Podcast appearances and mentions of Paris Accords

Today’s brother and sister farmer panel features two of the sharpest young minds in agriculture. But can they agree on methane and the Paris Accord?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of our leading farming academics chips in on methane and the Paris Accord. Plus, she tells us why ducks are such a pest.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's REX Daily Podcast, Dom talks with Fiona and Thomas Langford about winning the Share Farmers of the Year Award at the NZ Dairy Industry Awards over the weekend, their corporate backgrounds and their initiatives to drive positive staff culture... He talks with Matt Gibson, GM of venison at First Light Farms, about the venison market, tariffs and the GE debate... And he talks with Groundswell NZ co-founder Bryce McKenzie about a new initiative in its campaign to see NZ exit the Paris Accord, the continuing conversion of farmland into forestry and a new survey which reveals farmers some farmers are rejecting NZ's current ruminant methane strategy. Tune in daily for the latest and greatest REX rural content on your favourite streaming platform, visit rexonline.co.nz and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for more.

Dom talks with Groundswell NZ co-founder Bryce McKenzie about a new initiative in its campaign to see NZ exit the Paris Accord, the continuing conversion of farmland into forestry and a new survey which reveals farmers some farmers are rejecting NZ's current ruminant methane strategy. Tune in daily for the latest and greatest REX rural content on your favourite streaming platform, visit rexonline.co.nz and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for more.

Guest Bio:  Dave Snowden divides his time between two roles: founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge and the founder and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at the University of Wales.  Known for creating the sense-making framework, Cynefin, Dave's work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making.  He has pioneered a science-based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory.  He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style. He holds positions as extra-ordinary Professor at the Universities of Pretoria and Stellenbosch and visiting Professor at Bangor University in Wales respectively.  He has held similar positions at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Canberra University, the University of Warwick and The University of Surrey.  He held the position of senior fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang University and the Civil Service College in Singapore during a sabbatical period in Nanyang. His paper with Boone on Leadership was the cover article for the Harvard Business Review in November 2007 and also won the Academy of Management aware for the best practitioner paper in the same year.  He has previously won a special award from the Academy for originality in his work on knowledge management. He is a editorial board member of several academic and practitioner journals in the field of knowledge management and is an Editor in Chief of E:CO.  In 2006 he was Director of the EPSRC (UK) research programme on emergence and in 2007 was appointed to an NSF (US) review panel on complexity science research. He previously worked for IBM where he was a Director of the Institution for Knowledge Management and founded the Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity; during that period he was selected by IBM as one of six on-demand thinkers for a world-wide advertising campaign. Prior to that he worked in a range of strategic and management roles in the service sector. His company Cognitive Edge exists to integrate academic thinking with practice in organisations throughout the world and operates on a network model working with Academics, Government, Commercial Organisations, NGOs and Independent Consultants.  He is also the main designer of the SenseMaker® software suite, originally developed in the field of counter terrorism and now being actively deployed in both Government and Industry to handle issues of impact measurement, customer/employee insight, narrative based knowledge management, strategic foresight and risk management. The Centre for Applied Complexity was established to look at whole of citizen engagement in government and is running active programmes in Wales and elsewhere in areas such as social inclusion, self-organising communities and nudge economics together with a broad range of programmes in health.  The Centre will establish Wales as a centre of excellence for the integration of academic and practitioner work in creating a science-based approach to understanding society.   Social Media and Website LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/dave-snowden-2a93b Twitter: @snowded Website: Cognitive Edge https://www.cognitive-edge.com/   Books/ Resources: Book: Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World by Dave Snowden and Friends https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cynefin-Weaving-Sense-Making-Fabric-World/dp/1735379905 Book: Hope Without Optimism by Terry Eagleton https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hope-Without-Optimism-Terry-Eagleton/dp/0300248679/ Book: Theology of Hope by Jurgen Moltmann https://www.amazon.co.uk/Theology-Hope-Classics-Jurgen-Moltmann/dp/0334028787 Poem: ‘Mending Wall' by Robert Frost https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall Video: Dave Snowden on ‘Rewilding Agile' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrgaPDqet4c Article reference to ‘Rewilding Agile' by Dave Snowden https://cynefin.io/index.php/User:Snowded Field Guide to Managing Complexity (and Chaos) In Times of Crisis https://cynefin.io/index.php/Field_guide_to_managing_complexity_(and_chaos)_in_times_of_crisis Field Guide to Managing Complexity (and Chaos) In Times of Crisis (2) https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/managing-complexity-and-chaos-times-crisis-field-guide-decision-makers-inspired-cynefin-framework Cynefin Wiki https://cynefin.io/wiki/Main_Page   Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku:  Dave, thank you for making the time for this conversation. I read in your, your latest book - the book, Cynefin: Weaving Sense Making into the Fabric of Our World, which was released, I believe, in celebration of the twenty first year of the framework. And you mentioned that in your childhood, you had multidisciplinary upbringing which involved lots of reading. Could you tell us a bit more about that? Dave Snowden:  I think it wasn't uncommon in those days. I mean, if you did… I mean, I did science A levels and mathematical A levels. But the assumption was you would read every novel that the academic English class were reading. In fact, it was just unimaginable (that) you wouldn't know the basics of history. So, if you couldn't survive that in the sixth form common room, and the basics of science were known by most of the arts people as well. So that that was common, right. And we had to debate every week anyway. So, every week, you went up to the front of the class and you were given a card, and you'd have the subject and which side you are on, and you had to speak for seven minutes without preparation. And we did that every week from the age of 11 to 18. And that was a wonderful discipline because it meant you read everything. But also, my mother was… both my parents were the first from working class communities to go to university. And they got there by scholarship or sheer hard work against the opposition of their families. My mother went to university in Germany just after the war, which was extremely brave of her -  you know, as a South Wales working class girl. So, you weren't allowed not to be educated, it was considered the unforgivable sin. Ula Ojiaku:   Wow. Did it mean that she had to learn German, because (she was) studying in Germany…? Dave Snowden:  She well, she got A levels in languages. So, she went to university to study German and she actually ended up as a German teacher, German and French. So, she had that sort of background. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku:  And was that what influenced you? Because you also mentioned in the book that you won a £60 prize? Dave Snowden:  Oh, no, that was just fun. So, my mum was very politically active. We're a South Wales labor. Well, I know if I can read but we were labor. And so, she was a local Councilor. She was always politically active. There's a picture of me on Bertrand Russell's knee and her as a baby on a CND march. So it was that sort of background. And she was campaigning for comprehensive education, and had a ferocious fight with Aiden Williams, I think, who was the Director of Education, it was really nasty. I mean, I got threatened on my 11 Plus, he got really nasty. And then so when (I was) in the sixth form, I won the prize in his memory, which caused endless amusement in the whole county. All right. I think I probably won it for that. But that was for contributions beyond academic. So, I was leading lots of stuff in the community and stuff like that. But I had £60. And the assumption was, you go and buy one massive book. And I didn't, I got Dad to drive me to Liverpool - went into the big bookshop there and just came out with I mean, books for two and six pence. So, you can imagine how many books I could get for £60. And I just took everything I could find on philosophy and history and introductory science and stuff like that and just consumed it. Ula Ojiaku:  Wow, it seemed like you already knew what you wanted even before winning the prize money, you seem to have had a wish list... Dave Snowden:  I mean, actually interesting, and the big things in the EU field guide on (managing) complexity which was just issued. You need to build…, You need to stop saying, ‘this is the problem, we will find the solution' to saying, ‘how do I build capability, that can solve problems we haven't yet anticipated?' And I think that's part of the problem in education. Because my children didn't have that benefit. They had a modular education. Yeah, we did a set of exams at 16 and a set of exams that 18 and between those periods, we could explore it (i.e. options) and we had to hold everything in our minds for those two periods, right? For my children, it was do a module, pass a test, get a mark, move on, forget it move on. So, it's very compartmentalized, yeah? And it's also quite instrumentalist. We, I think we were given an education as much in how to learn and have had to find things out. And the debating tradition was that; you didn't know what you're going to get hit with. So, you read everything, and you thought about it, and you learn to think on your feet. And I think that that sort of a broad switch, it started to happen in the 80s, along with a lot of other bad things in management. And this is when systems thinking started to dominate. And we moved to an engineering metaphor. And you can see it in cybernetics and everything else, it's an attempt to define everything as a machine. And of course, machines are designed for a purpose, whereas ecosystems evolve for resilience. And I think that's kind of like where I, my generation were and it's certainly what we're trying to bring back in now in sort of in terms of practice. Ula Ojiaku:  I have an engineering background and a computer science background. These days, I'm developing a newfound love for philosophy, psychology, law and, you know, intersect, how do all these concepts intersect? Because as human beings we're complex, we're not machines where you put the program in and you expect it to come out the same, you know, it's not going to be the same for every human being. What do you think about that? Dave Snowden:  Yeah. And I think, you know, we know more on this as well. So, we know the role of art in human evolution is being closely linked to innovation. So, art comes before language. So, abstraction allows you to make novel connections. So, if you focus entirely on STEM education, you're damaging the human capacity to innovate. And we're, you know, as creatures, we're curious. You know. And I mean, we got this whole concept of our aporia, which is key to connecting that, which is creating a state of deliberate confusion, or a state of paradox. And the essence of a paradox is you can't resolve it. So, you're forced to think differently. So, the famous case on this is the liar's paradox, alright? I mean, “I always lie”. That just means I lied. So, if that means I was telling the truth. So, you've got to think differently about the problem. I mean, you've seen those paradoxes do the same thing. So that, that deliberate act of creating confusion so people can see novelty is key. Yeah. Umm and if you don't find… finding ways to do that, so when we looked at it, we looked at linguistic aporia, aesthetic aporia and physical aporia. So, I got some of the… one of the defining moments of insight on Cynefin was looking at Caravaggio`s paintings in Naples. When I realized I've been looking for the idea of the liminality. And that was, and then it all came together, right? So those are the trigger points requiring a more composite way of learning. I think it's also multiculturalism, to be honest. I mean, I, when I left university, I worked on the World Council of Churches come, you know program to combat racism. Ula Ojiaku:  Yes, I'd like to know more about that. That's one of my questions… Dave Snowden:  My mother was a good atheist, but she made me read the Bible on the basis, I wouldn't understand European literature otherwise, and the penetration guys, I became a Catholic so… Now, I mean, that that was fascinating, because I mean, I worked on Aboriginal land rights in Northern Australia, for example. And that was when I saw an activist who was literally murdered in front of me by a security guard. And we went to the police. And they said, it's only an Abo. And I still remember having fights in Geneva, because South Africa was a tribal conflict with a racial overlay. I mean, Africa, and its Matabele Zulu, arrived in South Africa together and wiped out the native population. And if you don't understand that, you don't understand the Matabele betrayal. You don't understand what happened. It doesn't justify apartheid. And one of the reasons there was a partial reconciliation, is it actually was a tribal conflict. And the ritual actually managed that. Whereas in Australia, in comparison was actually genocide. Yeah, it wasn't prejudice, it was genocide. I mean, until 1970s, there, were still taking half -breed children forcibly away from their parents, inter-marrying them in homes, to breed them back to white. And those are, I think, yeah, a big market. I argued this in the UK, I said, one of the things we should actually have is bring back national service. I couldn't get the Labor Party to adopt it. I said, ‘A: Because it would undermine the Conservatives, because they're the ones who talk about that sort of stuff. But we should allow it to be overseas.' So, if you put two years into working in communities, which are poorer than yours, round about that 18 to 21-year-old bracket, then we'll pay for your education. If you don't, you'll pay fees. Because you proved you want to give to society. And that would have been… I think, it would have meant we'd have had a generation of graduates who understood the world because that was part of the objective. I mean, I did that I worked on worked in South Africa, on the banks of Zimbabwe on the audits of the refugee camps around that fight. And in Sao Paulo, in the slums, some of the work of priests. You can't come back from that and not be changed. And I think it's that key formative period, we need to give people. Ula Ojiaku:  True and like you said, at that age, you know, when you're young and impressionable, it helps with what broadening your worldview to know that the world is bigger than your father's … compound (backyard)… Dave Snowden:  That's the worst problem in Agile, because what, you've got a whole class of, mainly white males and misogynism in Agile is really bad. It's one of the worst areas for misogyny still left, right, in terms of where it works. Ula Ojiaku:  I'm happy you are the one saying it not me… Dave Snowden:  Well, no, I mean, it is it's quite appalling. And so, what you've actually got is, is largely a bunch of white male game players who spent their entire time on computers. Yeah, when you take and run seriously after puberty, and that's kind of like a dominant culture. And that's actually quite dangerous, because it lacks, it lacks cultural diversity, it lacks ethnic diversity, it lacks educational diversity. And I wrote an article for ITIL, recently, which has been published, which said, no engineers should be allowed out, without training in ethics. Because the implications of what software engineers do now are huge. And the problem we've got, and this is a really significant, it's a big data problem as well. And you see it with a behavioral economic economist and the nudge theory guys - all of whom grab these large-scale data manipulations is that they're amoral, they're not immoral, they're amoral. And that's actually always more scary. It's this sort of deep level instrumentalism about the numbers; the numbers tell me what I need to say. Ula Ojiaku:  And also, I mean, just building on what you've said, there are instances, for example, in artificial intelligence is really based on a sample set from a select group, and it doesn't necessarily recognize things that are called ‘outliers'. You know, other races… Dave Snowden:  I mean, I've worked in that in all my life now back 20, 25 years ago. John Poindexter and I were on a stage in a conference in Washington. This was sort of early days of our work on counter terrorism. And somebody asked about black box AI and I said, nobody's talking about the training data sets. And I've worked in AI from the early days, all right, and the training data sets matter and nobody bothered. They just assumed… and you get people publishing books which say correlation is causation, which is deeply worrying, right? And I think Google is starting to acknowledge that, but it's actually very late. And the biases which… we were looking at a software tool the other day, it said it can, it can predict 85% of future events around culture. Well, it can only do that by constraining how executive see culture, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then the recruitment algorithms will only recruit people who match that cultural expectation and outliers will be eliminated. There's an HBO film coming up shortly on Myers Briggs. Now, Myers Briggs is known to be a pseudo-science. It has no basis whatsoever in any clinical work, and even Jung denied it, even though it's meant to be based on his work. But it's beautiful for HR departments because it allows them to put people into little categories. And critically it abrogates, judgment, and that's what happened with systems thinking in the 80s 90s is everything became spreadsheets and algorithms. So, HR departments would produce… instead of managers making decisions based on judgment, HR departments would force them into profile curves, to allocate resources. Actually, if you had a high performing team who were punished, because the assumption was teams would not have more than… Ula Ojiaku:  Bell curve... Dave Snowden:  …10 percent high performance in it. All right. Ula Ojiaku:  Yeah. Dave Snowden:  And this sort of nonsense has been running in the 80s, 90s and it coincided with… three things came together. One was the popularization of systems thinking. And unfortunately, it got popularized around things like process reengineering and learning organization. So that was a hard end. And Sanghi's pious can the sort of the, the soft end of it, right? But both of them were highly directional. It was kind of like leaders decide everything follows. Yeah. And that coincided with the huge growth of computing - the ability to handle large volumes of information. And all of those sorts of things came together in this sort of perfect storm, and we lost a lot of humanity in the process. Ula Ojiaku:  Do you think there's hope for us to regain the humanity in the process? Because it seems like the tide is turning from, I mean, there is still an emphasis, in my view, on systems thinking, however, there is the growing realization that we have, you know, knowledge workers and people… Dave Snowden:  Coming to the end of its park cycle, I see that all right. I can see it with the amount of cybernetics fanboys, and they are all boys who jump on me every time I say something about complexity, right? So, I think they're feeling threatened. And the field guide is significant, because it's a government, you know, government can like publication around effectively taken an ecosystems approach, not a cybernetic approach. And there's a book published by a good friend of mine called Terry Eagleton, who's… I don't think he's written a bad book. And he's written about 30, or 40. I mean, the guy just produces his stuff. It's called “Hope without Optimism”. And I think, hope is… I mean, Moltman just also published an update of his Theology of Hope, which is worth reading, even if you're not religious. But hope is one of those key concepts, right, you should… to lose hope is a sin. But hope is not the same thing as optimism. In fact, pessimistic people who hope actually are probably the ones who make a difference, because they're not naive, right? And this is my objection to the likes of Sharma Ga Sengi, and the like, is they just gather people together to talk about how things should be. And of course, everything should be what, you know, white MIT, educated males think the world should be like. I mean, it's very culturally imperialist in that sort of sense. And then nobody changes because anybody can come together in the workshop and agree how things should be. It's when you make a difference in the field that it counts, you've got to create a micro difference. This is hyper localization, you got to create lots and lots of micro differences, which will stimulate the systems, the system will change. I think, three things that come together, one is COVID. The other is global warming. And the other is, and I prefer to call it the epistemic justice movement, though, that kind of like fits in with Black Lives Matter. But epistemic justice doesn't just affect people who are female or black. I mean, if you come to the UK and see the language about the Welsh and the Irish, or the jokes made about the Welsh in BBC, right? The way we use language can designate people in different ways and I think that's a big movement, though. And it's certainly something we develop software for. So, I think those three come together, and I think the old models aren't going to be sustainable. I mean, the cost is going to be terrible. I mean, the cost to COVID is already bad. And we're not getting this thing as long COVID, it's permanent COVID. And people need to start getting used to that. And I think that's, that's going to change things. So, for example, in the village I live in Wiltshire. Somebody's now opened an artisan bakery in their garage and it's brilliant. And everybody's popping around there twice a week and just buying the bread and having a chat on the way; socially-distanced with masks, of course. And talking of people, that sort of thing is happening a lot. COVID has forced people into local areas and forced people to realise the vulnerability of supply chains. So, you can see changes happening there. The whole Trump phenomenon, right, and the Boris murmuring in the UK is ongoing. It's just as bad as the Trump phenomenon. It's the institutionalization of corruption as a high level. Right? Those sorts of things trigger change, right? Not without cost, change never comes without cost, but it just needs enough… It needs local action, not international action. I think that's the key principle. To get a lot of people to accept things like the Paris Accord on climate change, and you've got to be prepared to make sacrifices. And it's too distant a time at the moment, it has to become a local issue for the international initiatives to actually work and we're seeing that now. I mean… Ula Ojiaku:  It sounds like, sorry to interrupt - it sounds like what you're saying is, for the local action, for change to happen, it has to start with us as individuals… Dave Snowden:  The disposition… No, not with individuals. That's actually very North American, the North European way of thinking right. The fundamental kind of basic identity structure of humans is actually clans, not individuals. Ula Ojiaku:  Clans... Dave Snowden:  Yeah. Extended families, clans; it's an ambiguous word. We actually evolved for those. And you need it at that level, because that's a high level of social interaction and social dependency. And it's like, for example, right? I'm dyslexic. Right? Yeah. If I don't see if, if the spelling checker doesn't pick up a spelling mistake, I won't see it. And I read a whole page at a time. I do not read it sentence by sentence. All right. And I can't understand why people haven't seen the connections I make, because they're obvious, right? Equally, there's a high degree of partial autism in the Agile community, because that goes with mathematical ability and thing, and that this so-called education deficiencies, and the attempt to define an ideal individual is a mistake, because we evolved to have these differences. Ula Ojiaku:  Yes. Dave Snowden:  Yeah. And the differences understood that the right level of interaction can change things. So, I think the unit is clan, right for extended family, or extended, extended interdependence. Ula Ojiaku:  Extended interdependence… Dave Snowden:  We're seeing that in the village. I mean, yeah, this is classic British atomistic knit, and none of our relatives live anywhere near us. But the independence in the village is increasing with COVID. And therefore, people are finding relationships and things they can do together. Now, once that builds to a critical mass, and it does actually happen exponentially, then bigger initiatives are possible. And this is some of the stuff we were hoping to do in the US shortly on post-election reconciliation. And the work we've been doing in Malmo, in refugees and elsewhere in the world, right, is you change the nature of localized interaction with national visibility, so that you can measure the dispositional state of the system. And then you can nudge the system when it's ready to change, because then the energy cost of change is low. But that requires real time feedback loops in distributed human sensor networks, which is a key issue in the field guide. And the key thing that comes back to your original question on AI, is, the internet at the moment is an unbuffered feedback loop. Yeah, where you don't know the source of the data, and you can't control the source of the data. And any network like that, and this is just apriori science factor, right will always become perverted. Ula Ojiaku:  And what do you mean by term apriori? Dave Snowden:  Oh, before the facts, you don't need to, we don't need to wait for evidence. It's like in an agile, you can look at something like SAFe® which case claims to scale agile and just look at it you say it's apriori wrong (to) a scale a complex system. So, it's wrong. All right. End of argument right. Now let's talk about the details, right. So yeah, so that's, you know, that's coming back. The hyper localization thing is absolutely key on that, right? And the same is true to be honest in software development. A lot of our work now is to understand the unarticulated needs of users. And then shift technology in to actually meet those unarticulated needs. And that requires a complex approach to architecture, in which people and technology are objects with defined interactions around scaffolding structures, so that applications can emerge in resilience, right? And that's actually how local communities evolve as well. So, we've now got the theoretical constructs and a lot of the practical methods to actually… And I've got a series of blog posts - which I've got to get back to writing - called Rewilding Agile. And rewilding isn't returning to the original state, it's restoring balance. So, if you increase the number of human actors as your primary sources, and I mean human actors, not as people sitting on (in front of) computer screens who can be faked or mimicked, yeah? … and entirely working on text, which is about 10%, of what we know, dangerous, it might become 80% of what we know and then you need to panic. Right? So, you know, by changing those interactions, increasing the human agency in the system, that's how you come to, that's how you deal with fake news. It's not by writing better algorithms, because then it becomes a war with the guys faking the news, and you're always gonna lose. Ula Ojiaku:  So, what do you consider yourself, a person of faith? Dave Snowden:  Yeah. Ula Ojiaku:  Why? Dave Snowden:  Oh, faith is like hope and charity. I mean, they're the great virtues… I didn't tell you I got into a lot in trouble in the 70s. Dave Snowden:  I wrote an essay that said Catholicism, Marxism and Hinduism were ontologically identical and should be combined and we're different from Protestantism and capitalism, which are also ontologically identical (and) it can be combined. Ula Ojiaku:  Is this available in the public domain? Dave Snowden:  I doubt it. I think it actually got me onto a heresy trial at one point, but that but I would still say that. Ula Ojiaku:  That's amazing. Can we then move to the framework that Cynefin framework, how did it evolve into what we know it as today? Dave Snowden:  I'll do a high-level summary, but I wrote it up at length in the book and I didn't know I was writing for the book. The book was a surprise that they put together for me. I thought that was just writing an extended blog post. It started when I was working in IBM is it originates from the work of Max Borrasso was my mentor for years who tragically died early. But he was looking at abstraction, codification and diffusion. We did a fair amount of work together, I took two of those aspects and started to look at informal and formal communities in IBM, and its innovation. And some of the early articles on Cynefin, certainly the early ones with the five domains come from that period. And at that time, we had access labels. Yeah. And then then complexity theory came into it. So, it shifted into being a complexity framework. And it stayed … The five domains were fairly constant for a fairly long period of time, they changed their names a bit. The central domain I knew was important, but didn't have as much prominence as it does now. And then I introduced liminality, partly driven by agile people, actually, because they could they couldn't get the concept there were dynamics and domains. So, they used to say things like, ‘look, Scrum is a dynamic. It's a way of shifting complex to complicated' and people say ‘no, the scrum guide said it's about complex.' And you think, ‘oh, God, Stacey has a lot to answer for' but… Ula Ojiaku: Who`s Stacey? Dave Snowden:  Ralph Stacey. So, he was the guy originally picked up by Ken when he wrote the Scrum Guide… Ula Ojiaku:  Right. Okay. Dave Snowden:  Stacey believes everything's complex, which is just wrong, right? So, either way, Cynefin evolved with the liminal aspects. And then the last resolution last year, which is… kind of completes Cynefin to be honest, there's some refinements… was when we realized that the central domain was confused, or operatic. And that was the point where you started. So, you didn't start by putting things into the domain, you started in the operatic. And then you moved aspects of things into the different domains. So that was really important. And it got picked up in Agile, ironically, by the XP community. So, I mean, I was in IT most of my life, I was one of the founders of the DSDM Consortium, and then moved sideways from that, and was working in counterterrorism and other areas, always you're working with technology, but not in the Agile movement. Cynefin is actually about the same age as Agile, it started at the same time. And the XP community in London invited me in, and I still think Agile would have been better if it had been built on XP, not Scrum. But it wouldn't have scaled with XP, I mean, without Scrum it would never have scaled it. And then it got picked up. And I think one of the reasons it got picked up over Stacey is, it said order is possible. It didn't say everything is complex. And virtually every Agile method I know of value actually focuses on making complex, complicated. Ula Ojiaku:  Yes. Dave Snowden:  And that's its power. What they're… what is insufficient of, and this is where we've been working is what I call pre-Scrum techniques. Techniques, which define what should go into that process. Right, because all of the Agile methods still tend to be a very strong manufacturing metaphor - manufacturing ideas. So, they assume somebody will tell them what they have to produce. And that actually is a bad way of thinking about IT. Technology needs to co-evolve. And users can't articulate what they want, because they don't know what technology can do. Ula Ojiaku:  True. But are you saying… because in Agile fundamentally, it's really about making sure there's alignment as well that people are working on the right thing per time, but you're not telling them how to do it? Dave Snowden:  Well, yes and no - all right. I mean, it depends what you're doing. I mean, some Agile processes, yes. But if you go through the sort of safe brain remain processes, very little variety within it, right? And self-organization happens within the context of a user executive and retrospectives. Right, so that's its power. And, but if you look at it, it took a really good technique called time-boxing, and it reduced it to a two-week sprint. Now, that's one aspect of time boxing. I mean, I've got a whole series of blog posts next week on this, because time boxing is a hugely valuable technique. It says there's minimal deliverable project, and maximum deliverable product and a minimal level of resource and a maximum level of resource. And the team commits to deliver on the date. Ula Ojiaku:  To accurate quality… to a quality standard. Dave Snowden:  Yeah, so basically, you know that the worst case, you'll get the minimum product at the maximum cost, but you know, you'll get it on that date. So, you can deal with it, alright. And that's another technique we've neglected. We're doing things which force high levels of mutation and requirements over 24 hours, before they get put into a Scrum process. Because if you just take what users want, you know, there's been insufficient co-evolution with the technology capability. And so, by the time you deliver it, the users will probably realize they should have asked for something different anyway. Ula Ojiaku:  So, does this tie in with the pre-Scrum techniques you mentioned earlier? If so, can you articulate that? Dave Snowden:  So, is to say different methods in different places. And that's again, my opposition to things like SAFe, to a lesser extent LeSS, and so on, right, is they try and put everything into one bloody big flow diagram. Yeah. And that's messy. All right? Well, it's a recipe, not a chef. What the chef does is they put different ingredients together in different combinations. So, there's modularity of knowledge, but it's not forced into a linear process. So, our work… and we just got an open space and open source and our methods deliberately, right, in terms of the way it works, is I can take Scrum, and I can reduce it to its lowest coherent components, like a sprint or retrospective. I can combine those components with components for another method. So, I can create Scrum as an assembly of components, I can take those components compared with other components. And that way, you get novelty. So, we're then developing components which sit before traditional stuff. Like for example, triple eight, right? This was an old DSDM method. So, you ran a JAD sessions and Scrum has forgotten about JAD. JAD is a really…  joint application design… is a really good set of techniques - they're all outstanding. You throw users together with coders for two days, and you force out some prototypes. Yeah, that latching on its own would, would transform agile, bringing that back in spades, right? We did is we do an eight-hour JAD session say, in London, and we pass it on to a team in Mumbai. But we don't tell them what the users ask for. They just get the prototype. And they can do whatever they want with it for eight hours. And then they hand it over to a team in San Francisco, who can do whatever they want with it in eight hours. And it comes back. And every time I've run this, the user said, ‘God, I wouldn't have thought of that, can I please, have it?' So, what you're doing is a limited life cycle -  you get the thing roughly defined, then you allow it to mutate without control, and then you look at the results and decide what you want to do. And that's an example of pre-scrum technique, that is a lot more economical than systems and analysts and user executives and storyboards. And all those sorts of things. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku:  Well, I see what you mean, because it seems like the, you know, the JAD - the joint application design technique allows for emergent design, and you shift the decision making closer to the people who are at the forefront. And to an extent my understanding of, you know, Scrum … I mean, some agile frameworks - that's also what they promote… Dave Snowden:  Oh, they don't really don't. alright. They picked up Design Thinking which is quite interesting at the moment. If you if you look at Agile and Design Thinking. They're both at the end of their life cycles. Ula Ojiaku:  Why do you say that? Dave Snowden:  Because they're being commodified. The way you know, something is coming to the end of its life cycle is when it becomes highly commodified. So, if you look at it, look at what they are doing the moment, the Double Diamond is now a series of courses with certificates. And I mean, Agile started with bloody certificates, which is why it's always been slightly diverse in the way it works. I mean, this idea that you go on a three-day course and get a certificate, you read some slides every year and pay some money and get another certificate is fundamentally corrupt. But most of the Agile business is built on it, right? I mean, I've got three sets of methods after my name. But they all came from yearlong or longer courses certified by university not from tearing apart a course. Yeah, or satisfying a peer group within a very narrow cultural or technical definition of competence. So, I think yeah, and you can see that with Design Thinking. So, it's expert ideation, expert ethnography. And it still falls into that way of doing things. Yeah. And you can see it, people that are obsessed with running workshops that they facilitate. And that's the problem. I mean, the work we're doing on citizen engagement is actually… has no bloody facilitators in it. As all the evidence is that the people who turn up are culturally biased about their representative based opinions. And the same is true if you want to look at unarticulated needs, you can't afford to have the systems analysts finding them because they see them from their perspective. And this is one of one science, right? You did not see what you do not expect to see. We know that, alright? So, you're not going to see outliers. And so, the minute you have an expert doing something, it's really good - where you know, the bounds of the expertise, cover all the possibilities, and it's really dangerous. Well, that's not the case. Ula Ojiaku:  So, could you tell me a bit more about the unfacilitated sessions you mentioned earlier? Dave Snowden:  They're definitely not sessions, so we didn't like what were triggers at moments. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Dave Snowden:  So, defining roles. So, for example, one of the things I would do and have done in IT, is put together, young, naive, recently graduated programmer with older experienced tester or software architect. So, somebody without any… Ula Ojiaku:  Prejudice or pre-conceived idea... Dave Snowden:  … preferably with a sort of grandparent age group between them as well. I call it, the grandparents syndrome - grandparents say things to their grandchildren they won't tell their children and vice versa. If you maximize the age gap, there's actually freer information flow because there's no threat in the process. And then we put together with users trained to talk to IT people. So, in a month's time, I'll publish that as a training course. So, training users to talk to IT people is more economical than trying to train IT people to understand users. Ula Ojiaku:  To wrap up then, based on what you said, you know, about Cynefin, and you know, the wonderful ideas behind Cynefin. How can leaders in organizations in any organization apply these and in how they make sense of the world and, you know, take decisions? Dave Snowden:  Well, if there's actually a sensible way forward now, so we've just published the field guide on managing complexity.  Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Dave Snowden:  And that is actually, it's a sort of ‘Chef's guide'. It has four stages: assess, adapt, exert, transcend, and within that it has things you could do. So, it's not a list of qualities, it's a list of practical things you should go and do tomorrow, and those things we're building at the moment with a lot of partners, because we won't try and control this; this needs to be open. Here's an assessment process that people will go through to decide where they are. So that's going to be available next week on our website. Ula Ojiaku:  Oh, fantastic! Dave Snowden:  For the initial registration.  Other than that, and there's a whole body of stuff on how to use Cynefin. And as I said, we just open source on the methods. So, the Wiki is open source. These… from my point of view, we're now at the stage where the market is going to expand very quickly. And to be honest, I, you know, I've always said traditionally use cash waiver as an example of this. The reason that Agile scaled around Scrum is he didn't make it an elite activity, which XP was. I love the XP guys, but they can't communicate with ordinary mortals. Yeah. It takes you about 10 minutes to tune into the main point, and even you know the field, right. And he (Jeff Sutherland) made the Scrum Guide open source. And that way it's great, right. And I think that that's something which people just don't get strategic with. They, in early stages, you should keep things behind firewalls. When the market is ready to expand, you take the firewalls away fast. Because I mean, getting behind firewalls initially to maintain coherence so they don't get diluted too quickly, or what I call “hawks being made into pigeons”. Yeah. But the minute the market is starting to expand, that probably means you've defined it so you release the firewall so the ideas spread very quickly, and you accept the degree of diversity on it. So that's the reason we put the Wiki. Ula Ojiaku:  Right. So, are there any books that you would recommend, for anyone who wants to learn more about what you've talked about so far. Dave Snowden:  You would normally produce the theory book, then the field book, but we did it the other way around. So, Mary and I are working on three to five books, which will back up the Field Guide. Ula Ojiaku:  Is it Mary Boone? Dave Snowden:  Mary Boone. She knows how to write to the American managers, which I don't, right… without losing integrity. So that's coming, right. If you go onto the website, I've listed all the books I read. I don't think… there are some very, very good books around complexity, but they're deeply specialized, they're academic. Gerard's book is just absolutely brilliant but it's difficult to understand if you don't have a philosophy degree. And there are some awfully tripe books around complexity - nearly all of the popular books I've seen, I wouldn't recommend. Yeah. Small Groups of Complex Adaptive Systems is probably quite a good one that was published about 20 years ago. Yeah, but that we got a book list on the website. So, I would look at that. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Thank you so much for that. Do you have any ask of the audience and how can they get to you? Dave Snowden:  We've open-sourced the Wiki, you know, to create a critical mass, I was really pleased we have 200 people volunteered to help populate it. So, we get the all the methods in the field guide them. And they're actively working at that at the moment, right, and on a call with them later. And to be honest, I've done 18-hour days, the last two weeks, but 8 hours of each of those days has been talking to the methods with a group of people Academy 5, that's actually given me a lot of energy, because it's huge. So, get involved, I think it's the best way… you best understand complexity by getting the principles and then practicing it. And the key thing I'll leave us with is the metaphor. I mentioned it a few times - a recipe book user has a recipe, and they follow it. And if they don't have the right ingredients, and if they don't have the right equipment, they can't operate. Or they say it's not ‘true Agile'. A chef understands the theory of cooking and has got served in apprenticeship. So, their fingers know how to do things. And that's… we need… a downside.. more chefs, which is the combination of theory and practice. And the word empirical is hugely corrupted in the Agile movement. You know, basically saying, ‘this worked for me' or ‘it worked for me the last three times' is the most dangerous way of moving forward. Ula Ojiaku:  Because things change and what worked yesterday might not work Dave Snowden:  And you won't be aware of what worked or didn't work and so on. Ula Ojiaku:  And there's some bias in that. Wouldn't you say? Dave Snowden:  We've got an attentional blindness if you've got Ula Ojiaku:  Great. And Dave, where can people find you? Are you on social media? Dave Snowden:  Cognitive. Yeah, social media is @snowded. Yeah. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Two websites – the Cognitive Edge website, which is where I blog, and there's a new Cynefin Center website now, which is a not-for-profit arm. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. All these would be in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time, Dave. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Dave Snowden:  Okay. Thanks a lot.

The Taxpayer's Union popular podcast Taxpayer Talk returns with host Peter Williams and the Taxpayer's Union Climate and Fiscal Policy analyst Levi Gibbs talking about New Zealand's commitments (or lack of them) under the Paris Accord and how the Government can close the forecast 17 billion dollar budget deficit.Hear Levi explain why the Treasury forecast of New Zealand's $20 billion plus commitment to buy carbon credits may not come to pass. Then he suggests ways to better manage the New Zealand Government's asset schedule to reduce the huge budget black hole. But are the suggestions politically possible? Support the show

North Otago farmer and award-winning environmentalist. Today we talk about semen-testing bulls, Trump, the Paris Accord and a ripper of a season - in no particular order. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's REX Daily Podcast, Dom talks with Simon Quilty from Global AgriTrends about the US trade tariffs, why he thinks NZ is in a good place to weather the storm and why he's predicting record meat prices in the next 12-18 months... He talks with Associate Agriculture Minister Andrew Hoggard about whether NZ should remain in the Paris Accord, the continued efforts to stay on top of wilding pines and his biggest concerns in his capacity as Biosecurity Minister... And he talks with Dr Trish Pearce, Executive Adviser to the Equine Health Association, about a new system for tracking horses in NZ, why she believes it's needed and what will horse owners be required to do. Tune in daily for the latest and greatest REX rural content on your favourite streaming platform, visit rexonline.co.nz and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for more.

Dom talks with Associate Agriculture Minister Andrew Hoggard about whether NZ should remain in the Paris Accord, the continued efforts to stay on top of wilding pines and his biggest concerns in his capacity as Biosecurity Minister. Tune in daily for the latest and greatest REX rural content on your favourite streaming platform, visit rexonline.co.nz and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for more.

We asked the Act Party leader and soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister if the current Deputy Prime Minister has cut his lunch when it comes to the “War on Woke” and pulling out of the Paris Accord. And has Seymour gone soft on the supermarkets?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Given deeply polarized domestic politics and insufficient international commitment to the Paris Accord, can we reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avert some of the worst effects of climate change before it's too late? It's an elemental question that warrants despair, yes, but plenty of hope too. Political scientist Leigh Raymond, a 2021-22 CASBS fellow, explores the implicated issues through a conversation about "Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere" with its author, sustainability scientist Rob Jackson. Jackson launched the book project as a 2019-20 CASBS fellow.ROB JACKSON: Faculty page | Stanford profile | CASBS profile | Jackson on Google Scholar | Global Carbon Project | Publisher page for Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere (Simon & Schuster, 2024)Media related to Into the Clear Blue Sky: KQED Forum | The Times | Scientific American | Aeon | Wired | Times Literary Supplement | The Conversation | Chemical & Engineering News | Civil Eats | more Scientific American | Literary Hub | Heatmap | Environmental Health News | Orion | Fast Company | Inside Climate News | The Wall Street Journal | Atmos | ACS Publications |LEIGH RAYMOND: Faculty page | on Google Scholar | Publisher page for Reclaiming the Atmospheric Commons: The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and a New Model of Emissions Trading (MIT Press, 2016) | 2017 book award announcement |"What Climate Policies do Americans Want from Their Legislatures?" Good Authority (July 5, 2022)"Building Support for Carbon Pricing - Lessons from Cap-and-trade Policies," Energy Policy 134 (2019)"Framing Market-Based Versus Regulatory Climate Policies: A Comparative Analysis," Review of Policy Research (2022)  Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford UniversityExplore CASBS: website|Bluesky|X|YouTube|LinkedIn|podcast|latest newsletter|signup|outreach​Human CenteredProducer: Mike Gaetani | Engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel |

Today we find the Matua and Prince of the Provinces in the Solomon Islands - but what is he up to? Today he's got "chocolate teapot" electricity gentailers along with the "woke" banks in his sights. We also ponder the Paris Accord and whether we should be in or out? And will he ever get the chance to run the country?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's farmer/politician panel ponder putting arms on staff, collars on cows, the Big Dry, whether we should ditch the Paris Accord, and whether the banks and the Nats are too woke. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Under the Biden administration the US once again became the world's largest producer of oil and gas. Because all fossil fuels projects are politically constituted via permitting, etc., it is no surprise that of the nearly $7 trillion of fossil fuel investments since the 2015 Paris Accord, almost $2 trillion has been provided by six US banks including Citi. Cancer alley, the nickname for a stipe of largely Louisiana coastline, is home to over 200 petrochemical plants, refineries and ports. As the name implies, per the EPA, cancer alley residents are exposed to over ten times the level of health risks from resulting air pollution. A recent report by Hip Hop, Stand.earth and others, titled “Citi: Funding Fossil-Fueled Environmental Racism in the Gulf South,” documents Citi's investment in moreover four liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals, the GHG emissions they'll emit and the resulting health harms they'll inflict on moreover minoritized communities. As likely the frontline example of environmental racism should cause one to recall the prosecutor's closing argument in the George Floyd case, “if you're doing something that hurts somebody, and you know it, you're doing it on purpose.” The report is at: Citi-Funding-Fossil-Fueled-Environmental-Racism-in-the-Gulf-South.pdf.Info on the Hip Hop Caucus is at: https://hiphopcaucus.org/.Info on Stand.earth is at: https://stand.earth/resources/citi-enviro-racism/Info on Rise St. James is at: https://risestjames.org/As for our failure to make any progress in addressing health equity see, e.g., this JAMA-published research in 2019: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2736934 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

I tell you what, I am almost torn on this talk today about New Zealand pulling out of the Paris climate agreement. The one we're signed up to along with a truckload of other countries - and which US president Donald Trump has just exited. In fact, here are the numbers: we are one of out of 193 countries that are signed up members. That's 193 out of the 197 countries that there are in the world. But Donald Trump is not having any more of it. And talk about winds of change in the White House, there could be winds of change here too, with David Seymour sniffing an opportunity and saying that the ACT Party could very well go into the next election with a policy to get us out of the Paris agreement too. Here's what he's saying: "There is a wider question of whether the government of New Zealand should be committed to the Paris Accord when half of the world appears to be pulling out of it, anyway.” Which isn't really correct, but that's politics. Speaking of, maybe David Seymour is just doing what Sir John Key used to do all the time: put an idea out there as if we are one big focus group. Somehow, I suspect there might be a bit more to what David Seymour is saying. And I bet there will be no shortage of people who would actually vote for this kind of approach. And this is where I get to the bit about me being torn. I reckon —in fact I know— there would be no shortage of people who would vote for this kind of policy. I know there would be no shortage, because I can actually understand their thinking. It is very easy to understand their way of thinking that New Zealand is a tiny cog in the climate change machine and, really, what difference can we actually make? And then there's the belief that the big polluting nations aren't doing their bit. So if they're not, why should we bother? Which I get. The other side of the coin, though, for me, is that the United States isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all. Which is what former climate change minister Nick Smith was getting at when he spoke on Newstalk ZB this morning. He says when it comes to climate change you have to take a long-term view, and you can't have politicians flip-flopping on policy. He says our free trade agreement with the European Union has specific references to climate change and we would be nuts to pull out of the Paris agreement. He says China and Australia are part of it and, if we did pull out, there could be serious trade and economic consequences for New Zealand. And this is the point where I stop being torn and come to the conclusion that we have to stay signed up to it. Whether or not we think we can make much of a difference. You might think ‘well that's a lot of time and money and effort to make little or no difference'. But is it worth jeopardising trade relationships for? I don't think it is. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found Click On Picture To See Larger PictureThe green new scam is not just dead in the US but is spreading across the EU. The ECB has made it clear they will not have a bitcoin reserve. The ECB cut rates and Trump is now calling out the Fed for not cutting rates. He is going to show the people how to control inflation. The [DS] is panicking over Trump's nominees, they know that once the are confirmed they will begin dismantling their criminal syndicate. In DC there was a helicopter and plane that collided. Was this an accident because of DEI or was this a targeted hit. Blackhawk pilots are trained to quickly maneuver. Trump is now creating EOs that he is preparing for the next phase of his plan, draining the swamp.   (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); Economy The Green New Deal Is Dead, Even In Europe. Thank Trump Trump pulls the US out of the Paris Accord. And the long-suffering Green New Deal is on the deathbed in Europe. Joining Forces in Europe Euractiv reports France's Far-Right Asks EPP to End the Green Deal Together. French far-right leader Jordan Bardella senses an opening for a right-wing coalition to tear down the European Green Deal.   The European far right has long opposed the Green Deal. But Bardella's comments came after several leading EPP figures — as well as France's centrist government — demanded revisions or outright repeals of core Green Deal legislation last week.   Source: zerohedge.com   https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1884973645895700864 https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1885049309369970761   https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1884954629638664274   https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1884954631123435702   https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1884954634839617838 Donald Trump lashes out after Federal Reserve keeps interest rates steady US president had called on the central bank to sharply reduce borrowing costs Trump bashes Fed after bank doesn't cut rates      climate change, Inflation would never have been a problem. Instead, we suffered from the worst Inflation in the History of our Country! https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1884988865229832492 Political/Rights https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1884752000518181357 https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1884720835644022843 https://twitter.com/MJTruthUltra/status/1884770928879341953  aliens to come to them and they will get them across. They're not just operating inside the United States, they're operating on the outside “We're not spending another dime to help with the destruction of this country.” That means NGO's… like HIAS NGO's which have been destroying this country via human trafficking, Drug trafficking, and resettling illegal aliens all across the United States.. not to mention the funding of terrorism.   https://twitter.com/Patri0tContr0l/status/1885025821603033261   are going to counter man missing children and exploited children going forward.” Geopolitical/Police State Trump Settles with Meta Platforms for $25 Million After Social Media Giant Suspended His Accounts in 2021 President Donald Trump settled with Meta Platforms for $25 million after the social media giant suspended his accounts following the January 6, 2021, protests at the US Capitol. $22 million from the settlement will go to President Trump's presidential library. The rest will go to legal fees and to fellow plaintiffs who signed on to the case. Meta did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.

In his first days in office, Donald Trump set about radically reshaping America with a long list of executive orders. He declared a national energy emergency in America, promised to "drill baby drill," renamed the Gulf of Mexico, and ended many national environmental engagements, including the Paris Accords. On the immigration issue, he went after cartels, began deporting illegals, and confronted foreign governments like Colombia, which at first refused to take back its citizens. Many have called this Trump's effort to "repeal the 20th Century." It may seem radical, but is it all that bad? Trump has also called for an end to the income tax, the opening of an external revenue service (ERS), and more tariffs to help encourage manufacturing to return to the U.S. In this episode, we talk about what these executive orders mean for the next four years. Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth with Backwards Planning Financial.10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.Visit KeepwisePartners.com or call Derrick Taylor at 781-680-8000 to schedule a free consultation.Buy your beef or pork box today from Salt and Strings Butchery.Book your free consultation with Boniface Business today at https://bonifacebusiness.comPurchase your body armor at Premier Body Armor. Visit Mid State Accounting where your growth becomes your legacy: https://www.midstateaccounting.net/Your trusted data and technology partner. Visit White Tree Solutions: https://www.wtsdata.com/

‘Drill, baby, drill’ is the new refrain of President Donald Trump’s second term. As Trump pulls out of the Paris Accords – again – The Take speaks with activist Tori Tsui on getting back into the fight and managing climate anxiety. In this episode: Tori Tsui (@toritsui), Climate Activist Episode credits: This episode was produced by Tamara Khandaker, Sonia Bhagat, and Chloe K. Li, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Hagir Saleh, Melanie Marich, Amy Walters, Hanah Shokeir, and our host, Kevin Hirten, in for Malika Bilal. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz. The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Sarí el-Khalili, Tamara Khandaker, Phillip Lanos, Chloe K. Li, Ashish Malhotra, Khaled Soltan, and Amy Walters. Our editorial interns are Melanie Marich, Hagir Saleh and Hanah Shokeir. Our guest host is Kevin Hirten. Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Aya Elmileik is lead of audience engagement. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad Al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio. Correction Jan. 27, 2025: A statement indicated that the Israeli military emitted more carbon through bombing Gaza in the first two months of 2023 than 33 countries combined. That figure is incorrect. Emissions exceeded those of more than 20 countries. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads and YouTube

The Trump Administration has quit the Paris Accords as is clearly opposed to wind power. But if the Administration doesn't support renewables, corporates will, as data centers add ever more load to the grid. The solar industry continues to post record manufacturing scale, demand, and low prices simultaneously - with Indian and US reshoring as the only dynamic stories alongside perovskite Comparing the capex costs between China and the West across different energy projects, it's clear that the bigger the project, the steeper the difference in investment cost - with HVDC lines, nuclear power, and offshore wind the most comparatively expensive in the West.

Every year, delegates from across the globe meet to discuss how we can muster an international response to climate change. On November 5th, 2024, voters elected Donald Trump to be President and one of his first actions was to, again, pull the United States from global climate accords. How can we take meaningful action on climate change when an election fundamentally changes American climate policy? And are these annual meetings actually accomplishing anything or is the age of multinational climate action over? Guests Derek Walker Adjunct Professor in International Climate Change Law at Vermont Law and Michelle McMillan, law student at Vermont Law share their perspectives. Support the show

A 'woke' local council under fire for using ratepayer money to fund a 'Survival Day' event on Australia Day, Peter Dutton rules out withdrawing from the Paris Accord, and the AFP warns of possible foreign influence in Australia's rising antisemitism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week's Climate Check reviews the significance of President Trump taking us out of the Paris Accords to help stop doing damage to the climate—and maybe there's a reason why it won't sting so badly the second time around. Also: There's a theme centered on pride rather than pity when it comes to dealing with another round of Trump. We'll hear from folks who attended an event designed to lift the voices of people who face being attacked and marginalized over the next four years. UpNorthNews with Pat Kreitlow airs on several stations across the Civic Media radio network, Monday through Friday from 6-8 am. Subscribe to the podcast to be sure not to miss out on a single episode! To learn more about the show and all of the programming across the Civic Media network, head over to https://civicmedia.us/shows to see the entire broadcast line up. Follow the show on Facebook, X, and Instagram to keep up with Pat & the show! Guest: Melissa Baldauff

One of Trump's first measures after taking office was to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement (also called the Paris Accords or Paris Climate Accords) is an international treaty on climate change that requires it's signatories to set their own emissions reductions goals and to report regularly on their progress.  Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement makes the United States one of only four countries in the entire world who are not signatories to the Paris Agreement, with the other three non-signatories being Iran, Libya and Yemen. Oto spoke to Amanda Larsson from Greenpeace Aotearoa to discuss the implications of Trump's exit from the Paris agreement, and how Aotearoa should adjust its own climate targets in response.

Wildfires like those hitting southern California take an enormous social and psychological toll on victims and observers alike. We hear how people and communities can heal from the “climate trauma” brought by wildfires and other disasters linked to the climate crisis. Also, President-elect Trump's stated plans to again remove the U.S. from the Paris Accord would be just the latest whiplash in a decades-long trend of U.S. inconsistency on the climate. What's ahead for global and domestic climate policy over the next four years. And the Carter Presidency left a legacy of environmental action, ranging from major habitat protection to trying to address the then largely unrecognized threat of fossil fuels to climate stability. Gus Speth chaired the White House Council on Environmental Quality under Jimmy Carter and joins us to recall pivotal moments and ponder what might have been if the solar-panel-loving President had won a second term. This episode of Living on Earth is sponsored in part by AirDoctor – the air purifier that is designed to filter out 99.99 percent of dangerous contaminants so your lungs don't have to – including allergens, pollen, pet dander, dust mites, mold spores – even bacteria and viruses – To get your AirDoctor, go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code EARTH  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode Overview: In this episode, Tracy speaks with Bill Wirtz, Senior Policy Analyst at the Consumer Choice Center, to unpack the current state of European agricultural policies, the rise and recent decline of the "green agenda," and its impact on agriculture, trade, and food systems. We explore Europe's experience and discuss how similar trends may start to impact North America. Key Topics Covered: European Agricultural Policy Landscape European Farmers Pushing Back Against Policies Why Europe Is Ahead of North America on Green Policies The United States' Agricultural Policy under the Trump Administration gricultural Policy in Canada and Recent Resignation of Prime Minister The Impact of Green Policies on Food Choices Advice for North American Farmers Watching European Trends What to Watch for in the Coming Years Tune in to this episode for a deep dive into Europe's green agricultural policies, the growing backlash from farmers, and what North American farmers and consumers need to know as these trends begin to cross the Atlantic. Detailed Show Notes: European Agricultural Policy Landscape: Tracy asks Bill to give our audience an overview on European agricultural policy, starting with the Paris Accord, while tracing its roots back to the Kyoto Protocol. With so many terms floating around—Green Agenda, Green New Deal, Agenda 2030, Farm to Fork, and more—Tracy asks Bill to break them down and help connect the dots, offering a clearer picture of the environmental movement and its origins, which are shaping Europe's agricultural policies with a focus on sustainability and climate goals. European Farmers Pushing Back Against Policies: Bill talks about the increasing backlash from European farmers against restrictive policies, including product bans, land set-aside programs, Dutch farm buybacks, fuel and farm insurance hikes, and the latest farm inheritance tax. These policies have sparked widespread protests across the continent, and while farm protests have always been common in Europe, they have become increasingly more prevalent in recent years. Why Europe Is Ahead of North America on Green Policies: Bill explores why Europe is implementing green agricultural policies faster than North America and whether similar policies will emerge in the U.S. and Canada. The United States' Agricultural Policy under the Trump Administration: Bill provides insights into how Trump's agricultural policies may affect U.S. farmers, particularly regarding regulation, trade, and environmental standards. He also discusses the growing concerns around the Trump administration's agricultural policies, particularly regarding regulatory shifts and the potential impact on U.S. farming practices. He also touches on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s push to ban agricultural chemicals and anything he deems unhealthy. RFK Jr.'s position has sparked debate, as his proposals could significantly alter farming practices by restricting the use of pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals, raising questions about their long-term impact on food production and farmer livelihoods. Agricultural Policy in Canada: Tracy and Bill discuss Canada's agricultural policies, including the government's receptiveness to pro-trade and innovation arguments, the resignation of Prime Minister Trudeau, and the recent withdrawal of six national crop organizations from Canada's sustainable agriculture strategy. The Impact of Green Policies on Food Choices: Bill highlights how Europe's green policies affect consumer food choices, comparing the differences in food systems, prices, and availability between Europe and North America. Advice for North American Farmers Watching European Trends: Bill shares key advice for North American farmers on how to avoid the regulatory pitfalls seen in European agriculture. What to Watch for in the Coming Years: Bill offers insights on the future of agriculture and green policies, identifying key developments North American farmers should be watching in the next few years. Tune in to this episode for a deep dive into Europe's green agricultural policies, the growing backlash from farmers, and what North American farmers and consumers need to know as these trends begin to cross the Atlantic. ............................... Bill's Winter 2025 Canadian Speaking Engagements: CrossRoads: Alberta's Crop Conference

After 2 years of shortfalls, Newsom proposes $322BIL budget with no deficit. META is getting rid of fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram. Also making other major changes directly related to the changing administration. Jimmy Carter raised climate change concerns 35 years before the Paris Accords. Trump is returning to the White House but unlike most presidents before him, he won't be bringing a dog.

On this episode of the podcast, former Chief of Staff at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Mandy Gunasekara, talks about her time serving in the first Trump Administration and her bold insights on environmental policy. Gunasekara recounts her pivotal role in the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, exposing the economic pitfalls and the lack of accountability from major polluters like China and India.Gunasekara critiques the Biden Administration's environmental agenda, calling for a leaner, more effective EPA and advocating for the global adoption of U.S. pollution control technology. She also shares her perspective on the importance of private sector collaboration in government and the challenges faced by Trump officials navigating the ‘deep state' in Washington, D.C. Furthermore, Gunasekara discusses the reforms needed during the second term of Donald Trump's presidency and the critical need to push back against entrenched bureaucracies.You can follow Mandy on X (formerly Twitter) by searching: @MississippiMG and you can get her book “Y'all Fired” on Amazon.com today!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On todays Show James and Glenn (the Dynamic Duo) talk about, Elon Musk's new email service, X Mail, which is expected to launch soon and offer increased security compared to Gmail. They discussed the potential return of In-N-Out Burger to using beef tallow for frying fries. The group also debated the significance of recent drone sightings, with theories ranging from government drones to distractions from other issues. They touched on the SpaceX and Tesla advancements, including daily launches and the potential for global phone connectivity. Additionally, they mentioned the potential criminality of figures like Liz Cheney and Fauci, as suggested by Elon Musk. The conversation revolves around political and legal discussions, including accusations of perjury against Dr. Fauci and speculations about potential pardons for Jan 6 protesters. There's mention of a slow news week and the potential impact of Trump's actions on international agreements like the Paris Accords and NATO. Don't Miss It!

Tim answers the call for comment and Peter Dutton (pictured) releases costs for nuclear power. "‘Farcical': PM rubbishes Dutton's nuclear plan"; "The Coalition reveals the cost of its nuclear power plan – but the devil is in the missing detail"; "Malaysia, Thailand brace for more rains after floods kill more than 30"; "Australia sweats through hottest spring on record as temperatures soar 2.5C above pre-industrial levels"; "Monday predicted to hit record high temperatures"; "How the world gave up on 1.5 degrees"; "Miguel bought a car. Then there was a $2000 cost to charge it"; "We've entered the era of gutless government"; "Why is everyone talking about nuclear energy?"; "Millions fewer Australians to drive electric cars or have rooftop solar under Dutton's vision"; "The very big assumption Peter Dutton's nuclear plan makes"; "Rare glimpse at stunning reef beside Woodside's gas-drilling ambitions"; "Dutton abandons Liberal principles in nuclear energy pitch"; "‘Amazon of the Seas' Threatened by Oil and Gas Developments"; "Big Oil Is Urging Trump Not to Pull Out of the Paris Accord"; "China holds the world's climate future in its hands"; "How good! Victoria is set to gain three new massive national parks soon"; "VIDEO: Around 100 protesters rally against a proposed gas import terminal": "Britain leads the world in cracking down on climate activism, study finds"; "Rare glimpse at stunning reef beside Woodside's gas-drilling ambitions"; "Miguel bought a car. Then there was a $2000 cost to charge it"; "Energy generators poke holes in Dutton's nuclear plan as questions over costings pile up"; "Grattan on Friday: Dutton's nuclear policy would have coal-fired power stations operating for a lot longer"; "Never mind that the Coalition's nuclear proposal is a fantasy – it doesn't even claim to reduce power bills"; "Ed Miliband pledges ‘most ambitious reforms to UK energy system in generations'"; "EPA will grant California the right to ban sales of new gas cars by 2035"; "How to stay safe in the heat"; "Global EV sales surge in November - here's how China is driving momentum"; "California conservation efforts have raised Lake Mead by 16-feet in two years, regulators say"; "Arctic Tundra Goes From Carbon Sink to Carbon Source for the First Time in Millennia: NOAA Report"; "Millions fewer Australians to drive electric cars or have rooftop solar under Dutton's vision"; "Queensland environment minister stands by ‘scepticism' about human-induced climate change"; "Share the nuclear free Australia petition with loved ones";' "Meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic is weakening ocean circulation, speeding up warming down south"; "Environmental-Political Collapse Accelerates"; "Excerpt: Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World by Elizabeth Sawin"; "Murder, mayhem, and minerals: The price of the renewable energy revolution"; "Are solar farms destroyed during storms? Experts debunk the myth that panels can't handle the wind"; "Mission rewilding: Scotland and Wales are trailblazing Europe's nature restoration"; "Climate change's more than €550 billion price tag is pushing up insurance costs, report says"; "Clear skies over the Atlantic: Is climate change to blame for the alarming absence of clouds?"; "That's not cricket: Dutton nukes CSIRO's probity"; "The Postal Service's electric mail trucks are way behind schedule"; "US supreme court hears oil railway case with environmental protections at stake"; "I regret none of the climate policies we pushed in Ireland. But we underestimated the backlash"; "'It sounded like a war': How an ordinary December turned 'Armageddon' for these Aussies"; "

Dr. Injy Johnstone, a Research Fellow in Net-Zero Aligned Offsetting at the University of Oxford, joins Mike, Alina, and Anthony to discuss the recent 29th Conference of Parties in Baku. They tackle the historical challenges with carbon offsetting, the nature of the long-awaited Article 6 of the Paris Accords, and what the outcomes from Baku mean for carbon offsetting going forward.

Can COP29 be a turning point in the fight to reduce emissions and cap warming?     The US has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 17% since 2004, and yet the US and world are falling short on limiting global temperature rise and establishing a net-zero economy. What kind of progress can we expect to emerge from this year's UN climate conference, COP29?      Join Steve Odland and guest Alex Heil, Senior Economist at The Conference Board's ESF Center, to find out why COP29 was hosted by Azerbaijan, whether developed economics will fund the necessary climate actions, and the role of the power sector in decarbonizing.     (00:49) Understanding COP and Its History (04:11) Focus on Finance at COP 29 (07:35) Geopolitical Context of COP 29 (09:42) Absence of Key Leaders (11:21) Paris Accord and National Contributions (16:00) Carbon Credits and Financial Support   For more from The Conference Board:  The Future of Greening and Industrial Policies Post Election  Hitting the Reset Button on ESG: Setting Strategy in a Time of Uncertainty  Window On: The Future of Methane 

This week's show features stories from NHK Japan, France 24, Radio Deutsche-Welle, and Radio Havana Cuba. http://youthspeaksout.net/swr241115.mp3 (29:00) From JAPAN- The PM of New Zealand offered a national apology to hundreds of thousands of children and the eldrely who were abused in institutions over the past 70 years. Israeli media say Netanyahu now admits his government was behind the exploding pager attacks in Lebanon. The Guardian newspaper has ceased posting on X which it called a toxic platform. The COP29 United Nations Climate Change Conference opened this week in Azerbaijan- the conference president called for unity and to recognize that climate change is already here despite corporate denial- the goal is to get developed countries to aid poorer developing ones. From FRANCE- A report on the financial assistance that organizers hope to create at COP29. Developing countries will need one trillion dollars annually to adapt to climate change and bring their pollution into line with the goals of the Paris Accords- one trillion dollars is one percent of global GDP, also a year of pure profit for the fossil fuel industry. From GERMANY- The Biden administration promised to cut off weapons to Israel if they did not allow more aid into Gaza within 30 days. Aid agencies say that even less aid is getting through now than since the war began. Professor Michael Lynk former UN rappoteur on human rights in Palestine discusses the situation and how the Trump presidency will change things. EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell proposed suspending EU-Israel political dialogue over breaches of international law. From CUBA- Iran says that Israel should be expelled from the UN for the wars in Palestine and Lebanon. Pegasus is spyware blacklisted by the US in 2021 for its use to spy on journalists, opposition politicians, and activists- Colombia alleges that the US financed an $11 million purchase for the spyware to be install in Colombia in 2021. Available in 3 forms- (new) HIGHEST QUALITY (160kb)(33MB), broadcast quality (13MB), and quickdownload or streaming form (6MB) (28:59) Links at outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml PODCAST!!!- https://feed.podbean.com/outFarpress/feed.xml (160kb Highest Quality) Website Page- < http://www.outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml ¡FurthuR! Dan Roberts "Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing .... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world. " --Jimmy Carter Dan Roberts Shortwave Report- www.outfarpress.com YouthSpeaksOut!- www.youthspeaksout.net

SO, HOW DID WE ALL GET IT SO WRONG?Pollsters and pundits predicted a close-run race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but the consensus was that Harris had led consistently in the polls and that her victory seemed assured given the massive financial resources at her disposal, the apparent momentum and the slickness of her campaign, particularly compared to the bizarre circus of her opponent.THE LEFT - IN A BUBBLE RAP?Nick Cohen chats again to Washington DC-based journalist and podcaster Ben Cohen about Trump's shock landslide. Two weeks ago, Ben told The Lowdown he was confident that Harris would win - based mainly on so-called quality polling. Ben agreed that journalists from the left can operate inside a bubble and can often fail to realise how much people outside the bubble disregard or even hate them and their views. Leftist idealism and a belief in the stupidity and mendacity of the opponent can sleepwalk you into believing that people share your worldview, and are motivated by the same values.FAILURE TO TACKLE WOKE & FACE UP TO REALITYBen @thedailybanter said Trump's opponents - buoyed up by the polls and the huge Harris crowds - possibly indulged in wishful thinking but they also made the mistake of not clamping down on the more wokeist tendencies on their side that played into Trump's hands and helped him scare voters away from Harris. "The left has eaten itself," Ben tells Nick."It's become a kind of parody of itself ... I've been writing about this for years, that identity politics is going to cost them the ballot because most of the country doesn't understand it."Nick also says Joe Biden should have made it clear 2 years ago that he would only serve one term. Where did the predictions all go wrong and how much blame can be laid at the feet of the Democrats? In the end, Biden was forced off the Ticket after his calamitous presidential debate performance leaving Harris only 100 days to turn things around for the Democrats. Ben says, "it was... an insurmountable task."THE INEVITABLE TRUMPIST TSUNAMI OF REVENGE AND STUPIDITYBen says everyone is filled with dread at the coming tsunami of Trumpist lunacy. Ben predicts Trump's regime will combine brutality with his trademark incompetence. He expects Trump to rip the U.S. - yet again - from the Paris Accords, undermine Nato and other international alliances - possibly fatally - betray Ukraine to Vladamir Putin and set up detention camps for immigrants - and that's just for starters. "We're in for a very scary few years, I would say," Ben tells Nick. "And we'll see how well American institutions can withstand the assault that's about to happen."Ben adds, "The guy is a cockroach. He survived two assassination attempts, he survived two impeachment trials. He survived the democratic machine that raised, you know, several billion dollars, over a billion and a half dollars in two months, that's what Kamala Harris raised, and it was to defeat him."Read Ben's The Banter Substack here and listen to his podcasts here.Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mandy was EPA Chief of Staff, working in both the Senate and related international environmental work. She became the architect and point person on the Paris Accord withdrawal that President Trump announced in the summer of 2017. She reflects upon the "Obama Climate Cabal", which is when Obama sold out America, the U.S. economy and workers, giving China and India a 'free pass'. Mandy developed many Democrat-Obama enemies when following Trump's orders in getting out of the failed Paris Climate Accord. Her new-found enemies in the deep state perpetrated a nasty prank. She became another victim of the Obama/Democrat vitriol at a climate conference in Bonn, Germany..Trump asked Mandy to come up with a better climate deal for America at the conference. With over 120 delegates in Bonn in attendance, "everything that could go wrong went wrong." Booking arrangements that were made placed her and another staff person 45 minutes away, in the wrong direction in a German sex hotel! She claims this was not an innocent mistake. This was clearly a deep state form of harassment. This vial stunt was set up by the Consulate in Germany. It was an intentional act by people angry with Mandy in fulfilling Trump's mission.When Mandy worked at the EPA for Donald Trump, she reports that Donald Trump was clear. The direction of the EPA under his watch was to clean of the air, water, address legacy pollution in the soils and to make our economy run more efficiently. She reports that under Trump the EPA went 'gangbusters' to better the environment and still roll back unnecessary regulations.About the Book:From a State Department-arranged German sex hotel to costly, unsubstantiated investigations brought on by anonymous sources, Y'all Fired shows readers the unfortunate reality of a young woman's fight to institute America First reforms and what the permanent government of DC will do to resist it. Buckle up, because this gets personal.Y'all Fired: A Southern Belle's Guide to Restoring Federalism and Draining the Swamp provides an insider account of an outsider's service in the Trump Administration. It brings to life first-hand experiences of deep state bullying and the frustrating reality of having few tools to effectively push back.Y'all Fired cuts through the politics and provides a substantive assessment of how we got here by explaining the enduring institutional challenges to reform, including passage of the Sixteenth Amendment that forever changed the relationship between the federal government and the states, and the broken promises of FDR's New Deal.Get Mandy's Book: "Y'all Fired: A Southern Belle's Guide to Restoring Federalism and Draining the Swamp" Mandy's Book “Y'all Fired” Describes Needed Reforms to Quash Deep Stateon the GrassRoots TruthCast with Gene ValentinoORIGINAL MEDIA SOURCE(S):‣ O➡️ Join the Conversation: https://GeneValentino.com➡️ WMXI Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/NewsRadio981➡️ More WMXI Interviews: https://genevalentino.com/wmxi-interviews/➡️ More GrassRoots TruthCast Episodes: https://genevalentino.com/grassroots-truthcast-with-gene-valentino/➡️ More Broadcasts with Gene as the Guest: https://genevalentino.com/america-beyond-the-noise/ ➡️ More About Gene Valentino: https://genevalentino.com/about-gene-valentino/

Post 1956, several battles are fought between North and South Vietnam.  The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 gives US President LBJ authority to increase US involvement in the Vietnam War. This is followed by targeted bombings under Operation Rolling Thunder by the US and counter offensives by the Viet Cong like the Tet Offensive. Agent Orange and Napalm droppings lead to a massive ecocide with severe after effects on the human population. Paris Accords of 1973 call for a ceasefire and North Vietnam triggers one last offensive towards reunification.

(2:00) Helene on Earth — Devastation, Aftermath, and Climate Change GriftWATCH - raging rivers and the AquaFence that saved a hospital on an islandDamage estimates are comparable to money given to Ukraine - what will Feds do?Where's the National Guard as people stranded on roofs, some died — it's abroadIdeally, how show a free society handle thisClimate grifters are indifferent to the loss of life and property and are concerned that Trump may damage Paris Accord and UN agenda.  Then it dawns on them that they have nothing to worry about.  Even if Trump did the unexpected — something, anything — they point out it can be COUNTERED AT THE LOCAL LEVELMichael Mann, false climate prophet for profit, is undeterred in his false predictions about hurricane seasonOn to the next grift…methane…as Biden bureaucracy funds nearly $1 BILLION to find methane emissions and tasks BLM to do something about it.  You know where this story leads.NEW! FrankenChicken(56:56) Update on baby Liam, listener comments, TN lithium production concerns, and another prayer requests (1:04:33) NewsDem Senator issues bill to add 6 more seats to pack Supreme Court.  Why only 6 more?John Kerry says it out loud: First Amendment is IN THE WAY of THEIR GOVERNINGWSJ (at WEF) bemoans "we were the gatekeepers".  Even with censorship we now see through the propaganda(1:16:37) NPR Rails Against Constitutional Sheriffs As they throw the usual litany of libelous labels, their total ignorance of, and contempt for, the Constitution has never been more transparent (1:26:35) Listener comments - EV fires from flooding, Battery Storage Site fires from flooding, Lithium pollution in TN, Methane, CO2, and more (1:40:44) Replacing the WestVienna, Austria - population incensed over luxury apartments for "arrivals", far better than AustriansOne of world's largest shipping companies stops delivery to Haiti.   Gangs were shooting at the container shipsBiden/Lala shown to release over 650,000 criminals into USA(1:52:20) It's Pre-Season for the Fantasy Germ Games as MAGA Cheers RedfieldJD Vance gets thrown out of restaurant for politics.  MAGA Media condemns but forgets when we ALL got thrown out of restaurants for lockdown and mask nonsense during Trump administrationCanada fines Amish for not downloading a Covid app for smartphones.  How many ways is this insane?Trump discovers what "phone apps" are — something for "really smart people"Boris Johnson, England's Chief Medical Officer try to walk back their tyranny.  Why aren't ANY American politicians scared?Trump's "EPIC CDC Endorsement" — MAGA Media sycophant and prostitute Darren Beattie, Revolver, thinks Trump's CDC Director Redfield's endorsement is a "win" — ONLY if you don't care about a repeat of 2020.  Beattie blames "hysterical women" for the lockdown.  That's a new one.SIDS (Sudden Infant Deaths) surged after the TrumpShotsCDC is now using the PCR "test" on wastewater.  Like "climate computer models", junk science and lies that are the foundation of the MacGuffins(2:33:56) Israel Moves to Eliminate Cash — Harbinger of Global Governance AGAIN Canada and USA say they're not moving ahead with CBDC.  Israel shows the global Mark of the Beast agenda is full on.  Criminal penalties for cash and prohibition of possession (2:51:05)  Listener commentsFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

The Hard Truth with Tony Shaffer – The United Nations proudly presents its "Pact for the Future," but behind the applause is a rehashed Agenda 2030 plan. This strategy drives climate change alarmism, the Paris Accords, and a new push to extract funds from Western nations. Join Cherie Currie and Tony Shaffer on *The Hard Truth* as they discuss the implications of this global agenda.

(2:00) Helene on Earth — Devastation, Aftermath, and Climate Change GriftWATCH - raging rivers and the AquaFence that saved a hospital on an islandDamage estimates are comparable to money given to Ukraine - what will Feds do?Where's the National Guard as people stranded on roofs, some died — it's abroadIdeally, how show a free society handle thisClimate grifters are indifferent to the loss of life and property and are concerned that Trump may damage Paris Accord and UN agenda.  Then it dawns on them that they have nothing to worry about.  Even if Trump did the unexpected — something, anything — they point out it can be COUNTERED AT THE LOCAL LEVELMichael Mann, false climate prophet for profit, is undeterred in his false predictions about hurricane seasonOn to the next grift…methane…as Biden bureaucracy funds nearly $1 BILLION to find methane emissions and tasks BLM to do something about it.  You know where this story leads.NEW! FrankenChicken(56:56) Update on baby Liam, listener comments, TN lithium production concerns, and another prayer requests (1:04:33) NewsDem Senator issues bill to add 6 more seats to pack Supreme Court.  Why only 6 more?John Kerry says it out loud: First Amendment is IN THE WAY of THEIR GOVERNINGWSJ (at WEF) bemoans "we were the gatekeepers".  Even with censorship we now see through the propaganda(1:16:37) NPR Rails Against Constitutional Sheriffs As they throw the usual litany of libelous labels, their total ignorance of, and contempt for, the Constitution has never been more transparent (1:26:35) Listener comments - EV fires from flooding, Battery Storage Site fires from flooding, Lithium pollution in TN, Methane, CO2, and more (1:40:44) Replacing the WestVienna, Austria - population incensed over luxury apartments for "arrivals", far better than AustriansOne of world's largest shipping companies stops delivery to Haiti.   Gangs were shooting at the container shipsBiden/Lala shown to release over 650,000 criminals into USA(1:52:20) It's Pre-Season for the Fantasy Germ Games as MAGA Cheers RedfieldJD Vance gets thrown out of restaurant for politics.  MAGA Media condemns but forgets when we ALL got thrown out of restaurants for lockdown and mask nonsense during Trump administrationCanada fines Amish for not downloading a Covid app for smartphones.  How many ways is this insane?Trump discovers what "phone apps" are — something for "really smart people"Boris Johnson, England's Chief Medical Officer try to walk back their tyranny.  Why aren't ANY American politicians scared?Trump's "EPIC CDC Endorsement" — MAGA Media sycophant and prostitute Darren Beattie, Revolver, thinks Trump's CDC Director Redfield's endorsement is a "win" — ONLY if you don't care about a repeat of 2020.  Beattie blames "hysterical women" for the lockdown.  That's a new one.SIDS (Sudden Infant Deaths) surged after the TrumpShotsCDC is now using the PCR "test" on wastewater.  Like "climate computer models", junk science and lies that are the foundation of the MacGuffins(2:33:56) Israel Moves to Eliminate Cash — Harbinger of Global Governance AGAIN Canada and USA say they're not moving ahead with CBDC.  Israel shows the global Mark of the Beast agenda is full on.  Criminal penalties for cash and prohibition of possession (2:51:05)  Listener commentsFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.

Unleashed: The Political News Hour with Chris Cordani – Make no mistake; the UN is congratulating itself for doubling down on Agenda 2030, the Paris Accords, global redistribution of wealth, and a shifting of national sovereignties toward a World Order led by the unelected body of appointed ambassadors, funded heavily by taxpayers in the US and other more developed economies...

UK Elections, the blue print. Baseball is Different Now

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled the President of the United States and former holders of that office are granted immunity under the law when acting in an official capacity. This upholds a long-standing power of the Executive chamber, one which dismantles a huge portion of the Left's #Lawfare against Donald Trump. The Democrats and fellow Leftists are in a tizzy over this, including President Joe Biden, who angrily denounced the Supreme Court's decision (a tirade which wound up being an anti-Trump campaign speech, but who's keeping score?)Also:Young EU voters continue to reject the left. What's behind this movement?China ditches Climate Change Agenda. It will no longer report emissions, it will increase traditional fuel usage. How do those Paris Accords look now?Archbishop Vigano stands strong in his challenge to Pope Francis' woke agenda for the Catholic ChurchIf you like what we are doing, please support our Sponsors:Get RX Meds Now: https://www.getrxmedsnow.comMyVitalC https://www.thetruthcentral.com/myvitalc-ess60-in-organic-olive-oil/Swiss America: https://www.swissamerica.com/offer/CorsiRMP.phpGet Dr. Corsi's new book, The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis: Forensic Analysis of the JFK Autopsy X-Rays Proves Two Headshots from the Right Front and One from the Rear, here: https://www.amazon.com/Assassination-President-John-Kennedy-Headshots/dp/B0CXLN1PX1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=20W8UDU55IGJJ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ymVX8y9V--_ztRoswluApKEN-WlqxoqrowcQP34CE3HdXRudvQJnTLmYKMMfv0gMYwaTTk_Ne3ssid8YroEAFg.e8i1TLonh9QRzDTIJSmDqJHrmMTVKBhCL7iTARroSzQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=jerome+r.+corsi+%2B+jfk&qid=1710126183&sprefix=%2Caps%2C275&sr=8-1Join Dr. Jerome Corsi on Substack: https://jeromecorsiphd.substack.com/Visit The Truth Central website: https://www.thetruthcentral.comGet your FREE copy of Dr. Corsi's new book with Swiss America CEO Dean Heskin, How the Coming Global Crash Will Create a Historic Gold Rush by calling: 800-519-6268Follow Dr. Jerome Corsi on X: @corsijerome1Our link to where to get the Marco Polo 650-Page Book on the Hunter Biden laptop & Biden family crimes free online:https://www.thetruthcentral.com/marco-polo-publishes-650-page-book-on-hunter-biden-laptop-biden-family-crimes-available-free-online/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-truth-central-with-dr-jerome-corsi--5810661/support.

(2:00) The Debate Was a Trainwreck Engineered to Get Rid of BidenThe debate should dispel the myth and the wishes for an imperial presidency — but it won't with their loyal partisansNo one, not even those who want to play nice so they can replace him — no one pretends Biden did wellBoth taking credit for the "pandemic" disaster(18:55) Handicapped: On the Brink of WW3, Trump & Biden Argue Over Their Golf ProwessAnother "presidential" first — two old men arguing over their golf abilities.  WATCH these Australian twins lip-sync it…yes, the whole world is laughing (28:42) Debate Schedule Confirms Dem Plan to Dump BidenLala Harris pretends they didn't know.  But the unprecedented early debate schedule says they did. Where are we by this date in a "normal" presidential race?Why we know they intended to replace himWho is likely?Drudge & MSM piling on Biden…what does Drudge's poll show as a preference with his Dem readers?(39:51) Listener comments/questions on debate (47:33) RFKj and John Stossel's attempt to get around debate censorship, made even worse than usual by CNN (53:17) Listener comments/questions on debate (1:16:57) Question: "you stated that Trump didn't actually drop out of the Paris Accord. Everything I pull up says that he did. Can you tell me why you stated this?" Here's how the deception worked (1:24:02) Why Trump & Biden Didn't End War: UN Complains About Lack of Opiates From AfghanistanThe UN, not even Nixon, was the ultimate pusher of the "War on Drugs" — which is really a war OF drugs.   As Biden & Trump argue over what happened in Afghanistan, the UN comically complains about a lack of opiates and about the loss of income to Afghans growing the poppies. (1:41:21) Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction issued an order yesterday to teach 10 Commandments and the BibleThink about WHO will teach and WHAT they will teachThe superintendent says the Bible is an important historical and cultural resource.  Is that what the Bible is?(1:47:59) In UK elections, Nigel Farage nails the problems with lockdown but only for the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns.  Here's why that's a big problem… (1:51:57 ) Trump & Biden Won't Save USA, Now What?We know that what happened since 2020 will happen again.  Nothing has changed and no one in government will admit their wrongdoing.  So, how should you live? (2:04:09) INTERVIEW Celente Predicts Who Will Replace BidenSeveral clues that the debate process was set up with the intention of removing Biden.  But who will replace him?  Will the switch change things like interest rates?For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

(2:00) The Debate Was a Trainwreck Engineered to Get Rid of BidenThe debate should dispel the myth and the wishes for an imperial presidency — but it won't with their loyal partisansNo one, not even those who want to play nice so they can replace him — no one pretends Biden did wellBoth taking credit for the "pandemic" disaster(18:55) Handicapped: On the Brink of WW3, Trump & Biden Argue Over Their Golf ProwessAnother "presidential" first — two old men arguing over their golf abilities.  WATCH these Australian twins lip-sync it…yes, the whole world is laughing (28:42) Debate Schedule Confirms Dem Plan to Dump BidenLala Harris pretends they didn't know.  But the unprecedented early debate schedule says they did. Where are we by this date in a "normal" presidential race?Why we know they intended to replace himWho is likely?Drudge & MSM piling on Biden…what does Drudge's poll show as a preference with his Dem readers?(39:51) Listener comments/questions on debate (47:33) RFKj and John Stossel's attempt to get around debate censorship, made even worse than usual by CNN (53:17) Listener comments/questions on debate (1:16:57) Question: "you stated that Trump didn't actually drop out of the Paris Accord. Everything I pull up says that he did. Can you tell me why you stated this?" Here's how the deception worked (1:24:02) Why Trump & Biden Didn't End War: UN Complains About Lack of Opiates From AfghanistanThe UN, not even Nixon, was the ultimate pusher of the "War on Drugs" — which is really a war OF drugs.   As Biden & Trump argue over what happened in Afghanistan, the UN comically complains about a lack of opiates and about the loss of income to Afghans growing the poppies. (1:41:21) Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction issued an order yesterday to teach 10 Commandments and the BibleThink about WHO will teach and WHAT they will teachThe superintendent says the Bible is an important historical and cultural resource.  Is that what the Bible is?(1:47:59) In UK elections, Nigel Farage nails the problems with lockdown but only for the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns.  Here's why that's a big problem… (1:51:57 ) Trump & Biden Won't Save USA, Now What?We know that what happened since 2020 will happen again.  Nothing has changed and no one in government will admit their wrongdoing.  So, how should you live? (2:04:09) INTERVIEW Celente Predicts Who Will Replace BidenSeveral clues that the debate process was set up with the intention of removing Biden.  But who will replace him?  Will the switch change things like interest rates?For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-david-knight-show--5282736/support.

The Pakistani prime minister is in Beijing after stopping over in the southern city of Shenzhen(01:01). Officials in Gaza say an Israeli airstrike on a school has caused dozens of casualties(09:13). The UN says it is likely that Earth will exceed the 1.5 degree temperature rise target set in the 2015 Paris Accord(21:06).

Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of the same ecological web, from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground, or the clearing of a wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre Mountains and the high desert of West Texas. And from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso Community. But cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his hometown wasn't easy. Dave is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he's bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club's statewide campaigns.I've known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I've seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Dave CortezDave Cortez is a 3rd generation El Pasoan now based out of Austin where he lives with his partner and six year old daughter. He grew up and learned organizing on the frontera, where industrial pollution, poverty, gentrification, racism and the border wall are seen as intersecting issues. Dave serves as the Director of the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter, and has been organizing in the Texas environmental movement for 18 years. Dave is supporting staff and volunteers across Texas who are organizing for power by centering racial justice and equity alongside frontline communities directly impacted by polluting industries.Quotation Read by Dave Cortez"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors. Black people have been here before us and survived. We can read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice Reagon says so poignantly, that each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor to the hard work of becoming ourselves, and effective. We lose our history so easily, what is not predigested for us by the New York Times, or the Amsterdam News, or Time magazine. Maybe because we do not listen to our poets or to our fools, maybe because we do not listen to our mamas in ourselves. When I hear the deepest truths I speak coming out of my mouth sounding like my mother's, even remembering how I fought against her, I have to reassess both our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing. Which is not to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate what she gave me – Woman, Black. We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not to lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about – survival and growth. Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. I ask myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives." - Audre LordeRecommended Readings & MediaTranscriptIntroJohn Fiege  Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of this same ecological web: from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground or the clearing of wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre mountains, and the high desert of West Texas—and it came from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air, and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso community but cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his home town wasn't easy.Dave Cortez  Two of my close family members worked at the plant. My dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events and they asked what I'm doing and, oh, they think I'm a paid protester, you know, forget my education, forget what's at what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific, and it's sad to watch. People fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them in their eyes and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way, or depression.John Fiege  Or domestic abuse. Dave Cortez  Exactly. It's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. John Fiege  I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Dave Cortez is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he's bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club's statewide campaigns.I've known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I've seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.Here is Dave Cortez.ConversationJohn FiegeWell, you grew up in El Paso in Far West Texas, and it's right on the border of Mexico and New Mexico. Can you tell me a bit about growing up there, and your family and how you saw yourself in relationship to the rest of nature.Dave Cortez  I've got a little picture I'm looking at my my very first demonstration. It's a bunch of kids, kids meaning college kids, my my age at the time, about maybe 22, 23, and a big peace flag and we're hanging around what was called Plaza de Los Lagartos, Plaza of the Alligators. And we're there I think we're protesting, must have been continuing invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but you know, I keep it up. And I keep pictures of the mountains of West Texas, the edge of the Rockies is what cuts into the central central part of El Paso, the Franklin Mountains. And then you have the Rio Grande, the heart and soul of that land. And on the other side of the river, those mountains continue into the Sierra Madres all the way down to the coast. It's majestic. It's, you know, that land is as colonized as is its people. You know, it's been, the river has been dammed up upstream in New Mexico, and two reservoirs to provide water for agriculture and farming and things like that, recreation. It was the only area of water that we we had access to when I was a kid. We would drive up to Truth or Consequences and load up on nightcrawlers and whatever other tackle and bait, and then take my dad's car and drive along somewhere, find a good spot. And fish from the shore for a couple of days at a time, camp, and, you know, that was a desert lake. It was wild for me, because we didn't have water, you know.John Fiege  So tell me about what you did. Dave Cortez  Well, we would just go up there. That was, that was our place to go get get access to water, you know, away from the desert, you know, growing up in El Paso, you just, it's It's dry, it's desert, we get, we used to average nine inches of rain a year, it's down now, you know, but the Rio was, it's always been sacred and it was special, it was a place you could go and see water. Not all year round, but most of the year and see it flowing and you look in any direction, away from the mountains, and you can see what feels endless, but it's actually you know, two or more hundred miles to the horizon, you see Thunder heads 30, 40, sometimes 45 or 50,000 feet high way far away, you think maybe you hope maybe those might come your way, maybe we'll get lucky and get a little bit of rain. Most times they don't. But with that sometimes you're blessed with the outflow that carries the smell of creosote, a native plant in the region that everybody's come to call the smell of rain. And, you know, even if you don't actually get the rain yourself, you might get some of those breezes and some of that wonderful smell. And it's, it's life giving, it's restorative. As a kid, you know, I was fortunate that my family made an effort to take us out into the desert quite a bit, we would go chase storms, we would watch lightning, my father would turn the AM radio to a blank station so we could hear the the lightning on the radio, the static pop. And we got a real kick out of that and we'd go off roading and find spots and park and you know, just hang out. And that was a pretty common thing for a lot of folks around town is just to get out into the desert. You know, my my heart and soul and my spirit is connected to that land, it is part of that land, I draw strength from those mountains, from that river. I worry about moving further away, what that might do to me, how how that might be a strain. Even just being here in Austin 600 miles away, it feels very far. You know, my family was middle class, I call it 80s middle class. And, you know, both my parents worked. I have two older siblings. And you know, we were all in public school and doing our thing. You know, everything seemed, you know, like The Wonder Years kind of situation. And you know, you don't when you're young, if you're fortunate, you don't see a lot of the issues around you. It wasn't until my teens, my parents split. And I was living with my mom and started to see a lot more other sides of life, some of the struggles, and just kind of notice more about the town, about the culture. But it was really when I moved back to El Paso after college, here in Austin at St. Edward's, where I studied political science and philosophy and environmental policy. When I moved back, it all started to come together how much I missed, how much I was removed from about my community and my culture in my youth. You know, so the language is the biggest example. We did not speak Spanish in my family. It was something my parents spoke to each other when they needed to talk about something that we didn't need to know about as kids. John Fiege  Right, right. Dave Cortez  You know, we didn't know about our indigeneity we weren't raised around that, we didn't know about the cultural connection to the land. I think in some way the spirit in my family drew us towards it. We would go spend time around those things, but we didn't really have conversations about it. And the biggest thing I didn't know about was how heavily polluted and contaminated the air was growing up. I tell a story about going into middle school. This time I was in in private school and Catholic school. Just being out on the playground it's a you know, concrete schoolyard kind of situation. And you run your hand on the on the railing and there's yellow chalk-like stuff and you don't think twice about it because it's like chalk. Or it's dust. Well, you know, in that part of town, downtown El Paso, it's because of the copper smelter. We had a 110 year old lead and copper smelting operation called Asarco that was less than two miles away from where I was going to school. And you know, you move on, maybe, you're a kid, maybe you wash your hands, maybe you don't. And it just, you know, when I moved back, I thought of that--I thought of all the times, I used to play in the dirt, like every other kid in El Paso does, you know, you don't got Barton Springs to go to or Greenbelt Creek, you play in the dirt, dig tunnels, and that stuff gets in you. And that's loaded with heavy metals, arsenic, cadmium, lead, you name it. It was it was a huge shock for me to learn that the land that I was around as a child, and the air that I was around as a child was just heavily contaminated. And I knew nothing about it. John Fiege  But what was the experience like when you were actually in college and getting more heavily into activism? Like what was motivating you? And how did you see yourself in relationship to other folks?Dave Cortez  Right on. Well, I can't leave out that the reason I came to Austin was because of my older brother and my older sister. I had never seen green, like this town, when I came to visit my sister in the summer. So I just was blown away, everything was green, there was water, it rained, I just felt like an oasis and I wanted to come here. So I went to St. Ed's, which ended up being, you know, expensive as hell, but really cool in the sense of, you know, an opportunity to learn, to be away from home. You know, and so, I didn't really know what to make of this town when I was here. I didn't know what to make of the people, the students, but by the grace of the Creator, in serendipity, I was thrown into a class on social movements. And that's a study in the 1960s. And so, you know, I developed a really foundational experience learning about the broader politic of American civil society, in that case, which blossomed into deeper learning around political theory and rhetoric, dating all the way back to some of the Greek philosophers, and modern day political thinkers, but I really got a ton of wild information into my head. In 2006, it wasn't here in Austin. It was on North Padre Island. The Austin Sierra Club was organizing a trip, there was a woman I liked at the time. And we were were fancying each other and were like, "Hey, let's go camping. I don't know what a crawfish is. But they're doing a crawfish boil. And they say they're going to clean up the beach." So we grabbed my SUV when we went and set up, and it was awesome to be out there around all these people we didn't know, you know, offering us free food and beer and just, you know, associating on this beach. And that, I really loved. Folks might not know this, it's like 60 plus miles of primitive Beach, outside of Corpus Christi. But I didn't quite understand what we're really doing until the next morning, right at dawn, when I was awoken by these huge sounds of tractor trailers hauling right by the water right in front of us. Just a caravan of them driving down to the other end of the beach to do gas drilling. You know, we get out of the tent, and we're watching this and I mean, you just want to, you know, throw something at those trucks, you know, and go put your body in front or something like "What the hell's going on?" And you're just watching the rubber, the plastic, you name it just fall off these trucks. And in their wake is just a mass of debris, and trash. And this is all in endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle habitat, its nest a nesting area for the Kemp's ridley sea turtle. And that's why we were there. And so, you know, right after that we all commiserated and got to work and picked up more trash than I think, you know, I've ever picked up. And I'm still shocked that that was allowed. But that's really where I started to take a turn and understand more about how the state facilitates this destruction, the destruction of the land and for the profits of few. And shortly after that I graduated, and that was it for my time in Austin.John Fiege  So after you graduated from college, you went back to El Paso, and you became an environmental justice organizer for El Paso, ACORN. And it was shortly after your time there in 2009, that right wing activists did a big hit job on ACORN and brought down the organization in the US for the most part. An ACORN was was a powerful community organizing group at its height, and it had this unique community based organizing model. Could you talk a bit about the ACORN organizing model and how it, possibly, I assume, became part of your organizing DNA?Dave Cortez  Just like learning about the 1960s is a pillar of my practice. The  work with Acorn is right there with it. You know, it shaped me, maybe it's just because it's one of the first things I learned about, but it'll be with me, as long as I do this work and have breath in my lungs. You know, some people were quick to point to that it's built out of the school of the Industrial Areas Foundation and Saul Alinsky model of community organizing, and yeah, that's true. But, you know, I didn't know any of that. I didn't, you know, I was, I was just taken in by these folks. There was a guy, recovering addict, just trying to make his money doing his canvassing while I was hanging out at a coffee shop, kind of where I was living in El Paso, the university. And there's my day off and I'm out there hanging out. There's this dude, his name was Ken. Ken let me know how they were planning to reopen the ASARCO copper smelter, the big 120 820 foot tall smokestack that I grew up around, and I was shocked. And, and that's, you know, like I studied all these things. And I was like, wow, I cannot believe that that's right there, my mom lives over here, you know, she works there, I live over here. And, you know, I told them, whatever I can do to help: get more letters, spread a petition around, whatever I can do. And they invited me in to meet the team, which was a small team. And the first task they gave me was actually nothing to do with that it was just to go distribute information about free tax prep, helping people in a really poor community, not far from where I went to middle school in which is not far from the smelter, get access to tax prep, in English and Spanish. And at the time, I had a, I had a mohawk. I covered that thing up real fast. I wore a straw cowboy hat and went door to door knocking on people's doors, let them know about this. And Jose Manuel, the the lead organizer at the time, the director saw me and, you know, was into it. And, you know, they offered me a job after a few days of that. And the job was doing the same thing, plus inviting people to come to a community meeting about the reopening of ASARCO. So here's a way that we can help you. With some, you know, with your money, basically, your your bottom line, and also, there's a situation happening, that can affect and will affect your your health and well being, and the safety of your family. At the time, I didn't realize that there was a very intentional strategy there. But that strategy is essential to the work that we do as environmentalists and in climate justice activists around the country, and here in Texas, people are struggling, and you got to find ways to help them directly with what they're struggling with day to day, which is often their pocketbooks. And so if you can do that, you're going to build some trust, you can build some relationships, and then you might be lucky to talk to them about another bigger, more complicated issue.John Fiege  That seems to be, like, a really beautiful definition of the difference between environmental justice organizing, and traditional environmental organizing, where environmental justice organizing, you have to start with the community, and make sure everybody you know, you have to deal with everything, you can't just isolate an environmental issue. Would you agree with that?Dave Cortez  Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know where that came from. I again, I'm not a I've read all the books about these things, but that, the model that was picked up by so many organizations and NGOs is is you know, it's it's almost like counter revolutionary, it's almost counterproductive. Like you're intentionally trying to marginalize your base in silos, you know, so, so whatever we do, you know, I try to espouse that in folks, some of the work we've done around Austin and other parts of Texas, that's the route we go, talk about bills, talk about bills every time and then, you know, start to figure out what else is going on, you know. With ACORN, a major flaw in the national model was that they would want to sign people up to be bank draft members, like you, you'd push a card onto them, "Hey, send this card in with your bank info or something. And we'll sign you up, you know, so you get access to our help." And obviously, I didn't do that. And as the work evolved, and we got more people canvassing and doing the work, we didn't do that either. It went against our values. Now, if there were middle class people, people with more means, yeah, we'd asked them to do that, too.John Fiege  To contribute a certain amount each month.Dave Cortez  Yeah. But we also did things differently, in the sense of, we organized, we found, you know, folks who are highly motivated by the issues, students, artists, residents in the nearby communities who wanted to contribute, and contribute their time, That theory in the ACORN model of, you got to get people financially bought in to be committed, I think can be challenged and there's lots of ways to get people plugged in. And so, one other key here was, you know, I wasn't brand new, this work wasn't brand new. There had been people fighting ASARCO before I was involved, obviously, and it had ebbed and flowed in terms of how much community opposition from just, like, working class people was centered. There was a lot of wealthier folks, politico types, you know, people who worked for legislators or senators or city people, you know, academics, things like that. And there was a handful of working class people in a smattering of workers from plant workers. So our job was really to find more just like students and people in the impacted communities, but it had been going on for so long that people were really drained. You know, parents who, whose children had MS as a result of this or had other health problems, they eventually backed off because it was just too exhausting to go up against the machine of the Texas State Government and go testify, and struggle, and they just couldn't do it anymore. You know, so we had to find new people and inject new life. You know, we made it a point to work with some of the younger folks to start a--not really an acorn chapter--but just a group on the campus called students for reform. And those kids are amazing, a couple dozen students, Chicanos, for the most part, all going off to do awesome things in their lives. But for three, three years, four years, they they led the fight, they're on campus challenging the administration to disclose more information and trying to represent student opposition to the reopening of the smelter.John Fiege  I was looking up some articles about ASARCO. I found this this one 2010 article from John Burnett, who's a NPR correspondent based in Austin. So he talks about in 2009, the US Justice Department announced the settlement of one of the largest environmental bankruptcies in US history, in which ASARCO would pay a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution in you know, at 80 sites, as many as 20 states, including the copper smelting operation in in El Paso. And he quotes some interesting community members like an 82 year old former maintenance worker named Miguel Beltran, who says, "you can't get a job here in El Paso compared to ASARCO, ASARCO is the best place to work. We were just like a family." And John Burnett, also quotes an anti-smelter activist named Debbie Kelly, who says, "They marketed very well. And the people of El Paso were brainwashed believed that this was the most wonderful thing El Paso could possibly have, this tall polluting contaminating smokestack." And this is this classic tension and environmental justice organizing. The big polluter in town is often the biggest and best paying employer as well, especially for folks with limited education. And these working folks often side with the company in some ways, and then at some times, kind of accepting the environmental problems for the economic opportunities. And the smokestack itself is this shining symbol of progress and prosperity that goes way back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. What was your experience with this tension between economic opportunity and environmental health in the organizing, and how that was represented in the media?Dave Cortez  Well, let's take a few cracks at it, because it's a big question. You know, I'll start with my family, two of my close family members worked at the plant, my dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events, and that's what I'm doing and "oh," they think, "I'm a paid protester," you know, forget my education, forget what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, it's deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific. And it's sad to watch, you know, people fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them, in their eyes, and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way.  Or, or depression in that way. John Fiege  Right.  Or domestic abuse. Don't talk about it. Dave Cortez  Domestic abuse. Exactly. You know, it's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. But, you know, that was the case. And you know, in that situation, just try and make peace with your family just, you know, get through the gathering. And you go on in, you know, some of my family was very supportive, you know, like, "yeah, that stuff's bad, and we should do better." You don't get investments in the well being of a community that like say, in Austin and all this money flooding here and STEM education being invested in and, you know, pre K access and, you know, nature based education and Montessori education, things like that. All of this is part of that, that conflict that pushes you to try and find the best thing you can for your family. And any of the workers that I organized alongside say the same thing. They were so proud and happy--Daniel Adriano another sort of lead visible face against the reopening of smelter, he's a former steel worker, you know, he tells a story about like, his dad worked there, his uncle, his cousins, you know, it was just like a family thing, like everybody, if you could get a job at ASARCO, you knew you'd be okay. You could raise a family, maybe even your wife or your spouse, your partner wouldn't have to work. But, you know, behind that, that Golden Gate, there was a lot of things that people weren't being told. You know, things like, maybe you shouldn't be taking your work clothes home and washing them. Right. They sent people home to wash, and that's very common in heavy industry in the 80s 70s 80s and 90s, you know, these these companies do that. In Danny's case, his kids got sick, you know, and they developed health problems. And he points to that as part of the reason washing his clothes in the same machine with, as his kids clothes. His wife feels guilt about that. Heavy guilt. John Fiege  Yeah. That's hard. Dave Cortez  You know, it's violating. You know, they had them--that settlement came because they, well, in part because ASARCO was caught for illegally incinerating hazardous chemical weapons waste materials from Colorado, in the smelter in these men weren't told about it. And they shoveled this stuff in there and were exposed to, you know, not recycled waste, just direct waste from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wow facility, a weapons manufacturing facility, Dow Chemical weapons manufacturing facility. That stuff was burned and they were exposed. You know, it's infuriating. And once they learned that, and they were falling ill and they had some evidence, they tried to organize other workers, let them know former workers let them know what was going on. And, and they encountered the same thing that I encountered with my family: just like this, this wall of acceptance, this willful ignorance. You know, I don't know about that, you know, just like denial, denial. And that was really hard on them. They got ostracized, they lost a lot of friends. You know, and so they found allyship in other people whose families had been sick, residents on the other side of the river in the Colonias, whose children had been severely sick, who were bleeding every night because of bloody noses and heavy metal contamination. You know, they found allyship with Debbie Kelly in the current place, which is sort of a wealthier neighborhood, you know, the educated, more white affluent folks who didn't want the smelter around. And this, that's how the "Get the lead out" coalition really came together it was--you just had these different interests aligned around this lack of justice, but the worker piece was always--and the economic piece was always always, you know, the straw that would break our back. And when ASARCO hired a PR firm, Teresa Montoya, to build their campaign, their marketing campaign to reopen the smelter, that was their big thing. I want to work for ASARCO I want to work for ASARCO and they march out all these Chicanos and throw them in front of a plant in their hard hats and talk about the good jobs and the pay. You know, it's tough to compete with. I know the people in Port Arthur, in Corpus Christi, even down in Brownsville, you know, and you name it. John Fiege  It's the same story everywhere. It's the same story.Dave Cortez  In Appalachia, as well, with the coal miners. Absolutely. The amount of energy it takes to fight Goliath. You know, you never have enough you never have enough resources. You got a PR firm In, you know, this facility was owned and run ASARCO, Grupo Mexico owned by Carlos Slim, at the time the wealthiest man in the world, you know, like, you're never going to have enough just to stop the bad thing. How are you going to strategize and organize in a way where you're talking about building the good, and replacing it with something better and taking care of these people? It's doable, it absolutely is. But at the time, when you're in the sock like that, it's very hard to pivot. And it's very hard to motivate people who have resources to give you those resources to bring on people to pay them to do that work. It's a boxing match, take your hits, and wait for the time to throw a punch. You know, and I think one thing that really hurt people hurt ASARCO a lot, was when it came out that at their operations in Arizona, El Paso and elsewhere, in the 70s and 80s, they had been using health standards, health assessment screenings that were based on a false standard that black men and brown men had a 15% higher lung capacity than white men, therefore, they could be--they could work 15% longer, they could be exposed 15% more than white men. And that came out. And you know, we had some incredible, dedicated educated volunteers who were digging this information up, who were, you know, putting it to the to the news outlets. And without the news outlets putting that information out there, like the New York Times that put it out about the hazardous chemical weapons waste, you know, we wouldn't have been able to really punch back. But that stuff came out and then we could organize with it. We made materials out of it. I made sure everyone knew that, you know, this is the kind of crap that this place was built on, no matter what they say now you can't trust them. John Fiege  Right. Yeah. And this--another thing that John Burnett brought up in this NPR story is, he quotes some longtime community members who said that when the winds were blowing to the south toward Juarez in Mexico, the smelter would crank up production and send pollution directly into Mexico where they could, they could do nothing to regulate it or stop it even worse than in the US. And that's a pretty insidious and cynical route around US environmental regulations. American companies have this long history of sending their polluting factories and jobs overseas. But in El Paso, they could just send the pollution directly to Mexico while keeping the plant and the jobs in the US. Were you able to do any cross border organizing in El Paso to combat this kind of flagrant disregard for air pollution in Mexico?Dave Cortez  I wasn't able to myself, or it wasn't a choice I made to do myself on the broader scale. Marianna Chu, who worked at the time for the Sierra Club, and as an independent activist and organizer did a whole hell of a lot and deserves a ton of credit. Marianna, and others were also were able to build relationships in the Colonias and get to talk to people that were, you know, the definition of directly impacted, right on the other side of the river. You know, you drive through, you pass on I-10, and you look to the left where you're passing through downtown, and it's just colonias and that's Colonia Felipe and some students who we'd found and became acquainted with at UTEP and were filmmakers and they were able to get over into the colonias and document the lived experience of some of these folks, and it's horrific, and they made a short film, I'm happy to share called The Story of Cristo and it's a little boy, you know, who's like that, he's bleeding, bleeding every night, because he's got heavy metal contamination, two years old. You know, and that story spread. You know, it was similar to other families all throughout the Colonia. Dirt roads, just full of metal, not a lot that could be done unless there was funds provided for it. And part of that settlement in relation to the chemical weapons waste was that ASARCO would give money to an outfit in Mexico to pave those roads. You know, that's it. Accept no wrongdoing. No, no responsibility. We don't admit nothing but, here, take this and leave us alone.John Fiege  Literally, sweeping it under the rug. They're just laying asphalt over the dust.Dave Cortez  Absolutely. I mean, that's that's absolutely right. And, you know, one interesting intersection here with with the colonias there was, as we marched towards the end of 2007 and 2008. You know, we're still fighting the plant, it started to become more and more dangerous and people were less responsive, and less receptive to being interviewed on camera with our comrades, and the gangs, were starting to move in to the Colonia and control things more. And that was that it wasn't safe anymore you can, the last thing you should be doing is driving over there with a camera. And so those stories sort of drifted away, those folks. And we weren't able to really work with them a whole lot more, because the narco war was starting to take root.John Fiege  Because it's, it's how it's the same thing they do to fight you, they give your neighbor a job, and then and they get your neighbor working against you. Dave Cortez  Absolutely, I mean, you know, you're not going to go toe to toe with the same weapons, you got to find a way to find their weak spot and cut them at that weak spot. And, you know, I learned that, I learned that in this fight, you know, we weren't scared of these people. We weren't scared of their minions. We weren't scared of the, you know, the former workers who wanted the plant to open. We weren't scared of them. They tried. Everybody tried to intimidate you, you know, but I'll start with, with that part, first, as a critical strategy. My, you know, 23 year old high energy, Mohawk wearin' self, right, like, I thought I knew it all and was ready to go, just like against that jerk down on Red River Street in Austin. And, you know, the first public meeting, debate, whatever, that we helped organize, some of those, those workers were there outside and they were, you know, they pick a smaller person, a woman to argue with, and she ain't scared of them. But you know, soon enough, there's, there's four or five of them around her and oh, man, you know, machismo is something all of us from the border suffered from and that kicked in hard. You just get into it with these guys. But, you know, that is not the way, that is not the way. You know, arguing and fighting, especially with the people, even though they're trying to get you to do it. The people who want a job in these facilities, the community members who just want a better way for their life, you cannot let the people at the top pit us against each other. That's why it's so important to be anchored in community talking about the nuance, you know, how to step and where, what to look out for, and really trying to build together, it has to be at the forefront.John Fiege  Isn't that the history of American industrial capitalism, that for it to work, the, the industrialists need to pit various groups of people against one another, whether it's along lines of race, or income, or religion, or geography, or immigration status, or, or whatever. Like, that's, that's how it works. You need to divide people by those things, so they don't get together and they don't, they don't form a allegiances.Dave Cortez  That's right. That's right. I mean, it's, but it's not something that's created by the oligarchs and the industrial capitalists and the power holders. It's something that they exploit, right? It's a, it's a wound that's already there. And, you know, it's something that concerns me greatly about broader civil society, and our failures to build community, in relationship in brotherhood and sisterhood. You know, in a true spirit of mutual solidarity, the more that we neglect doing that work, the easier it is for something to divide us or someone to exploit it, we see it, there's an endless amount of examples we can point to. But if you start your work in trying to build something better, and build through a positive relationship, it's going to feed in the long run, it'll help you endure all of the struggles that are going to come the conflicts, you know, the the infighting, the personality disagreements, whatever, you got to have some foundation and I learned that from that, that night outside the UTEP Library arguing with these guys that, "No, we got to we got to find a way to work with these workers. We got to really center the fact that people need work in jobs." And and that's where, you know, I really started to become close with, not the guys I argued with, other workers who were already disaffected, Charlie Rodriguez, and Danielle Riano and Efrain Martinez and others. You know, they became, in some ways they already were but from my work, they became the center of what we're trying to do and focus on, that this is actually not what we want these, these jobs are not the kind that we need, because look what they did to me. And so that's one piece. We've got to find a way to get people more meaningfully involved with the policies we're trying to change, so there's just a far greater number of people pushing for positive investment in something that is, you know, not just like NGO staff, you know, like, the less NGO staff and those boardrooms, the better. You know, get every day, people in their meeting, pressing for these decisions, and calling for it, and that makes it much harder for the special interests to push push their own agenda.John Fiege  Well, that's a good transition to Occupy Wall Street. So in 2011, Occupy Wall Street began in New York City in Zuccotti Park. And then the movement quickly spread around the world, including to Austin. And I know you were heavily involved in Occupy Austin, and its campaign to get the city to divest from commercial banks. I participated in a couple of those occupy Austin Bank actions. And I don't think I'd met you yet. But, you know, as many people might remember, one of the big discussions and debates around Occupy was whether and how to organize and whether to make formal demands, which always makes me think of Frederick Douglass who famously said, "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did. And it never will." But those words from Frederick Douglass, were not the guiding light of many occupy organizers and participants, I'd love to hear you talk a bit about your experience with Occupy Austin, and the internal debates and conflicts about what it was and how it should operate. And what you brought away from that whole experience that you put into your organizing work after that. Dave Cortez  Yeah, it was one of the most exciting times of my life so far, you know, to be able to three, four, sometimes five nights a week, meet up with 50 to 60 people not at a general assembly, but a working group meeting, and everybody's there ready to, you know, talk and break out and figure out the next step for getting people to close bank accounts. And, you know, organizing the rally and building the art and all those things. It was organic. I'm so happy that, I'm fortunate to have that experience in this city, and in this country. It was real, you see the romanticized version of uprisings in film, in writing, and on the news, different ways around the world. But, you know, this was that, at least the closest I've been to it, and it wasn't just the, you know, the sign holding, and, you know, petition gathering, we did all that. But it was, I mean, like people were, people were in, you know, the sacrifice time away from whatever they had going on around them to contribute to something better, and I have never seen an appetite, so large for participating and contributing to something that can change the world. I've seen it tried to be engineered a whole lot by NGOs. And it's laughable. It's insulting, you know, but for me at the time, it was it was like a dream come true. I remember a week before occupy launch, there was a meeting happening at Ruta Maya, and the room was full of people, and, you know, a bunch of white dudes, hippie yoga types on stage, you know, talking about some stuff, but I'm up there front row, just, you know, like, eager. And just like listening, I'm like, "This is great," you know, so they open the mic for everybody to come up and have something to say. And it was awesome. I'd just never seen it. You know, I was like, "wow, this is the Austin I always wanted to see," you know. Sure enough there was a meeting after that the next day, and the next day after that. And that kind of continued on for a few days. And then and then there was the day of the launch and lots of people packing City Hall. I mean, you couldn't move there were so many people out there and there were people talking for hours. Everybody was just willing to stay. And you know, I can't, I just can't believe how patient people were for weeks. And just like hanging out. You know, I think they just wanted something different. And they wanted to be part of something, like I said, Now, me, day one. I'm like, "yo, if we're gonna be out here, we need some data." And I got my clipboard. And my dear friend and former partner Betsy had been working for a group that was doing foreclosure organizing and getting people to move their bank accounts or close their bank accounts. And so, you know, I got some, some materials from her and took up like six clipboards, to the to the rally. And that was my whole shtick was just like, "Hey, y'all, we should close our corporate bank accounts," and people loved it. You know, it was like, "hey, here goes, put your name down, if you want to help out," and I mean, I filled up pages and pages of this thing, people who wanted to help out or close their bank accounts. And from that, you know, like, you'd find more people that were like, "Hey, I used, you know, I can help with that. And I used to work at a bank," or, you know, "I've got some time on my hands," you know. And so we, it was rad, because while all the noise was happening, the day to day that people were more familiar with Occupy Wall Street. You know, the the General Assemblies, the infighting, the conflicts with the unhoused folks and things like that, we had this parallel track of our bank action crew, which was doing, building switch kits, and, you know, trying to reach out to people to, you know, help walk them through how to close their bank accounts and stuff like that, or organize marches on the bank, so people could go in and come out and cut their credit cards, so we could all celebrate, you know, like, that was, that was great. That's classic organizing. I, you know, if you weren't down in City Hall, every day for that first month, you're missing out on something, you know, I don't think people appreciate enough how much work people invested into trying to maintain a space, like, maintaining a physical encampment is, you know, the people with the most knowledge on how to operate a small, little civil society is the people have been doing it before, which is our unhoused folks, you know. And there was a huge class conflict, that really emerged quickly, that the police and the city manager and others began to exploit, you know, by trying to bring more unhoused folks down to City Hall, allowing some to sell and distribute drugs, not enforcing any oversight, you know, we had women attacked, you know, and attempted assaults and things like that, that they were just looking the other way on. Because they wanted this to go away. And it was up to us to figure out how to manage that. And that really became the core of the non-bank action, kind of conversations. You know, everybody wanted to do solidarity with everything else. But it was really about, like, how do we keep this thing going? And how do we maintain our presence here? You know, do you negotiate with the city? Who negotiates? Who's responsible? Do we just say, you know, F-U, we're not going to talk to you all, you know, but like, through all that, like, some amazing friendships were developed, and I mean, like bonds, true, real friendships, and people may not be super close anymore, but all it would take is a phone call or text to bring people back together. You know, it's something I'll just value for the rest of my life.John Fiege  Yeah, totally. And in 2015, The Austin Chronicle named you the best environmental activist in Austin for your work as, "The heart and soul of Sierra Club's 'Beyond Coal' campaign in Central Texas." And I know you've done all kinds of work with the Sierra Club. But I wondered if you could talk about what the fight has been like to transition from dirty energy to clean energy in Texas, which, of course is the oil capital of the country. And looking over the years you've been doing this work, what stands out? What have you learned from this massive campaign?Dave Cortez  Like you said, it's Texas, we're the number one carbon emitter in the country, and a huge one in the world and the United States cannot meet the modest two week goals in the Paris Accords unless Texas gets its act together, you know, and we got some real problems here, not just from fossil fuel pollution, but from industrial and toxic pollution and just from our livelihoods, you know, there's another story out yesterday, you know, are we going to have power next week, because we're going to hit hit the peak of the summer. You know, it's hard to think about the fight for clean energy in Texas without thinking about the power of the fossil fuel and industrial industries. There's there's been a battle since 2000 and 2005 to stop new power plants and advocate for clean energy. The fuel type changes and you know, back then it was coal and then it is gas and and now, it's like, oh my god, we just don't have enough power. Now, how do we get it? But it's still the, you know, trade associations, the Association of Electric Companies in Texas, you know, Oncor, which is an electric distributor company, NRG, you go down the line, Energy Transfer Partners, all of these fossil fuel corporations, making billions and billions of dollars, still call the shots, they still influence, and basically direct, decision makers on what is going to be acceptable in terms of, even, discussion. You can't even get a hearing in the state legislature on flaring reduction, which is a very modest thing. Because they have enough influence to make sure that that conversation is not even going to happen. And their members, like Energy Transfer Partners, and others are some of the biggest donors to politicians in the state. So, you know, why shouldn't we listen to those people? Kelsy Warren, Dakota Access Pipeline CEO, behind Energy Transfer Partners, gave a million dollars, his largest donation ever to Governor Abbott, right immediately after the legislative session. And this is after his company made well over a billion dollars, I think it's closer to $2 billion, coming out of the winter storm, Energy Transfer Partners. While people died, these people decided it would make better financial sense and profit sense to go ahead and withhold supplies of gas to power plants and gas utilities, and let the price go up before they would deliver that gas and therefore make a ton of money. Forget that more than you know, some say 200, some say 700 people died, many of them freezing to death, many of them carbon monoxide poisoning during the storm, forget that. It's all about the money. And that's the biggest takeaway here, just like we would be fighting Carlos Slim, and ASARCO and other folks, you got to look at what the interest is, you know, why are people supporting this? Why are they facilitating this? I know, it's easy to just say, well, we just got to vote these people out. Well, you know, we've got to come up with strategies that will allow us to do that. We've got to come up with strategies that will make it so, in this state that's so heavily corrupt and captured by corporate interests, fossil fuel interests, industrial interests, that we're going to find a way to cut into their enabling electorate. Their enabling base. And it's more than just a voter registration strategy. It's more than just a mobilization strategy, or getting people to sign a petition, it gets back to what we started talking about with ACORN. What is their base? Where are they? What are their interests? And where does it make sense to try and make some inroads, and cut away? And unfortunately, we just don't have enough of that happening in Texas. There's an effort to try to build coalitions with, you know, some social justice and some youth focused organizations. But we're all part of that same progressive "groupthink" or Democratic base, that we're not actually doing much to expand, other than registering some new voters. And there's a lot of unpacking that needs to happen. You know, can we go talk to some steel workers or some people on the Texas-Mexico border, who started to vote more for Republicans and Trump, because they were worried about the Green New Deal? They're worried about losing their oil jobs. Why, I mean, like, to this day, we haven't made that pivot collectively as a movement, and it's hella frustrating.John Fiege  Yeah, it gets back to what we were talking about earlier with, you know, kind of the DNA of environmental justice orientation to this work, the work has to be intersectional if you want to transition Texas, the oil capital of the world, to to non-fossil fuel based energy, you know, you need to deal with, with voting rights, you need to deal with the bad education system, you need to deal with healthcare issues, you need to deal with police brutality, and you know, it's like it's all connected. To think that we can remove this issue of decarbonizing our energy source from all of that other, you know, what some people see as messy stuff is delusional, it just doesn't doesn't work, doesn't make sense. Especially, and it's so obvious in places like Texas, where, you know, what are they doing? They're just trying to, they're trying to suppress the vote, like, they know what the deal is, you know, they're they're losing numbers. They need to disenfranchise more voters in order to maintain this system. Dave Cortez  You know, there's an important caveat and distinction for environmentalists, environmental justice folks, or whatever. You know, if you talk to John Beard with Port Arthur Community Action Network, you know, he's a former steel worker. His whole pitch in Port Arthur is about youth engagement jobs, investing in the community. He's willing to talk to the companies, things like that. It's not environmental-first type of thinking. But the enviros, and you'll see this any legislative session, if you pay attention, we are on the far losing side of the losers. Okay, the Democrats being the losers, you know, Democrats in Texas carry House Bill 40, which is the ban on fracking bans. You know, Mrs. T, Senator Senfronia Thompson out of Houston, she authored that bill, Black Democrat, you know, revered for her work on voting rights and reproductive justice. You know, enviros, we are way, way out of the mix. And so even if we got those organizations doing the work you're talking about, to speak about climate change, speak about the grid, you know, pollution, things like that, we'd still be part of that losing side. And I'm not saying we need to need to be building out into red country, or rural country. It's a critique of the broader progressive movement that we aren't doing enough to find people, the greater majority of people that don't participate in our process, in politics, in voting, except in presidential elections. We are not doing enough to reach people who are just going about their lives and do not give a s**t about the things that we post online about our petitions or positions, or our op-eds, or whatever. That is where the fight is, we've got to draw more people in while the right wing tries to keep more people out. That's our only pathway. And so--John Fiege  What does a just transition mean to you?Dave Cortez  It's what we've been talking about, it's a whole shift in, you know, the operating system of a of a community, whether it's a town of 50,000 people or a state of, you know, 25 million. Just transition means that we're taking into full consideration, our triple bottom line, you know, our health, and shelter, and food, you know, our economics, our jobs, and ability to put, you know, bring income and get the things that we need. And, you know, just the land and our ecology. Just transition has to anchor that we are--that those things are connected, and that they're not--they can't be separated, that in order for our families, and our children and our neighbors and all that, to have a future and have a livelihood, we need to be concerned about our air quality, concerned about our water quality, but also about the quality of their education, the access to healthy food and grocery stores. If you were to talk to people and ask them to envision what, you know, their dream society looks like, which is a hard thing for people to do nowadays. You know, you'll hear some of these things and just transition is the process that we take to get there. It's not about you know, getting a worker from a fossil fuel job into a clean energy job.John Fiege  Well, and speaking of that, you know, in addition to your beyond coal and just transition work, you've done a lot of work with low income communities of color in Austin around a whole assortment of things: illegal dumping, access to green space, community solar and solar equity, green gentrification among among a bunch of other stuff. Can you talk about gentrification and how Austin has changed in the time you've been there and the tension that's emerged about Austin becoming one of the greenest but also increasingly one of the least affordable cities in the country? Dave Cortez  Yeah it's tough. People in Austin are largely still here to just party, have fun, make money. You know, they're really eager to do what they moved here for, you know, go do the cool thing and the restaurant, and the corporate soccer game and whatnot, you know, fine, whatever, I'm not trying to harp on people who want to have a good time, the problem is that there's no thread of the greater good of civil society, of trying to care for those in town that struggle and have the least. That doesn't exist here. It's just, it has lessened every year, it might be new people moving here might be more money here, and people being displaced. But you know, for the most part, with gentrification, the white wealthy middle class here is strong, you know, median family income is close to $90,000, you know, qualifying for affordable housing, you can make a ton of money and still qualify for affordable housing. And the people that move in, my brother calls them the new pilgrims. They're not super interested in learning what was there before, they're interested in what's around them now, and what might come in the future. And we do have a responsibility to make sure that we not just offer up but press on people at the doors, at community events, you know, cool, fun, s**t, barbecues and things like that, to learn what was there before they came, you know, sort of an onboarding into the neighborhood. And we did some of this in Montoplis, my old neighborhood that I lived in before I moved to South Austin, you know, people who I was like, "man, they're never going to help us," they're just, you know, part of that new white, middle class "new pilgrim." When I learned the history of the community, and the issues that were going on, I said, "Hell, yeah, whatever I can do," from, you know, cooking funding, speaking, writing letters, coming to meetings, you name it, you know, but we had to keep on 'em. And we had to give them a meaningful task. There is a lot of power, gentrification sucks. But I've really tried to work with myself on not being--automatically hating folks for just trying to move in into a home. But you do have to challenge folks on how they behave after they've moved in, you know, in Austin with our urban farming and desire for new urbanism and density and things like that, the culture of I know what's best is so thick, and it's really hard to stay patient. But I try to, even when I get mad and angry and frustrated, I try to remind people of what's called the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, and the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Principles of Anti-Racism, encourage them to read them, and to do everything they can to just shut the F up, and go listen to the people that they're talking about in affected communities. And get a sense of where you might be able to build some common ground.John Fiege  I actually wanted to spend a minute on that because, you know, you started, or you were one of the organizers, who started environmental justice group in Austin years ago, and I went to a bunch of the meetings. And I feel like that's where, you know, we got to start hanging out a bunch for the first time. But you would always start the meetings with the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. And, you know, those came out of this meeting hosted by the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and Jemez, New Mexico back in the 90s. Can you talk more specifically about the principles and why they're important to the work you're doing?Dave Cortez  So when you're thinking about undoing racism, or being an antiracist or antiracism work, you know, you're acknowledging that you're confronting a built system, something that's built under a false construct, race, you know, and when you're going to combat that, there's, you know, there's a lot of issues to it or whatever, but the Jemez principles will help you see, how do you approach people and talk about it? You know, for example, listen, let people speak is one of the principles, you know, listen to the people on the ground. Don't barge in there don't don't come in with your your petition and your fancy stuff and, or be online and be a dick. You know, go try to introduce yourself and get to know people. You know, ask questions. That's okay. You know, people were very generous for the most part, whether they're Black or Brown or or Native or Asian, or you name it, you know? If you're able to ask questions and listen about an issue, people will likely talk, you know. Trying to work in solidarity and mutuality is another big one for me, you know, it's not just about like, "I'm here to help you," versus, "I'm here because our struggles are connected and intertwined. And for me and my family to be successful and get what we need, it depends on your family, and your people being successful and getting what you need. How can we work together to make sure that we everything we do reinforces that and that we lift each other up?" A lot of things that we see is very transactional in the advocacy and activism world, you know, sign this, and then we'll go do that for you, or will tell the person to do the thing and change? It's not so much how can what can we do to help you directly, like we talked about bills and taxes and things like that. But also, we have to know that, what is it we're gonna get out of it, it's not just this potential policy outcome. There's tremendous value in human relationships. And in culture and community building, you're going to learn about the people in your community, you're going to learn about the history, you're going to learn, you know, and make new friends and maybe some recipes, maybe, you know, some new music or something. It's limitless. You know, humans have tremendous potential in beauty. But we we rob ourselves of that by, you know, retreating into our silos in our, in our four walls. You know, Jemez can give something--these are short, short, little principles that can give people something to read and reflect on, they can be kind of abstract and theory based, but when you're advocating for change, and then you look at these and you ask yourself, "sm I doing this?" There's tremendous potential for learning, and changing how we do our work.John Fiege  And the Sierra Club is one of the oldest large-scale environmental groups in the world. And it's traditionally been a white organization. Its founder John Muir made racist remarks about Black and Indigenous people, and in 2020, the Sierra Club officially apologized for those remarks and the white supremacist roots of the organization. In Texas, with your work and your presence, I feel like you've really helped the Sierra Club evolve there, where you are, and you th

A household name in the climate movement, Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010-2016 and led the negotiation of the Paris Accords. Ten years on from the Accords, Christiana continues her fight for our planet and our shared future. In this episode she joins former CEO of Unilever (2009-2019) Paul Polman, himself a major figure for the climate movement, to present a bold and utterly necessary call-to-action for our present and future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sponsor: Remove your personal information from the web at JoinDeleteMe.com/FP20 and use code FP20 for 20% offDeleteMe international Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com======Episode 2: Casey Handmer, the polymath founder and CEO of Terraform Industries, explains the first principles behind his idea to synthesize hydrocarbons (starting with natural gas, or methane) from the atmosphere.======(00:00) - Intro(00:56) - What Terraform Industries is Building(02:00) - Casey's Background as an Engineer(04:15) - Why Synthetic Hydrocarbons are an Urgent Need(06:30) - The Importance of Hydrocarbons(10:40) - Terraform's Process for Synthetic Methane(13:57) - Cheap Solar Energy is the Key Enabler(18:05) - How the World Captures and Uses Electricity(21:00) - Why Use Solar Energy to Make Hydrocarbons(24:51) - How Is This Possible?(28:23) - Learning Curve Effects on Solar Cost Declines(31:00) - Impact of the Inflation Reduction Act(34:50) - Why Is Lower Solar Efficiency Okay?(37:35) - How the Direct Air Capture Process Works(46:54) - The Sabatier Reaction(51:07) - Path to Commercialization and End-to-End Demo(52:52) - Deploying Alongside Existing Natural Gas Infrastructure(54:49) - Expansion into Synthetic Fuels and Beyond(56:20) - Final Thoughts======Links:Terraform - https://terraformindustries.com/Casey Handmer - https://twitter.com/CJHandmerChristian Keil – https://twitter.com/pronounced_kyle“How to Industrialize Mars”: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2018/09/03/how-to-industrialize-mars/Terraform Industries White Paper: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/01/09/terraform-industries-whitepaper-2-0/First Principles:Sabatier Reaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reactionEnergy Density: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_densityPhotovoltaic Cells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cellDirect Air Capture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_air_captureElectrolysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis======Production and marketing by The Deep View (https://thedeepview.co). For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email team@firstprinciples.fm======Checkout the video version here → http://tinyurl.com/4fh497n9

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.ktfpress.comNote: The transcript for this episode is below, rather than in the usual separate post. We're experimenting with ways to make our podcast posts more convenient and easier to find. Feedback is welcome as always at shakethedust@ktfpress.com!This month, our bonus episode features a discussion about our big-picture thoughts on the 2024 presidential election and the possibility of a second Trump term. Jonathan and Sy get into:-        How a Trump Reelection would harm marginalized people, democracy, and creation-        How God's sovereignty and familiarity with suffering would get us through another Trump administration-        How both the oppression Biden's administration causes and US history give us helpful context for thinking about Trump-        How we can minimize the suffering of others by overreacting to Trump-        And a discussion about a recent highlight from our newsletter on prison slave labor in America's food industryResources Mentioned in the Episode-        Our YouTube video of Dr. Mika Edmondson on MLK's theology of suffering and sovereignty-        The essay from our anthology, “Bad Theology Kills” by Jesse Wheeler-        The AP's investigation into prison labor and the Food IndustryCredits-        Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram-        Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra-        Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy HoekstraIntroduction[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending – F#, B#, E, D#, B – with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Jonathan Walton: I think there's a, there's just healthy, healthy gifts in Scripture when we remember that Jesus lived in an occupied territory by an empire that was ruthless, just like the United States. It's not a new thing to Jesus, it's not a new thing to God, which I'm really, really grateful for. Like our Savior understands. That's the reason he can say in scripture, “There will be wars and rumors of wars, let not your heart be troubled.”[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I am Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I am Sy Hoekstra. We today, are going to be talking about the election coming at the end of 2024.Jonathan Walton: Lord Jesus…Sy Hoekstra: Of course, I'm talking about the election for New York City comptroller. No, I'm talking about the presidential election [laughter] in the United States of America. When it comes to season four of this show when we get started in a couple of months, we are going to be talking mostly, if not all, about the election. Kind of bringing on some guests that we think have a really good perspective, just really diving deep into this crucial subject for this time. And we thought it would be a good idea to give you, our lovely paid subscribers some perspective before we dive into that. Some of like where we are coming from when we think about the election.How important is it? What are the truly bad things that will happen if Trump gets reelected? And without minimizing any of the harm that will come if he is reelected, how can we sort of contextualize these issues within history and theology from the perspectives of marginalized voices, to give us just kind of a broader understanding of kind of the real consequences and really what's going on this year? So what happens if Trump gets reelected and how earth shaking is it [laughter]? That's effectively what we're talking about today. We will also be doing our new segment, which tab is still open, diving a little bit deeper into one of the recent highlights from our newsletter, in this case, is going to be my highlight, a massive AP investigation into prison labor, and how it supplies the food that is absolutely in your kitchen. If you didn't take a look at it, it will be in the show notes. It is a shocking one, and we're going to talk about that one a little bit more. But before we jump into the main discussion, Jonathan.Jonathan Walton: Yes, before we jump into anything, we just have one quick favor to ask of you. And that is, go to Apple or Spotify and give this show a five-star rating. It's a quick, easy, free way to support us and makes us look good, and other people look us up. So please go to Apple or Spotify, give us a five-star rating, and if you can, leave a review. It's just a super, super helpful way to support the show, and many of you have done it. And so there's an unlimited invitation to this party [Sy laughs]. So please do give us a five-star rating, write a review. We really, really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much in advance.A Trump Reelection would Multiply the Harm We Do to Marginalized PeopleSy Hoekstra: Alright, let's jump into it. I know that both of us think this election is really important. But I also know that we both have some historical and theological perspective that might somewhat ironically, maybe make us think that it's a less earth-shaking election than other people might. But I just wanted to start by talking about what will happen. Why is this election important? If Trump gets reelected, Jonathan, what will happen and why does it matter?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, actually, as I've been thinking about this question, I think that the reason that it's important, are the reasons that have always been important. It's just a problem at a fire when someone has kerosene, and it's just walking around, throwing it everywhere. Right?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And so it's like, it is not untrue that the United States has, it has been and has baked in racist, bigoted, misogynistic frameworks into our entire systems and structures. It was intentional, and it is still working very strong and well today. That has always been true. What changes, I think, is how these systems and structures impact a lot of the vulnerable people. And if you vote for Donald Trump, or lean into the things that he normalizes as everyday practices, that is a profound problem for the most vulnerable people in our country. We are living in the wake of significant cultural, political, theological and demographic change in the United States, and to have a president that explicitly endorses exploitation and militarism and hyper-capitalism, then we have a serious problem.The things that I am hopeful do not happen is the expressed situational, like contextualized things in our time and culture, which again, I'm not saying they haven't happened before. I'm not saying that they're more unique than other things that have happened before. What I am saying, is we're living in this moment, and we have an opportunity as best as we possibly can to push back against systems that oppress, abuse and violate. And one of the ways to do that is to not vote for someone who's going to do and say things that cause oppression and violence and abuse to be multiplied the world over, because he sits in the most quote- unquote, “powerful” seat in the country. So Sy, that was a lot from me. What do you think about this election, and why is it important to you?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, so I think this question for me, is the one that I kind of want to answer a little bit talking more to marginalized people than not. And then the kind of like get some broader, bigger perspective questions that we're going to ask in a minute, are kind of the things that I think need to be directed towards people who come from the dominant side of a hierarchy, right? Like, right now I'm talking to people who are not white, instead of me talking to white people. Right now I'm talking to people I think, mostly who are disabled, and I'll be talking to able bodied people in a minute. And the reason I say that is like, I think this question of why is this important, primarily for me is like acknowledging all the things that have happened to marginalized people in his first term, and that will happen again, if he's reelected.So, for instance, because I'm married to an attorney who was working in immigration during the first Trump term, and because I have a good friend who applied for asylum just before Trump was elected, I saw kind of firsthand, like a lot of the very kind of small administrative things that Trump did in the immigration system that had a huge effect on the lives of just like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people that kind of went under the radar, just because they weren't flashy. I don't know how much you remember—how much you've put your memories of the Trump administration out of your mind for your own sort of mental peace. But there was so much stuff going on every day. Like he would say something new that was absurd, that topped the absurd thing he said yesterday, and proposed some new ridiculous policy and whatever.So a lot of things just like went under the radar that were small. And I'll give you an example. One was this woman I know who applied for asylum just toward the end of Obama's presidency. Had like an absolutely open and shut case for asylum. There's no question ever that she was going to be granted it. She was a woman from Iran who converted to Christianity and basically became a women's rights advocate. She's not going back to Iran. So she—without being persecuted, it's open and shut asylum. So she comes here and applies, and then just as, like she's kind of work… you know, it takes a while to get your asylum application granted, but it doesn't take as long as it took her.Because what happened was, Trump, in his efforts to deter as many people from coming here as possible, did this thing where he said we're going to process all of the applications that have been filed most recently first, and then we're going to make our way back towards the applications that were filed, sort of in the past. So she was making her way through the line through the processing thing, and then all of a sudden, the line flipped, and she was at the end again. So it took eight years to process her asylum application, which was unheard of previous to the Trump administration. And that just like left her in a state of limbo and uncertainty, it makes it, there's all kinds of things that are just harder when you haven't been granted that when you can't be moving on your path towards citizenship. There's all kinds of bureaucratic things that are complicated, and it just put her forever wondering whether she was going to be able to stay in this new place that she had made her home. And that's like one example of so many different things that happened.The worst things that we've been seeing at the state level are going to be amplified if Trump gets reelected. Meaning, think about like the DeSantis takeover of public schools in Florida. Like just anything to do with talking about race in history, or gender or sexuality, those things are going to be stamped out as vigorously as possible by the federal government. The violence towards immigrants on the Texas border that we've written about in the newsletter a couple of times, like the ways that Greg Abbott is just like actively killing people who try and cross the river into Texas.The way that he and Ron DeSantis are trafficking immigrants to Blue cities for like a political stunt. All that kind of stuff would be approved of and encouraged by the head executive of the country. Everything we're seeing about don't talk about…the attempts to completely erase queer people from our public education system, attempts to ban even like life-saving abortions. All that kind of stuff, the President would be behind all of it, and that is quite scary.Trump Will Undermine Democracy, Damage Creation, and Embolden People with the Worst IdeasThere will be I think increased attempts to undermine democratic norms and processes. Obviously, he did that in his first term. He will be maybe better at it. I mean, it's hard to tell, right [Jonathan laughs]? He's still, he's the same blustering guy that he was before. And there are some things that he's proposing doing that he would absolutely never be able to do, that the President doesn't have the power to do.But you know that he's going to undermine as many norms as possible to get whatever he wants. You know that if he loses this time, there will be election violence. I mean, I would be willing to bet that at some point, he goes, “Hey, about those term limits [laughs], what do we think of those still?” And his supporters are going to say, “Get rid of them,” and he will try. Again, not something he has the power to do, but that doesn't mean that there won't be violence if he can't do it. I mean, these are all totally realistic possibilities. And then foreign policy is just going to go off the rails. Can you imagine what would be happening right now in Gaza, if Israel had the full-throated support of the American President to do whatever they want to fight terrorism, which is absolutely what he would do. Right? I mean, it would be… like not that it's not terrible now, it's horrifying now, it would be on a whole different scale if Trump was president. Because ultimately, as we've discussed in the newsletter, like what the American president says are the guardrails of Israel's military operations, are in fact the guardrails of Israel's military operations. We sort of define how far they can go or Western powers defined how far they can go. That's always been the case.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: The environmental situation will get way worse, he's promised a ton more drilling. He's said he's going to pull out of the Paris Accord, which is the big multinational treaty about climate change that exists right now. It needs strengthening, but it's the one that exists. So basically, everything I'm saying is, the reason that it's important. The reason that it's going to be bad if he gets reelected, is because it will negatively affect actual people. Actual, marginalized people will be hurt. And the creation, like God's creation will be damaged. And the line that I do want to draw there a little bit for the clarity of our thinking is, that's the problem.The problem isn't that he will degrade America's greatness or whatever. He will harm like, he may hasten the decline of America, but America to me is not like theologically or morally significant, except insofar as it contains people. It contains people…Jonathan Walton: Exactly, yeah.Sy Hoekstra: …who bear the image of God, and the creation that God made and wants us to steward. So I think that's worth keeping in mind as well. Do you have any other thoughts? There's a lot from… Now, you did a lot from you, and I did a lot from me. Do you have any thoughts?Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Well, I think what you said put hands and feet to what I was thinking. Like naming specific policies that will violate and destroy the image of God and people downstream of the American empire. And the American empire looks like what's happening in Palestine. Looks like what's happening in the Congo. Looks like what's happening in neighborhoods in New York City, and around the country where kids won't be able to get books because they will pull the funding from the library. They will have made sure that these school boards would be completely flipped because the bully pulpit as they say, the presidency, as you said, full-throatedly endorses a race-based, class-based, gender-based environmental hierarchy that makes sure things run a certain way.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, the importance of him just emboldening people can't really be understated. I mean, it's like a little bit hard to remember now, but 8, 10 years ago, we were not regularly talking about the Klan, or the Proud Boys or like the QAnon or whatever. Any of these alt right things that have cropped up since he basically made it okay to have their views and be at least around mainstream politics, right?Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: I mean, you just, I don't know. There are so many people now who on their TV shows will have, who never would have done this before. Now, I feel like they have to have somebody who just has the absolute worst views you can imagine about whoever, to come in and comment like a really serious commenter because that's the environment that Trump has created. That's the people have been emboldened by him.Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely.Trump's Reelection Is not the End of the WorldTrump Isn't God, and Jesus Knows the Suffering of OppressionSy Hoekstra: Okay. So let's pivot to some caveats or some ways that we think about another Trump presidency, from a broader perspective. Not at all trying to minimize any of the harm that we just detailed, but Trump isn't the only thing in the world that causes harm to marginalized people or to people in general. So maybe put it this way, Jonathan: would a second Trump term be the apocalypse?Jonathan Walton: [laughs] No.Sy Hoekstra: Why not Jonathan?

ISRAEL MUST STOP; COP28 Controversy; Dog Illness Spreads Karel Cast #286 Israel must stop, and that's not antisemitic . They will not get rid of HAMAS this way, they will just breed more leaders after they kill these. They must now rely on diplomacy. Do you want to pay for this? As Americans we are, and I just can bare that I am paying to kill innocent people when the goal seems unobtainable. I support Israel, a two state solution and want HAMAS destroyed. But this seems more like a thinning of the Palestinian people and less about Hamas every single day. COP28 is going on and the world doesn't seem to care. An oil executive from the UAE is in charge…that makes sense. They are talking diet and plant based options this year at least, but who is really listening? We have not lived up to the Paris Accord, we are not taking the steps needed to stop climate change…it's as if we think it's all going to be OK…it isn't. There is a dog illness spreading, and you need to know what to look out for and how to keep your dog safe. I tell you. Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe at YouTube.com/reallykarel @ReallyKarel is all social media and website reallykarel.com The Karel Cast is heard three times a week on all your favorite streaming services and the video can be seen on Youtube. Karel is a history-making #LGBTQ talk show host currently living in Las Vegas with his pup Ember. https://youtu.be/RQ1hI_crW-4

We are talking about how these global warming protesters blocking off a road in Nevada doesn't make any sense. What exactly is ‘greenlash'? And what does the Danish scholar Bjorn Lomborg say about his book, Skeptical Environmentalist? Listen in to know more about this episode.   Highlights: ●     “This is why the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg has pointed out that even if we did everything that the Paris Accord requires of us, every single thing required, all of that effort would amount to a reduction of temperature by the end of the century to no more than about zero-point-five -degrees Celsius.” ●     “With almost a year to go before the next round of European parliamentary elections, pundits are already recognizing that the European parliament is poised to shift remarkably to the right! And that's because the European Green Parties are basically collapsing across the continent, Europeans are more and more feeling the deleterious effects of the imploding material conditions due to Green policies, and so the leftist parties are expected to collapse while the continent as a whole move to the political right!” ●     “It's been rather embarrassingly well-documented that computer generated models for climate change have been rather disastrous in terms of their predictability accuracy. And this is because the assumption among environmentalists is that the earth is static in nature, in other words, if you don't mess with it the earth stays the same, its climate constituents remain unchanged. Apparently, as it turns out, that's not true. The earth is not static.”   Timestamps:  [04:10] China and USA impact on global emissions [04:56] What is ‘greenlash'? [07:11] Climate change predictions [08:39] What do prominent figures say about climate change?    Resources:  ●     Get two packs of organic bacon FREE every month if you sign up HERE: https://www.frebahlem.com/BG484F42/ ●     Try Liver Health Formula by going to GetLiverHelp.com/Turley and claim your 5 FREE bonus gifts. That's https://GetLiverHelp.com/Turley ●     Learn how to protect your life savings from inflation and an irresponsible government, with Gold and Silver. Go to http://www.turleytalkslikesgold.com/ ●     The Courageous Patriot Community is inviting YOU! Join the movement now and build the parallel economy at https://join.turleytalks.com/insiders-club-evergreen/?utm_medium=podcast ●     Show your support for President Trump with his new cards HERE: https://www.physicaltrumpcards.com/trump-cards-collection-podcast ●     Join me and Ross on Thursday, August 31st at 3PM EST, and learn exactly how YOU can turn the swamp's corruption into value for you and your family! Sign up HERE: https://turleytalksinsidertrading.com/registration/?tambid=18762   Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode.  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or leave a review. Sick and tired of Big Tech, censorship, and endless propaganda? Join my Insiders Club with a FREE TRIAL today at: https://insidersclub.turleytalks.com Make sure to FOLLOW me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrTurleyTalks BOLDLY stand up for TRUTH in Turley Merch! Browse our new designs right now at: https://store.turleytalks.com/ Do you want to be a part of the podcast and be our sponsor? Click here to partner with us and defy liberal culture! If you would like to get lots of articles on conservative trends make sure to sign-up for the 'New Conservative Age Rising' Email Alerts.