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We’ve all heard the language: “fight,” “tackle,” “combat” the climate crisis, right? But what if the “warrior mindset” wasn’t just a battle cry, but actually part of the problem? According to OG environmentalist Paul Hawken, it is, because it “others” nature. Paul joins Climate Curious to share why it’s time to stop trying to “fix” the Earth, and remember instead that we are a part of it.
Enjoyed this conversation? Listen to the full episode: https://tedxlondon.com/podcasts/why-the-full-truth-of-the-climate-crisis-starts-with-grief-with-paul-hawken/
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Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Welcome
00:43 Climate is not other
01:22 War language problem
02:25 Decarbonize and tech fixes
03:38 Objectification and narrative
05:06 Caring versus action
06:11 Go upstream for causes
07:54 Align with Earth
08:17 Closing credits
Welcome
[00:00:00] Maryam Pasha: Welcome to Climate Curious Quickies, bite-sized nuggets of Climate Goodness. From our TEDx experts in under 10 minutes
[00:00:09] Ben Hurst: in this week’s climate Curious, we are joined by a climate OG to [00:00:15] ask, what if the words we are using to describe nature are actually making it worse from shifting our narratives from a masculine start of Warfield battle cries.
[00:00:26] Ben Hurst: To fix the environment to one that’s more aligned with the [00:00:30] natural world and treating it more like mother than other.
[00:00:33] Ben Hurst: Here’s OG environmentalist author and civil rights champion, Paul Hawkin. Stay curious.
Climate is not other
[00:00:43] Paul Hawken: The climate cannot have a crisis. [00:00:45] It doesn’t give a hoot what we think or say or write. It’s the climate. Second of all, the climate is not something other. It’s not distinct. It’s not separate. It’s the biosphere that creates the climate. And just like [00:01:00] you have, you have lungs and you have air, okay? CO2, you have oxygen, you know, inside you.
[00:01:07] Paul Hawken: And you’re a physical body. Okay, well, the earth is the same, right? It’s a physical body that has a gaseous [00:01:15] envelope, right? And it breathes, it exchanges, you know, plants take in CO2, you know, and make oxygen. You know, this is.
War language problem
[00:01:22] Paul Hawken: Beautiful, beautiful cycle of life, you know, and so we’ve disturbed it, but we’re not gonna, in a sense address it if we say basically the climate has a crisis or if we use verbs, which are very masculine verbs, if I may say so for my gender.
[00:01:39] Paul Hawken: Uh, we’re gonna fight, tackle, and combat the climate crisis. Now we’re in real deep. Do-do, [00:01:45] because basically what you’ve done is you’ve. Othered it. You know, it’s out there somewhere. Now you’re, God knows what some warrior, you know, going there and you’re gonna fight the crisis. Well, othering is what caused the climate [00:02:00] crisis.
[00:02:00] Paul Hawken: We have other human beings, other cultures, other places, you know, other traditions, other ways of knowing, you know, and it’s overlaid. The Western scientific reductionist way of understanding the world. And there’s [00:02:15] nothing wrong with Western reduction science, by the way. It’s a one way of seeing the world, but it’s not the way, it’s not the only way and so forth.
Decarbonize and tech fixes
[00:02:25] Paul Hawken: So again, and then we’ve come up with this amazing lexicon of [00:02:30] words like, we’re gonna decarbonize. I mean, if the earth could giggle, it would like, oh really? The decarbonize. Really what we should be doing is decarbonizing really. ’cause we’ve taken this carbon, [00:02:45] right, you know, from the soil, really, you know, gas, coal and oil.
[00:02:49] Paul Hawken: It was from plants and fish, marine life, you know, and then burned it and stick it up in the air, you know, in the atmosphere. You know. And so we be, should be decarbonizing earth ’cause [00:03:00] we are decarbonizing it right now. Um, we, we talk about things like direct air capture as a solution. It’s like, I’m so red laughing, but it’s like, oh really?
[00:03:11] Paul Hawken: You’re gonna capture the air and you’re gonna do what? You’re gonna put it back on [00:03:15] the earth. How interesting. You know, what are you gonna do with that air you capture? You know that CO2, you know, actually you’re gonna put it in depleted oil wells so you can get more, capture, more oil so you can burn that.
[00:03:26] Paul Hawken: That’s what that, that’s what all companies are [00:03:30] wanting to do, planning to do. Spending billions of dollars, you know, just get the CO2 that we put up there, bring it back so we can put more CO2 up there. Know.
Objectification and narrative
[00:03:38] Paul Hawken: So, I mean, I was in an, in an audience when I’ve done this before, you know about the language, you know, and I said, you know, half this room understands what I’m talking about.
[00:03:49] Paul Hawken: I said, what do you mean why half? I said. I’m talking to the women. If any woman here has not felt, felt objectified in her life, raise your hand. [00:04:00] No one raises their hand. Okay, so we, and I’m using gender now as we, you know, that male species objectify and thinks that that. Describes, helps, [00:04:15] works, you know, and it doesn’t, it actually alienates, separates, uh, and harms.
[00:04:21] Paul Hawken: And so that’s what I mean about the climate narrative. You know? Now I am not criticizing you people, the listeners, about what they do, what [00:04:30] they care about, what they are on a daily life. Not at all. I think they’re heroines and heroes, and they have all my. Uh, support, you know? Absolutely. So it’s not, I’m not talking about hu human beings now.
[00:04:43] Paul Hawken: People, they’re extraordinary. [00:04:45] I’m talking about the narrative. And the narrative came out of something that we inherited, which is, you know, western reductionist, you know, scientism and culture that actually doesn’t communicate well. It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t land. [00:05:00] Uh, it landed for us, that’s fine, but it hasn’t landed for 99% of the people on Earth.
Caring versus action
[00:05:06] Maryam Pasha: So Paul, when you see numbers that are coming out, like, um, when people do surveys where they say, look, [00:05:15] 80% of people around the world care about climate change, do you think that. We’ve kind of, not, misdiagnosed is not the right phrase, but we’ve kind of missed the target. Like we [00:05:30] like the, the work in the climate movement has been around getting people to care and know and assume that that translates to action, but actually that’s not what’s happened.
[00:05:42] Maryam Pasha: I’m just curious to know, like, how does numbers like [00:05:45] that, how do they influence your thinking? Uh,
[00:05:48] Paul Hawken: not at all. I think people are caring, human beings are, are carrying species, so it, it doesn’t impress me. It validates what I believe. Actually, you know, the human beings [00:06:00] are good people and they care about each other, about their children, about their family, about other people, you know, and so, but, but I don’t think it’s an actionable question.
[00:06:10] Maryam Pasha: Right.
[00:06:10] Paul Hawken: And I don’t.
Go upstream for causes
[00:06:11] Paul Hawken: I think if we’re going to be most effective, we have to go upstream to first. Cause you know, there is the parable of the river, which I don’t know who created it by the way. Uh, Bishop Desmond Tutu rec, uh, uh, recited it once, uh, in, uh, uh, in Georgia and a church where I was. But uh, I’ve heard it many times, which is you’re by the river.
[00:06:35] Paul Hawken: And you’re having a picnic or whatever and so forth, and then you see a child or somebody you know in the river, you know, being washed away, can’t swim like this. And you look and you [00:06:45] jump in the river, of course, and you save the child, right? And you bring her or him back to land and you’re going, wow, shoot.
[00:06:53] Paul Hawken: That was close. You know, and then you go back to your picnic or whatever you’re meeting, and then pretty soon, oh, there’s another child going down the river, you [00:07:00] know, and you go back in the, when the third child goes by, somebody says, you know, instead of saving the children, we might wanna go upstream and see who’s throwing them in the river.
[00:07:10] Paul Hawken: And so the same thing holds true for what do you want, [00:07:15] whatever movement you wanna call it. The climate movement, the environmental movement, biodiversity, you know, so forth, is we have to go upstream to first. Cause if we’re not focused on first cause then we’re scrambling and, and, and, you know, to deal [00:07:30] with the outcome, the symptoms, you know, the manifestations of.
[00:07:35] Paul Hawken: First cause, uh, but we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna fix it. That’s another male verb, you know? And I, I’m a guy and I love to fix things. I have nothing wrong with [00:07:45] fixing, but, you know, I used to raise motorcycles. I had to fix it all the damn time, you know, I mean, it broke. Uh, so it’s a good verb, but it’s a bad verb.
Align with Earth
[00:07:54] Paul Hawken: When you look at the earth as a whole, you know, the earth can fix itself. [00:08:00] And does every single day, you know, and so forth. What we need to be is in alignment with that, as opposed to coming in as a, you know, charismatic species, you know, that knows better. No, we [00:08:15] don’t. No, we don’t. Yeah.
Closing credits
[00:08:17] Ben Hurst: Thanks for listening to this quickie.
[00:08:19] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at TEDxLondon. Until next time,
[00:08:24] Ben Hurst: stay curious.[00:08:30]
