This reading is from censored number 126 and before I begin I'd like to read a few thing a little quotes from the Massed head prove all things hold fast that which is good And that's one Thessalonians 5 21 He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he that gives to the rich shall surely come to want Proverbs 22 Verse 16 He that makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent Proverbs 28 20 and as the nail sticks to the to the stone So sin sticks to buying and selling Ecclesiasties 27 verse 2 The article is called a question of freedom By William J. Eisenman PhD Since the time men and women left the land and Settled in cities, especially during the industrial revolution This move was thought of as a gaining of freedom Young people wanted to leave the farm and find their fortune in the big city Once in the city one needed a job to support himself Many times it was a matter of any job This attitude proved a boom to business Which founded profitable to exploit the situation Workers experienced low wages and terrible working conditions As workers try to improve their lot by forming unions They were fired Beat up or killed At this time the police and national guard were on the side of the employers Workers had no rights in our capitalistic system There is a built-in uneasy tension between employer and employee The fatal flaw in the system is that the boss will never pay an employee what he's truly worth The employee is always forced to make more for the employer than the employer pays him The worker is always exploited and this is accepted as natural as if it were God ordained As a thought experiment ask yourself why Is it so readily accepted that an individual drags himself out of bed in the morning It's the streets, newspapers, internet, unemployment office to find a job Wouldn't it be more logical and economical for the business or corporation to seek out the worker Our thinking, politics, economic decisions are all done from the point of view of the boss The business, the corporation It has now become clear to all who truly observe that not just see that Democrats and Republicans owe their allegiance to corporations and big business Over and over again censored has informed its readers that when corporations own the government are married to the government that is fascism Where is your freedom in such a situation? The only freedom we have today is the freedom to shop Today we have people and politicians calling for and enacting cuts in food stamps, wick and other programs that help the needy and the poor This is all done by the disguise of cutting the budget to make government smaller and save it money This is a lie These people are not serious If these people were serious they would be going after waste and fraud, subsidies and grants As well as tax breaks to huge corporations and the rich Censored 125 showed clearly that these tactics are merely a tax on the poor These cutters of programs for the needy and poor hate the poor and are jealous of the poor They believe the poor get something for nothing These entitlement cutting politicians have managed to get the poor to fight among themselves for crumbs and bitch that the other guy got more than him While politicians laugh all the way to the bank Politicians have for years conspired with certain government agencies to save money by denying people benefits that they are entitled to Recently a doctor working on behalf of the office of Black Lung was exposed as denying people had Black Lung disease When they did have the disease, claimants also get tied up in court for years and years until they die Which saves the government money Even the Social Security Administration has been exposed as having an official policy of denying first-time disability claims Knowing that about one-third of claimants will not pursue their claim Even cost of living adjustments to colas are rigged The CPI calculation used is all a scam All of this is a conscious decision by our government to increase income inequality During the Georgia W. Bush administration the United States began giving tax money to faith-based organizations The First Amendment to the Constitution grants freedom of religion But not the supporting of it There's supposed to be a wall of separation between government and religion We already unfairly grant religions tax-exempt status According to the Bible all religions are not equal And all those professing to be Christians are not Christians Mark 7 verses 7 through 9 Wherever one looks concerning government the payouts flow upward The average American is screwed at every turn Our government engages in welfare Our government is for sale During the financial meltdown of 2008 markets failed Banks could not borrow Nobody would lend No one could refinance But foreclosure's mushroom Millions were out of work Two auto manufacturers filed for bankruptcy protection Banks failed And the stock market crashed Behind all of this were deliberate mistakes And machinations accomplished by men like Phil Bram Larry Summers Robert Rubin Arthur Levitt And Alan Greenspan All these opposed the regulating of derivatives and credit default swaps They got President Bill Clinton to go along with them And he signed into law the Commodity Futures Modernization Act Which allowed all hell to break loose The problems grew and grew And yet these smart men knew it all But their premise was wrong All they did was as a result of the get way of life The devil's way of life Ben Bernanke another perceived smart man said In October 2007 that the United States banking system was healthy In fact the banks were starving for capital All this as a result of greed How's that freedom thing going for you Private industry is the basis of the capitalist system And therein lies the problem It cannot be stressed too often That expecting the private sector to provide jobs for all who want one is wrong It's a big mistake It amounts to nothing more than a sock to industry Keep this in mind all who think government cannot work And is too big The taxpayer rescued the entire financial system In the United States 2008 All would have been lost if not for big government 8 million jobs were lost in the chaos of the financial meltdown The new finance was a failure Did you have any say in any of this Feeling free yet? Some ideas Even when proven wrong and dangerous are hard to kill It has become clear by now that market liberalism has failed And our ideas about economics are wrong Market liberalism reared its ugly head in the 1970s And since the 1980s companies have abandoned any pretense of a social contract with their workers Economic growth in the 1960s before market liberalism took hold was 4.3% a year While after market liberalism became the flavor of the day Growth in the 1990s was only 3% We have had jobless recoveries in the 1990-91 and the 2001 recessions At this time there are 3-20 applicants for every available job The growth of the financial sector has been staggering Its share of corporate profits in the United States in the early 1980s was only 10% And in 2007 it was 40% This financial monster soon began buying political power It was a debt machine It bought deregulation which gave it more freedom to manipulate money and exchange rates All checks and balances were removed And by the end of President Bill Clinton's term Speculation ruled the day and debt followed Behind it all was the short-sighted arrogant We don't need government mantra This is paradoxical reasoning The financial markets created the financial meltdown They were uncontrolled And of course this led to disaster In all of this we note that political power has shifted Overwhelming to the wealthy Inequality began to rise again in the United States during the 1980s It is claimed by some that tax revenues doubled during President Ronald Reagan's administration It was conveniently forgotten that revenues rise naturally with inflation, population growth And with increases in real wages In 2008 the poverty rate was 13.2% And real incomes of the poor have gone down in the last 30 years In 2008 food insecure households amounted to 49.1% Excuse me 49.1 million Americans And 15% were without health insurance In 2007 there were 1.6 million homeless Americans What many of us are stumbling upon is that equal opportunity is a myth Knowing all of this and more Parentheses see censored number 125 end of parentheses What has led evil men and women in Congress to cut food stamps WIC and other needed social programs Adam Smith warned us to beware of capitalists Because their interests are not, are never exactly the same as the public Their interest is generally to deceive and even oppress the public In 1882 William H. Bavander built in true capitalist style Bellowed, the public be damned The capitalist, although most times cloaking himself in some form of phony Christianity Believes the poor are unfit to survive They are nature's failed experiments Jay Gould expressed his disdain for workers when he said I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half Today's capitalists have gotten workers and the poor to fight among themselves for crumbs While the big boys and girls cart off the whole loaf A type of socialism reared its ugly head in America at the end of the 19th century When big business began running the economy In 1886 corporations were illegally regarded as persons As per the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution Things got so bad that the Sherman antitrust laws were enacted Which were enacted to defang big business And regulate them in regard to the public interest These laws ended up being used against the unions Unions were portrayed as conspiracies in restraint of trade President Grover Cleveland understood what was happening when he said That corporations were becoming the people's masters President Teddy Roosevelt also saw the handwriting on the wall When he said that regular folks can't get a square deal With the rich controlling everything Roosevelt called the rich malfactors of great wealth These men understood that we need public power to counterbalance private power Those who call for smaller government in this sense are selling you out Or making you of no effect Their objective is to have no firewalls between us And the viruses of the big corporations in the wealthy In 1913 the income tax was instituted to also defang the wealthy And big corporations while redistributing income throughout the economy More fairly in 1914 Henry Ford began giving his employees Five dollars for eight hours of work At the same time steel workers were getting one dollar for twelve hours of work Henry Ford was in business to sell cars And he knew that if his workers did not make decent wages They would not be able to afford buying his cars Consumer credit came on the scene in 1920 which expanded the economy Today many people believe that the stock market represents the economy But the Dow Jones is merely the average stock price of thirty huge companies The consumer is the economy Workers are the economy Milton Friedman maintained that people were motivated by self-interest And that concentrated power, that means government, is a threat to freedom There was not one word from Friedman about unregulated concentrated corporate and wealth power This brand of laissez-faire economics claims that the government, that is you and me Should never intervene in the economy This ideology has brought suffering and hardship to our economy But it has concentrated the wealth upward to those who already have Our government has been taken over by the very interests it was supposed to regulate Some die-hard republican conservatives regard President Ronald Reagan as akin to a god According to these sycophants, Reagan saved America from liberal ruin And brought the Soviet Union to its knees Let's examine some of what Reagan actually did In 1981 the tax rate was lowered to 50% And in 1986 it was lowered to 28% Some loopholes were closed and some others were at it Huge corporations got tax cuts and rebates In 1981 General Electric, a firm Reagan worked for, got $150 million The government and deficit ballooned under Reagan So much money was thrown at the Pentagon that it paid inflated prices for things such as $643 for a hammer And a $2043 for a nut Reagan's tax breaks went almost exclusively to the rich There were 130 Reagan administration officials investigated, indicted or convicted Which was a new record In 1982, 1983 and 1986 Reagan raised taxes The base was broadened and social security taxes were raised So most people, except the rich, paid more taxes The national debt was below $1 trillion when Reagan took office and was over $1 trillion when he left The rich got richer in the 1980s Until the 1980s the United States was the world's biggest creditor But soon it was the world's biggest debtor We got massive homelessness under Reagan We got rising health care costs, joblessness, loss of family farms and gated communities Reagan was no saint nor a god And could have been impeached for Iran contra Selling weapons to Iran which was illegal Government policies during the 1980s were deliberately crafted To concentrate wealth in a few hands, those who were already wealthy The plan was to starve the beast, the government So there would be no money for people helping projects A reverse, Robin Hood And so we come full circle We poked holes in our vaunted individualism Our worshipped upward mobility And our supposed equal opportunity Our freedom We have discovered that our freedom is an illusion And that the only freedom we really have Is the freedom to shop The end


Well, not everyone's moral So we need ethics to make them moral just be nice to people Doing the best interest of the individual.


I'm Thalia Truesdale. I moved to Sawyers Bar, California in 1973 and lived there until 1988.  And so we moved there not knowing what we were going to be doing or anything, we were just looking for someplace free to live. And a friend of ours had a mining claim, so we moved into this little 10 by 12 cabin and immediately began to become, immediately began to become part of the community. And I had never really known community before and I became a passionate advocate of community. Everybody knew everything everybody was doing. It was a very, very, very small place, maybe a population of a hundred at the most. I mean, that's in a big watershed area, so everybody was miles away from everybody else, but we all got together all the time. We had dinner with another family probably three or four nights a week, always. And all the children were at somebody else's house on Friday and Saturday nights and sometimes we didn't have our own, but we had somebody else's and that's just the way it always went. Very, very, very powerful community and mostly heatheness, people who were escaping the city for some reason. Some people were sort of back to the landers, which is what we sort of were. We lived in this little cabin, knew we couldn't have a baby there because it was, well we had a baby, but we knew we couldn't stay because it was literally on a cliff. Just a little tiny piece of property that, like maybe 30 by 20, by 15 actually. If that and the cabin was just perched on the edge of the cliff. On the other side of the river was a waterfall and a sheer rock wall and there were square nails all over there and some old few little pieces of boards and some other hardware and doorknobs and stuff. So there had been cabins there too and it was even steeper than where we were. But there had once been thousands and thousands of people living on the river and getting rich as much as they could and when the gold played out a little bit toward the turn of the century the Chinese took over a lot of the mining claims and did a much better job of cleaning up and got quite rich with everybody's leftovers sort of. And then there was a resurgence during the early 30s during the Depression. There were quite a few people moved back in and the town swelled a little bit more. The town had, at one point it had doctor's office and houses of ill-repute, houses of ill-repute and big hotels and bars and a bowling alley and even electricity for a little while from a town generator that didn't quite work out because of politically people couldn't figure out who was going to get electricity and who wasn't. So anyway it was a very thriving community and there are other thriving communities up the mountains on the gullies and up the gulches and stuff as well. The Forest Service didn't want any of that. They wanted to just control natural resources and not have any people living on Forest Service land which it all was Forest Service land. There was like one tenth of one percent of the Klamath National Forest was private land and that included huge logging swaths too all over the place. So they began tearing down cabins. So we had a mineral exam the summer after we got there and we were dredging for gold and we were earnestly dredging for gold. That was sort of our job and they came down and I didn't tell us, the ranger came down and didn't tell us who he was and just was really friendly in everything and are you planning to stay et cetera and the next thing we knew we got this notification about a mineral exam. So we contacted miners that we knew on the Trinity River and the Salmon River and we had a huge turnout of people, many of whom we didn't even know. We'd only been there about a year who came to protest and as it turns out they had this huge hullabaloo to get their dredge down these cliffs that we lived on down to the river and it turns out that the women who owned the mining claim we were living on had refiled and changed the name of the claim and so the whole thing was null and void but no claims had ever been declared viable by the ranger and it was up to the ranger to determine what viable meant. The 1872 Mining Law says that, I can't remember the exact wording, but it's up to the ranger. So if the ranger is making $30,000 a year, he thinks everybody should be making $30,000 a year yet we were living on $100 a month really nicely, we had no bills, we had nothing so we were fine with that. Anyway, we did move and build our house, they did burn down our house, they burned down every cabin on the river that was on Forest Service land on a mining claim. They didn't want anyone living on a mining claim, you could mine it but there's nothing in the laws that said you were allowed to live there. So they just made sure that they just they got rid of the riffraff, they just made sure that everybody was gone and they tried to eliminate the town basically. So I became very interested in buildings and the first building that I was really enamored with was a church that was built in 1857 on what was then flat ground but then it was totally mined around it and it was just left on a pedestal which is where it is today. Just a little plain church that was lined with muslin on the inside just to make it a little bit brighter because I guess they couldn't paint it or something. There was a picture of a painting that was probably I don't know five by ten at least a huge painting in the church of the crucifixion and the church that owns that building, the Catholic Church in Fort Jones, took the painting out in the 80s for cleaning supposedly and never returned it. They said there would be vandalism and there had never been any vandalism there including the people who tried to dig under the church to get the gold that was left there because like $50,000 worth of gold came out of there in those days and that's when gold was pretty cheap so there was you know there's a wealth of money under that church right now. In 1982 we bought an old miner's estate and really interesting old place up on a again on on cliffs that were literally that steep just a tiny little notch where he could he could build well he didn't build it I don't think but he was a hermit who had lived there from then on 1923 until he died in 1982 and he had never thrown anything away it was just astonishing what he had his collections of everything were just amazing and for people who live on the river you have to be extremely creative in in what you are how you do things how you fix your broken muffler and you know how you how you make things go and he was just an incredible tinkerer so he had all this great stuff so we inherited or we bought all this wonderful stuff and then we became a resource for everybody on the river who needed a thing a mojigie or who's a mouflage it you know they could come to us and we would have it which was nice. So when this library was being planned we knew we wanted some community artwork in here and we talked to Lillian and Marvin Rosenberg Lillian has been doing this type of of of installation art for many many years all over the country and when the building was begun in 2003 the the Lillian and her husband Marvin went to the school and had all of the kids make a clay piece for the walkway outside the from that connects here from here to the school so once we bought this piece of property we knew that the connection between the the library and the school was going to be huge so every one of the staff and children and everybody at the school made a clay piece of something that represented the Applegate Valley to them an animal or flower or plant or something like that and they were set in cement stepping stones like this and they are all the way along the along the walkway and then once the library was built originally this was going to go in front of the circulation desk but this was a better wall for it and so Lillian opened up her studio for about a year on Mondays and anybody who wanted to come could come up and make one of these clay pieces and she did not want to teach she just wanted people to just either know what to do or learn from another person there and so we did we all sort of there were maybe two three four five maybe eight people there at a time for the for a full year making these pieces and some of us made some leaves and grasses and generic pieces as well as as other things too her husband did the the letter stamping that's kind of the his was his contribution he also made the sun some people did the woodwork they cut the cut down the trees this is from three different trees and they slapped it it tells the history of of the Applegate and starting with the prehistory and going through the the mining and the current history and people could just do whatever they wanted to this was a a man who has who raised his black Angus so he he did his his black Angus it was very very fun very educational and and then we wanted to I wanted to have this little this little blip about it and so I contacted all the artists and asked if they could send me some information about their experience and this book was born this was a I started getting between two sentences and three pages from everybody and so we included it here with with the photographs of of each of the pieces and it was a very different experience for everyone this is exactly what we got we didn't do any editing or anything and everybody's story is different and together it makes this amazing whole it's just wonderful and Lillianne was dying when we did this and she was 84 and had cancer and was not well at all and we had a little gathering and I'm going to cry and gave her the book it was very heartwarming so anyway it was a wonderful thing and I'm really happy that we have this here as a history we have an eye spy for little kids they can you know look for the picture of the cow we have a card that has a cow picture on it and they can see what they can find and yeah it's very fun and that's the story of the mural


Well the room got quiet. Welcome everybody. We appreciate you coming out this afternoon and taking the time out and we appreciate Mayor Taylor for coming back to address the council members. If those of you who are here in August remember the meeting that we had and the table breakouts that you participated in and we gave that information, comments, questions, and things to the mayor's office and they took a few months to call through the information and wanted to get back to us to talk a little bit more about the nonprofit sector in the community and things that the mayor's office is currently doing and how we as a council of nonprofits can participate more and hopefully in the future in the direction of our community in our city and especially from the nonprofit side where we touch so many in the community in need and so with that I would like to turn it over to Mayor Taylor and thank you again for for coming out and we appreciate it. Thank you. Well good afternoon everybody. I apologize for being tardy. Sometimes it's hard to get away from City Hall but I appreciate you all waiting for me and appreciate the opportunity to continue the dialogue that we started a few months ago when I came by to see you so I hope that we can delve even a little bit deeper and think and talk about how the city can be more helpful to you in the work that you do in you know meeting the community's needs recognizing that you all are partners in that work. I certainly want to advocate for policies that allow us to do that. I think I've made it clear to you all that really my heart is for the work that you do and if you asked me years ago what I envisioned myself being or doing I thought I would have been sitting in one of your seats right here but I've taken a little bit of a different path but certainly want to make sure that we can can be helpful and then also I have beyond me kind of interacting with nonprofits as employee at a nonprofit and as an elected. I also did have the opportunity just as a city employee I was a grants manager and so worked directly with with folks that were providing services so I've been inside of the machine that pumps out those contracts and gets you your checks cut and gets those performance reports from you albeit that was some years back but just so you'd know that I have some perspective from inside the belly of the beast. Okay so but on the other you know certainly as an elected it it's very clear from this perspective that you know taxpayers want accountability and they want transparency. There's so many demands on our tax dollars and from what I've observed San Antonio is kind of unique in the commitment that we have in providing such a large amount of money from our general fund every year to the nonprofit sector and with such a large city with so many competing interests it certainly is a challenge to determine and prioritize how we should spend those dollars which makes the conversation that we're having even more important because we want to spend them in the most efficient manner possible. So I wanted to reflect on a few things that I'd gleaned from a survey that I guess you all did point out a few points and then hopefully hear from you though I do want to before I do that acknowledge the not the elephant in the room but the camera in the room. So we are being live streamed on now cast and I certainly think that that is wonderful for people who aren't in this room to know more about the work that you do to know more about how we partner with the city. I also know from being from being an employee at a nonprofit from being the board chair of a nonprofit and from being a funder of nonprofits that there sometimes are some sensitivities and people always don't always want to hear the truth. I hope that everyone in this room is able to express in some fashion to me what I need to hear but if you're not able to do that in front of the camera I want it to let you know that I am more than willing to hear you when the camera is not on so that we can really get to the heart of the matter as far as dealing with the challenges that you that you face in trying to strengthen the partnership that we have with the city. I hit something okay just wanted to make that disclaimer. So what I kind of what I've learned from some of the surveys that were provided so the city could do a better job in a few areas first off distinguishing between outputs and outcomes it's really easy for it's easier for us to just point out to outputs but really the work that you all are about should be about outcomes and we need to figure out how we can do a better job at data gathering and sharing in general because I think that would help us to have a better understanding of and demonstrate outcomes. I think there are a number of folks at the city we heard who kind of treat you all as though your extensions of the departments that we've organized at the city and you all may not necessarily be doing your work in that fashion so I think to a certain extent more education on behalf of some of the city staffers beyond the walls of city hall. I think we could do a better job in working more closely and understanding the targeted populations that you serve and develop goals and metrics to help us evaluate how effective our investments are there. I would like to see us create a more collaborative model that includes not just nonprofits but also our academic and research institutions philanthropic organizations and the local government. I think all those entities are working on some of the same issues but not necessarily in alignment and certainly from the perspective that data should drive you know where we make investments I think there's lots of opportunities for more for more collaborative model that allows us to share data across the various types of institutions and then for me this is the last one is really important how the ongoing work of the city and the nonprofit community for those who are unfamiliar as say tomorrow is our comprehensive plan for the city of San Antonio. We've not had a comprehensive plan in the city of San Antonio for really over 40 years. We had some master plan policies that the mayor Howard Peake had worked on back in 1998 but it wasn't a plan plan per se in the same sense that I say tomorrow is so I think that the plan allows us to have a blueprint for where we're going in the community and again when dollars are scarce resources time and talent are scarce then I think having some sort of blueprint is all the more important. So some of the things we are working on to address some of those challenges there's a number of things that are going on. Don't hold it up here. Okay thank you. So we've done some work in relation to the data ecosystem we want to make that more robust but we've been working with CI Now, UTSA, the P16 Council on SA 2020 to kind of strengthen the capacity for gathering data and also change the narrative on how we rely on data in relation to making public policy. I think many of you probably know better than me that in some instances there are folks in the funding community who decide that they're passionate about a particular issue and they're going to inject millions of dollars towards that cause regardless of what the data shows is a real need in the community or regardless of what the data shows period and they're within their rights is their money they can do that but I think that to the extent that if we had more robust systems to show them well this is where the needs are or this is where we're getting good results or strong outcomes in relation to certain programs or investments then perhaps we could be more persuasive in encouraging them to invest their dollars in different ways. So we're looking at having a convening on this data issue in February and also within the city department within the city we're trying to get people to work outside of the silos. I think I kind of started a lot of that with our work on the east side and that was even going beyond the walls of the city but there were so many partners that we were working collaboratively and trying to share data and now even within the city where we have some positions that we're trying to encourage those persons to be like point person to cut across various departments like we have an educational liaison. You know there are some other things other areas where we're looking and going in those directions. We're also developing research partnerships to to help us with specific issues. I recently attended the National League of Cities Mayor's Institute on post-secondary success and I was accompanied by Judy McCormick from P 16 as well as Adriana Contreras from San Antonio Education Partnership and we went to share ideas ask questions and learn about how we can improve the post post-secondary success rate specifically for minority males because we were doing it within the context of my brother's keeper. So we kind of have a we have a partnership through that institute and they're going to help us do some more research on you know how we can get better. So we're looking at a few other areas where we can do research there and then another area where I think there's still quite a bit to do but just making the transition from essay 2020 to essay tomorrow and how we kind of bring them in alignment. I think is still a bit of a challenge and also our city boards and commissions getting them in alignment with with essay tomorrow is something else that we've been working on. So that's just a little bit of a of a snapshot. From our perspective it is you know it's easier to be reactionary as an elected right especially in these days with social media and in order to get to the kind of results and system that I'm that I'm talking about requires a lot more time and attention and within a large bureaucracy of course it's kind of it's hard to get all the parts moving in the same direction but that's where you all can come in as far as being helpful and getting on the same page because you know I'll just be candid you know with some of the various roles that I've played in throughout my professional career and my life as a civically engaged person. I've observed a lot of competing for crumbs between organizations that are serving communities that you know are disadvantaged or at risk and I know that we have we've we've made some progress and we have some models here that speak to a new paradigm but I still think there's some work for us to do there as far as people getting outside of the mindset of well it's my nonprofit against all these others and my cause I hear here recently you know I got caught in the crosshairs frankly of someone for political gain pitting nonprofits against each other well my this cause is more important than that cause you know why are we getting into those kind of conversations we know that there are a number a broad range of needs throughout the community and we have to figure out how we can better work together to address them so that's really why I'm here today so that there's just a little bit of reflection based on the survey questions and answers that I saw and just a little bit of an update for you of some of the things that we're doing that specifically address some of those concerns but what I hope more than anything is that we can just kind of have an open dialogue okay so I'll pass the mic to somebody else so what we'll do is we'll go ahead and we'll take if people have conversations about what the mayor just talked about or some of the other things that the office has thought about that we would like to get feedback on our whether or not it would be beneficial to have a quarterly meeting with nonprofits to continue brainstorming on an ongoing basis predominantly before we hit budget season so that we know what needs are in place and how we can better coordinate our efforts and not necessarily be reactionary when it comes to funding so that's one area a second area where we would like to receive feedback is potentially utilizing the nonprofit council as a clearinghouse and by that I mean the mayor's office stays in constant contact with the nonprofit council provides information on an ongoing basis and then what we do from there is the nonprofit council disseminates that information we receive feedback that way so that the staff can sort of help support and coordinate some of those efforts in a more ongoing manner so we're really looking to see how you might want to get involved and some of the projects the mayor just mentioned that that she's initiated especially in particular as it relates to essay tomorrow and she's honest about that she wants to wants to know if if there are ways in which you can plug your agency in it doesn't matter if you're an agency that receives funding from the city or not but whether or not you feel like there's added benefit and things that you can provide and bring to the table to if you would like to be a part of an ongoing conversation that meets regularly to discuss some of these problems that we can identify where we really need where we what we really need to address within the community and then three whether or not it would be beneficial for you to receive ongoing information from the council as a point of advocacy so I don't know if we want to open it up for conversation and what I'll do is I'll hand the mic off to somebody and then if we can just sort of talk about it that way does that all make sense to want to start back over here the data and so forth if there was a way to create more conversation around United Way Area Foundation the city to maybe model some of the reporting similar United Way invested in a new data and I'm not saying that all of them are perfect and and that you know if there's one in particular that's perfect but you know they put the resources in to find a new reporting mechanism and rather than recreating another one is there a way to have those conversations before we move too far and in different directions and so that maybe there's some similarity if the area foundation is funding you know high school graduation if United Way is doing that if the city is doing that could we talk about some similarities in their outcome reporting and then maybe even looking at systems that are similar so that it would be a little less taxing on the nonprofits but even one thing I see with the city is just having you know we're having to do so many paper copies you know for the grant and things like that and so maybe getting some of the systems that have already been put together and maybe that would save on some of the recreating of that and so I'm wondering if maybe that conversation can happen as we start talking about data elements and so forth. So as a recap so looking at how we can coordinate the efforts from the area foundation United Way city where it's less taxing on agencies and then transition in particular the city from having to have multiple paper documents to an area which we're doing things digitally right starting there it's great. I'm Kimberly Britton with epicenter and you know to build on what you're saying if you want a specific example one of the things when I was with the museum and I was applying for DCCD funding one of the things that I said you know the Konkoski Foundation everyone can attest to applies for money there is pretty arduous the process you go through with them and the vetting that they do and the information that you provide and and I've been raising money for 30 years even prior to that experience and then we were working on the DCCD grants and the level of proofs and documentation and the things were more arduous than an already arduous process from like a Konkoski funder and I think I've even in discussion in the community had folks offer and it to be a resource and saying then and I know some efforts have been made to streamline that process and I applaud that very very much so because it's hard because you see that things have been put in place because something went wrong you know people are trying to recover and cover themselves because somebody did something stupid and that that's always hard to protect against stupid but but but I think that we're more than people and I don't want to speak for everyone in the room but that you you're willing to say you know gosh we'd love to look at a new model and something that makes sense so that you really are eliciting information that's helpful because that was one of the things I always ask what does this information testing that my CEO is actually in the position which is one of the attestations you have to make they have to prove that they're actually in the job what does that do for you to protect you what if they're lying what if you know they somebody's attested to that so I think just trying to go to a more private model that was just an example of something that I saw very personally and I see the other thing that I hope and I love what you said about trying to be having had more exchange of information and collaboration between city staff and nonprofits but I will tell you I've witnessed it as I've gone through this bond process and that you have a lot of nonprofits who are hopefully applying for different things on the committees and they're seeing it's difficult because these committee members of citizens are about to have all of their final meetings this next week are being pitted against one another's projects and so whether than achieving sort of a collaborative and I don't know if there's a better way but I was a citizen would love to help feed into something that makes that better for because my nonprofits the same thing your your mission is not better than my mission or how do I go up against this project when it's going to be important to that community but the same time my project is important and the committee members are now put in a position where they have to rob Peter to pay Paul they've got to go into a design that's already designed by city staff in some respects and then try to disrupt that and it's just miserable for everyone I know it's got to be miserable for staff who put their hard hours in it and it's certainly a little difficult for the committee so I probably preaching to the choir in that respect but I will tell you as an observer I know there I keep going there's got to be a better way there's got to be a better way than then what's about to have happened which is another round of one committee going well I want to take a million from you and I want to give it to so-and-so but anyway thank you thank you so sorry I'm just hello I'm Angela from Alpha Home we have some staff here with me today which is great thank you and I really want to understand what creates a compelling business case for a grant to the city we've talked about I'm we had to do drug and alcohol addiction if it is here in the room David Fitz's lifetime and we've certainly talked about collaborative efforts between the three of us because it's more bang for your book whichever way you look at it the scary thing that we talk about when we're together is that if the three of us combine you know it might save 25% but it certainly won't be the three of you will only get what one of you would ask for if he came to us that way and we've talked about that about Krunkowski grants and so on and so forth so there's a scary piece in going to the city and saying okay you're gonna get together we want to do this from adolescent through men through women hopefully women and children as well and then the city said well now you only count as one so we might have given you three times that funding and now we're only giving you one time that funding so it and in and of itself it can sometimes stop the collaborative effort but I really want to understand what data would be compelling to you how to present it we know we save the city a lot of money and we receive no city funding we haven't really asked it and think so you know I'd be really interested in what that looks like to you well that's a hard question to answer but you know I feel like the answer should be that you've got a track record of success you can point to some strong outcomes from your individual programs and or that you're modeling some evidence-based practice so that's that is one side of it those things do come into play but the the other side is I'm just gonna be real realistic with you the other side is how much money is available on the table you know where you're serving people geographically and whether or not what I've found here recently is that we've we've had a hard time being able to do anything new and innovative because we have so many existing commitments to organizations that have been funded for years so for example in this year's budget I found my what after I had pushed I guess maybe two or three years ago for us to have a small line item for new agencies that we didn't even get to spend that money on new agencies this year because of the fallout of my mission is better than you know your mission so then the the money for the new agencies ended up going to to you know squash the beef so you know I mean there's a possibility that maybe we need to relook at the system but you know I also have to say that everyone in the room has to take responsibility for their role in the in the system at large because folks that have been getting money for years want to hold on to the money that they've been getting for years even if they're not doing anything new or innovative or they're not using evidence based practices or or demonstrating some compelling outcomes so somehow we've got to figure out how to navigate that conversation it's very difficult what we've tried to do at the city the other thing I would say as far as you know trying to make a case for for a collaborative grant is well as long as I'm there anything that advances the you know essay tomorrow principles will be a priority I'll always advocate for that but we also had a few other we had some categories that we used in relation to how we how we distributed the the general funds for nonprofits and so I think we need to figure out how the council can have a more sophisticated discussion on how those dollars get arranged and distributed and if those categories are even still the categories that we need to have in place so where I would say that we're open to suggestions on that if any of you have worked in other cities like I said I think San Antonio is a bit of an anomaly as far as how much funding we give but if any of you have experiences from other places that you would like to share I would certainly be open to that and sharing that with the staff so I know I probably didn't give you the cut and dry answer that you'd like but I tried to give you a slice of the reality that we live in and an indication that there is opportunity for us to make improvements to the system but I think it's important for you to know some of the constraints that we're working within. Good afternoon, Leah Rosenauer, Girls Inc. So yes we have lots of big challenges and I think with big challenges come big opportunities so I'm gonna ask about something that I know very little about and that is social impact bonds. I have never been involved in the bond generation of physical facilities and and how that process takes place I hear some others in the room are are there other funding mechanisms that we can work together to create to implement and I only have read a few articles about bonds that are developed for social impact and I don't know if anyone in the room knows more about that or if I think maybe yes there are some mechanics I need to be fixed and and some of the of the day-to-day things that can be improved upon going to computer applications paper applications but big what how else can we work together to address some of the bigger issues that data and I say tomorrow and things are telling us and I don't know a if that's a mechanism or b if anyone knows any more about it than the two articles I read. Thank you I would say I've read maybe three articles about it certainly sounds like an intriguing concept I would say that we as a community are far from being to the point where we'd be able to sell that to the voters because folks here are very conservative as far as how they'd like to see the tax dollars used they like to focus on basic infrastructure. However I would say that if we had some of the mechanisms in place that we talked about as far as more alignment between the various institutions so that we're speaking with one voice and an authority on data and as well as an authority on public policy recommendations one of my staffers and I for years we've kicked around this idea of a think tank that do we really have you know a think tank in this community that everyone looks to that makes unbiased public policy recommendations based on data. I think if we have that organization or institution combined with a robust data system it would be a lot easier for us to communicate and make a compelling case to the voters to do something different but at this point there are many components of that kind of system that are missing. Any other thoughts? You'll have to excuse me for not knowing much about the San Antonio tomorrow because I am new to the community but when you talk about that I assume there has to be a component that's about vision right it's a vision for the city. So I think that there has to be some balance between you're talking about the concept of some of these you know the old institutions old nonprofits that have been around forever and they tend to be the powerhouses and they can reflect on data because they've had the consistency to be able to pull some more data. Think data is super important but I also think there has to be some room for vision. So what do we want to create in San Antonio and how do our nonprofits fit in and how we do that. So I think the data is really absolutely important but we also have to figure out a way of looking at maybe some of the softer side of it that's part of who we are as nonprofits is sometimes we are a little bit of the softer side so maybe that's something we can help the city with is that we do have that orientation we can put the numbers down we can line it up we can put boxes around it but helping to look at how do we create that vision for the city. Thank you. Well first off to learn more about SA tomorrow you can go to www.sanantonio.gov which is the city's website and type in SA tomorrow and there should be a link to the plan and and I believe also there are copies of the plan available at your local library it's actually three plans in one land use plan transportation plan and a sustainability plan. So from my perspective and I'm going to say something that pushes the envelope a little bit here even though we're live streaming I'm going to say something that might make folks squirm a little bit from my perspective we've done a lot of work on visioning already in this community between SA 2020 which really was about so as you're new to the community back in 2000 and was it was it 2010 I think it was 2010 the under the previous mayor he kind of brought folks together to talk about what their vision for San Antonio was by the year 2020 and so there was a broad base of participation in that process and there are some some reports that outline kind of that vision and then we use that to as a foundation to build on in relation to SA tomorrow to take it beyond a vision and move more towards you know how we could practically implement and also to think from the perspective of the physical city as well as the social city though those connections where I think the gap is is first off lack of as you just articulated people not knowing about any of those efforts but then also I think people not always buying into the vision and this is the part that may be a little bit challenging for people to accept but I've articulated my vision of San Antonio as a globally city where everyone has the opportunity to prosper where every resident is connected to opportunity what I have found in working in the nonprofit sector and being around the nonprofit sector that there are some folks who have spent so much time serving those in need in our community that they have a hard time embracing the idea of a future where those clients that come in to their office week after week could actually be connected to prosperity that instead their vision is I just need more money to keep serving these people who are going to be poor for the next 50 years okay and I don't think people feel that out of any malice I think that people sometimes it's just as a result of the work that they do every day seeing so much need that it's hard for them to think to a point of transformation today I was over at Haven for Hope because we had a we were entertaining a group that came in from Houston because they're trying to figure out what they're going to do there and they asked well what what is different about what you're doing now as opposed to what you were doing a few years ago and I said what's different is that Haven for Hope is about transformation while we it was wonderful that we had a caring community that came together to provide shelter for people that were in need it was just that shelter people lined up at whatever time they got their bed and they went out the next day and their lives were essentially the same what we have now is model this folk focused on transformation that we have people who are in a campus environment who are have committed to doing X you know milestones and do the work to actually change their lives to then become self-sufficient so I think that we've got to do more work as far as ensuring that folks that are working whatever whatever field it is that you're where you're laboring that we do have that in mind and I'm not saying that the food bank is gonna work its way out of business in five years you know that's probably not going to happen but I'm what I'm saying is that I hope that we can make stronger connections between those visions that we've articulated for our city as a whole and the work that you do as leaders in the community because the work that you do with each and every individual and each and every family ultimately builds towards us achieving that vision and if there's a way if you are there are suggestions on what we can do to well I mean we're already talking about how we can be better partners with you but I think part of the challenge of what we could do better at the city is just kind of getting the word out as well but for folks that are struggling with the day-to-day you know the essay tomorrow is not you know really relevant but for those of you that are in positions of leadership in the community and are have access to resources that you can provide to them and you can help them to get on a path towards self-sufficiency if we're talking about poverty or whatever it's very important I think that you all have an understanding of what the vision is that's been outlined and where the different public entities are working towards and where we're how we're looking at prioritizing investments that didn't make you squirm too much did it any anything else I think maybe us figuring out how a regular some sort of regular schedule for for for meetings like this would be helpful I think you all providing to me to me in my office specifically however you work through your committees that you have here providing to me in writing suggestions on what you think could it in improve the the application RFP process I would like to follow up on meeting as you mentioned Jessica with the United Way and Area Foundation in the city maybe on the on the reporting the other thing that you could do to help is to become familiar with essay tomorrow and share that with your board and staff I mean obviously not the whole it's of biblical proportions it's a huge document but just having a general sense of the direction that that's that that's going and sharing that I think with your staff and your board so that as you all do your strategic planning that you have that as kind of a baseline and a context for you know how you want to move your organization forward and so I think that would make sense great well if there's if there's anything else please don't hesitate to reach out to Scott or myself I'll be around I can give you cards as well at the end we really do want to try to make a stronger collaboration between the office and the council so that we can start having these conversations on an ongoing basis because I think that one of the things that's most important is that a lot of times when you're sort of operating at a 30,000 foot view it's really difficult to know what a lot of the needs are on the ground and what systems are not actually working because you're not seeing it day to day and you're not operating within it and so something may sound like a great idea but doesn't necessarily always work and so I think that's really the first step in building this is continuing this conversation on an ongoing basis in particular as we're leading now that we're sort of past this past budget season as we're sort of thinking our way through and have time to have these conversations before the next one comes up and around and I think it's also we're talking about social impact bonds it's going to be really paramount to start that kind of process of thinking and strategizing now since we have time before a bond in four more years in 20 what 2022 would be the next one 2020 and at some time a long time from now so those are all really good things to start thinking about now and so absolutely please continue to reach out all that information will reach the mayor she does want to continue to come back and have ongoing conversations with people who would want to be a part of that and I think Scott is going to be facilitating some of them. I also think that the essay 2020 vision and everything that happened with that four years ago and even including today has been marketed very very well in the community and to the nonprofit sector I don't know that essay tomorrow has done as as good a job and and so therefore I think that's why a lot of nonprofits may not understand it and I know you said it's like you know a biblical document but when you say go out and pit you know kind of inform your board you know do we have to read the 5000 page document or is there someone at the city that can come and maybe do an informational workshop how it impacts nonprofits how nonprofits can impact that program because again I think essay 2020 embrace the nonprofits and really got them behind it and whether that is good or bad I think it was least informative and so I I don't know if the members would be interested in that but I think it might be a a good opportunity to you know kind of we've got a membership of over 160 nonprofits maybe kind of starting with us would be a great idea because I'm not real familiar with it other than I know a lot of it has to do with infrastructure streets drainage and all of that which are great but I don't see the connect and I also would agree and would like to see if you want to disseminate information out at least to our group of nonprofits asking questions wanting input looking for experts in particular areas to sit on committees we could be a really really good connector for that as well. So much that is a wonderful suggestion Scott I think sometimes as planners we aren't quite as good at the marketing side of things but so that that observation is is well noted but the other thing I was kind of thinking about when you're talking about it is that the nonprofits that we have been dealing with in relation to essay tomorrow has been the neighborhood associations and I'm just thinking out loud here but I feel like maybe there's some opportunity for support from folks like you with neighborhood associations and even for work for some working together I'm sure depending on if you're a geographically based organization you may already work with neighborhood associations but I just see that as an area where we probably needed to be a little more robust I think there's a real desire from folks who represent neighborhoods to be more to be included in various ways and maybe if we put our heads together we can figure out what that looks like. I know we're going to be as part of the implementation phase for essay tomorrow we're going to be doing some more planning basically with larger geographic areas beyond the neighborhood in the past the city had kind of a neighborhood planning strategy we're going to be doing some larger plans maybe there's some opportunity for some cross collaboration but I know that some of the nonprofits they want to do more but they don't have the organizational capacity that a lot of you all do so that just made me think maybe there's an opportunity for some working together or learning from each other. Anything else or. Well I guess thank you all so much for coming thank you all so much for sharing thoughts and ideas once again if you have any additional thoughts based on what was discussed today please either feel free to email them to Scott directly or you can reach out to me as well if you want I can definitely hand out my card at the end of at the end of the meeting so thank you so much and have a great rest of your evening and we'll see you all soon.


I should thank IIEA and RDS for giving me the opportunity to speak to you all today and thank all of you, of course, for coming over your lunch breaks to hear what I have to say. I want to start with some context, actually, about why we're having this conversation in the first place. That, of course, is that, globally, we are on course for something like four degrees of warming above pre-industrial temperatures by the end of this century. I'm not going to go into the gory details of what that implies for human societies and economies. Suffice to say that it's quite a terrifying prospect. I've just had a daughter. There's a very good chance that she will still be alive at the end of this century, and she will be one of the oldest and most vulnerable members of society. And I do worry about what four degrees of warming means for her. We also have to realise that, despite the best intentions, Paris, the talks at Paris at the end of this year are not going to avert dangerous climate change. The pledges which are on the table, which currently cover about 70% of emissions already, put us on course for something like three degrees of warming. And this seems to be, from the conversations I have, the general expectation of what Paris is going to deliver. And, of course, there's a question mark about whether or not governments are actually going to deliver the pledges they put forwards. And this, again, is well above the two degree guardrail. It's well into the territory of tipping points, runaway climate change and all that goes with that. So what we know is that a lot more must be done if the international community is actually going to deliver on its stated objective of limiting global warming to two degrees centigrade. Now, of course, there are lots of opportunities to do this. A lot more can be done in existing sectors with technologies and more ambitious policies and so on. What I want to do today is talk to you about one opportunity and I argue that it's an opportunity that deserves far greater policy priority than it currently receives, which I think is almost zero. And that is reducing consumption of meat and dairy products at a global level. Why will production of meat and dairy on a life-cycle basis generate just over 7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year? Now, there's a lot of science out there which goes into the breakdown of where all of this comes from. Suffice to say, a lot of this is from enteric fermentation in rumen and livestock, methane. The livestock sector is probably the largest source of methane globally. Also very significant amounts of nitrous oxide from manure and fertiliser use to produce crops. Carbon dioxide from land use change, deforestation and soil carbon losses. Within the livestock sector, of course, beef is the most emission intensive due to enteric fermentation and poor conversion efficiency. Producing beef is not a particularly efficient way to get calories or protein. Dairy, much lower emissions intensity, about a quarter of the emissions intensity of beef may be less. But there are comparable volumes of emissions globally from the dairy industry simply due to the volumes of dairy that are produced and consumed. Between the beef and dairy amount for something like two thirds of the total emissions in the livestock sector, chicken and pork are much lower intensity products. But this is where much of the recent growth has been globally and it's also where the growth is expected to come from in the future. Growth in consumption is really important here. By 2050, consumption of meat and dairy are expected to have risen 76% and 65% respectively on 2005 to 2007 baselines. And this is a key point that on this trend of increasing consumption, supply side mitigation, technical mitigation on farm and in the value chain cannot contain emissions growth. If we do everything we can, everywhere we can, emissions are still going to rise. So if we move all of livestock production onto the most carbon efficient models available within a particular agroecological zone, you can reduce emissions intensity of the livestock sector globally by something like 32% and demand growth is outstripping that. And this causes a problem of course because inexorably rising emissions in the livestock sector cannot be reconciled with a shrinking carbon budget in the long run. And a number of studies, recent studies, academic studies have looked at this question specifically an extrapolated agriculture and land use emissions in the context of a two degree budget and found that the two collide somewhere in the second half of the century. The conclusion of these studies is that even with sustainable intensification of agriculture, dietary change is necessary if we are to keep global warming below two degrees centigrade. Now this isn't a question of either or. I'm not saying we only need to look at reducing consumption. I'm saying we have to do both. We have to do what we can on the supply side. We have to do what we can on the demand side. Given this, which I think is a fairly compelling case for action, what is being done, I would argue nothing like enough. As many of you will know agriculture is not covered in UNFCCC negotiations. Efforts to establish an agriculture work stream there have failed. Agriculture is marginal in international climate finance accounting for a few percent of the financial flows in public and market based mechanisms. We've got the new global alliance for climate smart agriculture, and of course that is to be welcomed. It remains to be seen, I think, what exactly that is going to deliver in terms of livestock sector emissions. Looking at the national level, 40 annex one countries to the UNFCCC, only Bulgaria and France include quantitative emissions reduction targets for their livestock sectors. Similar picture among developing countries of the NAMA mitigation plans that have been submitted to the UNFCCC, eight of 55 mentioned livestock, and only one Brazil has a quantitative emissions reduction target. Where they exist, policy measures are typically weaker than they are for other sectors of the economy. They are often voluntary, private sector led. The livestock sector is typically not included in emission trading schemes or carbon pricing schemes. So compared to efforts in other sectors, transport, power, industry, housing, forestry and so on, I would argue that the livestock sector is pretty much forgotten by policymakers. But all of this actually amounts to far more than is happening on the demand side, and there there really is nothing. And this is frustrating because this is actually where the real mitigation opportunity lies. A study that was published last year in Nature Climate Change looked at the mitigation opportunity from global adoption of nutritional guidelines. If everybody eats the amount of meat that is recommended by the World Health Organization, what would be the impact on global emissions? The estimate was about 5.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050, which compares very favourably to 4 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent from sustainable intensification of the entire agriculture sector, not just livestock. It's also attractive from an economic perspective. Another study looked at the impacts of global adoption of nutritional guidelines on mitigation costs, and they found that globally again by 2050, if people adopted healthy diets, then the reduction in emissions in the agriculture sector would create sufficient space in the two-degree carbon budget for other sectors to cut their emissions more slowly. With a cumulative impact on mitigation costs in the energy sector of a reduction of something in the region of 50% by 2050. That is a huge number. You think about what that could do to the political economy of decarbonising the energy sector. There are further co-benefits from reduction in meat and dairy consumption. Health is an obvious one. Of course meat and dairy form part of a healthy diet, but globally we already eat more meat than is good for us. Globally per capita basis about 25% more meat than is recommended, and of course this masks a huge skew between developed and developing countries. The US consumes over three times more meat than is recommended on a per capita basis Europe just under two and a half times. Of course diets to the high in animal products are associated with a higher burden of non-communicable diseases. The cause and effect relationship between these two factors is not yet fully understood, but there is a higher incidence of certain forms of cancer, colon cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes associated with diets to the high in livestock products. So there could be very significant public health benefits from a shift to diets that are lower in meat and dairy. Food security about a quarter of all crops grown globally affect animals. This represents half of all the protein that is produced in about a third of all the calories that are produced. When we're looking at feeding 9 billion people by 2050, possibly 11 billion people by the end of the century, is this really a good use of scarce agricultural resources? The rough rule of protein and calorie production from vegetables are three to 20 times more efficient than they are from the livestock sector. So it would surely be better to be producing animal products using crop residues rather than crops and pasture land not suitable for crop production. And if this was the case, that would probably cover about 30% by mass of meat production globally. So there's about 70% of global meat production that you can argue is inefficient on that basis. Land use about three quarters of all agricultural land is used either directly or indirectly to raise animals. What is the opportunity cost of this land use in the context of increasing demand for land, particularly in the context of increasing demand for carbon sequestration? Anybody that looks at the most ambitious scenarios of the IPCC will see a lot of bioenergy with carbon capture storage in there. Now we can have a debate about how realistic that technology is, but certainly it seems that the modelers are assuming that there needs to be a significant amount of land use put aside for carbon sequestration. Between 1990 and 2008, about a quarter of all global deforestation was for pasture land. That's just under eight islands deforested for pasture land over the period. About 10 islands were cleared for crops, about a quarter of which of course are fed to animals. This has implications for biodiversity. Globally there are about 22 billion chickens now. That's three per head of the global human population. I estimate that cows are probably the most biomassive species now walking the earth in terms of sheer wet body weight. Unfortunately for other species, things look less good. A paper in science last year found that we're probably on the cusp of the sixth great extinction. The background extinction rate over history is about 0.1 extinctions per million species. We're probably now somewhere between 100 and 1000. Habitat loss is the single biggest driver of species loss and agriculture is the single biggest driver of habitat destruction and 75% of all agricultural land is used for livestock production. So I think there's a strong policy argument for addressing consumption of meat and dairy. And then the question becomes why are governments not doing so? And there are a number of reasons that we've identified. First of all, there's a fear of intrusion into lifestyle choices and being accused of nanny statism, particularly in the context of general public ambivalence about climate change. Second, of course, is the cultural significance of meat in many countries, particularly this is something that we found in our research in America and Brazil. Meat has huge cultural significance and it's a very difficult conversation to have to ask people to give up meat or at least reduce their consumption of meat. And in developing countries, meat and dairy products have aspirational status they're associated with moving into the middle class. There's also expectations in government of significant private sector resistance. This is common to all aspects of climate change policy, but governments generally are reluctant to engage in policies which they anticipate will result in significant private sector mobilisation in opposition. And there's uncertainty regarding the efficacy of different interventions. How would government through policy measures go about reducing consumption of meat and dairy? What is the evidence for what works and what doesn't? The evidence base is extremely thin on this topic and that makes it very difficult for policy makers to pursue in this difficult political environment. And this leads to a circle of inertia. There's an absence of action from governments. This leads to low levels of awareness or concern among publics and that of course generates an absence of action. So to look at this question more closely, we commissioned Ipsos Moray to do a survey of consumers in 12 different countries, middle income countries, developed countries to understand their attitudes and understanding around the role of the livestock sector and climate change. And what we found was an awareness gap. So people in all the countries we surveyed had high awareness of climate change, anthropogenic climate change, but there was always a low awareness of the livestock sector's role in producing emissions compared to other sectors of the economy which produce emissions in a ballpark range. Typically, from the focus groups that we've run, there's a vague awareness of the role of the livestock sector. Generally, the things that people talk about are jokes about burping or farting cows that they've read in media pieces, but they don't really take seriously. It's a bit of a humorous subject. And they're far more likely to identify transport, power, industry or deforestation as drivers of emissions. And this is a problem because what we also found was that the willingness of people to act is linked to their awareness of a sector's contribution to climate change. So sectors where people had a greater awareness of the role in climate change were the ones where they identified that they would be willing to change their behaviours, maybe to ride a bike instead of driving a car if it was transport for example. And this is also true within sectors. So if you look at a particular sector, those people that had a greater understanding of the role of that sector in contributing to climate change were the same people that were more likely to say, I'd be willing to change my behaviour. And awareness of course is a precondition for voluntary action. If people are going to change their behaviours they have to be aware of the problem they're trying to address. But alone it is not going to be enough. Actually only a small minority of people will consciously change their behaviours based on new information. And this is something that we've seen come through quite clearly I think in the focus group research that we have done. Actually choices, consumption choices, purchasing choices are primarily automatic and they're shaped by environmental cues in the purchasing environment. And of course this is something that's exploited very effectively by the retail sector. I don't know how many times you've walked into a supermarket and bought something that you had no intention of buying when you walked in. But for me it happens almost every time. If you're queuing up at the checkouts it won't escape your notice that these are very often lined with sweet treats. And of course the idea is that as you're standing there waiting to buy your food you buy yourself a chocolate bar. Very often those sweet treats are positioned at the eye level of a small child so that the child will nag the parent. So these are the kinds of environmental cues which lead to automatic choices. And even when people are making rational consumption decisions based on an understanding of the consequences environmental concerns tend to be subordinate to more immediate concerns of health, food safety and so on. So it would be naive to suppose that people are going to change their behaviours and eat less meat and dairy products simply by increasing awareness about the problem. But I would argue that raising awareness is still very important for three reasons. First of all it creates the political space for action. If governments don't see a public that is aware of the issue or understand it then they are less likely to decide to move. Secondly it creates an opportunity for responsible business practices. Again if consumers are aware of this issue there is an opportunity for businesses to position themselves as responsible actors and stakeholders in this space. Thirdly it prepares publics and consumers for government intervention. So if governments actually are going to move forwards to shape dietary preferences, disincentivise certain consumption decisions it will be a lot easier for them to do so in a context where consumers understand the policy rationale and justification for doing that. And again this is something that we've seen in the focus groups in the different countries that whilst I would be lying if I told you people would welcome interventions to make beef or dairy more expensive they wouldn't, that's clear. They could also understand the rationale for doing so and whilst they may be disgruntled in the short term they would expect to come to accept it as part of climate change and public health policies they have done in many other aspects of life. So returning to the challenge of preventing catastrophic climate change that I opened with dietary change is part of the solution. It is not on its own sufficient but it is necessary. It also offers important co-benefits, health, reduced habitat destruction and species loss, enhanced efficiency of food production and many other aspects. The received wisdom that dietary change is simply too hard for governments to pursue is untested and I would ask the question is the challenge of reducing meat and dairy consumption in comparably greater than that of transforming power, transport and industrial systems which is of course where the lion's share of mitigation policy is focused. Or for that matter the practices of millions of farmers around the world. Let's not forget how difficult it can be to change on farm practices in very large developing countries where extension services and government capacity are very low. I would actually argue that shifting consumer behaviours against these other challenges is no harder and the efforts need to begin now. Thank you very much.