Timestamps:

00:00 – 00:49 – Intro

00:50 – 06:56 – Mary Anne’s story of Beyond Coal Campaign

06:57 – 12:28 –  Playbook of the gas and oil industry

12:29 – 17:09 – The climate change underdog

17:10 – 20:23 – What is your role in the climate change movement?

20:24 – 21:26 – Citi Advert

21:27 – 28:02 – How do we scale this movement?

28:03 – 31:17 – Climate Confession

31:18 – 32:22 – Outro

Show Notes

Climate Imperative – Climate Imperative Foundation provides funding, technical support, and expertise to inform the most important climate policy decisions in major-emitting countries around the world.

Sierra Club – The 2030 Strategic Framework provides a vision for the world Sierra Club wants to conserve, protect, and create. This vision is firmly rooted in our Core Values of anti-racism, balance, collaboration, justice, and transformation.

Beyond Coal Campaign – To fight climate change, improve public health and reduce pollution, we have to stop burning fossil fuels. From mining to burning to waste disposal, there’s nothing clean about fossil fuels like dirty coal and fracked gas. Our campaign is uniting people across America to replace our dirtiest energy sources with 100% clean, renewable energy.

Europe Beyond Coal – Europe Beyond Coal supports and coordinates work with civil society groups working across the European continent, including the European Union

Transcript

Intro 

Mary Anne Hitt  0:08  

Sometimes I think one of the biggest barriers to us tackling the climate crisis is our own lack of imagination, and not actually believing that we can do this.

Ben Hurst  0:20  

This is climate curious, the podcast for people who are bored, scared or confused by climate change.

Maryam Pasha  0:27  

I Maryam Parsha, the director and curator at TEDx London and the co host of this podcast, alongside the amazing Ben.

Ben Hurst  0:34  

Hi, I’m Ben Hurst activist and advocate exploring what positive masculinities can look like, and self confessed climate normy.

Maryam Pasha  0:49  

Ben, this conversation has been almost a year in the making, right? We first met the person we’re gonna talk to today. A year ago at TED countdown Edinboro and you’re always thinking about thinking about how sometimes when we meet people when you feel like they’re superheroes? Yeah, yeah. They’re part of the Avengers or something. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Mary Anne’s story of Beyond Coal Campaign

Ben Hurst  1:12  

Some some people are villains. And some people are heroes. Yeah.

Maryam Pasha  1:15  

And this is the latter. Yeah. I was gonna say villains.

Ben Hurst  1:19  

What? No, this is a hero. This is a superhero.

Maryam Pasha  1:23  

And I think that one of the things about climate that you know, is I for purposes podcast, as well is that it can feel it can feel like overwhelming. You know, we’ve talked to clever Hogan about eco anxiety. We’ve talked to people about how sometimes it can feel like a big, unwieldy, wicked problem. And one of the things that I really love hearing about is when we win, right, I want to buy the wins. So it’s usually about the winner. So rather

Ben Hurst  1:48  

with less talk about the winds. Okay, so check it we’ve got with us today, Mary Anne here, and Mary Anne is the Senior Director at Climate Imperative. Now, listen to me when I’m telling you this, this is serious rap. Mary Anne has been doing this. She’s got over 25 years of experience in building and in leading effective campaigns and organisations. She was also with the Sierra Club for about 12 years where she served as the National Director of campaigns. And she also worked as the director of the Beyond coal campaign, which was actually recognised as one of the most successful environmental campaigns in history. And that is not an over exaggeration. Right, the campaign blocked the construction of 200 proposed US coal plants. It also secured the retirement of two thirds of the existing US coal plants. And it helped usher in this new like clean energy era. And it also inspired SR beyond coal campaigns all around the world. Now, I have to start by saying thank you, Marianne, so much for joining us. And I think the place that we want to start this right is with a story. So can you tell us a story of a whim? Well,

I would love to and thank you for having me, my fellow Avengers, fellow heroes for the planet. Let’s please all go out there together with our fancy outfits and

yes, good man suit. I don’t want to be Iron Man. I take that back immediately. But yeah, someone else it will get back to you on our suits

Maryam Pasha  3:31  

that’s another podcast

Mary Anne Hitt  3:34  

Well, let me tell you the big story of a wind, which is the story of the Beyond coal campaign that I had the honour to lead for a decade. When we a decade ago in the United States, we were getting half of our electricity from coal, it was the biggest contributor to climate change, and all sorts of very dangerous air and water pollution. And over the course of a decade, this incredible grassroots movement succeeded in securing the retirement of two thirds of the coal plants in the United States. So currently, out of 530 coal plants that we had a decade ago. 358 are retired or slated to retire. So again, 530 to 358. Down, so about 172 remaining. We were getting half of our electricity from coal in the US now it’s less than 20%. We’re now getting more electricity from renewable energy than from coal in the United States. And it has been the lion’s share of the greenhouse gas reductions in the United States, I think 80% of the greenhouse gas reduction. So I know there’s a lot of numbers in there. But the headline is, this is a grassroots people powered movement that transformed how we make electricity in the United States, away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy, and we just keep going and growing and making more and more progress.

Ben Hurst  4:54  

How does it feel? How does it feel to like, be a part of something like that or to lead something like What’s the,

Mary Anne Hitt  5:01  

you know, I’ve been thinking about this recently because I, I left the Sierra Club a year ago. And so I’ve been kind of reflecting back. And I feel like when you’re in the middle of something like that, you don’t always realise that you’re in the middle of something historic, because you’re so busy doing it, right. And so we’re so busy. You know, a lot of these coal plants, were making people sick. You know, they were like giving kids asthma in the neighbourhoods, they were releasing this toxic coal ash into the water. And so you’re running around visiting people learning about the struggles that they’re having with pollution, you’re trying to get decision makers to listen to you. But I would say the main thing that I always took away was working with people, and working with folks on the ground who, again, are living with pollution, who are David and Goliath really taking on these incredibly powerful industries and being a small part of be able to help them when helping David beat Goliath and seeing it happening again and again. And again, coal plant after a coal plant after coal plant. It just gave me a huge appreciation for how much is possible and how much we actually can change the world.

Ben Hurst  6:01  

Right? I think somebody from the outside looking in, as we’ve been saying, as you’d like to say, from from somebody like a normal civilian, I think especially at the beginning of this whole, like podcasting journey and learning about the climate crisis and what’s going on. This felt unachievable, like the whole thing felt like it, this is an impossible task, we’re destined to fail. It’s so nice to hear like a story of like, a real success like that. And that’s like, tangible success, right? Not just like, oh, yeah, the date has changed, or like we’ve done, but like real lives, real people, real climate change, like impacted in real ways, which is like incredible. Good job.

Mary Anne Hitt  6:51  

Me and many, many other people, on behalf of all them. Thank you.

Maryam Pasha  6:56  

I want to take us back 10 years ago, then, because I do think that right now, because of the work that you guys have done. People think about Colin, I think yeah, was this like yesterday’s news? Yeah. Which is a testament to the work, right? Isn’t the mindset shift. But I want to, I want you, if you can take us to a decade ago, you gave us a top line numbers about how much coal was being used. But what was the attitude like, like, did you when you start when you when you in this campaign started? Did it really feel like you were trying to move a mountain,

Mary Anne Hitt  7:29  

it absolutely felt like we were trying to move a mountain. And actually, what brought me into this was trying to save mountains, because the coal industry was blowing them up. And Appalachia, and I’m from Appalachia, I live in West Virginia now. And and the coal industry was literally trying to blow up mountains. They weren’t trying, they were blowing up, they blew up hundreds of mountains across Appalachia to

Maryam Pasha  7:53  

because I don’t think people really understand what coal comes from, I have to tell you, I just had no idea I just assumed it was in the ground, you went down and got it,

Mary Anne Hitt  7:59  

which historically was what they did. But they have the coal is in the mountain like layers in a cake. And so they would this was a cheaper way to get the coal because it required fewer people. And so they would drill a bunch of explosives, blow up the rock, to scrape off the coal layer, drill down into the next layer of rock shovel that into the valleys and literally flattened hundreds of mountains in Appalachia. So that was happening. And we were I was working with grass, grassroots folks trying to stop it. And there was this one new coal fired power plant that was proposed in this in the same region. So we started working to just try to stop this one new coal plant because we thought if they build this, then they’re gonna have all the more reason to keep blowing mountains. And it turned out it was one of 200 new coal fired power plants that were proposed in the US in this sort of George W. Bush era, early 2000s. And there were people fighting them all over the place, grassroots people, and we all kind of found each other and got connected and started learning from each other. And we stopped 200 coal plants from being built in the United States. And had they been built. Obviously, the we’d have been locked into this most polluting energy source for another 50 years, and there would have been no space for clean energy, the world would be a very different place. And the climate outlook will be they’re very different and doing all that we learned we could win. And we learned how the decisions got made. And so we then went, we realised Oh, well, if we can stop these, you know, 200 coal plants, there’s 530 existing coal plants, and let’s use what we’ve learned and try to try to start retiring those and to back to your question. What was it like people thought we were crazy. I mean, people thought it was impossible, right? Because if you think back to 2008, Barack Obama was running for president. Part of his platform was supporting clean coal. This was a phrase a marketing phrase from the coal industry that people were using all the time. The coal industry was making half of our electricity. People said if you if we transition anything the light It’ll go out and people’s electricity bills will go up. And so it was seen as just a wild, impossible thing to try to attempt when we sat down set on this course, a decade ago. I was like goosebumps.

Ben Hurst  10:12  

Yes, this is a good story almost feels like a lack of like watching a film rather than just like your actual real life.

Maryam Pasha  10:22  

It feels really familiar. That narrative we’re hearing now, right around gas and around oil. And water. I don’t want to take us away from the story for a second. But I want to find out whether you feel like now, in hindsight, looking back, you can draw these threads through to other polluting fossil fuel industries?

Mary Anne Hitt  10:45  

Absolutely. It’s it is a similar playbook of the gas industry, the oil industry, the coal industry, which is to, you know, kind of dominate the market, but also dominate the politics, and then make people very fearful of the alternatives. And, you know, I think whether you look at the US right now, in the places where the grid has really been strained by climate change, you know, in places like California and Texas, which have had extreme weather that have tests, Ed’s tested the grid, it’s actually been renewable energy that has kept the lights on and things like battery storage. If you look right now, across Europe, where there’s a huge energy crisis of Russian oil and gas and coal being cut off, the long term energy security solution is renewable energy, because you don’t have to buy the sun and the wind from, you know, Vladimir Putin. And you will have these this forms of energy for Yeah, he was pretty diabolical, let’s be real. Maybe he’ll find a way. And so I do think that it’s the same playbook from the fossil fuel industry that they scare people that you can’t live without this energy source that your lights will go out, your your electricity bills will go up, your power bills will go up. And the reality is this, the solution to all of this is renewable energy in it. And now, renewable energy is actually cheaper than fossil fuels. And it’s getting yet the scale that it can power huge parts of our economy. And so I really think we should just prepare ourselves to see a lot more of their confusing PR and dirty tricks and interference with politics. But the trends are in the face on the side of clean energy, the economics, the politics, and the public will now are on the side of clean energy, because

The climate change underdog

Ben Hurst  12:28  

they feel like you have moved from being the underdog to being on the winning side, or do you still feel like you’re fighting, like, like on that kind of journey?

Mary Anne Hitt  12:40  

You know, once an underdog always think it’s hard to, it’s hard to actually make that switch. And I think in the US now, you know, we just passed this big climate piece of climate legislation. And I got to go to the White House and be part of this huge celebration for the passage of the bill. And I had that thought about just switching our own mindsets from not always being the underdog, but actually realising that your the momentum has shifted to your side, and how do you take advantage of it, because this is the key decade, or the climate. And now we have, Paul, we have this big policy in the US that’s going to help us continue this transition away from coal to clean energy, and it’s signalling to the rest of the world, that we’re going to step up and do something. And we’re not just going to be showing up at climate negotiations and making pledges and then going home and not delivering on them. So I do think it’s a game changer. And I think getting out of it, at some level will, we’ll always be an underdog when it comes to the money of the fossil fuel industry, they’re always going to be able to blanket the world with commercials and fill up the coffers of politicians, you know, campaign funds, and will always be an underdog or for a long time, at least financially. But I think, again, the economics, the technology, and the public are all are all now on our side. And so we have to do as much as we can with that momentum and just keep going.

Maryam Pasha  14:09  

I want to fight understand what it takes to shut down a coal plant. Like how does one do that?

Mary Anne Hitt  14:17  

I respect the people who are doing that and making that sacrifice. The so one of the things about the beyond coal campaign that was I think a sort of a transformational insight was that the decisions about how we make electricity in the United States were not all made in Washington, and they were not all made in the White House or in the Congress. They were being made in states. And so as advocates, we had to learn how to go into those places and make the kind of arguments that those decision makers were going to hear which were about keeping the lights on and keeping energy bills low and we learned how to make the argument that clean energy was actually the way to keep the lights on and keep energy bills low. And we were up against these huge electrical utilities that are essentially monopolies. And so we were very much the underdog in those venues. But we learned how to make good arguments. The other thing that we did was at the national level, there were all of these huge loopholes for coal pollution. So when President Obama came into office, there were no standards for coal plant, greenhouse gases, or mercury, which is this neurotoxin. There are no federal standards for that they were just putting 100% of it in the air. There were no federal standards for the coal ash, which is this stuff that’s like the ash and a fireplace. And it’s full of toxic heavy metals. And it is was the second biggest volume of solid waste in the United States after municipal garbage. And there were no federal standards for like there was literally getting dumped in holes in the ground. So we took these loopholes, and we pushed the EPA to either close them or shrink them with new regulations. And so that was the other part of of what force changes was, once these coal plants had to actually deal with their pollution. Then they thought, Oh, well, do we want to spend a bunch of money on this coal plant to get it up to date? Or do we just want to retire it and look at look at other options. So it was the federal pressure and the state pressure together was how we kind of small.

Maryam Pasha  16:12  

So at least, I want to, I want to pull this apart? Because this is so fascinating, because I think that when we’re thinking about campaigning, and I’ve, I remember this realisation in like a totally different realm. It was, you know, when I was working more human rights is figuring out where the decisions are made, right? I think we all assume that decisions are made at the highest levels, but not all decisions are made there. So that’s something that I took from there is like identifying that. And then the other thing is making it too expensive to continue business as usual. Right, which seems like so smart. I want to ask you a strategy question, because I think sometimes when we are campaigning on something that we feel very deeply about, our arguments seem to sometimes be like moral or ethical arguments. But what I’m hearing from you is you made economic arguments and you made data arguments. And I want to understand how do these things come together? How have you found them to be effective in the mix?

What is your role in the climate change movement?

Mary Anne Hitt  17:09  

Well, the way that you described it is exactly the way we thought about this problem. And I would encourage any one who cares about some piece of the climate puzzle to think about is, what are you trying to do? What’s your actual goal? So in our case, it was retire all the coal plants and replace them with clean energy? Who can give you that? And it’s not like an institution, it’s not the United States government or some big corporation? It’s actually is there a person? Is there a decision maker or a couple of decision makers somewhere that have the power to make that decision? And who are the people and the groups of people that they listen to? And what are the messages that are going to motivate either you know, those sort of those audiences or that decision maker themselves?

Ben Hurst  17:53  

Because my assumption is like, with the general public, you are trying to pull on people’s heartstrings, right, that you’re trying to convince them that this is about being a good person or doing a good thing in the world. Whereas for people whose motivation is making money and doing good business, we asked someone the other day about whether people are it who are innovating within the climate space, I do it because they are good people, or they’re doing it because it will make money and the person’s response was they’re doing it because they can see that it’s the future. And we asked again, for clarification, they just repeated the same thing. But I think it’s the idea of like, what is what is the correct way of communicating that message? Because it’s always the same message, right, like, regardless of who you’re talking to. It’s just a different way of communicating it.

Mary Anne Hitt  18:42  

I agree. And I think there is the need also to just have the broader general public mobilised and fired up about what needs to change, right. And that it’s not the sort of more targeted campaign strategy is not the only thing we need to do in the world. We also need to we need it. I mean, I think the reason we were able to pass a climate bill in the United States, because we have, you know, people are having fires on their doorsteps, and they’re having floods on their doorsteps. And this, you know, this movement has has educated people over the years to help connect the dots and point to there’s a better future. There’s clean energy there, clean energy jobs, there’s economic opportunities with clean energy. So let’s go down this new path. So I think we have to do both. We have to do the mass education and mobilisation. And do you don’t want to confuse that with a campaign strategy? You know, it’s not sufficient. You’ve also got to pinpoint what are the things you’re trying to change? Who are the decision makers? How do you get them to to make the decision that you’re wanting them to make and I think I think we have to do both.

Maryam Pasha  19:46  

Yeah, I think it’s this both and mentality that we need. I was reflecting on a conversation earlier about sometimes it can be frustrating when people are all one or all the other or not people when you feel like If a campaign or a movement is all one or the other, and actually, it’s so much more valuable if you can see the role that people have to play, that some people have to be the loud people or the people who glue themselves to things, right. And some of you know and some of you will have to be the ones that are thinking strategically, and having the conversations, and I think it’s when we pit those people against one another, that the incumbent wins. I agree.

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Ben Hurst  20:23  

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Maryam Pasha  20:30  

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Ben Hurst  20:41  

Instead of your typical boring ad, we actually thought you might be more interested to hear about some of the initiatives Citi has played upon

Maryam Pasha  20:49  

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Ben Hurst  21:02  

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Maryam Pasha  21:14  

is cool to see how supporting student projects can help grow a whole new generation of green businesses.

Ben Hurst  21:19  

Nice ones see,

Maryam Pasha  21:21  

thank you for making this podcast possible.

Ben Hurst  21:23  

Now, back to the show.

Maryam Pasha  21:26  

So going back to this campaign for a second, that will be on call campaign. So you have this huge these huge successive wins in the US. Where did you get like, like, what happened? Because coal is still an issue and other parts of the world? I mean, obviously, it’s still part of the mix here. And the work is still ongoing. But what about globally? What’s the picture like?

How do we scale this movement?

Mary Anne Hitt  21:47  

Well, one of the exciting things that happened in the like around 2016-17 is other countries started creating their own beyond coal campaigns. So there is a Europe beyond coal campaign. That’s a coalition of 40 organisations. There is Japan, South Korea and Australia beyond coal campaigns, you know, kind of that shared name and vision and branding of phasing out coal and replacing with clean energy in those geographies. And, and now, there’s a whole global network of advocates from every continent that are all working to move away from coal to clean energy. And and now I think it’s a pretty universal I mean, the big climate conference last year in Glasgow, these are not my words, these are the worlds of like the United Nations uniting the world to consign coal to history. And I was sitting in the room with Bruce Willis, who he and I ran the beyond coal campaign together for 10 years, sitting in the room and Glasgow, seeing those words on the screen of uniting the world to consign call to history. And I just was, I was blown away that in a decade, the work that we and so many other people had done had shifted the debate, and shifted the terms and shifted everyone’s mindset so much that now it was just not a matter of whether we’re going to consign call to history, but when and how fast. And, and so I think that it truly is now a global shared understanding that we have to get away from coal as fast as we can, and that we need to replace it with clean energy and not with renewable energy and not gas. And that’s just a testament to advocates and advocacy and tenacious determination over many, many years.

Ben Hurst  23:22  

So what is the next move fee? Like? What’s that? Because, for me, I feel like I would crave the feeling of like, going back to, you know, like the feeling of the underdog and like going back to the beginning and going back to the grassroots stuff. And do you like start the cycle again, somewhere else with a different issue? Or is there lacquer? Well, I

Mary Anne Hitt  23:42  

think one of the things that I was, so the thing about this moment is we are running out of time. And so I what I’m really thinking about is how do we scale this to go even bigger and even faster? Because we now not, we don’t just need to get off of coal in the electricity sector, we need to get off of all fossil fuels in the electricity sector, and we need to electrify buildings and industry and transportation so that we’re driving cars, and living in homes that are powered by electricity, and that electricity is clean. And we need to like ratchet up that progress in all those areas as fast as we can. This decade and so I’m really thinking about how to how to take the lessons that we learned and then you know, learn things from other folks and other movements and and and exponentially speed up that progress.

Maryam Pasha  24:39  

This joy just makes me super happy. When I’m happy and quiet as opposed to every other member of this podcast. What I’d like I want to work

Ben Hurst  24:51  

out here I need to say

Maryam Pasha  24:55  

I think knowing that we can win is so important. Otherwise, it feels like a never ending battle to know that actually other people moved unmovable things. That is just I think that’s just equally as important. Yeah,

Mary Anne Hitt  25:12  

I agree with you so much. Sometimes I think one of the biggest barriers to us, tackling the climate crisis is our own lack of imagination, and not actually believing that we can do this. And I believe that we can, I really do. And I think, if you think about the, just in the US the progress in the last decade, just on how we make electricity, and then having passed this piece of legislation that is going to really accelerate and turbocharge this kind of transition across our whole economy, and then the signal that that sends around the world. You know, I, I really believe that we are the architects of our future. And it’s not the fossil fuel industry, that we are the ones who are going to write the next chapter of our future. And I think if we step into climate work with that orientation, that we can actually when our ambition is higher, and our audacity is greater, and the things that we can achieve are beyond even what we can imagine.

Maryam Pasha  26:29  

You talked about the signals, what signals do you think he can send, and what is your hope on an international level for movement?

Mary Anne Hitt  26:35  

So there are several organisations that modelled the greenhouse gas impact of this bill, and largely all kind of came to the same conclusion that the President’s goal is 50% greenhouse gas reductions this decade, this gets us 40%. So this gets us within striking distance of actually meeting the climate goal that then puts us in the United States in alignment with the overall world, you know, Paris climate targets. So in terms of how much this can bring greenhouse gases down this decade, it is extraordinary. And I think that that in of itself is important, because it will spur innovation, it will spur the creation of new businesses, new industries, lots of new jobs, lots of new, kind of, like, a lot of there are going to be a lot of new stakeholders who are very, very wedded to and have a lot of ownership in continuing this clean energy economy. So I think here, the momentum is just going to grow.

Maryam Pasha  27:36  

It’s awesome. Makes me very hopeful, right? Like, we need like these moments like these acceleration moments. And that’s what it feels like. So I’m just super grateful that you have come and shared the story with us and, and just also really grateful for the work that you have done and continue to do like, it is. It is awesome to watch.

Ben Hurst  28:02  

And now it’s time for our climate confessions. Let’s fess up to the bad habits we just caught. Kick.

Climate Confession

Maryam Pasha  28:12  

It comes out time in the episode Mary Anne where we’re going to ask you your climate confession? Well, I

Mary Anne Hitt  28:17  

do live in West Virginia, as you know. And so I must confess that I’m pretty sure my electricity is still like 90%. Coal.

Ben Hurst  28:28  

No, no, no, cut the episode, cancel the whole thing.

Mary Anne Hitt  28:36  

I am blaming hypocrite.

Maryam Pasha  28:39  

How do you how that see, this is the thing actually, this is such a good one. Because Can you even really control that way you because of where you live?

Mary Anne Hitt  28:46  

Well, this is the this is I think, a good example of the limits of individual choices versus systems. I mean, if I had to have a switch on my wall that said the solar switch versus the coal switch, I would obviously switch on the solar switch to get you know, the grid to be sending me the hour. That is that is clean. But West Virginia is I mean, the whole world knows that Senator Manchin was my senator holding up climate progress because he’s so tied to the coal industry, and the coal industry still controls the state. And so most of our electricity still comes from coal. We’re one of the most coal dependent states in the country. And a further confession point to i my house I lived in before we did have solar but in this house, there are a lot of trees and so if we wanted to have solar, we would have to cut down trees, which seems like kind of defeating the purpose to cut a bunch of trees down Yeah, but um, solar panels so we don’t have solar on our house. And so I’m just dependent on the grid and I think it motivates me to keep going until someday my maybe my electricity is 50% coal or 30% coal in West Virginia, but it’s the kind of the our industry Your choices can only get us so far. And then we have to change these systems.

Maryam Pasha  30:03  

This is so true. And also, I think that one of the kinds of say, one of reflecting on knowing your area and the story and where you live, one of the reasons I think it’s so powerful is, it’s very easy to be like, we shouldn’t use coal, when you live somewhere where you can just be like, I’ll get my electricity from wind, or where maybe the people down the road from us jobs aren’t dependent on the coal industry, or where you don’t live in a place where the whole, like society is tied to this industry. So for you to do this work where you are from and not to move, which has been tempting,

Mary Anne Hitt  30:44  

it’s beautiful there. I love it.

Maryam Pasha  30:46  

Well, I mean, we weren’t singing the song, 

Ben Hurst  30:48  

everyone she loves the coal. 

Maryam Pasha  30:49  

No.

Mary Anne Hitt  30:51  

secret is out, don’t tell anyone. 

Maryam Pasha  30:56  

Like, it’s I think it adds another layer of dimension to this story that I I really appreciate. Because I think I think that maybe I would, I would be like, you know, I just don’t want to be here anymore, you know, but to stay and to be embedded in that community and to fight is just awesome. So thank you for sharing it with us. I think you could do the work. 

Mary Anne Hitt  31:16  

Thank you for having me 

Outro

Ben Hurst  31:18  

thank you for coming. I remember. Stay curious. Thank you for joining us this week. We really hope you enjoyed this episode.

Maryam Pasha  31:27  

If you did, please hit the Follow button to make sure you get next week’s release.

Ben Hurst  31:31  

We are now officially crowdsourcing climate conditions. So please leave yours in the ratings in the review section. And we’ll shout out you next time.

Maryam Pasha  31:39  

A huge thank you to our headline partner Citi, who has supported us for the past six years to bring world changing ideas to the TEDx London stage, and has champion climate curious since day one

Ben Hurst  31:51  

and shout out to our fabulous team behind the pod.

Maryam Pasha  31:55  

This episode was produced by Josie Coulter comms written by Tess Lowry. Oh work designed by Rebecca Ming is 

Ben Hurst  32:02  

curation by Marian Pasha 

Maryam Pasha  32:04  

mixing engineers by Ben Beheshti 

Ben Hurst  32:07  

music also by Ben Beheshti presented by Ben Hurst and Maryam Pasha. Remember, stay curious