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"We MUST want to rethink how we really live"
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann

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What world do we want to live in?

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That' the question.

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Not "Can we survive and

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can we continue to grow the economy?"

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What if we could sustain

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business as usual

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What if we could install, you know

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carbon sucking machines and

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bleach the sky with sulfur aerosols

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to maintain constant temperatures

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and continue to ruin life on earth

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until we have a concrete world

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with hydroponic factories,

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synthetic food and

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digital VR displays

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of all the nature that's been lost

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And rising GDP of the whole time

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what if we could do that

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Do we want to do that?

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The geomechanical view is basically

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understands Earth as a complicated machine

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So it's like a diesel engine

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If the air fuel mixture is wrong

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then the engine won't perform well

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So if levels of greenhouse gases are too high

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then the planet is not going to perform well

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Earth as a living being

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Whereas if we understand Earth is a 
living being

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then we might say okay

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what will make the planet more resilient

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to higher levels of greenhouse gases

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because I think that if we

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cut greenhouse gases to zero

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even if we did that overnight

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if we continue to degrade the organs

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and tissues of this living being

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then the planet will die of organ failure

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even if carbon dioxide emissions are

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reduced to zero

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because this is not a machine

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CLIMATE A NEW STORY

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I'm advocating that we

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reformulate our basic environmental narratives

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so and especially the climate narrative

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so that it comes from the understanding

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that Earth is a living being

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and not a complicated machine

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The living planet view is familiar

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to a lot of people

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because of Gaia theory

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that essentially says Earth, if not live, is

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like a living being

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it maintains homeostasis

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it has many qualities of life

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Most scientists would not say

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that it's actually alive

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but I think we need to go

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to the place of relating to earth

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as a living being

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and even a sacred being

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PLANETARY HEALTH

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So we have a planet that is severely degraded

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the rainforests, the mangrove swamps

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the wetlands, the kelp forests

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the seagrass meadows,

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the water, the soil

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all of these are at a a fraction of their

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former level of vitality and health

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which means that

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this earth is much less able

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to maintain

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a stable climate

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and to deal with whatever challenges and fluctuations

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happen whether it's human emissions

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CO2 emissions or

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volcanic emissions or whatever

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fluctuations in the Sun

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the planet is much less able to be resilient

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when its organs are so degraded

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so that means that

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if we hadn't reduced

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our tree count to half

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of what used to be

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if we hadn't turned

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vast areas of every continent into deserts

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I don't think that 400 ppm would be a problem

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but in fact

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we've done the opposite

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we've made life so so much less able

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to handle challenges

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that greenhouse gases, I think,

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are a serious threat they're very destabilizing

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and that's a different view

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than the standard global warming

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runaway global warming narrative

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but it's not entirely contradictory to it either

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the production of fossil fuels

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also does damage in other ways

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that I think ultimately from

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the Living Planet View might even be more damaging

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the way that it destroys whole ecosystems

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I mean you've seen probably the photographs of the

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Alberta tar sands

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and just the ruin caused

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by the more mountain top removal, you know

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or the oil spills

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when we understand Earth as alive

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I mean imagine like that's happening to the cells

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and tissues in your body

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like whole swaths of them

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are getting poisoned and destroyed

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then how are you going to maintain

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a healthy body temperature

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you know, maybe that's extending the metaphor too far

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but that's the situation that we'll in

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STEPS TO RECOVERY

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So from the living planet view

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we understand that

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the organs of Gaia are essential

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especially those that are still intact

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like the Amazon

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like to some extent the Congo

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like some other places on earth

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that are smaller but still intact

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these are reservoirs of health

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these are where Gaia's memory of health

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even is located

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we need to protect these areas

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the Amazon is a living being in and of itself

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and we just have a very superficial understanding

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of how that inter-relates to to the Gaian physiology

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so if you reduce the Amazon to how much carbon

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that it sequesters

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you're gonna miss out on all of these other

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physiological effects

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so first priority

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these places must be held sacred

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if we do not do that

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then even if we compensate

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for the lost carbon

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from the Amazon

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this planet is still going to spin out of control

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PRIORITY #1: SACRED

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second priority is

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to repair, regenerate and heal

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the organs that have been damaged

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particularly forests and soil

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soil is probably THE most important

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organ of the planet

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and of course it's related to the trees

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and to the prairies

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and to all the other ecosystems

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so regenerative agriculture for example

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from the carbon lens

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you can also justify this

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it's probably by far

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I would say it's by far the fastest way to

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take carbon out of the atmosphere

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there are farmers and ranchers out there

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who are building topsoil

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at just phenomenal rates

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in school we learned it takes 500 years

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to build an inch of topsoil

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but the farmers out there who are doing it

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in one year

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taking huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere

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PRIORITY #2: HEAL

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so, okay

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third priority is

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to stop poisoning all the tissues

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with herbicides, pesticides, insecticides

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toxic wastes, pharmaceutical wastes, sunscreens etc. etc.

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that reduces the resiliency of the planet

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universally on, like a tissue level

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as opposed to an organ level

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like we've got to put a halt

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to this 90 year experiment

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what will happen if we douse the whole landscape

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with insecticide

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again and again

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like, are we surprised now that

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insect populations have declined everywhere

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it's not just because of that rhough

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I think a and really important and unrecognized cause

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is the depletion of megafauna

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that reverberates down through the food chain

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so, like we don't even have to understand why

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if we're coming from a living Earth perspective

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we know that this is important

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fourth priority is to reduce fossil fuel emissions

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and this is controversial thus I put this as fourth priority

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however, if you hold the first three priorities

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you're necessarily going to

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have to reduce fossil fuel emissions

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because you can't hold ecosystem sacred

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and continue to frack and drill

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and strip mine

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and pipeline

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so the fourth priority is actually

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a product of the other three

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and it all comes from the same perspective

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of "let's do everything we know how to do

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to participate in the healing of the planet

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that's why we're here

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at this point in time

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first the healing

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and then to bring even more life

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to this world

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TACTICS

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I think that the appropriate tactics

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vary in every situation

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I don't have a formula that you should do this kind of

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action here and that kind of action there

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but the tactics need to come from

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an understanding of what we're serving here

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werel serving

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yeah, in one level you can say

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the protection of life on Earth

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or the healing of life on Earth

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on another level you might also say

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that we'rel serving a change in our deep narratives

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and our mythology that names who we are

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why we'll here

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and what's real

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so, I think that

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part of that understanding

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is understanding of each other

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and even if the people that we demonize

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that actually you are here to serve life, too

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and it might be difficult in your situation

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but you're the same as I am

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instead of demonizing you

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and holding you as an irredeemable

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polluter or greedy or an enemy

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and thinking that the only solution is

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going to be to dominate you

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to conquer you

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to win a battle

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by doing that we enemies of people

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who wouldn't necessarily have to be enemies

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if there were some way to invite them

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into alliance

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and to speak to that part of themselves

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that if they really knew what was happening

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they wouldn't want to do that

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the despair that a lot of people feel

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about the future of this Earth

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draws from the same theory of change

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and the same understanding of reality

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that the problem comes from

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basically the theory of changes

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that you exerts a force on a mass

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of something changes

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so the more force you have

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the greater power you have to change the world

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from that theory of change

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sorry, the powers that be in the system

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they have a lot more force than you do

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and you're never gonna have enough power to change anything

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but maybe the world doesn't work like that

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like there are other ways

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to change the world besides

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dominating others by force

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for me hope lies in these things

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hope lies in understanding that nature

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where let's say other beings

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can be our allies

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because we're tapping into

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another world of cause and effect

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that puts us in the right place at the right time

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saying the right words to the right person

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awakening in them what has been awoken in us

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bringing them into greater courage

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in their service as well

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maybe the change happens that way

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and when we understand that

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we just don't really know how this world works

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and if anything, the failure of our civilization

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should teach us

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that we actually don't know

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it should bring us to a point of humility

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from that point of humility

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anything is possible