Climate Courage: the outback floods a month later

It was more than a month ago when outback Australia was swamped by floods, experiencing a years’ worth of rain in a week, which not only devastated lives and livelihoods, it devastated livestock as well. The floods were bigger than the size of Texas and to this day, locals are still waiting for the water to drain away completely. What were the final numbers of livestock lost? What was the impact and cost? How are local people feeling about this event and the future?

We’ll get to the bottom of that, as well as other major news on climate from around the world, including new information on the AMOC, some promising news from Antarctica (or is it?), the farmers in the UK have raised the alarm on crops, Tony Blair putting his foot in it, extreme heat events, a significant decline in bird numbers reported in the US and what it means, we’ll delve into Overshoot following Nate Hagens definition, the war between India and Pakistan because our world can not afford war, especially at this fragile moment for our world, and so much more. As always, there’s a lot to discuss, so come and join us, 9th May, 8am UK, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. 

To help us dig into the conversation, we are delighted to have Heather Cameron joining us from the outback of Australia. Hailing from Gunderbooka near Bourke in New South Wales, she’s a born and bred outback gal, but today, is running her own country retreat, so everyone can enjoy the peace of Australia’s stunning nature. The Lower Lila retreat is 64,000 acres, grazing sheep, cattle, and goats, and has a carbon project to conserve areas of native bush lands for future generations to come. But she’s doing more than that, Heather is a credentialed practitioner of coaching, while also studying to become a master practitioner of coaching, and she is also author of ‘Never Underestimate a Woman’ with book three in the series coming out soon. 

Climate Courage is a livestream, held every two weeks and is co-hosted by Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko and Richard Busellato. On the show, we cover critical topics across the full spectrum of the polycrisis, in everyday language, and we go big picture on the climate crisis, while also drilling down and focusing on the actions we can all take to be part of the solution. Whether individual action, community action, or national/global action - every single one of us can be part of ensuring a live-able future for our children and grandchildren. We owe them that!

#ClimateCourage #RethinkingChoices #UncommonCourage 

To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to Climate Courage. My name is Andrea Edwards. My name is David Coe. And at the far end, you have me as usual, Richard Bursalatto. Welcome. Welcome. We have got a, an incredible amount of information to get through today, and we know we're not gonna be able to do it. So we're just gonna go as deep and as wide as we possibly can. But before we start, I've had a very, very, very bad case of COVID this week. So if I disappear off screen for a bit, it's because I'm coughing, sneezing, or something else. It hasn't been a lot of fun. When was the last time you guys got COVID? Twenty two. No. '23. Sorry. '23. '20 '3. Yeah. Never tested positive in 2020, but fairly sure I had it given what I felt like in the timing. And in '23, it was not as severe, but then I tested positive. So I've had it twice. Yes. I I got it twice, and, I got it first time during 2020.'20. Yeah. My wife works as a midwife, so she's she was working in the hospital, and she basically, I mean, hospitals at that time were the breeding ground in in many ways. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So so all of us got it, and then I had it really bad. I had it in hospital. I ended up in hospital. Oh. It stayed on for a long time. All my muscle muscles have all sorts of issues and everything, really peculiar. And then I got it last year again, and it all flared up. Oh, wow. It's come it's remarkable how the, it it just triggered a whole storm of kind of, you know, immune and other kind of issues. Yeah. Right. Well, you don't wanna be getting it again. It's one second time. It was worse than my first time. So that was kind of I thought, oh, okay. That that's interesting. I thought it would go the other way around. And I'm vaxxed up to the up to the hilt. So, yeah, hopefully, it'll, avoid long COVID. But anyway, so if I disappear, that's why. So today, we, have a very special guest from the Outback Of Australia, and I met this lovely lady just just over the weekend. And we were talking about the floods and the impact on the floods. And I said, Heather, would you be willing to come and join us on Climate Courage? And she said, yes. So welcome to Heather Cameron all the way from, well, outside of Berg. It's a a town called Gundabooka. Is that how you say it? Yeah. Hello, everybody. Yes. Actually, an area. It's not a town. So Burke is my closest town. I'm 84 kilometres from my closest town. Wow. Wow. Now I just so people know where you are, I decided to put a map in. Let me just get it up here. So this is where you are. So tell us, what's the, drive because driving distance, not flying. What's the city city that's closest to you? Sydney actually is, although Brisbane's only an hour further. It's only because of the way that the roads are situated that they're not direct route. Yeah. So it just takes a little bit longer to go to Brisbane. Yeah. Yeah. And you're up near the Queensland border there. Right? Yeah. Pretty close to the border. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So I thought people people might wanna get a sense of where you're from. But, I I can't do kilometers from Sydney. Yeah. K. So I'm also I'm I'm also a country girl that was only 300 kilometers to the closest city, but I think people don't always really appreciate how big Australia is. Right? Yeah. That's that's just phenomenal. And I I I suspect going back to school here, I think it's also got to do with the projection of the global map that actually we kind of underestimate the size of Australia if we had done it in, what is it called, cone projection rather than Mercantor. It would have showed as bigger and more appropriately sized because it's a big country. I mean, speaking to Australian friends and the distances, it's I think it's actually very similar to Canada in that sense how people think about distances. It's like, oh, yeah. My my son had an away game in hockey. It was 280 kilometers going. It's like, Jesus. I can be in Scotland here if I drive that distance. Yeah. It's true. K. Yeah. Yeah. My musical activities used to be, 300 kilometers away. Yeah. That's true. But, Heather's also a coach, but she's also written, well, it's a series of books, and it's called Never Underestimate a Woman. And, book three is about to come out. So do you wanna just just tell us a little bit more about your life and your books and what you're up to? Yeah. Absolutely. Book three has actually been released now, and I ordered some when I was in Singapore just last week, and they've already arrived. They arrived yesterday, so very exciting. So my, life has been challenging, and I started writing when I discovered it was a form of therapy. So I would journal every morning, and it was coming together so well that then I thought, you know, if I shared my story, if I was vulnerable enough to share my story, perhaps it'll help and inspire others. So part one was released in 2023, November '20 '3, and it didn't take long to reach Amazon number one bestseller. Nice. And then part two was released because it's a trilogy. So part two was released in February 2024, and now part three has been released just a week ago. So, yeah, very exciting time. Yeah. So and and there was some hard times there when I was writing. You know, you don't really realize what you suppress, what you hold back. I came from a family inflicted by domestic violence, extremely violent father, and we weren't allowed to talk about it. I was, one of seven children, so I was the youngest of the seven children. And my mom said people would look down upon us if we talked about it, so we were better not to speak about it. So I went through, you know, my life for all of those years, and then it was I was in my, later forties when I started writing, and I didn't realize how good it was as a form of therapy. You know? It was just, it was just like tapping on those keys was was letting all that rubbish go. So it was so good, but I also have a really warped sense of humor. So I've put my crazy Australian outback humor in there as well. And I spent, my first years I left school at 16. I'd never read a full book, never mind ever thinking I'd ever be an author. I'd been pushed through the public system. It's not so great in Australia, sadly, that we don't learn a lot of stuff at school that we're gonna use for the rest of our life. So I ended up teaching myself to to read and, yeah, and started reading short stories. I worked in the shearing industry. I've started off as a checkout chick in the supermarket, then went into the shearing industry. Was in a pretty toxic team. It was the ex in laws, and, yeah, they weren't great to work for. So I would go off to my bedroom with a small dictionary because there was no mobile phones in those days and certainly no mobile service. And I would, you know, just read Reader's Digest or little stories like that, you know, so magazines, and look up the words that I didn't know, and that was how I taught myself to read better. So, yeah, after a lot of years, I was a good saver. I owned my first house when I was 18. So I bought a little dump of a house in the the, town that we were living in at the time. Oh, I jumped out for a moment. Sorry. I don't know what happened. You're just Oh, okay. On my screen, I did hear it. I was like, what? It's only just getting cranked up too. So yeah. So, sold that little shoe box of a house after we'd done it up a few years later. I didn't have it for many years. And that was the deposit on this farm. Banks were selling a lot of farmers up back in those days. The floor price had crashed out of with the wool, so wool prices were really bad. Livestock is always up and down. It is quite a gamble being a farmer if you're relying on livestock and wool for your income. And the bank, when we were trying to get a loan, the banks kept refusing us. And we went through a lot of banks in Dubbo, our biggest center. And and, eventually, one man that that was the Commonwealth Development Bank at the time said, why do you wanna be a farmer? And he held up a big a four piece of paper and said, see all these people's names on there. He said, we are selling them up. They've all gone bust. Why would you wanna be one of them? Or how do you think you're going to be able to survive when they can't? You know? And I said, well, we're shearers. We've got an outside income, and we don't intend to give that up. We we're gonna be shearing contracting. So, yeah, he lent us the money and bought the farm all those years ago. So that was in 1993. I've been here for thirty three years. So I was pretty young when I bought my first farm at 64,000 acres, so it gives me something to do in my spare time. Uh-huh. And and, yeah. So, got out of the shearing industry. We ended up going into the earthmoving business. So started with a really large well, started small, of course, and then ended up with a really large earthmoving business, large company. I was the director of that company. And it was in the Bowen Basin in in Queensland, so right up in the guts of Queensland there in the coal area. We had a lot of machinery working up there. And, I discovered that my husband at the time was living a double life. He had a, an a couple of apartments that he put deposits on in the Gold Coast. He had a nice, Filipino woman over there and living a complete other life. So that was a terrible shock to me when I was here running the farm and trying to homeschool my kids and and, run the farm. So, yeah, so I went to battle. I went my mom ran to get away from the DV, and she moved to Sydney and put the two youngest in the school hostel, and me being the youngest. And I was only 12 when that sort of happened, and I went, I wanna break the cycle. I'm gonna change things for women. I wanna be the voice for women, and I'm gonna fight for as long as it takes because my kids deserve to grow up in their own home. So after 24 court hearings in the Parramatta Family Law Court in Sydney, I had to keep going that 800 kilometer journey every time I went to court. Three and a half years later, I finally saved the farm. So my children got to grow up in their own home. Nice. And, yeah, it's been a big journey, a hard journey, but, you know, as I said, I wanna be a voice for other women to help and inspire others that women shouldn't have to run. Why should we run and hide with our kitties? And and that was another awful part too. The the ex, you know, had sent messages saying he's coming to take the kids because he knew there'd be a bargaining tool. So then I've had this awful so part three, that sort of part one, part two wrapped up. Part three has been the challenge of trying to survive with very little income and then a huge legal debt that I had to keep paying off. And the debt that I was left, he left me with an $8,000,000 debt, the ex did. So I had to deal with the receivers with that. And get what was company and what was partnership. And luckily, the farm was partnership, and that's what helped me save it. Plus we had a lovely little Cessna one eight two airplane, and I did all sorts of deviate things to save the plane because we owned it. And I managed to save it, and I got a court order to sell it, and that helped me fight as well. So yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. So a good success story there in in part two. But part three, as I started to say, it was the challenge of surviving after that, then what? You know? So there's still bills coming in. There's still bills to be paid and debt to be paid off. So, yeah, it's really how I navigated my way through that. Got into a relationship with my new partner. Yeah, down to earth easy going bloke, which is great. His name is Popeye, and everybody knows you miss Popeye, so I can get much more Aussie out back than that. Yeah. And, yeah, help him to navigate his way. He was going through a similar sort of situation and help him navigate his way as well. Wrote about that in part three. And so really some tools and resources. And because I've taken on in that last ten years, it's been eleven years since the the big drama that I had. And the last ten years was really, yeah, how I came through that, all the the learnings that I've done, all the trainings that I've fitted in, and how I've navigated my way through life and now helping and inspiring others and coach other women and speak to ladies groups and and all sorts of things now. So it's really, really good. Yeah. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Wonder Woman. Oh, our powerful story. Very Yeah. Thank you. Alright. So it's worth buying the book, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Now now The whole trilogy, part one, two, and three. Yeah. And and you think I suspect there's gonna be like a four, five, six as well. And there there could be, but I Yeah, I probably won't. I think people will be sick of hearing about me. Oh, what's going on now? You know? What's she up to now? Yeah. Maybe I'll put you in. Encourage other people to write their trilogies. But but the other thing that obviously was happening at the same time is that while you're struggling with finance and and and and all the other things, you're also struggling in a hostile environment that you can't rely on. So I know that there's been massive drought periods and all sorts of things going on for you as well. So it's not just you're not you're not it's not it's never linear. Right? There's all these different things going on. So That's exactly right. Yeah. And so about a month with 02/2013 was the mega drought. Was that is that the year? That that was the mega drought, and that was when I made my grim discovery. 2013 was the hardest year I've ever had in my life. And I wrote about that in in part one. And part one no. Part two. Sorry. Part two because part one, yeah, was right from a little bit of my mum's history because I decided to add that there for legacy reasons as well. And, yeah, and part two. So I've spoke about, you know, when I made the grim discovery, and I was struggling with drought. I was driving a d 10 bulldozer pushing over trees to feed cattle to keep them alive and putting out salt licks with, you know, carrying my kids around the paddock doing these farm jobs. My little girl was at school, but my little boy was on my lap in the bulldozer most of the time while we were feeding cattle. So it wasn't easy. It was a struggle, a massive struggle. Yeah. And, you know, pulling animals out of the river that was drying up fast. So, you know, and often you gotta shoot them and put them out of the misery. It's just awful because it you can't make them stand up when their legs are going to sleep, like cattle and stuff like that. So it's it's it's pretty gut wrenching. You've gotta be have a pretty, yeah, strong outlook on life to to manage as a farmer in these Western areas. But it is a wonderful lifestyle when we do get rain when when it is a good season. And, yeah. So so, yeah, I was managing with all of that as well as the the massive battle too. Yeah. Yeah. So about a month ago, we saw that Queensland got hit with rains, the size of Texas. And so that's the only way people can really get a sort of sense of the scale of Australia and what the outback really looks like. And it started north of you and sort of came down. So, just wanted to maybe just give an overview of what happened and, sort of talk about what your experience was in in those recent rain recent floods. Yeah. There was really not the the the warning that it was coming either, you know, so it was really challenging. I work at the local just I I I like to do community stuff, so I actually donate my time at the local radio station once a week. It gives me something to do. So and, anyway yeah. So you get my WARP humor. But but in any case, I really enjoy it. It's really good, and it is a great community thing to do. And and even with the weather forecast and everything, no one predicted that amount of rain to be coming. And, you know, we all thought that we were in for a dry period and weren't expecting it at all. And then they got a massive dump up further in Queensland, and some of that was in our catchment area. So, you know, we're in a a 12 inch annual rainfall where I am. And if we get our 12 inches, we are happy with that. But some years, we'll only get three, and other years, we might get 17. It's just how it rolls. We never know. There is no, annual rain season out here. It it just rains when it does and doesn't when it doesn't. So you can't sort of bank on when your rain should come either. So anyway, all of this rain just came in and just dumped on Queensland. People lost their whole herds of cattle. It was shocking up up further. But because they had no warning to get them out or to get them onto higher ground, they just drowned. It's just terrible. So there was dead animals everywhere for them. It was just shocking, you know, and their houses flooded and all sorts of terrible things. And there isn't a lot of, I don't feel anyway, a lot of government government assistance in Australia. They send SES in to search and rescue, you know, to sort of get in and see what they can, but they really don't do a great job. I had actually got when the floodwaters reached us here because it came down from up north, our catchment area is around Alcatelah, and it comes all the way down through Charleville and Cunnamulla and then down past us here, and it comes into the Darling River down just before Lath, and, ends up out into the Menindee Lakes. But, anyway, so when it got to here, I, organised with my my neighbours got a a a four seater chopper. So my son and I went up with him and had a look to see what sheep and goats and stuff that we had stuck on islands and that. So we knew that we could, you know, perhaps get the boat in and feed them, which we've been doing. You know, so we we at least had the warning even though we still got four inches of rain out of that rain. It was over a week period, so it was steady rain, so it didn't cause too much havoc. Most of it soaked in, and then we had warning for the river coming. So we were able to get over my partner and I got over on the four wheel bikes in the main big river paddock we got here and moved out all the sheep that were in that paddock before the water got there because most of that paddock goes underwater. So the few that were left there, you know, still had food on the islands. Because we'd been in a drought, that was the hardest part for the Queenslanders as well. The cattle that did get themselves and sheep that did get themselves onto higher ground through all of these areas, we were in a severe drought. So there was nothing growing on the island. So unless the water was deep enough to get a boat to, there was no way to get food to them. And then with the SES bringing the choppers in, bringing in the large bales of hay, that's what my neighbor was saying. It's got a chopper. You know, we muster with we use a gyro copter here. We get a local fellow to come with a gyro copter to help us muster, and we're on the ground with the two way radios, and he's, like, telling us left or right and how far to go because we're crashing through scrub. You can't see what you got in front of you till you come out the other side. And, and he can see what's what's happening from above. So he's just guiding us through to put the mobs together, and that's how we muster every time we need to, whether it be, you know, sheep, cattle, or goats. It's the same same deal. And he was saying, well, you know, because the cattle and the livestock are scared of the choppers because they're used to being pushed around with them. Imagine, you know, a great big chopper coming in with a bale of hay. They're jumping out in the water and some of them are drowning anyway because the choppers are frightening them. So it it was just ugly. Really, really horrible. Yeah. So some of those people there was a a lovely old man. Sorry. There was a lovely old man up in Queensland that was interviewed and I heard him speaking and saying, you know, he recovered from the seventy four floods, but he's never gonna live long enough to be able to recover from these ones. Right. Right. So These losses. Number the last, number of livestock death, I heard was a hundred and fifty thousand. Did what do you know what the total number is? No. And I don't think they'll really know for a long time because until they can get into some of those areas are still terribly wet. I know this morning, I went on my little tractor, and I bogged it because the ground looked like it was dry. Right. So it's still bogged. Yeah. But there there is actually still water there as well. Right? Yes. Yeah. And the areas that there's still water, well, they won't get an accurate number until, like I said, in these scrubby areas where there's a lot of, timber on. Even in the big open farms, some of those properties are, you know, a few hundred thousand acres up there in Queensland. They're bigger scale than we are. So until they muster their stock in, they won't know what their losses are. Right. Okay. And then the other thing we we started talking about was the warning system. So I I heard that in Queensland, they've got weather warning monitors all over the country, but there's just basically this whole because it's so huge. Right? There's just not there's not enough technology monitoring the weather in in that part of the country. But then then you kinda think, well, I mean, BOM, the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, must have had some sense that there was this big event coming through and issued a warning. So the I mean, it sounds like there's a a real systemic failing, and I I know I'm sure when people are on the ground, they're they're blaming. But I is is this potentially just, we're we're we're just not prepared for what the the the new sort of era of of of climate that we're in. Do you think it's more that, or is or is it failure, or is it is it lots of different things? What what do you think? It's a lot of different things. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a it's a lot of different things because, you know, they wouldn't be talking about a lot of back in the days, like, there was no way of recording how big the floods were or they didn't have height levels or anything like that. So I think it's happened before. It's not new. And and when they talk about the seventy four floods, these were bigger than those. But as I said, the because of the recording, no one would know, you know, if if they're being higher than that before. So it it is failure for BOM that that we should have had more warning. I mean, as I said, for us in New South Wales, at least we got the warning because we knew the river was coming, but the rest of Queensland didn't, and they should have. The farmers should have had some warning that that sort of weather pattern was about to occur because they could have got them to higher ground and got feed out on those higher areas before the rain hit. Mhmm. Yeah. Because most people have some sort of hay stockpile or they can get access to hay. Yeah. If they if they get a little bit of warning. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. And so what about the costs to the people across the area? What's are we getting any indication of that yet? Not really. No. No. There's always a lot of, gut broken promises from government, but don't really, see it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So that yeah. Like, yeah, it's lack of support. So, obviously, during the fires, we hear a lot about the local animals being killed just because they can't get away fast enough. Is, is was Australia's natural sort of animals impacted as well, or were they able to get away from the floods? No. They were impacted as well. Yeah. There was footage of, like, kangaroos tangled up in fences dead and that all over the place as well. Just terrible. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't see anything like that discussed. Did you did you, David or Richard, did you see any of that sort of coverage? No. No. Because during the fires, they like to show the koalas burning at the side of the road, but they I I didn't see any any of the natural animals. Okay. If it when from an indigenous perspective of the First Nations people, do they do they have a view of what's happening from an environmental perspective that's maybe talking about this is being seen in in in history or this is a new era of the climate? Have you come across anything like that? Not that I'm aware of. No. No. Same, I guess, because they didn't have a way of recording. Oh, like, they're cave paintings to a degree, but I don't really know if they painted, you know, water scenes or anything like that. Yeah. That'd be interesting to see if we could know know about that. Alright. So but when it comes to, like, the whole climate emergency, and I know that the, Albanese government, I think a lot of them being reelected was because, the opposition was so, in sitting too much sitting in the climate denial phase, and Australia's just getting slammed again and again and again by extreme weather events. So what do you what are you hearing on the ground in in, in the Outback? You're like like, are people talking about climate change? Are they, are they concerned? Are they fearful? What what what's the conversation that's happening sort of at in the Outback around the topic? No. Not a lot. It's easy like you mentioned before, blame. So as far as flooding can go that, you know, a little bit of perhaps it's because of climate change. And the same when we go into a severe drought. Oh, it's because of climate change. You know? It's like it's like, oh, that's the go to. That's what we can blame. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But people aren't you know, because when I go back to country parts of the country that I grew up in, everyone tells me about how much it's changed over the last twenty, thirty years since I've left. Right? I so people aren't really sort of having that conversation about what's going on in the in the global environment and what we need to do to change? It's not Not really. What I have noticed in this area in the thirty three years that I've had this farm is a lot of country, a lot of good country out here. National parks, so the government, I guess, is, well, they own the national parks. So a lot of them are farmers because they're getting offered really good money to sell out to national parks. So a lot of farmers have have done that. They've taken that option and gone, which is really sad because, you know, quite a few of us are now saying, well, who's gonna feed the country if we keep selling our land off to national parks and it gets closed up? There's only so many parks that we can have. And the sad part about national parks, I know that they are also good to have as well, but I don't think we need so many. They want them to be back to their native states. So they actually fill in the dams, and they close off all the artesian water. Where the hell do they think the the native animals are gonna drink when they've been drinking at man made wells and water holes for two hundred odd years, and suddenly they're closing it all off. So they they perish when it becomes a drear because they've been drinking there for a few hundred years, so they just curl up and die. It's just it doesn't make sense. I just think that a lot of these people are sitting behind desks, and they don't get out and really realize what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's always the case. So that conversation where the implementation at the local level is not is not happening. It's being dictated at the national level. Right? And it's it's it's always the case. So the majority when you say feeding the country, the majority of the people in your region are, livestock farmers? Yes. Meat producers. More more meat than anything. But there is still quite a lot of wool produced out here. Yeah. So yeah. And around around Burke itself is cotton. Yeah. Yep. But not not not agriculture, wheat, all those sort of things. So it's more No. We're too low rainfall out this far. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Mhmm. Okay. So, I mean, you know, I I kinda when I was looking at the floods, I I I was sort of thinking, imagine if you had an extreme summer where it got so hot, you lost a lot of your crop, your your livestock because of the heat. And then you got the floods and you lost the the the rest of them because of the floods. I mean, my first message was to my sister and saying, stock up on meat if if if because it's gonna it's gonna cost a lot more. So the price of meat must have skyrocketed in Australia since these floods. Right? Such a I would imagine I'd imagine so. We produce our own, but it was only a couple of years ago when the livestock prices were shocking. And we had no guarantee because unless you, you know, really got big numbers and you can lock in a contract with, an abattoir or or, someone like Coles or Woolworths, which is our big shopping centers here. Yeah. You you can't you don't have a guaranteed price. We send ours to an auction system in Dubbo, and that's what most people do. And, you know, we were sending them down there not knowing what we were going to receive. So lambs at one point were down to $20 a head. Now people go into a a butcher shop or a supermarket, and they can't even buy six, you know, loin cutlets for for, you know, sort of $15. It's like, what the hell? The middle man is making all of that. The farmers, you know, are still producing it at this ridiculous price. And, so, you know, I was fortunate enough to be able to hold on to them at that point, but then you've got to sell them Because as they grow older, they're worth less money. So then it becomes a hogard or mutton, and that's not as worth as much as lamb because it's not as tender. So you still gotta take less, but you'd hope that you're gonna do better than $20 a head. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I think we're really failing when it comes to the farmers, and and and getting getting it right. So the farmers need to be part like, all types of farms. Just even down even down to local farmers. So in Bangalore, all the local guys are just they might have an acre and they're they're they're producing fruit and veg. Right? And they're just getting kicked out in these, these office office buildings or these apartments for tech workers are being built. So all all of the water's being being poisoned. The sewage system's ineffective. But the skill of farming, of growing food is being pushed out and pushed out and pushed out, and eventually, there's gonna be no one left to make growing the food. And Exactly right. But that and and we we we just we don't seem to be getting that, but all the way through to just taking care of the farmers, you know, the the struggle of the farmers. Yeah. And and it's yeah. Well, you know what I'm talking about in Australia. Yeah. It's more and more evident, and I've written about that in part three, actually, of my books, you know, talking about farmers and, the suicide rate's pretty high in with with farmers, you know, with hard times and things like that. And just the young people are not coming back to the land. The the kids are choosing not to. They want they want their nine to five job. They wanna know that they're finished at the end of the day. You know, our day can be as long as we need it to be. You know, I love the lifestyle. I'd never I'm not complaining by any means because it's choice of a lifestyle for me, and I love it. And I'm going across to farm tourism, and I do retreats and and, you know, other, businesses now as well to to to help me manage throughout that. So it's a it's about, diversifying in any way that we can to stay on the land, but it shouldn't have to be. Yeah. And it it does open up, I think, the wider discussion what the fair price of food is. And we've been living in, well, as a Gen Xer, I've been living in an era of constantly declining food prices as a share of your consumption basket. When my parents grew up, food was probably 50% of the family outlay. And I think just around COVID is probably when we bottomed in the Western world where I think food outlays were about 10% of the family spend. And now it's picking up because some of the staples have become a lot more expensive in these last five years or so. I I'm I'm kind of puzzled why we would expect on average to only spend 10% on our most essential intake. And to some extent, the same goes for energy, that it's seen as good for the common to have really low energy prices and really low food prices because then we have all this money to spend on other discretionary items. To me, it's kind of an alien thought that what we really, really need to appreciate, it needs to bring in a fair price. That way you actually appreciate what matters most to families in in the consumption basket. Because without food and energy, we have no life. Exactly. Yeah. And we have policy makers who are doing their utmost at every point in time to trying to suppress those prices to the to the absolute minimum. Right. And for me, it's an alien thought. Right? Ultimately, what it does bring, in my mind, is that you you see it as contemptuous. I expect my energy to be free. I accept expect to pay nothing for staples in the supermarket because it should basically be free. It's thing things I need, and things I need should be free. To me, it should be exactly the opposite. I'm reminded. I don't know if you saw Interstellar. It's it's I I find it brilliant film. You know? It's kinda like lots of kind of physics gone cool. Right. Okay. But the film starts with this thing which, you know, this quote about how the world doesn't need any more engineers. You know? How how I didn't run out of planes and TVs and kind of phones and stuff. They ran out of food. You know, the world needs farmers. Good farmers. And I I think that's kinda like what Richard's describing. There's this part where and and in many ways, you know, the whole the whole thing, the whole broader aspect about how we have an uns unsustainable situation in pretty much everywhere that you wanna look at. It has to do with that exactly as you say. You know, the the ideas of sustainability are written from desks miles away from where the animals need to drink. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And and until we get reconnected Yeah. It's not gonna get it right. So I I wanna I I just wanna add another thing before we hand it back to Heather. So, you know, the cocoa producer in Africa as the the it's been ground down. The price has been ground down and down and down and down so they can't live a good life. You know, coffee, you name it. Right? You look right across the world. The person who is growing the produce from the earth is not able to live a good life so that we can get something cheaper at the other end. And I think that's the model that needs to flip. Everyone who creates the food that nourishes us should be able to earn enough money to have a decent living standard. And that's where we that's where I think our capitalism has failed us. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I I think it's kind of the failure of see the totality of what it brings because ultimately and again, I can draw the parallel to energy production with food production. If we expect certain standards to be kept, you know, I don't want to eat tomatoes full of pesticides even though they might keep the bugs off or whatever. It's gonna cost more, And I'm prepared to pay more because I really enjoy my tomatoes. You know? It's the staple food of this household, our tomatoes. If you expect the producer of those tomatoes or the producer of natural gas or hydropower to come up with a price that is effectively at the bottom, they're gonna cut corners. They're gonna do things that are not exactly great because that's the only way they can create an economics around the area. So you are going to get much more scandals around food production that people are doing crazy things. And immediately, obviously, in The UK, Mad Cow Disease comes to mind. Right? Who on earth ever thought it was a good idea to bring herbivores into becoming carnivores? That's like it's not in their DNA. And it's gonna be the same with our energy consumption. Right? If I can't meet that price, I'm gonna put up wind towers, and I'm gonna have be mining for for coal and natural gas in ways that are really crazy because it's the only way I can survive financially. And then eventually you reap the cost of those really bad practices down the road. And the failure of today's capitalism to capture the true cost because the future actually has no value in that economic model is is a failure. Yeah. Alright. Well, so let's hand it back together, to Heather. David or Richard, have you got any questions? Oh, you know? You're speaking to an outbound farmer for the first time. So Oh, yeah. I mean, I'd I'd love to be there. I'd love to drive me, but, you know, there's if ever there's a chance to visit, I'd love love to do that. There certainly is. Well, I've got the retreat out here. So I have four beautiful little cabins that I've set up along the edge of the river. Yep. So that's that's how much I've been able to turn our lives around. Yeah. I I mean very diversifying. You know, when when people listen to how that that amazing transformation, you know, from from kind of your childhood to where you are going through all all the things in between. What keeps you going? You know, at some point, you must have thought sought this, you know, kind of curling up somewhere is better than trying to keep going or whatever. I think yeah. Good question. My kids were my driver for a long time. You know, I wanted my kids to obviously, we want better for our kids than we had ourselves, generally. Mhmm. So I wanted them to have a better life, and I wanted to be the the role model for them. So, yeah, my kids to for for a long time, and they're only I was a late starter, so my daughter's 18 and my son is 16. So he's still at boarding school in Dubbo, which is only five hours. Only five hours. That's close for us. That's our like, closest biggest center. Yeah. And, my daughter's, now going to uni in Wagga Wagga, and I've written about her story as well, like, and a bit about my son, of course, in part three because her journey is amazing too. She just blows me away, that girl. I don't know where she came from, but, oh, mate. She's she's something else. And I know my boy will be too, you know? So she's she's a little entrepreneur herself. So my my kids have just yeah. I've just wanted to be the best model for them to answer that question. Yeah. Yeah. So when you when you when you look at people who are just sort of down in the doldrums and there's a lot of people who are really struggling just to survive in these times. You know, mental health's a big issue. You know, people are just struggling with despair. You know, you're talking about the high suicide rates for farmers and and that sort of thing. Because I mean, my first impression of you, you were just one of those lights in a room. You know, you could just see it in your face. You're just one of those people. Thank you. That's true. What what what's your what's your advice to people to to step out of that despair and to step into the light? You know? What what do you think of the the keys? The keys is definitely, you know, people freak out because we have the the universal fears, the fear of not belonging, the fear of not being enough, and the fear of not being loved. And people are fearful of so many things. It's probably in the belonging field more than anything, and they're fearful of of stepping out of their comfort zone, and that's where the growth comes from. So we really need to when you feel uncomfortable in a situation, keep going because we're not going to improve if we don't. If we just you know, how did a how did a baby learn to walk? It was uncomfortable. They fell over. They hurt themselves. They kept getting up, and they just kept going until they mastered it. We've gotta be that baby. We've just gotta keep pushing ourself along. Yeah. And be kind to yourself at the same time. Yeah. I would say the others the other path out of fear and despair is action. That's, you know, taking action. Definitely. Yeah. You're going to to change something. You know, if you're Yeah. If you're not happy with the situation, go and change it. Yeah. And and as I said, with the with the comfort, you've gotta you've gotta push yourself out of your comfort zone. You're never you're never gonna change if if you stay in your comfort zone. You really you know, if if you feel uncomfortable, because you're doing something you've never done before, you just gotta keep keep going at it. Keep chipping away, and and you'll master it. And then then do something else. Just keep just keep you know, and you're being your best your your own cheerleader, really. You can't expect other people to to come to the rescue. You've gotta be your own rescuer. So I sort of I can't help but think, you know, like, everyone's gonna be in discomfort from now on. Right? Because nothing's going to stay the same. So getting used to being uncomfortable is not a not a bad strategy. I I I know exactly what you're talking about. It's the only place where you grow. But, get just being used to being uncomfortable. Mhmm. Because comfort has gone. And It has. Or or will or or will go. So let's just wrap up wrap up the story of the floods. Right? So I know that there's a lot of areas still underwater. When you sort of look at your community and and and everyone's talking and, what what what's what's the message of the future? You know, are people just basically giving up, walking away, selling their farms? Obviously, the government's looking at reforestation. But, is there a is there a a future energy in the community or is there there maybe it's time to adapt, change, do something different? What what what's going on there? I don't know if I could answer for everybody there. I think each person's gotta take their own journey. And as I'd said before, diversification appears to be the only way to go. So there is other ways of earning income streams, and they certainly need to be looking into that. I know we've got Climate Friendly and Green Color out this way that do carbon projects, and I actually started a a smaller project with them. I didn't wanna put the whole place under because there's parts of it that I wanna pasture improve and and, you know, bring back to its original state what it was years ago. My mom grew up about this way, so she knew what the land used to look like. And then we had a an invasion of woody weeds. So, it just sort of crept in over the years, and I believe that is a result of white man, really, because we stopped bushfires. Back in the days, the Aboriginal people would start the bushfires to bring the grass so that animals would come to the sweet grass, And then white men came and lost, oh, bushfires are devastating. They do bad for the country. Well, anyone knows that the ash is actually good for the soil. You know, so, yeah. So Grain Collar's come along now, and and they're, they call it ACCUs. So they actually pay us for locking up, basically, locking up areas of our farms if if we go into one of these projects. And that's something that I've, as I said, looking at at what else can I do? I had to keep brainstorming what else how else can I survive, and that was one of the ways I was like, well, that's how I can survive and not only survive, thrive, because they're only a ten year project, they only pay you for ten years? Some of the farmers are buying new four wheel drives and having a fat old time, but ten years is gonna run out and then what? So I've said, well, I've always, envisioned or visualized creating a retreat, having a, like, a holiday home, a farm stay out here. So I looked into that and invested in four little cabins and set them up on the the Wargo River out here, and we've put a lovely big community kitchen up there as well over the last few years just from this, the payments that come in. So I've invested into that, and it's not earning me any income yet. It's gonna take years to pay it off, but at least when the carbon project runs out, I've got a backup plan already implemented. Yeah. And that gives me time to market it and get get known and get tourists coming in. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Alright. David, Richard, any final questions before we move on to the next topic? I I think it's fascinating, and I think, dare I say, you're you're a prime example of what David because he really is at the forefront, I think, of this thinking is that the only way we move forward is through experimentation. If we see if this works, Let's let's try some of that and see how it pans out. And if it doesn't, I am not so invested. I cannot retrace my steps and go in a different direction. And and, personally, I think that's kind of how we evolved through life is that you burn your fingers every now and then, and it's like, okay. That wasn't great, but I know I'll heal. I'm not gonna risk so much that I can't recover. Yeah. I fully. Yeah. It's kind of very conceptualized in my mind that you you cannot run the risk of being mortally wounded by what you do. That that then you have a wrong perspective of risk. You you do it in small steps, and this was really good. Now I can do more next time. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I think, you know, my challenge is how do I persuade my wife that we should get out there and do the outback of the region. That's the best part. So so I'm gonna have to do that. Yeah. My my daughter is actually visiting Australia in a few weeks, but she's going to sort of Sydney and not in the Outback, but maybe I can suggest. I'll tell you a couple of flights and you're here. We're Yeah. Exactly. It's only eight hundred eight hundred o'clock. You can fly fly out to Dubbo, and that's only an hour. So it's actually fifty minutes from Sydney to Dubbo, and then you change over to Airlink from from either Qantas or Rex from from Sydney, then change over to Airlink and fly out to Burke, and it's only an hour's drive. We go in and pick our guests up. Okay. Well, I I feel as simple as that. Three hours, you're here. Yeah. I'm sitting here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Good to see the real outback. Got a little buggy. Can tour you around. My my partner's a good tour guide. Yeah. I think you crack a beer open for you at the end of the day. It's so beautiful out there. Right? The color just the colors and the smells and, Yeah. Yeah. I just love where I live and, you know, there is as as we've already discussed hard times with droughts and and floods, but, generally, the floods are good if they're not too major, because a lot of feed comes after the flood. If it if it's not on the ground too long and it moves off fairly quickly, all the all the good feed comes up, and then you've got beautiful pasture to last for a long time then after the flood. So, you know, I I you gotta take the bad with the good, and, I look for the good. I look for the good in everything. So, yeah, that's that's how I like to roll. Yeah. Yeah. It's a true true example of resilience, Uh-uh an Outback farmer or just an Australian farmer in general. It's always about it's just it's it's it's at the core because there's no certainty. Right? Yeah. And Yeah. Is this is this Lower Lila Retreat? Yep. That's me. That's that's the that's the one. Yeah. I'd love to look it up. See you when you get here. I I can't. Coming back to what you're saying, I mean, I I think, you know, this this part where we we've we've always been saying I've always been saying, and especially in in my mind to kind of young people and young professionals as in, you know, they the the ones who feel they have to stay in the desk and work and make the world better in many ways, it's it's this part that it's not enough to survive. You gotta you know, what we wanna do is thrive. Yeah. So that's that's one of the thing that you're saying. And and and if you go back and you sort of think, well, why why do you do this? Why do you have to have faith about what you're doing and keep doing is because, you know, you you in many ways, you know, I I what I wanna say is if to to sort of the twenty to thirty five year olds out there in in a way, maybe 40 even or or down or down or or definitely down to the 15 and youngest is that, you know, if you feel your parents have somehow let you down, that what should give you that faith to go forward is that you can be not be that parent, but the other parent that you want. Mhmm. And and, you know, that's why you keep striving forward in that way, which is what you were kinda saying in that way. I think that's so, so important. So and and the other part to what Richard's describing what you're saying is, you know, if you're gonna do something and you bet your farm on you, then you're gonna lose your farm. You know? Yeah. It's gotta be smart about this. You know, it's not about how you you never know what's gonna happen. So even if you're absolutely right, you never know what's gonna happen. So the chances are something is gonna knock you out. And and I think the last bit that I get from you is very much that in this world where, you know, where the world is just changing along, your worst enemy is your comfort zone. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What's going on in your head is your worst enemy. Yeah. You overlisten or you overthink. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm certain that I do that. But, Although I I I have discovered that there's a a about 20% of the population do not sit inside their head. What? It's not everyone. Yeah. Yeah. I know. David, are you are you are you a head talker? I I I can imagine you might not be. I I I I don't know what I am. I I tend to, I tend to think best when I'm walking along, and I tend to forget what I thought. I it it tends to be because, well, that's a great idea. And then I tend to forget it, and I don't think, damn. I wish I'd written that down or something. Yeah. No. That's what that's what I mean. I mean, thoughts in your head that are critical of yourself. So you're your biggest critic. So, so, Richard, you might not actually do this either. Yeah. No. Because it's it women are very women are really common with with their head talk. Yeah. Men are too, but it's not as high. But, yeah, the it's interesting because, Heather, that's, something I've I've been interested in for a long time because I'm just like, I've always had this head, you know, just self criticism. And it and it's like I've learned to I've had to learn how to control it. And and then I discovered other people didn't even have it. And I was like, wow. That must be amazing, going through the world without without yourself telling yourself how shit you are all the time. Right? But Andrea can be conditioning too, though. If we've heard of our parents or I I used to hear my mother criticize herself all the time. I never ever heard my mom say anything she liked about herself. You know, she'd be like, oh, I hate my knobbly knees. I don't like my big nose. I hate my big tummy and never anything nice. Never that, you know, gee, I've got a nice smile. I love the way that, you know, I can look good when I put on a pretty dress or never anything nice. Yeah. But the people the people who don't have that issue in their mind, they find it very confusing when people who do have it talk about it. So it's it's it's just a really interesting it's a really interesting part of humanity, so I thought you might enjoy that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Because we don't know we don't always know. We often presume that everyone must be the same because I am, so therefore you are. And it's like, no. You're not. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Like, because when rich when Richard agreed, I'm like, I can't imagine Richard would do that to himself. He just doesn't strike me that way. But, anyway, hope. Let's move on to hope. So there's an article. It's called Beyond Hope, and it's in the minority report. So, Heather, do you wanna stay with us for a while? Or Yeah. I'll stay with you for a little while. Yeah. Yeah. If that's okay. Yeah. And it's in the, on on another one on Substack called the minority report. And it really every time I see an article on hope when it comes to the climate, I always read it because I wanna know what the perspective is. Because people get really angry with you. If they feel that you can't you don't leave them with hope when you talk about what's going on in the in in the environment right? The planetary crisis. The the bigger bigger picture. So because which to me isn't just extreme weather events. It's microplastics, forever chemicals, it's biodiversity, ecosystem collapse. It's all of these different things. Some are gonna take decades to fix. Some are gonna take hundreds of years. Some are gonna take thousands of years. So when I talk about the complexity of it and the fact that we're not doing anything about it and people say to me oh you've gotta leave us with hope. I I always I'm like I I I can't leave people with hope. Because it doesn't feel like well it's not it's disingenuous for me. Because if nothing's changing I know that there is no hope. But if we start to change we might be able to put a bit of hope into the mix, but hope hope isn't right because the only thing that matters is action. So I don't know. David or Richard, are are you getting are you having the hope conversations? I don't see it as hope. I see it as faith, and there's a big difference. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, faith faith allows you and and, you know, this is think think of it as just, you know, with without getting into too fine to sort of, you know, the the pope and all that sort of faith in that way. Just think of that as saying, the faith that you can be that, you know, that parent you'd like to be or whatever it is, is different from the hope that you can be that. You you just say that, it says differently. Because hope is always something that somehow you wish it would happen. Faith is somehow something that's already present, and hope is always something that's kind of further in the future. So you you you can only thrive now. You can't think about, you know, what I would do in the future to thrive. And you thrive in the in in knowing that you're taking the actions to ensure that you thrive. Hope leaves it very much to someone else to do for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, it's a it's a disempowering Yeah. Sort of word. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's it. When you're mired, it can leave you stuck hoping someone will come. Yeah. Whereas faith is about how I can get myself forward. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's any problem here. Distinction. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a really important difference there. And I I like the disempowering bit, because, you know, myself, essentially, I've been conditioned to remove hope as a variable. When you played sports, there's there's no point hoping we're gonna get, you know, a free kick outside the penalty. I need to engineer getting a free kick there. When when you as I did, I've I've basically been trading my whole life in financial markets. Hope is your worst enemy. It's what clouds your rational judgment. And when you see things hoping the market will go up or down, it's like you should already be out of this trade because it's a really, really bad trade. So you become conditioned to to remove hope as something you even think or relate to in any shape or form because it's a bad thing. Hope is a really bad thing. It clouds your rational judgment. While faith is different, that is something you can almost lean back on. It's got your back. While hope does not have your back. It's just an illusion that somehow, miraculously, things will turn around in markets, for example. It's it it's I've been very conditioned to suppress it my whole life as a variable while faith is different. Yeah. Right. Heather, do you got any thoughts? Yeah. I use trust. Throw another one in the mix. Yeah. Yeah. That you trust that they will take action, that you trust that it will change. Yeah. Yeah. And choice. Yeah. So when when people say to me, Andrew, you're not giving me any hope. So people can't people literally, people cannot even talk about this stuff. Even though I don't talk about it negatively, I talk about it practically. And I talk about what we need to do, which is complete systems change. Right? And then they still well, you haven't given me any hope. I'm like, well, I I I honestly, I I I like, we we're not we're not we're not talking about one thing here. We're talking about multiple layers of change. Right? I like to sort of bring something to that in in you know, I I I I came across this thing kind of from another Australian, off the Internet, and it's about kind of body and joints and getting getting your body moving well and so on. It's really good. You know, I can tell people what it is another time, but I won't won't won't mention that. But in there, there is this part in it. You know, it's got these exercises and stuff. And, obviously, they're challenging. They're difficult. And it's it's it's it's kinda like and it's gonna hurt a bit and stuff. And the lady in there sort of makes this comment along that says, yeah. It's difficult and all the rest, but you gotta start somewhere. And that's the difference between the people who says you gotta leave me something with with hope is the answer to that fact is you've gotta start somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're not gonna get any hope if you don't start somewhere. Just saying you gotta leave me with hope is to say somehow the thing is gonna turn around without you having to start somewhere. Yeah. So I'll give you an example. Someone the other day I was talking to, they said, they they'd flown to this event that we were at, and they just basically said to me, it's hard to believe that me not getting on a plane is gonna make any difference when I know, 10,000,000 more people from India are gonna get on a plane this year than than we're on a plane last year. Right? And they're absolutely right because that that is the scale of growth that is happening in this region. The new middle class regions countries. Right? They're spending more and they're doing more. We're seeing it now. The tech, the the the tourists overruns all across the world from nations all across the world. Anyway, I mean, when I first started traveling, you could be in a beautiful place, Venice, and there'd be no one else around. Now you can't even get to the to the steps or any of the famous places. Right? So it the whole world is overrun with humanity that's got money to spend. And so people are saying, well, me not me stopping isn't gonna make a difference. So I made a conscious decision to stop a few years ago and only get on planes if I absolutely have to or if I'm gonna make a a massively positive contribution towards a lot of people that could drive change. Right? That's that's my that's why I get on a plane. But But if we all just go, but if I knew I'd but, you know, if I do it and there's all this happening, I'm not gonna make a difference. And it's like, nobody you're kinda missing the point. Once you make once you embody change and you actually understand what you need to embody for this future that we need to build together, the birthing of a new world, you will inspire others and that will ripple out and we need to do it quickly now. Yeah. I when Richard and I wrote our book, The Unsustainable Truth, we were going trying to explore. So so where for for for have this information, Richard and I came from 30 making money for big money, basically. And, we spent the last few of those researching into sustainability for to form a sustainable policy for hedge fund we're working on. And we really came up with lots of great ideas of how to make a lot of money, and many of those other people have done since, and we've seen it along. Mhmm. And they work. They make a lot of money, but they actually, we we didn't do any of those because we realized they don't make the world sustainable. They make it worse. So this is very much kind of in line with what happened was going on. We ended up leaving the industry. And, you know, circumstances like COVID and other things come along, but, actually, when you leave, there are two things that makes you change. One is necessity. You change because it's necessary to do so. It's very hard to sort of say don't. And the other is actually something that drives you because you don't know necessarily where to go, but something that drives you along. And and as you were describing, you know, this part where you felt, I can be better for my children than what my parents were for me in in in that way. I think that's really important a lot, and they can be very simple kind of things that drives you. I I you know, you can express it very simply. It doesn't need lot of layers and layers kind of stuff. The things that requires layers and layers of stuff, and this goes back to when we're researching along. We started asking what does it mean to be good, try and do good and all the rest. And one of the places we landed on was, in Texas. There is a, business school, McCombs School of Business. And they have this part in there about ethics, ethics unwrapped. And they talk a lot about rationalization, the different types of rationalization. And I remember very much this video of this, you know, young lady talking about how she can rationalize anything. It's like her superpower. And and and this aspect to say, there are 10,000 Indians who are gonna fly more. So what does it mean for me to fly? It's one of those rationalizations because it makes it your action dependent on an outcome you can be sure of. If you take actions where the outcomes are things that you can be sure of, then the world will never change because the only thing you will do are the things that exist in that way. I'm sure, you know, Heather, you must have felt along the way. You know? I don't know what's gonna happen out of doing this. Absolutely. There was there was a lot of times when I didn't know what would happen, what the outcome would be, but I did I just refused to give up. And and that's the part. That's the answer to to to those things. If you only do the things you know will happen, you never do anything. You'll be stuck in your comfort zone. And then what you'll find is that the world will have moved on. You're like the wildebeest that refused to migrate. You're just standing in this dried up waterhole all by yourself. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. I refuse to migrate, but but I knew that the good season would come again. Yeah. Exactly. Right? But you're migrating in your minds. Right? Yes. Yeah. It's not always it's not always physical. Yeah. No. I I I like that. So one of the things that was really coming through in this in this article is no matter what, there can be no guilt. Guilt is negative. So when people say to me, why aren't you doing this? And I'll and I'll explain to them. If they're continuing to do those things, I that's fine. There's no guilt. Right? I've I've made these clear decisions. People ask me what I'm changing. I'll tell them what I'm changing, but there's no guilt if they do not do make decide to make those changes. But we forgot to do the very first story that we were gonna do, which was, of course, Pope Leo the fourteenth. What did you guys think after especially after last our last Climate Courage where we actually talked a lot about it? What was your reaction? Didn't know about him, which makes me one of many. He was not mentioned among the front runners when they closed the conclave. Haven't seen the movie yet, which might give me more insight on what actually goes on. Good. But I can only imagine you get elected through a myriad of compromises between the various groups because that's how politics in a closed society works. And he must have some very good political skills, or his backers might even have convinced him that he was the one that could forge a path and reach a majority. We know very little about him apart from what's been said in the news the last twenty four hours from old friends and colleagues, and he obviously spent a huge amount of time in Latin America. So his Spanish Italian is is very good for an American. I'll I'll readily acknowledge that. He seems on the face of it to be a continuation of a more progressive Catholic church, which probably started two popes ago in some respect. We don't know yet. The fact that Trump wasn't enamored and banging the American drummers, you know, probably tells you that he's not massively aligned with Trump's view of the world and whatever that means. I think we're about to find out pretty soon the direction, the charge will take under his leadership. But first reaction from me would be that it seems they have decided not to deviate from the path having been laid out in the last ten, fifteen years. It's it seems to be a church that is moving quite quickly and progressively in a direction to become a much more active part of the debate in society at large. I I'd like to, so I'm Catholic. Right? So so I just wanna lay it out there first because, you know, obviously, that's gonna be a bias and on the rest of switch off or whatever. And, on Sunday, I go to mass. So, Catholic, you go to mass. And, the preset is sort of, you know, sermon that where I usually fade and lose attention. But this time, I was quite lucky because I arrived late, and I arrived just as he was talking about it. So so I had my attention there. And he said, you know, there's this there's passage in the Bible where Jesus who's the, the the son of god character, the main character in the New Testaments kind of thing comes along. And he he asks, Peter who is a who is kinda like the archetypal disciple, and he's the the father that the the first pope, you know, the the the church was granted to Peter to go and be to look after on earth and and all his kind of followers. And so so this relates very much to that. And Peter had obviously, you know, the story goes, he he denied Christ. He was, you know, Christ was being questioned and all the rest, and people recognized him and says, oh, aren't you with him? He says, nah. Nah. Not me, mate. Don't know who he is. Just here for the crowd. And he did that three times basically over there. And and Jesus asked him. They says, you know, do you love me? And the and he asked him three times and, and it was always odd because you read this. He asked him three times and Peter sort of said yes each time. But the priest said actually in the in the early in the Greek words where the Bible was written in Greek in that way, there was two different words for love. There was kind of a brotherly love and there was a selfless love. There's kind of an all encompassing selfless love as you can imagine where you would give your life up for for, you know, for your child, for your children in that way kind of thing. And a brotherly love as, you know, Richard and I, my girlfriend, pop and have a drink and kind of, you know, give each other a pat and a hug or whatever it was. Kind of I'm not sure we extend to the hug, but, anyway, we'll give each other pat, kind of love. And and Jesus asked Peter, do you love me in that selfless love? And Peter says, I love you in the sense of, you know, I'll give you a pat on your back kind of way. And so Jesus then asked him again and says, do you love me in that selfless love? And Peter again probably thought and says, yeah. I can't really say yes to that because I basically said I don't know you. You know, when when push comes to shove, I walked away. So but but I do care. You know, I would go for a drink with you and and all the rest. I'll even buy you a drink, in that way. And then third time, Jesus asked him, do you love me in that brotherly way? And he was relieved and says, yes. Of course, I do. And that essence is that is that message that that God, the divine, and whatever comes to us. It is not some unattainable form that we somehow have to aspire, but we can never achieve because that divine is divine and we're not. But that comes to us. And so with the pope, with this new pope that comes along, we put all kinds of kind of politics and what does it mean and things to it. But if the pope follows along what the teachings of the gospel and stuff and the pope becoming that part of kind of Peter in carrying on that tradition and that love alone is that comes to us. So in our world, which is all split and has all the difficulties and has all the uncertainties and all the thing, all the all the unknown unknowns. We are in a new time of unknown unknowns. And we don't know if we can be that person with hope or faith or whatever. Then what this election of the pope is saying to us is comes to us. This is American born Peruvian, kind of priest who kind of represents all men of different things. And that's what it is. It's just that god, Jesus, comes to us, and that's what this election has created has produced. So that's all my take. Yeah. Interesting. Heather, did you were you paying attention? No. Not a lot. I did in saying that, I went to the Vatican with my partner and my children, only two years ago when we're over there, and I can't believe it. He didn't come out and meet us. Ah, he he Shocking. He he was actually he was actually there when I took the boys, a few years ago. So it was amazing. So we we had a couple of, his people, one one from Asia and one one from Ireland on the last Climate Courage talking about the work that they're doing, or they've been doing with Saint Francis. So I felt that this is an important moment, not just for the Catholic church, but for the world, because it's a directional moment. So and we're we're seeing, you know, we saw the Romanian, elections where a far right person was elected. We've seen the mayoral elections in in The UK. We've seen the Australian elections where Albanese got in, which is, like, cool. Not not from a not from a, on one or the other perspective, just from from a decent human beings not speaking with divisive language, talking about climate change from that perspective. So I found it was important. So just as I went to bed last night, the white the white smoke was released. And I'm like, oh, how long is it gonna be until they actually we see the person, and I I couldn't stay awake. So and then I was having all these nightmares. Right? Tossing and turning. And then

I'm like, oh, just get them. It was like 06: 1:11:38

00 in the morning. I'm like, just just turn your phone on and go and find out who got elected. And then I I saw First American Pipe. I'm like, oh, no. Because, of course, the whole Opus State thing, right, which is really being driven out of The US. And I I and then I'm like, I'm not gonna look into this now. I'm gonna go I'm gonna get a decent amount of sleep so I can do the show today. And it wasn't until I woke up that I spent some time looking at him, and I think the ladies that we spoke to last week will be thrilled with him. The quality of the human being that he is. He's going to extend on the work that Francis has done and bring his own unique approach. And by the way, he he tweets. And about a few months ago, one of his tweets was, JD Vance is wrong. So we're gonna get along okay. Excuse me. That's that's that's really important. I I think I think you bring up the other thing about the, you know, the the the Romanian election and those things. And and, I I wanna say I watched this series. Obviously, I spent more too much of my time kinda wasting it watching binge watching and various stuff. It's called the CAPTCHA. It's a BBC series. It was I I watched it through Netflix. I think it's available different countries in different ways. But what it what it basically is about is how the it's no longer even misinformation. It's actually outright creation. It talks it deals with some deep fake and other things, in the way in in a in a story. You know, it's a it's a fictional story. But I was watching in my daughter, and I was saying, this happened. This part this thing is real. That happens. That that thing is real. This happens. This thing is real. It's just put together in different ways. And the way in which elections now you know? You almost feel that what you really do need to do is do what they did in the conclave, which is for yourself. You know, just close yourself off from all the rest of the stuff. Block it all out. Don't even go along to it. Find out where your call is, where your center is. You know, let that then guide you about what you want to do because all of that other stuff is crafted, designed to trigger you. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. The five people that we hang with is who we become, so we better choose wisely. Yeah. But but I do I do feel like it was like, I don't know. Kinda it's been it kinda feels like we're kind of heading in a direction as a global society that just you know, it's just it's such a self destructive direction. So it felt like for me, this paper conclave felt important just from a it just I I to give to keep a little bit of hope sitting sitting out there for me. Right? That, you know, there's there's there's this organization that is really capable of doing so much incredibly great work and has a positive influence with politicians around the world. So, yeah. No. It it felt it felt good. And the fact that he's such a I mean, because he he speaks Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and obviously English. Right? So, but having a pope that's first language English, that's the first time ever, I think. Yeah. I believe so. Yes. Yeah. So, that's kinda that's kinda handy at the moment when you look around. So yeah. It felt it felt like a big big moment. But, anyway, Richard, do you wanna share some good news this week? Oh, I'm always, you know at We went on the list. Have you got it? Yes. I have got it in front of me. I think we should go to, agents of change and agents of evolution. It's actually, a really good story that Andrea found. And it ties in nicely with this, build the beast thinking that is very ingrained with David. You know? There there is that sense that you need to keep on evolving at all times. And it goes back to kind of the Darwinian thinking it's not the strongest, it's not the fastest that actually prevails. It's the one that can adapt to the environment that you're in. And it's it's it's quite a positive story, I have to say. It's showing some significant scientific proof that we're actually are adapting in areas, and I think that's it's a nice story. It's, it gives me hope that actually it's not all doom and gloom, which is very easy turned up with. And, yeah, I like that a lot, I have to say. Well well found. I think it's called Embodied Evolution Defined, and talks about these evolutionary agents. It's it's a really great story. And Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't sure which one you were talking about. Yep. Yeah. Got you now. Okay. No. It's Yeah. It basically talks about yeah. The the sort of the impulse that has been driving us for billions of years. It's it's it what drives survival on this planet. And it left me with a huge amount of hope, I have to say. So yeah. Yeah. A great great positive story to to to talk in all the negativity that hits us in the press normally because we have a slight negative tilt. It has to be said. Oh, it's said. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's hard not to, right, when the stuff we're talking about. So the other the other positive story, of course, is, pangolins. Pangolins. Another good story. Yeah. So in Singapore, there are pangolins in the forest here. Do you did you know that? Did not know that. Yeah. It's a modern city and there's pangolins. Right? So, China has announced that it is removing, I'm gonna try and say, Guilinji, which is a traditional Chinese medicine, and I found this really interesting. So basically, they're moving it from their official pharmacopoeia. So that that's like a central sort of repository approval, Chinese medicine, I'm presuming, to align with wildlife protection. But at the same time, on Netflix, there's this new series called Kulu, the pang the the pangolin's journey. And, it's a South African documentary, which is absolutely wiping wiping the floor with its, with its ratings. So I need to watch that. But, basically, pangolins are hunted for their scales, because they're believed to have healing properties, and the meat is considered a delicacy in some Asian societies. But, they've they're just they can't run away right? But the Guilingi is a a medicine that includes red ginseng, deer antler, seahorse, and pangolin. Now seahorses are my favorite sea creature, so I couldn't believe when I saw seahorses also in this in this, medicine. But anyway, yeah. So it and it's it's a positive thing. So I think that when I look at some of the biggest issues like, the ocean, the fishing, a lot of the medicines, so the hunting rhinos, fast fashion, sustainable energy, electric vehicles. I think China is the answer to a lot of our problems, and it's a country where the government can act at scale and say, we can't do this anymore, guys. And right now in in the trade wars that are going on around the world, especially with The US, Cheyenne was obviously hoping on a a different outcome with Bush, Bush Trump. With Trump. And, yeah. And, they haven't got it. But if there's a way that this could kill the fast fashion industry because we've got enough clothes on the planet to clothe the next six generations of humans yet to be born already on the planet. Right? It's out of control. We need to do something. David? Yeah. I I think I think, just on just on this thing about kind of the good news and stuff, I I I read something this morning. I just wanna bring it up. It's a I'm I'm trying to think what what what was the art where where it was. It was in one of these sort of, energy press kind of thing, energy industry press type thing. Mhmm. So and he was saying he was talking from a US Energy Producer and basically says, you know, oil prices at the moment, it makes it impossible for he was talking about his own company who was saying, you know, we're not gonna increase production. It's just ridiculous because we'll make a loss out of it. What we're gonna do is we're gonna use the money to pay back that and buy back shares, basically. Because what Trump has done with the drill baby drill is made it impossible for us to continue. And I think that's kind of a an interesting element to to add into this. Now, obviously, OPEC plus is increasing their production and trying to take their share, and this is this is an element to to remember. The US the reason The US drills is very commercial. They wanna make money out of it. The reason Saudi drills is because they got to fund their whole government. The reason why Senegal has drilled has opened up a new gas natural gas field and has just begun production is because they need the money for all their various actions, including all the climate stuff and everything. So the motivations are all very different along different places. But as far as The US, which is the world's biggest producer, is concerned, it's all commercial. And what Trump has done has make the commerciality fair. And that's the same as Sha'i Chi as, you know, Andre is talking about. That business relies on the fact that small packages can get through customs without any tax, and that's gonna stop now. Because as soon as The US stop it, other places are gonna stop it too. It's gonna go along. So, again, you know, the the the the part about what your action and what you do, you know, you you have to look at the opportunities. You have to look and see what's there. And then, actually, you know, from from your call, from your center, kinda take actions because you're driven by something that you believe in, that you wanna move forward with. That's how you can actually manage and navigate through what's going on. So in in that way, you know, kind of the the the one thing I find that's, well, there's two things I like to bring up in there. One is sort of the blackouts we are having and what that means, and the other is the is the conflict in India, Pakistan. And the blackout Bali went dark, basically, you know, kind of the whole the whole place. And tourist is like, oh my god. I come here to have a good time. You've gone dark on me. You know, how do I go out in a great time? Right? So that's one part. And the other part is Spain lost its complete power across the whole country and most good chunk of Portugal as well. And and that's like, oh my god. What do I do? You see all the news about a panic and everything. And how do you how should you really see that? After all, that's what we wanna be talking about. How do you really see the world? How do you look through the tea leaves? You're in Bali. Go start. Look up and see the beautiful sky. You know? Although although although, David, it was actually so Spain and Portugal when it went down, it wasn't in the middle of summer when they were going through an extreme wet heat event. Bali's in the middle of an extreme heat event, and they they, you know, eight eight to twelve hours, maybe even longer before the air conditioning is back on. For a white person on holiday who's not used to extreme heat and has the no time to adjust to extreme heat, that's actually a really dangerous place to put themselves in. Well, that then goes down to this thing. Is that if it all of these are like practices for us Mhmm. For a world that we're going into. And, yes, it is. But the the the wrong part of it is then to somehow think that you should fix it so I can keep coming. The practice that this is actually teaching you is either discover how to stay cool. And I'm always reminded of my mom. When I was young in Hong Kong, I was in a tram in Hong Kong, really hot humidity up in the nineties kind of thing. Right? So you you you like hot, humid, you're a young child, and you're fidgeting like crazy to try and cool. And my mom sort of looks at me and says, you know, when you got when you can stay calm in your heart, you will be cool. When you can calm your heart, you will be cool. And that's the thing for all these tourists. Okay? You've got to learn about how you can stay cool and and and physically, mentally, all of those things together. And it's holistic. It's all connected. Because if you if you fret about, you spend your body if your body fretting about, your mind can never be calm. And you I think it's I think it's important, like, because, you know, I I had to learn how to be cool in Asia. But, Phuket just last week, the wet bulb temperature was 52 degrees Celsius. So you can't you can't survive in heat like that if if if you don't get access to cool. And that's that's not about keeping you anything calm. It's about get yourself you're gonna die of heat stroke if you don't get yourself to a cold. And that's the point. That's the point of the practice. Right? You know, you you are going to go along in that way. So if you're gonna rely on and this goes to the other part. If you're gonna somehow rely on perfection to be the way that you survive and you never thrive because that perfection is never gonna come. And this is the point. We we look at these things and people offer those arguments. Those arguments are trying to tease you into saying, how do we make it perfect? The answer I understand. The so so you go along and you say, of of course, we've got to do something about that people won't. But the reality is more and more places around the world will see power failures in times of extreme heat and extreme Alright. Okay. Temperature. And it will come to you. You're gonna see it. So if you see then Bali, what are you going to do to prepare yourself for what that means for you? And if your idea of preparing yourself is to rely on the fact that somehow you live in a rich country whose system is perfect and look at Spain. Yeah. You are gonna find all these things will trickle off through. So what are your different ways by which you can actually move? If you only have one path and if you only rely on someone else to maintain that path for you, you're gonna find you have you you will be entirely stuck. You you you won't be able to manage it. You need to discover for yourself and you need to start now what it means for you to thrive. You know, what are the things around you that you want? How do you create the the the the pool places, the streams of income, the the the ways that you can actually help that robustness in your mind to keep going. What ultimately drives you? Because that thing that ultimately drives you is the thing that would take you towards how you can thrive. And if what ultimately drives you is to go on a holiday in Bali, then you've gotta really start asking about your comfort zones because that's a terrible comfort zone to have. And and and and that's that's that's that's the part about this. That's how you turn this along. And it's unfortunate because it's a really hard lesson. It's a really harsh lesson. It's great. You know, cam Heather has been talking about her, you know, her journey. Because her journey is a reflection of all of our journeys in in different forms. That's why it's a best seller because it so captures our own journeys in that way. But the essence of that is you have to take the steps. You have to start somewhere. Yeah. I'm just I'm just not sure. I'm, I'm I'm understanding. But I want you to I'm not I'm not sure I'm understanding the point you're making here. Because I think there's different points in this. Right? Because I think we've we've got to communicate the seriousness. I'm I'm, you know, there was a a female just found dead on the beach in Phuket A Few Weeks ago because she overheated. She didn't know that that was a dangerous thing for her to do to lie on the beach all day and she just died and they found her a few hours later. Right? So to me, it's about, like, we've moved into dangerous so India and Pakistan have been up up just on the verge of 50 for the last few weeks, months before it usually gets anywhere near that. Right? The Middle East, the stands, you know, the heat waves are crazy. I know Europe, The UK is having one at the moment too. Right? Yeah. So to me, it's it's it's it's we're moving into deadly territory in large bands of the world. We need to be aware of what that is. People don't even know what a wet bulb temperature is when I talk about it. It's so humid here at the moment. You wouldn't believe it. So we don't get the the really, really high heat that you get north of us and south of us, but we get the really, really high humidity, which you remember as a child in Hong Kong, David. Right? So we're in a hot phase right now, and it's disgusting. You go out. It's just disgusting. Right? So you just don't go out. But so the do do you understand this? So wait. I I what what what I'm saying is absolutely. Right? So so I think I think there's two there's, you know, there's knowledge, which is the knowledge of what the, you know, what a wet bulb temperature means, you know, kind of, you you know, the the temperature that is kind of at where where your sweat doesn't have any effect effectively, basically. Mhmm. You stop you stop sweating. Basically, that's the wet bulb temperature. You know, it's just devastating because you're way in which you cool. You know, unless you're talking, go panting and go and try to, you know, kinda get cooler that way. But it's not even that doesn't do anything because it's so saturated with moisture in here. So that's the knowledge you have. The understanding is that, you know, it kills you. The lady in on the beach who was found dead. That's the understanding along. And then you'd need something to actually say, what can I do? Where what guides me along? And that's an element of that wisdom, what I call wisdom. Knowing who you are and what action that makes sense to you that helps you to move forward with. And what I'm saying is that that wisdom cannot rely on somehow someone else making things perfect for you. It won't. We are past the point of no return. These devastating things, the knowledge of these things and the understanding of what it means is the reality we are going to. So to the to the comment that Heather was talking about, if there was sufficient notice, we'd have hay out there. Maybe we need to start thinking about what is our hay and what that needs to be Totally. For ourselves. That's the action we now need to start doing. Because what these things are telling us is that we are past that point that we could somehow preempt it, and it won't happen. Yeah. And and all that. And now it's specifically for you. And every single disaster, people need cash. Yes. Number one. Is on the safe Every single time. It's the first thing that goes down in the banks. Yeah. That's what happened in Spain. Yeah. People are there with nothing there. But the other side of that, the more societal side of that is if you if someone comes to you without cash in something like this, will you still give them a glass of water or a piece of bread or whatever? Because if you community is strong. Right? Yeah. If you rely on money to dis to be the source of how things get distributed, their prices will go crazy. What they're doing in Australia for well, to try and eliminate power outages and things like that is offering incentives for people to do solar because we get so much sun out here. Yeah. So that is a way of eliminating that problem. So we've only just, like, literally last week got solar panels put on the roof, so we won't have to experience that. Because we are in a really hot area, it gets up to 50 degrees out here, not usually for too many weeks, but our summer is December, January is the hottest month. And so if we've, overridden that, you know, if possible power outage by our solar is gonna kick in, we're all good to go. We're gonna stay cool. Well, that's gonna fix our problem. So anywhere that's got enough sunlight, that's how they can do it. And and if their governments will will put these, you know, initiatives into place. There's a lot of, a lot of farmers in Australia, especially with the, I I heard it with with sheep. They're they're putting solar panels in their fields high enough so that the sheep can go underneath them, but the morning dew is creating moisture, which means that there's grasses growing under the panels. So there's food for the for the sheep to eat. The farmers are getting money from the energy created from the solar panels, and everyone's winning. Have you are you seeing that around where you are as well? No. The closest is near Dubbo, so about four and a half hours drive. It's this side of Dubbo. And they actually got them fairly low to the ground, and they don't put livestock in there. I'm like, that's just crazy. If they're using Roundup or weed spray to kill the grass, and there's massive fields that were really good grazing country or farming country, it is in a cropping area, that have now been taken up with solar panels. And I'm like, what the hell? You know, there's plenty of factory roofs they could have put them on instead that's already a space that's not being used. Richard and I were talking about how, you know, did they get so much warm, the panels? You know, it'd be great to grow grapes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's there's there's there's some stories from Australia where the, you know, they they put them high enough and there's because there's all this moisture from the heat and the morning dew. And so, you know, there's some really cool stories coming out about it. Definitely. I I think that those are exactly, you know, the the the the part of what Heather's talking about. Right? There's you you you have to keep looking and thinking what can you do with what you have around you. You know, if you if you stay in your comfort zone and say, I got a solar panel who gets two feet off the ground. You just leave it there in that way. You're not really looking and then say, actually, there is space underneath it. Maybe, you know, I can have my sheep graze underneath it. Mhmm. Yeah. And Exactly. Oh, yeah. Put them on roofs. Yeah. Or put them on roofs, you know, because then it it it actually helps as an insulation to the roof. Exactly. Yep. It's gonna it's if it works, it has to take some of the heat energy out of, you know, the sun shining on it. So it's gonna keep the area a little bit better than if it didn't have it. So, you know, you you And independence from the grid's really important. Right? It's super important, and it will be a very, very large part of the future. So, certainly, both myself and David believe that. Because if you just do the maths and the energy demand we're seeing, we don't have the ability to rip out and reconfigure a central grid. It's it cannot happen. Then you have, like, Spain situation times a thousand. Yeah. If the demand keeps on increasing, the only way you are going to be able to, in some form, meet that needs to be decentralized. You're gonna have small hubs. And if you have 64,000 acres, then that's your hub. But for villages, it will probably be one wind tower. Well, you might I'd like to you know, even on an individual household level. Yes. You know, I I I what we're largely talking about is kinda like, you know, you you you have 10 you I reckon if you had something like 10% of your energy, if you're in a in a in a developed world, especially in someone like a city and so on, it actually provides for your fundamental needs if you actually thought about it. All the other stuff is what we kinda fill up. It's it's like what you talked about six times more clothes than we ever wear kind of thing. Right? Yeah. You know, it's it's the same with the energy. It's the same with with all of that stuff that we have along. So if you have that, if you can have that, and that's, you know, a panel on your roof, a a bit of a wind turbine thing. You you you have these you know, if if you see on roof roof chimneys, I don't you've see you see these silver little balls that goes Yeah. Spinning around. And it's because, you know, it draws a heat out and spins it and distributes it. That works in reverse or or works in that way to create electricity. You can do that. Yep. And and and the ball itself is so light. It doesn't it isn't enough, but you can use it as you would do in a merry-go-round where you you're standing on the side, the kids on it, and you can give it a little shove every time it speeds up along. So you can actually use it to spin a flywheel and just keep adding little bits of energy in it until it's got enough along to really give you some power out of it. You can do all those things. All that is kind of I I spent a decade as a physicist. Right? So it's that's that's that's where I come from. But so so all of that are things that we can actually do, which essentially provide us with the energy that we would need for most of the things that are essential to us, including how to cool ourselves. And in cooling ourselves again, you know, we nobody tops of heat chimneys. You know, you you you have a you have something outside which you say dark color connected to inside that will draw air through and it will draw air through you. When you have airflow, you have the ability to cool air. You know, when air goes through into expands along, it gets cool. So you can actually go along and device a heat chimney where the south side ends up drawing it, you know, the north side or the shader side ends up going on through. And And if you don't have a shader side, you can create shades. You can actually put up, you know, grow bamboo or whatever it is. Or or if you're in somewhere where there isn't, it's hard to grow along. You can actually think about, you know, creating the nettings and things so that you can do that. And and that's, you know, what There's some amazing traditional things. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just create what I call nano climate. Not even like they're kinda nano climate. Yeah. Yeah. So just, Joe's just, we I missed it. Sorry, Joe. Politically, the American pope has a better chance of influencing the way the world would lean. In some ways, he outranks the US Supreme Court, which I think is fine. But but I do. Yeah. I I I think it really matters. I do. I absolutely do. But you're you're right, David. Like, the some of the traditional technology, the cooling infrastructure, the regions like Asia, The Middle East. I don't know if it's gonna work as well as the temperatures are getting be beyond 50. But we're not, you know, we're not doing any The thing is there there's a difference, right, between the there's an economic difference. The kind of thing I'm talking about are terrible in the big money world because people can do it themselves. Yeah. So they don't make money. So you'll never see those things proposed, and you never see them on the shelves. And they find that every time someone talks about it, they're gonna be knocked down as saying, you know, you can't scale and all those things with it. Scaling essentially means getting more people to pay me for what I want them to use. That's what it means, basically. It's not about getting more people to thrive in their own way wherever they are. So that's one side of it. The other side of it is that our schools no longer teach science in the way that science was discovered. Science was always practical. Is this is is is like this comment that made about sustainability kind of thing. You can't do it on a desk. You gotta be out there to see where the animals are actually getting their water to do that. And and that kind of practical approach where you experiment, you discover as you go along is something which more and more of our formalized education is educating people away from. Yeah. Mhmm. The problem is the textbooks are all written before the world is changing. Yeah. It's true. I mean, Heather Heather Heather, you had that real life education. Right? And that was the creatures in the bush. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But Richard, the first what was it what was your first point? I was just thinking from a from a capitalist perspective, Richard, what do you think of that first point? What can you it was about if if they if you can't sell it at scale, we're not gonna no one's gonna make it. Right? No. Because you're talking about you're talking about those those chimney things. So they're they're that's an industrial solution but I've never seen it for a house. And it's so just so you know, Heather, it's, it's basically rather than having solar panels, so say you're in a place that was gonna get a lot of, hailstorms. You're not gonna wanna have solar panels because you have to replace them all the time. But there's these little chimneys which, they spin around and they capture energy and you pump them down into a battery. Them on factory roofs and stuff. Yeah. Exactly. Right? But they should be on the homes too. It's to me, it should be more it should be simple. You should rely on one thing. Yeah. Yeah. And if you wanna be robust to what may happen, you want to be know that, you know, even when it gets dark, you you're okay or other things, you're okay. And you shouldn't just rely on one thing. But the commercial world is always gonna sell you one thing. Yeah. Mhmm. And so, you know, that's the problem. Right? Because it makes you dependent on them. And by making you dependent on them, they make more money. Yeah. Yeah. Or also continuing to exacerbate the problem. So Which makes you more depend on them even more, which is fantastic. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, so that's where we are. Right? And that's but Yeah. Richard, because, you know, you're you're a champion of capitalism. I love capitalism. Yeah. But you also understand that it's a problem. Right? It's a huge problem because we have corrupted capitalism as as as it was intended. Yeah. We we haven't actually understood, you know, in an almost, religious meaning, the true meaning of capitalism and the true power of capitalism, how it actually can massively enrich in our lives because it's the only system that actually works. But we have corrupted it and bastardized it and turned it into a creature nowadays, which is basically, how can I be better off than others? And, you know, that's not what's ever was intended, you know, and certainly not what Adam Smith was advocating once upon a time. It's it's it's very different. But tying it all back, I think we should go back to all the stories you dug out here because it really No. No. No. I I I want you I want you to I want you to help people understand because because you advocate for capitalism. I think it's important. Yes. What does it what does it mean in its truest sense of the word? And can we live in a world that's sustainable with capitalism? Absolutely. I I would argue I would be so bold that I would argue that only capitalism can bring about a sustainable world. But we need to factor in all the bits. And at the moment, we're kind of bastardizing capitalism into making it pay for me now, and I don't really care about the future because it has no value. Any banker who sits down will you will will tell you that you can pay off the farming equipment in ten years. You can you you can fertilize this much more, and your crop yield will be this much higher. And in ten years, you paid off the whole investment. Yeah. But in year twelve, the soil will be worthless because I've absolutely ruined it. Yeah. But that doesn't factor into the model. That's not capitalism. True capitalism takes into account what happens forever, factoring in all the costs. And I think, you know, quite some time ago, David and I, we had a discussion. Can't remember who it was with with the well, and I think you used the the analogy of the well. You're you're in a very arid area, not desert, but stuff is really struggling to grow. But you have the one well. Now the way capitalism works is I'm gonna feed my donkey to bring the water up from the well, and I wanna make some money. So I factor in the cost of what the donkey costs me and some refurbishment of the well every now and then when the bucket gets, you know, too old to be used. And then I put a margin on top, and I see where the market kind of is for a bucket of water in this very arid area, and that's where the price is. All of a sudden, the well is empty. What is the price of the last bucket of water? Now capitalism in its current form hasn't factored this in, because, actually, the first bucket should have priced been priced along the model that the water will run out. And then we would not have grown, you know, flowers. We would have focused on growing crops because that would actually have been beneficial to the overall model. And too much of what we see today and what David is talking about scale is all about how can it benefit me and how many can I sell? A true capitalist solution takes into account the whole. Yeah. And and the whole at the moment is probably it's a great idea for you for you to have a heat chimney. It's a great idea for you to have solar panels disconnected from the central grid. And all these shapes and forms, it's probably a great idea for you to grow some crops where you live so you have some extra food supply. And if you're in apartment, you probably need to grow them on your balcony or your windowsill or even indoors. David's also a great champion for growing stuff indoors. I haven't quite reached there yet, but I'm trying to grow things. And when we talk about protecting yourself from heat, it's all these really basic old old solutions. Like, I'm trying to encourage more plants to come up my walls because I know it will insulate the house when the sun hits it. And if you look at what's being sold, it's like, you know, we can put some cladding on. Yeah? Because that I can scale and sell to a hundred thousand houses. It's like, just plant a a climbing vegetable on your next to your house, and it will cover your wall. And it will do the job of protecting you from the direct sunlight, and it will cool your house when we don't have 50. But three years ago, we had 40 here. And it's for most people, it's unbearable. I'm very, very fortunate. I live in an old house. So it wasn't that hot, but it got warm. And here, no one has aircon, and you shouldn't need aircon. We live in The UK. It's ridiculous. I I'd like to add that, and and, again, the comments here from John Augustine, I think, is relevant along the Absolutely. Because capitalism only works with sustainability, becomes part of the demand side of the equation. It only works that that is people need to demand sustainability rather than demand goods. Yeah. Makes it which makes it very different because then what you do is you satisfy the demand of sustainability rather than you satisfy the demand for goods. It only works when all the costs are costs and the price isn't subsidized. And and I I have this thing where I'm, you know, this this thing which I think people find very difficult to to, in some ways, to describe, but maybe I found a better way to describe it. You know, supposing you know someone who has the Mona Lisa. K. French government at the moment, but supposing someone has it. And you you you actually evaluate a lot, and you know they're gonna destroy it for whatever reason. Okay. So you go along and you say to them, look. What do you wanna do with them with it? And they say, well, you know, we want to, I I I need such and such or whatever it is. And it says, well, why don't we join together and we invest in getting what you need in that way? So but for we all part, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kinda ask you to not to destroy it, but to put your we're gonna create a fund to create all these businesses which can now give you what what you need. And what I'm gonna ask you to do is, you know, put in put in the Mona Lisa. Don't destroy it, and I'll invest money along. And we'll kinda show the Mona Lisa around to tell people what we're doing as a way to attract them, inspire them to what we're doing, and get them also to contribute maybe, you know, putting become partners of this thing altogether. So now that makes sense to people, and you think you can do that, and that's great. You know, when when you put into the fund, the fund manager is gonna look at this and is not gonna go along and say scrape the paint off and then burn it. It's gonna go along and says, how can I use it to inspire people into what I'm doing? We can do use nature in that same way too, but we don't. We think of cutting it up and chopping it and destroying it as the way to do it. We measure it in what Richard is talking about in terms of what we can get out of the water from the well in what we use rather than saying, what do we think of a landscape that has water above, water below? How can they inspire us to think how else we can do without having to keep doing it so we're left with nothing left in that way. So so capitalism in the current way is essentially selling our family, you know, kinda air loops, which is nature for the pennies we get and hoping that somehow that will be okay. To put it the other way around, you have to go along and say, our family emblems are there to inspire us with the history of kind of our family, where we've come from, the the the trilogy that Heather's written. You know, kind of like, you know, the the the first print of that is a family heirloom. You know, it's never to be sold. It's to be read in in in that way. So so so so those those are kinda how do you rethink capitalism? How do you redefine and reimagine capitalism? Because what capitalism does not describe is the fact that it allows people to transact in a way to say how can I serve you so that you can better yourself? That's the heart of capitalism. What is transferred into is how can I get your money so I can better meet? Yeah. Yeah. And it's a it's a you know, that you it's sort of so everyone talks about the the system of extraction Yes. Where we we create products and services, but the other the other side, of course, is waste. Right? So being being married to an engineer and, you know, understanding, you know, the the the most unbelievable sorry. I'll take you off, David, so it's in. Don't have to sit there. You know, like, a chemical waste product with the pH level of the charts, and working out a way to put it into the earth so that it doesn't go into the environment. But there's a time limit on that. So eventually, the safe structure to keep it contained will break down, and that chemical will go into the environment. But there's no there's no obligation on the on the comp on the company that put it in the ground beyond that five year agreement. Right? So our waste, the businesses have no responsibility for the waste. From fast fashion, like, it basically, every single thing we buy, there is no waste responsibility at the corporate level. And and and and and a true capitalist like me would argue that that is the essence of of the flawed model. That because in in a true capitalist sense, you should have unlimited, forever product responsibility to capture the true cost, but the future has no value. Hence, I can do this and get away with it and and assume that the externality of whatever is paying that price. And But the and for me, the fiduciary corruption. Yeah. Right. But the fiduciary responsibility of a business that's moved looking forward with no responsibility for the waste is destroying the possibility of their business in the future because they're not gonna be able to create whatever they wanna create because of the waste that's in the environment that's poisoning the environment. Right? So Of course. It's just illogical to me. But but by then, I have retired. Right? And I've got my stock options. Well, there there's there's various things that came up this week about that. That's quite interesting. And and also, I mean, you know, Andre pointed out this part about, you know, DuPont Yep. And and and and the legacy it leaves behind kinda as a as a chem as a chemical industry that basically created horrendous, littered the world with horrendous capital chemicals. Three years as well. And and I think I think there is a part that we we have to there there are three parts to this. The first part is that, you know, one one of the sort of chemicals he created, this PTFE type Teflon type things which no longer used along in that way and absolutely horrendous in in in this sense, in in terms of disposing as waste, is that it itself was to deal with what do you do with oil and all the dredges out of it after you've extracted out, then you can burn. And that became the chemical industry. So we deal with waste in thinking if we can use waste in some helpful way, then we can reduce our waste. But what it does is it litters it with other kind of consequences, and it's really worth remembering that. Again, in in in this world where I spend too much time watching, I think there is a Netflix film called Dark Waters, I think. Yeah. Or something like that, which is about DuPont and and Yeah. People do you think is It's very good. Very good. Okay. I'll watch it. There's a book, read one hour about merchants of death. Oh, yeah. Yeah. On on those things. But I think in those ways, it talks about how it starts almost like their agents in that way to go forward. But in many respect, they were cleaning up what was left of the of of oil. So each thing, each cleanup has other other consequences along that we have. Yeah. And the other part is this week, Chevron finally lost a lawsuit on not cleaning up a bit of land that it messed up, basically. And it got fined 740 something bill million dollars as a result of this. The point is this took twelve years. The CEO at the time retired in 2018 Mhmm. To Richard's point there. And the other part is even if you find it hundred billion dollars or I mean,$745,000,000. Chevron's profit last year was $17,000,000,000. So even it doesn't even count as as as a as a as a chip on one year's kind of profit in that way. Let alone over 12. But then again, even if you bankrupted the company, say you find it a trillion dollars, It doesn't change the fact that it was already done. Yeah. And what happens is the businesses cost their liabilities. So it goes along and says, sure. You know, we get sued for this. We may lose the law case. It cost so much and over such a time. We just sell the product for that little bit higher. And that's the part. Remember a few weeks back, we had the we had some people talking about marketing, and those the comment was made along the way about how, you know, marketing kinda drives the world. Yeah. So so if we expect if we if we open out ourselves, we are always going to be enticed along that way. So we kinda it's it's a circle. It's not something you can somehow fix in one form or another. You do have to have some kind of trust as Heather would say or or faith as I would describe in what you do. So you can't be guided. You can't always just be taken down the traps of trying to say why this would work or that would work. You need to free yourself to say, I realize it's not perfect. How do I still make my step? Yeah. I I, you know, I think that's it. You know, the thing that I'm just constantly sitting here going, what when are we gonna wake up is, we we know all this has happened. You know, that DuPont article. So there's an article, I think it's in the Atlantic, which, how did we get where we are from a synthetics perspective. And, of course, the first consumer synthetics was nylon stockings, which went crazy. We went crazy for, you know, and and you'd buy a pair of stockings in World War two that would last you for years. Now if you can get them on your foot without ripping them, you know, you don't buy one pair of stockings. You have to buy five. And you have to be so careful about getting them on. It's the best thing about living in the tropics is you never wear them. And, Heather, I'm sure you don't wear stock stockings on either. No. But but but you gotta spend a lot of money to get the quality. You know? Not rich. Practical farming, I suspect. No. Not real practical. It's good if you're horse riding and it stops the chafe. You know? You can put them on under your jeans. That's about it. Those practical size to stockings. Yeah. Bloody hot, though. Yeah. Imagine. But just so I think we all just need to sort of step back and say, okay. We got we got a lot of stuff wrong. Let's just come to like, all industries, let's just come together and get it right. But we, the consumer, have to just stop demanding cheap. We need high quality products that last for longer. That's not gonna bring great share share return value. Right? You know, we it's a real it's a real revolution, and I think we just we're not even willing to face up to the conversation we need to have. You know, the marketing conversation was fantastic. Like Mhmm. The the world that is presented to me on social media is in in complete opposition to the world that I know that needs to be presented to me. And most people aren't thinking about stuff I'm thinking about. Mother's day. Right? Mother's day is coming up next week. Is that is it mother's day for you as well in in Australia or Sunday in Australia? Is it in The UK, or is that maybe in brand UK? Yeah. In case at the Mother's Day. Yeah. Alright. Okay. So Mother's Day is coming up. Right? Every single airline's marketing to me. I've already said I'm trying not to fly unless I absolutely have to. Products. I don't need I don't buy anything. I don't want anything. You know? If I if I need it, I get it. But otherwise, I don't buy anything. So, you know, this world is being marketed to me that's not in alignment with who I am in the world. So No. But at the moment Again, it it it goes back to almost how we started today. Right? What is the fair price? You know? What are your priorities? With a certain amount of wisdom, you know, pushing 60, I I spend decent amount of money, certainly for a bloke, when I buy shoes because it's a well-being thing. If my feet are comfortable, I'm gonna feel good and they last me forever. I still have shoes from the time I started in the business in 1990. Sure. They've been repaired a few times and resold and everything else. But, actually, they were they were probably, in relative terms, more expensive back then. But they're a really great product. They suit my feet, which are tricky. And I feel good in them. And I repair them because it will be very hard to find similar shoes again. I don't see the point of having five business shoes. They're all black, and I don't use them very often anymore. But I want two so I could alternate, and I still have two. And then I have a pair of brown ones for Funky Friday. But it's it's that mindset that I've never kind of gotten to that I need to have five shirts of different kinds. It's like, you're only gonna wear them twice. A shirt doesn't like shoes last forever, but a good shirt actually does last you a long time. It will go through many washes without losing its shape, and it's and for me, that is I'm prepared to spend more because I want the product with certain qualities, and it comes the same way with food. I want to know that it has certain properties, and I want to know that the farmer who produced it actually can earn a decent living and can continue. And I think this is really, really important. It's about the relationship, right? If if I know that the farm will be around next year and ten years from now, it gives me the security and the safety of saying, you know what? I will find food. Because we're going into the world that we talked about today where this will become a a very different outlook. And then I should, as an insurance, be prepared to pay more to have the certainty or near certainty that the person who produced this will go on producing it and will not close down because they can't find the economics. And then God knows where I'm gonna find my food because whatever little I'm growing here in my garden is not gonna be enough. And and you should be prepared to pay a fair price. That is, for me, part of the whole equation. And, actually, it's very capitalist. Yeah. Our food's practically organic out here. We don't even have fruit flies because it's a dry area. So I grow a lot of mangoes and all kinds of things in my garden. I've got all this beautiful fruit that doesn't have any chemicals on it. And with our livestock, there's very little chemical as well. Like, it's only sheep producers that have to backline for lice once a year. And, yeah, worms, if it's if there's a good season, then perhaps, well, you know, once a year. So it's it's basically organic. Yeah. I think I think it's free and and stress free as well because they've had such a lovely life. I love that. It's like white Wagyu sheep. Yeah. And goats. We have goats out here as well. So a lot of goats. The the storytelling at the moment, the narrative at the moment about how we make our choice or whatever it is and so on and what we need to do. I I I see it as, you know, this is still we we're still missing the fact that we won't have that choice. You know, the world is going to be a lot harder. It is it is, you know, have those kind of life experience in many ways. You know, my mom had a had, you know, started with a tough life. Her one of her most kind of poignant story, which she she she told laughing kind of thing when she was young and the second world war. She goes out trying to get bread. I think her father or whatever had been in the gold rush and had managed to come back wealthy. But they lost it all when Japanese invaded and they moved out of their places and ended up being destitute in many respect. She was going out with her brother to try and find bread and he, you know, bomb exploded, he lost his leg and that was kind of, you know, the introduction to life. Yeah. Right. Whatever we we we think in terms of our choices, the choice is not really going to be there around. It's really gonna be case of what do you actually need for you to thrive. So it's not the thing you gotta think about is not how do I go along and do with only three shoes. The fact is you are only gonna have three shoes. But what are you gonna do with those shoes is what matters. Not which shoes are you gonna have, but what are you gonna do with that? How does that help you thrive along? And we still don't get that because when we are start to talk in those ways, we are taking ourselves from the advertising for by the issues and by those issues. We're actually moving it back into our own space. What am I gonna do with those shoes? How is that actually gonna help me be achieve that core that I wanna be? You know, the parent I wanna be that's better than my parents to me. The, you know, the the the person I am that's better than the than than the than the the the capitalist I am capitalist I am that's better than the capitalism that I see in that way. And and and Yeah. I was just thinking we've we've gone we've gone past our deadline, so we should we should wrap it up. We had so many other news stories. I mean, those of us in Asia in particular are very nervous about the, situation in India and Pakistan. I hope I hope it calms down. That's always been one of the red alerts in the world for Yeah. Yeah. Not good. The UK Farmers are really screaming now about food security in The UK. So, food security is becoming an issue all around the world, countries right across the world. All all, staples, are diminishing. I think it's the average is 5.6% per year diminishing, in the staples, which, you know, might not sound like much, but it's gonna add up and that, you know, when we talk about the cost of living crisis, it's gonna keep going up. So a lot of stuff going on. We're we're paying attention to it all the time, trying to make sense of it. We're not giving you hope, but hopefully, hopefully, we're giving you, the idea that it's time to just really, really sort of harness in, you know, the amount of I would say we need to reduce our energy and material consumption by about 70%, give or take, if we come from a wealthy background. And, and then focus on your community and building resilience. But, Heather, thank you so much for joining us. You're our first So welcome. Thank you. Yeah. You're so welcome. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you. I mean, great to have you here and, you know Thank you. Blown away by by your life story and your lifestyle. Yeah. And and, just to let you know, I have messaged my daughter. I hope she gets this opportunity to give it a go to get out to you. Yeah. That'd be nice. I certainly hope so. That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah. Be really great. I'll definitely come. Good. I wanna I wanna I wanna listen to the local radio station too. That that that would be Tune in on a tune in on, Wednesday morning, two w e b, Outback Radio, five eighty five AM. That's that's where you find me. No. Oh, that's too early in the morning. That's that's like, like, 2AM for me or something. But, anyway, yeah, it's really good. No. No. No. The the station is called five eighty five AM. Yeah. I don't go until

08: 2:09:41

00. I'm they're on from between eight till twelve. Yeah. I co host with another guy. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Bring people in and interview them, and it's a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Well, we've enjoyed interviewing you today. Alright. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Have a fabulous weekend. Bye. Thank you. You too. Bye. Bye.