The Sh*t Show: sustainable tourism + community building

We have two guests and two topics this week, starting with sustainable tourism from a Pakistan perspective, and then we are going to dig into the importance of community building as we face the years ahead. Community is critical and it can be something you focus on in your local neighbourhood, or perhaps you prefer to be part of a global digital community? Whatever it is, it can be an anchor for the challenges we face in the years and decades ahead. 

We will also be digging into the main news, discussing our take-aways from the No Kings march across the United States, how climate change is already having an impact on food availability and inflation, France’s economic woes and the possibility it’s the canary in the coalmine for Europe, where we are with world peace, maybe we’ll talk about “Prince” Andrew (maybe we won’t bother), the White House in ruins, and a whole lot more. Let’s be honest, it's Wednesday, so who knows what else will happen between now and the show this Friday? 

Joe won’t be with us this week, but we have two super special guests, Sadaf Khalid, a global consultant in sustainable tourism and the CEO of Walnut Travel Tours & Consultancy. Sadaf is all about building partnerships and cooperation on the Sustainable Development Goals in Pakistan and across the world. A true champion for the environment. 

Our second guest is Oliver Gill, a stonemason who spends his working hours fixing crumbling buildings in the UK – a noble trade. But he is also co-founder of The Climate Crisis Club, a global community that gathers on X every Saturday to talk all things climate and everything it entails. To be part of a group like this comes with a lot, including the emotional intensity of facing the issue of our time, as well as coordinating across such a diverse group of passionate people. 

It’s going to be awesome, so do join us, and get caught up on the news while you’re at it, this Friday 24th October 2025, 8am UK, 9am EU, 2pm TH, 3pm SG, 5pm AEST. Streaming across various locations, and no doubt about it, we’d love your support. 

The Sh*t Show is a Livestream happening every Friday, where Andrea T Edwards, Dr. David Ko, Richard Busellato and Joe Augustin, as well as special guests, discuss the world’s most pressing issues across all angles of the polycrisis, working to make sense of the extremely challenging and complex times we are all going through, plus what we can do about it. Help us move the needle so we can change the name of the show to something more genteel when (or if) it is no longer a sh*t show. 

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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

0:01

Oops. Are we waiting for LinkedIn to go live? Yeah. All right, guys. Doing all right. I've got a call at 10.

Yeah. I have a haircut. 10: 0:18

30, so I need to go quarter 20 past. I need to leave any other slots. So that I. Yeah, sorry about that. We did. We tried to stay on time. It's hard. Too much to talk about. Yeah. All right. It still hasn't started. All right. Hi, everyone. If you're joining us now, we're just waiting for LinkedIn to go live and then we'll. We'll be. We'll be getting stuck into another packed agenda. Yeah, there's a lot. It's. Well, there's a demolition job going on that's really interesting. All right, we are live, so welcome to the show. My name is Andrea Edwards. I'm David Coe. And at the fore end you have me, Richard Basilato. Welcome. Yeah, and Joe's not with us today because he's doing an event in kl, so we'll miss. We'll miss him and I. There's actually a lot going on in the AI space that I. I want to plug his brain about, so we'll have to save it for next week. I don't know if you've seen some of the. Even Steve Bannon is calling for. What is it not artificial intelligence. It's a. There's another word linked to it. Anyway, calling on a reprieve. So we shall. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, do you know the word? I mean, there's. It's. It's something artificial intelligence. But anyway, it's the one that, you know, it's perceived as a threat. So we've got two guests on the show today. We're going to talk about sustainable tourism and community building, which is something we've talked about many, many times in different ways. Ollie is our community building expert, but he's not here at the moment because he's having trouble getting on the link. So we'll see how we go. And. David, would you like to introduce our first guest? Yes, absolutely. Let's bring her on. Hello, Sadaf. Hi, everyone. How are you? Hi. Good. So just want to say hi to Sadaf. Can we arrange this so that we also have the rest of us around? Yes, maybe that's the right thing. Stick here for now. Let me do this bit. Yep, you do this bit. Okay, so. But anyway, so, Sadaf, welcome to be here. You're from Pakistan and we met a few years ago and over, you know, and among the different things that came up was really Kind of the activities and things within Pakistan and the enthusiasm of the youth that you were very much expressing at that time, especially within aspects of kind of the tourism and things. But I just want to ask, if I may just to sort of say, can you give an introduction to yourself? I in particular, you know, kind of your whole, your whole family, I think, has been involved with that kind of community aspects right from the time before it became like, you know, the hype words, as it were. So do you want to give, give kind of an introduction to yourself and how it led you into the path where you are now? Thank you so much, David and Andrea and Richard for inviting me to your show today. Thank you. And this topic, sustainable tourism and community building, is very close to my heart. So for the viewers who don't know me, I'm Sadaf Khalid Khan and I belong from Pakistan. How I ended up working on this sustainable tourism and climate challenges that we talk about today is that my journey started from 2010 when the first time Pakistan was hit with floods up in the northern areas of Pakistan in, in Kalam KPK and where my family, my own mom, she was stranded for five days. And not only her, but the whole, There were about 5,000 tourists in the local community had to be rescued by helicopters because the road, the destruction was massive and there was no road communication and the road, the network was all swept away by floods. So I started, I was in tourism and hospitality already working at my resort, the Walnut Heights, and working in travel agency in Islamabad promoting tourism. But then I started to do research why the climatic challenges are happening, what's going wrong, engaging with the community, mobilizing campaigns, educating them. So we're going to talk about that later. David. But that's how I ended up and started working on sustainable tourism and community building. Sorry, I muted myself. So this is, this is my part here. You know, my knowledge about Pakistan is very scarce and I've thought of it as a tourist destination. So do you want to give some, give some kind of connection about, you know, how it is a tourist destination? Is this predominantly amongst Pakistani themselves or is this something that's actually much more cross Asia or something where, which would be interesting also to, to others. So Pakistan is a beautiful country, as we know on a geographical map, if you see the location is between Central Asia, China, bordering with Iran, Middle East, Dubai. So Pakistan is known for basically adventure tourism. We have the K2 that is the second highest peak in the world. A lot of adventure climbers from Europe, they come to Pakistan and for These expeditions. But having said that, Pakistan has to offer much more than adventure tourism. We are also working on promoting the Buddhist tourism. We have UNESCO sites in Pakistan. Recently, a lot of Buddhist monks have started coming to Pakistan from Japan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, China. And then at the same time, because you know Pakistan's history with the neighboring countries, we're also promoting religious tourism. The Sikh for the Silk Pilgrimage, we have the Kartarpur corridor open. A lot of Sikh pilgrimage are coming to Pakistan to visit their sacred sites. And as well as we've got the Indus civilization, the Manjudar or the UNESCO sites, as I was mentioning in Pakistan. And then we have Mughal history neighboring with India and Pakistan. A lot of historical sites in Lahore a lot of people don't know and the museums and the heritage that we have, from forts, old forts to castles. So Pakistan as a country, as you were asking, David, we have a lot to offer as a tourist destinations for beach holidays. We just starting recently, we've got some new beach resorts opened near Karachi. And Gwadar is another upcoming beach tourist destination, part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, which called the CPEC project. So, yeah. So Pakistan has a lot to offer. And also to your question you asked, we have domestic tourism blooming, but we also have foreign tourism coming in all parts from the world. As I was mentioning, Europe, Europeans are the most like, they visit Pakistan quite often. But we have, as I said now tourists coming from Malaysia is another tourist. Like they're coming into Pakistan because they don't have mountains and that kind of climate. So they. That's another country that's exporting Pakistan. Yeah. Over to you. Can I. I'm just going to, I'm going to bring O in, but we'll introduce him in a minute. So we made it, which is good. Just the 2010 event that your mom got stuck in, was that the first time something of that scale had happened? Or was or is that something that historically has been happening before just to give us a sense of change in. In the environment? Yeah. So that was. That was massive floods in Pakistan. 2005 was the first earthquake, natural calamity that came. And then 2010, just after exactly five years, that scale of floods we all experienced for the first time. So we were not really prepared for it. Even our government, our local communities, the tourists. And it was like a massive floods, which was a horrific experience for everyone, for that matter. And we were trying to cope and adapt and like everybody was in a state of shock. Even though Pakistan is a country and we were getting all these International donor countries from us, Turkey, China, neighboring countries to help Pakistan for that kind of calamity. Even Angelina Jolie as a celebrity, she came and visited the camps in Northwest Frontier that was called then as now is Khyber Pakhtunpa, to help the flood effectees. And then a couple of years ago, you obviously had the devastating floods which took out what, 40% of the country. And then just more recently, we saw those other, other floods. So it's obviously something that's escalating and it's wiping out not just people and their homes, but also agriculture as well, right? Yeah, exactly. 2022 floods I personally experienced again in the, in that Kalam Swat community in the north parts of Pakistan. And, and again the pattern was the same. Five days of massive rain cloud burst and then again the bridges were swept away and we had to be rescued by the helicopter. And recently by 2025, Gilgit Baltistan and Punjab Province, Lahore, they were the most affected. And as you said, Pakistan is an agriculture country. It was a lot of economic loss in terms of agriculture. The infrastructure loss and as well as the tourism and hospitality figures went down to almost 45% because people like watching news all over. Even domestic tourism declined because people were not feeling safe to travel to these areas. So Pakistan has been unfortunately, the climatic challenges that we talk of every year it's getting worse with the figures that we see. And recently our Prime Minister addressed at the United nations the Climate Conference in New York and he was pledging us and other international donor countries to help Pakistan for community resilient building and infrastructure development. As we talk about. Yeah. Is it happening like. Or is. Is corruption sort of getting in the way of, of doing what needs to be done? Sorry, David. Yeah, I mean, yes, corruption is there as we speak of, but then a lot of private sector, like I would talk about the youth movements, they're quite active. Pakistan's population, 66% of the population, is the youth aging from third from 25 to 35. They're very active in mobilizing and doing small community projects for Pakistan. But having said that, the government has to also play its role with the donor agencies. There's a new project in Pakistan which is just recently starting calling the Emerging Pakistan, which is led by wwf. That's a huge project they've started in Punjab. And recently I had a project in Gilgit Baltistan. I conducted a Silk Road festival where wwf where I conducted trainings for the women entrepreneurs about sustainable tourism and how the climatic challenges are affecting that. So that's the Start and let's see how it goes. Yeah. And I think this brings to, you know, some of the things that you've been writing about that, you know, within, within the Pakistani press. And so I'm really calling for that coherence of policy. And I think one of the things you mentioned that you've mentioned before is really where tourism builds and the problems that can cause itself. Also you want to kind of elaborate a little bit more because I think, you know, when people think of tourism, they're always a little bit torn between the idea that actually it's great to have sustainable tourism in some sense, but inevitably you, you always end up in situation where you destroy more than you contribute. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I've been recently writing in articles, I mean, I've just addressing directly to the Prime Minister of Pakistan the urgent need of the sustainable tourism policy. Because at the same time, I think it's not just Pakistan. If you look at the global climatic changes, no country, even a developed country, they're not prepared for it. What we require right now is that policies are also very important. But implementation of policies are important. That is what is missing in a country like Pakistan. When I talk about, let's start with the domestic tourism, I mean the ntma, we have a national Disaster Management Authority with the social media, with the mobile messages on the TV ads we are running and educating people not to travel during the monsoon seasons when it's on high alert and we don't, can't really predict when there's a cloud burst and there would be flash flooding in that, in those areas, especially in the north. But domestic tourists, they still travel and they don't change their plans. So the problem that we talk about, it has to be from both ways. The people needs to understand the domestic tourist for foreign tourists there. They know where travel, they follow the news, they're responsible. And not only that, David, when we would remember when we were talking discussions during COP28 in Dubai, in the online sessions, is that littering, plastic pollution, destroying the beautiful surroundings, that's also a responsibility of a domestic tourist or any tourists visiting those areas. So the responsibility lies between the, obviously the government, the people who are in the hospitality tourism sector and the tourists visiting those areas. So we can't just blame one person. It has to be a collective effort as a whole when we talk about these problems. And at that period you point back to the, you know, COP28, which is the, I guess we're about to come into COP30. So that would be two years ago, straight Trying to do my mental maths here. And, and you know you, you, you connected us with a number of people and their projects and they, they varied along in the different ways. What do you see as kind of the, the sort of stories from there that actually people elsewhere can also pick up and maybe you know, when they find that when they think about the tourism, this aspect of responsibility, you know, you, you, you actually mentioned about. It's not just the policy, the implementation that involves the people traveling as much as the people who are providing the things there. So recently I just heard about this very interesting project by a community leader up in the Gilgit Baltistan which we are nearing with the China Hondura Pass border. The cloudburst. He came up with this detector. He tried to create it on his own scientific research. He's a young student I guess and it helped alarm his small community of around 50 to 100 people. When there's a cloud burst or this kind of some the senses were detecting that and then he tried to evacuate his own community and then they were saved from that flash flooding this year it was I think in Al Jazeera and all those news as well. I'll share that article with you. So that's just a small story. If a community, if a student of a like climatic research and on the subjects, if he could develop that detector. My question is why can't the governments or why can't the other companies try to do the same? I mean this is just an example, recent example that I'm sharing. So I guess it's the responsibility like the youth movements are there. But of course you need funding for those projects. But then when we talk about sustainability I feel David, it's not just about the money. We can create sustainable projects. Remember when we just had a chat about educating people, the local entrepreneurs, the women, we can give them a business model of just like you know, developing these bags for recycling and they can use the same bags for getting groceries. You don't need millions and millions of dollars to start such kind of projects. A lot of non profits like I would like to name our Khan Development Company Corporation akdn. That's the biggest the, the, the success stories of successful projects especially in Gilgit Baltistan they doing quite well to educate women entrepreneurs helping the youth for small projects. But we need many more like them to work on these issues. But so you know it's one of the things you were talking about was the cloud burst. But the other big risk obviously in Pakistan, India, right across the Himalayas. Himalayas is the glacial lake outbursts in the thousands of lakes at risk in Pakistan. But then the other thing that you were talking about is just the waste that comes with tourism and the responsibility for everyone. So you know, I was living in Puket and there's all these six star resorts on these islands that you have to catch a boat to and they don't have any waste disposal and there's no way of getting the waste from the island so they just burn it or it just ends up in the ocean. Right. So when you think about the beautiful Himalayan mountains, just full of beautiful, I mean we've seen ever a space camp and how much human waste is left behind. So it really needs that government and community and like you say, the tourist commitment to just not taking waste, like not making it part of the experience at all. And I, I mean I, I, I don't think apart from maybe Bhutan, I don't think I've seen any country even remotely start looking to tackle that. Are you seeing any, any movement there at all from a waste perspective? Well, I tried in my capacity to like train like how segregation of waste is not really so recently the only project that I heard about, you know the Nestle Water company, that's a big company in Pakistan and they created non plastic Gilgit, Baltistan, Hunza and they want to recycling all the plastic bottles, water bottles, to make it plastic free. So this is just like a beginning of I think what we talk about these plastic pollution because Pakistan needs recycling plants. Even in the capital city where I belong to Islamabad, we have municipalities. It's just that we don't have that all the waste goes to the landfill sites. And then there's a whole mafia working on, they don't let these international companies or private companies come into Pakistan to work. So that's a very, that's a, like another subject in detail we'll talk about. But as of today I just heard a lot of these Swiss tourists, they just were visiting a week back and they were picking all the littering, all the garbage from these beautiful base camps in Pakistan. It was all over the social media. If the foreign tourists can do, why can't we do it? So yeah, we need bins in those areas. We need to educate people. There's a lot can be done. It's. Nothing is impossible when I, when we speak of these issues. But it's just the will and the motivation from all sides, from the government, from the private people, from the community, from the tourists who are traveling to these beautiful areas. I'd like to bring, bring one, one more point that I think you mentioned before. I mean we, we're seeing at the moment kind of the White House being knocked down and being replaced a lot. And, and I, I remember you made a comment before about hotels which had been devastated by floods and stuff and people rebuild them in, in that way too. And there's something. And how is that kind of, is that an opportunity? Are people taking that as an opportunity to, to implement the kind of sustainable policies? So. While the hotels building infrastructure laws, as I said, we have the laws in place, but unfortunately the hotel's belt, they, the local investors there, they. Even the floods, the hotel was swept away with flood, but they will build it on the same place near the river which is blocking the way when there's a flooding going on. So I mean there is a movement going on, especially in kp. I saw where my resort is, the encroachment the government is trying to go and they're going there like just giving them warnings that we want to destroy your hotel if you're not going to like, you know, destroyed yourself because that's creating a lot of trouble for the whole of that area and community. So what like what I would suggest when they're building hotel, the government is watching there. Why do they allow to build? Because there's huge investment in that hotel. Right. And then when such incidents happen, the government just come and they want to just destroy it. It's not fair on both sides because there is an investment involved. It should be planned. The planning of those tourism places, keeping in the climatic challenges is the need of the hour. What I feel not only in the northern parts, even in the city, I mean Islamabad this time in the very posh town, barrier town is a residential area. A father and a daughter were swept away in a car because of the flash flooding. So the urban planning, when we talk about smart sustainable cities relating to sustainable development goals and in a country like Pakistan, I think when Pakistan was 50, 50, 60 years back, I think the urgent need of planning is very important when we are developing these results. David? Yeah, I, I think people outside of this region don't really understand how anyone with money can bribe anyone. They want to build anything they want, anywhere they want. You know, it just, it's just a common problem is. Yeah. In Thailand we see that in the U.S. right now. Well, yeah, well, on a different scale, right. In Thailand all you have to do is you rent an elephant and you put an elephant on a piece of land and if they don't hassle you, after a while you build like a, like a bamboo shack around the elephant. And then as time goes on, your structure gets progressively more solid to the point where you, you basically you. Nobody, nobody hassles you. It's interesting process. Yeah. Having said that, I mean it was all over the news. I'll share the links with you. So this, I mean, very dear, not friends and colleagues. This. They build a hotel at Atab Lake in Hunza, which is nearing China border. And it's just on the lake you can see even as a tourist, it's just where. And any flash like a flash flooding or a glacier melt or any landsliding can happen. And they took permissions. It's called the Luxus Grand Hotel. And this year, thrice it was hit by these like, you know, the glaciers and these small kind of flash flooding. And it was all over the news. And they took the permission from the government and also the, all the sewage waste was going in the Atabad Lake, which is such a beautiful lake. So, so it's just that these are the educated rich people. They do open these hotels there. But then having said, as Andrea was saying, you can see it in front of your eyes, but still it's just like they just want to make money and business out of it. They don't care about environment or their own infrastructure damage or losses as well. I think, I think it's really interesting, isn't it, because it goes back to that responsibility. So as you were describing this, I was thinking, well, you know, maybe it's good to have some kind of like a, an index or review of kind of your, the, the, the impact of a hotel for people booking. And then of course it goes to the point you were making earlier that the people go there when, when, when you said, you know, if there were weather reports of potential cloudbursts and things in Pakistan, people still go along with their schedule. So, so they're not really have that awareness or concern even when they themselves may be the people caught in it. Yeah, that, that seems a pretty. What, what's the driver behind that? What do you think is the reason why? Is it because, you know, the, the holidays are so scarce? Is it something like that or. Yeah. So domestic tourism as we speak of international traveling, only the rich class, elite class, as we call in Pakistan, 1%, or maybe I can say just 2, 3% can afford going international vacations. The rest, they're all domestic tourists. So in Pakistan, as we speak of the summers, the temperatures soars up to 45 almost now. Some places to 47 degrees. It's so hot during the summers. And we have summer vacations. The schools are off as you guys have the three months or two months summer vacations. Everybody wants to experience a kind of cold weather when they all go to these northern areas just to have a breather from the hot temperatures. And then we have electricity crisis as well. Everybody cannot afford an aircon, you know, in Pakistan, so they just want to go for a week or 10 days, take their family, their kids, have picnics, go for walks, enjoy the cool weather. So, David, to the question again. Climate change, the climatic changes Pakistan had. We have four seasons, autumn, summer, spring, winter. But now the last 10 years, I see summers is almost now eight months and hardly we get winter period, which is just two months, that's from December to January or March. So that's another reason I feel that even when they hear these news, they're not bothered and they just want to have the relief for one week in cooler places. And that makes so, so much sense, right, because you, you're at risk of dying from heat or you're at risk of dying from, you know, a glacial lake burst or, you know, but one, one, there's a chance you won't die. The other one, it's almost guaranteed if your electricity goes out. So kind of makes sense, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It puts it, that really puts in context. Thank you for, you know, clarifying that situation on there. I think that's, that's, this is, it's really kind of that, that forced lifestyle changes that you, you're forced to make that actually further puts you in danger as well. And then, of course, then you have the commercial aspects that just taps into this as a mechanism from MC Money. But that eight months of summer, you know, and such a short winter period, and you think of the Himalayas and the glaciers. It's, it's actually, it's a very frightening reality that you're, that people of Pakistan are facing. Years ago I said, is Pakistan going to be the first country that has to be evacuated because of climate change? And when I listen to what you just said then, because India's obviously, I mean, it's a massive country with much, much sort of wider regions of variables. But yeah, the risks are just enormous now. Yeah, we talk about these issues. It's just that people, the good thing is that at least youth with the social media people know about it. It's not that people, even those community, I mean, trust me, those community, I was speaking today with those community leaders. The community that live, they are they're not educated but they understand these climatic challenges. The only thing is they need, they need hand holding as we speak of. They just need the right direction, the right networks, the right people to work and help them. You can prevent them as well. A lot of people like the educated class, they did not travel. As I said that the percentage of the tourism declined this year because there was so much warnings from the government. People from the major cities like Karachi, Lahore, that's the, the most like if the temperature sows up, they go to these northern areas for vacations. They didn't visit this year. So it did help. It's not that it did not help but as we speak of a lot has to be done still because the figures that I'm like 2060, there is a prediction and I strongly believe in that Karachi is going to sink. Karachi is the PO is the main trading port. It used to be the capital of Pakistan but Islamabad was decided later on being the capital of Pakistan. So these predictions are there. Even the airport was flooded in Karachi if you saw the news, during the monsoon seasons. So I mean what's the population of Karachi? Just to give people a sense, it's huge. I mean the last sense is I don't know when it happened. It's definitely. We're more than like what, 30, 50 lakhs? I guess just Karachi as a city. It's about 20 million. Yeah, it's a huge place. Almost, almost, almost the population of Australia. Yeah, it's about 20 million. So I, I want to, I want to move on. We've got another guest, Oliver, we want to bring on. So. But would you, is there a last word you want to tell people? Just, just wanted to just quick one with sadaf, just the Sustainable Development Goals because I think we need to be putting a limit on tourism all over the world. There's a lot of new regions that haven't had the massive numbers of tourists who are now opening up to tourists and they're going to be overwhelmed, especially if you look at the Scandinavian countries. So just wanted to get your sense from the Sustainable Development Goals from a tourism perspective. What, what do you think is most important for people to be really thinking about. In keeping perspective the Sustainable Development Goals. I mean the agenda was 2030, but 2030 is around the corner and I think none of the countries we were able to achieve those targets which we were supposed to. The most important thing is I think sustainable in keeping sustainable tourism is that straight away we need to have eco friendly results. That's the first step and then second step is also educating people how to be a responsible tourist when they're visiting these areas. I think these two perspectives, if you manage to achieve them, that will help also preserve our natural environment in a country like Pakistan. That's great. All right, so now if you're going to stay with us. Right, yeah. For the show. Yeah. All right, cool. All right, so I'll bring us all up and this is the first time I'm seeing Ollie's face. We usually. It's usually dark. Dark at night for me when we gather on X and talk all things climate. But welcome, Ollie. Hi, Andrea. Hi, David. Hi, Richie. Hello. Sorry about the mother getting on to start with. No, it's all right. I've. I've got to work out how to solve that problem. But Ollie's our first stonemason and I think that's just interesting in its own right. But the reason I asked Olion is because he's one of the co founders of the climate crisis crisis club. David, I think you've joined once. It might be a bit weird for you, but if you stick with. Gets better. I think Saturday is my day with my mom, so. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's late. It's like I was on it till 4am last week. But anyway, it's. It's a. For me, it's a great club. So I've. If I've joined any sort of. I. I'll give you an example. I joined a community recently and it was a spiritual consciousness type environment thing and they started off with the meditation and while the meditation was happening, everyone who was on this call was just in the. In the chats trying to link together and connect on LinkedIn and. And it was this frantic sort of noise that was going on and I found it really funny because. Because it wasn't really appropriate for the moment. But the other thing is, I think that there is a passion within, with within the people who are focused on the. On the community, to find the community, to find people who think like them, because I think a lot of. Quite alone and no one really wants to talk. Talk about the stuff that we want to talk about because I think it's too miserable. But anyway, Ollie, tell us about yourself, then we'll get to that. Well, first of all, it was very interesting to hear. To listen to Sadaf talking about Pakistan and obviously I'd be tempted to sort of leap into the whole environmental chaos really, and the situation there, because it's terrible. I mean, obviously we know that and. But first of all about me. I had a, I had a troubled youth and not, not crime, mental health mostly. And what I'm talking about today is communities. And I started off in, in very, a couple of communities that if you like, were, were, were exactly what I'm going to talk a little bit about now, not just about the climate club, but communities, the various types of communities around, around the world and the ones that we're in and the ones that we try and avoid in the modern age that we're, you know, we're trying to dodge, if you like, in this rather independent, slightly kind of cut off situation that so many people find themselves in. So I had a troubled start in life and then I went and I thought, what am I going to do? And I just thought I'll do some sculpture, you know, and I did some sculpture and I thought this is great, but I'm not going to make a living out of this because nobody makes a living. It's not going to happen. It's a, it's not sustainable, basically. It won't happen. And so I'm not, you know, I'm not. Not wouldn't be lucky like Gormley or someone like that who sort of, you know, lived in a squat in Islington and then suddenly found himself a kind of international squad sculptor and, and got very lucky. No. So I went into stone masonry. I did the full training craft, advanced craft, even something called Mastercraft, which is a little bit of a sort of funny name for it. And I've worked for the whole total is 30 years in this trade from, you know, a lot of churches, pubs, stately homes, the odd cathedral now and then basically doing that kind of work and a lot of boring work as well, like steps, because there are millions and millions of front steps that are all dying at the moment all over London. They've reached their kind of 100 to 150 year maximum, which is, you know, if you're treading on stone for that amount of time, it's going to wear out. And they're mostly again, this is to do with the climate. They're not very. Most of these steps lead to basements and these steps aren't waterproof proofed and so they leak. And so people come to me and they say, stop the leaking, you know, so I do, I have to. But I have to build a whole new set of steps on top of it first. So that's the, that, that, that's the life that I've lived for the last 30 years. But during that time I've Always been very. A little bit crazy about the climate, to be honest with you. From about 1984 onwards, I got very affected by. By Band Aid, Live Aid, and I got affected before that by the Biafran famine back in the 70s, about 19. It was actually, I think it was sort of over by about 1970. But as kids at school, we were being bombarded by religious groups who were very involved. And it was, you know, it was affecting. I know I'm not the only one that was affected by this, and I said it before. A classic example was George Monbiot, who was at school with me, and he was in exactly the same age group and he was absolutely affected by this entire kind of. How can I put, was a kind of faith group within the school that was part of the school ethos at the time. It was very. It was very fluid through it. The headmaster was very into it. It wasn't a bad thing. There's nothing wrong about. Was sort of cultish or odd. It was very. It was very good. He was very affected by. I was. A number of people were affected by it and it actually went all the way through our lives. You can see how it affected everybody. It was. It was very interesting. So anyway, for all that time, really, since I was about 10, if I think about it, but particularly from about my early 20s, I've been very, very fanatical, really, about the climate. And that, I think, helped to. That really helped us sort of when. When the club, Climate Club came along, you know, the Climate Crisis Club, it didn't start as a club. It started as a. As a collection of people who followed a couple of scientists, particularly Michael Mann, my professor, Michael E. Man. And that was a kind of, if you like, that was. That was a link point for everybody. And then we. We got to know each other online. And then there was a small group of people. I mean, just. Just a few. And. And I know that Alex was there hammering away. He was like, absolutely. It was like. He was like John Bonham in Led Zeppelin on the. On the. On the bass drum. You'll like that. It worked really well, actually. No, it worked extremely well. And. And Noreen Wise was there and Dr. Val. Now, Dr. Val was. It turned out she was absolutely pivotal. She was there and she was. Why, she was sensible about things. She. She advised Alex. She said, for goodness sakes, go on. Spaces. Do you know spaces? She said, we both were. No, never heard of it sort of thing. And then we just started. He just. You just. You just. We just talked about it and we just thought, yes, let's try it. So we just started. He started the space and we got it going and. Well, that's a sort of point at which things began to build really, really well. But very slowly. It took a time. I mean, you dragged me into it. Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah. You found me on LinkedIn, I think, through or through a book or something. Yeah, I did. I threw through my friend Damien Corbett, who had a book, the book and blah, blah. And I tried a few people in the book and one or two did you particularly. But one or two did get involved. Some people were more involved in space travel and stuff like that, and that's fine, but space is there too. And it actually started with about, I think, eight to 10 people. And it was, it was. It was not like it is now. It was very kind of intense. Everybody talking at the same time, everybody trying to get their bit in. It was. It wasn't disorganized, but at the same time it was very kind of. It was very enthusiastic, let's say. And then slowly, over time, it's developed into a community that is both has regular people there or more or less all the time. People who come and go and they can. They can be gone for sometimes for weeks, months, and then suddenly they just turn up again. Yeah, they're. They're affected by something and they come back. So it's. If you like, it is a bit like a pub, you know, you can. You can irregulars and you've got people who come and go. And the tumbleweed sort of tumbles past, continues to go past week in, week out. And the sign swings outside and there's a fire burning and this is all. This is all not what's happening there, but it feels like it sometimes. It's comfortable, it's very friendly and above all, it's friendly. I know that Alex was very, very particular about. You know, there were a few fights early on with people and he was very particular that we stopped this fighting because it was. It was causing problems. Kind of online fighting. You mean to sort of like you're wrong? No, no, we talk, we're talking to each other. But it's, it's. It's because to me, it's one of the biggest challenges. Right, because everyone's in a different place and, you know, sometimes people will get on and they're quite new. They're trying to understand it. They're at the beginning and then you've got the doomers who've lost all hope and you've got everything in between. So I was just going to ask you, you know, like, when you look at that it's, it's a, it's an enormous challenge and sometimes, you know, people, people, you know, kick up a storm and create a, create a hassle and it's hard for Alex probably more than you, Ollie, but I think so. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, because people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, we all, we, we all sort of message him and calm me down. Yeah, yeah. But when like for other people who, who might be thinking about like, where do I go for, for community? Because it can be local, it can be global. Like we've got what, you know, what are the biggest challenges in bringing people together that you've, you've been seeing across the, across the years of doing this? Usually they're cultural, they're. I mean a typical example would be something like Gaza for example, Augusta, Israel. Problem is a perpetual problem and, and that's been resolved pretty well. But within the club. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, not in real life. Yeah, not in real life. No, not at all. But in club it has because they find a consensus not to fight about it and to respect each other's views and try and find a way for you. It still flares up, but not usually within the club environment. But the community thing is a community, basically. I read as I like this expression from a guy called Toby Lowe. A community is a group of people who share an identity forming narrative that, that sums it up pretty neatly, I think. So with the club, it's obvious, climate club, it's basically the ongoing climate crisis which is probably the biggest issue in the world ever, I think. I don't, I don't see any other issue as being quite on the scale of this one. And as you know, if you're in that crisis, it is completely all enveloping nothing. You, you cannot find a beginning or an end to it. You cannot find, you cannot really find a safe place to breathe. You have to find something that settles you. But at the same time it's such an enormous problem that most people in around the world, rich and I would say poor, rich and poor actually switch it off. They have to switch it off because it's too, too big a problem to actually cope with if you've been in it for all your life. It becomes, I find it becomes a lot easier. You know, it doesn't drive me crazy anymore. Now I'm much more, more, more understanding of it and I can hold the capacity of it, capacity of it much more. Most People cannot begin to go there and they will turn away. There are players out there that are worse than that. There are obviously paid trolls. I mean, I cannot understand something like being a patrol. How can you do that? So I think basically just, just take the money. They just take the money and think it's just another kind of job, if you like, and I just take the money. Or there are other people who have, they have their own very fixed ideas about what is right in the world, what is actually, you know, this is the right thing. This is what I believe. This is what I'm going to go on stating. It's a very current topic. Epistemic arrogance, it's called. You probably come across it a few times when. And it wastes an awful lot of time in discussion. It wastes a huge amount of time in discussion because, because it's so, you know, it's, it doesn't have a beginning or an end again. And so you, you can talk, you can argue with people about it endlessly and not get anywhere. And at the end of it, you feel where you were at the start. So it's very, it's very discouraging. And that's where a community comes into it in a way that is really productive because you've had the time to talk through all the issues slowly and it takes weeks and months. You may only be thinking to yourself, oh, there's only maybe, you know, on a particular group, particular Saturday, maybe 5, 600 people who've come and gone, but they've taken something away with them. They've actually, they've either joined, you know, voluntary, they've all joined voluntarily. You don't, you know, nobody gets pushed into it, but they've, they've come in, they've taken something away, they've gone away. It helps their journey into understanding the problem. Problem, and it also helps them to go out and do the same thing. I suppose it's, you know, it's a kind of like a. Being a missionary or something like that. In a way it's a. But it's, but it's a subject that is completely steeped in reality all of the time. And it's not even a kind of. There's no dogmator and it's happening. I mean, look at Pakistan and the horrors that they just in endure over and over. And now they, they, they are clearly taking the situation into their own hands by purchasing solar panels en masse on a huge scale and just doing it for themselves. Usually secondhand panels that have got plenty of life in them that are like a third or, or, or half the price of new ones, maybe less sometimes, and they're just able to plug in and they can literally save themselves by having, you know, their own arrays. That makes so much sense. Same in India, of course, too, particularly, and I'm sure over other parts of Asia. So it's. And more robust. I mean, you know, more robust than the power grid that keeps sailing. Yeah, yeah, completely. Yes, absolutely you can. So I was gonna ask, how does someone join. Is this like a members club? How. How does it work? And if someone wants to. No, just with the. The climate club. Yeah. It's just. You just come and have a listen, see if you like it and then contact Alex, he does the processing, if you like people. So where do they go to listen? Oh, what? Come, come, come. David, you know. Hey, no, no, obviously don't know. Right, I know, but it's you. It's basically. It's. It's a Saturday space on Twitter. I still call it Twitter. I'm sure the Saturday space on Twitter. It's at 11am EST. We'll do the maths if it suits you. It's terrible for Andrea, obviously, and it probably isn't that great. Well, it's terrible for you guys because I have to have a drink by that point. Yeah. Yes. That's easy. That's great. You know, that's easy. Yeah. This time of day, at 7 o' clock in the morning here. Oh, no, it's very. It's. Yeah, Dober here. But it's. What. But it's also. You got to stick with it. Right? It's because, you know, sometimes people, we talk about music and sometimes we talk about a lot of different things. We've got a. A massive American indigenous presence, which I love because, you know, it's just a view that we don't get outside of the U.S. we've got Africa, India, Pakistan, sometimes Australia, where it's four, five o' clock in the morning, they'll jump on. So I'm. I'm one of the few in Southeast Asia that come along. But it's. Yeah, it's a pretty widespread group. Greenland, Germany. Yeah, it's really wide. South America, a few there, particularly Brazil. Yeah, but, yeah, it's. And, But David, to join it, you literally just click on the link and come and join the space. You, you know, you don't have. You don't have to. If you can even do it anonymously, we get quite a lot of. I'm asking because I myself never been able to Find it as such. I mean I've found the chat but I've never found the other thing apart from the fact that Saturday mornings I'm with my mom. So. But, but I don't. So I'm kind of asking as a person who. So on Twitter, just, just across the top. Familiar with Twitter. So I don't. Across the top there's a band of chats that are happening and you just scroll through and you'll see it. Exactly. But I can obviously tag you in it next time it's up. What I see for example at the moment on Twitter is just a search bar and I type in Climate Crisis Club as a hashtag and it's got, you know, yourself there. And funny. And then there is Morton, Morton Baltus. Is that. Yeah, that's. I think that's Alex. Oh yeah. There'S a few like that. There's a. But the other thing of course is it's,

it's for 4: 50:13

00pm in the UK so it's

11: 50:17

00am oh, okay. So it's not. Okay. It's five hours ahead. But I always, these days, if people have trouble getting in, I always suggest that they just try climate climate crisis club.org and then you go straight into the web site which is a new thing, newish thing. And then once you're in the website there's a lot of links there that work basically because Kim, who's really like our driving force for all things. Yeah. Site wise is brilliant at that. And she, she was a founding member too. Really. She really come in really early and once this kind of this small group got going then very early on really expanded quite fast suddenly and it became that proper community. It was a, it was a nuclear, a sort of nucleus to start with and then it became a community. And as a community the, the, the. One of the most interesting things I find about it is this idea that people can talk about it and use the place for as a friendly place to be and at the same time to understand the situation with a lot of the climate stuff. And it is, you know, we have some very in depth conversations and we. There's a lot of people with a lot of knowledge there. Sometimes they fall out, people go, they come back, they go again. A lot of people do actually burn out as well. There is a, in it, there's happening and that's, you know, if somebody burns out then there's a massive amount of support and there's also time to sort of chill and go and come back to recover. Basically. Yeah, it is the Biggest problem in the world. And it takes its toll. No doubt about that. It has on me. I mean, trying to keep up with America in the American time zone is, you know, Andrea, what it's like. It's. It's a, it's a nightmare really. A lot of the time how you get around that is. I've completely changed my hours and at the same time I'm trying to work. Still. Still working, yeah. Getting up and going. Going out a little bit later. Thank goodness I'm an independent stonemason and. And, and actually still getting the work done but still keeping in with the. The club. It's. It has a very diverse set of members as well, I would just say. Go on. Yes. So. So I was going to go. I mean, you know, so basically on a Saturday about

4: 52:44

00 in the afternoon. PM in London. Yeah. Work out wherever that translates to. Now, now I know it's 4 o'. Clock. I thought it was like 11 o'. Clock. So 11 o' clock with my mom. So. So I look at 11 o' clock and I didn't realize the time zone. I got wrong time. So. So it's actually four o' clock in London and. Or around there because clock's going to change. Right. So is it. Which is the send. Which is the time is based on when you. We're gonna go stick to four and stick. Just keep to 4p. 4pm in. In the UK because the club will go on for six hours, usually five or six hours anyway. And it's okay, drop out. It's. It's view only. View only. But be there in person, not view only. Sorry, it's be there in person, choose to speak. If you don't. If you want to speak, that's cool. A lot of people just like to sit and listen. A lot of people are very active and we'll go straight into the speaking at a drop of a hat. And then there's anonymous listeners as well. I have mentioned, I think to Alex that anonymous listeners are fine because, you know, if it comes up on the stats later, this is great because this is people. I don't. Who cares who's listening? If people want to listen anonymously, that's fine because at least they are listening. At least there are people involved in it and actually who have gone there to have a listen and they don't have to advertise their presence necessarily because it's, it's. They are, they are there. The whole idea is to get as much, you know, expansion as possible, not just not Just to be sort of ticking buttons, Twitter buttons, snacking up, stack stats of. What do you call it, you know, sort of scouts, if you like, of people. The whole idea is to actually change minds about this thing. And I, I think in its own sort of modest way it is working. Don't forget there are sprung up about, about five or six other groups in Twitter mostly that, you know, spaces that have sprung up around. Yeah. Around extensions. Yeah. Satellite ones. So different languages and. Yeah, yeah, but also they're different topics, but they, and they are, they have their own identity. They're not some, some kind of claustrophobic, kind of like everybody's in the club all at the same time. There are different ones that are actually, that have evolved, if you like, over the same time. Can I say something about the indigenous community? Yeah, because we did have a very, we had a very strong indigenous community thread running through it for a number of weeks. There was a bust up, that happens. And. But we've kept up with some of the people who were involved in the indigenous side of it. Robert's been particularly strong like that and very, very, very keen. Robert Toskins, that is, who've come across, obviously, and he, he's very keen on that. And I am doing a, quote, quieter sort of way. It's always, you know, quiet away with me, I suppose. But the point is about the indigenous communities is I have the very strong understanding that indigenous communities in themselves hold most of the keys to getting through this. They have the knowledge, they have the understanding, they have the community above all that is particularly, that has, that has weathered, you know, thousands and thousands of years of this type of thing, really not, I mean, not such an acute climate necessarily, but they've, they have a much better understanding about going with the flow of the earth system itself. They just, they're just better acquainted with it. And they've been terribly persecuted by us lot whiteies in colonial, in the, in the 500 colonial years, whatever. And, and yet still they will come from forward and talk and are open to, you know, helping us and vice versa. Which is nice. Which is, which is a nice thing, you know, in a, in a modern world that is. That seems so sort of cold. Yeah. Can I ask about bus stops? I mean, it seems strange to have bus stops over a community based on the climate crisis. Is it over priorities? Is it over bus stops? What do you mean, bus stops? Yeah, you know what it seems like people who are all focused on the climate crisis and it's there, it's physical. He's in Front of us. And here's a group of people who actually already are, you know, focused on it and believe it. Can I jump in there, Ollie? Yeah, because, because it's, it's an interesting one. Right, so I'll give you a break from the main screen. I'll. So one of the bust ups happened when it was someone who wasn't American, said something that offended one of, one of our indigenous brothers in the U.S. right. And, and I was kind of listening to it and it's like, we can't expect everyone in every country in the world to understand every issue from every indigenous community in the world. Because I look at the indigenous community, obviously as an Australian, the first peoples in Australia, but then in Asia it's a very, very, very different thing. In a lot of countries, the indigenous people are the people, you know, the colonials didn't, didn't necessarily get into every country. So it's a big. And it's a, it's a complicated issue, but you've got to be very sensitive in how you deal with it. And sometimes people don't mean to get it wrong, but they do get it wrong. And so then, and, and if they, if they're not humble enough to say, I, I, I'm sorry, then it can become a little bit, you know, it gets out of control a bit. I don't know. Ollie, what do you, what do you think about that exactly? Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a. Very often it's, it's, it's a, a communication problem and it's also sometimes a personality problem as well. Somebody may just be having a bad day and they might, you know, it, they've, it's like anything, We're a top, we're, we're, we're atoms, aren't we, David? All right, so we're just going to collide with each other the whole time and something's going to spark off that from time to time. And I think that's just what happens sometimes. In a way, it's quite, in a way, in a funny sort of. On a level, on another level, it's actually quite a positive thing because it means something's happening. It means that there is, there are, there are, there are reactions going on. People are, you know, getting really stirred up about it. It's not, it's, it's, oh, how can I put it? It's become, it's become more grown up as time has gone on. People have learned how to not so much avoid it, but to manage it. And to keep going without there being blood on the floor, you know, necessarily. So it's a, it's, it's, it's. It's grown very well. I mean, some of the, some of the people on, on the space are very, are very good. Are very trained at spotting problems and dealing them quickly. So, yeah, it's. And I think with something like this, it's such a. It's such a big and complex issue. Some people are focused on a solution and that's all they want to talk about. Whereas. And other people are like, well, yeah, it's, it's a solution, it's not the solution because there is no. There is no the. You know, there's no a. It's only the. And, and so people, Some people get really kind of caught up in their. What they're thinking and that, that, that becomes a bit of a problem too. But, you know, I, I sort of mute and have a bit of a chuckle sometimes. But just because it's all you can do, you can't take, you know, where everyone's dealing with it in their own way and nobody, Nobody's right, nobody's wrong. We're all just in the middle of this global chaos, you know, in every aspect of it, geopolitical, including the, the physical world. So it's like. And some people don't have the maturity to sort of understand that, I suppose. Right, that's it. And the Doomer thing is very interesting thing. We had a huge fight about the Duma thing early on, and then it slowly became clear that there are different doomers, different types of Dumas. There are doomers, the dooms who are actually really positive in that they are doomers, but they keep going, they keep, they keep pursuing the climate. I wouldn't say Andrea is a doomer, but she's definitely got a bit of that. And that is really, if you think about it, it's very, very positive to have. To have that dumourism that you can actually use to drive, to drive the bus, if you like. You talked about bus stops, David, just now. And if you can have a Dumas that can drive the bus without crashing it, or other doomers, if you like, who they might think, I can drive the bus. And they park the bus on the side of the road. Road and they go to sleep. I can't be bothered with this. I'm a doomer. It's all over and I'm giving up. Wow, that's. That's the worst thing you can do, in my opinion. I mean, don't give. If you're a doomer, you cannot give up. You have to keep going. So the doomers who keep going are the other positive drivers and the doomers who. Who decry, if you like the. Any hope for anybody and go on about the end of the world and. And then. And then pull over and do nothing about it. They are the bad doomers. They are the. They are the doomers. I think that. That some of this climate scientists get really upset about. They're not really getting upset about doomers with attitude. Doomers with attitude. I'm absolutely. I think they're brilliant. Yeah, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna bring set up because she needs to drop off and she wants. She needs to go. So I'm just gonna bring you up to say thank you so much. Really great to get your perspective. Perspective especially what's going on in Pakistan, because I think a lot of people don't really get it. So really appreciate you coming along and spending time with us, my darling. And we'll see you again. All right? Yeah. Thank you, David. Thank you, thank you. I have to get back to work, so thank you so much and see you guys soon. Bye. I'm going to bring Ollie back on. So I like Dumas. I've spent a lot of time with Dumas because I think they are the people whose speak the most sense. But as I've said to Ollie many times before, they don't have any faith in humanity. That's the difference. So when I spent a lot of time with them, I was trying to work out, well, where's the hope? Where's the hope? There's got to be hope. There's got to be hope. I spent about 18 months just with them listening. I'm like, you're not wrong, but there has to be a path. So. But I actually. Boomers club that you were part of. No, no, I just. I just found them all. All the. All the people. You know, Professor Elliot Jacobson is my favorite Duma, but you know, he's. There's a. Actually, there's an actuarian called. I can't remember. He's. He's got a Fantastic X handle. I should share it with you. O he man, he's. He's brutal. But yeah, you know, I mean, the thing about. Yeah, the doom is that Leon Simon is another one. And even James Hansen has been. Become a bit of a doomer, you know? Yeah. But he's. He's behaving himself. He's not as doomerish as he could be what he knows. Right? Degrees of doomness. Yeah, yeah, it's. But it's okay. No, you're, you're, you're much more optimistic than I am. So is Richard. I'm probably the doomer in that sense, but. Recognizing the reality and accepting the reality, or is it. Yeah. The concept of the Duma means that they basically don't think there's any chance. And we're. We're pretty much stuffed. Right. So there's no hope left in the conversation. So that's, that's, that's the Duma. But if you actually listen to them, they definitely paying attention to what's going on. They're sharing the data, but they're not sharing any solutions. Even though many of them are still involved, actively involved in community organization and doing their part. They're not. They're not. They haven't just given up on us, but they can. Wait a minute. You guys talk. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think this is really interesting in. In the sense of kind of. Because, Because I think a lot of reason why I'm asking this is not because I'm trying to sort of say, oh, they're doing this, or whatever it is, because I think most of us, you know, we have complex motivations. We. We are complicated beings, and you get to go through periods where we're despondent. We go through periods where elated about things and can be about the same thing. You know, the, The. The switch to go from one to the other could be minuscule in, in that way. So. So there's always a degree of doom on our side, but you need a degree of doom in order to go forward, too. Yes. Otherwise. Last week I shared about the. We've lost the coral reefs, right? Yeah. Yeah. There is no hope that that will change. There's none. It's done. Yeah. Yeah. Since I've been watching climate scientists talking about it, the media talking about it, the headline is May we may have. It's like, no, that's not what they said. We have. We have the. Just today on cnn, the corals are Florida gone. You know, not. Not right now, but. But they're. That they're on the path to going right. From a Duma perspective, that's, you know, here you go. That's. That's the end of it. From my perspective, it's. That's about as bad a news as we've heard this year. The implications are enormous, absolutely enormous for the entire. For every living being on this planet. Not just in the ocean. They talk about Storm surge, trillion dollar impact, home risks, all that sort of stuff. But it's like, it's so much that the impact of that is so much bigger. And if we don't start talking about this stuff, like the real impact, if we don't start talking about it, we're not going to do anything about it. We're still frittering around the edges of what we need to do. I like your comment about the word may. Right. You know, they may have died and stuff because when, when I look at the press, everything is like, you know, it's hunky dory. We're going to fix this. We've got this and all the rest of it. And you know, my kind of equivalent word in that sense is acceptance. A few years ago, Richard and I were giving this talk at these conference with sort of single, well, single family offices, you know, big f, Big wealth. Kind of thing, big concentrated wealth. And at the dinner after the guy here. Yeah, at the, at the next, at the dinner after the guy sat next to me said, you know, I really shouldn't be here saying why, because, you know, this is really dangerous, but I might get killed in the crossfire. But, but anyway, he made the point that he, he made the analogy to grief and he was saying, you know, you guys have accepted it and so you're looking forward along with that. And the problem I find and, and that's why acceptance is kind of my first step. And, and the, the problem I find with what I read is it's all in denial. Yeah, yeah, yeah. May. We may be that. But scientists say it's still okay. Yeah, well, if we just got CO2 emissions, we might do. No, that's not what, that's not what it's saying. You know, so we, we did a show 12 months ago where we talked about the importance of acceptance. I mentioned it on the climate crisis club a lot. I don't think people really know what I mean. But to, to be in true acceptance, it's like no matter what happens, you know, I, I saw today that in a big licensing for oil, oil and gas in Alaska, I think. And it's a shocking thing, right? But it doesn't matter what you say and what you hear, it doesn't knock you on your ass like it did when you went into you. Because there's climate anxiety and then there's the later is climate grief. And we've all been through our climate grief, right. And sometimes you slip back into it. You do. I do. And there's weeks where I'm Just like. But, but that, but I can always get back to a pretty equal sort of equilibrium, I suppose. And so it, it doesn't matter what I hear. I'm like, well of course that's good. Of course that's next because I've already accepted it. But I've decided to do everything I can to fight to make sure we don't get there. And I'll keep fighting because I know the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one. But I'll keep fighting because that's what I've chosen to do for my kids future, for all kids futures. And I, that's what acceptance to me means. Like the worst possible outcome. You've already, you've already seen it. Yeah, it's not pretty. Yeah, that's probably where we're going. But I'm going to do everything I can to make sure we don't. Yeah, I think of it. Stop wasting time on, you know, on the fact what it is. And, and it, and you know, he's describing this as kind of. So I started looking up stages of grief kind of thing. Acceptance is the first bit in that way. Or, or it's the last bit or whatever it is. Last bit. Right, the last bit. You need to get there through anger and denial. Yes. And then so they have this thing where I started thinking that word may, you know, you know, your, your partner may have passed away. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What do you mean? What do you mean? Yeah, the media. I, I don't. Look, I don't. I mean, Richard, you were saying like last week, the scientists make you angry the way they speak about it. I don't want, I don't feel any anger towards anyone who can't say these words as truthfully as they need to be said. In fact, there was an article on futurism. Let me find. It was like the best headline of, of any media I've seen. Just give me two seconds to find it. And it's like finally someone's saying it exactly as it needs to be said. Come on. I'm going to find it. It's just here. No, I can't. I'll share it. But they don't know how to say it. They don't know how to. Because if they do, they get attacked and if they don't, they get attacked and nobody wants to hear the truth. We know it. I think, I think you know, from, from that sort of. Richard. Trading background as such. You know, it's kind of that stop. Loss. Right? Yeah. Yes. You know, of course it may come back, but you'll be dead before that. That's part of it, certainly. But the other aspect of doomerism as well, positive doomerism, is that what, what you move on to us with your grief and loss is you move on to a new dawn of something which is basically you move into a zone where we start to actually look at how we can save as much as we can save. We look at, you actually really start as a planet and it has to, to be on a, on a planetary basis. You can't just have. At the moment we have small people trying to rescue stuff and that's good enough. That's, that's, you know, that's, that helps a lot. But you're still in the frame of a disintegrating climate. So if you have a much bigger process of trying to save stuff, like obviously trying to save the corals, I mean, how do you save a coral reef? How do you do it? Some people think you can still do it within the oceans. I don't, as a layman, I would say no, I don't think so because the, the temperatures are still rising and they can still kill all the corals. However, you can perhaps think about doing it on land. You can either, you can either do it in massive aquariums. I mean, there's, that's happening already. Corals exist in massive aquariums and, or you can do it on, in kind of research, kind of, I don't know what you call them, kind of bays along the ocean where your temperature is much more. You can regulate your temperature very clearly. That's just one aspect. You can do it with trees, the, the, the, the great green walls. There are two of them, at least two of them. The Chinese one, obviously, and also, which is not as much advertised and is highly successful, or the one in, in Africa. And it's not just the Sahel. It's, it's all the way along which had, which has had, despite problems, has had a massive success as well. Well, for the amount of money they spent on it. They have hardly spent anything on it. I think it's 2.9, 2.8 billion so far. And it's done amazing things with very little water. However, the point is they are part of this bigger process of trying to save, trying to rescue and try to repair, trying to restore in many ways, but not just like, for, like in order to keep the thing kind of going, you know, just to keep the, the process going in the face of the disasters. They're trying to do it in a way that is actually for the future, for the kids of the future. What is, what is. We know as, as the seven generations, you know, and, and actually, I mean, it's really a lot more than seven. It's going to be like 70 generations. So. Yeah, but then, but then we're, but then we're interfering with nature, right? So, you know those green walls that are being built? So China has reduced its, its emissions, which means it's less sulfates going into the air. And they've also got the big green wall, which is incredible, but they think that's responsible for warming up the Pacific, you know, so there's always, there's always. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So here, I just want to give you the two headlines, right? So here's Wired magazine. New report finds effort to slow climate change are working just not fast enough. I mean. Yeah, and then there's futurism. The latest crime climate news is so bad that you pro. You should probably not click this and just bury your head in the sand. That, to me, is an honest headline for the, for the Times, and that's talking about growing CO2 emissions. It's not even talking about the, the five things, six things that were released in the report with the tipping points, starting with the coral reef. So, yeah, it is that bad until we have that conversation. Because when, when we recognize it's that bad, what does it mean? What does it mean where I live? What does it mean to my home? What does it mean to my ability to earn an income, ability to feed my family? Because when you start actually putting it all together, that's when you start acting at the scale required to drive change from us up. Because the governments aren't going to do it, businesses aren't going to do it. We have to do it. But until we're willing to say, what does this mean to me, my family, my community, when we're still going to buy 50 new items of clothing a year, we're still gonna have Christmas crackers on the dining table full of plastic. We're still gonna eat meat. We're still gonna, we're still gonna keep doing all. It's still gonna go on these big holidays or on these cruise ships, which are eight times more polluting than if you went on a plane to somewhere else. You know, we're still going to keep doing what we're doing, which is contributing to what the problem is, because there's so many of us doing it. And until we wake up to that, that that's going to destroy the Global economy. If enough of us wake up. Right. We have to accept that too. That's part of the story. Right. So it's a. Yeah, I think, I think that's why, you know, so I obviously have a hobby horse that I keep mounting on and going on about it. But, but the, the. I, I feel very much that, you know, the way towards that sort of solution, even though it's mine or whatever it is, is closer to what Andrea is sort of describing, you know, because even if you had the mechanism that will fix this, and I believe I have the mechanism that will fix this, if you just go and push on that mechanism, you will fail. Or precisely what Andre is describing, because there's a whole transformation of what we think of as wisdom. Yeah. That. That has to be a come. That has to lead it. Yeah. And. And the great thing I feel about all these things breaking down is actually is forcing people to transform that because it doesn't work. The economy doesn't serve you. If you're a young person, you're kind of stuffed. So that gives them the opportunity actually to, to explore. If you can accept that. Because if you don't accept it, you go along and say, well, you know, there should be more jobs for me. I should be able to do this and that and all the rest of it. Yeah. So, Ollie, you're okay to stay with us? Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So Ollie is actually probably one of our most regular listeners. Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's good, it's good having you here. So let's just quickly go into the news. So I'll just, I'll just go through a few pieces that happened this week. So obviously we had the, the Louvre museum heist which was all kind of very, you know, Oceans 11, but then also the death of Ace. Ace Freely from kiss, who was all of our generation. Former Australian Prime Minister is the ambassador to the. Yes. And he's been insulted by Trump in front of the current Prime Minister. But thankfully albanese sticking behind him. George Santos. Have you looked into what this guy got up to do? You know, disgraceful is. He's the creep of creeps. Anyway. He's. He's got his pardon. So did one of the crypto guys. And then we had a whole bunch of young Republicans sending out the most vile sort of in a group chat, racist comments, including things like I love Hitler. I'm like, I, you know, if you put a. If I had a bingo card for people loving Hitler in, in our future, I, I wouldn't have Believed it. I just. I don't get it. Anyway, Van said, oh, they're just being kids. They shouldn't be punished. They're in their late 20s and 30s like my kids. Yeah, I get it. And okay, so how's this for another media headline that I, I thought does not give us all too much hope in the future? Anthropic has a plan to keep its AI from building a nuclear weapon. Will it work? Ah, there a possibility it won't work. I mean you don't have to use that proper. You just go to Gro. Where are they based? Well, yeah, exactly. Right. What country they got on the. On the pad, weren't it? All right. No Kings process thoughts. I mean, I felt good that they were sort of look, potentially looking at the number that is the absolute tipping point for a society to turn against. Great. The rulers. But anyway, thoughts. It's going to be the farmers, not the. Not the. No kings. Yeah, I suspect I'm with. With Oliver on that one. I think they wield a bit more power. Yeah. And they're not very happy. Other manosphere too. They're turning away. So that, that, that's. That's a good thing. So manosphere were one of the areas that I identified as missing in my election analysis. And then the tech oligarchy. So I don't think they. It's in their interest to turn away. I think they'll hold on for as long as they can. But yeah, I'm with you on the farmers. I mean, I, I think. I think that, that, you know, but the Nose Kings protest is very much kind of U S. Right. So in, in the sense that, you know, in the UK is you obviously are not going to say the no Kings protest. And many countries in the world have actually a king and a monarch. I think you might actually. So at the moment, down here is no tyrant. So the UK protest was called the no tyrant protest outside the US Ah, interesting. So that, you know, this is not like you stand outside the embassy to protest against Charles. Yeah, right. Which a no King's protest would be exactly what that is in this country. So what do you. What did you think of the AI video of him dumping on protesters? I mean, it's. It's so bizarre. Right. And so weird. It's on a whole new spectra of really. Really. I just don't think maybe with the mega crowd it resonated, but for. For me it just came across as. So Newsom's fantastic at trolling and, and doing. It's clever, you know, just the way he. And it's always in response to this, this, this felt very. Yeah, it didn't feel right. It obviously wasn't right. Right. But it didn't feel, it didn't feel clever. It felt just childish. Trump had a mask on and it wasn't covering his nose. So if he'd been in a jet fighter, he'd have blacked out. It just wasn't on there. It was. They said, we either show his face or we show it covered. The idiot Magaz might, or whoever they are now might not recognize it as Trump. I mean, simple. So, yeah, no, no, no nose covering. A bit like with the pandemic, you know, with people with their masks. Any thoughts? Well, I mean, I, I think, I think it's a, is an attempt to, you know, what has happened in America. So I'm going to take it back to America in, in the sense of what's going on there. What has happened in America is that it has a. Had a massive erosion of all three channels of kind of power from, you know, the, the, the houses, the, the law and the presidency in that way. Not only I mentioned this before or to someone else, but I think there was a re. Comment by one of the Supreme Court judges about how the amount of time that they spend looking at the, at the cases put about Trump's use of executive power is minimal. They basically just say, fine, he's okay to use it in that way, which completely kind of erases that role of the Supreme Court in that sense. So what, what this is in the protest, I think is. Is really an attempt to say, well, what else can we do in that way? Because they. They've indicted him. He's been found guilty of charges that actually people would find to be completely appalling. He has managed to go along and strangle the educational institutions. He has made law firms kowtow to him in every way. And so he is doing exactly what, you know, kind of, when you look at German history, has been going on in what's happening in Germany in the early 1930s. So, yeah, in, in that way. So, so this is really kind of attempt to try and bring it along. But I think the problem with it is that these protests don't ring together. And that's the big problem along there. Is it like, you know, when Oliver talks about the disagreements in the climate crisis club, they, they are fruitful disagreements. Yeah. These just segregate more. So I don't think they actually are going to achieve what he wants because. Is actually, I don't Know, there was, there was a lot of red state activity in the protest as well. So that to me gave me a bit more hope. Yeah. But if you look at the demographics, even in the red states, it was very split. I mean across most of America was very split. The electoral college is the thing that actually tips the state into red and blue, but the actual distributions themselves were very split. Yeah. All right. So David, do you want to give us a couple of quick newspapers before we move on? So jobless for young people is a problem, which we know. And Hong Kong has increased. You know, young people drop this rate and this is kind of a beginning to be a worry along. So I think that's going to be a major thing as we go along through especially they are coming on further and further and that's worth watching. The kind of extraterrestrial territorial strikes the US have been having in, in, in, in kind of like blowing up boats around the place saying they're drug trafficking and then just kind of saying, you know, we, we say they're drug trafficking in that way. That's going to, you know, it's triggered kind of reactions from Colombia is tricking clearly reactions with Venezuela and stuff. I don't think they're going to stop doing it. They're probably going to continue. It's going to be a problem. It's. It reminds me of Philippines, their president Duarte. Yeah. Who had his death squad as his answer to the drug problems. So. And I guess that sort of might go into your right wing politicians. The world going more right wing along. Well, think of where Jata is now. Right. So maybe, maybe that's the future for them too. I don't. Yeah, maybe, maybe. Well, Sarcos has ended up in jail, so another right wing politician. But we have a new right wing politician coming along in Japan who is the, the new woman supposedly, you know, cracking the glass ceiling by being right wing. So maybe that's the only way to be to crack the glass ceiling in that way through. That's, that's an interesting perspective because, you know, Hillary Clinton never got anywhere. The, even the UK's kind of left wing female politicians never got anywhere in that way either. The right wing one. So that's a kind of thing. And of course, you know, we all found that. I found this through Canva the other day. I was trying to open up my Canva to work and found that it didn't because Amazon services went down. And the thing about it that people don't quite realize is very often is it's like you know, around where I live in London, there are a number of main, main roads that go east, west. One of them go down, the other ones all pile up because traffic has to go somewhere. But even if you don't think you are affected, you're affected. And that's kind of like the climate crisis. Everything's so connected along. When Amazon goes down, everything else gets affected along for that too. I think that's worth bringing along there. Yeah, that's going to be. It's a big part of the story, so. But the message is, if you want to become a female politician, become a hard ass. Yeah, yes, absolutely. Noted. All right, so we talked about the global economy last week and Richard, you gave us sort of your take and David jumped in as well. So I always really value this. So there was a video on DW I can share DW News, which is German, and it basically talks about France's economic crisis and it asks the question, is all of Europe at risk? So I wanted to get Richard's thoughts on not just the video, but just the bigger story. Well, I, I think you're a bit at risk. And if we rewind back to, you know, when we formed the EU in the Post World War II era, I believe de Gaulle once said something like, Europe is France and Germany. The rest are just tidbits. And, you know, on one level, he's absolutely correct, but I don't think that's necessarily the kind of path that will ensure EU's future existence. But it's pretty clear that the Axis powers of European power will remain France and Germany, not Club Med or Britain. Britain left, but Britain's left, but, you know, still wants to be kind of part of Europe, but maybe not or whatever. But the Axis of power is France and Germany. And the reason EU was created was effectively that France, as a former colonial power that had been bashed in the war, War and kind of had lost significance, wanted to remain on the main stage as a player. This is my take, by the way. That's why he was founded. And Germany knew they were the pariah of the world. So the only way they would find a way back to become relevant again was by joining forces with another amalgamation of. Of countries and kind of Italians. Yeah, but it's, it's kind of what it is. The Italians tagged along because they do, you know, and then we kind of, we added other bits as it kind of came about. But that's the foundation for the eu. And it means to me, in, in real economic terms that EU can survive fairly well, putting out fires in the periphery like Greece, it's not a big thing, actually Iceland, which is not part of EU but part of Europe. So we can cope with those things. If Portugal was to have a major hiccup, we can deal with it. Italy, it starts becoming serious in Spain as well, as would probably in some form Scandinavia do. But what EU cannot afford is a major economic or political meltdown in one of the two axis countries, because then EU ceases to function. And what I think the German program wanted to highlight is that now how close France is to that situation. And they did it obviously in a kind of foreigner looking at the French situation. But it's well worth watching for anyone with a passing interest, which should be all of us, in how the future will shape for Europe. Yeah, but isn't, I mean, isn't. Isn't the problem, you know, the fact that Europe is aging? Of course it is. I mean, that's why it's, it's like if you look at the whole situation in Europe with an economist's eyes, with any reasonable actuarial, mathematical view, it's that Europe now needs a serious jolt of massive immigration and we're doing everything we can to fight it. I mean. Yeah, try to square that up. Japan is exactly the same. Yeah. And the right wing is preventing any immigration. Right. So, so, so that's, that's the aspect of. And yeah, but you know, the left wing is not exactly endorsing it either. Right. So, you know, kind of a liberal center that kind of tries to push the economic arguments and they get drowned out by whoever is shouting the loudest, which is typically the left or the right. And, and you know, that's in economic terms because. So basically France is simply a canary. It's not exactly. France is not the canary sized, is like the big goose in the playground. I can see how going back to the comments about the bus stop, how the language could trigger Bus stop here. Yeah, right. It's. For me, it's very simple. If France goes down, EU is over, you will get a complete fracture and split because then there is no point of having it. But when you say if, are you saying, is that like the maybe we were talking about? No. France is in a precarious situation, but unlike the climate, it's still manageable. You can still find ways of actually going back and restoring some resemblance of normality. But is it really though? I mean, is it. Is. It's kind of like the economic situation, you know, with the pop. It's not going to get younger Is it? No, it's not. Not going to get younger and you know, you will have structural problems that prevent explosive growth for a long time. But, but actually the French demographic situation is much, much better than Italy and Germany. Much, much better. Yeah, because they had immigration. Because it has immigration. But they won't work beyond 62, which is part of the problem. Right? That is part of the problem. It's like you go back to when we set up these welfare states, it's. Like. It'S a moving target. It was fine to retire at 62 when life expectancy was 68. You know, it's not fine to retire at 62 when life expectancy is 85. It's like it presents a little bit of problems. Forever is footing the bill and either you reform, but that's kind of for me where it becomes interesting in terms of French reforms. So I worked and I lived and I traded through Sweden in the early 90s when we pushed 500% interest rates on the economy, which by the way is an interesting experiment. But the aftermath was very cataclysmic. The early rendition of the ERM blew up. Sweden had to leave the mechanism just like Club Med in Britain. And in the aftermath Sweden effectively at the time was running the largest ever budget deficit the OECD had seen. And it was totally unsustainable. And the reformation of the early rendition of the welfare state took place with the regime change in 1994 where the sort of center right government got replaced by a center left government. And it very much in my mind resonates that I only think you can get serious change to outdated and obsolete welfare systems because the economics have changed from the left. I don't think you can ever change them from the right because the elements on the left hand side will rebel against it until they bring it down. And the right hand side normally typically don't understand how to formulate the most important aspects of what developed first stage should provide. Which by the way, I totally agree with. I think you should have a structure that allows a minimum level of welfare to citizens. What Europe and the west is facing is an uneconomic situation. We cannot continue to provide these services and you need to reform it. And France now being the goose shaped canary in the coal mine is telling us that you need reform if you're going to survive. How do you do go about it? Personally, I think that change can only come from the left, not from the right. Just to put in some context, I mean the French government deficit is about $160 trillion sorry, 60 billion euros. It's not that much in. In that way, but the total revenue for the government is about 480 billion or something. So. So it's like a third of it. So that wasn't it 100 of GDP or something. That is about 100% of GDP, which obviously is way above what Europe was founded on with a 60 deficit. But that's. Right, that's not the budget deficit. No, that's the debt. It's not the. But it's not the debt. You know, you can own a big house with a huge debt. As long as you can service it, you're kind of okay. But it's how much you bring in versus how much you spend. Yeah, yeah. That's the deficit. That's your problem. Yes. In the roof, usually. Yeah, yes, exactly. And that's what this is, right, is the leak in the roof. This is the bit that's constantly paying out over what you bring in. And if it's a third of what you bring in, then you're kind of in trouble. It's interesting. Listen to the economics. It's. Yeah. You know, of course, that politicians, when they're presented with a climate crisis problem, anything to do with the environment or nature or the climate, and then they are presented with a. An economic paper, the politicians will look straight away at the economic picture and usually anything about the climate goes out the window. It just, you know, that goes by the board and it is interesting. It is. It. Economics is compelling. It's absolutely compelling. And. I don't see us getting any better with a combination of the two. And I certainly don't see Europe getting better without a really good, thorough intake of migration, really good, solid migration, Particularly from Africa. Particularly from Africa. Because if Europe can continue, or let's say, go back if you like, and actually develop much better, much greater relations with Africa, Africa, on, on a much more migrated basis. We could really, you know, Europe could really haul ass. You know what I mean? It could really. But it's not going to do that if the right wing sort of pops in. Right. All right, so I'm going to move on to the next question, the next bigger theme. We'll skip past a couple, but we've talked about food security and in food inflation a lot and how it's going to become worse. Right. So there was a story this week that Penguin and club bars, which. So these are all British stories, but I think they're, they're relevant everywhere. So penguin biscuits are the inferior cousin of Tim Tams, Australia's Tim Tams, just in case, I got, I got three palms here or three people living in the UK here. So I'm sure that's gonna get a response, including from my husband. But anyway, basically what's happened is the Coco cocoa has been, had massive impacts from a, from a climate perspective in, in Africa. And so what they're doing is they're replacing it with chocolate flavors, which just sounds horrible to me. But anyway, what concerns, what concerns me about this is one of those alternatives is palm oil. And I live in, I live in the palm oil plantations of the universe out here in Asia. And it's a revolting monocrop that creates massive deforestation. So they're, the climate is causing the chocolate to the cocoa beans to not be available and to increase in cost. So they're replacing it with palm oil, which is causing deforestation and ecosystem loss and you know, all that sort of stuff. So it's just, it's not a good thing. In, in the. David shared a piece. Orange juice in the UK it went, it used to be 76p for one, literally. And it now costs 1 pound 79 and that's a rise of 134% since 2020. And it's gone up 29 just in the last 12 months. Right. So why. There's lots of different reasons. So first of all, there's a disease among the crops and we know that particularly in Florida, which is where a lot of the juice, a lot of the oranges for juice comes from, as well as across Latin America, extreme weather, over reliance on supply from a single nation. You know, we've seen that with the Cavendish bananas and new rules for packaging and complexities around trade wars and Brexit. So it's not just one thing and that's important. But there was a bigger piece. I can't see where it came from. But basically household staples including butter, coffee, milk and chocolate are driving food inflation. So these items make up 11 of the grocery sort of buy, but they account for nearly 40% all of the inflation. Just a minute. Oh, coffee, coffee, coffee. My turn this week. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, you know, these, these are big. So milk, butter, beef, chocolate, coffee and olive oil. So I bought olive oil when they first got hit a few years ago and we're still going through that olive oil, if I went and bought it now, it'll probably be at least double. So, you know, this is one of you guys. Jump in and. Yeah, but what you're describing is very, very troubling. It brings back one of my favorite, you know, things to bash, which are central banks. Right. Because I really, really do not like what they're up to. What you're describing is what most of us would describe as pocket inflation. This is what people are experiencing day out, day in, in their daily lives. Food is pretty important for us to actually continue to live and do things, but it's conveniently excluded from when central banks are looking at inflation. And they like to talk about core measures of inflation. That's not actually relevant for people at large. The most important item in the whole inflation is actually food, followed by energy, which they also conveniently exclude because that's what people feel on the street, in their homes, on their journeys. Why do they exclude it? Why do they exclude it? The reason, the reason they exclude it and the reason why it's madness to exclude it now is because food and energy are subject to fluctuations. And in the time past, at the days when central banking rules were basically kind of sculpted, these fluctuations are kind of seasonal fluctuations that you have. But in today's world they are largely driven by climate which is not changing. So these fluctuations are now permanent as such. So it becomes idiotic to hold on to a set of rules that's based upon a world where the climate never changes. Yeah. And think that should basically go and enforce a world where the primary belief is the climate will never ever change. Right. It's bonkers. It's very well put and it's absolutely bonkers. But psychologically, the damage it does to the electorate is that you feel the inflation while the central bank is telling you there is none. And the consequence of this is the policy ends up becoming too easy. Yeah. So it encourages more demand when the genuine production of real resources are getting harder. Yeah. Olive oil in Greece. Yeah. Yeah. This is what I noticed exactly. Huge fires, the whole crop got burnt. Olive trees are not exactly something you just grow overnight. And then watching people in the, in the supermarket with me, you know, on a Sunday, looking at the shelves of, of olive oil in disbelief and thinking, hang on a minute, the price has doubled, it's just doubled. It's come down a tiny. Oranges in Valencia after the PL floods, you know, it's like. Yeah. And what happens when central bank have easy policy, in other words, that the interest rates are low so that it's possible to try and cope with this by borrowing bit more money or actually printing some money along in, in those ways is that resources end up becoming distributed by money. It becomes case that the one with the most money is the one who's able to access the resources. So that actually ends up creating even more panic and creating the wrong situation. But, but that pressure is now moving up into the, sort of, into the middle class, into the higher middle class class. It's impacting more pockets. Right, that's, that's, that's going to create. Climate change is real. I mean, that's, that's the reality. It will impact everyone. So when you say it's moving up into that, it's just the reflection that climate change is not what this new story says by 2100, whatever it is and so on, it's here and now. Is that reaction when you look at your shelf of olive oils and you think, christ, that's doubled. Yeah. And then you go and pick it up anyway because you think, you know what, maybe I can figure something out. It may, yeah, it may happen. The price may come down. No, but it's, it's, it's the absolute poster child for believing that we can outrun climate change. Yeah. And the enablers are your friendly central bank. Yes. Okay. All right, so there's another story on the food one and then we'll move on to the next. But which I thought was really interesting. Again, it's the uk, so basically, if you buy a packet of sausages in the UK, it's going to cost you 3pmore. And people are saying bad timing, badly planned. Right. So this is, to me, this is a classic example of what's going on, right? We're creating an enormous amount of waste. Our councils can't cope with it. Well, if, if we, if we're in countries where we're lucky to have councils, Singapore, by the, by the way, when it comes to this sort of stuff, it's like world class. If, if, if the system that's here, even though it's not, everything's incinerated. Right, so let's be clear, right? But what they've done is they've introduced this new law where the, the company who said, the sausage manufacturer, whatever, whatever, they could not, not butcher, because it's not a butcher, it's a, like a factory. They're responsible for the waste. Now this is, this is what needs to happen. What we, we need to start to pay more for what we buy all the way through to the end of its life cycle. And so like when we buy a tv, they need to be expensive again. They're cheap, right. But then they don't last and they're cheap. So we just buy another one. We buy another one. It's More expensive to get it replaced and then there's nowhere for that waste to go. Right. So now this law is basically saying the manufacturers are responsible. So I do something where I. I have addresses in my. I have a document with addresses locally. I did it in Thailand too. And it's. The address is circular Economy department. And I send everything back to the manufacturer. So printer cartridges. Right. Incredible amount of technology. I'm not just going to chuck that in the bin. I'm not. I. It horrifies me, you know, that we just chuck stuff like that in the bin. So I send it back. I don't know what they do with it at the other end. But I'm. I'm making my. My little point. But the timing is really poor in this case. So inflation is up and people are struggling and now they're saying, well, this is really badly thought out. I don't think it is. It's just bad timing because it's. They've waited so long to do something that people are in a. More financially. Well, it. It's bad timing as far as people are struggling. And now they're saying, now you're going to make me pay more. That's. That's the failure to accept there is no right timing anymore. You. You're in a situation where actually, if you keep waiting for it to be better before you do something, you're just going to be swamped and buried under everything else. Exactly. The problem's just going to get worse. Right? Yeah. So this idea is a. Is an attempt to use an old language to attack a government on a policy. Yeah. It's simply to go along and claim there is good timing and bad timing. It's a game back down to the same sort of ignoring the. The total inflation, looking at the core inflation. It's an attempt to say there's a timing to how we manage our policy. We want to go and make our policy in the right time and not be driven by the fluctuations around. We live in a world of fluctuations now. There is no good timing. Flux. Yeah, we're in flux. We are exactly that. You know, the flux. When you look at individual waste and it's increased over the last couple of decades. So waste is managed by councils. People pay a council tax in the uk, or whatever it's called, wherever you are. So you pay an amount of money and that's part of. That's for waste disposal. Right. In the uk, you've got. Councils are going bankrupt, corrupt, so they can't do it. We've got colonial waste in this part of the world that's just seeping back into waterways and out into the ocean and poisoning everything. Nobody wants to pay more council tax or council fees. Nobody wants to pay any more. But, but our individual consumption has increased so dramatically that nobody is capable of dealing with it. And that's why we're in the situation we're in. And it's going to cost us more money and we need to accept that and we need to stop being as wasteful as possible. But we can't be perfect either because the whole system is designed to produce waste. Well, the problem is it is to try and put it back in terms of the cost because what happens is you just create more. More. You, you, you end up what, what the consequence of this is. You end up pricing capacity, scarce capacity, access to scarce capacity by money. Just the same as I was saying earlier, you act, you end up pricing access to. You end up determining access to resources, genuinely needed resources by money. Both of which are bad. Both of which would. Would actually make the situations even worse. The way to deal with waste is don't collect it as often. You're going to figure out how you're going to live with it and all the rest. We had Tobias a few weeks ago who was able to turn organic waste into fertilizer in 24 hours. Yeah. That's a process that you can have in an apartment block. Yeah. If you didn't collect it, you end up driving people towards that and then you're not after. How do you actually buy the access to the collection of waste? You begin to actually create and innovate with what you have. Yeah. And, and we, we don't think like that because our conventional thinking is it will all be looked after and we don't have to use our agency in order to think. And that's why it's money, because money allows us to do that. It's a hubristic money where we believe we can create things and solve one problem. Ignore, as Chitan was describing. Create two more. Yeah, yeah. And of course polymers. I mean the amount of different polymers out there. Sal really bad at names. Gave us a really good talk about this some many months ago. It's, it's such a complex issue. Plastic maybe because there are so many different polymers that all clash and cannot be combined and are some. They don't even know the poisons in them and the toxins in them. They don't even know what's going on in them. But mostly, most of all, they cannot, they cannot cope with the recycling and repurposing of them because there are just so many different types. It would, it would behove producers to actually make a much clearer method of marking their plastic as a certain type of polymer in the first place that was always identifiable from the use from the starting use right through to the being chucked out by, by us, you know, so that they can actually store the polymers properly. I don't actually think that that plastic packaging is, has got much more of a future anyway. I think other, other materials are going to take over, particularly mushrooms. Mycelia is going to be, is already pretty massive in this, in this field and it's perfect for it. So do you know what, do you know what I'm most hopeful for? The Chinese have taken on bamboo create single use packaging and you know, when the Chinese put, put their money behind something, I think they've got the greatest chance. There's two, two quick things, two more things I want to talk about before we wrap up. Number one is we're obviously you guys must be absolutely overwhelmed with coverage on Prince Andrew and the family. But Victoria, I don't know how to Greek her memoir. So a former Prime Minister and on Democracy now, if you're not watching Democracy now, they do, they do a really good job. They do some really good interviews with some people who are worth listening to. The, the Ghost Rider did an interview with her and this former Prime Minister was an absolute animal and they said who it was but I'm not going to say who it, who it was because I've heard the name said by other people but you know, we don't want that attention attracted to us. But number one, what a bright bloody lady like amazing, like she was the first to stand up. But number two, I want to ask you guys, are we finally going to get to the point where this sort of comes out? Do you think the pressure is building enough that. Because I mean, oh mate, you look at the people that are involved in this but you know the, the New York Times piece which was from the ghostwriter said the burden placed on sexual abuse survivors. It's basically. It shouldn't, it shouldn't have to continue to be that way. The people punished the most Sarah Ferguson, a female for sending in a minute. I don't know what she did but apparently there's all sorts of nasty stuff there. But are we, are we getting to the point where we're going to see some accountability whether it's Prince Andrew? I know I put Prince in the, in the show notes because I don't know, will he lose it? Who wants to have a, who wants to share thoughts? Well, I don't think it can be called Prince Andrew anymore. So that's a good thing. In, in a way. I, I think that, you know, I think I, I don't think we are at that point to, to be blunt about that because I think that the interests, it's back down to the no kings protest and all those things. I think we are unfortunately in a very nasty era where our political governance has been captured basically by very kind of self serving interests and the media has been, has, as we know we'll be talked about in, in that way the social, through the social media and, and the nudging processes that goes on is able to actually change that and the courts no longer serve the law. I think that's really important to actually realize the courts no longer serve the law. Scary. Even in the uk. So I don't come up across the world. I think you're going to find you, you're finding when you look across the world they just aren't actually, you know, kind of back in the day as it were. You know, the courts were the unbiased, you know, here's the law, this is what it says, this is what we, we do with that here. The judgments ends up having nuances and those nuances ultimately ends up being determined somewhat by what's going on in here and there and, and this particular in, in the U.S. you know, I just don't see how you're going to get that especially in the US in that way. You can, you can, you can go and do a leak and have it leak out there as it were. It would disappear off the media. No, it would just disappear off. I've just posted the Democracy now video. I think if anything you're just watching that. I don't, I'm not a royal gossip person. I don't care about that sort of stuff. But I think this is important. Anyone? Ollie, do you want to say anything? Dufresh is Dufrey Virginia? Yeah, it's with the G. Right. That's why it confuses me. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. But I do because it's strange that very quietly the King and Queen Camilla, they took off and they just went and prayed with the pope after 600 years, thereabouts. Was it 600? Yeah. 505. 500, yeah, yeah. The Reformation. And that's a very interesting as part of that story because, because he was escaping from the Andrew thing really to do that. It was like a something Positive to do. It's a real positive thing. I mean, and at the same time, the whole abuse thing, of course, I mean the Catholic Church, I know very well from, you know, my working career, a lot of it was for the Catholic Church and there was, you know, there was a lot of covering up, sexual abuse by priests. A hell of a lot of it, I can tell you. You know, Basil Hume was really good at covering up poor old Tarmac Aforkor who came after him, was. It was, it really fell on him. It was tough for him. But they dealt, they did have a kind of dealing method with it, that's for sure. So it did, it did go through. And now the, the Catholics are real king makers. I mean if we're talking about kings, they are king makers. It was very much the king, you know, the King and Queen going to visit the Pope and I think that was very interesting. And they are, as we know, they are a huge and enormous body of support for the climate crisis. Yeah, generally they are, I think they are probably the, you know, the biggest fan club that we could possibly have. They just need to press the button, you know, and activate the machine, get all the priests in all the parishes to, to, to spread the word to their flock and get them all wired up and going on the climate crisis and it could make a huge difference, I'm sure. 1.4 billion people, right? Yeah, absolutely. No, no, yeah, I think it's one of the best. And, and, and the interfaith coordination that he's showing as well. P. Leo. You know, I think, yeah, I think, you know, when you, when, when the doomers say there's no hope, I'm like, no, no, we, we, we, we could, we could have like 2, 2 billion, 3 billion people activated through their church, mosque, temples, you know, because I think it's one of the best things we've got. But, but then we're also in this other weird world of religion, fundamentalism sort of around the world, you know, in times of crisis. Right. We see it in the us, see it in India. You know, it's like that side of religion is kind of rearing its head. That's not good. But. No, but it is a positive that they, they did that and it was, it was partly caused by the Andrew the problem, what they call it. The Andrew problem. Yeah. Apparently, apparently the Queen was quite. So we've had Rob Robert here and he said he wants to come on another show and we're going to try and get you back, Robert, I promise. We've got a Pretty packed agenda till the end of the year. But, um, one, one final thing and we might not have time. Richard, did you have a chance to watch Ian Bremer's State of the World? No video. Sorry. No, no, no, that's okay. He does it every year. I don't know if you. Do you guys listen to Ian Bremmer G0. Rarely. I will have to confess, I think just like. No, actually it's, it's, it's fine and very good in bits and pieces, but it's just a lack of time. It's. Yeah, right. Yeah. The constant fight you have on your hands. Fighting time. Yeah. Ollie, did you have a chance? Because he does a State of the world every year. Right. Speaking in Japan. Yeah, but, but okay, so I'll just, I'll just. I did an AI summary. I don't do it very often, but he's, he's messaged to everyone. The US Allies is invest in self reliance. So he talked a lot about that. Building long term capacity and strengthen domestic capabilities. Right. Reinforce stability first. Focus on internal economic and political resilience. Assert diplomatic leadership. And he's talking about the unreliability of the US Regain competitive position. Increase productivity, investment and defense spending and then develop hedging strategies. Don't rely solely on U.S. commitments. Build new communities. And there was an interesting, there was another interesting piece around Asia's opportunity to. On that building new communities front, especially in this region, because this region's incredibly powerful now. Strengthen bilateral relationships and prepare for turbulence. And I think, you know, if there's, if there's one message that keeps coming through, even if people want to put their heads in the, in the sand. Prepare for turbulence. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Brace for impact. Yeah. And you know, he's buckle up with the not only perceived but now tangible unreliability of the U.S. you know, in the sense that one thing I will give Trump 100 credit for is raising the issue of the defense spending. And you can't have free riders if you want to be part of the protectorate of the world. Historically, going back, US Was happy to foot that bill by being the undisputed leader and effectively having the rest of NATO kowtow into what they decided. And every now and then they would send a bill like after Desert Storm and say this, what was it cost us? But it was actually the Saudis that footed most of that bill for the war that changed. And I think Trump is trying to kind of do the impossible, getting other people to pay their share, but without diminishing U.S. influence. I don't think that will work. I think part of the US Influence clearly came from the fact that they were footing the bill. Now, that means you now have a much more unreliable ally that's in there, that's still the leader and the perceived leader and everything else, but you're not quite sure what this leader will do. So it makes absolutely perfect sense for you to find ways and create other alliances that will help you in case U.S. unreliability becomes so tangible that you need to advertise down the road. And I think you need to explore those possibilities. And for me, the obvious, you know, grand coalition in the world will be EU and China. Perfect. Yeah. Because China would throw Putin under the bus tomorrow and the war would end. If it meant a massive trade agreement and closer economic cooperation with Europe, then Putin is gone. Sounds good. See, see, See, I think China. I think China's keen on Russia because of the land it's north of China. It's basically unfarmed land, you know, and the only people who, who've tried to farm it are Chinese migrants. So I, I actually think China is banking on its neighbor being a possible. Because, you know, if you look, especially in the south of China, the extreme heat events, and you look at the, you look at the flooding events and you look at, you know, the extreme weather events that are impacting China, they're going to have to secure land for their, for their 1.4 billion people. So I actually think their alliance with Russia is, is more. Because they're always thinking in the long term. I think it's looking at, you know, migration possibilities for, for their nation. And, you know, every now and again, you'll, you'll read something about it. It's pretty hard to find anybody talking like that. But you just. From a practical perspective, you know, like, why is America looking at Canada and Greenland up north? You know, we've talked about it before, right? For me, China, what's up north, it's Russia, you know, and it's melting and there's a lot of land that hasn't been farmed and they're losing crops to a lot of extreme. But events, you know, that, that wouldn't. Change that Chinese outlook, even if you reformed Russian leadership actually would make it more likely at the moment. China, in some ways need a little bit of Russian oil, but they're almost out of that dependency by finding other sources. The moment they have managed that. Yeah, exactly. I mean, nuclear. Yeah, yeah. The renewable rate of progression in China is incredible. And the moment they wean themselves off the need for Russian oil. They will start viewing Russia more or less like they view North Korea. A real nuisance. That's just distracting them from achieving their longer terms aims. But they're also cognizant of the trade ties they have with Europe and the still dependency they have for importing higher end European industrial machinery etc. So and for, for European manufacturers. China now was very interesting. We had numbers this week that Germany for the first time had more trade with China than with the US and that's kind of a harbinger of the importance in the world. So for me, okay, the grand coalition there makes perfect sense because it would end the war in Ukraine like tomorrow without Chinese implicit support. Putin is gone. That's great. All right, Ollie, any, any, any final thoughts? Oh, well, I, I, I see the, the Chinese as being brilliant at overseas investment anyway. I mean they're huge in Africa of course. Yeah. And I would see, I would see eventually see China, Europe and straight through to Africa as being the, the ultimate kind of link. Africa obviously the wild card because it's, it's a little bit, it's explosive. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But at the same time, you know, it's a huge, huge resources not just to extract but also to invest in and they've got South Africa is just waiting to be organized better as well. So. Oh, I just could see China, Europe and Africa, the whole thing that could work for me but, and the rest. Of Asia, well that is part of. It as well, isn't it? It's a huge kind of banana of countries that comes all the way around and it would really be something to, to celebrate. But that's, that's all good future stuff, isn't it? That's all, that's all as, as in a, in a doomy way that's something to look forward to. Yeah, yeah, we need that. Doomers need that. As long as the heat doesn't get us first, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. All right, so final question. What's keeping you guys distracted? Richard, do you want to go first? Happy to. It's still Christmas by the way. I'm just sorting out the very extensive. I think that's so funny for me, the family, everything around it, it, it is. I mean I built some few spreadsheets in my day but you know, this one has so many moving parts. It's, But I think we're almost there. So by next week it will be nailed down. I am, I had some Dutch friends and their, their Christmas celebration for me was just so weird because it Went for so long and it was very hibernating. Sort of. Sort of cultural sort of tradition as well. Yeah, y. But, yeah, so for an Australian, it's like. Yeah, don't. Didn't. Just don't get it. The Palms aren't like that, are they, Olly? You guys aren't that obsessed, right? No, I'm. Right now I'm gearing up for. It may show slightly Movember. I'm doing Movember this year. It may show slightly. Slightly. I'll check. All right. Yeah, that's my description. Nice. Yeah, yeah, nice. It's. It's not. It's not a good time for females in the world in November. It's for a good cause, but it's not that pretty. All right. So if you want to have a bit of a giggle, which I'm always up for. We watched rewatched Vacation, the new version of Vacation, which I watched when it first came out because I'm a big fan of the original Vacation with what's his name? You know how I mean in a vacation, Right? Yeah. You know. Yeah, Comedian. Yeah, Yeah, I know, but I don't. I don't know his name, but I know it. Yes. Yeah, yeah, I can see. I can see his face. Anyway. No, no, no, not Jim Carrey. No, no, not the car. The other. Watch the new. Watch the new one again, and then we watch the original. I gotta tell you that. That. That still holds. The other thing we watched is a new series on Netflix. I'm gonna have another drink. Just a minute. You guys can talk about the Grinch. No, there was a. There was. Who's the guy? He's an older guy and I'm sure it's him. That's the Vacation guy. Ah, I know who it is. I can kind of see Chevy Chase. Chevy Chase, yes. Sorry, I'm just. It's this boys giving me illness. Right. Another series that I want to recommend is for Victoria Beckham on Netflix. Okay. I gotta tell you, the British media are the nastiest media in the bloody world. You are so horrible to your people, especially to the women. I watched that. I didn't want to watch it because I saw the. The Beckhams and that was enough for me. But it's a journey to becoming a successful passion brand owner and all the challenges. And it's junior. Brilliant. It's brilliant. You know, it really is. I admire her. She lives around here. She's in the posh bit around here. You see her sometimes. You do. You see her sometimes. She's very Slim, quiet lady, obviously. Very determined. My God. Yes. Done well. Thinking. Thinking about Spice Girls. I mean, this is. This is much better, what she's doing. You've got real talent as well. Yeah. But that transition from Spice Girls to this, you know, they tell that story and how she was lost for a long time and really. Yeah. Just being a young lady with all that judgment about. About, you know, because she didn't smile. She was. Yeah. So it's. It's worth watching. And I think the way women are treated in the media and on social media has always been an issue, but it's an issue that we need to overcome. So I. I reckon, Andrea, it's the BBC. They're really. They're just a nasty outfit and they're very poor on climate as well. They very much dodge it. They sort of talk about it as though it's a sort of. You know, we've done with that now. We'll move on to the interesting stuff. Let's talk about the tennis, you know, or something like that. You know, it may be a problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yes, very much so. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're falling into a trap of trying to make news into entertainment. Yeah. And historically, BBC was seen like a bastion of perhaps a bit of boredom, but also of. Of objective reporting. And now I think they're trying to dress news up as entertainment. I think it's a massive failure on their part and I'm sure they will lose their audience. Yeah. Because if I want to watch entertainment, there's so much else I can watch than the news. Right. I don't watch much telly at all. To me, I've got to be frank. I mean, there's so much social media that I have to deal with with the club and. And so on. Yeah. I just. I just. I could. I think I actually have got the Netflix on my thing, but I just. I don't bother with it. It's weird, isn't it? I'm not. I'm not going to be blurred in by it. I've got better things. Just an hour or two a day. I just. That would be nice. It would just switch off. That's it. Yeah, it would be nice. I don't want to watch the algorithm stuff on BBC. To be sure. Yeah, yeah. All right, Ollie, thanks for joining us. It's been really awesome. Thank you. Great to have you here. Yeah. Yeah. David had to jump off because he had something going on. Yeah. Yep. And I think we're going to be talking about just people who. Working in the foundations, the charitable. Yeah, sort of, you know, those sort of big industries at the aid industries. So I think we're going to be doing that. So. Apologies for the cough. I wish you. Something's going through Asia at the moment. Yeah, it's horrible, isn't it? Humidity, horrible. Yeah. Oh, that's consistent, yes. Anyway, we'll see you in a week and only. Thanks. I'll see you on Saturday night. Thank you for being here, Ollie. All right, Cheers. Cheers.