Mass Media, Climate Anxiety, Nihilism. Oh, my!

The media won’t speak truth to power. They can’t. The power in question is what keeps the media going.

Join us as we break this down and discuss why the mass media coverage of climate change is not the whole truth, what’s missing, and why they keep it from us.

We also talk about the result on society of this situation — climate anxiety, nihilism, and ultimately more consumerism, which is good for capitalism and the media machine.

And we don’t just leave you with that mess, we talk about what to do instead!

Episode Transcript:

 [00:00:29] What is up? So today we are gathered here to discuss. A very important topic. Marc, why don't you start by telling me what. Told me about, was it your aunt or somebody who was telling you or asking you for some advice? Yeah, a friend of mine emailed me and I'll just share this one particular story.

[00:00:52] There was a few people who messaged me right after Monday. Whenever the IVC report was released, the latest one. And this one particular person emailed me and shared with me that she has a son early twenties and throughout the whole week, he was super depressed, super sad, angry, pissed off just all the fields based on this report.

[00:01:17] And she just didn't know how to respond. She. She acknowledged the truth. And then she knew obviously the work that we do. And so she emailed me asking for suggestions and ways that she can maybe direct her son's emotions, feelings, anger, pissed off ness towards something positive. So I gave her a handful of suggestions and links and things like.

[00:01:38] And and then, yeah I think later that week, you and I talked about it and just sharing this particular story, and one thing led to another, and we started to have some really interesting conversations about where all this is coming from outside of the the science stuff outside of the IVC. Yeah.

[00:01:55] And marc, you say where all this is coming from? Yeah. The climate anxiety. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it's been interesting the last couple of days, since that report coming out, reading all these articles about people responding to not even just articles, but even people's personal updates on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter about just, oh shit, this is really bad.

[00:02:19] And so I think collectively we're seeing more and more people waking up and realizing what's going on. Yeah. And then what we wanted to talk about, like a couple of things. So there's a couple of things happening at the same time. One is the IPC report that came out on Monday. And then all of the media coverage that followed and.

[00:02:40] All of, people's general reaction to that is it's climate anxiety. It's a feeling of helplessness. It's a sort of mass depression. So we want to talk about that. We want to address that and the hard feelings and things it and what can be done about it. But it also led to a conversation that you and I started having about the media and what.

[00:03:01] Can expect from the media and what we can not expect from the media. So before we get into that, I wanted to share a little sound clip. I don't know if this is legal, can legally share a another podcast. It's like a little clip from another thing. The last four decades has been hotter than the one before.

[00:03:20] And they've all been hotter than any time in the last several. I think it's a hundred thousand years, maybe 125,000 years. It's almost a guarantee that the next decade, this decade we're in the twenties, it was going to be hotter than the one before for this one. And the one after that will be hotter. And that causes all sorts of other problems.

[00:03:41] It's the largest, most menacing source of rising sea levels. It means more of the world's ice is going to melt. We're warming at two to three times, the pace of the rest of the globe, those glaciers that are shrinking all around the world are going to shrink even more. In some cases they're going to disappear.

[00:03:58] There was nothing to stop it to accelerating retreat. The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are going to keep melting within a few decades. We might have an ice free Arctic, which is a really horrifying phone and both that and glacier. Melt. And just the rise of temperatures is going to keep the sea levels rising more and more, maybe five inches, six inches, seven inches, whatever, five to 10 feet before the end of the century.

[00:04:26] That's enough. Geez. I need a beer after listening to that. And this is what's. Inundating the entire world, in addition to the news about the war in Afghanistan, and I don't know, like a billion, other things that are just terrible, like the point is the news media loves to share when things are going horribly.

[00:04:46] You know what I mean? Like that to the media is good news in a weird twisted way, because it means that they get more views. And they have something to report and they have something to pontificate about and they have all these experts that they can then go and interview you and ask them about their opinion and like their take from it.

[00:05:09] And it just goes on and on. It's free content for the news and they love this. And so of course they are just digging in hard to the impacts of climate change of the climate crisis. And marc actually forwarded me this amazing article that helped us focus our thoughts on this whole issue.

[00:05:33] And it was a business insider or. , and it's the headline is the media frames, the climate crisis as hopeless, but that's because they're hiding the solutions. And so for me, that was the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, the climate news coverage is digging in hard on the doom and gloom.

[00:05:55] This is hopeless. This is awful. It's a code red for humanity, and they're not sharing anything that people can do about it. And so of course the impact of that is everybody feels helpless. Everybody feels like we're doomed. What they're saying is. This isn't going to get any better for at least 30 years, which is wrong by the way.

[00:06:21] It's false. We can do things about this, but they're just, yeah, they're just really the news media does not have what's the word? And incentive. Think about the long-term impacts of what they're doing. They also don't have an incentive on highlighting solutions, right? And there, and you made a comment a few minutes ago about the reason, like we only hear the best stuff and that's by design, they tap into emotional fears and all this other stuff, that, that drives us to want to learn more in this kind of what's the word I'm looking for this this really weird way of it's on the tip of my tongue.

[00:07:05] Like w we, we keep doing what we know is wrong, but we can't help it, and so in this case, we keep watching the news. We can't help it because that's just how we get our information. And if we are solely relying on certain media outlets that we quote unquote trust, we feel that whatever it is that they report is the only accurate thing out there.

[00:07:28] And that's a problem. That's a huge problem. It is a huge problem. One thing that I did in my immediate circle, anyway, as soon as I knew that the IPC report was going to come out I knew that what it was going to contain obviously it's not going to contain any surprises ah, climate change assault.

[00:07:48] We would know about that already. So I knew that it was coming out and It was going to probably be more specific. It was going to be more dire because, since the 2018 report I haven't really seen any major policy changes. So obviously we're not shortening the gap between action and the time limit that the 2018 IVCC report said that we had to act.

[00:08:15] So obviously. You can deduce that it's going to be sounding more red alarm bells and telling us that we have even less time to act. And so knowing that, and also knowing that the timing of the report coming out is before the next conference of the parties cop 26, is it which is supposed to happen in a month or two?

[00:08:39] September? Yeah. Yeah. September. So they're putting that this report out so that the negotiators who negotiate on international climate policy and plan international next steps have the latest information. And so of course, it's going to be code red and sounding the alarm bells because they want to influence the policymakers to do what's right.

[00:09:06] And act in line with the science and take it seriously. So in my personal sphere, which is basically like I told my mom, and then I posted on the climate designers network. I was like, Hey, so Monday, this report is going to come out. It's not going to tell you anything you don't already know, like you have been hearing from me for ever.

[00:09:30] And in the community's cases, all of us that the climate situation. And emergency and action. It needs to be taken. And all the stuff that the report is basically going to be trying to tell people. So you already know this. You don't need to pay attention to the news. I know that the news is going to be dire.

[00:09:49] I know that it's going to be grim. It's not for you. It's Jenner. It's to generate. The political the social will, that then leads to the political will to take bold and drastic action because that's what needs to be done. And in a way, I was looking forward to all of that coming out and then hopefully sitting back and waiting to see what the policymakers do with that.

[00:10:14] But, my warning was intuitively knowing that people would pick up on the headlines and feel pretty helpless and feel pretty anxious, in climate anxiety. And if you're not in the space, as much as we are. Then that makes sense, right? If you have your normal life raising a family, nine to five, nine to nine, overwork kind of thing, you're only focusing on what's in your immediate surroundings.

[00:10:46] And so the last thing you might want to take on as a hobby is learning and understanding the climate space. And so it makes sense that the majority of people are feeling this way. After this report came out because there's still, unfortunately a small percentage of people that are in this space. And even those that are in this climate space, they still subscribe to what it is that you're talking about.

[00:11:12] Sarah. And maybe this is the difference between, Us and them in terms of designers. Just one thing I like to say, and maybe this is a segue into the next topic is that as designers, I feel like we're optimistic by nature in a sense. Where we look at a challenge and we try to find ways to make it better, to find solutions to focus on what's working and amplify what isn't working.

[00:11:40] And so I think there's also your day-to-day worldview kind of thing in terms of how you would approach. What the report listed out, definitely. Yeah, there's a lot of people that don't have. That perspective. And I, I heard from marc what your aunt said. And then I saw this tweet just randomly from somebody who said, you have a climate misinformation problem and they're tweeting to tick tock.

[00:12:07] And she said videos saying, it's too late to do anything about climate change are going viral, which is leading to climate inaction and a lot of mental health problems. And so, I want to talk about two things I want to talk about why the media reports things the way they do. And why it's not it's misinformation. It's propaganda. It's not the full story. Maybe it would be a good time to show that video that you just showed me. Do you want to share that?

[00:12:37] He had another thing we're unsure if we can share, but what do they say better to ask for forgiveness than permission from five years ago? Lots of experience. Yeah, here we go. So the video starts about 60 seconds. And so we'll just show you that part.

[00:12:56] We need them to tell us so we can fall in line.

[00:13:00] Democracy is staged with the help of media that work as propaganda machine media operate through five filters. The first has to do with ownership. Mass media firms are big corporations. Often they're part of even bigger conglomerates they're end game. And so it's in their interests to push for whatever guarantees that profit critical journalists and take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation.

[00:13:33] the second filter exposes the real role of advertising media costs a lot more than consumers will ever pay. So who fills the gap advertisers and what are the advertisers paying for audiences? And so it isn't so much that the media are selling you a product they're out. They're also selling advertisers, a product.

[00:13:59] You,

[00:13:59] how does the establishment manage the media? That's the third filter. Journalism can not be a check on power because the very system encourages complicity.

[00:14:11] Corporations big institutions know how to play the media game. They know how to influence the news narrative. They feed media scoops, official accounts interviews with the experts they make themselves crucial. Process of journalism. So those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other.

[00:14:35] If you want to challenge power, you'll be pushed to the margins. Your name won't be down. You won't be getting in. You lost your access. You've lost the story. When the media journalists whistleblowers. Stray away from the consensus they get flat. That's the fourth filter when the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you'll see the flat machine and action, discrediting sources, trashing stories, and diverting the conversation

[00:15:09] to manufacture consent. You need an enemy of target. That common enemy is the fifth. Communism terrorists immigrants, common enemy, a boogeyman to fear helps corral public opinion, five filters, one big media theory. Consent is being manufactured all around you all the time.

[00:15:38] So that is a video. I think I saw the video years ago and it was so it's basically the content of the video is taken from Noam Chomsky's book, manufacturing consent. And if you If you watch democracy now, the narrator, the voiceover is a needed men. But yeah, so he breaks down those five filters in that book much more than what the video does, but knowing that we were going to be chatting about this topic made me realize oh yeah, I forgot about this video.

[00:16:05] I should totally share it. Yeah. Yeah. It's so good. Like the visuals, the eyeballs and the mouths and the people running the machine, how their eyeballs or mouse are so shut, like so amazing. Yeah. So anyway, the point is even if a journalist were to write an article that fully expressed the climate problem complete with the solution.

[00:16:30] Because the solutions challenged that power structure that the media helps support the media will never completely report on those solutions. And it really took all of those puzzle pieces for me to be able to formulate that sentence in my head and share it here. So thank you. Thank you for sharing all of that.

[00:16:51] That's amazing. Yeah, and I think it's just an example of why we really do need to question our news outlets. We can't just rely on, the, a quote from a particular news channel fair and balanced, there's always going to be not always what we tend to go to mass media. There are people behind the scenes.

[00:17:14] And so we really needed to question their intention. We need to question their motives. We need to question their sources. And so it makes total sense that a lot of these media outlets are focusing. Part of the larger story, focusing on certain aspects of the story and not highlighting what we really do need to start talking about.

[00:17:37] And again, as I mentioned, the fact that we're in the space more often, others, we're in this time climate space. Yeah. We see this stuff and, at some, knowing that we're going to be talking about this topic, It made me realize, we take it for granted. At least I take it for granted.

[00:17:53] Cause for me, it's just, oh, I'm getting my news from places that I trust. And I still, question that at times. But again, for those who just have other things going on in their lives and the last thing that they want to do is do more research or more. Put more thought into where they're getting their news.

[00:18:09] They just, turn on the TV or open up a browser and just rely on what's in front of them. What's put in front of them. And I want to veer off a little bit here and say the moral of this message is not just to question the media because we have a huge portion of society right now.

[00:18:27] That really gets off on questioning the media to the point where they believe that the mass media is straight up lying about science, about facts, about things that happen. And that's not what we're saying. The mass media machine, I think, is still held to the idea that the reporting is fact-based.

[00:18:50] They're not just straight up making up stories and I'm pretty sure I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure that if something were revealed to be false, they would issue a correction right away. Usually you see that happen. Because if they report things that are false, they would lose the trust of people and they would go out of business.

[00:19:15] So it's not, yeah, it's not that they're not reporting the truth. It's just that they're not reporting the part that challenges their business model and their power structures. There's like a two-sided coin to this. And I think that I'll give credit where it's due. I don't think that people who are anti-science are smarter.

[00:19:36] Per se, but I will give them credit for having a sort of intuition perhaps where they can tell that something is not being reported fully or that there's something not correct in the advertising. In the media, in what the media is telling them The unfortunate conclusion of that intuition is that they think the whole thing is false and they throw the whole baby out with the bath water.

[00:20:03] And they don't believe anything that they see on the news. And therefore they believe that COVID is a hoax and climate change is a hoax and they only listened to the talk, show people, the pundits and opinion editorialists on certain channels that they trust. Because those people speak to the intuition part of them, they speak to the feelings part of them and the emotions and say the things that feel right.

[00:20:29] The gut of people who, you know, to their credit could tell that the mass media isn't telling the whole truth. Yeah, I wanted to interject that. And just to say that, like a question the media, but not the way that anti-vaxxers question. Sure, exactly. Yeah. So I think, let's come back to, the media that has.

[00:20:50] Publicizing or showcasing what the report has in it. And that your clip that you played earlier, is this everything's on fire. Everything's gonna melt. Everything's fucked. So yes, they are. That is true. That is, that's been mean that is happening. And again, no one knows exactly.

[00:21:07] We have all these models and AI and computers and things, and, they're getting better and better each and every year. But I think what we're trying to say, let's not have that be the focus of this story would be the main thing that we all talk about because it doesn't go anywhere outside of that.

[00:21:23] What do you do when, it's like when you're at a party and someone, changes the topic and talks about a really depressing event that just happened. And my cat just died. It was like, oh, sorry, man. If you just kill the vibe, how many in our audience in our committee, Yeah, I am one of these people who add a party or something.

[00:21:40] Someone brings up anything remotely related to climate, and then I'm like climate change and it's just a buzzkill it's totally stops. The conversation has to be really like, be out that's happening. Cool.

[00:21:54] And then everyone walks away from you. Yeah. And so all of that, I think that's a whole other topic is why people don't want to talk about climate change at all. And so there was a huge push for awhile to get the media, to even cover climate change and to talk about it as the emergency that it is.

[00:22:12] And now I think that has shifted a little bit And it's about the framing, in that video that we just watched, there was the common enemy w what'd they call it filter. So putting everything through a common enemy filter, but I think the common enemy filter that they're using in this case is climate change itself is the enemy.

[00:22:31] So what they need to be doing and that what they won't do because of question's power is that they need to cover climate app. Genocide, generational murder intentional and knowingly committing murder. And when you frame it that way, in that frame is a subject and a object and the subject is the person or persons or institutions committing the murder.

[00:22:57] And they won't ever do that because put it, putting it that way, puts accountability on the institutions, responsible for the crisis. Which are the institutions that the media supports and is funded by and makes them possible. So instead they leave that part out of the equation, which leaves people feeling helpless.

[00:23:18] And this part is a little bit conspiracy theory, nihilists scared, depressed, anxious. People tend to be easy to manipulate and get them to buy more stupid shit. Distraction. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm going to go out and buy a bottle of wine to distract me from how depressed I feel I'm going to go out and buy the new red dead redemption or whatever video game people are blind to distract me from, and then I need a bigger TV because I'm so immersed in this escapism.

[00:23:50] And a better sound system. So it's really good for business. It's really good for capitalism. It's really good for the advertisers, for everybody to be anxious and scared and depressed, but that's not the way that it needs to be. So what I would like to shift into now, if that's okay, is What we need to be doing as maybe independent climate communicators, or maybe what we might want to talk about at parties instead of just climate change.

[00:24:17] And there was one article that I found, oh, here it is. This was published on Nova raw media.com. I don't know what that is, but I like it. And the headline the title, it's an opinion piece. And the title is the IPC. Can't predict how we fight that.

[00:24:37] And it's basically about they're like, okay, so on Monday, the IBCC delivered it's six comprehensive assessment report, blah, blah, blah. The report made for grim. It warranted that breakdown was now happening rapidly and yada yada, yada, and then it goes into all of that. And what I like about it is towards the end of the article, or like maybe the last half of the article starts to say, what is, and isn't possible.

[00:25:07] Isn't just a matter of science. It is principally a matter of politics. If we want it to stop burning fossil fuels, we could, if we wanted to build a just green and sustainable world, we could, the problem of course, is that our governments don't want to, they refuse to take the action required because they are wedded to an economic model.

[00:25:31] That depends on growth. That incentivizes destructive practices for short-term profit and that values the private accumulation of wealth over the continued existence of life on this planet. I add to that there also at the same time in bed with large media corporations. Yes. So they have no intention of doing that anytime soon, enacting extreme progressive climate policy because it affects their bottom line.

[00:26:02] So the point is. We don't have to accept that the next 30 years will be more of the same heat waves and flooding and fire. We don't have to except the death and displacement of millions of people, which is predicted by the IBCC report, if we do nothing. So I think that there's this. Media led peeling conclusion that this is baked in and done.

[00:26:39] But look at over the last a hundred years, how much change has happened when people stand up and demand? Change, like in my lifetime, I've seen the Berlin wall being torn down and entire governments being re imagined and configured. Nobody believes that's possible as something as gargantuan as the United States and Western Europe and the whole world bank outlay crap that's going on.

[00:27:09] But. , the physics of the reality of the situation that we're in demand to change. And we have science and truth on our side to demand change the growth imperative for never an in-growth to payback that debts that governments have been hanging out with for decades. It doesn't work anymore. And at some point, somebody is going to be like, all right.

[00:27:40] All right. I'm just going to walk away from this debt and we're going to start over. Like they did at the end of world war two, all the allies, the leaders, the negotiators, whatever got together. And they designed the new monetary system and 22 days, and then released it to the public. Not even in beta, didn't have a QA team come on.

[00:28:01] There were I'm guaranteeing you, there were no women in the room. Colonies the countries that we're in developing times we're not invited to the table. Probably very few people of color in the room. This was designed by rich white dudes who were drunk on power and had let's just be graceful and say they had biases.

[00:28:26] They had no idea about evolution theory, ecological science, they had very limited knowledge about how the world works and they had some half-baked theories that they called economy. Science, which is not a science, it's a fake science and learning. But they had theories about what would bring wellbeing and peace that, which I guess were euphemisms for profit and through trial and error over the last, however many decades, math is hard.

[00:29:02] The shit don't work, guys. W I w it doesn't work, but they're unwilling to admit it because they're in too deep, they have so much sunk costs and all of these infrastructures and systems that are already in place. And I think they're at a point now where it's fuck it. Let's just squeeze everything as much as possible, every ounce as possible.

[00:29:22] Yeah, most of them are so old that they don't have to face the consequences. Exactly. So that's why it is on us and people younger than us even to stand up to them and be like, no, that's not okay. This is not okay. And they are using the media to make us complacent and anxious and nihilistic and everything else because.

[00:29:46] That drains our energy from being able to say, oh wait, actually, Hey, there's 20 million of us and six of you. So this is not okay. Yeah. They know it works. So they just keep at it and unwilling to hide. Or put the focus on solutions, unwilling to highlight the heroes that are already doing the work.

[00:30:09] It's not in their interest because for one, it proves that this can be addressed climate, can be addressed, but also it affects their bottom line as well. Again, like I'm so in it, because this is what we do. And, talk to me about kelp farming, regenerative, agriculture, carbon removal, all these amazing solutions.

[00:30:28] And those three out of countless solutions. Obviously project drawdown was, I think one of the first major, if I can use this word breakthroughs in this topic, Sarah, that really started solutions. Exactly. And nobody else would tell us that there were solutions get off of fossil fuels. And obviously is what needs to happen, but that's not on any of like you or me.

[00:30:56] Yeah. We can't do that. The decision makers there. Let me just go turn the switch off in the other room. So then we all got convinced that like we had to do. Turn our air conditioning to 80 degrees to save energy. And that was going to solve it. Yeah. You bring up a good point here. I think the other ingredient to all this too, is that.

[00:31:15] These organizations, these corporations, they're putting the onus on us by design. And so they're deflecting all of their responsibility towards us to change our ways. And as we all know, our individual actions as good as they are, as, as much as we should all do them is collectively not going to move into.

[00:31:35] At all. And so Sarah, I want to bring this up real quick. You were talking about, after world war two and all these people started to create this new this new economic structure. I keep going back to, I know we've mentioned this last time, the book that we're both reading and unless you finished but I'm still reading less as more.

[00:31:52] And I still keep going back to this. I think about this probably every other day. There's a blurb in there pretty early on. About how it's crazy, how we can't. We can't even bring up the idea of changing our economic system. That just is oh my God, what are you some crazy lunatic? Like we can be so creative in terms of coming up with new technologies.

[00:32:11] How many iPhones are there now? 15, 20 phones. We keep evolving and innovating all these other aspects of life, but yet we can't evolve or come up with a brand new economic system. I know. And it's for 25 or 30 years. The propaganda machine has been nailing. This point home that came out of the cold war, but socialism is bad.

[00:32:36] Communism is bad. And basically Thai. Anyone who believes in climate change to, oh, you must be a socialist. They have this concept of the slippery slope to socialism and it's so scary. It's the fifth filter, the common enemy. Yeah. So they've been using that common enemy to discredit anybody who.

[00:33:01] Understands climate science, because they know that the solution is anti-capitalist and they somehow think that any anticapitalist ideology is automatically what has come before. And I think with less is more what Jason Hickle is saying and what you and I are saying. Let's invent something new, given all of the knowledge that we have based on earth science on ecological economics.

[00:33:30] Now we have a branch of ecological economics. We know a lot more about human behavior. We know that. Market practices do work and don't work. And what the results of implementing them are. We know more about what people want. We know more about what. The world better. We know so much more than Karl Marx did, or any of the scientists of the 18 hundreds or whatever, like the Smith who invented capitalism yeah.

[00:34:01] To go back to as well. So we have the knowledge, we can take what's good from any of those theories and philosophies and ideas. And discard the parts that don't work. So we don't have to just slide back into something that people are for whatever reason, scared of, we can basically create a new economy the same way they did at the end of world war to create new rules.

[00:34:28] That take into account. The reality that we've learned in the last several decades, we've learned so much about how the earth works. That is just not even baked into any of the policies surrounding our economy. And it's about time. Like several countries have been saying this since the 2008 financial crisis.

[00:34:50] France came out and said, Hey, you guys, we need to have a new Bretton woods conference and redefine the economy. And it was just reading about it today. Someone else came out and said we need to do this. It really is just, we need to demand that a new economy be designed to be based on the wellbeing of people within the.

[00:35:13] Now more well-known earth system of where we live, the reality of where we live. This is not very hard. It's complex, but we have all the information. We have so much more information than we have before. And so I think like it's just this weird insecurity, fear thing of ah, I don't want to I'm scared to try something new.

[00:35:37] And as designers, when a system isn't working, like that's good news for us, that means that all of our skills come into play and we get to take all of these . Disparate pieces of information and start connecting them together and making something coherent out of it. And that's the kind of work that designers love to do.

[00:36:01] So that's why climate designers exists. I think this is a time for people who have the skills and tools to. Visualize complex information and help people communicate connections between different fields. Designers don't have to be an expert in every single scientific field, but we know how to help all of those separate experts get connected in a cohesive plan.

[00:36:32] That's what we do. Thank you for saying that. Cause I feel like I'm always the one saying that,

[00:36:36] and I re-read the end of a Buckminster fuller is operating system for spaceship earth, the 1969. I think he was published that somewhere in the mid to late sixties. And that's the last thing he says is like the planners and the architects of the world need to get together. And take reality into consideration and put forth a new plan because the people running the boat right now, do not know what they're doing, not have the skills to make these plans.

[00:37:10] And this has been very evident since the end of world war two and everything else that's happened. Like it has not lifted wellbeing except for a few people. Has not brought world peace case in point Afghanistan. And now we have ecological crisis to deal with it. Like they didn't even consider or know about back then.

[00:37:31] So it's time for a redesign. There's so many things I wanted to say in the last couple of minutes, but you can find it, just like interrupt me. No, I, okay. I'll say one thing I don't know if you've seen the Netflix series explained, there are like 20 minute videos on a variety of topics.

[00:37:47] And one of the latest ones that actually came out about a week or two ago is I think the title of it is the end of fossil fuels or something like that explained. And watching it. Two things. I don't think it went. Deep enough. I don't think it would. And this goes back to what we are talking about, there are people behind Netflix making those editorial decisions to determine how much is in this 20 minute piece and how much isn't. And that's the thing of what is not in that piece. And they did bring up the solutions towards the end. Of course. Like 92nd clip, compared to the 20 minutes that they have talking about the problem.

[00:38:26] The other thing I wanted to bring up is, and this goes to some of the comments you just made. They had out of all people, they had a handful of people that they were interviewing out of all people. They had the former CEO of shell, I believe uh, Lord brown. I forgot his first name, Lord something. Like a title is his I think he was given it by the queen something.

[00:38:45] Yeah. I don't know. I'm not at work, but um, here he is talking about, his latest thoughts and opinions currently, and I'm thinking, oh, why the fuck were you not thinking that when you're in the position of power, you knew what was going on. We all know. Bye now. And the, decades ago, these fossil fuel companies knew what they were doing.

[00:39:06] It's no secret. So him being in a leadership position decades, even after that, he knew what was going on. And so it just really bugs me. And you saw this a lot with Trump appointees in the white house, they would quit and discussed or get fired and then write a book telling about all the secrets, say the shit now, say it in the moment.

[00:39:23] You can save so many lives and, you know, put food on the table. I understand. Cause I also don't. Anyway, what I'm saying is there's when you say that there's smart people to come up with new economic systems and all these new things, I get it, but there's also people in positions of power that know that they need to do this, but they don't, they're unwilling to, so we can put together an, a team of people to come up with.

[00:39:48] All these new solutions at a systemic level. But I think what we also need to focus on is at the same time, how do we get those people that are early already in those positions of power, out of. Position, so that those solutions that we do come up with can get implemented, can actually be implemented at scale.

[00:40:09] And you see a lot of communal living places, you see a lot of small towns try and all these, like testing out all these different things, which is great. But we really need to amp that up. We really need to bring that to a scale. That's going to move the needle. And I feel like if we, I love the local level approach, don't get me wrong and we need to do that because as Sarah mentioned, we need to test things out, we're going to fucked up.

[00:40:34] We're going to fail. We're going to probably make some mistakes. But if we do it at a smaller level, it has less of an impact to those fuck-ups. And then eventually we learn from those mistakes. And then, yeah, let's start to. Branch that out into other areas, other industries. But until we, until those people in power stay in power, it's going to be a lot harder fight to do that.

[00:40:53] Yup. One of the really cool things that it says in this article about the ITCC can't predict how we fight back is they say we need to amplify the voices of the global. And act accordingly and they have a link here. It says at cop 26, climate vulnerable countries are demanding the delivery of climate finance, greater ambition from major emitters and a focus on loss and damage.

[00:41:20] And if you click on that link, it goes to the climate vulnerable forum, which is something I didn't know existed, but it's it looks like it's a group. The climate vulnerable nations and their statement is very much questioning power. And it says it's not yet too late. Yeah. So there. They definitely have a lot more to say about what needs to be done and a lot more urgency to do that. And really, I don't think it's up to us to come up with new solutions so much as another thing that designers do is we amplify the voices of people, by creating campaigns, brands, visuals, videos posters, all of the above and.

[00:42:05] Just going and looking at what some of these other countries who are more urgently facing the climate crisis, because they are just positioned a little bit differently on the globe and just amplify what they have to say, amplify what they are requesting. And I guess, the idea is if. The negotiators of these larger richer companies see that even their constituents are demanding these things, then it will help shift the power balance to these more vulnerable countries.

[00:42:40] Yeah. I'm wondering, I'm going to, I'm going to make a really. I don't know if I even believe what I'm about to say, but the design community, there's a lot of designers and first world countries I don't know the statistics I'll look it up after this. At least in the U S AIG is the one of the largest design associations.

[00:42:58] And they do a lot of these like census type things and there's probably data in there. So what I'm getting at is I'm wondering. How do we support those communicators as designers and those in third world countries? How do we support them to do this kind of work? So that we can avoid this idea of design imperialism of designers going in and with good intentions, of course.

[00:43:23] Maybe not the best processes or how are ways to approach a community that they don't belong to. How do we actually support those that are actually in those communities? Yeah. Again, be humble and realize that you have biases too, even though you have good intentions, you don't necessarily know what you don't know.

[00:43:43] And just a shameless plug. Another reason I bring this up is because I'm getting more and more excited about some of the new chapters that we're going to be onboarding in the next couple of weeks. We have a handful that some of them will call out specifically. We already have one in Latin America based in Brazil.

[00:44:00] We have another one coming on board. Our second one in India, we have another one in Oh, it's on the tip of my tongue. I can't remember. Yeah. I don't think that's a, I wouldn't think that would be, but you have a few. Yeah. So I get excited when I see our community. Reach into these other countries.

[00:44:21] And so like, how can we all learn from one another? How can we all learn and share resources so that we can uplift all of the designers within our community, every creative person within, so that they can do the work at that local level? Yeah. Or knows the media isn't going to help us find out. What's what they're saying, what they're demanding.

[00:44:40] So we needed to talk to each other and we need to talk about climate. So that's why we're doing this. That's why we're doing these res somehow sessions. We'll be doing this every two weeks on Wednesday evenings on our Twitch channel, which.tv/climate designers. Give us a follow. So you'll be notified when we come in come on.

[00:44:58] And another shameless plug. If you like what we're saying, we have a class that we're coming out with in two months fish one month, less than two months. It starts in early October and you can go to Tara dot du T E R a dot D O and click on start learning and go to becoming a climate designers.

[00:45:21] So we are working in partnership with tear it up too. And they provide a lot of climate and professional career related courses. They approached us to teach a class about climate design. And so that is going live starting in October. And we're taking applications now until October 2nd. We'd love to have you.

[00:45:42] Yeah. And we'll dive into some of these topics and others throughout and even between now, and then we'll be discussing some content from that course as well. So you can get a little tease or a taste of what it is that we're going to be covering. Indeed. Yeah. All right. Thanks marc for hanging out. You're welcome.

[00:46:00] Anytime.