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Life As We Know It, with Bill Weir (Climate, News, Storytelling, Author)
Episode 45516th April 2024 • The Action Catalyst • Southwestern Family of Podcasts
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Award-winning journalist and CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir shares the story of his new book LIFE AS WE KNOW IT (CAN BE): Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World, explains why reporting on climate includes reporting on EVERYTHING, the one thing that makes humans special from every other animal on the planet, advice from Mr. Rogers, the influence from his very unique upbringing, why there’s no climate change without culture change and why Earth repair is self-repair, and bonds with host Stephanie Maas over a mutual admiration of Taylor Swift.

Transcripts

Stephanie Maas:

Welcome to the Action Catalyst. Today's guest

Stephanie Maas:

is Bill Weir, an award winning journalist, Chief climate

Stephanie Maas:

correspondent for CNN, host of the CNN original series, the

Stephanie Maas:

wonder list, and now author of the new book Life as we know it

Stephanie Maas:

can be stories of people climate and hope in a changing world.

Stephanie Maas:

Hey, Bill, how are ya?

Bill Weir:

Hi, Stephanie. How are you?

Stephanie Maas:

I am doing great. Thanks for being here.

Bill Weir:

My pleasure. Great to meet you.

Stephanie Maas:

Hey, you too. Is that is that a sunny New York. I

Stephanie Maas:

see the backdrop.

Bill Weir:

It is a gorgeous, gorgeous New York. Love that

Bill Weir:

sunshine for the mood, right?

Stephanie Maas:

Absolutely.

Bill Weir:

Where are you?

Stephanie Maas:

Nashville.

Bill Weir:

Awesome. I love nashvegas I was just down there.

Bill Weir:

Yeah.

Stephanie Maas:

What brought you to town?

Bill Weir:

Taylor Swift. I brought my daughter to see her

Bill Weir:

this summer and it was epic. We had a great time.

Stephanie Maas:

How old is your daughter?

Bill Weir:

She is 20.

Stephanie Maas:

Wow. Okay. Yeah. And you know what? I don't care

Stephanie Maas:

what people say about her. That girl is hard working. I give her

Stephanie Maas:

props all day, every day.

Bill Weir:

Let me tell you something. I've been to hundreds

Bill Weir:

of festivals in my life. I'm a huge music nerd. And I've always

Bill Weir:

liked was you know, ambivalent about our catalog. I love my

Bill Weir:

daughter loved her. And I love that she's a really good human.

Bill Weir:

But this show in Nashville. It was delayed a couple hours by

Bill Weir:

pouring rain. And she played until her whole set until one in

Bill Weir:

the morning and leaned into it like Prince at the Superbowl and

Bill Weir:

it will go down as one of my top three. I saw Guns and Roses when

Bill Weir:

their first album came out, right? Like I've seen every big

Bill Weir:

act, you can imagine she will go down by far on the Mount

Bill Weir:

Rushmore of live performers. I've seen her like four times

Bill Weir:

with my kid. I have such respect for her.

Stephanie Maas:

Yeah, super fun. So in preparing for our time

Stephanie Maas:

today, I want to hear about your book and kind of where it came

Stephanie Maas:

from what you're hoping to achieve. I really want to put

Stephanie Maas:

some legs under that table. Walk us through the genesis and

Stephanie Maas:

evolution of this book.

Bill Weir:

Absolutely. So I have to back up a little bit. I've

Bill Weir:

been sort of a journeyman journalist, I started as a

Bill Weir:

sportscaster and came up through, you know, bigger and

Bill Weir:

bigger markets until I got my big break with ABC News and

Bill Weir:

spent 10 years there. And that was the first time somebody

Bill Weir:

said, actually was Diane Sawyer, who said, here's some strange,

Bill Weir:

interesting things are happening in China. Why don't you go

Bill Weir:

explain China to us. And this is like 2004, you know, and it's

Bill Weir:

the first time someone just gave me carte blanche to explore a

Bill Weir:

place. And that was the biggest gift I ever got in my career.

Bill Weir:

And I decide more if I can do this as much as possible. And so

Bill Weir:

I started angling towards that sort of exploratory journalism,

Bill Weir:

big picture stuff, global trends. And I moved to CNN.

Bill Weir:

Right around the time Anthony Bourdain had arrived, and they

Bill Weir:

were looking to do more original series like that globe trotting

Bill Weir:

series. And I, you know, came over to do a typical studio show

Bill Weir:

on cable news. But the first month I was on the air, the

Bill Weir:

Malaysian airliner went missing, and we're talking about the same

Bill Weir:

story every night, I thought I'd made a horrible mistake. And my

Bill Weir:

boss said, Well, what maybe you should do an original series,

Bill Weir:

what would you do? I said, I know exactly what I want to do.

Bill Weir:

I just had realized that my daughter Olivia is going to turn

Bill Weir:

my age in the year 2050. So I want to go to the wonders of the

Bill Weir:

world and wonder what will be left in how many elephants in

Bill Weir:

Botswana? How much ice in the Alps? Will Venice still be above

Bill Weir:

water? And so they said yes. And I got to do this the show called

Bill Weir:

The Wunderlist. And we shot in 24 different countries around

Bill Weir:

the world in that in nothing like that kind of travel,

Bill Weir:

immersive travel to shake your American ego centrism and start

Bill Weir:

thinking about all the ways we could do things better. And then

Bill Weir:

2016 that the election there, it sort of changed the landscape on

Bill Weir:

CNN, and the original series kind of drifted out of the

Bill Weir:

tension and they decided to create a climate desk at CNN,

Bill Weir:

and I for most of my career headed had avoided being pigeon

Bill Weir:

holed into a beat. I love politics. I love entertainment,

Bill Weir:

but I don't want to eat either one of them every day, you know,

Bill Weir:

and so, but I realized that climate is the one beat that

Bill Weir:

includes everything. Everything in our lives depends on a

Bill Weir:

livable planet. We think about it like a list. When pollsters

Bill Weir:

come around election. How important is the climate to you?

Bill Weir:

I mean, it's the whole restaurant, every menu item,

Bill Weir:

foreign policy, health care, justice, social justice, food,

Bill Weir:

shelter, transportation is tied to a livable ecosystem, an A,

Bill Weir:

and we just happen to be born in this Goldilocks moment on the

Bill Weir:

one planet that supports life as we know it. And we just we take

Bill Weir:

that that for granted, right? So I sort of leaned into that. But

Bill Weir:

then it was hugely depressing once you go deep into this, and

Bill Weir:

you really sort of drink from the fire hose of peer reviewed

Bill Weir:

dread every day and see what is happening and then go cover

Bill Weir:

disaster after disaster. So when my son was born in 2020, he was

Bill Weir:

a surprise. My partner, you know, was down to one ovary,

Bill Weir:

it's 42 years old, we didn't think this was in our cards. But

Bill Weir:

here we go. And when he arrived, it was such a joy, such a treat.

Bill Weir:

But at the same time, I had all this new information about what

Bill Weir:

kind of world this kid was going to grow up in. And the idea that

Bill Weir:

my little boy river is going to see the 22nd century. And so I'm

Bill Weir:

holding him height of the pandemic covering the George

Bill Weir:

Floyd riots, you know, between feedings. And so I just sat down

Bill Weir:

and started with Welcome to the world, I'm sorry. And so I

Bill Weir:

started distilling these into earthday letters to him, just an

Bill Weir:

assessment of things, how things were going awry. But over time,

Bill Weir:

I also became leaned into the innovation and the hope and the

Bill Weir:

organization and the possibility of a better world that we don't

Bill Weir:

really talk about in this space, you know, and Dr. Martin Luther

Bill Weir:

King didn't say I have a nightmare, everybody was living

Bill Weir:

the nightmare, he had a dream, you know, and we don't talk

Bill Weir:

enough about what life could look like if we do everything

Bill Weir:

that scientists encourage for us. technology and human

Bill Weir:

creativity is so powerful right now. And there's so much sort of

Bill Weir:

waste built into the way I grew up in our in our world, that by

Bill Weir:

eliminating these things, people wouldn't notice a difference in

Bill Weir:

lifestyle. I've seen now proof of communities from the first

Bill Weir:

solar town in Florida, that survived Hurricane Ian, and

Bill Weir:

they've never lost power to other, you know, societies

Bill Weir:

around the world, that I just sort of putting these little bit

Bill Weir:

of wonder a little bit of dread, you know, you have to be clear

Bill Weir:

eyed about what's happening. I structure the book around

Bill Weir:

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I took for granted,

Bill Weir:

never thought about the bottom of my pyramid, food, water, air

Bill Weir:

temperature, but I argue the top of the pyramid of needs, which

Bill Weir:

is love and esteem and sort of self actualization that I argue

Bill Weir:

if we pay attention to each other around the bottom of the

Bill Weir:

pyramid of needs, that it will fulfill us in ways that

Bill Weir:

supersede sort of what we get out of modern life.

Stephanie Maas:

Part of what I hear you saying is, you know,

Stephanie Maas:

there's definitely hope. But there's also some dread. And I

Stephanie Maas:

think this is a topic that can be really polarizing, there is a

Stephanie Maas:

way to bring us all together.

Bill Weir:

Absolutely. That's sort of a sweeping theme that I

Bill Weir:

have is truly what makes us special as human beings. It's

Bill Weir:

not our opposable thumbs. You know, chimpanzees have those,

Bill Weir:

it's not our ability to work together in groups, because

Bill Weir:

orcas and ants, you know, and wolves do that. But they've yet

Bill Weir:

to land a rover on Mars, or build a stock market and

Bill Weir:

repeatedly crash it. The thing that makes us special is

Bill Weir:

stories. And so everything in our lives, currencies, flags,

Bill Weir:

borders, religions, all of these are just the stories we've

Bill Weir:

agreed upon. And they're always under revision, right. And so,

Bill Weir:

the story, for example, there's a story that you should spend

Bill Weir:

three months salary on a diamond for the person you love, because

Bill Weir:

they're this rare thing. Now, there are quadrillions of tons

Bill Weir:

of diamonds, there was just a new deposit found there to

Bill Weir:

diamonds, rain on other planets, the rarest substance in the

Bill Weir:

known universe is wood, we've got the only planet where trees

Bill Weir:

grow, you know. And so the stories we tell around energy

Bill Weir:

supplies, and modern life and sacrifices, and all of that have

Bill Weir:

been told by a very few people who have very vested interests

Bill Weir:

in that status quo. And so the story now is changing in ways

Bill Weir:

that, you know, we've been burning fuel, the kinds of fuel

Bill Weir:

using the kinds of fuels that burn forever, because that was

Bill Weir:

the cheapest alternatives. You know, we went from peat to coal

Bill Weir:

to whale oil, you know, we burned whales for light at some

Bill Weir:

point. And I think that our kids are going to look back and say,

Bill Weir:

Wait, you at one point had poisonous gas pumped into your

Bill Weir:

house and you burned it to cook food, you know, like you didn't

Bill Weir:

have a house with a battery? It'll seem so sort of archaic,

Bill Weir:

but my experience is that if you connect with people about what

Bill Weir:

it is they love, they might be a fisherman. They might be a duck

Bill Weir:

hunter, they might be a farmer, they might be somebody. And if

Bill Weir:

you can just connect with them on the changes they're seeing

Bill Weir:

and not tie it to the politically loaded words that

Bill Weir:

get used in campaign ads. And just by saying the word climate

Bill Weir:

change that has been so loaded, on just connect with people over

Bill Weir:

cash, you know, I don't hear As many Meadowlarks as I did when I

Bill Weir:

was growing up, and take it from there level outward, and break

Bill Weir:

down those barriers by usually just starting with, what's your

Bill Weir:

story, but what gives me hope is there was a study out of Yale in

Bill Weir:

2022. If you had asked the average American, give me the

Bill Weir:

percentage you think of your fellow country, men and women

Bill Weir:

who care about climate change and action, most people of both

Bill Weir:

parties would guess between 33 and like 42%. In actuality, it

Bill Weir:

is between 66 and 80%. You are surrounded by allies in this

Bill Weir:

space that you don't even know you have. Because nobody wants

Bill Weir:

to talk about climate change at the potluck. No one wants to

Bill Weir:

Yeah, in the Punchbowl party, but change happens, just by

Bill Weir:

those opening those conversations.

Stephanie Maas:

In this journey for you, where has the hope come

Stephanie Maas:

from?

Bill Weir:

There's a great painting by Hieronymus Bosch,

Bill Weir:

the Garden of Earthly Delights, on one side is just the the most

Bill Weir:

depraved human behavior is happening in the middle. It's

Bill Weir:

sort of like the Garden of Eden and then over to the right earth

Bill Weir:

as it is, and then over to the right. It's what it could be

Bill Weir:

right. And so I oftentimes I think about what point of this

Bill Weir:

am I focused on every day, and it's really easy to get dark.

Bill Weir:

But when I start to feel sorry for myself, I think about the

Bill Weir:

Civil Rights Movement, I think about indigenous folks around

Bill Weir:

the world who are getting up and raising their kids every day in

Bill Weir:

much worse conditions that I have it here in the first first

Bill Weir:

world, the developed world, to try to knock myself out of that

Bill Weir:

sort of sense of Doom or ism. And then the best advice I ever

Bill Weir:

got came from Mr. Rogers, who taught me that when you see

Bill Weir:

something scary on TV, look for the helpers, there's always

Bill Weir:

helpers in, it's in a after a tornado or hurricane. Now I get

Bill Weir:

to actually meet those helpers when I go into these places. And

Bill Weir:

so I look for the helpers on the big scales, I look for a folks

Bill Weir:

like Andrew ponic, a guy just profiles who created a thermal

Bill Weir:

battery company. And you know, I got to visit the nuclear fusion

Bill Weir:

labs out at Livermore, after they had successful ignitions.

Bill Weir:

The idea that we could build manmade little stars and boxes,

Bill Weir:

using fuel that is essentially seawater abundant with no waste,

Bill Weir:

no risk of meltdown, once you throw yourself into that world,

Bill Weir:

and you and you tap into people, really smart people who are

Bill Weir:

trying to pull carbon out of the sea and Scott in innovative ways

Bill Weir:

who are leaning into nature based solutions. Those ideas

Bill Weir:

really get me excited.

Stephanie Maas:

Very interesting. I also hear out of

Stephanie Maas:

that a lot of empathy, where we're really starting to see a

Stephanie Maas:

difference being made as folks to say, hey, it is about the

Stephanie Maas:

bottom line, but it's not. And that's really what spawning a

Stephanie Maas:

lot of this change to tell me you're in my barking up the

Stephanie Maas:

right tree there, talk to me about that.

Bill Weir:

Absolutely. But I do think we've reached a point

Bill Weir:

where even if you care nothing about habitats of the manatee or

Bill Weir:

you know, any or anything, just the natural world, maybe you

Bill Weir:

don't, maybe you hate going outside whatever the case may

Bill Weir:

be, we've now reached a point where profit motive is as much

Bill Weir:

of a as much of a motivator as as anything, right? So let me

Bill Weir:

give you an example. I just interviewed two guys, who are

Bill Weir:

the lab partners at MIT, both from India, one grew up hauling

Bill Weir:

water and buckets and thinking about, you know, the basic

Bill Weir:

bottom of his pyramid of needs, literally on a daily basis. And

Bill Weir:

they decided to lean into cleaning up the dirtiest water

Bill Weir:

you can imagine, in semiconductor fab location

Bill Weir:

plants, or pharmaceutical plants, the kinds of places that

Bill Weir:

just use hundreds and 1000s of tons of water a week. And

Bill Weir:

they've figured out ways using various different technologies,

Bill Weir:

a suite of technologies, where a factory like that can recycle

Bill Weir:

95% of its water. So they can not only not take water from

Bill Weir:

nature, but put it back, those guys are going to be

Bill Weir:

trillionaires. You know, the business model is completely

Bill Weir:

different in the renewable space. That's why all the new

Bill Weir:

power plants that are coming online, they realizing that once

Bill Weir:

you build a solar array, or a wind farm, or a geothermal

Bill Weir:

plants, the energy delivers itself to you. You don't have to

Bill Weir:

go around the world digging and pumping for it. And once you use

Bill Weir:

your fracking skills from the oil legacy to dig super deep

Bill Weir:

geothermal wells and tap into the sun, which is beneath our

Bill Weir:

Earth, and use that heat to spin turbines instead of burning

Bill Weir:

stuff. Well, the business model is, you know, how do you capture

Bill Weir:

the rents on that versus charging you per barrel of oil,

Bill Weir:

you know, so it's going to be a different economic system. And

Bill Weir:

this is the biggest hardest thing that humanity will ever do

Bill Weir:

is sort of like changing out the engines on a 747 in flight we

Bill Weir:

don't want to make especially folks At the bottom of the

Bill Weir:

financial pyramid suffer because we're taking away readily

Bill Weir:

available energy sources, but much the way the developing

Bill Weir:

countries like India leapfrog the landline, they went right

Bill Weir:

from no phone to cell phones, you know, the hope is that with

Bill Weir:

help from the developed world, we could still get rich doing

Bill Weir:

that. But what's happening is a whole generation of new

Bill Weir:

consumers is changing the way they fill their pyramid of

Bill Weir:

needs. It's changing how they think. Right? So you've on

Bill Weir:

shanaar, the, the founder of Patagonia, famously would say,

Bill Weir:

to his own customers, before you buy that puffer jacket, are you

Bill Weir:

cold? Or are you bored? Do you really need that that? Or do you

Bill Weir:

or, you know, could you wear your old one for another year or

Bill Weir:

something? If you need the jacket, great, go for it, I

Bill Weir:

don't have any advice on how people should change their

Bill Weir:

lifestyles around this idea other than just thinking about

Bill Weir:

the hidden costs of filling our pyramids.

Stephanie Maas:

That's a pretty simple, good way to live. One of

Stephanie Maas:

my favorite quotes is with great power comes great

Stephanie Maas:

responsibility. And to your point, you know, it's

Stephanie Maas:

interesting about the two guys from MIT tying this back to your

Stephanie Maas:

hierarchy of needs, he was in a position where he had to fight

Stephanie Maas:

for those basic needs by carrying buckets of water. And,

Stephanie Maas:

you know, again, he'll make plenty of money, the money will

Stephanie Maas:

take care of itself. But that burned within him to go solve

Stephanie Maas:

that problem. And most people that are in that situation,

Stephanie Maas:

trying to figure out that bottom level of needs, they're not. But

Stephanie Maas:

when you are gifted with all the talents and the resources to be

Stephanie Maas:

a part of the solution. I think that's where the responsibility

Stephanie Maas:

really comes in. But that's I think, where the day to day

Stephanie Maas:

person can really bring some impact is holding those with

Stephanie Maas:

great power to the responsibility. Absolutely. But

Stephanie Maas:

it definitely seems like this next generation cares a whole

Stephanie Maas:

lot more about that than I've ever heard of a generation

Stephanie Maas:

before us.

Bill Weir:

Absolutely. Because they are smart enough to read

Bill Weir:

the science and do the math in terms of the calendar and seeing

Bill Weir:

what is happening and how fast things are changing. And then of

Bill Weir:

course, they've also whether intentionally or or it's

Bill Weir:

inferred that you're the generation that's going to save

Bill Weir:

the world, like, that is so unfair. It's no, the baby

Bill Weir:

boomers have all the money if they're not at the you know,

Bill Weir:

they, they, they have to be part of this, but it should be multi

Bill Weir:

generational as well.

Stephanie Maas:

And the world is so much smaller today. At mean,

Stephanie Maas:

candidly, you know, you think about the travels that you've

Stephanie Maas:

experienced in your lifetime. And I don't know the answer to

Stephanie Maas:

this. I mean, what were your parents background, what kind of

Stephanie Maas:

traveling did they do?

Bill Weir:

I had a very bizarre background. My parents divorced

Bill Weir:

when I was a baby. And my dad was a cop and Milwaukee and my

Bill Weir:

mom was a secretary who had a very zealous, passionate

Bill Weir:

conversion to evangelical Pentecostal Christianity. So she

Bill Weir:

announced one morning when I was nine years old at breakfast,

Bill Weir:

that she'd had a dream from God. And God wanted us to leave

Bill Weir:

Milwaukee and move to Texas, so she could go to Bible school and

Bill Weir:

become a televangelist. And she put me on the phone with my dad

Bill Weir:

to negotiate out of joint custody. And my dad said, Yes,

Bill Weir:

and, and so we moved, but the dreams kept coming. So I went to

Bill Weir:

17 different schools and six states, mostly around the Bible

Bill Weir:

Belt, and would then go back to spend summers and Christmases

Bill Weir:

with my dad, the out atheist outdoorsman. And so I was

Bill Weir:

pendulum in between these very different worldviews, which

Bill Weir:

turned out to be great training for a job in journalism, when

Bill Weir:

you're perpetually the new kid, learn how to read a room, you

Bill Weir:

learn how to empathize. And so I have friends in red states and

Bill Weir:

blue and and, you know, probably have a better lens into politics

Bill Weir:

of the day as a result of that. And, you know, I was the first

Bill Weir:

one for my family to go to college, and definitely the

Bill Weir:

first one to get a passport and actually start, you know,

Bill Weir:

expanding my horizons. So I consider myself incredibly,

Bill Weir:

incredibly blessed and lucky to have you know, such a transient,

Bill Weir:

you know, exposed me to so much. But as sort of another example,

Bill Weir:

I write about this in my book, you know, as I get into the

Bill Weir:

loving and the Esteem Needs, it gets more autobiographical,

Bill Weir:

because I was trying to fill my love and esteem needs in my

Bill Weir:

career and in different ways, and it's constantly changing,

Bill Weir:

right? And stories are so powerful, they're more powerful

Bill Weir:

than family. I've been estranged from my mom for years because

Bill Weir:

her her belief system is so strong in a different world that

Bill Weir:

we just she doesn't communicate with me anymore. And that's

Bill Weir:

heartbreaking. But my chosen family, my stepmother, but my

Bill Weir:

other people are actually hugely inspiring, right? And so again,

Bill Weir:

we are products of the stories we marinate in. And every now

Bill Weir:

and then if we poke ourselves out of that bubble and say,

Bill Weir:

what's your story and try to understand and connect on that

Bill Weir:

level, I willing to one thing I sort of realization that came to

Bill Weir:

me while writing the book was because of my mom's, you know,

Bill Weir:

fervent belief and her interpretation of, of a

Bill Weir:

particular faith turned me off so much. But I threw the baby

Bill Weir:

out with the bathwater by not engaging with a community, a

Bill Weir:

church, and that around that those ideals, and never

Bill Weir:

appreciated how valuable that is that sort of connection with

Bill Weir:

neighbors around higher ideals, and connecting with

Bill Weir:

congregations and picking out communities of people with

Bill Weir:

shared values, but that just makes you stronger, and lifts

Bill Weir:

you up. This is this whole thing we're into is a team sport. You

Bill Weir:

know, you, you had a really inspiring former Navy SEAL as a

Bill Weir:

guest recently, I was listening on the podcast where he talked

Bill Weir:

about how SEAL teams picking each other up, you know,

Bill Weir:

everybody's got a weakness. And the key is being paired with

Bill Weir:

somebody who doesn't have that weakness. So you get it

Bill Weir:

together, I that's such a great metaphor for fighting the

Bill Weir:

climate fight for connecting with neighbors around these

Bill Weir:

things, and it's not just a matter of, you know, maybe I

Bill Weir:

could get into an alternative energy company and and make a

Bill Weir:

million dollars. It's also is can be motivated about just

Bill Weir:

strengthening the community for what's coming. I met an amazing

Bill Weir:

woman who she was an NFL wife, married her husband in Seattle,

Bill Weir:

he played for the Seahawks, a retired moved down to the

Bill Weir:

panhandle of Florida, she had her baby, three weeks later,

Bill Weir:

Hurricane Michael comes ashore and she's googling in her house,

Bill Weir:

can my home survive a category four hurricane and realize that

Bill Weir:

the building codes were not up to snuff, they survived and

Bill Weir:

everything was okay. But it rattled her so much, that

Bill Weir:

without any experience in construction, she went down a

Bill Weir:

rabbit hole to try to figure out how to build a hurricane proof

Bill Weir:

home and ended up importing this technology from Italy. That is

Bill Weir:

basically a sprayed concrete wall that is bomb proof

Bill Weir:

bulletproof and is now just trying to build safer homes for

Bill Weir:

her community in Florida. I find that incredibly, sort of

Bill Weir:

inspiring, and, and those kinds of characters are going to make

Bill Weir:

all the difference in the communities of the future.

Stephanie Maas:

I think though, I really appreciate your

Stephanie Maas:

willingness to share some of what you just shared, it really

Stephanie Maas:

brings this full circle. I think it's a really beautiful story.

Stephanie Maas:

And it's a perfect example of what you're talking about. It's

Stephanie Maas:

the human story. And that is where our answers live. That's

Stephanie Maas:

where our hopes lie. I know, I gotta be super mindful of time.

Stephanie Maas:

Is there anything else that you were hoping we would discuss or

Stephanie Maas:

get to in our time together?

Bill Weir:

Um, not really, this has been a delight talking to

Bill Weir:

you. I'd like to say that there's no fix for climate

Bill Weir:

change without culture change. And I don't mean culture, ethnic

Bill Weir:

culture, or religious culture, you know, the things that are

Bill Weir:

really precious about human society I love, you know, the

Bill Weir:

quilt of different ideas. And and the melting pot of that is

Bill Weir:

the United States at its best. When I say culture, I mean, the

Bill Weir:

culture of endless consumption, mindless, mindless consumption,

Bill Weir:

and taking for granted the bottom of the pyramid, I think

Bill Weir:

there's so much joy, there's so much light, there's so much

Bill Weir:

mental health that can be found by rallying around communities,

Bill Weir:

and rallying around each other and nature and connecting with

Bill Weir:

the best parts of both, you know, there's been a lot of

Bill Weir:

policy changes recently, trying to come out of Washington,

Bill Weir:

depending on the party and power of the one idea that actually

Bill Weir:

was part of the inflation Reduction Act that excites me

Bill Weir:

the most, and I don't have a dog in the fight of policy. And I,

Bill Weir:

you know, I'm a neutral journalist on all of that stuff.

Bill Weir:

But I'm really excited about the idea of a civilian conservation

Bill Weir:

corps, where kids from the Bronx, and Wyoming and Maine

Bill Weir:

come together and spend six months working on trails out

Bill Weir:

west or bringing back mangrove habitats, you know, in the

Bill Weir:

southeast. And the thing that I really believe will save us we

Bill Weir:

have to get the youngest generation engaged with nature,

Bill Weir:

getting them appreciating how special this planet is, and how

Bill Weir:

quickly things can go away if we don't pay attention to them. And

Bill Weir:

with those connections that we make, to heal, you know, one

Bill Weir:

little patch at a time Mmm it's not just Earth repair itself

Bill Weir:

repair it is it is. It is good for the soul, the mind the body,

Bill Weir:

the spirit and, and the land around us. That's my dream. And

Bill Weir:

that's what I hope this book inspires people to think about.

Stephanie Maas:

I love it. I love it. Thank you so much Bill.

Stephanie Maas:

This has been incredible time together sincerely appreciate you.

Bill Weir:

I hope so, it's really easy to talk to you,

Bill Weir:

Stephanie. Thank you for your time.

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