Episode Summary: Henk Rogers engages in a compelling discussion with hosts Leekei, Steve, Olabanji, Dan, and Brian, covering topics from his advocacy for sustainable energy solutions to the crucial role societal will plays in addressing climate change.

Topics discussed include:

• the catalyst that led Henk Rogers to commit his life to advancing sustainable-energy solutions
• why everyone is impacted by climate change and why it matters
• why climate change is not the only challenge humanity has to face
• the importance of creating a world where people and Nature live in harmony
• an overview of Blue Planet Foundation and Blue Planet Alliance
• the availability of technology and funds for change, and the need for the will to act
• why in 2030 the UN should launch the Regenerative Development Goals
• how HI-SEAS, Henk's Hawaiian Moon-Mars habitat, is helping research on sustainable space living and its implications for Earth
• how Blue Planet Foundation successfully lobbied for America's first 100% renewable energy law, inspiring 22 U.S. states to follow suit
• the future of sustainable energy: hydrogen and geothermal
• what virtual gaming worlds can teach us about sustainability
• advice for video gaming art students: focus on enhancing in-game status without violence
• the need to redefine societal status for sustainability
• the responsibility of using money to fix something that is broken in the world

About Henk Rogers

Henk Rogers is a video game designer-turned-entrepreneur with a passion for ending the use of carbon-based fuels on Earth and creating systems that change the world. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to both fields and is widely regarded as a visionary leader in both the gaming and sustainable energy industry.

Henk Rogers is the President of the Tetris Company and a pioneer in the video game industry. In the 1980s, Rogers brought role-playing games to Japan and turned a little-known game called Tetris into an international phenomenon after intense negotiations with the Soviet Union and Nintendo. His efforts helped establish the Game Boy as a market leader and made Tetris one of the most popular games of all time. Rogers’ story became folklore in the gaming industry and is the subject of the 2023 Apple TV+ film “Tetris.”

Today, Rogers is the founder of 10 companies and non-profit organizations focused on renewable energy, space exploration, and ending the use of fossil fuels on Earth. 

About Henk Rogers: https://henkrogers.com/

About Blue Planet Alliance: https://blueplanetalliance.org/ 

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For more information on the project and to order your copy of the Carbon Almanac (one of Amazon best-selling books of the year!), visit thecarbonalmanac.org

Want to join in the conversation?

Visit thecarbonalmanac.org/podcasts and send us a voice message on this episode or any other climate-related ideas and perspectives.

Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!

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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington, Olabanji Stephen, Dan Slater and Brian Tormey.

Leekei is a fashion business founder, a business coach, an international development expert and podcaster from Paris, France. 

From a  beautiful valley in Wales, UK, Steve is a Podcast Coach, Producer and Alpaca Shepherd. Steve is fascinated by the ideas of regeneration beyond sustainability and is still a biologist at heart. 

Olabanji is from Lagos Nigeria. He’s a Creative Director and visual designer that helps brands gain clarity, deliver meaningful experiences and build tribes through Design & Strategy. He founded Jorney - a community designed to help people stay productive, accountable, and do their best work.

Dan is from Birmingham in the UK, he is a video game digital art student at Birmingham City University.

Brian is a Real Estate Title Insurance Professional and Goat Farmer in the US. 

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Since you’ve come this far, please show your Aloha

Hawaii has suffered a great tragedy. The deadliest wildfires in the last century. 

Maui-based Carbon Almanac Contributor Richie Biluan wrote “You are important. Your voice is important. Your aloha is significant. If you are on social media, send someone an encouraging comment who you see is going through this tragedy, or any for that matter. Share critical information with your network. Write. Read. And most importantly - love one another.”

Visit Richie IG to find out how you can help

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

Hi, I am Ji.

Hi, I am Steve.

Hi.

I'm leaky.

Today we are honored to have Hank Rogers on our show.

Hank is an iconic figure in the gaming world as he introduced Tetris to Japan.

In turn the game into an international sensation, and his work helps Seventh,

the Game Boys position in the market and contributed Tetris to becoming

one of the most renowned game ever.

His story is featured in the 2023 Apple TV plus film, Tetris, which is a remarkable

tale, and we highly, highly recommend our listeners check out that gripping movie.

I watched it last weekend.

I really, really loved it.

But today I'll focus will be Hank Current endeavors, as he now

leads about 10 companies dedicated to combating climate change.

Promoting renewable energy and space exploration.

Welcome, Hank.

Thank you for having me.

Good morning.

Well, good afternoon for me because I'm talking from Paris, Hawaii.

It's in Hawaii.

So Hank, your journey from pioneering in the gaming industry to being a

passionate advocate for system with energy is nothing short of remarkable.

Can you share with us what sparked this significant career shift?

What was the catalyst that led you to devote your energy

to fighting climate change?

Uh, so, so the catalyst was a heart attack.

I sold a company and a month after I sold it, I found myself in an ambulance on the

way to a hospital with a heart attack.

And uh, uh, first thing I said is that, you gotta be kidding me.

I haven't spent any of the money yet.

The second thing I said is like, no, I'm not going.

I still have stuff to do.

And I, I decided in the ambulance that if I had to hold my

breath for 15 minutes, I would.

And, uh, I have two stents.

No problem.

I, I obviously survived.

My doctor said, don't change anything, but I got to thinking

about what did I mean by stuff?

And so I worked it backwards from the end of my life.

I said, what is it that's gonna upset me if I didn't do something

about it by the end of my life?

And, um, so I s I searched for my bucket list and the first item came

to me in the back of the newspaper.

It was an article in the back of the Hawaiian newspaper, which said, oh, by

the way, we're gonna kill all the coral in the world by the end of the century.

Uh, what's causing that is ocean acidification.

What's causing that is carbon dioxide.

What's causing that is we are.

So I said, okay, that's it.

First mission is to end the use of carbon-based fuel.

So that's how I got onto my mission.

Hmm.

That's very interesting.

But you all, it look in great shape today, so Yeah.

Yes.

You're showing his arms.

Yeah.

So in, in one of your past interviews, or perhaps in the movie, I can't

remember, but you spoke about how you achieve such great success with

Tetris and navigate it through the intricacy of the Soviet system.

And you said, after all, people are just people.

That is something I remember.

And this insights serve you well then.

And I'm curious if this has also guide you in your current endeavor

and your activism, and are there other skills or insights on principles

from the time in the gaming industry that serve you well in the current

work fighting, , climate change?

Well, you know, the, the term people are just people.

Um, Refers to everybody in the world.

You know, everybody in the world either has children or

was a child once upon a time.

And, uh, so everyone in the world must be concerned about climate change

because we can see it happening.

You know, I would say like 10 years ago or so, we, there still could be people

who say, oh no, this is not happening.

Or it's an, it's a natural thing, or something like that.

But I don't know.

Today with.

Everything that's going on, the heat waves, the torrential rain,

uh, the droughts, uh, all of that people are, have to be waking up.

They can't just like say, well this is not happening.

It's, it's happening fires.

And so when people, when I say people are just people, people have to eat.

Yeah.

They have to, they have to have clothes, they have to have a shelter, uh, they

have to have all these basic needs.

And one of the basic needs is oxygen or, or a, how can I say?

An environment that we can survive in.

Yeah.

That's a basic need.

And if we move this world away from being an environment that we can

survive in, then we will not survive.

And that has to be something that everybody in the world should

be thinking about, if not for themselves, for their children,

or for their children's children.

We have this obligation.

Yeah.

That that is, that is really precisely the concept of carbon sessions, because

the climate change is a, it's something that is touching everybody, all of us.

People, everybody.

So that's why we want to have everybody involved in this conversation.

Hmm.

Even the people that run the oil companies or the electric

company, they have children too.

Yes.

Now, at some point they're going to have to, it's like if you live in Beijing

and you have a lot of money and you have children, You don't want to have the sky

be, you know, where you can't see the sun.

Yeah.

Or where you have to breathe that stuff.

I mean, you can see other cities in the world where we've already made that, that

change and now we have to sort of have a worldview and make that change for the

entire planet, which is kind of why it becomes a little bit more complicated

because people don't think globally.

They think locally so Hank, I, I'm curious what is there about people from the

Netherlands, because that is, that's where you're from originally, is that right?

Yeah, I'm originally from the Netherlands, but I left Netherlands

when I was 11 years old.

But there seems to be something about the, the genes of people from the Netherlands.

There seem to be people who were involved in change and, and innovation,

and they think in a different, seem to think in a different way.

The number of significant people.

Who've got roots back into the Netherlands is, is quite amazing.

And you've taken the position of where you were, obviously there was the, the,

the heart attack and the, the whole kind of change fixing the planet in some way.

How do you get involved in that?

And you've, you've branched into all kinds of things with your

businesses, so is there something that holds them all together?

I mean, climate change is obviously the answer to that.

Is there something that brings the different strands of those different

businesses that that works for you?

Yeah, so climate change is, is, frankly speaking, is just one of the things

that need to be fixed about the world.

You know, it may be the biggest and the most important, but it's not the

only thing, you know, we have to solve plastic in the ocean, for example.

I mean, there's all kinds of other things, and so I think that the thing that ties

them all together, Is that we have to work together to create a world in which

humanity and nature live in harmony.

And that's the overriding concept between all of my, my blue planet.

I just counted them.

I have, I have so many blue planets now.

It's, uh, you know, of course the original one is, is Blue Planet

Software, which takes care of Tetris.

And you know, in that, in that one, that's the oldest one.

It predates my switch to, uh, how can I say, to fixing the environment.

Still, even then, I vowed I would never work on a game that I

didn't want my children to play.

So that, that, the beginning of that thinking.

So then Blue Planet Foundation is working on to ending the, the, uh, uh,

use of carbon based fuel in Hawaii.

And we did our biggest claim to fame as we passed a mandate in 2015.

We're the first state to have a mandate of a hundred percent renewable energy.

Right.

Uh, I have Blue Planet Research, which is my ranch, where we

actually study living off grid.

We disconnected from the utility, uh, to study what it, what it meant.

Um, you know, and this is, uh, energy storage, that kind of stuff.

So that's what we study.

That turned into a business energy storage business.

So we have Blue Planet Energy.

So the, those are the, I see.

Foundation.

Oh, and then of course the, the big one, the, the Blue Planet Alliance.

The Blue Planet Alliance.

I was satisfied with doing things in Hawaii, but Hawaii

is just not going to solve the world's problem, not from Hawaii.

If, if we're perfect in Hawaii, other places are still not happening.

20 other states, by the way, in the US copied our legislation, so, We

have that movement in the US but it hasn't been happening outside the us.

So we start, I started a new organization called the Blue Planet Alliance, and

there's a couple of things we do.

One is we ally with other NGOs that have similar, well, uh, fix

the environment kind of missions.

So we sign an M O U that basically all it says is that we agree to work

together to create a world in which humanity and nature live in harmony.

And, uh, we're approaching a hundred NGOs now.

Uh, but the other thing is, is we're working with island countries to get

them to go through the same transition that we got Hawaii to go through.

And last year we focused on Palau Toga to, um, and this year we've got,

uh, seven or eight other countries that were gonna sign up this year.

All the sinking countries at either climate, at either

climate week or uh, at the cop.

, Blue Planet Alliance is, is basically where my focus is right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's amazing.

And, and I guess you've got that kind of profile that allows you to bring those

people together to, to kind of do the things you are doing, but also draw the

people in, which is so good to to hear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's partially what I'm doing, which is, you know, goes back

to my original mission of ending the use of carbon based fuel.

When somebody joins the Alliance, we take their mission and

make it one of our missions.

So all of the, all of the NGO's missions are part of the Alliance mission.

At the end of the day, I'd like us to fix everything.

You know, the, the concept is that everything that we've broken, uh,

in nature or everything that we've stolen from nature, we need to

give it back and we need to fix it.

Um, we have.

Money.

We definitely have the money and we have the technology.

All we need is the will.

Mm-hmm.

And that will just comes in the form of somebody somewhere making

a decision that, uh, I'm going to do this now I've made my decision.

I'm going to use the, and the use of carbon based fuel.

I don't care what your decision is as long as it's a decision

and as long as you stick to it.

So the, the United Nations is, is on, its, uh, sdg the, the Sustainable Development

Goals and they go from 2015 to 2030.

Well, I would like the next 15 years, 2030 to 2045 to be the, the Rd Gs,

the regenerative development goals.

Yeah.

It's where we fix everything that we've broken and, and so on.

And the end in 2045, which is the hundredth anniversary

of the United Nations.

So that is a great date for us to fix everything by.

I love that idea.

Yeah.

Hey, thanks Hank.

This conversation has been incredibly fantastic.

It's so great to learn about your passion and all the amazing

things that you're doing.

I'm particularly interested in space and everything that has to do with it.

You have a project called the High Seas Project, so.

Can you tell us about that?

I'm, I'm curious.

I mean, I've seen a bit of some of your interviews and how you are passionate

about space and everything that's going on there, um, enough to invest and really

pour out your energy innovation into it.

So maybe we can start with what is High seas?

What is that project about?

When did it start?

What's it doing now?

So High Seas is, uh, an analog.

High Seas.

Stands for the Well Hawaii, uh, space Exploration Analog and Simulation.

It's a facility on Mona Loa at 8,200 feet, uh, elevation where

we study living on other planets.

Uh, the first five years we did, uh, NASA missions and they wanted to find out how

people get along on long missions on Mars.

So the way the mission works is six people stay in a 1200 square foot dome

or a hundred square meters, uh, dome.

And if they go outside during the mission, they have to wear a spacesuit.

And if they communicate with the outside world during a Mars mission, we

delay that signal 20 minutes each way.

So for all intents and pur, uh, purposes, these people are, are.

Talking to each other for long periods of time.

We did five missions, four, four months, four months, eight months,

12 months, and eight months.

Um, we learned a lot.

We learned, uh, you know, for example, cruise selection is crucial.

You know, a lot of people when they, when they go to answer the questionnaires on

the way to cruise election, they lie.

They lie and they do whatever they want and they, they say whatever they wanna say

so they can get on the crew and that's it.

You know, so I, I think that maybe that, that's one thing that all

of the astronauts have in common.

They're good liars.

But anyway, um, so we did five years of, of Mars missions with nasa, and

today we're doing mostly moon missions.

They're much shorter and the delay in the communication's only three seconds.

So it's like a bad phone call.

Um, now why am I doing all this?

It's it's mission number three.

Mission number three is to make a backup of life by going to other planets.

And, uh, I believe that this is a, this is not just my mission.

It's a mission of all of humanity.

And it's a mission of mother, uh, of mother nature.

If you look at life, Life survives in every possible place

on earth where it can survive.

If there's any possibility at all that life survives, it is there.

And I could say the same thing about humans.

Humans pretty much live in any place that they can live.

You know, the most extreme, like coldest places, the hottest places.

The wettest places, the most dangerous places.

We are everywhere, so we are kind of mimicking life.

But here's the, here's the thing.

All of life, as we know it, is on this planet as far as we know.

And so if something happens to this planet, it's the

end of life as we know it.

So in order to, for life to survive.

And the reason by the way that it lives in all those extreme environments, So

that we can go to other planets and bring life as we know it to other planets.

Once we do that, I believe that this period that we're going through now,

which, uh, which is, I, I, I kind of think that Mother Earth is pregnant and

she's, she's having, you know, those symptom, but as soon as she has a baby,

everything will go back to normal.

Now, how will that happen when we go to another planet?

This is called colonization.

If we colonize another planet, historically, no colony has ever

survived on this planet that waited for resupply from the home, home planet.

We are going to have to live off the land on the other planets or wherever

we are going, and that means we are going to have to become very, very

good at, uh, circular economy because we're not gonna find another earth.

With all of this stuff that that nature gives us, we have to create

that stuff there to survive.

So we will learn so much about, about reusing everything.

'cause waste, there will not be such a thing as waste on the moon.

It's too valuable, you know, it costs a million dollars a kilo to

send something, uh, to the moon.

You are not gonna throw anything out.

And so we learn about packaging, we learn about how to, how to.

Get back all the nutrients from the food that we eat.

All the water will have to be recycled.

Everything.

Not a we.

We can't leave anything outside.

It's all gotta be reused and that technology will help us

figure out how to do it here.

I mean, just look at solar panels.

It came, they came out of this space industry to power satellite, and today

they are starting to power the world.

So it's that kind of thing that we're gonna discover by living on other

planets that we're going to need when we, uh, how can I say, fix this planet.

Wow, that's beautiful.

So is basically simulating Mars missions and now missions to the

moon, which is a beautiful way because I never saw it like this.

I, I have personally, I have a love-hate relationship with space travel.

Part of it is because of the way the rockets go into space.

There's an enormous amount of carbon dioxide that is emitted.

Um, the Carbon Almanac says it'll take a normal car to about, uh, I think 200

million years to emit the amount of carbon dioxide that the SpaceX Falcon

Heavy would emit in just a few minutes.

The way you're talking about it pretty much brings a lot

more rigor to the thinking.

And so it's not just about travel now, it's becoming about transferring life

and colonizing and seeing ways that we can start to do this, do this thing

sustainably, which, which brings my next question, is there a way that we can

travel to space sustainably without.

So much carbon or what are your thoughts around that?

Of course, absolutely.

You know, like, uh, uh, I, I don't know what percentage, but a huge percentage

of what, um, they used to get this space shuttle into space was hydrogen.

Hydrogen can power a rocket.

You know, the fact that we're using fossil fuel is just a little bit of our

laziness right now because it's easier.

And, and historically it didn't matter, but going forward, for example, if we go

to the moon, we are not going to find any hydrocarbons on the moon to make rocket

fuel, but we are gonna find hydrogen.

We find water on the moon.

All we need to do to water or ice is electrolysis, and then we can create

hydrogen, which is a rocket fuel.

So for taking off from the moon, Or even having a gas station in low earth

orbit with, um, gasoline or whatever you wanna call it, with energy from,

from the moon, that's hydrogen.

You know, when a rocket goes up, 95% of what you're lifting is fuel.

So just think about that 5% payload.

If you could build a payload in space, Or take off that rocket from the moon.

Now we're talking about a fraction of the amount of energy needed for the lift.

And you've got hydrogen as a, as a fuel, which is completely sustainable

because it basically, it's water.

Oh, well you make me want to go to space now.

Might you visit Hawaii?

Uh, thank you so much.

That's, um, that's incredibly helpful and I think it, I take

a deep breath knowing that.

Well, it's not the end and we don't have to emit that much carbon traveling

to space, and we can actually explore space and other planets sustainably.

So that's, that's incredibly beautiful news to me.

Uh, and I think our audience would love to hear that as well.

Thank you.

if you allow me, Hank, I would like to go back to, , the Blue Planet

Foundation because, uh, you said a couple of things that I just.

I think it's fascinating because you say that we have the money, we have

the technology, and then you just added something, uh, that we are

lazy and, um, I would like, yeah.

I would like you to go back to the, uh, if you don't mind, to go back to the Blue

Planet Foundation and walk us through the process of, of, uh, your lobbying.

The Hawaii, , government, I believe, uh, to introduce the hundred renewable energy

law, you know, what was the process?

Because I believe that there's a lot of, um, , a lot of, um, fight to convince

people that, uh, they, we have the technology, we have the money, and you

are lazy, basically, is what you said.

I mean, you didn't say that, but.

I didn't tell, you know, it's, it's, it's no point in, uh, telling somebody

that they're lazy because if you tell somebody they're lazy, then basically

it's the end of the conversation.

Who wants to tell, who wants to listen to somebody that just

told 'em that they're lazy?

You know?

No, you gotta treat people with respect.

So I, I remember, you know, talking to the utility and say, we should do this,

and they kind of, in a greenwashing way said, yeah, we should do it.

But they actually didn't do anything.

They just say they're gonna do something, blah, blah, blah.

This is called, this is called greenwashing.

Mm-hmm.

It's a nice story, but nothing happened.

I remember talking to the governor at the time and the governor said, boy,

uh, you're trying to do this, but you don't know anything about this.

You have no idea what my problem is.

You know, as I'm, I'm trying to run a state here.

Uh, you know, you think about climate change, but I'm thinking about security.

Mm-hmm.

What happens if something happens in my, my supply?

Of, uh, oil, uh, is stopped.

Somehow it's a tanker goes down or there's a conflict somewhere.

And, uh, she said, uh, we have 26 days of fuel and after that the lights go out.

So, so that's my concern.

Um, and anyway, I said, okay, that's fine.

But I think that's probably another reason why we should switch to

renewables because they, you know, once we get them going, they never go off.

You don't need any supplies from out, from outside.

Um, but the, and the politicians in general, at that time when we were

getting started, um, the biggest company in Hawaii was the electric company.

Mm-hmm.

And they still are.

The bigger company in Hawaii, Hawaii spends, uh, for just for

electricity, $2 billion of oil and a billion dollars of coal.

Just to give you an idea how much money you spend on.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

A million and a half people spending $3 billion on, on.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

Uh, so they had a lot of political clout.

It was our lobbyist versus their lobbyist.

And of course they have way more money than we do.

We don't have any money compared to them.

And, uh, so yeah, it was difficult.

Uh, what, what we needed to do is get the people on our side.

Once the people get on our side, uh, then.

They push their politicians and then the politicians could get on our side.

But how do we get the people on our side?

You know, it's like, uh, you talk to somebody and say, why is this my problem?

Mm-hmm.

You know, in Hawaii we don't have pollution because they, they put the

power plant on the end of the island, so when the wind blows, it blows all of the

smell, all of the pollution out to sea.

So it's not our problem and we just, uh, make it somebody else's problem.

And, uh, so we decided that we are going to reach the people through the children.

Hmm.

The children who actually need to, uh, have their future, protect their future.

And, uh, I was recently in, in Korea and, and somebody asked me,

so what policy should we pass?

Uh, politician asked me this and I said, um, you should

tell your children the truth.

Then you should ask your children what you should do.

Because if you, if you tell an adult, uh, the, the truths, first of all,

sometimes they won't believe it because they have their own belief system.

Second of all, they'll still have all kinds of reasons why they

can't make the change or they're too busy or so on and so forth.

Or they're, how can I say, listening to.

The other side of the news, the news that comes from the oil companies

that says, yeah, we don't need to make this change right away.

We, we have time.

The oil companies and the electric companies want us to take as much

time as possible so they can make as much money as possible to make

the change that we have to make.

Mm-hmm.

And it just means that, that we have much more difficult job putting

things back at the end of the day.

So they, they are making a problem for us because they don't care about what

happens to their, the, the result of their product, which is carbon dioxide.

Mm-hmm.

They really don't care.

They just, they just care about the money.

I mean, what good is money?

If you trash the planet, it's like, what good is money if you can't breathe?

You know, we need oxygen.

We don't need carbon dioxide.

And so, It's a, it's, it's so like ridiculous to, for, for, uh, companies

or people to, to think that money is more important than the environment.

It makes no sense.

It makes no sense.

Uh, we should put them in a, in a room and make them use up their oxygen and

see which they'd rather have money or.

And I, I, I like it.

I like very much, uh, what you say that's, you know, children actually,

I really believe that children at the end of the day, children's, all

the decision maker in the family.

And that's a transition to Dan question.

Hi Hank.

I'm really pleased to have this opportunity to talk to you and

thanks for giving your time today.

Um, I'm studying video games, digital art course at Birmingham

City Uni, and I found out.

Something quite interesting about, um, how video games are linked

with sustainability on the planet.

So for me, um, I think gaming, yeah, it's a, it's a window into the future

how we will be living in the future.

You know, today we live in mostly in the real world, but in the

future it's very possible that we're living mostly in the virtual world.

And if we live in the virtual world, when we buy something, Buy clothing or buy a

car or buy a house, whatever it is that we, uh, that we buy, and to show off to

our friends about how great we are, which is why we buy clothes, which is why we

buy bigger cars and live in bigger houses.

It's just to show off to our friends.

Yeah, this is all about status, but if we gain our status by virtual objects,

then at the end of life of that virtual, virtual object, there is no garbage.

Everything that we, every piece of clothing that we buy turns into garbage.

Uh, every, every object that we buy turns into garbage.

And so this is the big problem.

We, we, we mine resources and we create garbage.

That's basically what we do in a virtual world.

We don't need to do that when we're done with our object, when it's lost its

value, uh, then we can just say it's gone.

And there's no trace left behind.

So I really think that in the future, if we can get our status by, you know,

something in the virtual world, that's much, much better than something gaining

status with an object in the real world.

Okay.

I think that's one of many first year video games.

Uh, um, Have going forward into the gaming industry regarding

this sustainability problem?

Um, yeah.

Think about, um, what gives you status in a game and, uh, I would,

I would love for you to gain status in a game by doing something good

instead of like killing somebody.

So, uh, you know, this, there's, there's so much, um, how can I

say, violence in video games.

And I think this is just because the audience is young boys who are going

through their rite of passage to become an adult, and they think that, uh,

that by showing their ability to, I don't know, out kill somebody else.

That, that is a form of status.

Yeah.

But I, I think we need to change that status to, uh, how can I

say, doing good in the world.

Mm-hmm.

I'm, I'm working on a, on a, you wanna call it a game?

That's okay.

It's certainly, I'm using a, uh, my, my, how can I say my

background as a, as a game designer.

I, I created the first role playing game in Japan in 1983.

Just to give you some background.

The game that I'm working on is, is all in the real world.

People ask me at the end of my speech, what can I do?

And I always say, I'm sorry, I don't know what you can do

because I am me and you are, you.

Only you can figure out what you can do and what you will

do, and you should do that.

But then I see people with puzzled look and they say, oh my God, they, they

don't know where to start because the problems that they face are so big.

You know, what can a single person do to fix such a huge problem?

And so, um, my game is I create a list of things for people to do.

And in the beginning there's small, like turn off a light in

a, uh, in the room where there's no people, or pick up a piece of

rubbish and put in the rubbish can.

It gives you one point.

You do add up a bunch of single pointers and then you go up a level.

You go up a level, we give you bigger things to do that's role playing.

So you go up levels, uh, and then we give you those big, you do a bunch

of those and you go up another level.

Now, one way to make points is by doing the actions that you

find on our list of things to do.

But the other thing that you can do, which is making you more points, is you

can create things to do for other people.

If you create a thing to do for other people that is sticky and a lot of other

people do it, you get a lot of points.

So then it becomes a competition to see who can make the most sticky

or the most actionable actions.

And then we can look at the actions and we can do a calculation,

what's the, like carbon footprint, reduction of that action.

Uh, and, and then we start being able to calculate how many.

People are doing some action and so on.

And then the idea is that when you get to level five or level six, then

you get benefits in the real world.

Like you get to buy tickets first for the next concert, or you get the

best seats or you get, um, considered for a promotion first in, in your

company, uh, that kind of thing.

So yeah, I think that in the beginning it, it will be like a game.

Uh, but at the end it'll be become very serious.

And, uh, the actions that you do, the AI watches, which actions you choose.

And so it predicts what action you're most likely to do next.

So the AI will lead you to whatever your field of interest is and make you.

A hero in that direction.

Okay, this one page on the Carbon Almanac about computing and carbon,

for example, it says, it says that one hour of playing Fortnite on Xbox X.

I'm not a game player, so I have no idea what it is, but, uh, is

equivalent of 27 lead bulbs per hour.

, but if you play the same game on PlayStation five, It's equivalent

to about 40 lead bulbs per hour.

And yeah.

And then the other thing is that, uh, the vast majority of game being

played are played on mobile phones.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Oh, they're not being played on Xbox or, you know, PlayStation or Nintendo.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, they're playing like on mobile phones.

Yeah.

Because everybody has a mobile phone.

Not everybody has a, uh, game machine.

So, Uh, yeah.

And it, yeah.

L e d bulbs.

That's interesting.

You know, and in, I live off grid.

Yeah.

On the big island.

Yeah.

Well, uh, and in my house here, I'm off grid, so it is very strange because,

you know, in my game it says, turn off a light in the room where there's no people.

But in my house, it makes no difference.

Mm-hmm.

Because I'm off grid.

So I'm not creating any carbon dioxide by leaving the lights on.

So it's very strange, you know, because I have this habit of turning

off the lights, but then I realize, oh wait, it doesn't make a difference.

Because actually when you think about it, the amount of energy which

is landing on this planet is huge.

Yes.

And, and, and we spend most of our, our fossil fuel fighting against

this energy that's coming out at us.

Yeah.

By, by refrigeration and, and air, air conditioning.

It's like use that energy, that energy is raining down on us.

Uh, and, and, and it's like, wow, our reaction is so strained.

And by the way, I think that the future is not wind and solar.

I think the future is geothermal.

Geothermal is sourced from the heat of the center of the earth, which has been

around since the beginning of the planet.

It's not going away anytime soon.

Mm-hmm.

There is it boundless.

We just have to learn how to dig a little deeper and, and this

is the thing, this is the thing.

We've, we've learned how to dig deeper for oil in like crazy places.

In, you know, over two miles of ocean, down through the ocean floor.

And it's like, are you kidding me?

That is such a technologically complicated thing.

And, and yet we have geothermal, which is like, there's a whole ring of fire.

All the places that have volcanoes in the world just have to dig down and,

and send down water and get back steam.

How hard is that?

Oh my gosh.

You know, I've been to Iceland.

, it's, it's amazing what.

It's, it's, it's just absolutely amazing.

And if you don't have geothermal, then use the geothermal somewhere

else to make hydrogen, then bring the hydrogen to wherever you are,

and then use the hydrogen because the side product of hydrogen

combustion or in a fuel cell is water.

You know?

Wow.

Who doesn't need water?

Everybody needs water.

Sure.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So, and it's like, Perfectly circular.

So you make the hydrogen, you get back water, and then somewhere else you make

hydrogen some more and you get back water.

It's like, yeah, that's the way to do it.

Yeah.

Brian, do you wanna take the, the last part?

Yes, I would love to.

Um, yeah.

Uh, very excited to do so.

Uh, Hank.

Wow.

Uh, uh, so many amazing topics here.

I focus some of my collegiate study on mimetics and I really love, I wanna learn

more about this game idea of getting users to create contagious memes that

are like climate positive ideas that they're getting other people to go out

there and do that are improving status.

I loved your comment about achieving status in a more low impact example.

You know, for example, like digital fashion versus status

achieved through conspicuous consumption in the physical world.

As it often is done in ways that are particularly climate impacting,

flying around the world, huge houses, parties, clothes, lots of

disposable possessions, et cetera.

I'm curious of your thoughts on how all of us and our listeners as individual

contributors and influencers in our own social circles can help lean into

that trend towards status achieved through digital means as opposed.

To conspicuous consumption in the physical world.

Any thoughts?

I'm sure you have many thoughts.

Uh, many thoughts.

Uh, so, um, I would like people to, uh, gain status by how much

they are doing that helps the future of humanity and nature.

That should be the ultimate status because if you are

gaining your status by consuming.

Destroying nature, that should be antis status.

Mm-hmm.

And so I'm working on a rating system, and the rating system basically tells

you how good a product or a company is for the future of humanity and nature.

Right now when you go to buy something on Amazon or whatever, you get five

stars and five stars tells you if somebody was happy with that product.

Which means that they, they, they got value for their money, but it tells you

nothing about how good that product is and what went into making that product.

What is the supply chain that created that product?

Um, so, you know, clothing, oh my gosh, horrible, horrible supply

chain issues all over the world.

The dies are being let, let go into rivers in India and they're, I mean, it's like

countless thing and it's, it's all about.

Looking better.

Looking better is such a, such a, a slow, how can I say, what's the word?

It's such a temporary phenomenon because like a month later or

a year later, it's looked like, oh, that's last year's fashion.

You know, I used to wear all kinds of t-shirts, different things written on

them, and now I'm down to one T-shirt.

It's got a silver lining.

Hmm.

And so what it means is that I can wear it for a week without it smelling at all.

Antimicrobial, right?

Right.

Antimicrobial, yes.

So now I wear a black t-shirt and it's antimicrobial.

I don't have to change my shirt.

That, I mean, that's a huge amount of laundry.

And I've stopped accepting t-shirts from people or buying t-shirts.

So I mean, that's.

That was my fashion thing.

'cause I stopped wearing a suit a long, long time ago.

I, I'm over it.

Yeah.

So, so it's just a matter of thinking and, and people don't look at me

and expect a fashion statement even though, even though by the way I do,

I have, I have a couple of jackets and I threw paint on my jacket and people

go, wow, where did you get the jacket?

And it's actually, it was just an old jacket and I threw paint on it.

And so it's funny how you can create fashion statement

without buying new stuff.

You know, you can recycle your old clothes by, by adding some

flavor to it or something.

You, you don't have to go out and buy.

And by the way, if you do it yourself, that is way more status than if you

have somebody else do it for you.

If, if you buy a jacket that's looked like that, it says, okay, well

you spent a lot of money on this.

Yeah.

But if you did it yourself all the more, right?

Oh, you are an obvious or you, you know, it's all the more status.

So, you know, it's funny how, how me going backwards and not wanting to

buy new stuff, whereas I have a jacket that someone else threw paint on down

in New Orleans that I met the artist.

I'm so excited to meet this guy.

And so when I wear it, I can tell people about this cool guy I met.

But all the better if I did it.

I agree.

That's, yeah.

Well, you know, and you know, all the better if you took your jacket and said,

can you throw that paint on my jacket?

And then you Yeah.

That jacket like another 10 years.

I also wanna return to one of the other comments you made a, a short bit ago.

I'm curious of, of the perspective you have having worked with government bodies

and corporations as to like how we can help enforce some type of more holistic.

Measurement of our impacts.

So the example you used was the factory with the fumes sort of floating out.

They put it on the windward side, so it like floated out over the ocean.

So it, we, it didn't bother us.

Right.

In quotation marks.

Um, so how do we get our, how do we make our choices as consumers,

citizens, corporations, cultures?

Like how do we get ourselves to look at that kind of decision of where we place

this factory and what even the factory creates in that more holistic fashion?

Is it about.

A, a big multinational, international kind of governing body.

Is it about countries, is it about states?

Is it about communities?

Is it about people?

Is it about consumer choice?

Your rating things suggest consumer choice.

Like, I'm really curious how you think about that.

Yeah, I, it's, it's about transparency.

So the rating system, uh, is meant to, to create transparency.

So the, where we get our data is from.

Over 500, uh, rating certificates by different agencies around the world

that look at different things like fair labor practice or toxic ingredients,

or, you know, all of these things.

Somebody's looking at them and we incorporate that into the rating system.

Now, if you know, uh, what the rating of a product or a service is like,

we're just about to do bookings.com.

I will know exactly which hotel is eco-friendly and which one is not.

Yeah.

Then I make the choice, you know, I have the choice and I and yeah.

Guarantee young people are gonna make that choice.

And if people make that choice, then companies have to change.

Yeah.

To cater to that choice in the future.

And when things are getting better or worse, nobody will buy stuff from a

company that's a polluting company.

I.

That's just like unthinkable.

Why would you do that?

You're contributing to the problem.

It's right now we're contributing to the problem.

'cause we just don't know.

Most people just don't know when they buy something, they have no idea.

How did this product get here and where is it going after it's end of life, you know?

This, if this plastic object, we knew that it was gonna break up into

tiny pieces and it's gonna end up in the ocean and it's gonna become

part of our diet when we eat fish.

You wouldn't use that bottle of shampoo in the hotel.

Oh, right.

And so by, by making this transparency, and by the way,

Europe just did a amazing thing.

They passed a law against greenwashing.

Yeah.

It's sort of like our A stuff, but on, yeah.

Greenwashing.

Company cannot te tell the public about their own product because

they're, they're freaking gonna lie.

Then they're gonna tell part of the truth.

They're gonna say, oh, well we did this and we did this.

And, uh, they're not gonna talk about what they did over here.

They're only gonna talk about the good news.

What we need is, is somebody look at that company and their

products and say, you know what?

This is what's going on.

This is the truth.

And, and based on that truth, Consumers can make decisions.

Yeah.

And then companies have to follow.

And that's just, uh, you know, that's just the way we need to move forward.

Yeah.

Oh, amazing.

Transparency.

Um, last question, I promise.

Um, professionally, I, I do a lot of real estate transactions involving wind, solar,

geothermals, you said, and the related sort of power storage projects in those,

a few different forms that takes, um, I'm curious of your perspective on where

we are on this sort of, Or, or direction towards a tipping point that these kind

of projects will like, make total fiscal sense, even without any subsidies.

And like, they'll, it'll become a self-fulfilling pattern that

anyone developing something says, I will do it this way first.

Well, if you take Hawaii as an example, because Hawaii was

first, uh, in my world anyway.

Um, we basically had a plan to achieve 40% renewable energy by 2030.

On the past to a hundred percent.

We have already reached 40% renewable energy.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, uh, we went from, it's impossible to, of course we're doing this.

I remember being on a panel and I said, we're gonna go a hundred percent

renewable by 2045, and the guy sitting next to me says, I'm a scientist.

I researched this at the University of Hawaii.

There is no way we can go a hundred percent by 2045.

And I said, well, I'm not as smart as this guy, so I'm gonna do it anyway

because I don't know that I can't.

Yeah.

And we are killing it.

We changed the business model of the utility.

So then make more money.

They guess what?

They're our best friends now.

They sound like us when they talk.

It's just the, the whole mindset has changed to, to, yeah.

It costs them 25 cents per kilowatt hour for oil.

It costs them 8 cents per kilowatt hour for wind and solar.

If you add, if you add storage, it's up to 12 cents and wind and solar is

expensive in Hawaii because they have to bring all that stuff to Hawaii

from a long way, and, and land is expensive and labor is expensive.

If you go to other places in the world like Texas, they can buy wind,

the utility can buy wind for less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour.

We're, we've done wind projects down there.

Yeah.

There is no way that, there's no way that fossil fuel can compete with that.

And we, I mean, the world spend $7 trillion a year subsidizing fossil fuel.

In what universe?

Does that make any sense?

Subsidized renewable at the same amount.

What the fossil fuel industry does is it gets subsidized, makes record profits,

and then gives us a massive, massive cleanup job at the end of the day that

taxpayers are gonna have to pay for.

That's just fair.

I wanna, I want to see if you're willing to go out and give a prognostication.

When do you think we'll be at that?

And maybe you're saying we're, we're nearly there.

When do you think the people who are creating energy producing projects,

right, whether in whatever form that is, whatever kind of power platform that is,

they'll be choosing renewables broadly.

We'll have reach our tipping point where it continues to accelerate and maybe we're

already there in the well-to-do countries.

We are already there.

Okay.

You know, like in, in all of the first world countries we're already there.

Places like India and China where they're still catching up, where they still

have people that are behind the curve.

Mm-hmm.

The poverty curve, um, that say we have to lift our people up before we can

actually think about climate change.

Mm-hmm.

We have to think about that.

How do we raise those people up to the point where they're not surviving?

Right.

Because a person that survives will do anything to survive,

you know, in including set a building on fire or whatever.

Yeah.

If you have, that's what it takes to survive.

You'll survive.

So we've gotta get people out of survival mode, you know, and that's

sort of where the imbalance of, uh, how can I say, money, uh, in the

world that kind of leads to that.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know how to redistribute the money in the world.

I would love it if things just became a little bit more expensive and that

everybody could have a living wage.

Um, that would be great.

You know, so everybody could have a job or, uh, but how

do, how do we achieve that?

We have created such a machine where, where some people make so much money

that they couldn't possibly spend it in their, the rest of their lives.

I mean, and what's the, again, what's the money for?

If you used your money, this is the way I feel about it.

If you use your, if you've made money, you should use your money

and your ability to fix something about the world that's broken.

Yes.

That's your responsibility.

That's, that's where you need to go.

Don't die with your money.

Don't give it to your kids.

They will.

It just ruins their lives.

Give your kids a house.

Give your kids an education.

Then use your ability and your money to fix.

I don't care if it's climate change or if it's plastic in the

ocean, or if it's women's equality.

I don't care what it is.

Figure out what's broken in your mind and go and fix that because you can.

And if you can, then it's your responsibility to do that.

That's amazing.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Oh, Hank.

You've given us such a rich feast of ideas and challenges and, and

solutions, and it's been really, really good to spend this time with you.

So one of the things I heard was that we've got the money, we've got

the technology, we have to make a decision, and that's, that's a, a

real good takeaway if we wanna find out more about the work that you're

doing, about the, the different.

Initiatives that are there.

Where's the best place to to jump into that?

I mean, 'cause there's, there was lots of links.

We'll put a bunch of stuff in in the episode notes, but is there

one place that you would send people to find out more about?

Um, I, I don't do a lot of, uh, efforts to upkeep it, but there's

a hank rogers.com and that's, it's spelled h e n k r o g e R ss.com.

And then, uh, of course there's the Blue Planet Alliance, and I think that

that's the, uh, That's sort of more on the forefront of what I'm doing

right now and trying to get done.

Thank you so much for your time.

We really appreciate it.

It's been a pleasure to hear from you.

Thank you for being here.

Alright, thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Aloha.

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