaganda. It's not the full story. Maybe it would be a good time to show that video that you just showed me. Do you want to share that?
[00:12:37] He had another thing we're unsure if we can share, but what do they say better to ask for forgiveness than permission from five years ago? Lots of experience. Yeah, here we go. So the video starts about 60 seconds. And so we'll just show you that part.
[00:12:56] We need them to tell us so we can fall in line.
[00:13:00] Democracy is staged with the help of media that work as propaganda machine media operate through five filters. The first has to do with ownership. Mass media firms are big corporations. Often they're part of even bigger conglomerates they're end game. And so it's in their interests to push for whatever guarantees that profit critical journalists and take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation.
[00:13:33] the second filter exposes the real role of advertising media costs a lot more than consumers will ever pay. So who fills the gap advertisers and what are the advertisers paying for audiences? And so it isn't so much that the media are selling you a product they're out. They're also selling advertisers, a product.
[00:13:59] You,
[00:13:59] how does the establishment manage the media? That's the third filter. Journalism can not be a check on power because the very system encourages complicity.
[00:14:11] Corporations big institutions know how to play the media game. They know how to influence the news narrative. They feed media scoops, official accounts interviews with the experts they make themselves crucial. Process of journalism. So those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other.
[00:14:35] If you want to challenge power, you'll be pushed to the margins. Your name won't be down. You won't be getting in. You lost your access. You've lost the story. When the media journalists whistleblowers. Stray away from the consensus they get flat. That's the fourth filter when the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you'll see the flat machine and action, discrediting sources, trashing stories, and diverting the conversation
[00:15:09] to manufacture consent. You need an enemy of target. That common enemy is the fifth. Communism terrorists immigrants, common enemy, a boogeyman to fear helps corral public opinion, five filters, one big media theory. Consent is being manufactured all around you all the time.
[00:15:38] So that is a video. I think I saw the video years ago and it was so it's basically the content of the video is taken from Noam Chomsky's book, manufacturing consent. And if you If you watch democracy now, the narrator, the voiceover is a needed men. But yeah, so he breaks down those five filters in that book much more than what the video does, but knowing that we were going to be chatting about this topic made me realize oh yeah, I forgot about this video.
[00:16:05] I should totally share it. Yeah. Yeah. It's so good. Like the visuals, the eyeballs and the mouths and the people running the machine, how their eyeballs or mouse are so shut, like so amazing. Yeah. So anyway, the point is even if a journalist were to write an article that fully expressed the climate problem complete with the solution.
[00:16:30] Because the solutions challenged that power structure that the media helps support the media will never completely report on those solutions. And it really took all of those puzzle pieces for me to be able to formulate that sentence in my head and share it here. So thank you. Thank you for sharing all of that.
[00:16:51] That's amazing. Yeah, and I think it's just an example of why we really do need to question our news outlets. We can't just rely on, the, a quote from a particular news channel fair and balanced, there's always going to be not always what we tend to go to mass media. There are people behind the scenes.
[00:17:14] And so we really needed to question their intention. We need to question their motives. We need to question their sources. And so it makes total sense that a lot of these media outlets are focusing. Part of the larger story, focusing on certain aspects of the story and not highlighting what we really do need to start talking about.
[00:17:37] And again, as I mentioned, the fact that we're in the space more often, others, we're in this time climate space. Yeah. We see this stuff and, at some, knowing that we're going to be talking about this topic, It made me realize, we take it for granted. At least I take it for granted.
[00:17:53] Cause for me, it's just, oh, I'm getting my news from places that I trust. And I still, question that at times. But again, for those who just have other things going on in their lives and the last thing that they want to do is do more research or more. Put more thought into where they're getting their news.
[00:18:09] They just, turn on the TV or open up a browser and just rely on what's in front of them. What's put in front of them. And I want to veer off a little bit here and say the moral of this message is not just to question the media because we have a huge portion of society right now.
[00:18:27] That really gets off on questioning the media to the point where they believe that the mass media is straight up lying about science, about facts, about things that happen. And that's not what we're saying. The mass media machine, I think, is still held to the idea that the reporting is fact-based.
[00:18:50] They're not just straight up making up stories and I'm pretty sure I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure that if something were revealed to be false, they would issue a correction right away. Usually you see that happen. Because if they report things that are false, they would lose the trust of people and they would go out of business.
[00:19:15] So it's not, yeah, it's not that they're not reporting the truth. It's just that they're not reporting the part that challenges their business model and their power structures. There's like a two-sided coin to this. And I think that I'll give credit where it's due. I don't think that people who are anti-science are smarter.
[00:19:36] Per se, but I will give them credit for having a sort of intuition perhaps where they can tell that something is not being reported fully or that there's something not correct in the advertising. In the media, in what the media is telling them The unfortunate conclusion of that intuition is that they think the whole thing is false and they throw the whole baby out with the bath water.
[00:20:03] And they don't believe anything that they see on the news. And therefore they believe that COVID is a hoax and climate change is a hoax and they only listened to the talk, show people, the pundits and opinion editorialists on certain channels that they trust. Because those people speak to the intuition part of them, they speak to the feelings part of them and the emotions and say the things that feel right.
[00:20:29] The gut of people who, you know, to their credit could tell that the mass media isn't telling the whole truth. Yeah, I wanted to interject that. And just to say that, like a question the media, but not the way that anti-vaxxers question. Sure, exactly. Yeah. So I think, let's come back to, the media that has.
[00:20:50] Publicizing or showcasing what the report has in it. And that your clip that you played earlier, is this everything's on fire. Everything's gonna melt. Everything's fucked. So yes, they are. That is true. That is, that's been mean that is happening. And again, no one knows exactly.
[00:21:07] We have all these models and AI and computers and things, and, they're getting better and better each and every year. But I think what we're trying to say, let's not have that be the focus of this story would be the main thing that we all talk about because it doesn't go anywhere outside of that.
[00:21:23] What do you do when, it's like when you're at a party and someone, changes the topic and talks about a really depressing event that just happened. And my cat just died. It was like, oh, sorry, man. If you just kill the vibe, how many in our audience in our committee, Yeah, I am one of these people who add a party or something.
[00:21:40] Someone brings up anything remotely related to climate, and then I'm like climate change and it's just a buzzkill it's totally stops. The conversation has to be really like, be out that's happening. Cool.
[00:21:54] And then everyone walks away from you. Yeah. And so all of that, I think that's a whole other topic is why people don't want to talk about climate change at all. And so there was a huge push for awhile to get the media, to even cover climate change and to talk about it as the emergency that it is.
[00:22:12] And now I think that has shifted a little bit And it's about the framing, in that video that we just watched, there was the common enemy w what'd they call it filter. So putting everything through a common enemy filter, but I think the common enemy filter that they're using in this case is climate change itself is the enemy.
[00:22:31] So what they need to be doing and that what they won't do because of question's power is that they need to cover climate app. Genocide, generational murder intentional and knowingly committing murder. And when you frame it that way, in that frame is a subject and a object and the subject is the person or persons or institutions committing the murder.
[00:22:57] And they won't ever do that because put it, putting it that way, puts accountability on the institutions, responsible for the crisis. Which are the institutions that the media supports and is funded by and makes them possible. So instead they leave that part out of the equation, which leaves people feeling helpless.
[00:23:18] And this part is a little bit conspiracy theory, nihilists scared, depressed, anxious. People tend to be easy to manipulate and get them to buy more stupid shit. Distraction. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm going to go out and buy a bottle of wine to distract me from how depressed I feel I'm going to go out and buy the new red dead redemption or whatever video game people are blind to distract me from, and then I need a bigger TV because I'm so immersed in this escapism.
[00:23:50] And a better sound system. So it's really good for business. It's really good for capitalism. It's really good for the advertisers, for everybody to be anxious and scared and depressed, but that's not the way that it needs to be. So what I would like to shift into now, if that's okay, is What we need to be doing as maybe independent climate communicators, or maybe what we might want to talk about at parties instead of just climate change.
[00:24:17] And there was one article that I found, oh, here it is. This was published on Nova raw media.com. I don't know what that is, but I like it. And the headline the title, it's an opinion piece. And the title is the IPC. Can't predict how we fight that.
[00:24:37] And it's basically about they're like, okay, so on Monday, the IBCC delivered it's six comprehensive assessment report, blah, blah, blah. The report made for grim. It warranted that breakdown was now happening rapidly and yada yada, yada, and then it goes into all of that. And what I like about it is towards the end of the article, or like maybe the last half of the article starts to say, what is, and isn't possible.
[00:25:07] Isn't just a matter of science. It is principally a matter of politics. If we want it to stop burning fossil fuels, we could, if we wanted to build a just green and sustainable world, we could, the problem of course, is that our governments don't want to, they refuse to take the action required because they are wedded to an economic model.
[00:25:31] That depends on growth. That incentivizes destructive practices for short-term profit and that values the private accumulation of wealth over the continued existence of life on this planet. I add to that there also at the same time in bed with large media corporations. Yes. So they have no intention of doing that anytime soon, enacting extreme progressive climate policy because it affects their bottom line.
[00:26:02] So the point is. We don't have to accept that the next 30 years will be more of the same heat waves and flooding and fire. We don't have to except the death and displacement of millions of people, which is predicted by the IBCC report, if we do nothing. So I think that there's this. Media led peeling conclusion that this is baked in and done.
[00:26:39] But look at over the last a hundred years, how much change has happened when people stand up and demand? Change, like in my lifetime, I've seen the Berlin wall being torn down and entire governments being re imagined and configured. Nobody believes that's possible as something as gargantuan as the United States and Western Europe and the whole world bank outlay crap that's going on.
[00:27:09] But. , the physics of the reality of the situation that we're in demand to change. And we have science and truth on our side to demand change the growth imperative for never an in-growth to payback that debts that governments have been hanging out with for decades. It doesn't work anymore. And at some point, somebody is going to be like, all right.
[00:27:40] All right. I'm just going to walk away from this debt and we're going to start over. Like they did at the end of world war two, all the allies, the leaders, the negotiators, whatever got together. And they designed the new monetary system and 22 days, and then released it to the public. Not even in beta, didn't have a QA team come on.
[00:28:01] There were I'm guaranteeing you, there were no women in the room. Colonies the countries that we're in developing times we're not invited to the table. Probably very few people of color in the room. This was designed by rich white dudes who were drunk on power and had let's just be graceful and say they had biases.
[00:28:26] They had no idea about evolution theory, ecological science, they had very limited knowledge about how the world works and they had some half-baked theories that they called economy. Science, which is not a science, it's a fake science and learning. But they had theories about what would bring wellbeing and peace that, which I guess were euphemisms for profit and through trial and error over the last, however many decades, math is hard.
[00:29:02] The shit don't work, guys. W I w it doesn't work, but they're unwilling to admit it because they're in too deep, they have so much sunk costs and all of these infrastructures and systems that are already in place. And I think they're at a point now where it's fuck it. Let's just squeeze everything as much as possible, every ounce as possible.
[00:29:22] Yeah, most of them are so old that they don't have to face the consequences. Exactly. So that's why it is on us and people younger than us even to stand up to them and be like, no, that's not okay. This is not okay. And they are using the media to make us complacent and anxious and nihilistic and everything else because.
[00:29:46] That drains our energy from being able to say, oh wait, actually, Hey, there's 20 million of us and six of you. So this is not okay. Yeah. They know it works. So they just keep at it and unwilling to hide. Or put the focus on solutions, unwilling to highlight the heroes that are already doing the work.
[00:30:09] It's not in their interest because for one, it proves that this can be addressed climate, can be addressed, but also it affects their bottom line as well. Again, like I'm so in it, because this is what we do. And, talk to me about kelp farming, regenerative, agriculture, carbon removal, all these amazing solutions.
[00:30:28] And those three out of countless solutions. Obviously project drawdown was, I think one of the first major, if I can use this word breakthroughs in this topic, Sarah, that really started solutions. Exactly. And nobody else would tell us that there were solutions get off of fossil fuels. And obviously is what needs to happen, but that's not on any of like you or me.
[00:30:56] Yeah. We can't do that. The decision makers there. Let me just go turn the switch off in the other room. So then we all got convinced that like we had to do. Turn our air conditioning to 80 degrees to save energy. And that was going to solve it. Yeah. You bring up a good point here. I think the other ingredient to all this too, is that.
[00:31:15] These organizations, these corporations, they're putting the onus on us by design. And so they're deflecting all of their responsibility towards us to change our ways. And as we all know, our individual actions as good as they are, as, as much as we should all do them is collectively not going to move into.
[00:31:35] At all. And so Sarah, I want to bring this up real quick. You were talking about, after world war two and all these people started to create this new this new economic structure. I keep going back to, I know we've mentioned this last time, the book that we're both reading and unless you finished but I'm still reading less as more.
[00:31:52] And I still keep going back to this. I think about this probably every other day. There's a blurb in there pretty early on. About how it's crazy, how we can't. We can't even bring up the idea of changing our economic system. That just is oh my God, what are you some crazy lunatic? Like we can be so creative in terms of coming up with new technologies.
[00:32:11] How many iPhones are there now? 15, 20 phones. We keep evolving and innovating all these other aspects of life, but yet we can't evolve or come up with a brand new economic system. I know. And it's for 25 or 30 years. The propaganda machine has been nailing. This point home that came out of the cold war, but socialism is bad.
[00:32:36] Communism is bad. And basically Thai. Anyone who believes in climate change to, oh, you must be a socialist. They have this concept of the slippery slope to socialism and it's so scary. It's the fifth filter, the common enemy. Yeah. So they've been using that common enemy to discredit anybody who.
[00:33:01] Understands climate science, because they know that the solution is anti-capitalist and they somehow think that any anticapitalist ideology is automatically what has come before. And I think with less is more what Jason Hickle is saying and what you and I are saying. Let's invent something new, given all of the knowledge that we have based on earth science on ecological economics.
[00:33:30] Now we have a branch of ecological economics. We know a lot more about human behavior. We know that. Market practices do work and don't work. And what the results of implementing them are. We know more about what people want. We know more about what. The world better. We know so much more than Karl Marx did, or any of the scientists of the 18 hundreds or whatever, like the Smith who invented capitalism yeah.
[00:34:01] To go back to as well. So we have the knowledge, we can take what's good from any of those theories and philosophies and ideas. And discard the parts that don't work. So we don't have to just slide back into something that people are for whatever reason, scared of, we can basically create a new economy the same way they did at the end of world war to create new rules.
[00:34:28] That take into account. The reality that we've learned in the last several decades, we've learned so much about how the earth works. That is just not even baked into any of the policies surrounding our economy. And it's about time. Like several countries have been saying this since the 2008 financial crisis.
[00:34:50] France came out and said, Hey, you guys, we need to have a new Bretton woods conference and redefine the economy. And it was just reading about it today. Someone else came out and said we need to do this. It really is just, we need to demand that a new economy be designed to be based on the wellbeing of people within the.
[00:35:13] Now more well-known earth system of where we live, the reality of where we live. This is not very hard. It's complex, but we have all the information. We have so much more information than we have before. And so I think like it's just this weird insecurity, fear thing of ah, I don't want to I'm scared to try something new.
[00:35:37] And as designers, when a system isn't working, like that's good news for us, that means that all of our skills come into play and we get to take all of these . Disparate pieces of information and start connecting them together and making something coherent out of it. And that's the kind of work that designers love to do.
[00:36:01] So that's why climate designers exists. I think this is a time for people who have the skills and tools to. Visualize complex information and help people communicate connections between different fields. Designers don't have to be an expert in every single scientific field, but we know how to help all of those separate experts get connected in a cohesive plan.
[00:36:32] That's what we do. Thank you for saying that. Cause I feel like I'm always the one saying that,
[00:36:36] and I re-read the end of a Buckminster fuller is operating system for spaceship earth, the 1969. I think he was published that somewhere in the mid to late sixties. And that's the last thing he says is like the planners and the architects of the world need to get together. And take reality into consideration and put forth a new plan because the people running the boat right now, do not know what they're doing, not have the skills to make these plans.
[00:37:10] And this has been very evident since the end of world war two and everything else that's happened. Like it has not lifted wellbeing except for a few people. Has not brought world peace case in point Afghanistan. And now we have ecological crisis to deal with it. Like they didn't even consider or know about back then.
[00:37:31] So it's time for a redesign. There's so many things I wanted to say in the last couple of minutes, but you can find it, just like interrupt me. No, I, okay. I'll say one thing I don't know if you've seen the Netflix series explained, there are like 20 minute videos on a variety of topics.
[00:37:47] And one of the latest ones that actually came out about a week or two ago is I think the title of it is the end of fossil fuels or something like that explained. And watching it. Two things. I don't think it went. Deep enough. I don't think it would. And this goes back to what we are talking about, there are people behind Netflix making those editorial decisions to determine how much is in this 20 minute piece and how much isn't. And that's the thing of what is not in that piece. And they did bring up the solutions towards the end. Of course. Like 92nd clip, compared to the 20 minutes that they have talking about the problem.
[00:38:26] The other thing I wanted to bring up is, and this goes to some of the comments you just made. They had out of all people, they had a handful of people that they were interviewing out of all people. They had the former CEO of shell, I believe uh, Lord brown. I forgot his first name, Lord something. Like a title is his I think he was given it by the queen something.
[00:38:45] Yeah. I don't know. I'm not at work, but um, here he is talking about, his latest thoughts and opinions currently, and I'm thinking, oh, why the fuck were you not thinking that when you're in the position of power, you knew what was going on. We all know. Bye now. And the, decades ago, these fossil fuel companies knew what they were doing.
[00:39:06] It's no secret. So him being in a leadership position decades, even after that, he knew what was going on. And so it just really bugs me. And you saw this a lot with Trump appointees in the white house, they would quit and discussed or get fired and then write a book telling about all the secrets, say the shit now, say it in the moment.
[00:39:23] You can save so many lives and, you know, put food on the table. I understand. Cause I also don't. Anyway, what I'm saying is there's when you say that there's smart people to come up with new economic systems and all these new things, I get it, but there's also people in positions of power that know that they need to do this, but they don't, they're unwilling to, so we can put together an, a team of people to come up with.
[00:39:48] All these new solutions at a systemic level. But I think what we also need to focus on is at the same time, how do we get those people that are early already in those positions of power, out of. Position, so that those solutions that we do come up with can get implemented, can actually be implemented at scale.
[00:40:09] And you see a lot of communal living places, you see a lot of small towns try and all these, like testing out all these different things, which is great. But we really need to amp that up. We really need to bring that to a scale. That's going to move the needle. And I feel like if we, I love the local level approach, don't get me wrong and we need to do that because as Sarah mentioned, we need to test things out, we're going to fucked up.
[00:40:34] We're going to fail. We're going to probably make some mistakes. But if we do it at a smaller level, it has less of an impact to those fuck-ups. And then eventually we learn from those mistakes. And then, yeah, let's start to. Branch that out into other areas, other industries. But until we, until those people in power stay in power, it's going to be a lot harder fight to do that.
[00:40:53] Yup. One of the really cool things that it says in this article about the ITCC can't predict how we fight back is they say we need to amplify the voices of the global. And act accordingly and they have a link here. It says at cop 26, climate vulnerable countries are demanding the delivery of climate finance, greater ambition from major emitters and a focus on loss and damage.
[00:41:20] And if you click on that link, it goes to the climate vulnerable forum, which is something I didn't know existed, but it's it looks like it's a group. The climate vulnerable nations and their statement is very much questioning power. And it says it's not yet too late. Yeah. So there. They definitely have a lot more to say about what needs to be done and a lot more urgency to do that. And really, I don't think it's up to us to come up with new solutions so much as another thing that designers do is we amplify the voices of people, by creating campaigns, brands, visuals, videos posters, all of the above and.
[00:42:05] Just going and looking at what some of these other countries who are more urgently facing the climate crisis, because they are just positioned a little bit differently on the globe and just amplify what they have to say, amplify what they are requesting. And I guess, the idea is if. The negotiators of these larger richer companies see that even their constituents are demanding these things, then it will help shift the power balance to these more vulnerable countries.
[00:42:40] Yeah. I'm wondering, I'm going to, I'm going to make a really. I don't know if I even believe what I'm about to say, but the design community, there's a lot of designers and first world countries I don't know the statistics I'll look it up after this. At least in the U S AIG is the one of the largest design associations.
[00:42:58] And they do a lot of these like census type things and there's probably data in there. So what I'm getting at is I'm wondering. How do we support those communicators as designers and those in third world countries? How do we support them to do this kind of work? So that we can avoid this idea of design imperialism of designers going in and with good intentions, of course.
[00:43:23] Maybe not the best processes or how are ways to approach a community that they don't belong to. How do we actually support those that are actually in those communities? Yeah. Again, be humble and realize that you have biases too, even though you have good intentions, you don't necessarily know what you don't know.
[00:43:43] And just a shameless plug. Another reason I bring this up is because I'm getting more and more excited about some of the new chapters that we're going to be onboarding in the next couple of weeks. We have a handful that some of them will call out specifically. We already have one in Latin America based in Brazil.
[00:44:00] We have another one coming on board. Our second one in India, we have another one in Oh, it's on the tip of my tongue. I can't remember. Yeah. I don't think that's a, I wouldn't think that would be, but you have a few. Yeah. So I get excited when I see our community. Reach into these other countries.
[00:44:21] And so like, how can we all learn from one another? How can we all learn and share resources so that we can uplift all of the designers within our community, every creative person within, so that they can do the work at that local level? Yeah. Or knows the media isn't going to help us find out. What's what they're saying, what they're demanding.
[00:44:40] So we needed to talk to each other and we need to talk about climate. So that's why we're doing this. That's why we're doing these res somehow sessions. We'll be doing this every two weeks on Wednesday evenings on our Twitch channel, which.tv/climate designers. Give us a follow. So you'll be notified when we come in come on.
[00:44:58] And another shameless plug. If you like what we're saying, we have a class that we're coming out with in two months fish one month, less than two months. It starts in early October and you can go to Tara dot du T E R a dot D O and click on start learning and go to becoming a climate designers.
[00:45:21] So we are working in partnership with tear it up too. And they provide a lot of climate and professional career related courses. They approached us to teach a class about climate design. And so that is going live starting in October. And we're taking applications now until October 2nd. We'd love to have you.
[00:45:42] Yeah. And we'll dive into some of these topics and others throughout and even between now, and then we'll be discussing some content from that course as well. So you can get a little tease or a taste of what it is that we're going to be covering. Indeed. Yeah. All right. Thanks marc for hanging out. You're welcome.
[00:46:00] Anytime.
Join Marc & Sarah in the first of a series inspired by War on Women’s song lyrics “Let’s raise some wonderful, beautiful hell.”
The episodes in this series will be about an hour long, with informal, candid conversation between Marc & Sarah about topics we don’t hear many people talking about but that really need to be said.
This first episode discusses what so many people in the environmental movement get wrong — calling for us to “save the planet.”
Tune in to find out why we think this narrative is actually harmful, and what we need to be thinking about instead.
You can watch the full video conversation above, or listen to the edited version below (or in your favorite podcast player.)
[00:00:00] Marc: Anyway, thanks for hanging out. Y'all this is our first ever Twitch stream. Did I get that phrase right? Sarah? Is this a Twitch?
[00:00:09] Sarah: Yes, we are streaming on Twitch, which makes it a Twitch stream.
[00:00:14] Marc: Sarah. Sarah's had to educate me on Twitch over the last couple of weeks. We're learning. He's a great teacher. So yeah, it's a little awkward. Because I can only see you. I don't know who's in the audience. So maybe that's a good thing. I won't get stagefright as I still do. When I know there's dozens of hungry predators wanting to attack me, primal instincts.
[00:00:35] Sarah: Yeah. Still out there ready to attack
[00:00:38] Marc: you. Yeah. And they're in the audience. Yeah. And now you
[00:00:42] Sarah: can't see them, so you're not afraid of them. Is that what it is? Exactly.
[00:00:45] Marc: That's why fear of speaking in public is our biggest fear because it, it triggers that primal instinct. Yeah. Public speaking,
[00:00:55] Sarah: man.
I believe you, but I don't know that it's because we think that there's predators. I think that because we are social animals and the fear of making a fool of ourselves and being socially exiled. Is a greater threat then, or I guess the same threat, because once you're socially exiled, you are, then I'm at risk of being eaten by predators.
[00:01:17] Marc: Yeah it's not that it's not that it's that we are. No. So let me explain. So it's a bit more we are out in the open, we're not in our habitat, we're exposed, right? So we're out of our comfort zone and then we just see, another thing, whether it looks like us or not, and then we're like, whoa, I don't know where to hide.
I'm not in my safe space. And when you're on stage at mimics, that mimics, that environment mimics those feelings. Yeah, look it up. We can talk about this later. People who don't want to know about this stuff. They came here for climate, not fear of speaking in public
[00:01:52] Sarah: I'm exposed.
Something like that. Okay. Should we just get
[00:01:56] Marc: started? Let's do it before we lose people.
[00:02:01] Sarah: Yes. Okay. So welcome to our new episode of this podcast. We're trying out a new format. So bear with us. We are simultaneously recording this and also live streaming to Twitch. So if you want to see what we're talking about live and in real time, our new Twitch address is twitch.tv/climate designers, all one word.
And this is our first ever experiment in live streaming. So we're just like getting the hang of it. And we. Don't know yet how often we'll do this. So this is as our first experiment. We've invited a few people, we haven't promoted it widely. Nobody knows what we're doing this, but we've invited a few of our friends to come and give us feedback and give us support and let us know what you think of this format.
Let us know what you think of doing this on live stream. I'm seeing Rachel's here from Los Angeles and Kelly from Boston. Thanks for coming. Cat's here and sunglasses emoji. Awesome. Thank you guys for being here. It's it makes me feel so much better that we're not just shouting into the void.
We've got our friends and supporters out there telling us if we look okay if the lighting's all right, which it's not really, but that's fine. So thank you. Yeah, this is open to the public. Anybody who just happens to happen upon us could come in here. And I'm really curious to see if we get climate trolls, climate deniers coming in here and saying, you guys are stupid or something and that'll be fun.
How will we deal with that? We just ignore them and kick them out. Or we'll we have a conversation, see if we can change their mind. I don't know to be seen, but yeah, if you want to come and join us in the next time we do this, whenever that will be, it will be at Twitch TV dot climate or slash climate centers.
And you can follow us to get a notification of when we go live. And that will enable you to give us feedback while we're while we're recording it. And you will have to log in to Twitch in order to be able to chat and interact with us. And that would be great if you did that. Otherwise, if you go, just watching, listening. No problem. No need to log in. Mark since this kind of came from you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to change up our format and try something new,
[00:04:25] Marc: right? Yeah, over the last few months or so I think really after the party program with the excitement after that ended and, meeting more people, new people, and some of those people are actually now on our core team, it gave me a second burst of excitement and energy.
But at the same time, I was like what are we. What are we not doing yet? We're starting to build this foundation with climate designers, with the help of, amazing people. And then I was like, what's the next? So I guess what I'm trying to do is carve out what's going on currently, but then thinking about the next step while others support that.
And I started to think about some of the bigger topics that I've been talking to with with friends and Rachel and my girlfriend who's in the audience about these bigger headier topics that I feel designers need to know. And some of that was in the party program. We talked about indigenous wisdom.
We talked about environmental justice systems thinking, things like that, but even leveling up more, talking about things like capitalism, talking about things like the human narrative that we've been unfortunately sold over the last a hundred plus years. Advertising and, other factors and systems in place.
And what does how do we actually do transition to a different economy? This renewable stuff is great and all, but just because we switched to a hundred percent renewables tomorrow, we're still working with this gross in damaging economic system. And so like, all we're going to be doing is renewing the shit that is putting us in this mess.
So I want us to really start to think bigger about the topics that I feel we need to start talking about, especially at the intersection of design and climate. And some of you out there know me pretty well and know that I have been listening to punk rock music since I was in middle school.
And it really. Shaped me. I've written a number of times about this on my blog, about how it, and instilled in me the idea of questioning and authority. This idea of fighting for causes that you believe in this whole DIY ethos. And so I still listen to that music today. It really does motivate me and there was this really amazing, great band called war on women, out of Baltimore, Maryland, an amazing band.
I've seen them live, I think twice. And I'll see them later this year with bed, religion, and be a fucking amazing show. And they released a new album just a few months ago called wonderful hell. And they're a title track. Wonderful hell has some really beautiful lyrics in them. And it's a really great kind of sing along song with your fist in the air and flicking everyone off.
And there's a a phrase in there that I go back to. So I'm going quote it now. There's gotta be a better way than giving up and in wallowing let's raise some wonderful, beautiful hell. And don't know, I've just been having that spirit in me the last couple of months now.
And so bringing all this up to Sarah and and Rachel, and just, I felt like I wanted to speak up a little bit more and talk bigger and that phrase talk bigger is something that Sarah and I have been using internally to talk about this next. Hello, elevation. Evolution. Is that too much of a strong word, Sarah, with this podcast, like just leveling up the podcast.
So anyway that's the backstory of why we're wanting to do this to prototype in a new way and to think about some of the topics that we feel designers need to start thinking of.
[00:07:45] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it really made me think about, I guess what's been on my mind. And when you brought this up to me I merged it with what I've been thinking about, which is the last 50 years of environmental activism in which there has been accomplished major changes and major efficiencies and a lot of really good things, but we're still seeing the rate of change compared with the transformation still needed.
It's just not enough. And we're running out of time to make big changes. And so for me, it's been let's not keep saying the same thing that's been being said for 50 years. How can we change the narrative? What do we need to question to initiate deeper changes. And I came across this phrase. Initiate deeper changes by asking deeper questions.
And one of the books that I'm reading right now. And so I think this is an opportunity for us to ask deeper questions and have bigger conversations and also to put it out there transparently not polished. We don't have everything all figured out. It's just to have start having those conversations.
I think one of our favorite climate scientists, who's also an educator often tells people when they ask what's the most important thing that I can do about climate change right now. And she always says, just start talking about it. So that's what we're doing. And even that is an interesting topic, like why people don't talk about it and what holds us back and why it's scary.
And I think we can go for miles on that too, but We did put together a little presentation. We can go into, we got a question already from wait Lindsey. Hi Lindsey. Thanks for joining. She says, Sarah. Now I want to know what book you're reading right now. I am reading designing regenerative cultures by I'm the worst at names and I just had it in front of me designing regenerative cultures by Daniel Wall.
[00:09:57] Marc: Daniel and your wall. He's great. He's awesome. So good. Highly recommend whole Danny boy. He's great. Speaking of books, I'm I just started reading lessons more by Jason Hickle who has ties to, I feel really bad. I haven't done my homework on the author. I've just heard that the book is really great from multiple people who is connected in some form or another to extinction rebellion.
So less is more from Jason heckles talking about de-growth and capitalism and all that fun stuff that I've been peeking out on lately.
[00:10:33] Sarah: Yeah, it's a really good book. You're reading it too, right? I am. I have a whole lot of books in progress.
[00:10:42] Marc: I do one at a time. Sarah does
[00:10:43] Sarah: 20, I don't, I pick up one book and whatever I happen to be thinking about at the time, I often find a phrase in that book.
That's exactly the thing to help me, keep moving forward and then I'll pick up some other books. Can anyone relate? I don't know. I'm a non-linear reader.
Another check-in with the chat. The, we got our first spammer. I wonder how common that is.
[00:11:09] Marc: 18. Oh, you know what? I think it was one of my high school friends. I invited, what is he selling? Oh, he want, he wants us. Oh, big followers.com. Cheryl buy it.
[00:11:21] Sarah: Awesome. Yeah, like we said, this is open to the public it's happening live and in real time we're going to say some things just to try to be a bit provocative or instigating or rebellious.
So I fully expect that some people might come in here and be like,
I'm anti what we're saying, I guess might be the way to say it. I think if you put climate in your name, you're going to invite some of that. And I don't know. I'm okay with that. I need that full workout
[00:11:50] Marc: as long as they're nice and civil and respect. And if they want to jump into zoom and come on screen and have a chat,
[00:11:57] Sarah: let's do it.
So I invite criticism, I invite feedback and I invite you all to do the same. Let's have open dialogues and conversations. Let's have real raw conversations. Let's say the things that haven't been said or are not being said enough. And also one of the nice things about this new format is we're going to invite more of our senses into the conversation that we may have previously with the podcast.
So if you are a visual person, and if you're a designer, I'm going to guess that you probably are a visual person. You might want to watch on Twitch. And then I think afterwards, if we do our technology correctly, we'll have a recording that we can put on the YouTube so that we'll have some visuals to share.
Not only just our audio senses, but our visual senses as well. Yeah, of course you can still listen to this on the podcast the regular way, but now you can also. Watch us live and engage in real time or watch us after the fact on the recording.
How often will we do this? We don't know yet. I think some of that is up to you is every Twitch session recorded? Yes, I have set it up so that everything will be recorded and we can totally hang out here casually more often. I think one of the nice things about this format is we don't have to do as much prep work in advance.
So we might be able to do some of this more often. If it's helpful for you all, for the people in our community for designers who want to make change on this planet. So that we can keep living on it.
[00:13:38] Marc: I like how you said that. So nonchalantly all you designers out there who just, want to solve our economic and, ecological breakdown, just hang out.
We just
[00:13:48] Sarah: hang out with us. Maybe we'll even play video games.
[00:13:52] Marc: All right. Now let's move on. Now that you brought up the V word, we should move on. Nope, no video game. Talk on this thing. I won't be able to keep up with you. Yes.
[00:14:06] Sarah: Okay. Okay. So let's dive into the topic that we wanted to cover. The thing that we picked for our first topic is along the lines of flipping the narrative and not saying the same thing that we've been saying for the last 50 years.
So one of the things that has always graded on mark and me is when we hear the phrase, save the planet. And so let's just dive in on like why that's not the motivation or the message that we think we want to send. And of course, we're putting this out there to be a little bit provocative. Of course, we love this planet and want to keep living on it.
But here's the thing. This planet has been through hell and back. It has been in the Haiti on eon when it was first I was going to say invented, but created the earth was 446 degrees Fahrenheit. And that sounds really exact by the way. I say this because there's no roof to how hot it can get, and when it was that hot, the surface was completely molten, melted and toxic, and there was no life on it.
And the atmosphere was full of carbon dioxide. There was no oxygen, it was just a completely different. Place. And for those of you who are listening and don't have the visuals, we will describe the visuals to you. So for this one, we have found artist's interpretation of what the Haiti eon might have looked like.
And you see a lot of lava big fireball explosions, lightning flashing all over the place. And volcanic eruptions, it looks like some comments and meteors hitting it. Cause we probably didn't have a magnetic shield at that point yet. Not an awesome place to be
[00:15:47] Marc: this image reminds me of Lord of the rings and this would be a good time for me to insert a Lord of the rings joke, but I don't know Lord of the rings,
[00:15:54] Sarah: so yeah, totally expecting you to have one.
[00:15:57] Marc: I've seen like the first movie or two, I don't know. Cool. I know. Thanks. All
[00:16:04] Sarah: right. So then the next slide after this planet has been through hell, it's also frozen over many times for millions of years. So we've had many ice ages. In the past 2.4 billion years, we've had I think five and the temperatures of the entire planet I dunno like snowball earth is one of the phrases that they've used really super cold.
We're already seeing a comment from cat. She says you changed my own perspective on this terminology, Sarah. I don't use saving the planet anymore as a result. Thank you. Lindsay says my cynical partner loves to fatalistically point out that the planet will be fine. There just won't anymore. Exactly. And it will be fine. Maybe it's yeah, just the point is that this planet, like as a planet, it's been through a hell of a lot more than what we're putting it through right now.
It's a little bit hubristic to think that we need to save it, but this comes with a, but so let's go to the next slide. Oh, wait, I forgot to describe it for our audio listeners. It's a picture of the earth as a frozen snowball. And then there's also a chart of the ice ages during the past 2.4 billion years.
So you can see how the temperature has oscillated up and down a little bit or a lot of it. So in the next slide we have. Another chart. And it's a chart that shows the evolution of humans over the last 1 million years and below that it shows the temperature of the earth. And what's really interesting about this to me is that you can see that temperature is going up and down over the last 1 million years, because we've been oscillating between what scientists called the glacial periods of the ice age, and then the interglacial where everything thaws and gets warm.
And that's because of the orbit, of the earth and things that are way too complicated for me to understand. But what's really striking to me about this graph is over the last million years, there's several different variations on the human species. Put out there by evolution to see which one will And at the top of the graph is a zoomed in factor of that 1 million timescale.
And so we can see in each of those short little interglacials, it's highlighted in green in those short spans of time where the earth was not completely frozen. It just so happens that in the last one is when all of human civilization has occurred. So the zoomed in slice at the very right side of the graph of the last 1 million years of earth history is it contains the invention of agriculture, organized agriculture and animal husbandry.
It contains building cities. It contains the building of the pyramids, which actually only happened, but what like four or five, four or 5,000 years ago when you start looking at it on the scale, Earth. We're just a little blip or just teeny tiny little blip.
So the thing that I want us to think about is human civilization has only ever experienced a tiny range of Earth's changes in climate. So for that entire 10,000 years, the climate has been so stable. And in fact, because the climate has been so stable, it has enabled human society to create agricultural and city-based civilization before that, when it was too in cold or when it was in the process of warming or cooling crazily, like humans lived like everybody else on this planet and traveling around to the pockets of the planet that were habitable habitable to try and survive and find food when the rest of the planets frozen, all that stuff.
So it was just, I don't know, like just happened to warm up enough and then stay that way for long enough for us to do all the things that are part of our entire written history and everything that we know.
Let's see. We're on the next slide. Go to the one that's not super high Rez or.
Yes. So this one is a slide. It's a chart again, but it's only the last 20,000 years. And again, it shows the global temperature. So it shows it rising to that point from the last ice age, from the last glacial period to that stable temperature that we have enjoyed for the last 10,000 years. And you can see that stable temperature staying about the same for 10,000 years including to the point where the great pyramids were built.
It's actually starting to trend towards a little cooler and from what I've read that most scientists agree that we would be on the track towards another ice age actually. And then the industrial revolution happens and the temperature goes way up, completely breaking the pattern that we've seen.
We earth has experienced for billions of years with our carbon dioxide emissions. So now, and the other thing that it says on this chart is we're at this point where we can choose, all bets are off, the pattern is disrupted and we're at this point where we can choose to bring the temperature back down, or if we do nothing and we just keep doing what we're doing, the temperature has the potential to go way above anything that this planet has seen for, I think a three or 4 billion years.
And that means that all of the life that has evolved on this planet, along with us over the last three or 4 billion years, we're all more adapted to. This cold to relatively mild, somewhat warm, that range of temperatures. And so that baseline of stability is what scientists use to measure the rate of change or the amount of change.
When you hear things like 1.5 degrees Celsius, or two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages. That baseline is what they're talking about. So I just say on the text here on the slide, since the industrial revolution, we've built cities and technology based on an assumed stable climate, while releasing enough carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere to force a rapidly heating climate.
It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
[00:23:11] Marc: Yeah. Preaching to the choir.
[00:23:16] Sarah: So next slide. What that means is our civilization has not been designed for the climate or creating it. That's another way of saying that the problem stating the problem. So this is a picture of one of the streetcar power cables in Portland. It melted, which shut down train service during the heat wave that they had a few days ago, a week ago or whatever.
That's just an example of one of the many failures and infrastructure that we're starting to see as temperatures rise way above that range that we've enjoyed for the last 10,000 years.
[00:24:07] Marc: Yeah. And to just add this quick little comment about the latest news here in the U S about this, infrastructure bill and, trying to, to.
To squeeze some climate change stuff in there, as opposed to calling it out specifically. But you know my question about that, and of course I need to do more research. I've been a little busy lately, but with that infrastructure bill, where's that money going? Are we rebuilding from the ground up?
Are we putting band-aids on existing infrastructure because we're not taking this as serious as we need to. What's the money being used for how's it been allocated who says, who has a say in where that money goes? Yeah, I just want to, the last couple of slides we could have easily have made a whole podcast episode on, that previous chart, the chart before that.
So this is really exciting to see how things are starting to connect with one another.
[00:24:58] Sarah: Yeah. And Rachel in the. Shattered out green new deal. And absolutely I think the green new deal has come under a lot of criticism because it's very wide, widespread and expensive. And the reason it is so widespread and expensive is because climate touches everything and it's this infrastructure that we've been built on and it's trying to put new infrastructure in place that supports life.
So yeah, it's, it has to be wide, wide sweeping broad, and yes, it's going to be expensive and very, to comment it again, the civilian climate Corp will be an incredible step forward. Yes. I have not read the news in like weeks because I've had my nose in these five different books. So like, how's that going?
Where is it? What's the story? What's the status? Is everything moving forward, the way that it should be probably slower than we want, but still good. Or what's going on.
[00:25:57] Marc: Yeah. I've been a little busy myself, but what I've gathered from snippets it's not as fast as we want. It's not as much as we want.
Is it even exactly what we need? These are big questions that people are asking that I've been catching here and there. So
[00:26:14] Sarah: Rachel says yes, more representatives are getting on board. I'm just overjoyed that finally we have a government in place that's taking climate seriously, absolutely refreshing step in the right direction.
But yeah it's frustrating when we understand the scope of what needs to change and how quickly we need to change it. So that's definitely one of the things that we hope to talk about. During this new format of our podcast. Yeah. Cause it's slow moving.
Yes. Some great comments in the chat. So next slide, I think, is more I'm preaching to the choir, but you all know this. We have to redesign our way of life to cooperate and evolve with the natural world we live in, or we join the 99.9% of species that have gone extinct on this planet. And for those of you just listening along there is a photo here of some really nice, interesting looking renderings of some of the species that have come and gone before.
Oh gosh, it's too small for me to read, but some really cool looking no longer with us animals.
And I should note that when we join, if we joined the 99.9% of species that have gone extinct on this planet, we will take everything else on this planet with us, because we are at the top of the food chain. And that's just pretty shitty.
[00:27:55] Marc: Yeah. It's not as if the humans will just disappear and everything else will stay it's that we're taking everything down.
It's like we're falling and we're just grabbing it. So it's catch her fall and it's all coming down. I do want to focus on that first half of this I really was thinking about this reading it earlier, I think, how do we get to that point? How do we reconnect with nature and all the living species, that make up our world, right?
It wasn't too long ago that we're connected. To nature. We were connected. We were working on the lands. We were, using it in more productive regenerative ways, it was just really the last two, 300 years with the rise of okay, and industrial revolution and all that, that we started to really, step back and see nature in a very different way where we saw it for us as opposed to a part of us.
And although with our current global economic system in place, it makes it very easy to separate ourselves because, we are now living in these buildings. We are now driving three ton vehicles. We're now doing all these different things that for many millennia with our ancestors never had to do.
And so it's crazy to me how we're just, we're not so far into this. And like the previous charts, there were not so far in the grand scheme of things and our existence as a species, but wow. Like how quick did we frickin forget everything? Yes, we have our prevalent primal instincts, those who's who jumped on at the start.
Sarah and I were talking about, public speaking. And then why would we have that fear of the number one fear in humans? Anyway, yes. We still have those criminal instincts, but beyond that It's convenience. It's comfort. I get it. I much prefer to sleep on a soft bed as opposed to, the hard ground or whatever in the elements and, trying to run away from a Mastodon, who's trying to eat me, like I like my life as is, I think there's been a lot of great innovations and and advancements as the species, but holy shit, man, we're S we're too smart for our own good, God damn we can not to say I'm a I'm into the space, travel stuff.
That's another podcast. But like the fact that we can build machines to put people up there and bring them down safely, the fact that we can cure diseases, the fact that we can connect billions of people using these, glass and plastic and metal that we have in our hands every day. Like we can do some cool fucking shit.
But hello, how do we get back to how we used to live and be in harmony with one another and everything on it, on the planet. So anyway another topic,
[00:30:23] Sarah: this is so smart and yet really dumb at the same time. That's exactly right. So that's what we hope to untangle in this new format, I think.
And I'm really happy that Kelly picked up on the cooperate and evolve phrase in that. So what I'm, I guess what we're getting at here is instead of, like I said earlier, that phrase save the planet that really just graded on me and then Mark's like yummy too. And so we're like, okay, how do we rephrase that?
Or what is it that we actually are trying to do? Because I think looking at this as humans saving the planet it just continues to reinforce that idea that we are separate from all of it
[00:31:11] Marc: and superior, just, you said a few minutes ago that, the reason why everything's going to go down when we go down is because we're on the top of the food chain.
Why should we be at the top of the food chain? So how do we realign our place in this living ecosystem so that we don't act as if it's all for us, but that we are contributing to this whole system and keeping that balance from ever from never tilting off balance.
[00:31:36] Sarah: Correct. Not separate. And in fact, I think we need to maybe rethink the idea of a food chain. It's not really a chain and we're not on the top of it, even though I didn't say that. It's a system and we're part of it and we need to figure out. How to make our part of it matter to the system and add value to the system and help the system thrive.
Or that's still is going to reset. It's going to collapse and it's going to start over with that.
[00:32:02] Marc: Sarah, if you haven't been paying attention, we've been living in this global pandemic for the last year and a half, I think we jolted nature. I think it, it took it, we pushed it enough to where it gave us a big, not even an earthquake, but a fucking planet quake.
This was like a, and Hey, y'all this isn't cool. Here's what you get for fucking shit up.
[00:32:21] Sarah: What's the beginning of that collapse looks like we are living it.
[00:32:25] Marc: So can this be what we're currently experiencing this global pandemic and I'm not trying to belittle this whole thing.
It's really shitty. And I can't, I every so often man, I can't believe I'm living through a pandemic. Isn't it crazy? We all are obviously, but yeah. I I really hope that this is a shock in the system and this is if we don't, real things in this is nothing.
Exactly. This is this is the appetizer, the
[00:32:49] Sarah: beginning. So yeah, let's go ahead and go to the next slide because I don't want to dwell too much on how shitty everything is. You've been with a global pandemic and all of the heat waves and the wildfires and the floods and everything that is going on right now, all over the globe.
I still want to be able to say that this moment in time presents a unique opportunity, especially for people like us designers, strategists, planners, people who can look at systems for what they are and plan something new. I believe it was Washington state, governor Jay Inslee, who said we are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.
And that's just a brilliant ly worded way to say it because this decade right now, the next 10 years, We are at that absolute last, there's a sign on the road. There's a fork in the road and there's a sign that says last exit we're right there. And I guess all the previous exit signs, if we're going to keep with that analogy when we saw those, we being the grand, we of humanity I love the analogies that come to my brain as I'm coming up with them.
As we saw each of those, you could take this exit and, you could implement this policy and have a slow, gradual transition. We were like, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait it out. I don't really have to pee that bad. I'm going to see if there's another rest, stop coming up.
And now we're finally in the thick of it where we're feeling the effects
[00:34:37] Marc: got to
[00:34:37] Sarah: piss. Now we really have to pee. Like we can not hold it any longer. So in a way, feeling the effects and having the horrific tragedies that are happening with the fires and the pandemic and the disease and the floods and the heat waves.
Must I go on the feeling of those, the jolt that is giving us is also a catalyst for change. So I have no doubt that this next decade is not going to be business as usual. There's no option to just keep going the way that we have, like we're either going to piss our pants or we're going to get off at this exit.
Find a clean bathroom and have a more graceful exit. How's that? Did I bring that analogy
[00:35:31] Marc: home, a clean bathroom only
you have to go into a whole foods or something.
[00:35:40] Sarah: So yeah, let's get into the not doom and gloom, but the doom and bloom portion of our segment this evening.
So according to the experts in many of the books that mark and I have been reading and articles and PDFs and everything out there, there is still a chance. And every time I talk about this, I imagine Jim Carrey in dumb and dumber talking to his crush. And she's like the chances of me ever dating you are like a million to one.
And he's so you're saying I have a chance classic kinda where we're at right now, but we still have a chance. We can still transform our civilization ending our reliance on fossil fuels, transitioning to renewable energy, but we have to make it a massive, fast, fair, just equitable transition. All of the things in a very short amount of time.
How do we do that? How the heck do we do that? So some of the things that I have on the slide here for those of the people listening at home one of them is the rewiring America field manual. It's a short, readable, straightforward, little PDF that you can download for free from the rewiring America website written by Saul Griffith.
He went through and he crunched all the numbers for the us. And he details exactly what needs to be done to transition off of fossil fuels in the next, I think 10 or 15 years, he puts it up and he ha he knows how much it's going to cost. And he knows what policies need to be put in place. And it's awesome.
And I highly recommend reading it. The other one that we have on there is less, is more like mark mentioned early or one that we are reading. How's that. Long section on things that we need to rethink about our world and things that we need to implement as solutions or new ways of working. I included the upcycle in here from the authors of cradle to cradle.
This is, embracing circular design and regenerative design and how to redesign our products and our processes so that they are, like we said, cooperating and evolving with nature. And I have yet to read this, but it's on my list climate, the new story by Charles Eisenstein. Mark says, it's good.
That's what I got. There's so many books and experts out there talking about the solutions. This is just a short sampling of some of the things that have been top of mind lately.
[00:38:28] Marc: Yeah. I'm wanting to acknowledge too, that, a lot of the books here, actually, all the books here are written by CIS white men.
And who are we not listening to, are we not reading? Who are we not paying attention to? And so we're, one of the many things that we're trying to do with climate designers is to create, resources that really do help our members. And having a book list and other resources out there for you all is something that we want to do.
But yeah, please share with us others as well. I know there's definitely, women and indigenous authors out there Dr. Anita Sanchez joined us during the party program and, she has some great writing talking about indigenous wisdom and in the 21st century.
And yeah. Let us know, what are you reading? What are you watching? We're all ears and we'll add it to our resources.
[00:39:14] Sarah: Yes. Kat mentioned all, we can save another one on my list. That is mostly women it's short essays by women. All we can save truth, courage and solutions for the climate crisis by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine K.
Wilkinson.
[00:39:32] Marc: Yeah. On my list too, we just need to have reading days,
[00:39:36] Sarah: It's another topic. Okay. Back to the charts and graphs for a second, this is what we're looking at. For those of you at home, I'll describe it in a second. If we succeed over the next 10 years and doing what we need to do, we can bring global temperatures back down in the next 20 to 30 years and avoid complete catastrophic climate breakdown.
So there's a sort of a little small snippet of a graph from the on roads simulator. I know cat in the audience is taking their online training, which I'm super excited to hear more about in the simulator. You can go in and tweak a bunch of levers, so you can see can I basically, can I bring temperatures back down by simply.
Adding a carbon tax. Can I bring temperatures back down by simply planting more trees? Can I bring temperatures back down, through a bunch of other things, they have a bunch of other levers and what you can see from all of that is if we do absolutely nothing, what we're looking at is a rise in temperature.
And I'm not that interested in the year 2100. I do plan to be alive through 2050, but I doubt I will make it to 2100. I would be over 120 years old at that point. So I doubt I'm going to make it that far. So I don't care about 2100. I knew I do care, but it's just harder for me to wrap my brain around that.
And so I look at this as like the next 20 to 30 years, what can we expect? So if we do nothing right now, we're at 1.2 degrees above that baseline of stability that we've enjoyed for the last 10,000 years. One degree Celsius. It doesn't sound like very much, but that's global average. And so it takes a lot to heat up the earth.
We're at 1.2 right now in the way that I had it described to me that really made it hit home to me is every 10th of a degree. Is enormous weather changes and disruptions and climate patterns. So all the things that we were talking about earlier with, the heat waves and the pandemic and the floods and the wildfires, that's at 1.2 degrees of warming.
And so 1.3 is going to be even more of that. More of the same 1.4 is going to be even more of that, more of the same. And so in this graph, you can see that if we do absolutely everything we can, we're still going to go up a little over the next 10 to 20 years. I think if I'm reading it but we are working really hard to cap it at 1.5 and not go any higher because the entire planet really hasn't seen temperatures of over two degrees in more than three or 4 billion years.
Like I said, We don't exactly know what will happen, but what we do know is all the things that are currently happening today will keep happening and will happen even more. So every 10th of a degree that we go up. So I don't want to see it go higher than 1.2, 1.2 is not acceptable. 1.2 is where we are now and where we are now is not.
Okay. So I don't want to hear about two degrees. I don't want to tell about 2100. I want to talk about what we can do to bring the temperatures down right now. And the fact of the matter is the climate system moves slowly. It's a big freaking planet, and we're going to have to put in a whole lot of hard work and a whole lot of effort over the next decade to get real change in our systems by 2030, and check back with me in 2030, because if policies and stuff haven't changed and things haven't been put in place, I'm going to be talking about.
Adaptation and resilience and how to move forward in a very chaotic world. But I don't want to have that conversation right now because we still have a chance,
[00:43:53] Marc: right? Yeah. There's a chart that I saved. I took a screenshot, it was on Twitter. It was from last summer, 2020 summer of 2020. And, Every summer is the hottest summer had a chart, tenure chart, a line graph. And it had at the average temperature per summer was getting higher and higher.
And the headline was of course, 20, 20 hottest year on record in the last decade. And then the woman who posted it was like, or if you look at it this way, 20, 20, the coldest summer in the, in the next decade. It's like what you were saying one 10th of a degree can totally it's just, this is not going away anytime soon.
[00:44:30] Sarah: I left San Francisco in October, November of 2019, and I remember walking outside on nice sunny days. I think I said this to you a few times when we would go have lunch. I'd be like, oh, it's so nice out. This is the last of the nice days,
[00:44:53] Marc: little
[00:44:53] Sarah: cynical. I know, but this is the new normal exactly. Cat this like when we hear about temperature breaking records or the hottest temperature ever recorded, blah, blah, blah. This is the new normal, this is the new baseline for at least the next 10 years. And like I said, then I hope to see the temperatures coming back down.
If we do a lot of work and we do it well. So let's talk about what needs to get done.
Oh, for the viewers who are not viewers, the listeners at home, I forgot to say that slide also had a road. Is Rosie the Riveter. We can do it from world war two because visual propaganda and imagery. Can go a long way and that's where we come in as designers sometimes. Okay. So the next slide is about what stands in our way.
Why aren't we moving forward? And I think the biggest thing that stands in our way right now is we need the political and societal will to make the necessary changes. So there's a picture here of a few different things in unearthed, which is a publication online by green peace, I believe is that right?
My brain is full of holes like Swiss cheats, but unearthed, just unearthed very fiery accusatory report where some of their journalists dressed up as. Lobbyists or fuel investors or something and have meetings with the fossil fuel executives or lobbyists. I'm sorry, I don't have the detailed right in front of me, but anyway, they went under cover and they had some conversations and got these Exxon executives, fossil fuel executives to blatantly say that they covered up and denied valid climate science and delayed climate action and they knew it.
[00:46:54] Marc: And that they're currently as always have been working against. Any big change. Yeah. Look into it folks. I just type in I think the guardian was the one that broke it. If I'm not mistaken and then it got picked up by all these other blogs of course, but yeah, just type in Exxon head hunters.
Yeah. Kat I think Lindsey. Yeah, you're right. They were head hunters. I watched the video and it was so fucking infuriating, just hearing this guy talk as if this was just part of the good part of the job, and BD,
[00:47:22] Sarah: so yeah, they have been, clearly actively working in our government as a lobbyist to prevent change and they have a lot of money and they fund a lot of our politicians.
So there's, political will to do what they want. And when there's, 50 something percent of the voting population does not agree with the other 50 something percent. It is really hard to get the politicians to do anything. It's a standstill. So we need to build the political and societal.
We'll tell our politicians and representatives that what we're currently experiencing is not okay. One of the other images that I have on the side is someone leaked marketing materials from BP. One of them says in the headline obtaining a social license to operate a challenge for the industry. This idea of a social license to operate is something that they are clearly aware of.
So like they know that it needs to be socially acceptable to burn fossil fuels for them to have a viable. That's what that means. The one on the top bottom lower right. Is another lead marketing material from, I believe also BP, although it looks like the colors of Exxon Rochelle. Anyway, it says, how do we regenerate this generation's view of oil and gas?
So many things about that headline make me laugh. They did a poll of us consumers and young people about to join the workforce. And they are basically presenting this as a huge recruiting challenge, which I think is awesome. Oil and gas companies are going to, they know this and they've made nice looking, marketing materials, talking about it.
They are going to run into a challenge recruiting workers from. This generation, the young generation. And I'm like, hell yeah. Because they're gross, but that who wants to work there, they're gross. And because our younger generation has principles and has their eyes open and knows what's going on.
[00:49:36] Marc: And we've been talking about this for years, Sarah, I remember us having more conversations walking in between lunch and stuff at a coworking space about, how hard it is for these companies that are damaging the planet, not just fossil fuel, but any other companies and within any other industry, how hard it is for them to find young talent, because younger people are becoming more and more aware of this issue.
And so what happens to these large companies, are they going to offer more money, more perks, benefits, all that stuff, or. And if not, they can't find anyone they're just going to crumble or do they shift into something more productive? Do they reinvent themselves? I don't know. Like it's going to be interesting to watch, a lot of these companies that are destroying this planet and many different ways are, the majority of them are, behemoths they've been around for many decades.
And so are they just going to completely shift everything? I don't know.
[00:50:32] Sarah: Rachel picked up on the fact that they used the word regenerate. That's another one of the things that makes me laugh so much about this headline. They're already starting to try to shift their image by co-opting the language of the young people and the things that they care
[00:50:50] Marc: about.
I just don't think the copywriter looked up the definition of regenerate.
[00:50:56] Sarah: Absolutely. 100% positive that they use.
[00:50:59] Marc: Oh, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. Of course they did. Of course they did. They're probably trolling sunrise movement and
[00:51:08] Sarah: that's why they use black and yellow. You're right.
[00:51:10] Marc: Seriously.
They're making the shit look cool to attract these young people, yeah. Yeah, man, they're stuck in these organizations. They want to, I don't, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a handful of influencers that are being paid by these folks. Yeah, no,
[00:51:25] Sarah: totally is the a little bit off topic, not on the topic of recruiting, but the PR and ad campaigns by the fossil fuel industry.
Recently, they have been using social media. They have been paying social media influencers. They're all over that stuff. They are very good at obtaining that social license to operate through our media channels. They've been doing it for decades. They're experts. Yeah. And so that, like seeing them shift thing that you talked about, they are absolutely promoting that they're shifting and they talk about it like they're shifting and they might spend.
80 to 90% of their PR and marketing on talking about how much they're shifting to renewables and research and development into stuff. But when you look at how much of their actual operating money they're spending, it does not correlate with how much of the PR they're talking about it. Totally.
[00:52:19] Marc: Yeah. And there's definitely proof out there that supports that. Yeah. Jeez. So I want to bring up this, and we're just about wrapping up with the presentation you all. Just to let you know, one quick thing, and I think we'll get more into this in feature podcasts, for me, it's when I read stuff like this and when Sarah and I have these types of conversations, my mind always goes to, why does it have.
Be where all the onus is on us as individuals just living our normal lives in a system that have had, that has been designed by these people to get what they want and leave us with crumbles, right? Like why are we not fucking going upstream, pounding on these companies, doors, raising fucking hell to get them to actually change or to take them down.
Like it's in front of us, everyone hello, like where's the outrage. Where's the I'm just, so this is so I won't get more into it. Cause I know we have other things we want to wrap up the presentation, but this is the thing that really gets me out of this whole climate conversation is that one thing, and how do we address that as designers? I don't know.
[00:53:31] Sarah: It's a interesting being, where is the,
[00:53:35] Marc: why are we not. Realizing the bigger picture and the real enemy here. Why are we not taking on these larger companies and questioning our economic systems? Why are we not domaining that much change?
Like I know to bring the tote bag, I know to walk more and drive less, whatever don't talk to me about, not using another fucking straw. Like I want to go after the, these guys, like that's the stuff, why where's the pissed off Innes in everyone about this? Like it's all in front of us.
So that's what I'm talking about. But again, we'll get more into it a bit later. I know we're about wrapping up here.
[00:54:11] Sarah: Yep. No, absolutely. I think that is what we're trying to do here is figure out I guess we can go to the next slide because it's getting to that call to action. Like how do we remove the societal license to operate from these people and get them.
What is causing the most harm. So the next slide is talking about what are the necessary changes, and this is not a complete list. There's a list on here that describe some of the most immediate, practical policy driven things. Most of it, not all of it, but a lot of it is from the rewiring America handbook.
Some of it is from less is more, but I'll read it really quickly for those that are just listening, a managed and fair and just transition from fossil fuels to renewables. The end of fossil fuel subsidies. It's ridiculous to me that our tax dollars are still subsidizing fossil fuels. Like what? No new permits for fossil fuels.
We're still starting new. Fossil fuel drilling and exploration projects in 2021 year of our Lord, whatever
[00:55:21] Marc: and Biden as our president,
[00:55:25] Sarah: you were seeing a lot of pledges for net zero by 2050. We need to be talking about real zero by 20 30, 20 31. Part of that is government loans to improve housing.
So in rewiring America, Saul Griffith talks a lot about how the government has in the past. There's a precedent for this giving low interest loans to homeowners to rebuild the infrastructure of the home, to get off the grid, whether it's solar panels or replacing the furnace or getting a new stove or whatever you need to do that can be government assisted.
The end of planned obsolescence. So in the design of our devices, they're not designed to be repaired. They're designed to be replaced, and that is very intensive of our resources and it doesn't make much sense giving land back to indigenous people. The rapid buildup of renewable energy infrastructure, that is something that we are going to need government policy and funding to, you know, Biden's whole campaign for election was on this, the creation of millions of new clean jobs.
We need to stop cutting down our trees in the Amazon and other places we need to end deforestation. It is just compounding the problem. It doesn't make any sense. We need solar panels on every roof. We need to electrify. All of our industries, so that then that electricity can be run by renewable energy.
So anything that runs on liquid fuel or coal or even wood pellets, natural gas is still gas. And we need to subsidize regenerative agriculture. That's already happening at least in California. It needs to be happening a whole lot more where the government is funding farmers to adopt climate friendly agriculture policies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions and take it out of the air instead of the opposite.
So that's just a short list of things off the top of my head.
[00:57:30] Marc: Yeah. And I want to make a note that all of these are very practical and we need to do these things right. And this is where designers can come in, where we can support those companies, those initiatives, those projects, solutions to make sure.
They are so successful that they are doing their part too, bring our temperature down, like going back to some of those charts. Like we need all designers within all these different industries to really step up and make sure that they, give everything they got. So that these companies and these new industries can be the most successful.
But again, though, building all of this on a capitalistic system just doesn't make sense. And so what's missing from this list is the idea of de-growth the idea of coming up with a new economic system. Again, as human beings, I've listed a few things minutes ago about us being so creative, we can put people in space, we can cure diseases.
We can come up with a new economic system. Like I think the thing that we always forget is that capitalism is only 500 years old. It hasn't always been around. There's been other economic system some better, a lot better actually. And why not revisit it, some of those or come up with new ones. I have a lot of friends in the bay area that are in, in the, new economic space, like they're coming up with what we could be living under.
And I think what's missing from this list in this larger conversation that I'm excited to talk more about is this idea of de-growth right. I'm not going to, maybe I should get a bit more, anarchists. I've been holding my breath always back for many years, sometimes shit needs to be said.
And as Sarah mentioned at the start of the, some things might, rub wrong way, but I don't know, not to say that we know the answers, not to say that what comes out of our mouth. It is right, but it's something right. And one other thing that's also missing from this list as well is, the idea of who are we as a species, I feel like we need to take this time, maybe even during COVID I would hope to rewrite our human narrative, like, how are we showing up?
On this planet, how are we showing up as a species that is much more advanced than a lot of other species? That's a gift, what a gift that we have that we are from all of these millions and billions of combinations that just so happened to happen over fucking millions of years has developed us in our lives right now and all the amazing things that we have in front of us, what a beautiful gift.
And so I think what we need to really start to do also is really rewrite our human narrative to get away from this idea of individualistic mindsets and my mind, and, the American dream and climbing the corporate ladder or whatever and start to think about where we should really put our values, valuing purpose, a sense of community, valuing ourselves.
And I want to bring up a few comments from iHeart, Rachel. She's been as always dropping math knowledge. She mentioned a few minutes ago, this is why we need to destroy capitalism, consumerism and be more collective and community focused in our ways. Definitely. You said something else just below that
maybe that was it. Oh, actually exactly.
[01:00:35] Sarah: It was too much to be outraged.
[01:00:38] Marc: So going back to my comment about why are we not fucking, pounding on these doors? Yeah. I heard Rachel like people by design, right? Yeah. People are being worked to death. So that they can't do anything, but work a second job, a third job just to put food on the table.
And so it's a distraction and I feel like this also goes into what I always get them confused either BP or shell. I think it's BP that created the carbon footprint shit, right? Yeah. That is a distraction people. I don't, Hey, if you're in the carbon footprint app, industry, go for it. I support you.
I'm not interested in that. Honestly, as a person. I, yes, I care about the impact I have on the planet, my carbon footprint. Totally. I try to be mindful of how I live and all that stuff. Check check, all the boxes checked off. But again, that was put out by an organization by company purposely to distract you from the shit that they're doing, putting the onus on us.
And for me, that's fucking bullshit.
[01:01:38] Sarah: That is,
[01:01:40] Marc: and these are signs. They know exactly what re what they're doing, but again, though, I'm going to go back to my thought and we can finish up. But, I really do feel like, outside of the practical stuff, outside of capitalism, all that stuff, I feel there's also just as much work, if not more work on how we need to view ourselves, not only within ourselves with each other and within this planet.
And I feel like we can do all this stuff, we can just switch to renewables. We can do all the things that would keep us in a bit more of a, in an, somewhat thriving world. Even though things are gonna look bad for a while, but what's the next fuck up that we're going to create as human beings, if we don't focus on ourselves, so I don't know. So again, another topic for later, but just something that I've also been thinking about lately.
[01:02:24] Sarah: Yeah. Kelly from Boston said most, can't see the big picture. P S that's also by design. We are educated to not be able to see the big picture and that's on purpose.
[01:02:40] Marc: Oh. And don't get me started on why do you think alcohol is legal?
Why do you think, some of these drugs and foods that suppress are abundant, big pharma, they are, they're profiting off of our sickness and they're profiting. Dumbing down us so that we don't see that big picture. So again, a whole nother topic that I think about often we'll talk about it later, but it's all been by design.
[01:03:07] Sarah: I'm seeing a lot of people saying again, the chat. Clearly we have a lot to talk about as we keep
[01:03:13] Marc: going and, as we're wrapping up, we're just over an hour. So thank you all for sticking around. Didn't really know how long we were going to go. And maybe this is a good time to wrap up because we plan on talking about this stuff often, we're not trying to.
Most of us and, we're all about, optimism and positivity and all that, lovey-dovey stuff. So we're not trying to make this into the opposite of that. The doom and gloom stuff. At times, we do need to talk about this stuff though. Like we need to have that real talk.
And so we're gonna weave both of, both the optimistic stuff and the real shit. That is the stuff that we need to be addressing, because that's the stuff that's making the doom and gloom. So we can't just, think about sunshine and rainbows all fucking day. Like we need to also talk about our current and previous actions and things like that, so that we can acknowledge that stuff and recognize it and learn from those mistakes and then apply it, or maybe not apply it in the present moment and into the future.
[01:04:07] Sarah: Yeah. So I think just to wrap it all up in one shiny bow for this talk today we'll end it on the next slide. Which is instead of talking about how we humans need to come into the rescue and save the planet, let's focus our energy as creatives, as designers, when we're putting messages out into the world about this, the task right in front of us is to remove the biggest block, to make the biggest change that we need to make in the time that we want to make it.
And so that is let's focus on directing all our creativity towards uniting societies will. So however that looks to you as creatives, we might make campaigns, we might make slogans, we might make posters. We might make t-shirts. We might make products with brands, with messages that are promoting an image of an ideal world, that we're all building.
Let's try and do everything that we do for the purpose of getting everybody on the same page and that. Building up to a rapid and fair and just full-scale transition to a zero carbon clean, renewable energy. And there's a lot more that needs to be done. But if we can get everybody going, if we can figure out what it is, it's not save the planet.
I don't think it's, there is no planet B, although that one's really cute. I like it. All the things that have been said already I don't know that they're working. I don't see it. So we keep, we need to keep experimenting. We need to keep trying and we need to figure out what's the thing. That's going to get everybody on the same page because we are definitely not United.
We are bickering. Within each other's groups and against each other. And we need to be sending a United message and get us all on the same page for the work that needs to be done in the amount of time that needs to get done. It's very urgent and it's very important that we all start doing this in this decade.
[01:06:22] Marc: Yes.
[01:06:23] Sarah: Like mark said I'm surprised that we have been talking for over an hour. We clearly have a lot to say I think it might be worth us doing this if we can maybe weekly. We were talking a little bit beforehand if we should be doing this monthly or more often, I think we have a lot of things to say, so we should probably be doing it more often.
It's a much more casual format. I'm actually curious to hear from you all in the chat is this amount of interaction. Okay. We have mark and me on screen and then you through text chat, is that, should we bring you into the zoom? Like I think the thing that I worry about is the more people who are speaking the longer, this thing will go and we don't have time to just sit in front of our computers all the time, but we definitely have a lot to talk about.
I can tell.
I'm seeing a lot of yeses in the chat. Cat loves this format. Carly. Hi, Textless. Fine. I think. Okay, cool. Cool.
[01:07:35] Marc: We can always just follow up too. Most of these are our core team members and chapter leaders who are all freaking amazing. So thank you all for joining and hanging out. And for those that we don't know, thank you for joining and hanging out and for not text bombing us.
[01:07:54] Sarah: Yeah. Keep it small. Maybe join, maybe have two other people join in. Yeah. I've I have a dream of bringing in somebody who's an expert in science or evolution or something. And letting me just ask them eight year old questions okay. But why. But
[01:08:16] Marc: we are actually and search for. I don't know, I just made up this phrase before this podcast.
I was talking to Sarah about this. Maybe we have a an internal climate or resident climate science resident with climate designers, they're our go-to person for all this stuff. And it'd be great to have, people with a personality who can like, have fun with this and explain it in fun ways and interesting ways and simple ways.
So if any of, I really love the work from a man I'm blanking on his name. It'll come to me in a minute, but the climate town guy on YouTube, if you don't know him, go to YouTube and search climate town we've been chatting on IgG. So hopefully he'll maybe come and do one of these with us, but I would love to have someone who can just roll with us and bring that.
Stuff to the conversation in ways that would benefit our members.
[01:09:04] Sarah: Yeah. And Rachel's calling out variety and diversity is nice too. So we're always very conscious of that. Maybe not another ASIS hat, white dude, even though he's a climate scientist, maybe. Sure.
[01:09:16] Marc: Of course. So that's why I'm asking if any other people let us know.
[01:09:20] Sarah: And also Kelly suggests someone who knows a lot about the green new deal. I was thinking someone who knows a lot about life sciences and evolution or DNA and viruses or something. I dunno, whatever we are, we're going to talk about economies. I don't necessarily think that we know what is the right economy.
I think we're going to need to invent something new. So we probably should bring in some people who know things about different kinds of economy.
[01:09:47] Marc: I know a few people. Yeah. Cool, cool.
[01:09:52] Sarah: I'm seeing lots of yeses in the chat, so that'd be cool. Great.
[01:09:56] Marc: All right. Should we wrap up, sir? I don't want to keep folks.
Yeah.
[01:10:00] Sarah: Yeah. So an hour and 22 minutes, thank you so much for hanging out with us and we will edit this down and release it on our podcast at some point TBD, if the YouTube will just be straight up recording or if that will be edited as well. I'm not sure. But yeah, if you have any feedback that you want to send us an email, please do that too.
Like the length the content, the format, something that we should cover. Do you have any questions that you want us to talk about for an hour? We could probably
[01:10:30] Marc: do that too. And also for people who might be watching for the first time, we don't know who the hell me or Sarah are. We are the co-founders of climate designers, and you can learn more about what we're doing and why and the how and the who, and all that stuff@climatedesigners.org.
So definitely check it out. If you're a designer, please join our community. If you're someone who's just curious about what we've been talking about and want to see how we're actually, actually making this happen with the creative industry, our mission is to create a whole new creative industry where we put this stuff at the center of what we do.
And so if you are new to any of this, or if you want to learn more, go to climate designers.org,
[01:11:11] Sarah: that's right.
[01:11:14] Marc: Yeah, this is very casual. I like this with no script. Just chilling, hanging out.
[01:11:21] Sarah: Yeah. And so a tradition with switch is when you're done wrapping up your stream you would go and read somebody else and drop your audience off with a new channel to just raid them.
It's what it's called. I don't know that we'll do that today because I don't know how and B all of the accounts that I know anything about are not online right now. We still need to learn how Twitch works, but that might be fun for us to do at some point, if we find some other Twitch streamers who talk about climate stuff or other design streamers or something, I don't know if anyone knows more about Twitch than we do get in touch.
[01:12:01] Marc: All right. That's a wrap. Thanks everyone.
[01:12:07] Sarah: Bang.
Designers may have incredibly innovative eco-friendly ideas, but how do we actually get these ideas into production? How do you convince a client or an employer to choose a more sustainable option that might cost more? Why do design-led companies boost stock performance by 211% over standard S&P 500 companies?
These are a few of the topics covered in this 39 minute interview with Creative Leadership specialists Shana Dressler and Brian Quinn. Shana & Brian have been working together to bring leadership skills to creative professionals, and we were happy to sit down with them and a live audience of our community members to chat about the skills necessary to lead clients & teams towards positive change.
To stay in the loop on the leadership skills training sessions we may offer in the future, sign up at climatedesigners.org/leadership.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Join our online community
- climatedesigners.org/leadership
- ShanaDressler.com
- Turquoise.NYC
- The Value of Design compared to S&P 500
Transcript:Sarah: [00:00:00] Welcome to a special episode of we are climate designers! Not only do we have two great guests joining us for this episode, we have a live audience joining us for a Q & A session after the interview, which is something new that we're trying. It's something that we're going to be offering our community members. So if you are not part of our active fun and engaging online community, definitely sign up. You can connect with others in your area and around the globe by heading to climatedesigners.org/community to get all the links to get in there And it is free! Let's get started
Marc: [00:01:08] Yeah So today we have Shana Dressler and Brian Quinn they're gonna introduce themselves in a minute but yeah super excited to have you all here and Shana you and I have been colleagues for a very long time now So it's exciting to work with you again after so many years So would love to hear from you all about your backgrounds So you've been doing this kind of creative leadership training for a while now So how did you all get into doing this kind of work and maybe more importantly why are you doing this kind of work
Shana: [00:01:36] So first of all thank you so much mark and Sarah for having Brian and I so my background starts of probably 2010 where the New York city the startup community was just getting going I think most of us that were Launching a social enterprises and for-profit businesses had no idea what we were doing and that parlayed itself into small business skill training And so I worked for about 10 years with entrepreneurs and then started to realize that the most impact I could make would be to do leadership training Because at the end of the day if you have an idea and you have a team basically if you're not being effective as a leader it really doesn't matter how great your product or your services you fall flat on your face If your team isn't willing to follow so yeah and that led me into getting leadership training in Amsterdam at the things school of creative leadership And I'm also an executive coach and there was a lot of training that was involved with leadership there.
Brian: [00:02:32] Yeah And Shana and I have known each other for a long time and We originally were working together reconnected and like 2019 and then ended up creating a workshop together around human skills or soft skills for 99 U And it was I think the last physical event they had my background is I'm an event producer and experience designer curator of conferences And I'm the one bringing together the workshop experience side of things As we look at this idea of at the time it was like the future of work And then also I think the future of leadership has is really connected with that as well we recognized that there was a massive change that people weren't going to be working the same This is all ahead of the pandemic and we wanted to help change that And now obviously the pandemic threw a few things off in terms of doing more of these workshops or events But I think it's great now to look at it in terms of reinventing companies or the way in which people work from the inside out and how can that be applied And in this case certainly the idea of applying that to climate designers is really interesting and around the scope of leadership
Sarah: [00:03:39] Yeah for sure in our work educating designers we've definitely found that there's a real need at a certain point in a designer's career to learn these leadership skills one of the things I like to talk about is the design index fund is a group that analyzed in 2015 they analyzed the difference between I think it was 10 Design led companies and contrasted them with the S and P 500 And they compared these 10 design led companies with the value of the stock market over 10 years And they found that design improved the performance of these design led companies by 211% So that's what I like to talk about is the the value of design and what it brings to these companies So design led companies meaning apple Airbnb and Pinterest And we talking about what is the value that designers bring to businesses and maybe putting like a measurable number on that and then thinking as designers as climate designers we have the choice which businesses we want to Bring that 211% value boost to And which companies we've worked for in which companies we lend our expertise to so I don't know Brian do you have some thoughts around like maybe why is it that design led companies are doing so much better than the standard S&P 500
Brian: [00:05:09] we certainly when we did our program one of the base the kind of pillars one of the four pillars that we started with around like what are the humans centered skills for the future of work And trying to think about this is it all boiled down to empathy And I do think that designers are uniquely suited in this weird and sensible way to to be very empathetic And that means they also engage in a process I guess to generalize and saying all designers but when we look at companies there is that trope of course that many companies out there still think that design is the last part of the process so how it looks And yet they still have terrible weak products and services all of that But designers perhaps are in the way they think very well equipped to see a new way of looking at the world and having that conscious approach of intention and value and how things work So as of course we know our world is getting super complex it's just clear that design needs to be a part of this people say seat at the table maybe it's driving the whole process I don't know but I think that's certainly when we heard about it when certainly I heard about climate designers it made a lot of sense to me because it's okay climate change is one of the biggest issues maybe may dwarf this pandemic it's going to be huge in the future So how can designers take the lead either internally in teams or through the work they do through their own companies through communication and storytelling I think they're well equipped in many ways It's just about perhaps bridging that gap of leadership
Sarah: [00:06:32] Yeah One we talk about often as a design led company to look at is Airbnb we love their story They were founded by three designers and I'm assuming that their current status as the most valuable travel company is not due to the awesome Photoshop skills those founders have
Brian: [00:06:48] Yeah I it's so funny because I work in travel right now I organized conferences around the business of travel and yeah it is Airbnb is become one of the most valuable companies in the industry but and they got they the founders came out of RISD and they They obviously had the I think there was two co-founders and then they brought on like an architect to help to build things maybe they were inspired by Steve jobs at some point who knows but they ended up in Silicon valley I don't think anybody really took him seriously at first And over time though they've really came in with their convictions about this mission of we want people to stay in other people's homes and have this air bed and breakfast experience And everyone was like you're crazy But maybe it's the strength of their beliefs or knowing that they wanted to build a community around this but somehow over time and does great design as a part of it in terms of the visual aesthetic that imbued a lot of trust but over time they've grown and the idea latched on And it's a great example I think it's also really interesting to say with companies like Airbnb or apple that they wouldn't necessarily be built in the same way as if they were started today and we're facing an entirely different set of challenges So what's the ability to see something like that kind of company for climate design or climate change in the future as well So I think it can be there designers just inherently try to see things differently and build it so it's a matter of where can we get there
Sarah: [00:08:10] you mentioned that it happens over time There's design process that goes into that and iteration listening to your customers and realizing where the problems are and then making changes based on that I think is a big part of that evolving over time to become a really valuable company Shana what do you think it is that design led companies are doing differently than other companies?
Shana: [00:08:29] I think the design-led companies start with designers, and so their orientation towards leadership as soon as they assume the role of being a leader is going to be very different than if you are somebody that comes up the ranks of a fortune 500 company and or you have a business background and what Brian said before about people responding to like the founders of Airbnb like you're crazy is probably what makes design leaders great because there's an openness to it Like creative leadership is all about exploring things that are out of the box so I think that needs them with people And that's what leadership's all about you have a vision of your company and then you have to have people to execute on So already having human centered design as a process that becomes more applicable to people understanding how innovation works and how there's a disruptive nature of innovation hopefully translates into people understanding that people will feel disrupted in the process of the business being disruptive and then I think also the The point about empathy when you talk about leadership competencies empathy is one of the qualities that ranks the highest after vision you're going to lead somebody that has a clear vision And then after that you want to feel appreciated You want to feel seen that's what's going to excite you and inspire you to follow so I think that all of these qualities is probably what has a lot to do with why design led companies and also anyone that's doing working in design realizes that they have to collaborate And whereas people on top might be managing top down There's no way when you're working as a designer with everybody that it takes to get a product you have to collaborate and being a collaborative leader just makes you a stronger leader
Marc: [00:10:14] Great So I want So I want to circle back to what Brian said a few seconds ago So what would a design led company focusing on climate actually look like So maybe Shana do you have any thoughts on that on that
Shana: [00:10:23] I think that if you're not thinking about climate I don't know what you're thinking about I think we've all heard the comment If we don't have a planet to live on and live in in a way place where there's clean air and everything else that we need to thrive like really in no business So I think that it's so shortsighted not to understand your larger impact and how you are in a larger eco ecosystem in general so I think in terms of design-led companies focusing on climate I think one is you need to be deliberate about it and know that this is something you're tackling It Can't just be something that you're adding on later I think it has to be designed into the whole process and I think it's just not necessarily climate out there It could be like how are you using resources How are you figuring out recycling What is the impact of your own business has on the environment start close to home we can't do a lot about what's happening in multinational companies I have to think across the globe like start local in terms of impact and I think it's just there's so many tools that designers and design companies have like circular design back in the day when people were talking about cradle to cradle understanding if we're using raw materials how they're going to end up so we think that all of these things may be accompanies thinking more like social impact but at the end of the day it's absolutely connected to climate And so I think also making that intellectual connection is really essential that it's not just this term that I always feel is spread on everything what does social impact mean Anyway that's the social piece but what about the environmental side
Brian: [00:12:01] it's so interesting So we're being very general right So it's designers we're painting designers with one brush and we're painting the climate change problem with another as well it's such a complex issue and yet no matter what kind of designer you are or what company you work in or what you see your role being it's I guess what I'm trying to figure out is how can and I think what we would embark on in a kind of Leadership dedicated summit here And what I'm also excited to hear from people in the questions and hear from their individual problems is trying to say how can we engage in a process And whether it be project based within a company and yes you could say it's is it just fulfilling some kind of CSR type need versus them understanding a larger intrinsic problem of in global issue where do you start small or do they are they looking to reinvent their entire company Either way I think designers are the ones that can really help lead the way in which a company tackles this And it may just be storytelling and maybe design thinking and embarking on that process But if a designer imagines themselves as the CEO is the leader of a company and where would they across the board look at these different gears that are operating and how whether it be data analytics or just analysis and feedback and all of this stuff how can we actually understand the impact of the company and then change operations and try to make maybe drastic everybody has even if they're a big company they're going to run into financial concerns of saying putting the brakes on it saying this is too much but trying to make the case that it's going to be much better in the longterm to affect change now in many ways I guess how can designers be at the helm for not only that conversation but strategy in terms of how a company is able to tackle that and maybe it's instilling that core belief across the company thinking empathetically again about I understand each person's job and their challenge And here's how I'm going to help to see that tackle it bring it into the process and not trying to bulldoze through these things is I think is also something I would expect designers might approach in terms of how they bark on this change throughout a company a design led company So I hope that again I think it would be great to then really get more granular with actual examples but yeah
Sarah: [00:14:14] yeah Yeah For sure
Shana: [00:14:14] I'll add that also when I ran an incubator for Google for design entrepreneurs and one thing we realized that maybe designers don't articulate enough of is they're actually trained to become strategists they're problem solvers they're communication specialists They know how to shape chaos into something that communicates powerfully And these are all really incredibly important skills that tie back in terms of a leader to vision Like again who do you look to To follow somebody that actually has it an idea ahead that they have a true north they have a destination and then basically we're inspired to get on board with that leader And so I think where designers can start to insert themselves even within a company is being intrapreneurial starting with where are the gaps Where are the issues what is the head of the company and people that have a C in their title like CTOs CIO CFO CTO there's so many see there's like chief data chief data officer what are they missing that you can see That is a really unique quality that people that go through design school get trained on And then how do you package that up to communicate what's needed then I think finally it's like compelling communication is a huge part of when I've seen design curriculums It's not good enough to communicate but you need to be Succinct and compelling and get to the point and to persuade And so I think that when you really see that as your skillset you can almost shift your lens to somebody to to the type of person within a team that can really affect very significant change
Brian: [00:15:58] one of the modules in our workshop generally is influence and persuasion And I think that's a big part of this climate change arguably has become this political issue and it's something that becomes emotional for some And it's about how do we actually show people in many ways that even seemingly minute or infinitesimal changes now can have massive effects in the future or how can why do I need to worry about this problem in the future And I know that I'm sure many of us could try to tell that story til we're blue in the face but at the same time trying to engage in a process in that and thinking about also of course profitability for our company and answering that equation is going to be inherent in that process too So it's there's no one path but I do think that's part of that empathetic journey that would be really great is as long as people are willing to hear it to a certain degree.
Sarah: [00:16:46] Nice Shana when you were talking about meeting with the different heads of different departments and the CTO and the CEO it reminded me of my background in software startups in Silicon valley I was trained as a graphic designer and then I was mostly self-taught as a UX designer I just fell into the role and I was never formally trained in leadership but I Just graduate graduated into that role through experienced And one of the things that you were talking about something that I would just do because I wanted to help everybody in the company do what they do better And so I would meet with every head of every departments as the sole designer at the company to just see how everybody was using the product and where the gaps were It was just something that I highly recommend people start doing if nobody else is doing it I'm getting back to now that we know how valuable leadership skills are to a designer's ability to change and improve business practices and products which is exactly what we're trying to do as climate designers Or we're trying to help them change their practices to become more sustainable regenerative innovative eco-friendly All the things so obviously this requires companies to do things differently than they currently are so as a designer who might come into a company like I was in my roles I was hired as a UI designer And then I just started doing product management cause nobody else was doing it and became head of product And it was just what I did but if you're not as a cheeky as I am I guess how would someone go about learning these skills and can it be done more quickly than 10 or 15 years of the school of hard knocks Like I did I made a lot of mistakes of course and learned a lot from those mistakes but is there a way to teach people these leadership skills more quickly and less painfully?
Shana: [00:18:39] Yeah I think the first thing is the best way to lead is to start with a project that you take the lead role on because leadership training can become very academic like to listen to somebody talk about how to lead You're not leading yourself is a little bit hard to follow so I think as somebody that's working within a company the first step would be like listening for what's needed listening for where there's a gap listening where there's an opportunity And then the proverbial raise your hand and offer to take initiative and get started because you're not going to really learn how to lead until you have people that are following you that's the whole point And I think it's also it's not necessarily a lead follow dynamic It could be how do you lead There's three types of leadership There's no top-down you're just like the commander there's a leader lead leading by the side and there's also leading from behind And so part of really picking your leadership style won't be possible until you start to interact with people to see how does your personality drive with another person's and how do you need to keep aware of what the dynamics at play are so that you can figure out how to you adjust yourself Because telling other people what to do and being critical is not going to get the best out of people So there's so much that goes on with like observation and like a test and learn if I speak this way to somebody what kind of impact am I going to get If I give somebody feedback in this way so I think a lot of it comes down to really coming from a place of curiosity and as much as it's like the worst news and leadership is it's really about self-knowing The better You understand yourself the better you understand where your own landmines are the better you understand what irritates you that's step one like the consciousness piece And then the sec step two in leadership is called self-management meaning manage your self because you cannot manage other people easily but you can start to course correct for the way you're coming off and how to do that as you're observing all the time what is the response What's the look on somebody's face we're all on zoom so much Most of us are probably not paying attention but most of us are very emotive through our our face Or our body like as a coach I was been trained look at somebody's body If they're all of a sudden tensing up and their shoulders are way up to their ears or if they have a stance that looks you know stressed out chances are the body is the biggest indicator to understand what's going on and the head and the heart so like circling back to this in terms of like how to do it is start off with offering yourself up to take the lead on something and be passionate about it and then get great people around you so that they know you're not going to be perfect None of us are on and that you're there to to keep learning together as a group I think that the more it's about us and less about me and you where there's that separation I think people tend to create a lot more psychological safety which is one of the main principles in a leadership and team study that Google did a few years ago where they found that when we feel safe with other people we work much better We can deal with conflicts as they raise We can Give each other feedback And these are all of the things that kind of get us back to a place of optimal working and getting things done And everything else gets in a way of just not being productive is not so much about the work it's usually about relationships So I guess it's a good in the bad news it's easier to learn a skill That's a hard skill like coding or graphic design or customer development research but it's much harder to deal with people cause we're not taught it you're often not taught it from parents Your friends don't teach this to you Most religious education Isn't about how to show up you can read a book that doesn't really help you flex the muscles around How do you change your behavior so yeah unfortunately I think our school systems need to start teaching a lot more about all of these what Brian and I are adamant are human skills They are not soft They are not easy and mean I think we would all have a better day in and day out experience if we were just a lot kinder.
Brian: [00:22:56] The connective tissue We often say I think a lot of people say that but yeah sure Yeah
Sarah: [00:23:00] Brian do you have thoughts around specifically how long is it going to take to learn these kinds of skills
Brian: [00:23:06] Yeah that's the funny part cause it's it could be instant or take a lifetime it's I think of these things as a practice and it's funny going back to the soft skills idea at the same time Shana I was listening to what you were saying and thinking about perhaps what designers bring as they also bring a willingness to engage in a process And if we thought about employing some Even product design process to a challenge like this that is complex because of humans And really if we think about something as large as climate change and and addressing that within a company and all of these questions that might come up people have problems understanding what they need to know or how much they need to know before they take action And anytime people have to make choices it's about are they changing their mind or being told to change their mind And so it's all of these things And yet if we demystify that and take it into a process and use our strengths as well there's times where I think Shana you say let's take our design hat off or keep it on or off I I think there's times where it's just let's not just be a designer because I think that can could be limiting in some ways too And be broader than that But At the same time using our skills and engaging in a process and knowing who you're leading the company you're at and what their goals are and what matters to them And then using that to think about how can we bring that into this process And anytime we're trying to start something ambitious or disruptive and there has to be some patience in terms of how long it takes but I also think that participation as far as bringing people into that makes it gives them a little bit of comfort and the agency and the fact that they can maybe be a part of that growth together with you And you're just helping lead it versus any sort of force feeding of here Let's get into this thing We have to do something on climate change Like people just I'm sure it can glaze over but any good
Shana: [00:24:57] Yeah they've done so much study on knowing facts doesn't actually — that's not the tipping point for people. You can deliver up lots of data and lots of knowledge…
And with designers understanding what goes into customer development and interviewing and design research It's applied that to human experience, Like how is it that we change? What makes us change? What when are we willing to go through something painful to know that on the other side is a benefit? Meaning if we have to stop — if you're thirsty are you going to not buy a bottle of water because you've forgotten all about water ball at home — what is that deprivation piece? That that's just an example of — we all know, yeah, Bring your own water bottle, you forget — And when you're a designer thinking to that specific example to bring back into your work, so then how do you, How do you figure out what that behavioral change piece is for the work you're doing in your job? Knowing that all of us — we know these things and we still, there's some reason that we're still not getting it.
So I think the more concrete you can think of examples around change, what are the skill sets you've been taught, And then to think, again, as designers are trained to do, think outside the box, for the impact that you want to make within climate and your job and hopefully a project that you'll take on as an intrapreneur within a company to start to flex those leadership muscles.
Brian: [00:26:25] And just to speak to one of the questions cause I do think it relates to this as in terms of designers dreaming big and how do you create something that's approachable or something that you know especially with leading it you understand that it can actually get off the ground is how can it have a beginning and an end? And what's the goal, That's something that you can ship, that is actually Achievable and put some boundaries on it versus something as broad as climate change and just broader initiatives — what's our key … I work with a lot of destinations globally and they often wonder what's the KPIs of what we're measuring the effect of what we are doing as a destination as a city in terms of our own initiatives or the actual overall environmental benefit or sustainability of how our entire city is achieving it is it on that big macro level or is it just really how we've had our own little benchmarks And I think it's a hard balance those tactics are some of the hardest questions to answer but at least if you define it give it some parameters and guardrails then that may help set it up for success and leading the next project that proving it out for the next time and continuing on.
Marc: [00:27:32] Great Great So maybe this is a great question to wrap up with So many of our community members are designers obviously and they're working with companies who might be a little resistant to adopting innovative sustainable approaches when it comes to doing less harm to the planet especially because of these approaches often costs more ,might take longer to get into production, all that stuff .So I'm wondering if you all have any tips or ways that designers can approach companies or even clients that are maybe a little bit resistant to doing more — creating more of a sustainable approach?
Shana: [00:28:04] The good news is that it's possible The bad news for most of us is that to get the attention of these leaders use you have to talk about how it's going to hit their profit and loss their P and L sheet So you have to figure out a very clever way to make the case for Implementing this change will actually save the company money.
And I know that sounds so crass and so disconnected and so horrible. But the truth is that's where a company will change behavior.
So taking us away for just one second from climate into diversity, equity, and inclusion — companies are now starting to implement these policies because they're getting sued. So they're willing to spend money on it and they're willing to make change because it's costing them money. They realized — McKinsey did a huge report (That's a management consulting firm that has global offices) that diverse teams, actually, they could find a lot more ROI with a product or a service when a diverse team came together to do the production.
So using the example that's not climate, So climate designers need to learn from that and figure out — maybe you're doing a presentation on, what's the short term is that maybe we can't save you money, The medium term is when you start to save money, and the long-term is when you're going to save lots of money.
And part of the the convincing factor is for this company to be so shortsighted, maybe there's another competitor around the corner That's going to take market share if this isn't implemented quicker also. Because most of us that are conscious consumers if we have to choose between two companies that do the exact same thing and one is more conscious around climate and ethics, most of us are going to put our money down to align with our own values.
So I think, again, just to restate what I stated, you have to take a big detour off what you're used to doing, which is, again, to try and convince them, because to all of us it makes sense. But for people that are being driven by profit you just — it's a translation. You just have to learn their language, speak it, do all of your convincing in their language and pull it back to what you know is better.
And that's that comes back to the leadership piece. That's the vision that you have that they don't have. That comes back to persuasion. You having the capacities and the competencies to take somebody that doesn't agree, And again, use your skills to get what you want. And again, I think, be willing to realize that this might not be a straight path forward. That you're going to have to take some back country roads, but keep your true north so that you get back to where you want to go. So that's why I said the good and the bad news. Yes, It's doable, too, You have to be very clever in how you do it
Brian: [00:30:47] Yeah I think the motivator may not always be money either I think understanding where if we keep talking about a general company what are those things that they hold sacred or that is truly most important maybe fear can be a motivator maybe because if apple were built today at launching the iPhone is revealed to be like super environmentally harmful that it would have been a flop who knows but I think it's the companies today the kind of paradigm for what people are generally accepting both on a kind of public level public perception and what governments are regulating and that may continue to evolve So there may be that fear of paradigm of here's this facing problem that we're going to have to figure out And we can use design thinking or a process to engage in this in a different way or it may just be that there's a intrinsic mission to doing good in the world and we just need a way to get there and to try and think about again shepherding that I think so often people have that process or that goal in mind but then you get into somewhat of a process and you realize it's going nowhere fast And so maybe the analytics and ability to bring back some feedback come into come into a process and evaluation of work would really be helpful here And that could be small that doesn't have to be like we're design thinking experts That could be just even in a small business like a designer could say Look I think I can help us get there it's I think it's about stepping up in many ways too And just sharing saying let me help figure out this process or I think I could help here So
Shana: [00:32:19] I think it's also examples If you can point to examples where in your industry using innovation and sustainable practices has worked that's really helpful tool that would be my addition
Sarah: [00:32:31] Yeah yeah so what I'm hearing from you is holding that vision of the bigger picture you're trying to help the business create a brand And so maybe one of the choices that you need to make in the short term might be [more] expensive But if you remember that it also costs money to do build to do brand building activities they're actually saving money from that other place because this is actually a brand building choice and just like thinking more holistically about that.
Brian: [00:33:01] Yeah It won't be a straight line ever And I think anyone looking for a straight line of here's some sort of profitability out of making these changes that's never going to be the case but I think yeah maybe getting the company to feel more comfort with discomfort maybe having the confidence in yourself to help lead that process I think those would all be a part of it and a lot of the skills and approaches that we look at in in the workshops they vary depending on the use case And I do think it's interesting to say how can we all build our arsenal of these skills and employ them at different times and know when to use them so often it's just that people don't even really take the first step in terms of embarking on even picking one of them it may just be a little bit of trial and error but yeah I think that's stepping up and saying I'm going to bring a sense that and shepherd it is going to be important Yeah
Sarah: [00:33:50] Yeah it's a whole host of skills.
Shana: [00:33:51] I think the idea about how can designers get the seat at the table and a what's so critical about being at the table is you want to be understanding what the leaders of your companies interests are. What their concerns are, what obstacles are they facing? So that's why you want to be at the table, and then how do you get there is probably a little bit more complex but I think it all comes down to, as much as you can, understand like what's going on with your company — how to get visibility in your company, what kind of committees might be around. Like how do you start to understand what the larger strategy of your company is. Yeah, I think that all of those play really an important part in trying to make change. Because, like, sustainable solutions are really effective, but if you can't convince anyone to do them and you don't know the language in which it's going to be effective then just remains an idea. And all of us just remain very frustrated that we don't see things changing.
Sarah: [00:34:48] For sure
I liked Shana how you brought in the example of diversity inclusion. And just to draw the analogy for anyone who wasn't paying attention, we are seeing similar trends in the climate space now where companies that have not been kind to their environmental ecosystems are being brought up into courts and maybe facing not just activism action but also legal action. And so part of what you're doing by adopting some of these sustainable practices is prevention of future liabilities like that.
I feel like we could talk about this for another hour but we do want to have a little bit of time for live audience questions. Before we do that, do either of you have anything else you'd like to share, or just tell us how people can learn more about your work and connect with you online?
Shana: [00:35:41] I don't have anything else to add. I'm really curious to hear what people's questions are. For me, I have two websites: One's ShanaDressler.com and that's my executive coaching work. And I also have a leadership consultancy called turquoise and the URL is turquoise.nyc. I do a lot of my work is project-based meaning working on soft skills training on an actual project which I found to be much more effective than pulling people off site to do a lot of disconnected just to bring in different workshop exercises and then they don't know how to then apply it back to their work. So that's a little bit about me
Brian: [00:36:18] Yeah And I'm really curious to learn about everyone's work as climate designers here but I would say with regard to Shana and myself reach out to Shana if it's something around the leadership training or the workshop that could be achieved. And I think that's a great place to start the conversation, we talk all the time but to channel things I think it'd be helpful to reach to Shana and or yeah I'm always excited about this. And I need to like look at more conversations on Twitter now and everything just to find out what are the ideas. And whereas the communities that are talking about this, I'm very intrigued.
Marc: [00:36:47] Great Great And before we wrap up just wanted to mention this to as many of you are listening and joining us live that climate designers is all about action, right? We're all about providing our community members with the tools and resources that they need to put climate at the center of their work And so we'd love to offer you all ways to level up and step into those leadership roles And so we're excited to be working with Shana and Brian on creating some sort of program to do that, and just full transparency, we don't really think that this program exists anywhere — the idea of bridging design, climate, and leadership.
And so as many of you know Sarah and I over the last however many months of building out climate designers we're really building the bike as we ride it in regards to creating this whole initiative. And so we're all on this journey together. We're co-creating the skills We feel you all climate designers need to have to take climate action. And we're really Excited to announce that we're going to be hopefully creating this program with Shana and Brian. So if you're interested in taking part in this program head to climate designers dot org slash leadership and you can sign up for more details as we build out the program and launch it and all those amazing things. Yeah.
So maybe with that, Shana, Brian, and thank you all for joining us on the on the podcast. And for those listening don't forget to subscribe, share this episode with any colleagues and the people that you work with that would benefit from listening to this interview
In this episode, Marc and Sarah sit down and have a delightful chat with illustrator and outdoor enthusiast Kika MacFarlane.
Kika makes lovely illustrations, often about oceans, forests, and mountains. She recently had her eyes opened to the potential of art as activism when one of her illustrations went viral on social media.
Since then she’s been collaborating with intersectional environmentalist founder Leah Thomas, among others, and her art has taken on a more activist tone, with messages like “Sustainability is an act of justice” and during the latest election season “Vote for oceans,” “Vote for forests.”
Get cozy and listen in as we discuss what goes through an artist’s mind when creating illustrations she hopes will ignite activism.
Links mentioned in this episode:* KikaMacFarlane.co * follow @kikamack on Instagram * Kika’s Toxic Gear Culture post * Kika’s profile on Climate Designers * Intersectional Environmentalist * CatchAFire — skills-based volunteer matching
Transcript:Sarah: [00:00:29] In this episode, Mark and I sit down and have a delightful chat with illustrator and outdoor enthusiast. Kika MacFarlane. Kika makes lovely illustrations often about oceans, forests, and mountains. She recently had her eyes opened to the potential of art as activism. When one of her illustrations went viral on social media. Since then she's been collaborating with intersectional environmentalist founder, Leah Thomas, among others. And her art has taken on a more activist tone. With messages like sustainability is an act of justice. And during the latest election season, vote for oceans, vote for forests. Our chat with Kika is coming up right after this brief message.
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Sarah: Hey, real quick. We want to tell you about the climate designers party program. This is a new kind of event because we are done with boring sustainability conferences or those business and design conferences with just one sustainability breakout session.
We're creating a two-week party centered around climate and focused 100% on a creative audience.
Marc: [00:01:32] Yeah, think 24 hour global kickoff events, design showcases networking opportunities and some live music and comedy performances. We're going to cover various topics, such as systems thinking, circular design, behavior, change, climate communications and environmental justice. So this is all happening March 1st through the 12th, 2021. So go ahead and check out ClimateDesigners.org/PartyProgram for more information.
Sarah: [00:01:58] let's party.
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Sarah: We are here with our latest guest Really excited to talk to you today.
Marc: [00:02:07] Yeah. Excited to introduce Kika McFarlane. She's a designer, illustrator, and all things creative. she's in, I believe Jackson hole Wyoming. Is that correct? Kika.
Kika: [00:02:18] Yes. It is .
Sarah: [00:02:19] We're so excited to chat with you.
Marc: [00:02:21] Yeah. Thanks for taking the time. we are super stoked to have you on, just a little bit of background, climate designers. We have an Instagram account, which we're actually just reached over a thousand followers. So thank you for all of those who are following us.
and Kiko, I think we discovered you on our Instagram feed. it was your post that you. that you shared, I think right before you went on a backpacking trip and you talked about how the outdoor space, ha is, is more or less, geared more towards. you know, it doesn't really, it's not really inclusive when it comes to people of color.
do you remember that post? Do you, can you explain a little more?
Kika: [00:02:59] Yeah, absolutely. that post I made was specifically talking about, toxic gear culture and I think we have all seen the ways, that the outdoor industry is predominantly white and wealthy, and very homogenous in that sense, but it was a personal realization that I had been one of the problems within that. And one of the ways that it is perpetuated is in our obsession with gear and I love outdoor activities. I spend a lot of time doing it and I work in the outdoor industry. So I would definitely consider myself a gearhead and have always had this kind of love for outdoor gear. And, you know, everyone has certain brands that they like, and it really is an obsession, within people who participate in these sports, these outdoor sports.
And I realized that that was a huge barrier for anyone trying to get into the outdoor world. Just to have the right gear, but also this culture that we had built around it that really prioritized brand names and shamed people for the brands that they were wearing or the clothes that they were wearing outside.
And these things that ultimately didn't matter and were kind of small things were, holding people back from being able to participate in entry-level sports. So it was definitely about inclusivity in the outdoors overall, but more about the specific issue within it that I had noticed, in my own life and, and things that I was doing in myself.
And, yeah.
Marc: [00:04:14] Yeah. And so just to tell people a little bit more of that particular story, you posted that right before your backpacking trip, and then you came back and apparently it blew up and you didn't really expect it to blow up as much as it did. I think you got a couple thousand likes and a ton of comments, right?
Kika: [00:04:31] Yeah, I think it was shared about 50,000 times had 10,000 likes, really made the rounds and really started this massive conversation, within people about, about the small things within the outdoors that make it hard for it to be inclusive for different groups.
Marc: [00:04:45] Great. Great. And so yeah, with that, I was like, Whoa, this, this person's bad-ass she just like called out a whole industry.
Right. And so, and so, you know, we look more into your work and, and, loved what you were doing. and so yeah, we basically just reached out and said, Hey, you should become a climate designer, you know, be featured on the website. And, and then eventually, we, We reached out to you for this podcast.
so I want to dive into speaking of your featured profile, in your description, you state that you want to quote unquote, utilize illustration to ignite activism. I would love for you to go a bit more into that. And, and specifically, what does that look like for you and how do you want people to respond to that?
Kika: [00:05:26] Yeah, that, that's a great question and segues really well. after talking about the toxic gear culture posts that I made. so I've come to realize recently through social media, how powerful digital illustration specifically is in igniting activism and eliciting a response from people. and I think the toxic gear culture post was the first time that I had really seen that happen to me or from something that I had created. But if you look at the past recent months in all these different realms of activism on social media, we really have seen this surge of digital illustrations being used as this tool to share information, really rapidly to spread a message.
And they're really visually beautiful. They're easy to digest and, there's just been this massive wave of them appearing on the internet. And that's something that I've started to focus my work on a lot, because I've realized that it is a really unique tool not only in sharing information and making things digestible and easy to share, but also in something a little bit more than that, you know, social media is so personal to everyone and, and what it comes down to is almost our identities, you know, we're on these websites, shaping who we are as people and the things that we post and the things that we share.
And I I've started to realize that, you know, people sharing a post about cutting back on plastic. Sure to a certain extent it's to tell their followers, Hey, plastic is bad. And here's why, but it's also, it's, it's also waving this flag of like, I am trying to cut back on plastic. This is who I am as a person.
And so it comes back to this like identity and to showing people that they care, which I think is pretty cool and unique. And there has been a lot of pushback, I think from people calling it this new wave of Instagram activism, you know, all these people are just out here, like sharing these photos. These were like viral digital illustrations.
And what does that really doing? And I think that that is important to think about to a certain extent, because it is important to do more than just share something it's important to. You know, go out there and protest and to write letters for whatever it is that the cause is. But I think that people often overlook what's happening on a large scale, you know, when we are sharing these digital illustrations, we are shaping our identity overall, and we're changing who we are as people and what we care about.
And I think that that is really, really powerful.
Sarah: [00:07:37] Yeah, that's hugely powerful stuff. I love it. And I have to admit, I am really inspired by what you're putting out there. And I'd love to chat with you. as an illustrator, as a designer, a little bit about your process, you know, like just thinking about anyone who's inspired to do this sort of digital activism, even though people poopoo it. you know, it's one of the few things that we feel like we can do when we're all in lockdown and aren't really out marching in the streets that much. And, You know, like if we live in a small town, we can't get out to the protest or we want to be able to do something.
We can at least post it on our social media and the way that you do it, it's really beautiful. If somebody scrolls through your Instagram feed. at Kika Mack, M a C K. you'll see, you know, you have a lot of similar color palettes and the illustrations cover a range of styles, but they feel pretty loose and casual and fun.
there's kind of a mosaic style and a little scribble doodle style that you have going on for a lot of them. And it. It almost, it almost appears like they're effortless. So I really want to know, like, how do you come up with what you're drawing? Are they, commissioned from someone else? Or do you draw it first? And then someone says, Ooh, make me one of those. Or how does it all work? And how long does one take you? And all of that?
Kika: [00:09:01] That's a good question. it totally depends on the subject or what it is. I certainly do a lot of freelancing commissions, and work with different organizations in that realm. But most of the things that I post and create are just from my own personal experiences.
For example, the toxic gear culture post, and a lot of my activism posts are kind of ways to hold myself accountable. There are things that I recognize within myself and, you know, art is very personal and my Instagram before the toxic gear culture happened was very personal as well. So it was less about, the intention behind it was less about, Oh, is this going to be something that 50,000 people share? It was more about, wow, this is an experience that I'm having. And I hope that, others can relate or that I can learn from it by putting it out there. but I have noticed now that my, tactics and thinking about what I'm posting have definitely changed, and I've also been more strategic with using illustration as a tool.
To get these messages across. so an example is I recently found out about this massive open pit gold mining proposal on the South fork of the salmon river. And immediately I was like, this is something that a lot of people are talking about and a great way to spread that message would be through digital illustration.
So I just sat down and created one and posted it and, Saw the way it said it was immediately shared and that this message of a potential goldmine was shared really rapidly ending brands started to be aware of it. so in that sense, like the things that come up, or that I learned about that, I feel like maybe people aren't knowing about I'm using illustration as a tool, intentionally there, but I also, a lot of my illustrations are just personal things that I connect to.
Sarah: [00:10:38] Very cool. Yeah. I think, The idea that you just, you kind of call yourself out or hold yourself accountable and say things that are personal really resonates with me. rather than trying to think of something that To put it out there, thinking that you want 50,000 people to share it, I think is what holds a lot of people back.
and rather than thinking that at the get-go, when you share things that are personal and for you, that's what really strikes the chord. And you know, every once in a while, the, the chord sings and, and everybody picks it up and it takes off. But I don't think you can plan that.
Kika: [00:11:15] I think that's very true.
Marc: [00:11:17] You know, something I, I always share with my students. I teach a class at CCA called common designers, for undergrad graphic design and interaction design students. and, and something that we also share in our presentations, is that designers, illustrators anyone in the creative space, we have, a number of amazing super powers. And one of them is that we can take really complex ideas and turn them into something that can, that will make them more approachable, so that anyone can approach it and be like, Oh, I get it now. Right. And I'm not saying that designers need to explain every single thing, but yeah.
Well, the way that I look at it is like, let's hook people's attention. Let's get there, grab their attention. And if the designer illustrator filmmaker, if they do a good job and there's a really strong call to action, then that person will want to go further. They'll want to go and learn more. They want to go donate, sign the pledge, download, et cetera, et cetera.
So, do you have any, like, what's your thought process when it comes to what you want people to do? In a post after they read a post, like D does that come to mind at all when you're putting these together?
Kika: [00:12:26] Definitely. And again, it depends on, on what the post is specifically. but for a lot of them, you know, I, I hope to, to call people in and for example, tell them about this mining proposal.
And then within the posts, use that as a place to help people write letters to the forest service, leave comments, explain to all of the next action steps because you're right. It totally is that like hook, can we pull them in and can we take this issue? like if it is an open pit gold mine or something, a climate issue, can we make it emotional and can we make it personal?
And how do we get people to connect with it? Because that is what will drive them to do that next step. whatever it is that call to action.
Marc: [00:13:03] Yeah. And having a very strong call to action is, is really key. I want to shift gears a little bit. So you work with the intersectional environmentalist organization.
Can you share with our listeners a bit more about the organization, and what you do for them?
Kika: [00:13:16] Yeah, absolutely. so intersectional environmentalist is started by Leah Thomas, who I met while we were both working at Patagonia and she is an amazing environmental activist who at the start of the summer and the start of the black lives matter movement, had an experience similar to mine with the toxic gear culture posts, where she created a post about environmentalists for black lives matter and about, intersectional environmentalism that really went viral. That really struck a chord with people because it was, this message that had been missing from our whitewashed environmental movement for so long and, early on when it was just being started and she was just putting it together after she had made that post, she reached out to me, asking for some help with graphics for social media. Some digital illustrations, like we've been talking about, and I was really excited to jump on it because it is, this kind of complex and lofty idea, you know, we're, we're so used to thinking of environmentalism and then, racial justice as these really separate, activist ideas.
And so to, to find a way using illustration to bridge those and to boil down, like why. There is a connection and why it's important to have that conversation together was something I was really excited to do. So I created a series of graphics for her about that. That really focused on, you know, why, why racial justice is climate justice?
And I think what Leah Thomas has been doing is really cool because it's waking up a lot of people up to, the fact that, that this is, this is huge, that the groups who are often the least contributors to pollutants are the one who are most effected by climate change, that these voices have been.
Completely erased or not invited to the environmental conversation, but they're the ones who, who are being the most adversely affected. so I've been really inspired by the work that she has done, and it's really excited to get to help in the illustration sphere on that front.
Marc: [00:15:09] That's awesome. And it's only a few months old, correct?
Kika: [00:15:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah. she started at the beginning of the summer and they really were able to grow into a huge organization very quickly.
Marc: [00:15:20] And so someone who is pretty tapped into, the space, you know, climate activism and things, is that, or has that been moving the needle in this conversation?
Kika: [00:15:30] Absolutely.
Yeah, I think it has for sure. I, I mean, a huge testament to that is the fact that it has grown so much that so many people have followed and pledged their support. and also the amount of brands and other organizations who have worked with Leah Thomas and intersectional environmentalism. To make their environmentalism more intersectional to invite more voices to the table, to put black indigenous and people of color at the forefront of these conversations.
there's definitely been a huge change and there there's so much work to be done, but I think it is really cool that we've been able to see that start to happen.
Sarah: [00:16:05] it is really cool. And I am really excited that you, you know, bring your expressive style and color, and there's just a real joy. In your art style. just speaking like art school critique style, like the colors and the expressive gestural, you know, casual way that you, you illustrate is just really fun and joyful, and it, it really shows through the love that you have for the outdoors.
And, yeah, I think it's really brilliant and I love that you're, out here speaking for the earth and, and doing the good work.
Kika: [00:16:41] Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I mean,
Sarah: [00:16:44] thank you.
Marc: [00:16:45] What would you say to, as we wrap up, what would you say to a young emerging artist, illustrator designer who finds themselves at the intersection with their interests around creativity, as well as climate and the environment, what would you say to them in terms of just how they can start to blend those things together?
Like what you were doing?
Kika: [00:17:04] I would definitely encourage them to focus their work on themselves in their community, you know, there is so much change and so much design potential that can happen in our spaces immediately around us. And it's very easy to, become so overwhelmed by how many designers there are in the world and how many fights there are to fight.
and just recentering it back to that personal connection and to the things that are happening immediately around you is a great way to create something that is authentic and that will make a difference. and just reaching out to local organizations and volunteering design work, is such an amazing way to gain experience and to make a difference.
I definitely got started doing climate design work through Catchafire. And finding organizations who needed, designs to help, help spread their environmental messages, and just volunteering my time because I can do it digitally and it was really easy. and that was a wonderful way to learn, but just, you know, find it, finding where the need is around you and staying true to, to what makes sense for you and to what really impacts you and the people around you is a great way to center it.
Sarah: [00:18:05] Catchafire is a great resource too. I've never heard of them. So I'll definitely check that out.
Kika: [00:18:10] Yeah, I would definitely recommend it. It's also a great way, like right now with, the global pandemic and everything and staying inside, you know, it's been so hard to find volunteering opportunities and to give back, but they have a ton of digital volunteering opportunities online, so.
Sarah: [00:18:23] Awesome. And where's the best way for someone to find your work online? I know you have website Instagram, all this stuff. Where would you have someone to go.
Kika: [00:18:31] Yes. you can follow me on Instagram at Kika Mack. K I K a M a C K, or, KikaMacFarlane.co.
Sarah: [00:18:40] Awesome. Thank you so much for chatting with us today.
Kika: [00:18:43] Thank you guys. I'm so honored that you reached out and it was great to chat.
Marc: [00:18:46] I appreciate it. You got to keep doing the good work.
Bartlett Brands is a small studio in San Francisco who creates gorgeous brands, specializing in eco-friendly packaging design for indie cosmetics and personal care products.
We sat down to chat with founder Rebecca Bartlett and Art Director Lauren Golik about their incredibly innovative strategies to make the most environmentally sustainable decisions for products and packaging without sacrificing aesthetics and that “wow” factor so desired in luxury personal care products.
As you listen, be sure to give @BartlettBrands a follow on Instagram!
Links mentioned in this episode:* BartlettBrands.com * The Great Pacific Garbage Patch * AIGA SF Eco Warrior Design Series * Biossance * Bartlett Brands’ Planet First Pledge * Rent the Runway * Ace of Air * One Year with Less Packaging — Glossier offers option to opt-out of the pink pouch and other extra packaging * The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy document * Project Drawdown * Recology Tour and Napa Composting Tour
Episode Transcript:Marc: [00:00:29]
All right. Welcome back to another We Are Climate Designers podcast. My name is Marc and Sarah is joining right now. (laughs) Um, yeah, we're pretty excited to have not one but two guests for this podcast, Rebecca Bartlett and Lauren Golik, They work for Bartlett brands, which is an award winning boutique branding agency from cosmetics to consumables. They bring the all girl power to creating brands that challenge status and cut through the quo, Rebecca and Lauren. Welcome to the podcast.
Rebecca: [00:01:05]
Thank you for having us. We're excited to be here.
Marc: [00:01:08]
Very cool. So yeah, we have a number of questions we would love to chat with you all about. Before we dive in, maybe you could give us a little bit of introduction, the two of you, about who you are and what you do.
Rebecca: [00:01:19]
Sure. I'm Rebecca, the principal and creative director of Bartlett brands. As Marc said, we are a small and mighty team. We're based in San Francisco, focused on CPG in a lot of personal care and wellness and skincare cosmetics, food and beverage, essentially all the things that I like, and that are interesting. and yeah, my background is packaging. So I started in packaging about 20 years ago, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, at Louise Fili Ltd.
And it was always my dream to be in packaging. And then 15 years later. So, you know, maybe about five years ago, when we discovered that there was an Island of trash floating in the ocean, I realized that that was all of my trash from my career. And so we set out to atone for our sins and try to do better, you know, as, as experts in packaging and design, we're kind of the first to be empowered to make a difference and sort of change the outlook of the future on that Island of trash.
Lauren: [00:02:23]
And I am Lauren. I am the art director at Bartlett brands. So I. as far as just like what I do, I take the brand strategy and convert that into the visuals that you see about a brand. And my background is also in packaging, for about 10 years in, mostly the personal care space and then started at Bartlett brands in 2016 and was very excited that Rebecca shared my passion for sustainability. It's also something that it was always like on my radar, but I definitely also had that like, aha moment, around the same time when all of this horrible stuff was coming out about the trash islands. So it's been really amazing to be able to make that something that our studio is all about.
And last year we partnered with the AIGA, on the eco warrior series. And that was a four-part talk series that we did back when you could do talks in person. And, it was a wonderful experience for all of us. We couldn't believe how successful it was. And there was a waiting list and people were just so excited about the content.
So, yeah, that was just like a really important thing for us. And we're going to continue with that. You know this year and beyond, and we're very excited about it.
Rebecca: [00:03:43]
It's been so interesting to see the momentum from, you know, when we started with, I would say our first truly. Sustainable client. in 2016 we were branding Biossance, they're an indie beauty brand now leading the clean beauty movement in Sephora. They were our first client that I would say really had sustainability as a core value. I mean, I think that along the way, we've had a lot of clients where we've been able to make big changes for them, while sustainability maybe wasn't a core value, but for Biossance, it really was.
And so when we were working on that and trying to move the needle, I think we were discovering that our industry was really behind in terms of this. And so the beginnings of this was like, we were talking on panels and circuits and like, you know, people were coming to us and they were interested in sustainability, but there wasn't really a lot of options for indie brands out there as we were doing sourcing and trying to do the best we could, you know, unless you have really high MOQ and millions of dollars, you know, your options are very limited. So it kind of started from this place of frustration where we're like, man, we want to do better for our clients.
What can we do? And now, you know, four or five years later, we are seeing a lot of progress and a lot more education and designers are more educated about the field and how they can do packaging better. And clients are more aware and consumers obviously are the ones driving all of this.
Sarah: [00:05:16]
Yeah. I wanted to interject real quick and define some industry terms. So CPG is consumer packaged goods. Any merchandise that customers basically use up and throw away. So can you talk a little bit more about, you know, is that just cosmetics and beauty products? Is it also food? What does, do you have a specific focus within that?
Rebecca: [00:05:35]
Yeah, our focus has historically been in personal care. And some food and beverage. Yeah. So, I mean, when you're thinking about personal care or you're thinking about dream creams and oils and things that are going to slather on your body and put in your hair, very often single use one and done, very often plastic bottles. or very specialized types of, dispensers for these where, you know, the product can't touch air, you know, we're talking about like one or two ounces of product in a plastic container that gets used for 30 days and then thrown out.
Lauren: [00:06:15]
And not even just one type of plastic, like seven types of plastic and maybe like a metal spring.
Rebecca: [00:06:20]
yeah.
Lauren: [00:06:21]
So it's. Yeah, I think a lot of people think about food first, when you think about sustainability and packaging, because food is kind of even more, ephemoral than personal care. Like you use it for like a day and then it's gone, but personal care is a huge, huge sector. And it's still so much plastic, even if you're using it for 30 days, not two days. It's still really big. And I think it took a little bit longer for people to think about that area of their lives. Like they're thinking about the kitchen where the recycling bin is, but they might not be thinking about it in their bathroom.
Marc: [00:06:57]
Great. Great. Rebecca. I want to come back to a comment you made, about five or so years ago, the studio had this, what we like to call, kind of a climate epiphany. And you recognized the fact that you were, kind of contributing to this waste, this issue of plastic waste in the world, whether it's in landfills or in the ocean.
And then you also mentioned how, designers back, you know, five or so years ago were asking very different questions or maybe even no questions regarding this versus what they're asking now, what I want to go into that a bit more specifically. It's 2020. sustainability and design is, it's a thing. It's definitely a thing. And it's amazing that more designers are focusing on that, what are some things that designers still aren't getting or understanding or considering when it comes to design and even more specifically packaging design?
Rebecca: [00:07:54]
Yeah. I mean, I think overall, the first thing that you want to think of is creating less, right?
So, you know, it's so fun to design a million things and especially coming from a space of prestige packaging, or luxury packaging, luxury experience, the whole experience, you know, we do a lot of direct to consumer. And so it's like every moment of the experience is like this. Thing. so kind of like the step one from that is, well, you know, our clients might have the budget to create all the things and we want to have the most wow experience you could possibly have, it really kind of comes back to step one, being like,
How can we actually create less?
How can we create a wow experience? Now we're thinking about like creating wow experiences, where there is a durable package that could be refilled, you know, it's, it's such a wow experience. It is like an expensive and non trash-like piece of packaging.
And you're going to put your focus there. Versus on six different things that go in your shipping container that immediately get thrown away after you've taken a picture of it for Instagram. so I think that's kind of the first thing that we think about. you know, I think the world is changing in personal care too, around thinking about innovative formats that don't require certain types of packaging, like pumps where it's just like the end of life for a pump is a landfill. And even if it's a pump made out of a single material, it's still going in a landfill. Cause it looks like a pump. you know, and so this idea of still, creating less, you know, avoiding single use and eliminating all the unnecessary elements.
So you can still have a "wow" experience, but you just have to be a little bit smarter and a little more creative on how you create the wow without necessarily using more stuff.
Lauren: [00:09:45]
One thing I would add there is. Kind of the way we look at it is we sort of think about how we can create less, first.
And then we go into choosing our materials. People, I think, just automatically think about materials and Oh, what can I do that's biodegradable, but I, I kinda tell people that biodegradable is sort of planning for the worst case scenario that if it ends up in the ocean, but if you actually think about it, Because only 4% or something like that of Americans have access to compost.
There isn't really like a good waste stream for these things that are compostable and biodegradable. And unless you're in a couple of major Metro cities that have composting sort of like it's going to end up in a landfill anyway, because it's non-recyclable, so, I don't know. I think people think that biodegradability is the thing that's going to solve all of our problems, but to Rebecca's point, just creating less and maybe trying to do more in the reuse area can have a bigger impact right now while we don't have more prevalent composting facilities in our country, at least.
Sarah: [00:10:51]
Very cool. I am really curious to know how your clients perceive the work that you're doing and the Planet pledge that you've taken in terms of like, do you have to convince clients to go along with your philosophy or is it more that clients seek you specifically because of your philosophy?
Rebecca: [00:11:13]
Yeah. In the beginning, when we first posted the pledge, the Planet First pledge, that is, I think that our clients were a mix of ones that were sustainably minded or at least liked the idea of it and ones that weren't. So the ones that aren't, you can kind of strong arm them, right?
Because again, you know, the customer has expectations unless they want to hear about their overuse of packaging on Instagram, you know, get in line. But when it comes down to it, You know, when we're doing sourcing and we're like, okay, you know, especially a few years ago, PCR. So post consumer recycled plastics were hard to get they're more expensive, you know, like making these changes, costed more money.
And so the ones that really didn't have that as like a core value, were not excited to pay more. And so like a lot of times, they'd be like, Yeah. Yeah. All good. All good. All good. Oh, well we pay 12 cents more per unit, maybe not.
But since we've been sort of talking about it and we're known for this particular topic, we do get a lot of interest from clients that are like, not only do we want to be sustainable, that we were getting clients that are like, we want to change the whole picture.
So right now we're working with a brand that we've been working on for almost three years. That's creating a completely circular, beauty and wellness brand. And we've touched every single part of that journey to complete the circle and it's like radically different than anything else.
So, you know, now we, we do get interest from clients who know that we have expertise in this and that we're also passionate about it, yet,because the background again is still creating these beautiful and premium pieces, we're still delivering on the thing that the customer actually wants, which is like cool ass products and cool ass brands.
I think that's one thing that we have seen over time where it's like, consumers want to feel good and everyone wants to do the right thing. But in a lot of cases, they're not really willing to go out of their way, you know, to do something uncomfortable or like to sacrifice. so, you know, we kind of are at that bridge of being able to deliver on like an excellent consumer experience without compromise.
Sarah: [00:13:35]
Yeah, I think that's one of the things that's so cool about the work that you're doing at Bartlett Brands, is that it doesn't feel like what comes to mind when we think of earth friendly branding or planet friendly products, you know, it doesn't have that sort of like granola hippie vibe. It still feels and looks like any commercial brand. Right. And I think you've been walking that line really well.
Rebecca: [00:14:01]
Thank you.
Sarah: [00:14:01]
Could I ask you to talk a little bit more about creating a circular brand? Marc and I talk about circular economy a little bit, but I think this is a really great opportunity to put it into some specifics about what exactly is different and maybe even what that means for some who don't know.
Rebecca: [00:14:17]
Yeah, I mean, for this particular brand, it's actually, if you could think of sort of like Rent the Runway where you're buying your product and borrowing the package. You'll be sending it back through a very high tech series of online actions. They have an app and all this stuff, proprietary cleaning and fulfillment center.
What they've tried to do is remove the friction at every single moment. So we break it down. It's like, okay, Let's talk about the experience of sending something back. Oh, it's a huge pain in the ass. It's like, I gotta find a printer and like my printer's out of ink and like, okay, now I gotta schedule UPS to come.
Oh, well we're in COVID. And like, UPS isn't coming to my area, you know? And it's just like, there's so many areas of friction throughout the entire system. it's not just like that moment that you need to send something back. It's like, So many moments. and so, you know, as we were going through their process of doing this, not just from like sending something back, but, you know, designing the packaging, you're like, okay, let's think about how we can create something that delivers on all the things that you've become accustomed to when you spend a lot of money on a fancy, fancy serum.
You know, like how it comes out and what happens when you close it and how much exactly comes out. you know, trying to kind of like reinvent that with different materials has been nothing short of almost impossible.
Lauren: [00:15:46]
And they wanted to use like no plastic if possible. so we were forced to kind of explore new materials that we hadn't worked with before, which was really fun, but also really hard.
Rebecca: [00:15:56]
Right, right. Like materials that generally usually do not come in contact with like, Certain types of, effective skincare ingredients, let's say, you know, so there was like along, the way so many times where we're like, I don't know if that's going to be possible or like a vendor's like, I don't know if that's going to be possible.
The CEO of this company is. Relentless in her pursuit. And you know, here we are three years later, it was supposed to launch this summer. It's now holding a little bit, but, everyone can sign up for emails to be notified of their launch online at AceOfAir.com, they're called Ace of Air , and you know, she has, she has pushed everyone, you know, to make this thing far exceed anything that's ever been out there before.
Lauren: [00:16:43]
Yeah. And we, you know, we don't like to use the term zero waste because it's kind of like impossible, but I would say it's the closest thing to zero waste that exists.
The shipping container even is reusable many, many times everything's meant to be reused many, many times.
Sarah: [00:17:01]
So you, you order this product from their website. And then it's shipped to you in a package and then you use it and then you use an app that you've also designed to tell them that you need to ship the product back and get a new one or something like that. And then that whole thing is part of the experience you've designed.
That's amazing.
Is that right?
Lauren: [00:17:22]
Yeah. Hopefully launching very soon.
Marc: [00:17:24]
And I love this and it reminds me of just the conversation we were having before we hit record on this podcast. You know, especially young designers, I think young designers, or even just, you know, newly graduated designers, they focus on the one thing that they're really good at.
So designing a website or, you know, in this case, maybe a package, but it's so important to encourage designers to think, not just about that one particular touch point, but every part of the project, every part of the system, every part of the thing, the brand. And I loved how, You know, Rebecca, you're kind of walking us through some of the touch points that need to be, be considered to really truly make this a more circular brand, circular experience.
And so, you know, I think with young designers out there, or even just design educators, you know, we really need to start to push young designers to think more in systems and think more broadly in terms of how we design and what we design and that every single touch point needs to be considered. It's not just the one artifact anymore. It's the overall experience.
Rebecca: [00:18:28]
Yeah, I think that's so true. And definitely if it, you know, if design hasn't shifted to that yet. It should. Right, because it is all about this experience. Every touch point contributes to the overall experience.
Lauren: [00:18:43]
Yeah. And I think that's true about sustainability. and I think it's true about branding in general.
Marc: [00:18:48]
Yeah, and I want to, go back to something that Sarah mentioned just a few minutes ago, about how a lot of the stuff you're designing, that a lot of the stuff that we see on your website, doesn't have that stereotypical, you know, sustainability brand and stuff. How I mean, and, and the work that we do, we kind of strive to do the same with our clients.
What do you suggest for clients who are maybe thinking about it or know that they have to, if they really want to kind of amplify the brand or whatever it is that they're working on?
Rebecca: [00:19:15]
Yeah. I mean, I think it starts with you kind of fear-mongering them around the fact that like, unless they want to hear about it on Instagram, like their customer, you know, like for example, Glossier launched their products in that pink bubble bag.
It was so iconic. I mean, people collected it. It was just, and then years later, I forget what exactly this happened. Maybe last year people started being like, You're sending me a, a chunk of plastic that like is actually just waste. And, you know, like their consumers took to Instagram or like, we don't want you to do this anymore, you know?
And then they released their holiday packaging in, you know, pulp works, pulp form packaging. That looks as cool as every one of their experiences always delivers on this cool factor, you know, but it's something that's biodegradable.
I don't think I totally answered your question.
Rebecca: [00:20:09]
I think I'm trying to say that it starts with the consumer. Yeah. Because in the end, if they come to us and they're like, you know, we like the idea of sustainability, but we're not really like willing to do anything to actually help make it happen, there's not much we can, we can do some things for them, but. Sometimes they're having to pay for it a little more or, you know, partner with a third party. It's an uphill battle. We work best with clients that are sustainably minded in some sense, or at least get it.
Lauren: [00:20:39]
Yeah. I mean, I mean, I feel lucky cause I feel like we've gotten to a point where we can be more selective with our clients.
So we probably wouldn't take on a client that wanted to do like. Some crazy wasteful packaging. We'd just be like, nah, we're good. but yeah, there's so much data now to support the fact that consumers want to spend more money on brands that align with all their values, not even just about sustainability, but you know about other things about people and you know, everything.
So it's kind of easier. I mean, it's getting easier and easier to convince people that it's a good return on your investment besides being a good thing to do for the world.
Sarah: [00:21:16]
Yeah, I think that's key. I think there's an element of longer term thinking in that, and there's an element of a complete culture change of when you're running a business, you don't need to just think about the cheapest way to get something built.
You're also thinking about. Yeah. That's where the longterm thinking comes in. how is this going to be appreciated or valued by your audience? How is it going to help build your brand? How is it going to bite you in the butt later on?
Lauren: [00:21:46]
I think also the there's like that cultural shift that's happening too.
With consumers, they're wanting to buy fewer higher quality things, like with the decline of fast fashion, we've seen it. so I think that goes hand in hand where people aren't wanting to buy just the cheapest crap and then throw it out. They'd rather find something that's more of an investment, but is going to make them happier over time.
Rebecca: [00:22:13]
Yeah. I saw, a stat in a consumer data paper, just like a couple of days ago, right now, around the strongest motivators for purchase right now, granted, we are in this COVID state where it's like everything we buy, it's like such a big deal to obtain things right now, especially if you're in San Francisco, like it means you're going to wait in line or you're going to be like, you know, refreshing the Good Eggs app constantly until you can get a delivery window. So you're hyper aware of where you're spending your money. But anyway, this report had said that the strongest motivators for purchase are how companies treat their employees, community, and how they're giving back. Right. And, and, you know, we're, we're just like so aware of this now, if you're going to stand in line for 45 minutes, who are you giving your money to.
Marc: [00:23:00]
Yeah, there's definitely a handful of, of brands that I am a fan of and it's, for those reasons, you know, I think a lot of people are waking up and realizing I'd rather spend my money on something that I know is going to last.
And I know that came from a good place.
Rebecca: [00:23:15]
Yeah. And you're also thinking about like, at the end of this, which brands do you want to still be around? You know, you're truly connected to them and that you're supporting them to exist in our world when things reopen.
Marc: [00:23:28]
Yeah. Yeah. Last question, before we close out. So what advice would you give a young designer who is perhaps still in design school or just is about to graduate. What advice would you give a young designer who is interested in doing more climate related work, whether it is packaging or something else?
What advice? Any resources, any places you can point them to?
Lauren: [00:23:50]
Sure, my advice, when I talk to students that are really into this is just learn everything you can. We love the Ellen MacArthur foundation, the new plastics economy document, like, blew our minds and opened our eyes and really helped shape our approach to how we approach packaging. So definitely they're an amazing resource.
Project Drawdown. I know you guys talk about them a lot at Climate Designers, but they're amazing and have all sorts of free learning tools.
And then the other advice that I have is to sort of talk to everyone that you can. Go to meet ups, like the climate designers meet up, and just tell everyone what you're passionate about and what you want to do.
And I believe that if you sort of put it out into the universe, what you want and tell everyone that you can it'll come back to you and opportunities will open up.
Rebecca: [00:24:43]
Yeah, I would say for, for graduates, especially graduates who are looking for jobs now where, you know, maybe you wanted to work for a nonprofit, or maybe you wanted to work for Patagonia because you want to live out your dream of being this climate activist through your work.
you know, it might feel just like impossible to find that job. That's going to be the one where you're going to be. You know, shaping the landscape of the future, but I just want to say, like, we didn't come into being climate designers from that angle. You know, my passion has always been packaging. And so, you know, I wanted a packaging job and now I'm packaging expert, and now we know about how we can make great packaging choices and really any job would be like that.
So, you know, you can be a Climate Designer in any job you decide to take where it's like, you know how to make smarter decisions, you know how to make those incremental changes. In an entry level job, sometimes people don't feel that they're empowered to change a company and change a business, but you know, in your role, in your position, you can do the best you can. Again, back to what Lauren was saying by being very educated on making those decisions.
And then the other thing, you know, not to lose sight of is of course, the amount of power that the consumer has. So, you know, as a consumer, speak up and tell your brands what you want from them, or if they're doing things that you don't like, you are also empowered in that way to do that. Speak up in the workplace, speak up at home, and let your brands know what you're looking for in terms of taking a positive climate action.
Lauren: [00:26:20]
Yeah. And make sure you're doing all the right things at home with recycling and just kind of practicing what you preach and, you know, people will see what you're doing. And that makes a difference too.
Rebecca: [00:26:31]
Yeah, actually, that was also very formative for us in addition to honing in on our expertise around designing better, you know, tour Recology. That was kind of mind blowing when you actually see where your trash goes. All of these things that you thought are just not true. so as part of, you know, educating yourself, your home behavior makes a really big difference too. and there's definitely a right and wrong, and it is not clear a lot of times what that right and wrong is so as part of educating yourself, you know, you can change your behavior and make a difference over the course of your life.
Sarah: [00:27:11]
Yeah, one thing that was really eye opening to me with sheltering in place with my mother in Wisconsin, instead of in San Francisco, where we have very robust recycling and composting program.
And here in small town, Wisconsin, there really is so much less that you can actually throw in the recycling bin and there is no industrial composting situation. It's like, Oh, we're actually quite lucky in the San Francisco area. Not the rest of the country is like that.
Lauren: [00:27:40]
Yeah. People, I don't think everyone knows how it is outside of the bubble.
Sarah: [00:27:43]
No. Yeah. So,
Lauren: [00:27:45]
yeah, if you are in the Bay area, we did the Recology tour and we did the Napa composting tour and both were phenomenal. And we learned a crazy amount of information as consumers and designers.
Marc: [00:27:57]
I mean who doesn't like to visit a landfill or recycling.
Lauren: [00:28:00]
Yeah. It smells lovely.
Rebecca: [00:28:02]
No, seriously. I remember people like what do we do for fun?
We're like, yeah. We're really fun girls. Wanna go to a recycling plant?
Marc: [00:28:09]
I remember those field trips in grade school. Yeah. It's a blast. It's it's informative. It's eye-opening. So yeah, highly recommend it.
Sarah: [00:28:16]
Any infrastructure tours are very eye opening. Oh, cool. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us. Can you, give us a little bit, your URL, your social media, where, where can we find you and connect with you for more chit chat?
Rebecca: [00:28:30]
Sure. Yeah. We're at BartlettBrands.com and you can find us on Instagram @BartlettBrands, or Google search Bartlett Brands
Lauren: [00:28:38]
and definitely keep an eye on our Instagram in the next couple of months, because we're going to be figuring out how to do another Eco-Warrior series over webinar.So that will be fun
Rebecca: [00:28:50]
expanding beyond the Bay.
Lauren: [00:28:51]
That is the good thing about it.
Rebecca: [00:28:52]
Yeah.
Marc: [00:28:53]
Yeah. We'll definitely share that amongst our Climate Designers community.
Rebecca: [00:28:57]
Definitely.
Sarah: [00:28:57]
All right. Great chatting with you. Thank you so much.
Rebecca: [00:28:59]
Thanks guys.
Lauren: [00:29:00]
Thank you guys for having us.
Rebecca: [00:29:01]
Bye.
Jonny Black is a green graphic designer, one of the founders of Cast Iron Design, who specializes in branding, web design, packaging, and environmentally responsible print production.
In this interview we chat about how — and why — Jonny merged his passion for environmentalism with his expertise in graphic design, and what some of the unexpected perks and benefits have been since the two converged.
Follow along with Jonny’s exploration of sustainable design on the Cast Iron Design Instagram.
Links mentioned in this episode:* Cast Iron Design * Green Graphic Design by Brian Doherty * Living Ink in Colorado * Dieline
New! Episode Transcript:[00:00:00]
Sarah: Hey, I'm here with Marc and I'm really excited to introduce Johnny Black, graphic designer extraordinaire. He is hanging out with us today. He's a proficient typographer print production specialist, and all around visual wizard from Cast Iron studios —
Marc: Great bio!
Sarah: — Cast Iron Design — who specializes in branding, web packaging and environmentally responsible print production. Hey Johnny. Thanks for being here.
[00:01:00]
Jonny: Thanks . I'm excited to be here.
Sarah: Yeah!
Marc: so, yeah. Thanks for taking the time, man. You know, you have your studio Cast Iron Design and in your about section or in this case, your studio page, you have a section on sustainable graphic design. So the question for you, why as a designer, did you choose this particular route or approach to design in terms of sustainable graphic design?
Jonny: Um, yeah, we just see it as a way to maximize revenue primarily. Um, no, I'm joking. Um, no, I mean, there's so many reasons like I think the first thing that comes to mind is that it, you know, like you spend, we spend so much time at work, Just doing the work that we do. And if it doesn't have, if you don't feel like it has purpose, and you ha you're in a position to choose something that has purpose, then I would highly encourage everybody to do that regardless of what that purpose is.
[00:02:00]
And for me, that's, you know, sustainability, green graphic design, or whatever label you want to give it. and, yeah, just it makes the work and, the overall life experience more enriching because you're doing something that actually, you know, you think matters. Um, so there's the personal part of it.
And then, I think there's a lot of other really great, sort of repercussions. I mean, personally, I think it's a, I feel a sort of. pull to do this work. I was in a position about 10 years ago, actually almost exactly, when, I was like this environmentalist on one side and this passionate designer, on the other side and they never really converged.
I took this course in grad school. Called critical issues in design and they sort of, merged the two. I didn't really realize that green graphic design was a thing. And, through that course, I came across Green Graphic Design by Brian Doherty, shout out to Brian. That's a great book. It still holds up.
[00:03:00]
And then, yeah, just like slowly got, this idea moving and It really turned the trajectory of my life. I realized through the book and through the class that designers have so much power, right? Like we're at this, point of inflection where, we're like the gatekeepers between, the business and the product, right? We're, one of the last pieces in the channel of commerce. And I think there's huge opportunities for designers to take a moral stance, an ethical stance and make sure that the work that they're doing is something that they believe in. If you're in the position to be able to make that decision.
So we, we find that by doing sustainable design that we have better clients for instance.
Aa lot of people have, people tell all the — in the industry, they always tell horror stories about clients. Like we have, we have one really bad client experience, I would say. And that's it. I think almost all the people that we work with are really good people.
[00:04:00]
And I think part of that is because we weed out, you know, the, the shitty people, if you will, the people that, if they read something about sustainability on our website and they're like, nah, then. Yeah. That's, that's not the people for us. Right. And we don't want them to contact us. Um, and so, you know, needless to say, we're not getting any inquiries from Exxon or BP or, you know, that kind of thing. We haven't been asked to, uh, you know, do the Brexit branding or the Trump campaign, or, you know, um, so I think that part of it's really great.
And then we've also seen that we've, we've attracted more talent than you would expect from a studio of our size of our, experience. I think our last internship we had over 50 designers apply and most of them cited our mission and our positioned with sustainability as an attractor, and a driving force behind why they are interested in our studio.
So, yeah. I think that kind of sums up the, the why.
Sarah: Very cool.
[00:05:00]
Marc: I'm wondering, have you noticed, just going off of that last comment about the number of inquiries from young designers who are wanting to, to intern with you or work with you, has that increased over the last few years?
Jonny: Yeah, it's a funny question. So, um, think it was about three years ago — we always have lots of students email us about sustainability, we're, really happy to answer their questions and talk to them and that sort of thing — We had somebody ask a few years ago that said like, have you noticed a change in the last few years, this was like 2017.
She asked if we had noticed a change in sustainable design, uh, uptick. And I said, uh, no, uh, to be perfectly honest, I see no change at all from when I started in 2010 and it's, uh, you know, pretty frustrating.
But I would say in the last few years, there's been enormous change in industry. More and more people are talking about sustainability. More and more blogs are addressing it and more and more award showcases and, magazines and blogs.
[00:06:00]
Like I just, just all over the board, there's a huge surge in conversations surrounding sustainability. So yeah, definitely.
Marc: Yeah. And I'm asking, cause. You know, us being in the climate space for so long, I feel like us doing these public events and meeting people at these climate events. There's a lot more people that we're interacting with. Month after month, it seems like that number is increasing. And I think it's because people are, are waking up and realizing, designers are waking up and realizing like, Whoa, we have a crisis out there and what can I do to address this? What can I do in my day to day? And this is great, you know, the more people that know about this stuff the better. Um, so yeah, very interesting. How, both of us, your side and our side, we're seeing an increase in people's interest in this kind of work.
[00:07:00]
Jonny: Well, I mean, we're seeing increase in the impact of climate change as well.
And I think when you see, when you look at the news and you see an entire continent on fire, you're kind of like, Oh shit, maybe I should be doing something. Yeah,
Marc: yeah, yeah.
Sarah: I want to ask you, something interesting you said a few minutes ago. Designers have power — designers have immense power or something. I think that's what you said. Can you talk more about that? Because I think we hear from a lot of designers who feel like they are powerless or don't know what to do about climate change. What is it that you see as the power of being a designer in this — facing this climate crisis?
Jonny: I say this with some hesitation because, a lot of people who are going to be, you know, will be listening to this — It's certainly a position of privilege to be a designer that can say “No.” Right. Um, you know, there's a lot of people with, they have families, they have, you know, responsibilities and commitments to where they can't take those risks.
[00:08:00]
They can't stand up and they can't… so yeah, just preface it with that. Like not everybody's in the position to do that. Not all of us are in the position to do something, that's for sure.
Even if you bring up sustainability in your, if you're an in house designer somewhere and you bring up like, Hey, we are, you know, our design or packaging should be more sustainable.
Even if that gets ignored, the more people like you that bring it up the more change that will occur. People in power will consider that.
But I think for the designers in the position of privilege, whether they can say no and they can stand up and they can, you know, risk whatever it is in that situation, then yeah, I mean like designers, If you're a designer working somewhere and they ask you to do something and, you've been looking into sustainable design and you know that it's a really environmental hazardous thing that you're asked to do.
You can say no.
And, you can suggest an alternative. You can do research on that. You can, really push for that, talk to your colleagues and get them involved and get them on board. You know?
[00:09:00]
You have a lot of power because design is such a necessary component of business.
You know, it just can't operate — commerce doesn't happen without designers. So it's like, we're at the end of this chain, right before the product gets printed or packaged or that kind of thing where, realize the sort of atrocities that are being committed and do something about it.
So, I think historically designers have been in this subservient role. And I think that's definitely changing, businesses talking about design thinking and designers, companies that now have the Chief Design Officer as like a C-level role. There's all these different parts that are like, companies are waking up to how powerful design is as a force for business. And so the designer as a result becomes more powerful in their role, but it's, it's about… how can we take advantage of that?
Sarah: So what are some of the things that you do differently than another design studio?
[00:10:00]
Jonny: I think, I think there's just a lot of stuff. The first thing is that we intentionally try to attract a certain type of client. Right, like I mentioned before about weeding out the bad clients. We want clients that are wanting to integrate sustainable practices into their business or product and people that are doing —organizations that are doing things, the mission driven stuff, or they believe that they're making the world a better place or at least not have a negative impact. And so, we have worked really hard in the last 10 years to put ourselves in a position to be able to say, “No.”
We've had inquiries like, just all across the board, of really weird shit. Stuff from like a live lobster delivery to your door to, like, you know, anti-aging dog pills and that kind of thing, like just all this weird stuff that we think is either ethically questionable or just a snake oil, or we feel like, you know, we can't get behind the product.
So that's one of the things that we've worked really hard to do is to put ourselves in a position to be able to turn down the work that doesn't align with our studio, principles. and then from there, the work that we do take on, we try to integrate sustainability into whatever we're doing.
[00:11:00]
The most important area for that is in printing and packaging, of course, cause that's where the biggest impact can be made. It's essentially, it comes down to knowledge, not every designer — design curriculum is only begun to integrate sustainability into the classroom.
At all major universities, it seems like now they're starting to have a sustainability course, some of them have sustainability programs but it's still really a small part of the design curriculum in general.
Sarah: Could you give me an example of a sustainable print or packaging practices?
Jonny: So we think that paper is the easiest way to start, cause designers use a ton of paper.
[00:12:00]
Right if you use 100% post consumer paper versus a paper that's made from Virgin fibers where you're doing is you're using Post consumer recycled paper. That's taking it like has this, you know, it can be recycled several times before it’s not able to be turned into more paper versus a Virgin fiber source that —there's good Virgin fiber sources that are responsibility managed, but then there's also stuff like we're tearing down old growth forest and, and those — there's a huge difference in like the material choice.
So just educating yourself on the materials that you're using is a huge part of it. And then designing efficiently, or designing for efficiency. One example of that is designing for the press sheet. If you look at how, like go through the steps and look at how a printed piece is created, there's a lot of math and planning involved.
And if you can minimize the amount of waste that you're creating through smart design and considering that press sheet and kind of designing backwards. And that's one of the key things and key principles of green designers, you know, think about what the destination is and then design backwards from there.
[00:13:00]
And so you consider all these different steps that a typical designer wouldn't. So those are just a couple of examples of what sustainable design is.
Sarah: Yeah. You've got a really cool animation on your homepage about using algae ink …
Jonny: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've had like, um, you know, I think what's funny is that the stuff that has the biggest impact is, is really, simple kind of common sense stuff, like, you know, being less wasteful and using materials with smaller impact. But we also are really excited by the potential of what I would categorize as future materials. And so the algae thing that you're describing is, we worked with, Living Ink here in Colorado and they have this, ink, this pigment — it's really just the pigment — that's made from an algae bi-product and it's this really cool promising technology, but…
[00:14:00]
It's not, um, like you can't use it yet. Like, we, we were able to use it for this project. Cause they were like, you know, they wanted a project to beta, test it with, but you, um, you can't go out and commercially buy that. So it's not like something you can do as a designer today to go like do that. But we're excited to sort of shepherd that into the public sphere and make people aware of it.
And, you know, people have been, like people, somebody just emailed us to say like, Hey, how did we get one of those algae ink books? You know? Cause everyone's really excited about it, but, but that's like the sexy stuff, but the stuff that really makes a difference is like the boring shit, you know? Um, and that's kind of like the ground zero of where we start.
Yeah.
Marc: Yeah. Um, I want to shift gears a little bit, Johnny, you being. In my opinion, you're being a bit more involved in the design space. What are you seeing that is not being talked about or addressed in the design industry when it comes to climate change?
Besides the stuff that you kind of shared too, in terms of production and things like what are, what would you love if you were to browse a design blog or flip through a design magazine?
[00:15:00]
What, what kind of headliner article would you love to see at your house that you haven't seen just yet?
Jonny: I think. It [climate change] needs to be a bigger part of the mainstream conversation. I think that would be the, the biggest thing for me. It's like, you know, you'll see, I won't say what it was, but there's a recent, some design award thing that I saw and they had a sustainability category. It was all just your token stuff.
Like something that could be reused, you know, five different ways, kind of like the novel stuff that people think about. And I think. one of our, unwritten missions is we want to make sustainable design “Cool.” Right? Cause it's, it's not. If I'm totally honest, right now it's like, uh, I think five years ago, the stereotype that we're moving away from was like the leaf motif kind of crunchy granola, everything was Brown and green, all that bullshit, and I think, we've, we sort of moved away from that, but it's still a little bit stuck in that category and there's some really cool people working on, uh, working in this space that get me excited about where it's headed, but it's still just really not a part of the mainstream conversation.
[00:16:00]
But I think, I do think that's changing, seeing things like, the Dieline, for instance, covering tons of stuff about sustainability. And it's nice that having articles, threads on sustainability. it's definitely changing, but it's still frustrating that it's, like I don't want to be the “sustainable designer.”
Like I just want to be. Like my goal is to, kind of work myself out of this position, you know, essentially, like I just want it to be the norm. And then, I don't have to be on my soap box talking about it, you know?
Marc: Yeah. I hear that from a lot of friends in the same space. Like why can't this just be the thing that we do, what does that, this, the subset of something that's this corner of the design industry? Why can't it just be the design industry?
Jonny: And I do think that the way that happens is at the education level, and the people working in that space are really doing important work cause it's, if students all come out of school with like a really, heavy grounding and sustainable design education, then it's going to change the industry overnight, you know?
[00:17:00]
Marc: yeah. So knowing that, I don't think this was mentioned in your intro, but, I don't know if you still currently teach, but you've taught at the college level. In the design program. Right. As we kind of wrap up the interview, what would you say to a young design student who is interested in learning more about this, the sustainable design approach, or even just getting themselves familiar with the climate crisis and how they can play a role in that?
What would, what would be your advice? To a young student, either it was still in school or maybe someone who's about to graduate.
Jonny: I would say. To, invest time into just, uh, making yourself more aware. I think that is the starting point, there's so much cool shit happening with sustainable design on Instagram.
[00:18:00]
Um, and, uh, you know, here [the USA] and in the United Kingdom, like there's all these, People doing really interesting things that are helping push us in that direction. And so if you really dig into all of that, I think that's an important part of it.
And then when you get to the point where you're doing work, or applying for jobs or freelance or whatever it is, I think, we found really great success from putting your values front and center, right? Like really expressing that from the get go and not having it be something that you talk about like once you get hired or, you know, like ask questions in interviews, right?
Put your values on your website, like right when you get there, put it on your resume, like whatever it is that you believe in is a change in the design field. Uh, if that's sustainability great. If that's something else great, but whatever it is communicating that is going to help people wake up to the importance of this.
Marc: That's great. Love it. Any, um, any final thoughts?
[00:19:00]
Marc: Is there anything, um, anything else you want to say before we wrap up?
Jonny: Yeah, I would say, um, please don't use leaves and green in your, eco designs. We gotta break that stigma and, um, yeah.
Sarah: What about, like polar bears on ice cube or like
Marc: Like, the planet.
Jonny: Yeah. I mean, uh, I finally, I think we're, we're starting to move away from that, but that was like, , You know, when I would see sustainable design portfolios back in the day, it would just be a bunch of that kind of stuff.
And, um, yeah, I think, all of the media coverage about climate change is necessary, but it's also really helping us sort of bring sustainable design into the conversation.
Marc: yeah. If, if you want to appeal to the masses, you got to appeal to the masses. No one — Not everyone subscribes to the leaf and polar bear graphics, you know, you have to appeal to them.
Jonny: If you have a logo that has a leaf & a polar bear, that's totally fine. Don't listen to me. I'm just one person
Marc: well, Johnny man, appreciate it. Where can people find you and your work?
[00:20:00]
Jonny: CastIronDesign.com. And then, we're I think as far as social media goes, we're, we've primarily focused on Instagram. So @castirondesign on Instagram.
Marc: Nice. Thanks so much, Johnny. Awesome. Appreciate it, buddy.
Jonny: Alright, thank you.
In this episode, recorded May 12, we sit down with the designers who collaborated on an updated version of the First Things First Manifesto, originally written by/for Graphic Designers in 1964.
While keeping the humor and vision of the original manifesto, First Things First 2020 was written with a sense of urgency due to our climate emergency, along with the expectation that this decade is pivotal for people to proactively unite around social- and environmental justice-based climate action.
Meet Namita Dharia, a socio-cultural anthropologist, PhD of Architecture, and the assistant professor of political economy at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the Nature–Culture–Sustainability Studies MA program.
Ben Gaydos is the co-founder of goodgood and the chair of the Art & Art History program at University of Michigan Flint.
Listen to learn more about the work Ben and Namita are doing to bring relevant multidisciplinary climate impact focused education to their design programs.
Links mentioned:
- Original First Things First Manifesto (1964)
- FirstThingsFirst2020.org
- RISD’s Nature–Culture–Sustainability Studies MA program
- Ggoodgoodland.com
Michael Leggett was a software designer working for big tech companies like Google and Facebook until the 2016 election spurred him to find a new career tackling the climate crisis. He joined forces with Seattle startup Nori to help build an online marketplace where customers pay farmers to draw CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in the soil.
In this episode we chat about what it was like to leave his steady tech job to pursue what he felt called to do, and how he views the role designers play in taking climate action. “There’s so many things designers do that are applicable,” Michael says. “We are storytellers. We are salesmen. These are valuable skills. This is a hard story to tell.” Let’s roll up our sleeves and dig in.
Special Event! Thursday, April 22Q&A with Michael Leggett — after you listen to this episode, come hang out with us on Zoom and ask Michael some follow-up questions, chit chat, go behind the scenes with us for an hour!
RSVP here for the link and recording
Links mentioned in this episode* Nori.com * Project Drawdown * Leggett.org * @leggett on twitter * LinkedIn * read.cv
We’re excited to introduce you to Eric Benson, one of our advisors and collaborators at ClimateDesigners.org.
Eric is the Chair of Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as author of the book, Design to Re-Nourish, a manual of sustainability through systems-thinking for the graphic designer.
In this 17 minute conversation, we ask Eric to share some of his experience bringing sustainability concepts into the classroom as a design educator, even when the curriculum doesn’t necessarily call for it.
“Ask for forgiveness, not permission,” Eric says. Being a design educator right now gives us an amazing opportunity to influence the future of our climate crisis. With Eric’s help, we aim to add many more resources here at ClimateDesigners.org to help design educators do just that.
Links mentioned in this episode* Living Principles — AIGA’s Roadmap for Sustainable Design * Design to Re-Nourish — Eric’s book, systems-thinking for the graphic designer * Kiss the Ground’s graphic illustrating sustainable vs regenerative * Re-Nourish.org — Eric’s non-profit * Freshpress.studio — Eric’s papermaking studio
Warning: This Episode Might Get You Fired.
Inspired by books like Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro and Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi by Mark Boyle, we ask: “What can (or maybe should) designers do, in their current jobs, to take a stand and have an impact on climate change?”
We spend our 37 minutes discussing real practical ideas for designers to grow into the power and influence they can have at work.
Some of these tips might not make you the most popular, but as Sarah says, "I got to the point in my job where I would rather be fired than be a doormat, or do something that wasn't in line with my personal ethics and values."
Links mentioned in this episode:* Climate Activism for the Graphic Designer 101 — by Eric Benson * Drawdown — educate yourself on real climate solutions * Ruined by Design — Mike Monteiro’s book * Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi — by Mark Boyle
For this episode of We Are Climate Designers, Marc and Sarah interviewed Evan Hynes of Climate.careers.
Evan created Climate.careers to “Mobilize the world’s talent to solve the climate crisis.” Climate.careers is the place to go if you want to do impactful work within climate, or if you want to hire someone looking to dedicate their career to climate impact.
We talk about finding purpose in your work, happiness, the solution to climate anxiety, building your personal brand, and how organizations with a positive mission will soon rule the world :)
A teaser for our new podcast! For Climate Designers, by Climate Designers. Listen to this intro to get a sense of what this podcast will be all about.
Available in your favorite podcast player — please subscribe, and share with another Climate Designer you know to help us spread the word.