WEBVTT

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How are you doing?

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Alright. It's very good to be here.

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

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(Cheers)

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Yes.

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Somebody in here likes
to breathe, so do I.

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

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

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like a comedian has a sense of humor.

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Sense meaning the faculty to detect.

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

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and that is this planet that we live in.

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

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(Applause)

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The ancient people referred
to nature as Gaiah.

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

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I love her so much.

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(Laughter)

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This poem is called 'Garden of the Gaiah'.

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There is a car that runs off of air,

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- true story -

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it weighs less than 1,000 pounds,

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and its only emission is cleaner air.

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I drive a frickin' used Buick LeSabre.

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It was more handsome

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

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

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I made a choice.

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

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

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

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

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

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Balaena mysticetus - the bowhead whale,

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Panthera Leo persica - the Asiatic lion,

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Pongo pygmaeus morio -
the golden orangutan.

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

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

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

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My, how times have changed!

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The culture, not as drastic.

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

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is now burning down the rainforest.

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That's a cliche part,

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

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would it be enough to make you quit?

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That there, is the growing pain.

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They don't make nicotine patches
for a logging addiction

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

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

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And we don't touch the Earth anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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With wings like jetpacks,
in the absence of elevators,

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but when they puke,

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

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(Laughter)

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Who's the superior species?

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

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But the most beautiful part
of a bee is its stinger

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

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and at that point,
it must sacrifice its life.

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Would you sacrifice yourself
to protect the same pine tree

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that died to make the deck of your patio?

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

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What could we learn
if we allowed them to breathe?

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

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that God writes water
into the veins of a leaf.

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

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it looked like a sculpture
of a frozen flame.

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

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and this tree is what I became.

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

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

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

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Our cities are stone sculptures
that hold the heavens up

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when the mountains
would no longer suffice.

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We are one consciousness shift away

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from turning this Earth
into a technological Eden,

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

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So you want to save this planet?

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Start by appreciating what's left of it.

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

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

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as you looked up to the sky
and began to understand

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

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if this garden ever ceased to keep giving.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)