Viable Alternatives, Recycling Myths, The Economics of Climate Change & The Role of Business in Finding Solutions

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[00:01:02] Vivek: My name is Vivek Srinivasan I am from Bangalore, India, and I worked on uh, several articles for the project. I put together probably 20, 25 articles for the project.

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[00:01:23] Jennifer: And why did you decide to join the project?

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And so it happened to coincide with both the love of a topic I'm learning more about and want to get more engaged with as well as through my just personal relationships. So it's become really a personal passion that I'd like to focus more of my energy on.

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[00:02:45] Jennifer: Has there been anything that you've learned about climate or the climate crisis from working on this project that has just blown your mind?

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[00:03:37] Scott: It's safe to say that I, I didn't know what I didn't know, which is the place most of us start learning about anything. I knew just enough to be dangerous, as many would say, in particular, I didn't know that recycling was an abject failure And that was quite interesting to me having participated in it for many years in various locales. There were a few other things I didn't know that there were so many workable alternatives. So what's out there right now. That's a critical one because many people do not know even now, today that some of the things that really were kind of pie in the sky only a few years ago, and really were not viable. They're viable now. And we need to really look at them.

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[00:04:28] Scott: It is. I had the chance and it was sort of a self challenge that Seth jumped in on when he posted a list of all of these petroleum products, products made from oil and gas. And I actually saw it and said, Hey, wouldn't it be fun if we got together a small group and went out and actually found alternatives, not knowing how hard that would be, what it would involve, but this list is an amazing, and I took it on as another project it's posted somewhere on the Almanac, but what it did for us is it allowed us to go out and actually learn. What are those alternatives and you know, what many of them are not only extremely viable and fronted by very, very solid companies with great ideas, but they're also sensible. They're really sensible. And people should look at those. And I guess the only reason they haven't yet is marketing and probably money.

So if we can give the marketing and the money, the funding to these companies and support them, I think people will be amazed at what they could do to replace some of those and many of those petroleum-based products.

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But we feel like we are doing something by putting it in the recycle bin, but in reality that, I mean eventually it lands up in an ocean or landfill a very small percentage of it actually gets recycled. Similarly, uh, I learned that while there is a lot of interest in planting trees, for example, in the western world so to say that your Europe and so on and so forth is very interested in planting trees. Planting trees in Europe is not helping at all because you need trees or the dark part that will absorb the heat you don't need that close to the poles. The worst thing that you can do is plant more trees close to the poles and make it hotter over there. You actually need to do it around Amazon and along the tropical beds, which is where trees traditionally grow. And and also the naitivity of the trees, right? We want to plant trees so we just plant whatever tree comes, it comes to us rather than figuring out, Hey, what tree goes grows in Norway? You know, what is native to this land?

So we don't think about that. We just go about doing things in a very random manner. Thinking that we are doing good for the environment, whereas we are probably doing something which is even worse. So there were lots of pieces of data like this that jumped out with short that the traditional approach, which would be considered effort from a climate change standpoint ends up being disastrous because we are just not educated well enough about these things.

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[00:07:30] Mark: Yeah. Yeah, we are. And, and actually, you know, funny enough that back to your point, I was on a call yesterday with a project in Southern India, they're planting mangroves. And one of the pieces of what they're doing is there's an economic part to it as well, from a development perspective that they're collecting trash, that and plastic bottles that come into the mangroves.

And then they're building a micro recycling center in this area, and they're converting the plastics, especially the really small pieces, you know, the microbes that are hard to capture, but they're building that into a model to do art from it. So they're taking the recycled plastic and they're making plates and different pieces of art that they can use locally.

And then people locally sell them. So they're, they're taking that and converting it into economic development because I that's, a lot of the conversation I tend to have is, is. Recycling this tough, right? I think the numbers are pretty astounding that we've discovered that so little as this instance, there's no market for it. So the primary market from the United States for the world, I think was China and China stopped accepting recycled materials and papers, a big part of it too. Pulp products, plastic, all of that. So yeah, I talked to my son regularly and that, that. Uh, open my eyes and it's been fun.

What of course, when he's learning these things in college, and for me also to engage with some of his professors related to this project. So it really has created a nice dynamic, but it certainly, it has made me much more aware and much, much more well equipped to have conversations with other people about it as well.

Because one of my areas of interest is the economic development part of, you know, how to make a business model out of it as well because businesses, I think have a huge impact. Or should on this, whereas governments often get paralyzed and unable to make decisions. I think businesses can make a big impact. So yeah, it's been a great conversation with my son and just other peers talk about a different perspective on it.

It's just not all about saving the environment, which is important. It can also be a good economic development tool and help raise people out of poverty as well. If we do it right.

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[00:09:30] Vivek: I've been generally interested in writing. I've been very interested in putting words together and, it's a topic that happens to interest me. So I was like Hey, multi-national collaboration, great people to work with. There's going to be like a one of a kind of opportunity and why not just write some and contribute to it. Why not do that. Was the thought that came about.

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[00:10:21] Vivek: I mean, the working itself has not been very challenging. At the end, people are people are people, right? I was recently reading a book where he talks about, how based on our neighborhoods. We tend to create divisions just to look at ourselves as separate parts and that's how culture emerges. When you create that divisions constantly you, your culture evolves. It was like, that tends to happen, which is what is accepted in a culture versus what is not accepted in a culture. Starts to evolve. As you grow up in a particular country, you're not this reinforcement that you're not, they are different and you are different. And we are different people that sort of gets reinforced through various channels and various space. And what this project showed me is we are not all that different, right? We are all very, very similar in many, many ways. And we are all passionate about pretty similar things. It's pretty similar things that makes us jump to action and do something about it. So we are not all that dissimilar. Just because we speak a different tongue, just because we live in a different land or in a different time zone, doesn't make us all that different.

for you. Or maybe I am up at: 10:00

[00:11:58] Mark: I agree with Vivek's comments as well, and I'll just kind of add to my perspective or appreciation has been increasing my appreciation for other cultures as well for example, one of the areas I've been working lately with the project has been just a messaging for outreach to organizations to encourage them to help join us in this movement. I'll use one example that's kind of US-based and someone from India will say, well, you know, I have no idea what you're talking about. We don't have that reference, here's what I'm talking about to, here's a reference and Australia, here's a reference and a Germany here's the reference. So that's been really fascinating for me is, is working with a diverse team of people, but also. Looking at their point of view a little differently. You know, you get some exposure to friends and people you have in other countries and business associates, but this context has been really different.

So it's been eye opening for me to increase my appreciation of really thinking about the other person's perspective as well. And also to Vivek's point how generous this community has been, has really been fascinating. Everyone is so willing to help each other. It's it's really. The type of people you want to work with. You, you get them, you get excited to jump into discourse and see what's happening and excited to thank people and appreciate people. And they do the same for you. It's just such a great vibe and such a great environment to work in.

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[00:13:26] Mark: For me, it's been, a couple of people really jump out. I think. Seth Godin number one, I think he. His ability to shepherd this team and work with this team has really been inspirational. I think, and Ann Marie as well has been great. She, she and I have been working pretty closely on the HubSpot project. So she's been great to work with as well. And she's, I'm just amazed by she's kind of all over the place. I love when people have that ability to, I know we're all busy and doing different things but the time they take to take a breath and to help other people and, and work at the quality and level that they work at. So those two people in particular stand out for me.

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I mean, within minutes by a wonderful woman, who's one of the deepest thinkers I've ever met named Lynne. And what that does is that encourages you, that led me to make some more comments and soon a person named Michelle jumped in and these people were all encouraging, saying, keep going, keep going. And. I'll never be one who will stop talking if you give me a chance to talk or write. And so I continued and over time I worked on some major projects. Some of them were very quick, had to be done quickly. Right. I just said, Yeah. I could do that. And I jumped in over some very late nights and very long weekends for projects for Leah, for a Manon and then, uh, Barbara, all these people were just so kind, so supportive and so encouraging that, you know, when you get that, you give it right back and encouragement leads to engagement. And if you inspire enough through that engagement, it leads to action. And that I've seen that over and over during the Carbon Almanac's formation and now, in it's promotion.

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[00:16:33] Jennifer: I would like to ask you both because Vivek you're on the other side of the world and mark, you're working directly in the business outreach. I'm just wondering who, if you both had the opportunity to get this book into someone's hands anyone's hands in the whole world, who would it be?

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Uh, and also as a person that people listen to overall, I think he's got a good megaphone and also has, I think he's got the respect, I think, as being somebody who practices what he teaches. So if I had to pick one person, I probably go with Bezos.

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And I usually they'd say number 10 with a bullet or number diamond, the bullet, because these were weekly charts. That's who I want to get to the biggest companies because they already should know. And because they're already taking steps or their ESG that's environment, social and governance policies and practices, but even they need to be having themselves be led if you will.

They'd like to be encouraged, guided, but the ones that are the next tier down. They're the growing companies of our future. They're going to have huge influence, not just on the world, around them, but on their employees, on their customers, on their upstream suppliers and their downstream customers. This is really where we need to get, because that will then magnify because the people are super important, but people work for people. They work for organizations. And what better way to get to, you know, get them get to both at one time through a United front to talk about climate and what it means.

At the very beginning, I want to be able to be that bridge that gets from talking about what's going on in climate, you know, because I had to learn like everybody else. And now what, and the, now what part has been going on for a while?

People don't realize this has been on for quite a few years. If you're a company that focuses on these things, you know, if you've made a decision, usually at the executive level or at the, uh, maybe a board member made a decision, we gotta look at this. We gotta look at our environmental footprint. the, all the rules are changing every single day. Literally every day, there are several reporting mechanisms. Nobody can really decide which one's most important. Some companies do both three, whatever you and I know that's not an ideal way for things to be. It really needs to be simpler. People need to see the path and I want to help companies get along that path quickly and then make that path their own. So that's really what I would like to do. That's my passion. I love meeting all the people and you know, what's cool about sales, which I've been involved in my whole life sales is about walking around and in this case, maybe getting online and talking to people, just talking to people and sharing.

And that's what I want to do, because this is probably the biggest and most important sharing I'm ever going to do is how we can save our planet for humans. The planet's going to be fine. The humans, not so much, unless we make some, some things.

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And, uh, in addition to that you might call it lobbying, but essentially all the public servants are in their hands one way or the other. So these are the people who are ultimately pulling the strings. And if they decide as index funds to not actively invest in one category of companies, You can imagine 25% of the capital just disappearing from that category of companies.

And not that that's a huge hit for any organization to take on the market.

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[00:21:35] Vivek: I think there is a possibility to create change when you have a lot of people understanding what is going on beneath the surface. When you understand, that recycle bin is not the panacea.

re we doing? I often think of: 1960

And that better world is what kids who are reading those books set out to create. And you're not today. If you pick up science fiction, that's all doom and gloom. And I'm like if we can't even spend our time thinking about a positive future, that what are we even doing? We need to start thinking as individuals, as people as to what change we can affect. And when we start effecting the change that can grow into a movement.

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It is really cool because what it talks about is that there there's this guy dancing at a, at a music festival and just, he looks like he's crazy. And it, all of a sudden, a second person joins him. And the conversation was it's really the second person, who's the leader. So as soon as that second person comes and starts.

It's a dance with the crazy guy, turns into a leader as a result of that second person's I think a lot of what we're doing is creating a dialogue. So to me, it really starts with dialogue at a very local level with, with my friends, my family, my coworkers, other people that I can get into a conversation about this.

And then more importantly, take action. And that's really that second person. Now we start to take action and that I think then other businesses are going to be driven by the market. So if we can slowly move the market that way. And take action on what we dialogue about. Then I think we can make a huge difference in, as Vivek said, that's how revolutions start really that one spark.

And so we can be that spark and have been that spark, I think. So when you engage several thousand people working on this to talk to there in 40 countries, right. To talk to their friends, family associates that starts to bubble up from a grassroots level. Then I think the businesses and the politicians and the people in power will start to take notice.

That's what I think we're really, we have the ability to do. And again, it starts with that dialogue conversation. Now we move to action and people start to see that. And all of a sudden you've got a significant movement on your hands.

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[00:24:43] Vivek: I just told it Seth that we need to end the book on, on a positive note and so the last page of the book is actually an article that. And I wrote and then Seth edited it. And it basically says when polio was first discovered. We didn't even know what it was and we didn't know what we could do about it. The man who discovered polio probably had no clue what he could do for his patients. And. When the 1950s, we discovered a vaccine. And in the matter of the next 40 years, we made sure that polio was eradicated. And this was something that was done pre-internet, pre mobile phone. pre- all of that.

ely India eradicated polio in: 2010

And today they're like 140 cases across the globe. And the, probably a handful of countries that are not completely free of polio. A similar way. If you look at Chicago, plumping came in and changed the face of Chicago. Thousands. And thousands of people used to perish to disease, this like diarrhea in United States and then plumbing happened.

And it just, the city of Chicago was apparently raised by a few meters to enable plumping under the city. And so these are all feats that we ourselves have accomplished for ourselves. And therefore, This is a problem understood, but there is a solution. There is action that we can take, and it is in our hands to take action.

And that's what the article was about. It wasn't so much about just foisting facts. It was about real action that we can take, and that would be the page would crack open for them.

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[00:26:57] Mark: I think it can't right. I mean, we, we cannot wait that long. And I think that that's part of, and to answer the prior question in terms of, of specific page, I would turn to polio is something that's near and dear to my heart, as well as Vivek mentioned that from, from being an active Rotarian, rotary has been instrumental in driving a lot of the campaigns around the world.

And that's been our primary mission to eliminate and eradicate polio. Part of what I'm interested in, I think is helping people with the positive side that individual people can make a difference. And I think that ground swell has got to happened because we just don't have the time to wait is what's really critical.

And I think at the same time, we have to arm people with things that they can do as opposed to doom and gloom. And, when there is no way to solve. We have no choice, but to act it's just, how do we act? And what can we do is what I think is critical. So I would look to lots of different passages that are in the book to point out, here's something you can do today. There are different things that we can do, but I want to inspire that action because we really have no choice. We have to make the change or it's going to be catastrophic.

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I've actually also done one very cool thing that No one even knows about except for the people involved. I got to be involved in, in a pretty big way. I did many of the sketches. And I also did the photos. I did a lot. I'm the guy who wrote all the captions for all the photos. I didn't make necessarily all of them up, but I put them in and then I put in the credits to make sure everyone got credits that was a very specified format.

So I did that. And then what that led to was, we finalize it. It is what it is now. It's a beautiful PDF of photos. So I didn't take the photos, but I was the guy doing the grunt work behind the scenes to make sure that we did all everything right. If you will. Now, the point is, is I also got an asked to do something as a result.

This is after working on resources and other things, and this was something really cool. I got to do alternative text. And what alternative text is explaining, what does that graph mean to someone who is sight impaired? They can't see it. So how do you describe it? What a interesting process about using different parts of your brain to describe a diagram on the page and one of the most challenging ones was all of the IPCC outlooks. They have all these different scenarios trying to describe a scenario with a bunch of different data points. So arrows going every which way to somebody who can't see it and say, this is what this diagram is saying to you. So you literally are speaking to them through words, and hopefully they're using text to speech conversion or whatever but you're speaking to them and saying, this is what I see.

And this is what you would see if you could see this diagram, this chart, this picture, this cartoon. The one big thing that came out of this beyond everything else was I'm a huge lover of the water.

I've been a swimmer my whole life, whether that be competitive swimming for about 12, 15 years at a pretty high level to actually swimming in oceans, which I love to do wherever I go. And part of my joy is going in the water and really being one with the water. I'm completely at home in the water. I mean, I literally had zero fear sharks are there. I know that jellyfish. I just don't worry about it because not only have I been a lifeguard and swim instructor and everything, but I do feel completely at home. And generally I think I'd be okay in the water, but I love fish. I love all the mammals and fish and other water life. And one of the things that really came out of Carbon Almanac for me was how clear and applicable the proverb, teach them how to fish really comes here. And there's an ironic part of this. We're teaching people through the Carbon Almanac, how to fish for themselves, how to figure out where they can go in their carbon journey, how they can change things in their community, how they can join with others to make a bigger impact and how they can then actually work with all the big institutions in the world to demand change. Okay. That has to happen. And it would be better if everybody would just go along with it. But the fish are sitting there thinking, would you please learn how to fish? Because our lives depend on it. Our seas depend on it. Our future depends on it. That's the reality. We have a choice, we have options. And now with the Carbon Almanac, we have the facts to tell us. Where we can go, where we can connect and how we can act.

The other facts that are really important are that again, the alternatives that are out there, when you look at, it's not just in the Carbon Almanac itself, but in the resources, in our sources themselves, which we have posted online. I did a lot of work on those as well, to make sure they were correct and to line them up and to make them relatively similar across different categories.

But it really is true. People just don't know how many alternatives there really are and they are out there and we need to find them and companies need to embrace them, fund them and, and get them into the pipeline now, rather than wait another 10 years. Cause we can't.

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[00:32:17] Vivek: There is a lot that scares me about climate change action. I think that you know, the problem with rich people is that they're all old and by the time that the consequences of climate change really started hitting home, many of them are going to be six feet under the ground. So the incentive for them to do something about this at this present point in time is limited.

And that's what scares me because however we cut it and slice it. These people have inordinate power over a lot of things. And there is an, I keep bringing us up is because in many ways, a lot of the policy framework that eventually flows into the rest of the world depends on what US decides to do. I was reading an article about how us aid money that goes into Africa will not reach a recipient if they want to have an abortion, for example. Right. And so this is a policy decision of the United States, which is affecting somebody who is living maybe 7,000 kilometers away should have no bearing on their life, but it does.

So what happens is These things are very interconnected. Our lives are interconnected, right? The wind that blows in Sahara settles the dust in Amazon. And that's how the Amazon forests grow. And the thing that scares me is we have a tendency to be reductionist. We like to reduce things so that it's easy to understand. I was recently writing an article myself about the Mac index, right? The big Mac index, which is used by the economist. And it's used as a comparison of purchasing power parity. And the one question that arrived to me was, let's say you have 10,000 stores in one country and two stores in another country.

Do you really think the economics of these two are going to be the same easily, even fair to use this as a purchasing power parity index? I mean, your economics, there is going to be very different from out here. But it makes it very simple. It makes it insanely easy to understand what I'm talking about. But then when you go into the nuances it's not as simple as we are making it out to be. And so that is what, Makes me feel very painful about this thing, because the media, the people that might need try to reduce things to our manner, which is very easy to understand. And it usually is not that simple.

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[00:35:24] Mark: When I talk with several friends and people that really are just like we're doom and gloom, we might as well not take action because we can't do anything.

We don't have any power. We don't have the resources. We can't do anything. I'm always been very positive. And when you look at where the world has come, just in the past 25 to 50 years alone, how many people are pulled out of poverty and how many, how much access we have to better healthcare.

So there's lots of positive things. But to me, it starts with the youth. I think the youth are going to have a lot of dependence on the younger people today to really take action. I'm in my fifties, so I can do my part, but I really think that the youth among us have the, the energy and the ability, you know, you were talking earlier about working in different time zones. I could do that when I was 20 years old, much harder. Now that I'm 50, but I put a lot of faith in the younger generation to really make change happen. To me though. They've really got to get angry about it and start to drive change. I think we can't, we've learned, we can't sit back and wait for the people that are in power to make change because they have disincentives to make change.

They have an incentive to keep things the way they are and continue that path. The younger people that are ones that really, to me have the energy and passion and ability. But to me, they really have to get mad about this to really start to drive change. I think that's, what's going to need to happen I think.

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And they had all these dinosaur systems. When the pandemic hit all of a sudden, they couldn't. Rely on many of those systems they had to, and this is not just the banks, it was their customers. So they had to do more. They had to say, remember, we told you about how you could get on digitally. We have all these systems.

We have all five different ways you can sign on now's the time. There are no other options. So companies were forced and you will hear this all the time. They have literally compressed into one or two years, what probably would have likely taken 12 to 15 years. Literally that quickly, but what has that done for all of us?

We all now see we have the chance we have the choice to communicate. We can travel or we can travel via, via the web or via online conversations like we're having. And again, I love travel because of the outreach to people, the cultural connections that we make. And that is a huge part of my life. I also though see the power of this online media.

There are no more excuses. The pandemic kind of took away the excuses we can meet. We can connect around these facts and we can get things done for our climate. And we don't have to be in the same room to do it.

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And they say science moves forward one funeral at a time. Because once you have come up with a theory of yours, you just don't want to give it up. . And I think, you know, when it comes to this change, it's the same thing, right? It will move forward one funeral at a time. I mean, we are entrenched in what we do.

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[00:40:11] Vivek: Here in India, we banned plastic bags. And there's a new problem because they have this like pink cotton with wisdom, make bags, and that's even worse for the environment than the plastic was. I mean that beat the law, but it's worse. Like, I mean, the thing is you can't even throw this away.

This thing also doesn't disintegrate. It's just horrible. So, everything that we try to do from the perspective of solving a problem creates a new problem for us to solve. It's just interesting to see that you're not some of these convenience traps that we've gotten into. We just Harper introduce and convenience in our lives. And I think at some point it's about finding that balance between convenience and inconvenience. You're not giving up the old ways of life.

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And for it to be living, right. So I think there'll be other lots of other assets and things we're creating to help educate kids. With the kids program we talked about earlier, so that that's great. That's where it's got to start. Let's educate our, really our youngest, the youngest citizens. Now they can make a difference and then on up to the, the older people.

So again, hopefully we don't have to wait for us to die off. We can still make a change even as the way the older population. But I do like that. We are looking at it very holistically, which is cool.

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[00:42:21] Vivek: I think the people I worked with, I think it's been a pleasure working with the people that have worked with the thing that is what I will take for the rest of my life. There were many things that I myself did not know about climate change. I did not know about many of the dynamics at play over there. It made a difference in terms of learning many of those things coming to know what it is and what are the actions that we can take to make a change.

At a community level local level, you try to do as many things as possible. You try to see what you can change and the way you yourself are doing things at home. So you've got to make the choices. And so I think from that perspective you have to learn to forego incur convenience. In many aspects I am starting to do that.

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[00:43:08] Mark: You know I, I agree. I think it's really the power of the human spirit to affect change. I think it's kind of what I really took from this group of people. And it's a very diverse group, geographically perspective, politically. It's just a very diverse group of people from all over the place, which has been cool.

But I think we all want the same thing down the road. We may have different ways of getting there. I think, but it's just a diverse group of people all focused on solving, the same problem. I won't remember all the facts. That's why we have an Almanac. So like, I can, I can look them up, but I'll, I'll remember some of those, but I will remember this conversation. So I think it's just a cool community of people, but the power of that group to impact changes has been very important to me.

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And then maybe I'll think about doing it, but really it's down to the can. What can I do? And if there's one thing that the Carbon Almanac act should have taught anybody involved with it is that we can all do much more than we do. I'm talking. Those late nights when you're up writing a story or editing a story that needs to get fixed, that isn't quite right.

You can do that. And when you do it, you realize I did do that. And not only that I enjoyed it and I can do more. Give me something else to do that is what's amazing about this world. The more I've piled on the more I've been able to do. And it's because of that knowledge that I'm in it too. We're in it together.

We're attacking this together. We're tackling it together to use a more positive term. And now we're going to find solutions together and we're going to, we're going to actually act to make those solutions a reality. You can do it and you must do it. Not, not someone else is going to do it. You can, and you must.

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[00:45:12] Scott: even, and you know, even more regularly. regular people work for companies, regular people live in communities. Regular people do things that are either good, bad or not so good. I call it good, better, best for the environment. And you know, you can start with the good. Great place to start. You do a few good things for the environment.

Next, you can move to the better, And then finally you can be the best. You can be a shining beacon to all those around you. You can be that template that people say, look at what that person's doing. They are a perfect template for what we could do in our family and our community in our city, our state, our government. Come meet us where you are. And that is critical. People could come in where they are. They can help where they can help most. And you know what, we're all finding. We can help in other ways.