Throwing Stones Into Our Glass House

[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss several ongoing environmental disasters that are at least connected to human activities. And take a look at how our society's cultural and economic approach could be tweaked to possibly lead to better results as far as keeping the planet habitable. Joining me today is a man whose pessimism for our future prospects as a species is only outpaced by his optimistic view of people. Tunde. Ogunlana Tunde. You have to tell me one way or the other, man. Are people the problem or the solution? [00:00:56] Speaker B: I guess to have a solution, you need a problem. So maybe that's where you start, right? We create problems and then we gotta solve. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Then we create solutions. [00:01:05] Speaker B: There [00:01:06] Speaker A: you go. [00:01:06] Speaker B: I guess today's discussion is, you know, can we get ourselves out of some of these problems long term? [00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, definitely. [00:01:12] Speaker B: Will we? Will we come together on solutions? [00:01:15] Speaker A: So now we're recording this on September 14, 2020, and I want to jump right in. We're seeing reports of the devastating fires going on right now on the US West Coast. We're getting reports that animal populations on the Earth have shrunk almost 70% in the last 50 years and that our oceans are being overrun with plastic waste. So, Tunde, are we turning the Earth into hell? [00:01:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:01:41] Speaker A: My goodness. Well, no, but what do you make of this? Like, all the things that we could think of in our nightmares about, like, oh, you know, Earth is burning and water is, you know, like we're doing. All this stuff is happening, you know, on our, like, as we continue to live. Like, what's going on here? No, and [00:01:56] Speaker B: that's the thing, is that. And sad to say, I mean, I say that as a joke. Yes. But in reality, when I was watching some of the footage on the news and all that about Northern California and just how just the images, you're right, it reminded me of just the doomsday, Armageddon kind of scene. And, you know, it's sad and scary. I think what's happening, to answer your point directly, is obviously that the world is burning. Figuratively, literally, however you want to look at it. Well, [00:02:26] Speaker A: it's literal. Remember six months ago, during the summer in the Southern hemisphere, Australia was burning, [00:02:31] Speaker B: you [00:02:31] Speaker A: know, and we did a show on that. I mean. [00:02:33] Speaker B: Exactly. And so. And that's what I mean. It's burning because. Because it's hot and climate change and all that, and it's just hot. Well, [00:02:41] Speaker A: yeah, and what that means, I've heard some people saying, oh, people are starting these fires. This isn't climate change. The issue that you have where climate change comes in is that if land areas are warmer, and more importantly warmer and then drier, then fires can burn more out of control. Fires can be more aggressive, basically. They spread faster, they spread further. So the issue is that in this, in arid areas like this, the west coast area right there, the climate change makes them hotter and drier, so the plants are more dried out, easier to burn and so forth, there's more stuff that's easy to burn. But in other areas, you know, the climate change actually it makes existing trends in a lot of cases worse. So, like where we are in South Florida, it doesn't make it hotter and drier, it makes it hotter and the moisture stays though. And so we end up with stronger hurricanes, you know, and so it affects us in different ways, but it's still just the cascade of effects of us changing the Earth and making it. There's been this hot before. The issue was just people didn't live on the Earth when it was getting like this before. [00:03:46] Speaker B: You know, in my opinion, from the facts that I've seen and absorbed, I would say that human beings are the cause of the current trajectory of the climate change over the last hundred years. Does that mean that the Earth climate doesn't change on its own? No, of course we know that the Earth, we've been through ice ages, we've had all these things. You know, we know that there's different climate patterns throughout the world history. The difference is, and I think we alluded to this on another show, you know, anyone that grew up where it snows knows the concept of a greenhouse, and that's why they call them greenhouse gases, is that when you have enough CO2 in the atmosphere, it just warms up the atmosphere. And that's how a greenhouse works, is that plants emit CO2 and it's trapped within the greenhouse. And in the winter, that little greenhouse stays hotter than outside. And so it's not a stretch to imagine that if for the last 150 years or so we've just been constantly burning fossil fuels and other things that cause the Earth to warm, that the climate has increased and that's going to have alternative effects that natural evolution and the Earth's ability to absorb certain things, it's just too fast for it to happen. And on top of it, if we're pumping out more CO2, which is warming the Earth, one response could be to Maybe keep the trees that we have that would absorb some of the CO2 and where through deforestation, through just logging, like in the Amazon, which is, you know, kind of the well known ones. And then think about all these fires. Like you said, we had these fires in California. They make a lot of news because they're in our country. You mentioned the fires in Australia, which were huge. And let's not forget, I think it's in the last year, those massive fires in the Amazon. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:44] Speaker B: So our ability. And [00:05:45] Speaker A: there's been fires in Siberia, I believe as [00:05:47] Speaker B: well. Yeah. And, and, and which is again, climate change. Right. Who would have thought the fires could stay burned for a long period of time in Siberia? But, but that's my point is that in a sad like. And I'm even getting depressed hearing myself talk like this because it's like, as I'm saying, and I'm realizing, you know, the one natural kind of sponge that we might have, right. Massive sponges that could absorb the mess of too much CO2, which is trees. I mean, in the last, we just said in the last 12 months, there's millions of acres of trees that are just gone. And it's going to take four or five decades at best for those trees to come back, if they're allowed to come back, if we don't start developing, you know, on those lands and doing something else with that. So, you know, it's just, I mean, I think we are probably really past the inflection point of saving the Earth to where it might have been. I think, you know, that might be the nasty reality if we look at a lot of things that I know we'll talk about like, like, like the amount of animals, species that have just disappeared and all that. Because I think that what we've done is we screwed up the actual ecosystem and the relationship between everything from microbiology to macrobiology. And so, and we're going to keep feeling those effects. So I guess that's my long winded way to answer your question, that maybe weren't a problem, I guess after all that. [00:07:08] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean, I think that the fire issue, I mean, and like I said, we did speak on that when we spoke about the Australian fires. I mean, that is one that, you know, the fires would be if the plant matter wasn't exposed to hotter temperatures and being drier, they would be easier to contain. The fires, easier to put them out, they spread faster, they're harder to contain under current, under the current scenario, in the current setup, when you have, and that's Attributable, excuse me, to climate change. And I think that it's really something like fire burning is something that in the abstract is a natural thing. You know, fire burns a forest, can then be receded, so to speak, with, you know, the soil that is. That is richer and so forth. But the rate in which it's going is just outpacing anything that. That is going to be able to be regenerated in the same amount of time, especially when you consider, like you said, the cascade effects of all the other activities that we have. So it's really. It's frightening, man. I mean, it's frightening. It looks like fire and brimstone when you turn on the tv. [00:08:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:12] Speaker A: And, you know, it's. I think that the desire to not feel guilt or to not be blamed sometimes is taking too much precedent in people's minds where they want someone to tell them it's not their fault, it's not their bad. And so you don't have to feel guilty about this. But I think we need adults in the room. People just need to be mature. Yeah. And say, look, we have a problem. It's kind of like we saw with the coronavirus when there was this debate on whether China did it on purpose. And it's like, well, at this point, it doesn't really matter. We got to solve this thing. And then once we solve it, we can go and do the forensics and figure out how it happened. Like when the people. When you have a house on fire, you don't show up and try to figure out who started it while the fire's still going. You put the fire out and then you say, okay, let's figure this thing out. And so the same thing here, whether or not, if you have an aversion to feeling guilty that human beings maybe warming the planet, that's all well and good, but in terms of trying to mitigate the problem and actually to get to. On a different track to where if we are causing it, we can try to solve it. You don't have to reckon with whether or not it's our fault in order to get there. And so spending so much time on trying to deflect blame is really, really, really hurting us, I think. And again, that's a message that there are a lot of people that are receptive to. So I really think that just we need more adults in the room, to be honest. [00:09:37] Speaker B: And I think [00:09:37] Speaker A: regardless of the problem, we need to try to address this. We need to try to be less impactful on the Earth in terms of all of our activities. [00:09:46] Speaker B: No, I agree. And I think those who would like to see the climate addressed, issues addressed, and the speed at which I think we need to address them, I mean, I don't think we can go another 10, 20 years of just behaving the same way without, you know, really, really massive negative consequences probably a few decades later. So if we really care about our grandkids and future generation, all the stuff that people keep saying, then we do need to kind of eat our broccoli right now as a society, right? We got to do something, you know, rip the band aid off, do whatever the analogy is for doing something you don't want to do. So for those of us that want to see the environment saved and to see maybe, you know, fossil fuels, the use of them diminished, things like plastics, maybe not, not, not produced as much, I think the messaging needs to be different because I've always felt like, you know, climate change and these big abstract things that happen over decades and a lot of people, it's very hard for the mind to grasp that. But, you know, what goes hand in hand with fossil fuel production is usually pollution. And pollution is a much easier thing to grasp because we all can remember the scenes, you know, those of us that are old enough listening of the Exxon Valdez, I think in 89 or 90 when it spilled, we saw, you know, the, the, the, the birds and the animals and the sea lions all covered in oil and all that. I heard recently there was a massive oil spill in Siberia. The Russians, you know, one of their pipes burst and you see these aerial footage of, of these lakes that are just dark brown with all the oil in it. So I just think like, okay, maybe we, that was the best technology in the late 1800s, early 1900, you know, middle of the 20th century type of thing. But we know now for a couple decades that solar and wind are viable. Doesn't mean that they are going to replace everything tomorrow. But just like we wanted to put a man on the moon in 1961 or whenever Kennedy made the announcement and eight years later, Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon. If we wanted to be carbon free, let's say in 20 years or near it, I'm pretty sure society could figure that out. But that's where my concern and my sadness is, is that, you know, there was a, there was an agreement amongst our society that we wanted to get to the moon. We wanted to be that good. And so the national energy and kind of culture and experience was put behind that endeavor. And then we were proud when we made it happen right now, there's so much fracturing of all, you know, our discourse, our realities, all that, that I don't know if we have the cohesiveness and the shared vision to get past this issue. And that's what really concerns us. [00:12:32] Speaker A: We don't have the cohesiveness and the. To get past any issue. Like, everybody's energy. No, I mean, everybody's energy is only directed at making villains out of who they don't agree. No, [00:12:42] Speaker B: I agree, but it seemed like this is so important. And you're right. I mean, look, what's more important, A guy taking a knee in front of the flag at Anthem or our ability to have fish in the ocean that we can eat in three ocean. [00:12:53] Speaker A: No. And that question has been answered. That question has been answered by a lot of people, and fish is not the answer. [00:12:59] Speaker B: It's more important. [00:13:00] Speaker A: Symbolic things are taking on more importance than actual reality. And so as long as that's the case, and that's beneficial for some. Some people can. It's easy to wield power. There's no accountability when you're in leadership. If symbolic issues are the only issues that matter to people. Because symbolic issues will always be there, and there's no solution one way or the other. It's just a constant battle that you can fight. And, you know, there's no accountability. You know, like, there's just an external villain. So. But I want to move on because I actually wanted to discuss some of these things. I know I tried to go into the fire part, but also we had mentioned, and you had sent me something about the. Which is just jarring to see. Like, it's hard. It's hard for me to get my head around this, but just the report that animal communities had shrunk on average around 68% since 1970 to 2016 around the world. And that's, on average, like, some areas have seen decline as much as 94%. [00:13:56] Speaker B: I know. [00:13:56] Speaker A: And like. And that's just like, it's jarring for me to kind of conceptualize that. Now. This is talking about vertebrates, vertebrate animals, you know, mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, and, you know, like. So we'll have. And walking. And we'll have an article discussing this in our show notes. But what's your reaction to this? To me, like, I see something like this. I don't even think that our brains can appreciate something like this. Like, this is such a high number and such a. The planet's so large that I don't think we'd understand. We can really conceptualize how much destruction that is. But it's just an amazing amount of destruction. If you, the population is dropping by two thirds is, that's a lot. That's out of every three, two of them are dead, you know. And so I mean, what was your reaction to this? [00:14:43] Speaker B: No, I mean, it was terrible. Terrible. It's funny when you said our brains can't fathom it because I think you're right, it's funny. A couple days ago I got into a fun conversation with my 9 year old and we were talking about space and the solar system. So I tried to explain to him the concept of a light year, that it takes light one year to travel 6.3 trillion miles. And trying to explain that to a nine year old wasn't the easiest thing. And I think you're right. This, my brain feels like his brain felt. When I think about this percentage of animals that have, you know, just been erased off the Earth over the last 50 years and look, it's terrible. I mean, it's not unbelievable when you really understand. I mean, it's probably like anything else, right? The Earth is a sphere and it can only hold so much. So if you look at the human population has more than doubled in that period. And then the amount of resources that it takes to feed humans, not only feed us in terms of our food and our intake, but like we just got done talking about with it, with the whole climate change stuff. You know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're using resources from the Earth. You know, we're, we're mining, we're, we're drilling, we're having oil spills, we're doing all this stuff that is either taking from or the ecology to feed ourselves. And again, [00:16:08] Speaker A: we're changing it fundamentally changing it to where it's not habitable for things that were there. [00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's what I mean, it's not just the oil, I mean that gets the big attention. But what about just regular strip mining when you're mining for metals and all that? Literally, we blow the top off of mountains for that and we literally change landscapes. How many animals probably die just during that stuff? What about, I mean the worst to me, because it just visually is painful to see it. You know, these massive dragnets that we have in the ocean with this commercial fishing, you know, in the Pacific Ocean. And now they're talking about the Galapagos. I saw an article that they're starting to fish around that area and now they're, they're just these massive dragnets that are dragging up everything. Sharks, sea lions, all these endangered animals and, and they just dump them all out on these massive container ships and then they just, they leave them. You know, they pick out the tuna and the food that, you know, they can sell to the supermarket. And then they don't throw sharks and the sea rays back. They just let them die there. So it's, it's just this, you know, we've got industry that is exterminating animals. And I don't mean that to sound all, you know, squishy and all that. You know, I, I don't believe it's necessarily on purpose. That's the goal is just to decimate the earth full of animals. But there seems to be no regulation around it and no care to preserve, you know, our ecosystem in that way. I mean, I've. I've read studies other than what we've read just preparing for today that the yellow fin tuna population is like 90% lower than what it was just a few decades ago. And they think that we could outfish that species in the next decade. The other thing that I thought of in preparing for this is one of the rare advantages I saw of the COVID shutdown when it was like the heavy lockdown around the world in March, going into April was. I was amazed looking at the photographs from around the world, between the clearing up of the skies in some downtowns like Los Angeles and some cities in India and in China, you saw the before and after photographs and the air quality was just amazing how much it improved just with being shut down for three weeks. And then I remember seeing images and reading articles about like the, like, like Venice, you know, the canals were clear, you could see fish at the bottom. Apparently there was a flamingo migration into India, which had the largest grouping of flamingos, I think, in like 50 years. Like, it was like over 10 million. And it's just these little things. I was just surprised, like, wow, human beings stopped for like three, four weeks and look at how quickly the Earth has recovered. And so part of my thinking, and again, this could be me being all utopian and all that was, well, what if, like, only once every other year or every three years, like humanity just took a quarter off? Like, literally we just took one to three months and said, we're just going to just stop moving around so much and let the earth heal a bit. Because I thought, man, if that happened in three weeks, what we just saw from just an unexpected shutdown, imagine if we Actually put some purpose behind it. So again, not that, [00:19:25] Speaker A: you know, you saw how, I mean, you saw how people react. Some people reacted to the, to the COVID shutdown. So I think that you are living in la la land to think that people. No, of course I'm [00:19:34] Speaker B: living in LA la land. I'm not, I'm not saying that, you know, that people would react. I'm not saying that you just shut people down. I mean, this would have to be something agreed upon by society. Right? Like we. [00:19:42] Speaker A: And that's what I'm saying. Society can't agree on anything. Except the only thing people can agree on these days [00:19:47] Speaker B: is, yeah, look, I'm not in a fantasy this is going to happen in my lifetime or anytime soon. I'm just saying that in order for us to have a solution, we would need to attack this as a society. I would say similar to the way that some societies like Israel or Sweden have made the agreement that military service is mandatory for a couple years after high school. They don't sit there and argue about it and all that. You know, it's just part of their culture. You go to school, you grow up, and then, you know, you're going to serve your country for a couple years. And so I think, you know, we would need to have a global shift in outlook like that where, you know, we all understand that we need to serve the earth at some point and that we just agree to have kind of society, you know. [00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's actually, no, I think that is part of the disconnect with this, is that people. And that's what [00:20:36] Speaker B: you're saying. I don't, I don't have a fantasy that's going to happen. No, [00:20:38] Speaker A: no, [00:20:38] Speaker B: take that type. [00:20:39] Speaker A: No, no, what I was going to say is I think that that's part of the disconnect is that the, the, the scale of the problem is so large because it's global. People will think that, oh, well, if this country or that country or this region, you know, scales back, it doesn't matter because, you know, the other countries will all still be doing it. But actually that's. That, that's the, the cowardly mindset. That's the cowardly approach. The, the what, what's needed is leadership on these issues. Someone needs to step up and, and say, hey, we're going to take leadership on this and we're going to, to be better stewards of the earth. Meaning, you know, someone like some nation or some region is going to have to do that and then what will happen based on history, what we'll see is that other people, once the leader shows that it's viable, other people will fall in line. But everybody looking around and waiting for somebody else to pick up the leadership mantle on it, it's never going to get done. And so that's when we see, you know, the disregard for nature from every corner. Then it's, there's no one is, is standing and saying, look, we're going to do this a better way. We got to figure out a way to not destroy our habitat, you know, living beings. We don't want to destroy our habitat until we have leadership on the issue from some corner or from some society in the world. And then they, they show it's viable and then it, others can adopt it. It's. We, we just stand, we're sticking in the mud. You know, we're just, we, we can't move. So. And I mean, you see that with the, the way we're decimating natural habitats for other animals. You see that with this great Pacific plastic patch. That's, that's. And then they say it, don't call it a garbage patch because that, that again, scale it under. It undersells how large this thing is. But basically out in the Pacific, where you have this confluence of several currents, plastic pollution from all over, which floats, you know, primarily for the most part from all over the Pacific, congregates here and creates this huge, huge, huge patch of plastic that is just floating around. I mean, so we're clogging up the ocean with plastic and like animals get stuck in this thing. It's like the size of it is again, a scale that we can't really in our minds fathom. You said earlier, talking about the light years thing, I don't think that adults can really fathom that, like that amount of distance where it's taking light a year, a year to travel, that we turn on the light. The light's on. So it's one of those things that we're just limited by our own human experience where we just let amount of distance, this amount of trash, we just couldn't. Maybe if you put it all in one stack and made a mountain out of it, we could then get the scale of it. But just out in the middle of the ocean somewhere floating, think it'd be the size of Russia and we wouldn't know the difference because it's out of sight, out of mind. But either way, it's a big issue. It's not something that's shrinking, it's something that's Growing. And it's something that eventually will come to our homes. People talk so much about how fear is such a great motivator. What surprises me is that no one fears these types of things. I don't know if it's because you feel so disconnected from it or what, but this seems like a terrible thing to have building just off the periphery of our immediate vision where there's just this big patch of plastic that is potentially a threat of unknown proportion, that again, we just are letting it continue to build without regard. So, I mean, did you have any thoughts on that in terms of. [00:24:11] Speaker B: Remember, the real threats are things like the caravan coming over the border with 200. [00:24:17] Speaker A: Only. Only in election years. Yeah, [00:24:19] Speaker B: only in election years. But. No, I mean, this is. I think you're right. Look, not to, you know, downplay the severity of it with that joke, but, you know, obviously as human beings, we've talked about this in totally other topics about, you know, our fight or flight responses. You know, we're conditioned to deal with immediate things and, you know, our biological and chemical makeup. You know, I think it was much more advantageous for our survival over time and evolution to be worried about the lion that was chasing us on the prairie and all that, versus maybe, you know, the volcano that was, you know, up the, you know, that, that, that was on the horizon that erupts once every, you know, 10,000 years, so. [00:25:03] Speaker A: Or even once every 100 years. [00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I just think that obviously we, we as human beings, we see the things that are in front of us, you know, a lot sooner than we see the things that are more distant. And I think, you know, and that's not just with stuff like this. Right. In my regular avocation, you know, my financial planning, wealth management business, this is well known that, you know, most people don't save money. Right. Most people don't think about retirement 20, 30 years out. You know, there's a reason, you know, there's been studies that if you have a 401k plan with 30 different funds in it, people usually don't participate. But if you just have six funds in there, you get 80% participation. People like simplicity. They like straightforwardness. So from a psychological angle, I think this is where it hurts us in the long run that we have a society that is this advanced, that we can create things like plastic and the fossil fuels and all that. And so they help us and they're very efficient for us short term. Right. Because. [00:26:08] Speaker A: Which is our focus. [00:26:09] Speaker B: Yeah, which is our focus. So I, I want to get to Europe and I don't want to take three weeks on a ship, so I want to fly in a plane. But I don't think about the pollution that, that all that jet fuel is doing right there in the atmosphere. You know, I, I recognize we're in a society of 8 billion people. I live in the suburbs. I need to go to the grocery store to buy food. So, you know, in order to keep the food safe and sanitized, it needs to be wrapped in plastic. Something that, that's not perishable. [00:26:37] Speaker A: On that scale. Yeah, I mean that's not needed. But on that scale it has shown to be a relatively efficient way. Let me jump in with one real quick thing because I think that you actually undersold your point as far as the immediate versus the remote consequence. I don't think the human beings probably could function if they truly conceived the nature of all of the remote potential catastrophes that are around them. Like, I think part of that is just so. No, just so we can get by on a day to day basis. [00:27:09] Speaker B: When we did the book Talking to Strangers, there was a name for that Marco Pulos guy who was the one that. [00:27:15] Speaker A: No, the [00:27:16] Speaker B: whistleblower on the [00:27:17] Speaker A: Freddie made up. It was the. What was it [00:27:18] Speaker B: something. Yeah. Cause that's [00:27:19] Speaker A: something, fool. [00:27:20] Speaker B: That's the. [00:27:21] Speaker A: But yeah, that's the [00:27:22] Speaker B: type of person, the one that's always like the sky has fallen. The Chicken Little type that. So you're right, [00:27:28] Speaker A: most people would go crazy if they conceived of all the threats to their well being at all times. Like, so you're kind of being able to focus only on the ones that are in your direct, direct field of vision. [00:27:39] Speaker B: Because I'm realizing I'm the same way in a sense because you know, everyone [00:27:43] Speaker A: is. That's my point. I'm [00:27:45] Speaker B: just laughing because we're in our 40s and now, right. So of course, all my older friend male friends, this is the age range that we got to start getting certain things checked out that we don't like to get checked out as men. Right. Medically. And so I was joking with my friend, I was like, yeah, it's been a few years since I've been to a gp, you know, just to get a checkup. I use my last, last couple life insurance exams as my physical exams. And then he was saying, man, you should go to the doctor. You should go to the doctor. And I go, you know what? I think if there was something going on inside that's rumbling, I think I might have just rather not know about it. Just keep. So I Realized I'm guilty [00:28:19] Speaker A: of it. And it's the holy fool from [00:28:21] Speaker B: holy fool. There you [00:28:22] Speaker A: go. But go ahead. [00:28:24] Speaker B: I'll be the ostrich. How about that? Well, [00:28:27] Speaker A: that's [00:28:28] Speaker B: my. Understand. No, but to finish off real quick, I mean, to your point about this quote unquote garbage patch, they estimate it's about 88 tons of artificial debris in the eastern [00:28:38] Speaker A: state. But they estimate that after saying that no one knows how much [00:28:43] Speaker B: they estimate just in the eastern stretch of the Great Pacific garbage patch or something. So obviously that's only one part of the earth. I mean, that's probably a lot more. But what I found interesting is, which is again, this is where I think education is important because, number one, we have to be aware of this stuff, number one. So you need. That comes with just being generally educated about it. And then, number two, there has to be some sort of understanding about just chemicals and some sort of scientific knowledge about how things break down over time, because like one article says, you know, over time, sunshine and the water's turbulence work to break down larger pieces of plastic. So it talks about the microplastics. And, and it's interesting because, you know, just sharing a little bit of life down here in South Florida, you know, you get exposed to things like the boating world and all that, and you kind of learn how harmful the sun really is to things like plastics and surfaces, UV rays that break these things down. So again, I can see how over time, if you have 88 tons, for example, of plastic just sitting there floating in the ocean, you know, between the sun beating down on it, the UV rays and other rays of light that break down certain chemicals that make up plastic. And then when it says the water turbulence, you've got just the currents that are moving these plastics into each other and hitting them. You know, they're hitting against rocks and other things. So it's understandable that microplastics, small little chunks of plastic just get loose into the ocean. And the sad part for me is there was a. There was research done where they went to one of the deepest trenches in the ocean and, and, and, and were able to. To pull up, you know, with. I think it's so deep that humans can't go. They got to send the robots down there because of the pressure. They were able to take up samples of some of the, I don't know what you call it, crustaceans, you know, the type of animals that live at the bottom. And they found that the little shrimp and the other types of animals down there actually had Plastics in them. And that was kind of the proof that plastic is now all over the earth, all over the globe, and it [00:30:50] Speaker A: will be here for a long time. [00:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah, and I read another interesting. That's not about pollution, but it just showed me how intertwined our ecosystem is. They talked about nitrates that are found in the bodies of salmon that are in the northern Pacific. And those same nitrates are found in the giant redwoods and the big forests in Oregon and Northern California. Unfortunately, I guess those are trees that must be burning right now. And the whole point was that when the salmon swim upstream to go lay their eggs and all those iconic photos we've seen of bears, you know, at the rivers eating the salmon that jump and all that, that they end up dying after they lay their eggs. [00:31:33] Speaker A: And [00:31:34] Speaker B: so they die in the freshwater areas, in the streams, and then as they decompose their natural kind of waste, their bodies end up feeding all the life on the coast of those rivers. The ecosystem, they're all those trees. And so that's what they were saying is that these trees really live on the dead salmon in a sense. And it's a big part of that whole migration pattern every year. That's a one year massive feeding of the ecosystem up there. And it was just a good reminder to me that, wow, these fish that really spend most of their time in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and actually they are food for these trees that live on land right that way, in land and up these streams and rivers. And that's why it's just, you know, we can't escape pollution. We think that we don't see it and all that. It's not in our face, but realistically it's going to affect us eventually our food and all that. So [00:32:29] Speaker A: everything's interconnected. I mean, that's the thing that, you know, like, it's hard for us to really accept, but we need to accept so that we can then arrange our societies and our systems in our societies to account for this interconnectedness. Like we can set up rules, we can set up laws, we can set up regulations. And that's something that is done as far as emissions and things like that. Also, what could be done as far as investment stuff, though we discussed earlier this year about the trend where people were divesting from funds or from stocks that dealt mainly or primarily in fossil fuels. And so that's another area where economic activity can influence what behaviors remain viable, are promoted, and which ones are more shunned. And so one thing we saw this week though, which would be going the other direction was the Trump administration, particularly the Labor Department, are trying to change some rules with respect to investing to make it less viable to invest in companies that include or that consider environmental, social and governance factors in their due diligence. And so that has been a more recent trend. It existed at various times in terms of since you've had the corporations, the existence of corporations, creations of the state, which are entities, organized capital, basically these issues of what duties a corporation owes to society at large or to other stakeholders beyond just the shareholders has been hot for debate. But right now the debate has been the people who have prevailed is the people who argue that corporations are vehicles to achieve profit at all costs. So I ask you, if our economic system remains based on just an uncompromising pursuit of profit at all costs, is it even possible to turn around some of these environmental negative effects that we're ending up with? [00:34:34] Speaker B: No, probably to answer it directly. Obviously we need to have an understanding that the ecosystem with which we can create business and wealth is still built on the planet. The existence on planet Earth, [00:34:53] Speaker A: the continued existence. [00:34:55] Speaker B: So if, you know, if the hurricanes get so strong that they wipe out all of our office buildings and, you know, the earthquakes and the fires do the same, and we have nowhere to live, you know, and all that, and all the humans died, then business isn't going to look too good. So I know that sounds like maybe a smart ass way to approach the answer, but I mean, the reality is, to your point, that the business community has done a great job over the last 50 years in wanting to show any type of regulation as somehow eroding the ability to make profit and then standing in the way of economic success and growth. And I think like many things, there's truths and falsehoods within a lot of these debates. And I think, you know, I look at regulation, let's say, from governments on kind of societies and all that, you know, no different than regulation at home, right? We're parents, we have children, we have a kind of an ecosystem at home. And like anything else, too much overregulation and overbearing is going to have damage long term to the child or the society. And no regulation and no, you know, kind of discipline or guardrails is also going to have its own negative consequence. And there's always this kind of a good equilibrium in the middle. And sometimes the equilibrium can change. It doesn't always have to be static. You know, you treat your kids different at age 5 than you do at age 10, than you do at age 20. There's different levels of back and forth and kind of regulation right within the household and based on where they're at. And I think society is no different. You know, there was a time when maybe it made sense or it could have been seen as advantageous for businesses to behave a certain way. And now I think the needs of the environment and our needs as a society should allow us to see that, you know, the business community should, should shift certain behaviors to ensure that, you know, we all can sustain and stay here. So I think you're right that what we're talking about is important. And this is the stuff that is boring and usually doesn't get looked at. Like you're saying this is the Department of Labor announcing something that's not really sexy and not going to get anyone's, you know, knock anyone's socks off, but the diversion of, you know, trillions of dollars, because that's what the retirement plan market is. It's, it's, it's trillions of dollars. [00:37:31] Speaker A: Could you briefly just kind of give a better synopsis of it than what I did? Like, no [00:37:35] Speaker B: problem. So what happens is obviously most people are familiar with the retirement plans like, like 401ks, they fall under the ERISA law, Employee Retirement Income Security act of 1974. So that governs 401ks, 403bs, pension plans, so on and so forth. If we look like the state, we're in the state of Florida, there's last count that I read There was about 160 billion in their pension fund. So if you add up from other states, I'm sure the number is around a trillion out there out of 50 states and maybe more because California has the largest and they're pretty huge. And then you've got the non pensions, what's called defined contribution plans, and that's 401ks and the 403bs and all that world and deferred compensation plans. So then you got a few trillion dollars allocated there from all of us as employees in the United States that have this money going into our retirement accounts. As most of us are familiar, we've got these choices that we have to choose the different funds. And all this stuff and all that stuff is kind of regulated by these laws and these rules by entities like federal government, the SEC and the Department of Labor because it has to do with employment retirement plans. Right. So there's certain due diligence that the Department of Labor requires that investment firms and others that are managing and that are stewards of our retirement money do in selecting the investments that go into our retirement plans. So that's why it's a bit of a disconnect because these aren't things that we see. What we see is just the lineup of funds that are available to us. But what happens, there's a bunch of like anything else, right? There's a bunch of steps and processes that are taken along the way that, that are part of the decisions of what gets into our retirement plan. And so what you're alluding to here, James, is, and for the audience is that the, the current administration has removed the ability, and I would say this not only removed, but they put up roadblocks to make it much more difficult to include companies in 401k plan investments that are socially responsible, that take the time to look at things like their levels of pollution or their diversity or whatever else we can consider as socially responsible. And so what I, [00:40:03] Speaker A: so bottom line there, you basically set up the rules to try to get, to try to incentivize divestment in companies that are trying to be socially responsible, correct? Yeah, [00:40:15] Speaker B: and it's a good point because this is something that the average person who's participating in a 401k plan has no idea about and doesn't see. So it's an example of how it's going to manipulate the behavior of institutional class investors, meaning those who manage the funds that are in the 401s, which is a much smaller pool of people naturally, and they're just going to do whatever kind of the regulations tell them to do. But we as a society don't recognize how just this little type of legislation can move the needle in a huge way on billions and hundreds of billions of dollars and how that capital flows and to what companies. So does it flow to companies that are actively engaged in continued pollution of the environment or does it flow to companies that actually have some sort of corporate, whether mandate themselves or they want to take the air of kind of responsibility, more of a steward of these things. And what I found that's interesting is this. [00:41:20] Speaker A: Well, let me say one thing. So what this regulation does is makes it, it takes those two, the corporations that don't have any type of ethical framework under which there's a stated ethical framework which they're trying to operate and companies that, it takes them off equal footing and moves the companies that have stated ethical purpose and moves, makes, puts roadblocks up for them and makes it so it's easier to invest in companies that don't have this ethical framework in place. So go ahead. I Just wanted to. Yeah. [00:41:55] Speaker B: So but then here's where kind of the cronyism about it and you know, again this whole draining the swamp which doesn't appear to be drained comes in. And that's not to such a knock on this administration. But when we talk about more of the heavy hand of lobbying and the corporate influence, which definitely is not something that started recently that we know has been going on for a long time and I think this is where we see those influences. Because what I found interesting is that they gave the public some sort of 30 day window for comments. There was 8,700 public comments and 95% of the comments from individuals and investment related groups and all that did not Support this. Only 4% of the public comments expressed support and 1% actually were neutral. So you think about it, if they put this out for kind of the public test, clearly those respondents thought that this was not a good idea to remove these provisions and then forget about the public comments and all that because I know that that can go any way. But the more important what I found was when you look at the industry and then the gao, the Government Accountability Office, which is a well respected kind of neutral party of actuaries that do this kind of number crunchings, so Morgan Stanley and several others, Morgan Stanley being one of the largest investment banks in the world, they found, and I'll quote here, have these economically and socially responsible type of companies that want to be responsible that they say that found no financial trade off in the returns delivered by ESG funds relative to traditional funds. Additionally a 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office, so that's this current administration's GAO group reported that 88% of the academic studies it reviewed found a neutral or positive relationship between the use of ESG information and financial performance. So one can't say that the Department of Labor is making this or taking away this provision as an interest to investors because investing in these companies creates more negative returns. Let's say for investors the evidence is contrary to that, that the majority of the time it's either neutral or has a better positive, you know, result from an invest for an investor being in these type of sustainable companies that look at sustainability and, and all that. So that's what tells me that, you know, because it seems that the investment banks don't really care because they make money off just people having money invested. Where the money is invested is less of a concern to them as [00:44:44] Speaker A: long as it performs [00:44:45] Speaker B: correct. [00:44:47] Speaker A: You just pointed out that's what [00:44:48] Speaker B: forms. Yeah, Mor Stanley, you know, are saying that you know, this stuff looks good to us in a sense, which tells me that the rest of the investment banking community probably feels the same way. So that's what [00:44:58] Speaker A: it tells you though is that the 4% lobby that, that, that [00:45:02] Speaker B: that's [00:45:03] Speaker A: lobbied basically for this and got [00:45:05] Speaker B: me of interest and, and who again, this would be the type of thing that I wouldn't even say is on the average president's radar. I mean this is a very niche, nuanced type of thing, being in 401k market and, and all that stuff. And where did this capital flow? So this to me is the fossil fuel lobby most likely in the energy industry just finding ways to say let's keep capital flowing our direction in a way like you alluded to earlier in this discussion, that won't force us to change our behavior. We don't want to have to clean up ourselves. So let's just, just lobby some division of the government and let them. [00:45:47] Speaker A: Well, no, let's maintain the race to the bottom. Let's prevent anyone from who is trying to not just race to the bottom from competing on equal grounds with us. And so I mean, and that's what stood out to me about this was more so that it wasn't something to make things equal or it wasn't something to try to make things more tied to financial performance, but it was literally, hey, let's get, let's us as polluters or who don't want to have any type of ethical or, excuse me, environmental or social responsibility within our governments, let's give us an advantage relative to the people who are trying to be ethical, so to speak. And you know, and that's just. So while we see, I wanted to talk about this today with the environmental stuff because while we see all of the consequences of the whole culture and system being set up to just pursue profit at all costs, don't worry about anything else. And it's just short term profit at that. It's not even long term profit. And so we see that, we see the results of that, how it's changing our habitat, making it less hospitable for other animals and making it less hospitable for us. And at the same time the people who would like to continue on as business as usual are working behind the scenes to make it harder for people who want to do the right thing to compete on equal ground with them. [00:47:16] Speaker B: And [00:47:16] Speaker A: so it's not surprising that someone would do something that's in their own interest. But again, as a society, when 94% of the people commenting on this are saying no, this doesn't make sense, why would we do this? It's amazing that the 4% essentially who in the public comments are able to get in and just say, you know what, no, no, we're going to pay for this, we're going to lobby who we need to lobby and we're going to get it in. And we take society backwards basically because the wishes of the few can override the needs of the many. [00:47:50] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I think I was just going to hit on that and that's a great segue for me because I was going to discuss monopolies and like you said, the needs or the desires and wants of a few overriding the needs of the many. And this is a great example of a well entrenched, well heeled kind of sector of our economy, meaning the energy and fossil fuel sector that has all the resources it needs to start making the pivot if they really wanted to. And I think this goes back to when you said that people are led to believe certain things in our society over time. And I think the biggest thing has been, and whether it was the argument about cap and trade and all that, that somehow by getting in the way of fossil fuel companies revenue, by asking them either to be cleaner or to start making different capital investments into cleaner forms of energy over time is somehow going to derail our whole economic system. I think that's a fallacy. I can understand why the fossil fuel industry started pushing that over the last few decades. And it saddens me that so many of our fellow Americans have kind of fell for that. Because I've always thought about, instead of looking at through the lens of scarcity, like oh, if we touch these oil companies, somehow they've got the key to the kingdom over a whole economy. Why don't we look at things through the lens of abundance, especially with modern technology. I mean, first of all, like I alluded to earlier, whether you believe in climate change or not, meaning that fossil fuel companies are helping to warm our earth and our use of fossil fuels does that, [00:49:34] Speaker A: which have found to be the case back in the 70s. [00:49:37] Speaker B: But my point is like let's say I'm talking to somebody that says they don't believe that's true. I would still advocate to them, well, you can't deny the fact that it's just a dirty way for us to, to get energy. It's just dirty. We all know that it's. Well, [00:49:51] Speaker A: I mean, but let's [00:49:52] Speaker B: but [00:49:52] Speaker A: go back down to that. I mean that's Pretty hard [00:49:55] Speaker B: where I'm going. So my point would be is instead of having all that argument being bottlenecked there, I would say that the lens of abundance to me would be with our current technology. Look at all the economic growth that we could create through really looking at new forms of technology, wind, solar. Look at all the jobs we could create and all the new forms of innovation that are waiting for us. But we keep giving all of this money and capital and kind of our resources to this old archaic industry called the fossil fuel industry. It's like if we kept trying to invest in horse and buggies when we know we have airplanes and cars. I mean, that's what I'm saying. So that's where I do say that those who are looking for the environment to be healed should also get more creative with their mess messaging and talking to the public, because I think there's a message there. It's just that, you know, I'm our. Until millions of people start listening to our podcast, we're only talking to a few here. But [00:51:00] Speaker A: well, no, I mean [00:51:01] Speaker B: that, you know, we could do a lot with, you know, these renewable source of energy, not just helping the earth, but we could also have economic growth if it's approached the right way. Like it could be a win. Win is I guess, is my point. [00:51:15] Speaker A: Well, but that's the thing though is you need leadership that is interested in solving those kind of problems. Leadership that could think big. There's a case to be made that until Kennedy gets up and says we're going to the moon in 10 years, that the collective will and the collective imagination of the public would not have been able to organize around that principle. So you need leadership that's bold, that sets big goals, that tries to do more than just just capitalize on the immediate moment of whatever that is. And so, and people have to want that. I mean, that's the other thing is, I mean, I wonder oftentimes if people have just become tired of self governance because we really seem to be caught up in petty fights. Now some of this may be us being manipulated into it, but some of it is just the big picture is, seems to be lost on many, on whole segments of society. You know, like it's all about settlement scores and you know, like roasting this person or whatever it is. And so but as you pointed out earlier, I mean this is, these are big problems that we need big solutions for. And so either we're going to get serious about it, I mean, the earth is going to be all right. You know, it's just whether or not the Earth remains in a place where we can comfortably live and, well, reasonably live in large numbers, or whether the Earth is going to say, you know what, too many of you guys here now, you know, at least in terms of the way you're living. So I'm going to wipe out some of you peoples to bring this more in line. Because Earth's been here for billions of years. It's going to keep being here. But human beings have not been here for billions of years. And we can cut There are a lot of species that have been here. They've come and saw and then have left. And so if we don't want to join those ranks, then we probably aren't going to be able to continue to behave in the same way on a large scale that we have been this whole time. So, yeah, I mean, I think we can close it up from there. Definitely appreciate everybody rolling with us on this one to just try to connect a few dots here in terms of what we're seeing and how some of the more mundane decisions and things like that that happen in our society actually can have significant consequences in terms of what we see now and what we will see in the future. So until next time, I'm James Keys. [00:53:21] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Walana. [00:53:23] Speaker A: All right, subscribe Rate review and we'll see you Time. Next stop.