How To Handle Climate Anxiety & Find Harmony In This World w/ Climate Activist Katharine K. Wilkinson

0:00Welcome. I'm Kevin Miller and I have conversations with people that help us make better meaning of our lives. In this episode, how to handle climate anxiety and find harmony in this world. So my focus here on this podcast, as I say in the intro, is about how we make meaning of life, how we experience life. There are a lot of great shows that deal with specific issues that we face out in life. And I tend to focus on the issues we face in our minds. But what I found with my guest here was not a focus purely on the climate issues that we face today, but looking at them as a means to an end, in essence, to our overall experience of life. Our joy of life on this earth so that climate wasn't really the focus. It's us, but we're looking at how the climate impacts us. So we of course talk about climate issues. I was really curious. I don't feel super educated necessarily about how I can best contribute.

1:02And yet, as you'll hear, we primarily discuss the human experience. So Dr. Catherine K. Wilkinson, she claims her main label as a human on earth. But as a writer, teacher and creator, she has inspired hundreds of thousands of climate journeys through transformational projects that shift our cultural narratives about what's possible and nurture engagement ultimately and renewing this world. So her publications include best selling anthology called all we can save. She has a podcast you can tune into. It's called a matter of degrees. And she's a New York Times best seller of drawdown. So Dr. Wilkinson Catherine, she co founded and leads the all we can project where she shaped some really beloved programs. All we can save circles and then climate way finding. And 2019 time magazine actually named her one of the 15 women who will save the world. Well, her new book and that was my muse for the discussion is called climate way finding healing ourselves and the planet we call home.

2:15You can find Catherine on Instagram and sub stack at doctor or DR, DR Wilkinson DR Wilkinson. So coming up next is my conversation with Catherine Wilkinson about the climate crisis in our world and the experiential crisis in our minds and how to help both. Shopify is my go to for starting a business that selling something online the Shopify platform just instills trust in potential buyers. You can start a free trial today at Shopify.com slash Kevin get ready to hear that's Shopify.com slash Kevin. Catherine is much as I care about so many issues that we have in our world. My shows primarily, I mean, I stick to self improvement. That's our category and where we normally go. So I don't necessarily hit on climate specifically, even though of course a huge deal. It was the tagline of your book that drew me in healing ourselves and the planet we call home. And as I started reading the book, I felt an alignment honestly with.

3:28I felt like you're carrying about the climate, but it's not as a subject in and of itself. You care ultimately as is it fair to say a means to an end for the people who inhabit it. Is that fair? I think probably is a means to an end for all of life, really. Which we are of course humans, but I mean, my God, there's so much majesty on on this planet and so much beauty and brilliance. And of course, we couldn't be human without all of the rest of it. I have been looking lately just at the big topics of our culture and there's so much. Of course, you know that we spend the most money here in America, at least on our health and wellness, the vehicle of our body. Yeah. And probably a incredibly small fraction of that on the vehicle that our bodies then live on. I'm sure you know those stats and those numbers better than I do, but I imagine it's a dramatic mismatch.

4:35Yeah, it's probably not even numbers. We really want to want to tally up. And you know wisdom traditions have been trying to teach us for centuries, if not millennia about the impossible unentangling of our individual selves with the rest of of life. Science increasingly tells us this. And I think in a lot of ways, one of the fundamental, maybe lessons for us from the climate crisis is that we are not distinct from the atmosphere, right, that the ways we go about our lives, end up aggregating into these much bigger changes in our world. And those bigger changes come back and show up in our day to day lives. So if we want to think about wellness, we really can't think about it from only an individual perspective. We have to think about it in terms of the wellness, the sort of planetary health that that we are a part of.

5:45I've been a lifetime entrepreneur and I've walked with thousands of people who have started a business whether full time around the side. I usually did it for what I'd call lifestyle reasons. I wanted to own and run my own time. And then I also had a product or service that I uniquely wanted to offer to the world. Whatever your reason, there are tools today that make it so much easier than back when I first started. Shopify is one of those it's incredibly easy user friendly and you can get your business idea online and ready to take money really quickly. They've got templates to fit your website or you can do as I've done and just use them for the entire website and selling platform. And I put a lot of trust in Shopify for just helping people through the process, not abandoning the shopping cart and actually going through till they submit their money to you. And I think that's why millions of businesses worldwide do look at Shopify as the leader in online selling platform. So if you're ready to hear the of your first sale today, head over to Shopify.com slash Kevin to start your free trial today.

6:57It's Shopify.com slash Kevin and again, you'll get a free trial Shopify.com slash Kevin. I agree. And it's taken a long time for me to get that direction. And that's part of what I want to hit on here and take the opportunity for is the, you know, if you want to talk on non duality and aspects of that, I had Thomas Huble on the show. So wonderful. Yeah, two or three years ago and his book attuned. It was literally during the show, Catherine and I made some reference to. I think to myself being out in nature and he didn't correct me, but he just said, you know, another way to look at it when you Kevin are in nature, you're not looking at nature, you actually are nature, you're part of it. Yeah. I always have talking about it this time later, because it was just such a difference for me. I didn't come from that perspective itself and then all these external things. So this.

8:03Yeah. This, this different way of looking at which I feel is so much of your book is so much of your framework. I'm just admitting it has not been mine. I feel like a newbie into this concept and I help myself so much, but I'm just so aware that this is not, this is not the norm. I think a lot of people probably have that experience Kevin because in the I'm making some assumptions about overlapping cultures that you and I grew up in came of age and right. You can name them if you want. You know, we talk about American culture, we talk about the American dream, we talk about capitalism, individualism, right, all of these paradigms that do suggest we stop at the edges of our skin. Right. And and of course, you know, well, we know that there are, I don't know billions of other beings living inside our bodies. So even just at that small level, the entanglement of our of our reality is so real.

9:13And we've grown up with these paradigms of, you know, it's either economy or the environment, right, it's either individual or collective, right, not that these things are dependent upon a kind of fundamental wholeness that we can go about our lives kind of in contradiction of, but I think at some point we run up against against some dead ends there. You know, not to bring in kind of a depressing fact, but the number one killer worldwide is the burning of fossil fuels. It's the pollution of fossil fuels and the health impacts that that creates. But it's so diffuse that we kind of overlook that right and we come closer into things that we have more immediate control of. But I think we're called in this moment to see the ways that, yeah, we're in these fascinating and important webs.

10:16I've been a lifetime entrepreneur and I've walked with thousands of people who have started a business whether full time around the side. I usually did it for what I'd call lifestyle reasons. I wanted to own and run my own time. And then I also had a product or service that I uniquely wanted to offer to the world. Whatever your reason, there are tools today that make it so much easier than back when I first started Shopify is one of those it's incredibly easy user friendly and you can get your business idea online and ready to take money really quickly. They've got templates to fit your website or you can do as I've done and just use them for the entire website and selling platform. And I put a lot of trust in Shopify for just helping people through the process, not abandoning the shopping cart and actually going through till they submit their money to you. And I think that's why millions of businesses worldwide do look at Shopify as the leader in online selling platform. So if you're ready to hear the of your first sale today head over to Shopify.com slash Kevin to start your free trial today.

11:30That's Shopify.com slash Kevin and again, you'll get a free trial Shopify.com slash Kevin. Okay, I'm so tempted to jump right in there, but I'm going to stay fossil fuel specifically. I want to get into some of the specifics. But I do want to and some of this is for my audience because yeah, I'm not usually hitting on topics here, but what I feel that you're doing. We had Claude M. Steele. He's a Stanford professor on recently and ultimately he was trying to address, you know, the great aspects of being sensitive to our different races and cultures and marginalization and such. And yet his really topic of the book was trying to address the anxiety that that sensitivity is caused to some degrees. Great that we're more sensitive, but we kind of made ourselves so anxious. And can we try to leave it that and I you actually speak to climate anxiety that maybe we're seeing more more more more aware, which theoretically should be good.

12:43But again, it's affecting the individual and the anxiety is not helping anything. So is that fair to say that was a specific or primary thread of your book. Absolutely. I don't think there's any way to engage with this topic kind of holistically or even honestly without acknowledging the emotional components of it. And unfortunately, as the climate crisis grows more and more of us are having firsthand encounters with wildfires extreme heat flooding storms, right. And the impacts of this global change are showing up in our day to day. And for some of us that is creating, you know, not just kind of imagined reasons for anxiety or fear or grief or rage, but very present realities that are sparking those things. And we know is that those emotions are potentially really powerful sources of fuel for us, but not if they just spin around, right. Not if we're in the feudal position on the sofa.

13:57We have to have ways of working with them and by and large, these aren't conversations we're having, right with our friends with our family, maybe not even with our therapists. And if we are therapists may not feel fully equipped to have these kinds of conversations. So there's a really important piece, I think of naming the emotional terrain, if you will, of climate change. And also cultivating supports that can help us take those emotions and transmute them into a kind of motivation and fuel rather than having them be something that makes us kind of clutch in and freeze up and maybe get get stuck or paralyzed. Okay, I am going to take the opportunity, Catherine to leverage you in your position in regard, just again, just humanity and issues at large. Yeah, not just climate, because what you just said that, um, we're, you know, are we having these discussions? I am also struggling again with the culture that I'm a part of that there feels like there's this pressure to

15:08to have the conversations. I so I've got young, I've got, I've got adult kids and, you know, having an opinion and insight and knowledge and about every issue seems like it's this paramount pressure. And you're not only supposed to know about it, you're supposed to have a staunch opinion that you believe to be, you know, right. And I see a lot of the opinions going around, not a lot of action. You know, everybody's got a strong opinion, but I don't see anybody doing anything about it. And then like me, not to dive into the fossil fuels thing, but we talk about what we're going to do. And then we drive down and pay whatever it is, you know, here for 450 gallon per gallon and then drive 15 miles to go see a movie or to get something the grocery store appear doesn't have. Yeah. It feels like this grand mismatch and I don't feel any benefit on being critical, but just if I'm covering we're, it feels like we're just, we're not to to talk to hubols.

16:10We're not toon in fair. I think that is, I think that is really fair and I think it's particularly hard to be tuned in when things are changing as quickly as they are changing, right. And we are grappling with as many difficult dynamics as we're grappling with, you know, one of the sort of impetus for this book was that we are living in this time where our maps quite literally cannot keep up. And that is true literally right as entire neighborhoods or towns go up and flames shoreline slip beneath rising seas lakes or rivers dry up. Like literally our maps are struggling, but I think our internal maps are organizational maps are family maps are cultural maps. The ways that we have used to navigate make sense of the world figure out what a life of purpose and meaning looks like all of that gets trickier in this like terribly liminal time that we're in.

17:18And so to your point, Kevin about people having very firm and clear opinions. And so I'm like, how have we lost the value of the question of being able to say this is actually not the opinion that I'm holding, but the question that I'm holding and grappling with and trying to work my way towards some answers. I think, you know, I think our culture and our democracy would be so much better for a recentering of of the questions rather than the sort of slinging of opinions that I think we we get so often. And I don't have kids, but I think the the modeling of what it means to be like in a posture of inquiry is so incredibly powerful. Goodness, I hope I model that, but the separateness I've modeled that self and individual and separateness I didn't know any better for the most part because a couple of things I want to hit on though you said.

18:29We are starting to have firsthand experience. I don't want to miss that because I so I live up in the mountains of Colorado. Last year we had less snow than since it began being recorded, which I think was like 82 or something like that less snow. And we have been right as a lot of places have been with wildfires. That's our biggest concern here. And we've had not this year yet, but we've had in the past evacuations. But so yeah, we're dealing with a real and present danger and all the you know, a fluent. I'm going to I'm going to be judgmental all us affluent white people up in the mountains, you know, last year. Oh my gosh, you know, poor us couldn't go skiing because there was not enough, you know, snow, but it was at least a wake up call that holy moly something is different. Something's changing. I looked today and saw because I had a friend talking about the lake mead is at an all time low. I think 75% of its capacity or it's running at 22% but all time or at least again since since recorded that we know of and holy smokes.

19:33It's a week ago, as you well know of the floods in the Paul, which I do admittedly tend to advocate for. Do you know what's going on in your neighborhood and your neighbor? And I don't know that I can help something across the world. And watching those videos felt like a gut punch. Oh my God. I mean, we got what a thousand people did now or and maybe thousands more and to look at that and go. I mean, I'm assuming and I did a little research, but I'm not going to claim an opinion. I'm going to look to you as the expert that you're looking at that and going. Yeah, that's that's what we're talking about. That's climate change right there. Look at it. Yeah, I mean, I think this is the this is the unfortunately weekly if not daily gut gut punch of being in this work is like yeah. We you know, we this is what we have known was coming on on all of these different fronts because we have incredible scientists who have been, you know, as my my dear friend, Dr. Kate Marvel does.

20:39You know, creating computer model versions of the planet and running experiments in hopes that we don't actually run the experiment, right, which is, which is what we've been doing what happens when we dig up all of this carbon from underground and burn it what happens when we convert ecosystems into, you know, agriculture and and suburbia right. We've we've been unfortunately running that experiment and the outcomes are really harrowing and and there are things we can do right we are not on a definitively, you know, impossibly slippery slope into catastrophe. We are better futures that are still available to us and I think sometimes what's happening is that these impacts are now meeting us at our doorstep even the very privileged among us. And we may not be fully aware or engaged in what the set of solutions looks like, you know, in the years that I've been working on this even in the years since.

21:51I wrote most of a book called drawdown, which was kind of a compendium of what are the solutions in our toolbox right what are the technologies and the practices that we already have there already working. That book came out almost a decade ago and just the improvements in solar energy alone and the reduction in costs in that time has been absolutely mind boggling. We really are now in a place where clean energy can feasibly replace dirty fuels and that is so incredibly hopeful and there is a lot of work to do to bring that possible future about. Okay, I'm sensitive to going too far down this rabbit hole, but I'm going to ask because I'm curious and I feel really ignorant it's something that I could go research online and you know I've got my own areas of humanity I'm trying to address and I feel kind of ignorant on this so I want to ask in regard to I come I do come from a lot of investment in the health and wellness industry and Kevin's perspective you know is that we are going to be able to do that.

23:07We go into the grocery store and we just we kind of instinctively just trust it if it's in there it must be okay you know it's it wouldn't be in there if it was going to kill us and it's FDA approved and whatever not that we have these conscious thoughts but I think we just we want to trust where we belong we want to trust our community want to go and we want to buy it and then we find out that wait a minute all this stuff in the middle isles it's process actually harming us and and what not I think it's just it's heartbreaking to us and we instinctively again want to trust that's my premise to saying if we go to fossil fuels yeah that we look at this and you're looking at all the damage and yet yeah yesterday I think I got gas and it was I'm up here in the mountains it was I don't know for 420 or something like that a gallon and I'm looking at that and going again in my ignorance but understanding some of the problems that we're having shsh wouldn't it be make more sense if the gas was like $45 a gallon but it's not so again back to the trust we go along go well I don't know we got a government it must be okay yeah so tell us give inform us a little bit for me yeah no I think you're you're exactly right that we we do want to be able to move in the world from a place of trust and this is actually one of the really kind of

24:27gutting things from a survey a couple of years ago of young people around the world you were talking about the anxiety Kevin the the grief the the anger upwards of 85% of young people around the world say that they are that they are worried about this this topic and almost half of them say that their feelings about it impact their day-to-day lives their ability to just be students to hold a job to be members of a family or a community and one of the most gutting pieces to me is that they say they feel betrayed by leaders they feel betrayed by leaders of governments by leaders of industry and I completely get that and I particularly get it on this topic when you know some of the very best early climate science was being done within oil companies in the 60s and 70s and they had their own scientists who were saying hey if we burn

25:35all of this product right if we you know pump this out of wells or we dig it out of mountains here's what's going to happen and instead of saying huh this seems like a bad business model and that it is not worth endangering the future of life to to make as much money as possible they were like let's actually let's focus on a misinformation campaign so that people think there's not good science that they think this is a hoax that they think there are not solutions that they think the solutions are worse than the problem right and and so it's no wonder that people are confused and of course part of the reason why you know you're talking about gas prices why they don't reflect the reality of the impact they're having right they don't kind of financially account for what they're doing to

26:40basically the commons of our atmosphere is that we have an industry with a lot of money and a lot of influence and power that is very engaged in politics and lawmaking and so it's incredibly hard then to to rain it in right to put in place either carrots or sticks that might help us accelerate the clean energy future and so that trust piece you know it's like yeah what what do you do when the people who have known have been the ones entrunching us in this mess okay I'm going to read something to you that I sent to a friend that I'm sensitive to read because it's yeah I don't find a lot of benefit in criticizing even if we see problems in leadership I don't know what criticizing however I'm gonna read this to you I found this today and the written spoken

27:42words of poet Andrea Gibson why are the keys to our future in the hands of those who have the longest commutes from their heads to their hearts I quote those exact lines in in climate way finding are you serious yeah yeah yeah yeah okay when I feel goofy because I want maybe did I get that off your Instagram page or something maybe I did who knows but those are words of wisdom that we should be hearing from all angles so north-south east west these pages beyond I love it um and I do think you know I think it's um I think that is the kind of it's criticism but it's a it's a soulful observation right about where we find ourselves um and I think it is still in Andrea Gibson's amazing way offered with a generosity of spirit

28:49right um that says to me there's like a subtext in there that maybe we can close that gap right maybe we can close that gap between the head and the heart between ourselves and each other um and that doing so is a critical part of the solution when you were talking a minute ago I didn't make this connection did you buy chance see the tv series I don't remember where it is landman you know I did not um because I yeah and again I shouldn't I shouldn't critique but the critiques that I heard was that that was sort of heavily influenced by some fossil fuel sort of propaganda lines not surprised and also influenced by a lot of uh values that I wouldn't attest to regardless I admit that I watched it and there was a and was it good what's that was it good

29:53I to be it's an interesting take on I assume it's a representation and exaggeration maybe or maybe not of the pulse of our culture and they're depicting things so the character some of the character aspects yeah uh yeah I did and my thought was because I'm thinking as you were talking a minute ago there's a uh a rant I'm gonna say uh from the the lead guy whose name I just can't come up with a famous actor John is it John Ham no um um it's the main guy in the whole movie who I'll come up with it anyways okay and there's a lawyer or you know somebody who plays a lawyer who makes a criticism about the industry and he makes this rant that I think even that even finding the rant maybe I can find it for you would be it's because he makes the rant of going look we're just providing you guys are demanding it the culture demands it and if we don't

30:55yeah these are ramifications that may be it where you would see it and go oh yeah that's skewed because he makes a case of yeah one that we're demanding it which I would say is true I I do blame us for a lot and I want to get to the someone's this specific so what we can do but then he also goes through kind of a litany of and if we stop producing this stuff this is what y'all are gonna have to deal with and uh kind of an interesting I'm sure biased ex-pose but I think that's I thought interesting perspectives I think that's what we look at and go gosh it's it's just it's how the world works right it must be okay or what if we don't and how do we change and then we get to what you address in here and it just kind of fills all overwhelming and hopeless and then we do nothing yeah yeah totally and that is uh that's kind of a core a core track that we are fed hey if you weren't asking for it we wouldn't be doing any of this right and to me it's a very convenient displacement of responsibility right that um you know well

32:02it's just you consumers at the end of the line this is also why you may know the the concept of the carbon footprint uh BP poured tons of money into a huge campaign to popularize the idea of the carbon footprint to put the onus on us well we should just be working away in our own private lives trying to minimize our our footprint because if we're so worried about that when these much bigger systems around us have everything to do with what the realities of our individual footprints look like right well we will sort of fritter away trying to you know get that last piece of plastic cleaned up for recycling instead of saying hey guess what we want something different we don't want our utilities to be making electricity from coal and polluting our communities we want them to be making it from wind and solar and geothermal we want clean power you know we'll

33:06we'll be worried about right these little things in our lives um when you know i don't know about you Kevin but i haven't had anything to do with the engineering of cars or the uh the highway system i haven't had it you know there's there's so much that is being decided at the local level at the regional level at the national level that has everything to do with what our choices actually look like in our own lives and i know you know this from from the world of food right um that there's this dance of like well did we demand it or were we given it an enticed to consume it and reinforce to consume it and then it was made cheaper and it was made easier right like well where is the agency um and i think there's agency everywhere but i particularly put and put an onus on you know the entities that have had the most kind of power really in in designing

34:11our world okay well let's go down that road then because that has been i tend to focus on the individual yeah that's just been my my life for the most part and yeah for the first time involved in something where we're trying to do something at a bigger level so that it can hopefully have an effect at scale but to what you're saying are you saying because the carbon footprint thing i'm a i'm a product of that and i've thought about that for years and what can we do to so we built a uh a home that was a kind of alternative and try to do our part there and you know with the kids and uh you know how can we consume less and have less trash and recycle and do all those things yeah yeah okay i so i'm going to make an example that's legit so i live in a small town appearing Colorado and i spend a lot of time out riding and running i don't know what happened uh well here's my admission i am not involved in the

35:15local political scene i'm not out uh being involved and i don't know what happened but it feels like a dramatic asphalt spree is happening they are repaving everything from the roads to the city building parking lots things where i don't think and it's just i mean i've lived here forever it's just tractors going through there what the hell are they paving and and painting for but they're going nuts i would never choose to spend a dime on this stuff but i'm over here i'm gonna i'm gonna exaggerate the point i'm over here cleaning my recycling and doing that but i haven't been to a city meeting i don't know what's going on so am i hitting a thread here yeah i mean look i think it's very helpful to think about kind of three different realms of our lives when we're thinking about action on climate change or anything that we might care about really and one is

36:16is our personal life right and of course we have lots of opportunities we have tons of agency for quick and meaningful action at that level and i think that kind of making these choices you know in in our personal lives is an important way to stay grounded in our values day to day i became vegetarian at 16 as part of my kind of environmental awakening and that gave me a way to feel like okay it's tiny it's a tiny drop in the bucket but i'm doing something every time i eat then there's this vast realm of our professional lives that i think a lot of us say well i'm not a scientist or i'm not a policy wanker an activist so there's probably nothing for me to do um but i would say we're doing climate action right now right in in your superpowers Kevin of communicating and fostering dialogue and discovery on these topics like that is a that is a form of

37:20professional climate engagement um and whoever we are in whatever we do with our uh you know most of our waking hours there's possibility for engaging on on this topic and then the piece you were talking about of our public life are shared life in in a democracy such such as it is right that that piece of being civically engaged you know there are in most states for example a very small number of people who serve on a public service commission or utility commission that are making major decisions about where we get these fundamental needs of our lives electricity being a key part of that and i don't know it's probably a tiny tiny fraction of a percent of people who have ever showed up to a public service commission meeting right to tell these folks that this matters and yet

38:23you know this is a bill we're paying every month right this is a a big part of our lives um so i think the the the big opportunity really is to figure out in in the words of my podcast cohost dr. Leah Stokes to think less about the carbon footprint and more about being part of a carbon wave right of actually joining with others to see the things that we want to see brought to life whether that's a bike lanes in our city or whether that is um you know new clean energy generation whether it is you know making sure that we've got climate resilient schools for example right like there are many things that might deeply align with what we already care about and what our neighbors care about that we could help to move forward okay i'm i'm gonna i want to get a little more specific

39:23on on the what we can do but i do want to back up i mean again i i i loved your book cathart i loved how you wrote it and what i how i perceived your um spirit and energy in that and with that that's my preface to say i do want you to speak some i found myself coming back to what is my what is my mindset going into this before i get to the what do i do what is my mindset and kind of in the Thomas you know he will spirit of of how am i am i even thinking about my harmony with the world not just relationships yeah not even myself that's where i tend to spend my world is is self and relationships and whatnot but then this world i don't just live in and on but as we've talked about i'm a part of this thing what is the mindset of being in harmony and i

40:28i play i like to play mind games help myself with paradigms and and i have owned land and to think if everybody thought about if they were given a plot of land to build a neighborhood what would they do would they just come in with a big bulldozer and mow the hell out of everything down and asphalt it and do buildings and maybe they would but at least get clear on it or would they care about there's limited resources so does everybody just get unlimited water do they get to you know rape the soil and and yada yada what would we do and so kind of come at it from that angle before we go into what we can do of the the mindset that maybe we have lost and as you talked about you coming from an indigenous perspective that they seem to have emulated that well but i it seems like a more than a lost art yeah i think it's probably very telling about our our dominant culture that we want to jump to doing without reflecting without the pieces around yeah mindset around being right

41:32around our heads and our hearts as much as our our hands right um knowing that let me let me let me be candid on that yeah i'm the chief doer learning to be so i'm so help me totally totally um yeah and and and and in so many ways this book actually grew out of my own grappelings with the inadequacies of the way we treat that question what can i do um but first of all we we often take it at face value right and we you know bless the the good folks of the environmental movement we're like hi kevin here's a punch list of 10 things and i'd like you to get out there and tick tick tick tick tick right um which frankly i think sells us a bit short right there's so much about our own talents our own contacts our own values our own um you know like the the magic of who we are

42:36that you're never gonna capture in a punch list right no one would have ever said well here on the punch list is to write a book called climate way finding right um and i think so often that question is actually i don't know it's something of like we'll use a mycelial metaphor it's something of the fruiting body of bigger and deeper wondering that i think we're actually really grappling with this with within this time um right questions about what does it mean to be human here and now on a planet that is changing because our species has been changing it what does it mean to figure out where to live and who to love and what's worthy of our waking hours right these are huge existential questions and things that i think are really at the heart of what it is to be alive um and so i i think we have to start with all of that stuff if we want to arrive at really meaningful

43:43answers to the question what can i do right um if we want to answer that in a way that is genuine that is authentic that is something we could actually you know really give some of our life force to um and not just treat it as you know somebody's task list that's been you know handed handed over um because when i look at where we've seen climate progress it is almost entirely due to people who have like found a foothold and given of themselves to turning possibility into reality in some way um and that just demands that we do some process of discernment i think um and that's really what this book is about well i'm thinking is as you explain that that

44:46yeah maybe the tendency to just jump on the do almost on the doing almost feels something else symptomatic if i don't first address the core root of myself which i guess personal ethos is that track yeah yeah i think so um because for me the the animating idea of this work is that we are each a note of possibility for healing the climate crisis and that is true whoever we are and wherever we are and whatever we've got to give and nodes can be just sort of hanging out or they can be really energized right and activated and of course nodes by their nature are connected to other nodes um and so i sort of have this visual of like this beautiful web of us kind of lighting up um in in a different way than we have

45:50okay you just mentioned nodes connecting and i want to point out for folks listening to this show here just the continue i like when we have continual threads different guess different topics per se but continual threads we recently had on oh gosh i'm saying this i hope it's published already but we had um Daniel coil on the show and his new book flourish oh fantastic somebody brought it up yesterday i had listened to my show and and uh we were talking about it and him ultimately kind of like a blue zones perspective but saying the people that they're finding flourishing are part of a community that is growing together so i wasn't an individualistic thing so to come back i recognized that quickly in your message in your book that so much of it is not yeah just the individualistic thing okay go back into your house and start cleaning and you're recycling and and your carbon footprint thing that this is best

46:54served as a communal coming together which is you know is another other or a root issue of the problem that we are more isolated and separated than ever so that feels again like that's the primary part of your message yes absolutely absolutely and and back to you know what are the antidotes to anxiety the antidotes to anxiety i think are first of all feeling that we're not alone that we've got a community in this and that we are able to take action together um and that just feels hugely important both for making progress but also staying sane right um for taking care of one another as we ride through this frankly really wild time um of a lot of trouble and a lot of still potential um for i think a future that we'd we'd want to live in and that we could feel

48:02proud of leaving to those who who come after us okay something i'm i'm thinking i'm realizing that as a part of your message here that it's y'all healing ourselves and the world this is joint yeah a joint effort so i was a couple weeks ago i had the the privilege of spending some time with bill uri i don't know if you know william uri's yeah he's harvard's co-founder of their program on negotiations he's actually right now over in the middle east in big talks and negotiations and uh he so we're on a hike together and he said you know who he that he was that he said he was sharing with me he says so i was thinking kevin you know who is i mean we're we're it uh a really influential name had said that they thought that that we're like 75% towards a world war three um and is actually they'll show sharing it in hopes that hey that's i mean it's 25% we got a lot to work with yeah and bill saying that he thought his thinking was who's sitting around thinking

49:09how can we avert world war three focus just on that not on and he says and i saw you're the x-way says i don't think anybody is so he's right now uh part of his trip he's going to be in Ireland and he's got 60 people coming together from around the globe looking for a cohort of people that are just devoted not to their issue not to their country but to uh averting world war three but in our discussion then he he turned it on me and says kevin so i have again a project that i'm working on he says how would you how would you depict that amongst that and i and i said all of you who are trying to save the world and afford us another day i want us to enjoy the day that we're being afforded if you're affording it for us to just continue on in our misery and anxiety it feels ungrateful okay so there's my premise then and i'm getting to talk with bill about joining those efforts and that's what it feels like you're doing but you're talking both of them and but what i came to as you were talking a second ago is

50:11could you even look at it as as we have this cultural anxiety worsening anxiety yeah worsening well-being and and i would say just a worsening experience of life there could be the opportunity to heal that as you partake in healing the planet that feels like a primary aspect of your message i hadn't put that together completely completely i think you know if there is maybe feels weird to talk about an invitation that is is in the in you know part of a what feels frankly like a global catastrophe but i do think that there is an invitation in this to come into a truer more aligned version of ourselves as individuals as communities to you know to to rise up and say life is this extraordinary gift that has been

51:20and handed down over almost four billion years despite incredible odds right and now here we are holding life in our hands and we have the opportunity to make a contribution at this pivotal time you know i cannot imagine really anything more worthwhile to do with with the time that we have in these bodies um then to try to be a generative part of helping life continue on to more life and as you say more vibrant life more joyful life more beautiful life um more fair and free life uh but i think there are so many ways to do that and and you know picking up a piece of the work that we are you know equipped for and energized by is just like that is healing right um

52:30that end and of itself i think is healing i would primarily recommend you and your message in your book to help people consider and hopefully embrace a mindset of harmony with all uh in some ways so that's my that's my lead and now i am going to ask you some specifics or to list some specifics of okay so if i've got that mindset what do i do because i'll admit this being an area of feeling incompetent if not you know impotent in what do i do and i'm admitting that and i hear you saying hey no no harm nothing but a help for me to be aware of my quote carbon footprint that's really about as far as as it has gone so yeah help um that help is is is really what this book is designed

53:41to deliver um because we know that the majority of people around the world are concerned about climate change and we know that only a tiny fraction of people who are concerned have gotten off the sidelines and taken action in almost any way and so this book is really designed to meet you and not just talk to you but actually walk with you through a process of looking inward doing that with some care looking outward at solutions and context and community doing that with some spirit of curiosity and then getting to the point that we look forward with courage and we think about how to put that into action um and i you know it's a terrible thing to give people homework um but truly this book is my best answer to how do i arrive at at at genuine what can i do steps um and it

54:47also is so it's participatory right there's journaling prompts and creative mapping exercises and there's even a really beautiful like small group self-led experience if you want to go through it with family friends colleagues um and all of that was developed through a program that we have run over the last four years at a nonprofit that i lead called the all we can save project the program has now touched some 75 colleges and universities across the us in Canada but what it it is sort of the most relevant um is that everything in this book has been super thoroughly tested and honed this is not just you know i think this will work this is an evidence-based journey to go from that place of care and concern moving towards clarity and then ultimately contribution

55:47okay do you want to walk can we walk through it real quick um sure i did my homework um core practices of wayfinding and so you just named them but to look at and this is kind of my own uh some out of the book and some of my thoughts towards it so number one we look inward which we talked about kind of that okay where do i sit and i came i my own depiction was as as my own look at being at harmony with this with this world in this kind of you're like your deep motivation yeah yeah as a part of this looking inward and you wrote um i think you know emotions core motivations guiding values that was the one that i landed on i am again in my own work from a psychological and mindset standpoint continually um just say enamored convicted about how much we are at the core we are run by our beliefs

56:48that we often aren't even aware of but that's what runs us so guiding values so looking at that and then you said and what can we uniquely from that or furiously bring so what do i have to offer because it's not everything i don't have the ability awareness or knowledge well i shouldn't say awareness i can increase that but i don't have the skill set to provide everything so that's where we start and certainly not the time yeah well fair yeah yeah so looking inward anything you would add to that piece yeah i mean when you think about um so that there's a a framework in the book for helping us think about like what are our gifts what are the the talents that we can offer and and what has really helped me to have greater clarity is like where do i feel in nexus of power enjoy right where i've got that like fire in the belly you know and then that sort of delight maybe even list out feeling that can happen when it's like oh i'm really in the sweet spot

57:51of of what i'm here to do and i'm curious Kevin if there's anything that you're like yeah this is a this is a superpower of mine this is a gift of mine and i haven't thought about using it for climate but i could well you mentioned some degree it's this i mean this is the biggest impact that i have and it's within my skills on i mean talking i have an conversation like this yeah like what you said being in bliss i mean i have areas of my life where i called bliss called flow of course that i would say is flow this is one of them this is a you know having a conversation about humanity that i care about that i invest myself in this is a lot about it and i but i appreciate your focus on that back in my you know church days i remember you know we need volunteers to go vacuum the carpets and i don't i don't it's really hard to because that that could be flow for somebody that would not be flow for me yeah flow for me would be put me where are we communicating to

58:56get more people now i can help with the communities that's where i'm best served yeah and i really appreciate you seeing that because i think a lot of times we don't we say i'm going to go volunteer and do x it doesn't fit you at all god love you for doing that but you know if we can find a place that you actually care about you'll do a better job you have more impact so i'm thank you yeah totally totally and you'll you know like if it all feels like a chore yeah you know we know we know what happens to things that feel like chores they just fall down to the bottom of the of the list right and it's like well maybe i'll get back to that at some point um but if we if we find a way to yeah leverage leverage that that magic of ourselves in in some useful way and i think the amazing thing to your point is like what's flow for you is super different from what it is for someone and thank god you know um that like we have this whole ecosystem of talents and i think sometimes we have a way of i don't know like underselling or dismissing the things that come naturally to us

1:00:05right those natural sources of of giving to the world because like well it feels good and it feels easy so that must not be the real stuff right that must not be what we really then um need to do little little deal and much easier with it yeah no i would be like uh we need volunteers okay let me put a communication out and and get people together i'm really good at that okay now there we got in there hundred people showed up what do we do i don't know i hopefully there's somebody that knows how to do that with yeah do you have somebody who's great at experience design over to them there you go there you go okay so so this is part of the looking inward and then your next one is looking outward where you talk about uh looking at climate solutions and accelerator for change and then our unique contexts and communities and so that i could play the same game of gosh what are where do i have context and communities i could go down and look gosh i i would really well connect with these groups of people and these over here i i have no there's a military group

1:01:08i've never been in the military and here's a group for i don't know i'm i'm just poking corporate or academia neither one of those if i participated in either how about athletics okay i can i could jive at those folks psychologist i'm good yeah in my track and totally totally um yeah thinking about you know what are the what are the what are the what are the worlds that we already have footholds in right what are the people we are already connected with the context we already engage in right for me you know this could be anything from like you know i've i've been in the world of publishing at various moments in my life for many years now right that's a context that i can leverage for climate action for those who are you know in the world of law or in the world of organizing or in the world of culture shaping right like you can imagine these many different opportunities that arise and of course so much of this is playing out in place right so

1:02:14where are we rooted even if we're not rooted there full time that's a hugely important part of it as well um and the amazing thing about climate solutions we talked a lot about about clean energy in this conversation but there is such a breadth of what needs to be done and how it can move forward that truly like whatever gets you jazzed there's going to be some some nexus there and um and so i think if we kind of like take a tour of that terrain of solutions which the book helps with and see like oh like where do i have a little a little wonder a little spark a little sense of like i'd like to know more about that or that seems like it could be really up my alley as opposed to you know god that's the thing i really you know i don't want it i don't want to go do that like i don't wake up and get excited about solar panels but i do wake up and get excited about

1:03:17the possibilities of the written word um and so that's you know that's an area for me to leverage well i i'm going to bring back something my dear departed dad used to say back again in the Christian church days but he uh very influential guy and he would say a lot of times people think that okay if i'm just going to say you know god use me that they're kind of afraid to do that like he's going to say yeah go serve in a third world country and they're terrified he said god gave you skills and abilities if likely would use you in places that are fitting for you and i as you were talking i thought our propensity to come to something like this and say okay i'm sold uh what can i do and and what i felt you're saying is you already know what you're able to do come and tell us what you got to offer and you thought it's about okay yeah jealous what you've got to offer and then you know chances are there is something already in motion that aligns with what you care about what

1:04:17your values are what your talents are where your talents might be needed right so sometimes it's a matter of finding like oh wow you know i didn't realize that there was already this incredible group in my community that's you know already been moving on some of these things i don't need to start from scratch i just need to go join them right um oh there's a campaign that's already in motion for something that actually feels really resonant for me cool let me see if they need a massage therapist to keep folks you know feeling good and moving forward right it doesn't have to be um it doesn't have to be this like massive construction of something new right often i think it's like it's more like i don't know popping your raft on a river that's already that's already flowing hmm you did say you referenced in this segment of we looking out for outward you know look what are

1:05:20the worlds we already have contacts and we however we know that right now people have less and less contacts are isolated so even even myself i'm not super involved in my community here so if i look at it but i'm good look at i'm not involved i don't have well do i have contacts i probably do you know individuals but i'm more so gonna look at the groups that would have impact here and which ones do i know i'm gonna resonate with like the school board i i i hardly went to school i don't know you know but maybe the i'm just making this up you know the forest service or something like that well sure man i'm that's that's that's my that's my wheelhouse more so so to look at those places and or you know looking at yeah individuals we all tend to have some kind of a network and where can we get in so super helpful and then and then your next one is looking forward having vision and then the final taking action actually doing something but what i thought

1:06:24there Catherine is to do that back to the values this is you know my values line up this is something i am going to need to make time for and i just gonna add it on and make my life crazier or is there something i can give up to put it in there what am i gonna do to actually take action because i'm the kind of i'll tell man i meant let's go let's do it and i add it on it's not tenable and not counting the costs in essence yeah yeah totally i think that's a really important piece of the discernment right of of like what what can you actually take on and you know one of the things that i that i kind of advise in the book is think about like one or two maybe three things you want to do in the coming season right not 25 things that you're going to try to do over the next year like really make it something that is that is doable and then let

1:07:26the momentum build right and that could be like okay i want to try to do one thing in my personal life and maybe that's looking at where does my money live if you've got a bank account or a retirement plan or investments chances are that unless you have taken steps to make sure they're not invested in fossil fuels they are invested in fossil fuels and you could be doing that carbon footprint stuff all day long and what your money does at night while you sleep is going to do more damage than you could ever possibly undo during the day so things like okay i'm gonna move my money to fossil fuel free funds or a fossil fuel free bank like that's a big step that you can take and it's one that once you've done it you don't have to do it again right it's it's kind of durable change and then it might be in the professional sphere like okay let me i'm gonna spend some time really thinking about like

1:08:28where could i leverage my professional skills for climate action in some way or how could i bring this topic or this conversation into my professional sphere that one's the one that gets the most most complicated i think and then on the public life piece you know we're in an election season there are people who are champions for climate solutions and clean energy who are running for office can i knock some doors can i make some calls with the environmental voter project right like again kind of thinking about context and what's relevant to our lives right now that's a that's a really timely one as well. Catherine i just i'm grateful um grateful for your efforts to spearhead this and to use your superpower and get it out there and i inspire myself with your message for humanity you know overall for for and your inclusion of everything

1:09:34uh and that message and then specifically getting my own thoughts more towards the climate past my little carbon footprint. So thank you i'm eager to uh talk with my family about it and grateful to put this out and and continue learning so uh thank you thank you for letting me be a student and for uh letting me be a part of the effort. Thank you so much Kevin and for bringing that spirit of inquiry that we talked about at the very beginning of the conversation which is so very much who who you are um and i would be remiss not to say that for those who are interested in going through this climate-wafinding experience in community we have resources for reading group leads and we even hold online orientation sessions for folks who feel like maybe i'd like to learn a little bit more about what does it mean to do a

1:10:40reading group all of that is on our website at climatewafinding.earth. Catherine thank you. Thanks Kevin. Thanks for joining us in the discussion that again is Catherine Wilkinson Dr uh her book that i reference climate-wafinding healing ourselves and the planet we call home and you can find Catherine on Instagram and substack at dr Wilkinson. Till next time here's to you and me making better meaning in our lives and experiencing the miracle of living.