1
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How are you doing?

2
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Alright. It's very good to be here.

3
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Make some noise if you love oxygen,
ladies and gentlemen.

4
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(Cheers)

5
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Yes.

6
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Somebody in here likes
to breathe, so do I.

7
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It's like a compulsive habit,
I do it everyday.

8
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Personally, I believe that a poet
should have a sense of beauty

9
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like a comedian has a sense of humor.

10
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Sense meaning the faculty to detect.

11
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And I can't think of anything
more beautiful than the source of beauty,

12
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and that is this planet that we live in.

13
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Give it up for the biggest rock star
on Earth, the Earth herself. Thank you.

14
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(Applause)

15
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The ancient people referred
to nature as Gaiah.

16
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And so I wrote a poem to Her
like I would write a poem to my woman.

17
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I love her so much.

18
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(Laughter)

19
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This poem is called 'Garden of the Gaiah'.

20
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There is a car that runs off of air,

21
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- true story -

22
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it weighs less than 1,000 pounds,

23
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and its only emission is cleaner air.

24
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I drive a frickin' used Buick LeSabre.

25
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It was more handsome

26
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than the more 'fuel-efficient' car
that I could have bought,

27
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but its paint job had this feature
that deflected women away.

28
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I made a choice.

29
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Like many, I wished 
in my will to do good,

30
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or at least, half the size
of my carbon footprint.

31
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It's like this big massive boot
size 7 billion and counting,

32
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with enough weight that can stamp out
creatures bigger than we are.

33
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We turn the rubber and the soles
into erasers for names like

34
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Balaena mysticetus - the bowhead whale,

35
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Panthera Leo persica - the Asiatic lion,

36
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Pongo pygmaeus morio -
the golden orangutan.

37
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How could we be so certain these
are not sentient, intelligent beings,

38
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when 300 years ago, if you wanted
to hear me read a poem,

39
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they'd have made me do it
from the inside of a cage?

40
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My, how times have changed!

41
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The culture, not as drastic.

42
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It is not surprising that the same mind
that invented chain smoking

43
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is now burning down the rainforest.

44
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That's a cliche part,

45
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but if for every time you put down a pack,
another acre grew back,

46
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would it be enough to make you quit?

47
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That there, is the growing pain.

48
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They don't make nicotine patches
for a logging addiction

49
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so the environment ends up
getting it worse than the rubber tree

50
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that gave its life to make
the latex in your condoms.

51
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And we don't touch the Earth anymore.

52
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When's the last time the dirt underneath
your fingernails was actually soil?

53
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When I was little, I had a garden,
and my parents forced me to see

54
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that loving the planet is a lot easier
when it's not something

55
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that you are afraid to actually
put your hands inside of.

56
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For every surface in this world,
there was a creature created to love it,

57
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and of all these tiny creatures,
my favorite were the bees.

58
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You see, to a bee, a garden's a city
where the skyscrapers grow out the ground,

59
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and every level is
an all-you-can-eat food court.

60
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With wings like jetpacks,
in the absence of elevators,

61
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but when they puke,

62
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it's something you'd actually want
to put on your Cheerios.

63
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(Laughter)

64
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Who's the superior species?

65
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Let's see them try their hand
at Guitar Hero.

66
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But the most beautiful part
of a bee is its stinger

67
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because it only gives it one shot
to harm another being,

68
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and at that point,
it must sacrifice its life.

69
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Would you sacrifice yourself
to protect the same pine tree

70
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that died to make the deck of your patio?

71
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At least when you shelter a tree,
you get to stay alive.

72
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What could we learn
if we allowed them to breathe?

73
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Because one day, I want
to write poetry as perfect as the way

74
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that God writes water
into the veins of a leaf.

75
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Last October, I saw a maple
that autumn turned so red

76
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it looked like a sculpture
of a frozen flame.

77
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So I stared at it so hard
that its bark grew from my pores

78
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and this tree is what I became.

79
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I was only gone for a second,
but I came back with a message:

80
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trees speak with their roots,
and what they had to tell us

81
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is that we are all tiny creatures
in the Garden of the Gaiah.

82
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Our cities are stone sculptures
that hold the heavens up

83
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when the mountains
would no longer suffice.

84
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We are one consciousness shift away

85
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from turning this Earth
into a technological Eden,

86
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where the air car that I want
doesn't float above my pay grade.

87
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So you want to save this planet?

88
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Start by appreciating what's left of it.

89
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Just know that the grass always knew
that you were a Guitar Hero

90
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because since you were a child, it's been
letting you crowd-surf on its hands

91
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as you looked up to the sky
and began to understand

92
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that you are just a tiny creature
who would cease to exist

93
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if this garden ever ceased to keep giving.

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Thank you.

95
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(Applause)