WEBVTT

00:00:11.879 --> 00:00:13.819
A student walked into my office one day

00:00:13.819 --> 00:00:17.209
and said he'd like to talk to me
about an undergraduate research project

00:00:17.209 --> 00:00:19.689
and I said, "Sure, 
what are you thinking about?"

00:00:19.689 --> 00:00:24.129
And he said, "Well, there's been so much
research done on bottlenose dolphins

00:00:24.754 --> 00:00:29.044
that we now know they meet
the universal definition of persons."

00:00:30.477 --> 00:00:33.427
And I said, "Keep talking."

00:00:33.510 --> 00:00:35.820
And I didn't even realize
until that moment,

00:00:35.820 --> 00:00:40.280
that I had never thought of persons
as anything but humans,

00:00:40.280 --> 00:00:42.580
just like, you know, interchangeably.

00:00:42.983 --> 00:00:46.573
The implications though,
if dolphins are persons,

00:00:46.573 --> 00:00:49.683
is that they have moral standing,
and what that means,

00:00:49.683 --> 00:00:52.393
from an environmental policy 
and management perspective,

00:00:52.393 --> 00:00:56.513
is that we wouldn't be managing
populations of dolphins,

00:00:58.064 --> 00:01:00.794
they would actually,
individually have rights.

00:01:01.024 --> 00:01:04.494
In that project we looked at which rights,
in the Bill of Rights,

00:01:04.494 --> 00:01:06.894
and in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights,

00:01:07.505 --> 00:01:09.415
would be extended to dolphins.

00:01:09.415 --> 00:01:13.555
Or we would actually, really, recognize 
that they already have those rights.

00:01:13.960 --> 00:01:17.960
And I'm not going to talk
about that project tonight specifically.

00:01:20.344 --> 00:01:22.564
What is a person now?

00:01:22.564 --> 00:01:25.834
Philosophers have 
lots of ideas about this,

00:01:25.834 --> 00:01:29.564
there's rough consensus, discussed
by Thomas White in his book,

00:01:29.564 --> 00:01:31.674
'In Defense of Dolphins',

00:01:31.674 --> 00:01:33.644
around eight criteria.

00:01:41.612 --> 00:01:44.852
A person is alive, aware,


00:01:44.852 --> 00:01:48.292
feels positive and negative sensations,
and has emotions.

00:01:48.292 --> 00:01:53.932
A person also has a sense of self,
controls its own behavior,

00:01:54.652 --> 00:01:57.492
recognizes other persons
and treats them appropriately,

00:01:57.492 --> 00:02:00.092
and has a variety of sophisticated
cognitive abilities:

00:02:00.092 --> 00:02:02.792
problem-solving, abstract thought, etc.

00:02:02.792 --> 00:02:05.872
I'm not going to make the case
that dolphins are persons tonight.

00:02:05.872 --> 00:02:08.432
I'm just going to tell you some stories.

00:02:08.432 --> 00:02:11.512
Also because
many definitions of personhood

00:02:11.512 --> 00:02:14.772
have a big weakness, that has to do
with verbal communication,

00:02:14.772 --> 00:02:16.392
which I think is kind of funny,

00:02:16.392 --> 00:02:19.152
because the language spoken
by more organisms

00:02:19.152 --> 00:02:21.132
than any other language on Earth,

00:02:21.132 --> 00:02:23.522
is actually bioluminescence.

00:02:23.522 --> 00:02:26.402
So our use of language 
and communication are pretty limited.

00:02:27.513 --> 00:02:32.713
Several years ago there was a man,
he was at an aquarium,

00:02:32.933 --> 00:02:35.713
and he was looking through the window

00:02:35.713 --> 00:02:38.163
at this baby dolphin
on the other side of the glass.

00:02:38.163 --> 00:02:39.643
And he was smoking a cigarette,

00:02:39.643 --> 00:02:41.223
because it was several years ago.

00:02:41.223 --> 00:02:44.653
He took a drag off his cigarette,
and he blew it toward the baby dolphin,

00:02:44.653 --> 00:02:46.863
and it spread out on the glass.

00:02:47.181 --> 00:02:49.981
And the baby dolphin
swam away to its mother,

00:02:49.981 --> 00:02:53.451
and got a mouthful milk,
and swam back and faced him,

00:02:53.651 --> 00:02:57.081
and squirted the milk out,
yeah, yeah.

00:02:59.010 --> 00:03:02.170
Where is that in the list?

00:03:02.270 --> 00:03:06.270
So, abstract thought,
material substitution ability?

00:03:06.776 --> 00:03:08.586
Pretty impressive.

00:03:09.396 --> 00:03:10.536
Another story,

00:03:10.536 --> 00:03:13.216
there's a diver, who's diving 
down at about 60 feet.

00:03:13.216 --> 00:03:15.096
He was on the bottom doing something,

00:03:15.096 --> 00:03:16.776
and three dolphins swam up to him:

00:03:16.776 --> 00:03:19.376
two adults and a baby in between them.

00:03:19.376 --> 00:03:21.055
And they swam right up to him

00:03:29.448 --> 00:03:33.128
was wrapped around its fin
and was cutting into it.

00:03:21.055 --> 00:03:24.521
and the adults held the baby down
on the bottom in front of him.

00:03:24.521 --> 00:03:29.431
And the baby dolphin had a hook
in front of its tail, and the fishing line

00:03:33.128 --> 00:03:35.708
So they held this dolphin down
in front of this human.

00:03:35.708 --> 00:03:38.708
And the guy took out his knife
and he cut the lines

00:03:38.708 --> 00:03:40.728
and unwrapped the fishing line.

00:03:40.728 --> 00:03:42.888
And he tried to pull the hook out

00:03:42.888 --> 00:03:45.048
but it was too embedded
for him to pull out,

00:03:45.646 --> 00:03:47.856
and the dolphins were still
holding that thing.

00:03:47.856 --> 00:03:49.806
And so he cut it out
with his knife,

00:03:49.806 --> 00:03:53.346
which, without question,
was quite painful for the baby dolphin.

00:03:53.346 --> 00:03:55.040
But he got it all cleaned up.

00:03:55.040 --> 00:03:57.340
So one adult and the baby swam off,

00:03:57.340 --> 00:04:00.700
and the other adult 
swam right up to his mask,

00:04:00.700 --> 00:04:02.530
and put his snout
right into his face,

00:04:02.530 --> 00:04:04.125
which is normally aggression,

00:04:04.125 --> 00:04:06.955
but he said it was clearly
not an aggressive move at all.

00:04:06.955 --> 00:04:08.329
And that dolphin --

00:04:08.501 --> 00:04:11.151
they just they just looked
into each other's eyes

00:04:11.151 --> 00:04:14.881
for a long time, and then 
the dolphin swam away.

00:04:18.961 --> 00:04:21.672
Dolphins see with their eyes,

00:04:21.672 --> 00:04:24.232
but they really experience the world
through sonar.

00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:28.270
So if a dolphin
is in front of us underwater,

00:04:28.270 --> 00:04:31.508
it would be able to see and tell
all the differences in density,

00:04:31.508 --> 00:04:34.678
so it would be able to see
all of our organs, individually.

00:04:34.678 --> 00:04:38.048
They can tell differences in thickness
down to a millimeter,

00:04:38.048 --> 00:04:39.498
or probably less.

00:04:39.498 --> 00:04:42.028
That's as far as we can figure out
what they can tell.

00:04:42.028 --> 00:04:44.188
It would see our blood flowing,

00:04:44.188 --> 00:04:46.228
it would see all kinds of activity.

00:04:46.228 --> 00:04:48.238
Dolphins can tell
when humans are pregnant,

00:04:48.238 --> 00:04:50.188
because it's like, "Yep, that's in there.

00:04:50.188 --> 00:04:52.238
I know what that's about, you know."

00:04:52.238 --> 00:04:55.528
There's actually a case where a dolphin
indicated a woman was pregnant

00:04:55.528 --> 00:04:57.628
before she knew she was pregnant.

00:04:58.249 --> 00:05:02.249
But they see with sonar,
which raises lots of questions.

00:05:02.446 --> 00:05:06.466
And I'm sure that dolphin was doing
all kinds of sonar stuff with the human

00:05:06.646 --> 00:05:09.946
but we don't have
sensory equipment for that.

00:05:11.633 --> 00:05:12.833
Can they lie?

00:05:13.427 --> 00:05:17.187
When humans lie, our palms sweat,
our heart rate changes, and things.

00:05:17.187 --> 00:05:19.217
Dolphins could see all of that happening,

00:05:19.217 --> 00:05:21.277
and they can see it happening
in each other.

00:05:21.277 --> 00:05:25.047
So unless they could lie
with no physiological change,

00:05:25.047 --> 00:05:27.547
it might be that they can't,
or don't lie.

00:05:27.547 --> 00:05:29.987
Or maybe they do,
but it's interesting to think

00:05:29.987 --> 00:05:32.837
what would a society be like,

00:05:34.317 --> 00:05:38.597
if lying weren't possible,
and had never been possible?

00:05:40.962 --> 00:05:41.692
Wow!

00:05:41.792 --> 00:05:44.232
I don't think we'd actually have
the climate crisis,

00:05:44.232 --> 00:05:46.202
and a lot of other things.

00:05:50.957 --> 00:05:52.587
A woman researcher,

00:05:53.009 --> 00:05:55.929
she swam with dolphins a lot,
worked with them.

00:05:56.082 --> 00:05:58.206
There was a storm,
her boat turned over,

00:05:58.206 --> 00:06:00.736
there was a plastic bag
with a bunch of tools in it,

00:06:00.736 --> 00:06:02.696
that fell down to the bottom
and was lost.

00:06:02.696 --> 00:06:04.676
After the storm, she's down at the beach,

00:06:04.696 --> 00:06:07.506
she's going out for a swim,
there's a dolphin there waiting,

00:06:07.506 --> 00:06:09.706
as was often the case,
to go swimming with her,

00:06:09.736 --> 00:06:12.756
and the dolphin takes her out to a spot,
and dives down,

00:06:12.756 --> 00:06:14.846
and brings up her toolkit in its mouth.

00:06:15.334 --> 00:06:18.244
And hands it too her. 
You know? No! (Laughter).

00:06:18.244 --> 00:06:20.924
So she takes the toolkit,
and then the dolphin swam away.

00:06:20.924 --> 00:06:23.074
I mean, that was its purpose,

00:06:23.074 --> 00:06:25.674
like, "I'm going to get your stuff,
come on, let's go."

00:06:25.674 --> 00:06:26.854
(Laughter)

00:06:27.122 --> 00:06:28.892
They are also artists.

00:06:28.892 --> 00:06:30.412
Dolphins blow bubble rings.

00:06:30.412 --> 00:06:32.432
I couldn't find a non copyrighted picture.

00:06:32.432 --> 00:06:35.102
But go online and search
on that, dolphins' bubble rings.

00:06:35.102 --> 00:06:37.692
So they blow rings,
they look like doughnuts,

00:06:37.692 --> 00:06:40.022
and they can change them
into all kinds of shapes,

00:06:40.022 --> 00:06:42.172
they like to swim through them
and be creative

00:06:42.172 --> 00:06:44.812
and do multiple bubble rings.

00:06:44.812 --> 00:06:47.762
And they also express frustration,

00:06:48.004 --> 00:06:50.284
If the bubble rings
aren't doing what they want,

00:06:50.284 --> 00:06:52.664
and they slap them with their tails,
and, you know,

00:06:52.664 --> 00:06:55.844
exhibit feelings,
like it seems that they're frustrated.

00:06:56.313 --> 00:06:57.293
Maybe not.

00:06:58.575 --> 00:07:01.365
Dolphin brains are very different
from our brains,

00:07:01.365 --> 00:07:04.345
they are larger,
and what makes them larger

00:07:04.385 --> 00:07:07.285
is that they have more brain material

00:07:07.285 --> 00:07:10.365
in the area of the brain
that is devoted to higher functions.

00:07:10.365 --> 00:07:14.895
Dolphins also have more grey matter
than humans,

00:07:14.905 --> 00:07:18.515
and their grey matter has more folds in it
than humans' grey matter.

00:07:20.562 --> 00:07:22.742
At first, when I heard about this,
I thought,

00:07:22.742 --> 00:07:24.912
"You know,
other things would be persons too,

00:07:24.912 --> 00:07:26.932
like elephants, dogs,
and this and that."

00:07:26.932 --> 00:07:29.122
But then, after these details, I thought,

00:07:29.122 --> 00:07:32.612
"Oh, actually, dolphins have the second
most complex brain on the planet,

00:07:32.722 --> 00:07:34.532
and there's no close third."

00:07:35.306 --> 00:07:37.636
Their brains are way more complex
than great apes,

00:07:37.636 --> 00:07:39.406
they're much closer to us

00:07:39.406 --> 00:07:42.516
in a lot of different ways
of measuring intelligence and things.

00:07:43.268 --> 00:07:46.988
They also have the emotional centers
of their brains more integrated

00:07:47.068 --> 00:07:49.488
with their motor and sensory perception,

00:07:49.488 --> 00:07:52.708
and also their higher functioning parts
of their brains

00:07:52.738 --> 00:07:54.518
where we would be doing reasoning.

00:07:54.518 --> 00:07:56.008
So, as opposed to us,

00:07:56.008 --> 00:07:58.238
where our emotional center
is more isolated,

00:07:58.238 --> 00:08:02.938
in dolphins it's pretty integrated,
they are touching along a lot of surface.

00:08:02.948 --> 00:08:04.858
So it might be possible

00:08:04.858 --> 00:08:09.388
that dolphins can't be out of touch
with their emotions.

00:08:10.364 --> 00:08:12.214
And they clearly have emotions,

00:08:12.214 --> 00:08:13.764
and they clearly grieve,

00:08:13.764 --> 00:08:15.544
and they clearly experience joy,

00:08:15.544 --> 00:08:17.184
or whatever they call it, joy.

00:08:18.497 --> 00:08:20.157
So my student said to me,

00:08:21.247 --> 00:08:22.657
"By dolphin standards,

00:08:23.587 --> 00:08:25.207
humans might be autistic."

00:08:25.503 --> 00:08:27.353
(Laughter)

00:08:27.923 --> 00:08:30.063
I know, it's kind of funny,

00:08:30.365 --> 00:08:32.184
but this is very meaningful too,

00:08:32.404 --> 00:08:34.506
because he grew up
with an autistic brother,

00:08:34.506 --> 00:08:36.276
so he knew what he was talking about.

00:08:36.276 --> 00:08:38.146
He was like, "We're probably autistic,"


00:08:38.146 --> 00:08:40.826
and I said, "Oh my gosh,
we're autistic compared to dogs,

00:08:40.826 --> 00:08:43.776
we're autistic compared to,
you know, you've got a long list."

00:08:44.756 --> 00:08:47.506
There are all kinds of cetaceans,


00:08:47.506 --> 00:08:52.476
and it's not just dolphins,
that we find amazing relationships.

00:08:53.072 --> 00:08:57.082
There was a humpback whale,
so 40-50 feet long, a humpback whale.

00:08:57.195 --> 00:08:59.635
Up the coast of San Francisco,
in 2005,

00:08:59.635 --> 00:09:02.825
this was the very first successful time

00:09:02.825 --> 00:09:06.905
we ever unwrapped a humpback whale
that was trapped in all kinds of ropes.

00:09:07.097 --> 00:09:10.517
And it had crab pot ropes all over,
it had twenty of them.

00:09:10.737 --> 00:09:14.457
They are about 240 feet long,
they have weights every 60 feet,

00:09:14.457 --> 00:09:19.337
and several of them
had 90-pound crab pots still on them.

00:09:19.407 --> 00:09:23.947
And there was one wrapped
multiple times around its tail,

00:09:23.947 --> 00:09:26.507
there was one in its mouth, all over it.

00:09:26.677 --> 00:09:29.897
It was in very bad shape,
and a call went in,

00:09:29.897 --> 00:09:33.877
some highly experienced divers 
went out, and risked their lives,

00:09:33.917 --> 00:09:37.627
because one swish of a humpback's tail
could easily kill a diver.

00:09:37.627 --> 00:09:40.471
The whale stayed still,

00:09:40.471 --> 00:09:44.351
it had little trouble staying up
because of the weights connected to it,

00:09:44.351 --> 00:09:46.461
while they carefully, with curved knives,

00:09:46.461 --> 00:09:48.721
because the ropes were cutting
into its blubber,

00:09:48.721 --> 00:09:52.301
with curved knives they cut
all of the ropes away.

00:09:53.961 --> 00:09:55.351
And the whale,

00:09:56.631 --> 00:09:59.221
when it realized it was free,

00:09:59.561 --> 00:10:03.371
it swam all over the place, and they said
it looked like it was frolicking,

00:10:03.742 --> 00:10:07.752
and then they had this vibration
going on in the water, the whole time,

00:10:07.752 --> 00:10:09.092
that they could feel.

00:10:09.092 --> 00:10:13.372
Then the humpback whale,
this is a 50 ton animal,

00:10:13.422 --> 00:10:18.922
went up to every single diver,
individually, and nuzzled them,

00:10:19.453 --> 00:10:20.933
and then swam away.

00:10:32.021 --> 00:10:34.351
So we're in this intimate
relationship with them,

00:10:34.351 --> 00:10:36.331
of course we already live together,

00:10:36.331 --> 00:10:38.351
but we're being like 
really bad roommates.

00:10:38.351 --> 00:10:39.951
We're being like roommates that

00:10:39.951 --> 00:10:42.371
threw all of our garbage
in our roommates' bedroom,

00:10:42.371 --> 00:10:44.741
and we ate all their food,

00:10:44.741 --> 00:10:46.951
and their parents came over
and we killed them,

00:10:46.951 --> 00:10:48.551
and then we ate them!

00:10:48.551 --> 00:10:50.551
(Laughter)

00:10:50.551 --> 00:10:52.701
And this is the truth.

00:10:53.511 --> 00:10:55.041
And then we figure out,

00:10:55.041 --> 00:10:57.781
"Wow, oh my gosh, these roommates
are actually really cool,

00:10:57.781 --> 00:11:00.421
wonderful individuals,
I'd like to get to know them.

00:11:00.441 --> 00:11:02.881
I've been treating them so badly,
this is terrible."

00:11:02.881 --> 00:11:05.171
So we have a great opportunity

00:11:05.171 --> 00:11:09.251
to expand our relationships,
which is wonderful.

00:11:10.151 --> 00:11:12.271
What's not wonderful is that

00:11:16.430 --> 00:11:18.470
scientists predict
that we're going to lose

00:11:18.470 --> 00:11:22.510
most of the dolphins to extinction,
forever, by 2100.

00:11:26.955 --> 00:11:29.385
And that is not acceptable to me.

00:11:29.385 --> 00:11:30.735
Can I get a witness?

00:11:30.819 --> 00:11:33.559
(Applause)

00:11:33.559 --> 00:11:35.249
Yeah, that is not acceptable.

00:11:35.249 --> 00:11:36.639
The extinction crisis,

00:11:36.639 --> 00:11:39.719
the numbers we're on track for,
right now, for all life on Earth,

00:11:39.719 --> 00:11:43.199
is somewhere between 25 and 50%
becoming extinct by 2100.

00:11:45.695 --> 00:11:48.345
Somewhere between 25 and 50%
becoming extinct by 2100.

00:11:48.345 --> 00:11:51.115
Usually this is where people
want to turn off their minds,

00:11:51.115 --> 00:11:53.535
like, "That hurt,
maybe I didn't hear that right",

00:11:53.535 --> 00:11:55.905
or it bounces off
because it's such a high number.

00:11:55.905 --> 00:11:58.245
But we have to look at this,
even though it hurts.

00:11:58.245 --> 00:12:00.735
I think a bit like,
if I went into an emergency room,

00:12:00.735 --> 00:12:03.795
or somebody goes into an emergency room
and they're hurt, badly,

00:12:03.795 --> 00:12:06.675
and the doctors are like,
'Wow! I don't want to look at that,

00:12:06.675 --> 00:12:08.625
oh man, that's gonna be bad!

00:12:08.625 --> 00:12:10.385
When do I get off?"

00:12:10.854 --> 00:12:13.794
You know we've got to go,
"Okay, what's the situation?

00:12:13.794 --> 00:12:15.654
And how are we going to handle it?"

00:12:15.654 --> 00:12:16.974
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

00:12:19.197 --> 00:12:21.387
So, the cool thing
about the extinction crisis,

00:12:21.447 --> 00:12:24.327
is that we all go, or nobody goes.

00:12:26.597 --> 00:12:32.677
We can't save dolphins without saving
millions of other species in the process.

00:12:32.925 --> 00:12:34.205
Which is fantastic.

00:12:35.424 --> 00:12:37.234
So we all go, or nobody goes.

00:12:38.083 --> 00:12:39.723
The challenge right now,

00:12:39.997 --> 00:12:42.187
like the late Thomas Perry said,

00:12:42.187 --> 00:12:44.777
"What we have to do is the great work."

00:12:46.571 --> 00:12:49.841
I say, "What we have to do
is restore World Garden.

00:12:50.003 --> 00:12:51.003
That's what I call it.

00:12:51.003 --> 00:12:52.893
We have to restore world garden.

00:12:52.893 --> 00:12:55.593
(Applause)

00:12:55.593 --> 00:12:58.243
Yeah!

00:12:59.788 --> 00:13:01.458
And it's a big get to.

00:13:01.458 --> 00:13:04.878
So, what I want to talk about are --

00:13:05.977 --> 00:13:08.807
all my degrees are 
Environmental Sciences degrees.

00:13:08.807 --> 00:13:10.817
I was actually a tree hugger as a child,

00:13:10.817 --> 00:13:12.917
I didn't even know
there was a term for that,

00:13:12.917 --> 00:13:14.777
and I was hugging trees as a child.

00:13:14.777 --> 00:13:16.007
Really!

00:13:17.327 --> 00:13:20.017
I was eating dirt, too.

00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:28.400
So I'm going to give you four big ideas,
that are things that we need to do

00:13:28.440 --> 00:13:32.440
if we're going to restore World Garden.

00:13:32.440 --> 00:13:37.470
The first one is the hardest,
but it's not optional.

00:13:38.908 --> 00:13:40.408
And that's not it.

00:13:41.089 --> 00:13:43.279
Am I pushing the wrong button?

00:13:43.279 --> 00:13:44.519
Oh, there it is.

00:13:44.519 --> 00:13:46.359
Uh, you cannot even tell what that is.

00:13:46.359 --> 00:13:48.159
That is a really bad image of a plan

00:13:48.159 --> 00:13:51.399
from the Fish and Wildlife folks
up in Vermont,

00:13:51.399 --> 00:13:55.079
but what we need to do
is reconnect our habitats.

00:13:55.079 --> 00:13:58.539
We have fragmented our habitats,
and that's one of the major reasons

00:13:58.539 --> 00:14:00.559
for the extinction crisis.

00:14:00.559 --> 00:14:04.279
So, what we've created on terrestrial 
Earth, is a bunch of islands,

00:14:04.279 --> 00:14:05.919
they are isolated.

00:14:05.919 --> 00:14:08.809
So, if you imagine a Persian carpet,
a large Persian carpet,

00:14:08.809 --> 00:14:11.779
and it's got a beautiful,
complex design on it,

00:14:11.779 --> 00:14:13.569
and every part of that carpet

00:14:13.569 --> 00:14:15.889
is connected to every other part
of that carpet

00:14:15.889 --> 00:14:19.109
through the warp and the weft,
in a series of complex relationships,

00:14:19.109 --> 00:14:21.579
it's a good metaphor for an ecosystem.

00:14:21.579 --> 00:14:22.969
So we cut that up,

00:14:22.969 --> 00:14:24.939
paved over some of it,
burned some of it

00:14:24.939 --> 00:14:27.249
thrown it away, whatever,
planted rice on it,

00:14:27.249 --> 00:14:29.679
and there are pieces left,
but they're isolated,

00:14:29.679 --> 00:14:34.439
and each one is not as incredible
as the entire Persian carpet,

00:14:34.990 --> 00:14:38.170
and each one is commencing 
to fall apart.

00:14:39.683 --> 00:14:41.473
So we need to restore them,

00:14:41.473 --> 00:14:43.993
and have protected areas
with corridors in between.

00:14:43.993 --> 00:14:45.283
This is difficult,

00:14:45.283 --> 00:14:47.713
we run into the Fifth Amendment,
on property rights,

00:14:47.713 --> 00:14:51.243
and all kinds of other things,
but it's actually not optional.

00:14:51.641 --> 00:14:54.261
If we want to be stewards
of the future of life

00:14:54.261 --> 00:14:56.591
and maintain habitability on this Planet,

00:14:56.633 --> 00:14:58.833
this is not optional,
so we might as well say,

00:14:58.833 --> 00:15:00.193
"Yeah, we get to do it."

00:15:00.193 --> 00:15:03.103
The fact that it's not optional
makes the fact that it's hard

00:15:03.103 --> 00:15:04.993
pretty much irrelevant.
(Laughter)

00:15:04.993 --> 00:15:06.853
As far as I'm concerned.

00:15:06.853 --> 00:15:10.373
(Applause)

00:15:12.481 --> 00:15:16.111
And just like Drew said,
most of the things worth having,

00:15:16.141 --> 00:15:19.451
or most of the accomplishments
worth achieving, are hard.

00:15:19.561 --> 00:15:20.891
So this is fantastic,

00:15:20.891 --> 00:15:23.051
restore World Garden on this one.

00:15:23.364 --> 00:15:27.884
Another tremendous opportunity,
is microalgae.

00:15:27.994 --> 00:15:31.994
We already have
a sustainable fuel available,

00:15:32.465 --> 00:15:35.145
and I've been preaching
about microalgae for years,

00:15:35.145 --> 00:15:37.185
and I'm going to preach about it tonight!

00:15:37.185 --> 00:15:42.145
And you'll know why, and you walk out
with microalgae forever in your soul.

00:15:42.514 --> 00:15:44.254
I'm going to save you.

00:15:44.254 --> 00:15:47.074
Alright, I'm going to heal you.

00:15:48.298 --> 00:15:51.358
Some species of microalgae 
are very fatty.

00:15:51.358 --> 00:15:54.128
They are 70% or more lipid by weight.

00:15:54.128 --> 00:15:55.698
We can grow them,

00:15:56.138 --> 00:15:58.638
we don't do this in the ocean,
and squeeze the ocean,

00:15:58.638 --> 00:16:01.428
we grow them in an isolated place.

00:16:01.428 --> 00:16:04.888
So we grow them,
and we can press the oil out of them,

00:16:04.888 --> 00:16:07.548
and then we can use that oil 
for lots of industries.

00:16:07.548 --> 00:16:10.638
You can just burn straight in,
or we convert it to biodiesel,

00:16:10.638 --> 00:16:12.418
or whatever we want.

00:16:12.418 --> 00:16:14.688
The incredible thing
about microalgae is this.

00:16:15.941 --> 00:16:21.141
The best crop we have right now,
for producing oil, is oil palm.

00:16:21.763 --> 00:16:26.773
With oil palm we can produce, maybe,
650 gallons per acre per year,

00:16:26.773 --> 00:16:29.713
maybe a couple more hundreds 
than that.

00:16:29.713 --> 00:16:31.003
But that's it.

00:16:31.003 --> 00:16:32.233
In North Carolina,

00:16:32.233 --> 00:16:34.623
most promising for us 
would be rapeseed,

00:16:34.623 --> 00:16:37.373
which may be 47 gallons 
per acre per year.

00:16:37.373 --> 00:16:39.073
With microalgae, by 1999,

00:16:39.073 --> 00:16:41.973
the US government 
had already demonstrated

00:16:41.973 --> 00:16:45.573
5 to 10 thousand gallons
per acre per year.

00:16:47.137 --> 00:16:49.747
There's a company out there that,
a couple years ago,

00:16:49.747 --> 00:16:52.387
said they demonstrated
30,000 gallons per acre per year,

00:16:52.387 --> 00:16:55.437
and they knew they could do 100.

00:16:55.617 --> 00:16:58.357
So, if we do this sustainably,
there's no downside,

00:16:58.357 --> 00:17:02.367
and if you go online and you search
Green XPrize and microalgae,

00:17:02.427 --> 00:17:04.657
John Richard and I did a two-minute

00:17:04.657 --> 00:17:08.407
pitch for the Green XPrize competition,

00:17:08.407 --> 00:17:12.967
and you can kind of learn everything
you need to know to begin, in two minutes.

00:17:12.987 --> 00:17:16.127
So I encourage you, if you're interested.

00:17:18.020 --> 00:17:20.120
If we would burn our forest,

00:17:21.816 --> 00:17:22.996
it could save us.

00:17:22.996 --> 00:17:24.856
No.
(Laughter)

00:17:24.856 --> 00:17:27.816
This a power charcoal,
this is the power charcoal,

00:17:27.816 --> 00:17:30.236
this is biochar,
and biochar can save us.

00:17:30.236 --> 00:17:32.776
So, Drew was up here
talking about reducing emissions,

00:17:32.776 --> 00:17:34.946
and getting to 3.50,
we've got to get to 3.50.

00:17:35.286 --> 00:17:36.476
3.50 is the goal.

00:17:36.476 --> 00:17:40.476
So we have to turn around
and take a big step forward.

00:17:41.915 --> 00:17:44.395
Biochar is one of the ways to do this.

00:17:44.500 --> 00:17:46.840
Because, since we're above 3.50,

00:17:46.840 --> 00:17:49.110
we've got to start doing
sequestration today.

00:17:49.541 --> 00:17:53.701
Down in South America, there were soils
that anthropologists call Dark Earth,

00:17:53.701 --> 00:17:57.181
Terra Preta, and they didn't know
where these soils had come from,

00:17:57.181 --> 00:18:00.311
because they were round areas,
where there had been civilizations.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:00.311 --> 00:18:03.601
They didn't know people lived there,
because the Dark Earth was there,

00:18:03.601 --> 00:18:05.091
because it produced a lot more,

00:18:05.091 --> 00:18:07.771
or if the people had somehow
made these soils this way,

00:18:07.771 --> 00:18:09.541
that they're highly productive.

00:18:09.541 --> 00:18:11.691
And we found out
that they made them that way,

00:18:11.691 --> 00:18:14.911
by making biochar,
and mixing it into the soil,

00:18:14.911 --> 00:18:18.631
because it radically improves
electron transport and some other things.

00:18:18.661 --> 00:18:20.771
So we've decimated our soils.

00:18:20.771 --> 00:18:22.741
This is a great win win, because

00:18:22.741 --> 00:18:25.311
we can rebuild our soils,
and this is a wonderful way

00:18:25.311 --> 00:18:27.061
to start doing that,

00:18:27.061 --> 00:18:28.121
and the carbon

00:18:28.121 --> 00:18:29.811
that gets in there
is sequestered.

00:18:29.811 --> 00:18:31.231
We have the data.

00:18:31.741 --> 00:18:33.591
People did it for us.

00:18:33.591 --> 00:18:36.911
The carbon stays for thousands of years,

00:18:36.911 --> 00:18:40.351
it doesn't just decompose
and return to the atmosphere.

00:18:41.501 --> 00:18:44.691
Because it's not decomposing,
it's just interacting with things,

00:18:44.691 --> 00:18:46.551
but it's not changing its form.

00:18:46.551 --> 00:18:48.961
So this is incredible,
biochar is fantastic,

00:18:48.961 --> 00:18:51.471
and a way to a sustainable future.

00:18:51.471 --> 00:18:57.161
And finally, there's just one special 
class of beings that need to have

00:18:57.711 --> 00:19:00.301
attention paid to them, specifically.

00:19:01.904 --> 00:19:04.174
And that is because
they are the birth of life.

00:19:05.204 --> 00:19:07.534
And they are the pollinators.

00:19:07.540 --> 00:19:10.680
A lot of people know that we're having
a colony collapse disorder

00:19:10.680 --> 00:19:13.500
with the European honeybees,
but what most people don't know

00:19:13.500 --> 00:19:16.130
is that for decades
our native pollinators,

00:19:16.130 --> 00:19:18.230
which are better
than the European honeybees,

00:19:18.230 --> 00:19:20.740
our native pollinators
have been crashing.

00:19:20.740 --> 00:19:23.220
Those populations have been crashing.

00:19:23.220 --> 00:19:27.220
It's primarily because of pesticide use
and a loss of habitat somewhat,

00:19:27.220 --> 00:19:29.080
but primarily pesticide use.

00:19:29.148 --> 00:19:34.298
So this is something that you and I can do
for sure in our lives,

00:19:34.381 --> 00:19:39.546
whether we plant a pollinator garden
-without pesticides- on our own property

00:19:39.546 --> 00:19:42.906
or encourage the city to do it,
or make sure other people are doing it;

00:19:42.906 --> 00:19:45.456
learn about what kind of plants
work for pollinators.

00:19:45.456 --> 00:19:47.016
When I was a little kid

00:19:47.016 --> 00:19:50.606
I've always had this connection
to bees and wasps, I don't know why.

00:19:50.606 --> 00:19:52.976
There's a bumblebee,
you can't see it very well,

00:19:52.976 --> 00:19:54.346
on my scarlet runner beans,

00:19:54.346 --> 00:19:57.066
which were covered with bees
all summer, I just loved it.

00:19:57.066 --> 00:19:59.876
When I was a little kid,
I used to carry bumble bees around.

00:19:59.876 --> 00:20:00.756
I never got stung.

00:20:00.756 --> 00:20:02.946
My mum would say,
"You're going to get stung,"

00:20:02.946 --> 00:20:04.376
and I'd say, "No. I'm not!"

00:20:04.376 --> 00:20:06.446
You know, I was just,
"Wow! these are neat!"

00:20:06.537 --> 00:20:09.297
They're more than neat,
they're the future of life,

00:20:09.297 --> 00:20:12.127
so they deserve
special stewardship attention,

00:20:12.183 --> 00:20:14.393
if we care about ourselves.

00:20:14.393 --> 00:20:16.433
It's for our own self-interest.

00:20:16.433 --> 00:20:18.843
All of this is for our own self-interest.

00:20:18.843 --> 00:20:21.303
So back to dolphins for a minute.

00:20:27.881 --> 00:20:30.511
Maybe dolphins 
are non-human persons,

00:20:30.511 --> 00:20:32.961
I don't know
if they are non-human persons.

00:20:33.806 --> 00:20:35.656
But what I do know,

00:20:36.526 --> 00:20:40.846
is that when we interact
with non-human beings,

00:20:41.837 --> 00:20:45.837
and instead of thinking of them as 'it',

00:20:45.837 --> 00:20:49.157
-- which means you don't interact 
with them, they are just 'its' --

00:20:49.177 --> 00:20:51.527
instead of being with them as an 'it',

00:20:51.527 --> 00:20:54.757
if we are with them as a 'you',
or as a 'thou',

00:20:55.787 --> 00:20:57.887
that increases our own humanness,

00:20:57.887 --> 00:21:00.347
and that makes our own life
far more meaningful.

00:21:01.247 --> 00:21:04.217
And I hope that you will walk out of here
with different eyes,

00:21:04.342 --> 00:21:07.702
and question the other species,

00:21:08.215 --> 00:21:10.195
as Native Americans would say,

00:21:10.925 --> 00:21:13.265
the two legged people,
the four legged people,

00:21:13.554 --> 00:21:15.562
the swimming people,
the flying people,

00:21:15.562 --> 00:21:16.992
the crawling people,

00:21:17.072 --> 00:21:19.382
I would add
the photosynthesizing people,

00:21:19.382 --> 00:21:21.312
(Laughter)

00:21:22.142 --> 00:21:23.942
and welcome them to the family,

00:21:23.942 --> 00:21:25.862
and let's restore World Garden!

00:21:25.862 --> 00:21:27.042
Thank you!

00:21:27.042 --> 00:21:33.902
(Applause)