People say, oh, why are you so passionate about climate action or social action, social justice action? And to be honest, I'm not passionate. It is a responsibility. I don't have the luxury to focus on something else, because when you see inequality increasing, when you see the effect of climate change happening all around the world, then the only responsible thing to do is, especially if you're in a privileged position in a country where you can do something, then you have to do something. And that's why I do what I do. Dr. Sabrina Chakori is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators' Magazine, sponsored by the Lohas Regenerative Foundation. Sabrina is a researcher at CSIRO, the Australia's Science Agency, an associate lecturer, University of Queensland, founder of the Brisbane Tool Library, Post-Growth Institute Fellow. And Sabrina holds a PhD, obviously a doctor's, as well as a BSc in biology at the University of Geneva, an MSc in environmental economics, the University of Queensland. And she really focuses on using a systems approach and all she does in her PhD work and the research that she does. Sabrina explored packaged food reduction and food systems. Her work provides an understanding and repositioning of the socio-materiality of food packaging, politicizing packaged food, and highlighting the need to pursue de-growth strategies to increase the sustainability of food systems. As I mentioned, she is part of the Post-Growth Institute Fellow, a winner of the 2020 Creative Change Seven Young Achiever Award, that's a mouthful, and recipient of the Emerging Female Leader, Rosario, from the National Council of Women in Queensland in 2020. Sabrina is a multi-award, winning a social entrepreneur, researcher, educator, and dedicated activist. She's been doing this quite some time, believe it or not, as she looks young like she's just a young spring chicken. Sabrina is fully invested in creating systemic change that would build a more socially just and ecologically sustainable de-growth society. Sabrina has been advocating for more sustainable societies, leading numerous collaborations in various countries. For example, to translate the practice, her knowledge and vision, in 2017 she founded the Brisbane Tool Library, a social enterprise that encourages people to borrow tools, camping gear, and other equipment. This community-driven circular model reduces productivism and consumerism. The Brisbane Tool Library is Australia's first and only library of things to be located within a public library, state of library of Queensland. And Sabrina has also co-founded the de-growth journal, which with a collective that aims at changing the academic culture, decommodifying knowledge, and supporting slow science. Welcome to the show, Sabrina. Thank you. Thanks. It's so good to see you. And I actually could have gone on quite a bit more on you've been studying and doing this for quite some time. But I watched your TED talk. I've seen some of the photos around. And you actually started pretty young, I would say at a pretty young age. You were born into inherited a lot of this climate crisis and problems that we have at a young age. What sparked you to go off on to these degrees and these studies and to be so interested in climate activism? Yeah. So as you said, I'm already part, I like to remind people about it, that I'm already part of the generation who inherited these complex social ecological challenges. I've born in 92, which was the first climate summit in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. And the importance of that date, which is the year where I've born, is to remind people that we have been discussing this problem for quite a while, you know, with the club from publication, limits to growth in the 70s. So it's nothing new, unfortunately. But I still feel that there's the tendency to often speak about the future generation that will be impacted by these effects of climate change and social inequality and social injustice. But sometimes these talk about future generation is just a way to postpone the problem, to postpone action. So it's a good reminder to say, hey, we've been talking about it. The science has been clear. And we're still stagnating in business as usual in all aspects of society. And personally, well, people say, oh, why are you so passionate about climate action or social action, social justice action? And to be honest, I'm not passionate. It is a responsibility. I don't have the luxury to focus on something else. Because when you see inequality increasing, when you see the effect of climate change happening all around the world, then the only responsible thing to do is, especially if you're in a privileged position in a country where you can do something, then you have to do something. That's what I do. That's fabulous. Yeah, the first Rio, I believe, was very pinnacle. But 1992, Severin Suzuki, I believe, spoke at, I don't know if you know who she was. I think she was 12 years old at the time and spoke at that conference. And it was really a groundbreaking moment. But there are so many wonderful things going on. And as you said, they're all kind of coming to a head. And they've been around for a long time. The limits to growth books been around 50 year anniversaries this year. And you have some unique connections there that we're going to kind of try to tickle out there that roundabout connections. And also Stockholm plus 50 was just barely not too long ago in Stockholm, Sweden. The 50th conference of one of the very first climate conferences around as well. That is really heartbreaking that we've been doing this for so long. And sadly, I'm sorry, you've inherited this. I've never heard it before been said, like you said it, that it's not a passion. You basically inherited this. And there's really no other way you can do anything. So how did that path or journey start? Did it was there anything specific towards that that got you interested in to start studying those things? I mean, I mentioned that you were the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences and had all these ties not only to food, agriculture, but systems and doing other things and other circular degrow slow models out there in the world. How did that all come about? Was it just something else that we're missing? No, I should, you know, reflecting back at when I really started to be involved in so-called activism, even if to be honest, I don't like to use the word activism or activists because it almost indicates that most of people are passive and it's all the opposite people.  And the only, you know, we use this definition to say just that activists know their power. They are aware of the power that they have contrary to maybe people that have other priorities or obligation. I think I had an evolution in my, let's say, activism life to keep this term or career or study path. I think I started from being a very environmental, environmentally focused activist. And then I couldn't focus in my 20s. I couldn't focus on one subject, on one theme, right? I was worried about the Great Barrier Reef as well as the forestation in the Amazon, in Borneo, as well as, you know, extinction of other species.  So I had to take a step back and start reflecting on what was causing all of these problems, you know, because at the same time, you know, I was seeing all these migration coming, you know, from North Africa and Africa, all the victims of the Mediterranean sea. And so there was all these social and ecological problems that they were interlinked somehow. But at that point in my 20s, I couldn't point out, you know, the root of the problem. So stepping back a couple of years and doing more in-depth research and study, well, it's pretty clear and obvious from the science, but also from, you know, all the literature that it's had there that the current economic system, which is, you know, there's an economic growth on capitalism is at the root of all these problems, you know, because the IPCC reports, they mentioned that we live in the Anthropocene, the human age that has an impact on the environment. But really, I like to adopt more the definition of capitalism. We are in the age of capital, you know, of capital accumulation. And because we are so growth-driven in our society and we can unpack what that means, we are externalizing all these social and ecological costs, which then obviously have the consequences that we can see and read about. And so because I couldn't choose one specific niche topic, I decided to tackle the root. And the root is that we urgently need to change the social economic system, you know, existing in place internationally so that we could build an economic system that, you know, works for a social and ecological well-being and not just for profit. So you have a, you know, you have a lot of degrees, you've studied a lot, you're still working at the university level and doing a lot of things on that. Is that necessary to do what you do? Is it really necessary for the majority of people to be concerned or care about the environment and make a change? Does it help anymore? I kind of just want to know how, if that's given you more empowerment or better tools to address this on a political level, on an economic level and different sectors to bring things, new systems that make the old ones obsolete into place or has that helped in any way or is it necessary? And I kind of want to know not just the yes or no answer but a little bit more what your feelings are on that because some people get really overwhelmed when they're looking at the existential crisis and climate and all those things. They're saying, well, I have to go get a PhD or I have to get a master's in this and then I can start to talk about it or act upon it. Yeah, it's actually a very fundamental question which often links also to the question that I get asked. Should we change? Should change start top down or bottom up? Where do we need? And I like to think about the fact that we don't have that time anymore to choose where change needs to start. We need to make it happen wherever we are. I will answer at two levels to your question. So the first one is do we need all these degrees and this education, this bureaucracy around having titles? Yes and no. I mean, obviously those titles are just titles but they represent a background and knowledge of work in there but on a level as a woman especially in that we're in power to capitalism we still have a strong patriarchal society. So every woman in the world, if it has degrees it gives a bit of more power to speak about these issues but aside from that, I don't think that university education is the only way. In fact, I spend most of my time and my PhD supervisor as well as all my professor had in my life, they know that most of my time was most of my energy was put into outside of academia work. I think that what we really need and I think the most powerful leverage points I find in my own personal path and it might be different for everyone is actually working as a community. In the sense that often we think that we need to tackle these issues as individuals and that can get overwhelming. It can get really overwhelming to think that you need to make your shampoo and cycle to work and grow your tomatoes and do all of these things while being constrained by the current system which means you need to pay a rent, a mortgage you still need to pay for the current or the bills. So within the current system acting as an individual can get very overwhelming and that's probably why a lot of people feel powerless. They're like, well, if I can't grow my tomato then I'm not living a sustainable lifestyle so I'm gonna give up on cycling and everything. And that has to be a knowledge. This is unfortunately through all these 50 years if we take the Limits to Growth publication as a milestone. We had these very greenwashing campaigns that they wanted to neoliberalize climate action. You as an individual, you can do that. You have ecological footprint as an individual but that I think is a very dangerous path to go through. What we have to learn is to relearn how to act as collectivity, as community. And I think with my work at the Brisbane Tool Library I learned that, I just take a basic example now. If you reconnect with our neighbors in our street, in our suburbs, you might make the bread and I might grow the tomato or you might deliver something to me and I might bring your kids to school. That collaboration is the only key to find some structure of change. And that collaboration as a community level then it can be scaled up in recreating the commons or as we do at the Tool Library, recreating organization where community gets together to manage resources. So I think that beyond titles and everyone starts where they can with what they have. And as I said before, I've been privileged enough to have access to education in global North country which is as well an important privilege to a knowledge. So I do what I do but I think that the most powerful parts of my work has been to learn how to collaborate to catalyze change as a community, not as an individual. Absolutely, I love that. And I'm trying to, I try to start out our podcast very slow kind of tickling the surface and working our way deeper. But what most people don't know is that there's a lot of depth and substance in you as an individual but in the work and the things and the thoughts that you research and the things that you do and write about. You wrote a beautiful section for collaborative book, menu B regeneration global food systems reformation. And I really appreciate and so honored to have you there. And it was really tied to a little bit of the work that you you do with agriculture, food and sciences. But just in this last little section that as you answered that question for me, a lot of things have come out. And so we're going to have to kind of dive into those because they're so vital. I tickled a little bit that, you know, the limits to growth book came out in 1972 and there's some ties there. The ties are systems thinking, the ties are food, the ties are degrowth, the ties are many of those words that you've talked about and systems thinking. Donnella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, your grander Steve Barron Jr. who wrote Limits to Growth where not only created the world model three systems, dynamic modeling systems thinking is great from Donnella Meadows. But you apply all of those factors into your life, not just your work and your research, but into your life. And I, not too recently heard you speaking. I belong to the Systems Dynamics Society in Germany, but also in the world globally. And I want to know what did you talk to them about? You gave them a nice lecture and I guess a presentation and talk to them about some things. I want to know what you talked to them about. And I want to then go deeper into all the things that you just brought out degrowth, the economics, so capitalism and how we need to get off of this degrowth. What is the right economic model? And then I want to go into a little bit deeper, but first I want to start out kind of how we reconnected through the Systems Dynamics Society and what you talked to them about, which is really interesting because it's something that, even though it's 50 years old from the limits to growth, not a lot of people are applying systems thinking and a lot of areas of things they do. So I want to hear more about that and how you got into that and how that whole thing has kind of evolved. Yeah, so for me, so let's start by saying that, you know, system thinking and system dynamics are just methods and sometimes we give too much importance to the method itself, you know, but it's a method to understand the problem. It's a method to frame a problem. And for me, when I came across this method the first time, it was very eye-opening because we tend to be hyper-specialized, especially in academia and one small thing, which is good because we have experts that come up with drugs that solve many diseases and stuff, but sometimes because of these segmentation also of education, we miss the larger overview of the system. So for me, using those methods was really important to unpack the problem that I first analyzed with my PhD and then, you know, I use those methods for other problems, but just to give an idea of what I discussed at the System Dynamic Conference. So I looked at food packaging as a problem and it's a problem that we, you know, we read about a lot. The UN came up now at the beginning of the year in March with a new end plastic pollution draft resolution. And it seems a very superficial problem, right? We are overproducing packaging, overproducing plastic, which is the main material used for a special food packaging. We need to solve it, but it's not happening. The, you know, the logo, the recycling logo has been around for 40 years. Recycling is not happening for various reasons. So I might argue that recycling is not happening because of technical issues, which is true, because sometimes when we use too many times the materials, they lose of quality, et cetera. But let's be honest, recycling is not happening because it's not profitable enough.  So basically we live in this society where everything is disposable and we don't know any more what to do with the end products, right? And I looked at the food packaging, but it's interesting because through my research, I was like, okay, what does food packaging represent, right? Because we also, again, you know, I was mentioning before how we individualize the problem. We blame consumers, you know, you have to recycle properly. You have to learn where to, you know, put your packaging. But really the problem is a more systematic one and my research and my publication show it.  They go and buy packaged food. So there's already a shift in the conversation, right? What do we buy? What do we find on, you know, supermarket shelves? And we find packaged food. And, you know, from processed to fresh food is more and more packaged. And, you know, the data shows that since the 60s, packaging increased exponentially. So once we understand that the real problem is packaged food, then we unfold the problems like, why do we have, you know, so much production of packaged food? And I, using system methods, I show that we have three main subsystems influencing society and therefore influencing the food system. First of all, globalization, you know, with the introduction of the WTO, the World Trade Organization, you know, free trade agreement increased again through countries. We import and export products all over the world, which can be a good thing if it's, you know, global trade that is necessary. But unfortunately globalization, again, is growth driven. You know, we, we, when I say we, countries, companies, you know, companies export and import to increase profits and government incentivize global trade to increase GDP gross domestic product. And we can mention right now that, you know, we're talking about growth. When I say we live in a growth driven society, it means that the main index to measure the well-being, so-called well-being of our society remains GDP, the gross domestic product. And so our governments change laws and regulation and incentivize commerce of specific product just increase these index that doesn't account for the ecological and social costs, right? So if you look at food system back to our main problem is, we have a global market that might not be that necessary, right? And when I say might not be necessary, people would argue, yes, but we need these products, but really we could relocalize food system, we could eat seasonal food products. We don't need to import and export those products all year long. And to increase GDP, we have also what is called intra-industry trade, which means that countries import and export the same product. For example, the US export beef to European countries and import beef from Argentina and other South American countries. So we can understand that our globalization, our global market is not need-based, but is profit-based. So that's the first part, you know? And when we start understanding that globalization is a big thing and we can't ignore it, then we can understand why we need that packaging. You know, why that packaging is used, we don't need it, but it's used because supply chain are very long and complex. And of course food needs to be protected. So we already are shifting the conversation from the poor consumer to just, you know, find that package food at the end of the supply chain to an entire market that it's based on the profitability of that package food. The second sub-system is that with urbanization and the supermarket models, we indeed changed the way we consume food. And I'm just 30, but you know, if we ask our grandparents, they didn't have, you know, the supermarket model that we have now. And we can see again that since the 60s, then it accelerated around the 80s, there are more and more brands on the same supermarket shelves, right? So we go in to buy cereals or something and we find so many brands of the same product. And therefore companies have to compete, you know, for consumer attention. Some data, they show that consumers spend maximum like 29 seconds choosing a product, right? So packaging suddenly is not anymore just protecting food, but it became an important marketing tool, right? And companies spend a lot of money in that packaging, you know, marketing. So here we see another, you know, level of why we have so much packaging. And the third one, which is a more a micro-level sub-system, I looked at how and why people indeed purchase, you know, packaged food.  But also we talk a lot about, you know, poverty in general or income poverty, but what's happening, especially in western countries and slowly affecting also, you know, globalized countries, is that we live in a society that suffers from time poverty. And this time poverty, you know, is influenced by many factors such as, you know, people having to work many jobs to have, you know, a minimum of prosperity. So that's, you know, there's an increasing of working poor, working poor class. The composition of family changed a lot with, you know, more single parents or double parents, you know, families, both parents work. So composition of family changed, but many factor influenced this time poverty, which leads then, you know, to purchase ready to consume food, you know, frozen food, easy to cook food. And obviously when we say easy to cook, easy to consume food, that is packaged. But again, the problem is not people buying it, but it's that time poverty that drives people to buy those food. So when we look at this big system, then recycling doesn't even come into the conversation because it's just a post-consumer problem. And that is just a small example on how, you know, food packaging is mentioned a lot and we think that just by collecting few pieces on our walk to the beach, you know, we can help. But really what we need to think about is why our society works like this and why our food system are designed and what's the purpose of our food systems. And the purpose of our food system is mainly to increase capital for big companies and more and more, you know, centralized food company, food corporations, and not anymore to provide healthy and affordable food for people. I totally agree. It's actually another form of commoditizing food. In a lot of respects, we see some of the effects that Ukraine is having on food and agriculture currently because food has been turned into a commodity. And when you cheapen food, you cheapen life.  You brought up a couple of things that I want to touch upon or maybe see if you want to go in a little bit deeper. So in 2018, all international organizations, WTO, the UN, the World Economic Forum, World Health Organization, all international major organizations switched to a systems view of life approach to solving human suffering and our global grand challenges. And what I mean by that is a systemic approach to solve our problems. And in the beginning, you kind of, you mentioned this and I want to say it in a little bit different way. I want to say we have, we've up until that point in time, humanity has really been taking a linear or siloed approach at solving a lot of our human suffering global grand challenges. We focus in on water or focus in on packaging. But just as you even told that story, you realize that the packaging is a huge system that ties to many, many aspects. And I love how you unpack that to show us all the facets in a very complex system. And where is the real problem line? This, you know, post-consumerism issue and its time issue. And there's many things that came out there. When people sometimes hear systems think or think about this whole process, they're thinking like big government or that's a system or this, you know, there's some other kind of system or a computer system. They don't think about the thousands to hundreds of thousands of systems that are operating every day in each one of our lives and industries and things. And I really strongly believe and have seen the results that when we take a systemic approach to solving human suffering and our global grand challenges, we get a lot closer to solving or eradicating those problems and getting humanity on the right side of history. We also tackle the growth issues. We also tackle the economic issues because we're addressing a very fast set of those systems in order to do it instead of just saying, we just need to throw more money out of there. We just need to fix the water. And so I love how you say that, but I also wanted to just kind of go in a little bit deeper on exactly what I, when I hear you speak, what I hear out of it and how that's such a beautiful thing because it's still, even though it's emerging and we're 50 years now, it's still a limit to growth and systems thinking and, and that it's, it's hard to see it applied or talked about so that people can get a good understanding of how complex that is. The last thing I want to say about it and maybe you could, you could bring this out and your thoughts or feelings as well. A lot of people think it's too complex or it's too hard to think in systems. We do it every day. It's actually easy and a lot of those things are autonomous. They're just on autopilot and they'll happen naturally. But if we understand it's a system and that we have to do all these things in order to solve the problem or to address it or to have the system flow smoother, the better life goes, the better things work. And I wanted to see if you've experienced that as well. If you've taken this systems approach or in ways that you, you, you address things and you say, wow, that's just a better model. That works a lot better and it's also tackling the problem. So I wanted to see what your thoughts and ideas and if you've run into that as well. Look, I think that, you know, obviously we all function differently. And again, some people might be more, you know, able to understand the working system and others. They prefer to, you know, focus on a specific part of the system. And that's fine. And that's, you know, maybe goes back to that redistribution of tasks and collectivity, you know, because, you know, if I think about the system, I just mentioned about a package food, right? Okay. That's the problem is that we have a growth driven profit driven food economy. What do we do about it? Right. And, and, you know, if someone asked me how can we do food packaging, I would say, well, if you just want to focus on one thing, then let's fight for a basic income. And people would go, what do you mean? What's the, you know, what's the connection?  And that's one connection.  Another solution that could, you know, reduce packaged food is we need people to fight or at least to be vigilant about which new free trade agreement or existing free trade agreement we have in place.  So we need to change that. The other problem about, you know, systems is especially from an academic point of view is obviously systems are just a tool to frame a problem, you know, the oversimplified version of the system. So sometimes we get back into trying to understand or argue that, you know, that system is not accurate because one connection doesn't lead to the other is not a causal connection. But again, as I said before, it's just a method. But now I think we have all the knowledge, you know, from the IPCC reports to all the amazing scientists out there is just that we need to get organized and we can get organized because we are crushed by the current system, you know, even in academia, let's be honest about it, you know, universities have less and less funds, it became very competitive to just survive in academia and we have these, you know, publish or die system that, you know, we don't have time to do quality research anymore because we are pushed as for the GDP growth, you know, to just measure how many publication we have and not the quality of them.  And I might be a bit critique, you know, you mentioned them, the great or they look great initiative of the UN or, you know, I can see also you have the badge of the sustainable development goals and I know you work in there. And again, I think this idea of shifting the conversation to tackle social ecological issues from a holistic perspective is fundamental and it's a big change to the conversation, right? But at the same time, government as well as, you know, all the international organization that aim at increasing GDP. So if we don't change up, we won't change anything. And the SDG as well, you know, if I'm correct and probably people in the net, they can correct me if I'm mistaken, but the sustainable development goal number eight is economic growth. So if we just aim at achieving that, we can externalize all the rest, you know, the other goals come after that. So it's interesting how growth itself is a goal. And, you know, it's not just a way to achieve social and ecological well-being. So we need to be critique about that institution in our government. And that's probably the only way to then apply this systematic change. Yeah, absolutely. If there's any that I struggle with the most out of the sustainable development goals is that exact one of economic growth. And I wrote for the United Nations a sustainable development goal manifesto and in that manifesto, I actually changed that SDG to say sustainable economic growth or regenerative or resilient economic growth, depending on which manifesto you read. And I think that's really important. And this is a perfect time to get into degrowth and economics and kind of talk a little bit about that because it's not only tied to what we just discussed, but it's tied to pretty much everything. So a lot of people haven't heard that the SDGs are an entirely new economic system. They're like, what? I thought that was just an add-on to business as usual on some goals, but actually it's set up with nine. I think it's 94 trillion US dollars to reach the SDGs by December 2030. And there's a huge economic shift that occurs if we do that. So they are an entirely new economic system. If we choose to use them and adapt it. I'm with you 100% and on degrowth, post-growth from Tim Jackson as a wonderful friend of mine and a wonderful book as well. And I really want to talk how did you get into the whole degrowth? How is the publication going and what you write about that? And what got you on that path? And let's break it down and talk about that a little bit more. We've kind of tickled on it with some statements, but we need to go a little bit deeper. Sure. So first of all, once we understand that economic growth is the problem, then the next question is, what's the alternative? Or why? Let's start first with the why economic growth is the problem. And the problem is that we keep, as we said, fueling the economic metabolism of our society, but we live in a planet with limited resources. There's the planet boundaries, and nine or 10 of them have been ready. So we cannot continue to expand the economy on a planet with limited resources. So a knowledge of that then is like, how can we reorganize everything? And you said you mentioned where degrowth and post-growth, basically they mean the same thing. Maybe post-growth is a bit more politically correct because degrowth sometimes scares people. So what is degrowth? Degrowth means basically reducing the metabolism of our society, reducing productivism and consumerism to focus in investing into social and ecological well-being, into human flourishing beyond profit growth or GDP growth. It means basically prioritizing human health and other species well-being, beyond humans and ecosystem and ecosystem services, and their functioning. So it seems very obvious when you talk to people and you even don't mention the word degrowth, people say, of course, that's what society should work towards, but the reality is that it's not like this. So there's a lot of misunderstanding, and many of my colleagues like Timothy Parikh and others, they write a lot about degrowth and they try to explain that degrowth is not austerity measures. Degrowth is not collapse. Degrowth means planning for an economy that works for most of human being and for ecosystems. And that planning is the central part. Some people also during the pandemic, they almost mentioned degrowth in relationship to COVID and the pandemic and sometimes authoritarian or non-democratic decision that have been taken around the world. But that's not degrowth. Even all the austerity measure that we saw with the crisis in Greece and other government, that's not degrowth. Actually, degrowth is the opposite, is how can we plan the economy in a different way so that we avoid to get to those crises. I was just in Morocco last week, but also in Australia sometimes there's water restriction already, in so many areas in the world. So degrowth means what can we use this water for? Do we need to produce all these products? Can we rethink what we need to produce and consume? Can we rethink the water in this case that is needed for that production so that everyone can access the water rather than having restriction? So degrowth means rethinking the economy, producing yes for human needs. What do we really need? And again, these things are all obvious, but if you look at the history of the economy, that's not that obvious. Since the Second World War, we produced a lot of products. And in the 70s, 80s, industrial designers, they got to design for plan obsolescence. And plan obsolescence means to design products such as smartphones, as well at that time, not silver smartphones, but printers, fridges, et cetera, so that the product would break down and people would buy new ones. Obviously, if people buy more products than companies and shareholders, gain more capital. But if we think about it, that overproduction of products, it involves ecological and social costs. It involves labor exploitation in other countries and other resources. So degrowth means rethinking our needs, rethinking our values and objectives as society. And it can be taken from a different perspective, like degrowth incorporates a lot of parts. As I said before, linked to packaged food, do we need to work that much? Why are we working that much? Is it to consume more? Is it to pay these over exploited rents that people have to pay? Yeah, degrowth is a very holistic, new economic framework that basically wants a society that fits within the planet limits and also achieves some more social justice. I love it, yeah. Tim Jackson is the author and both of his books. Post-growth is the last one he wrote and then prosperity without growth from Tim Jackson. And he's actually from the CUSP organization that is all about degrowth as well. And he was also on the podcast. So you're in good company with what you're talking about. But I want to dive in even deeper because you mentioned in the beginning as you're kind of explaining it to us that a lot of people get fearful about degrowth and post-growth and about just about the terminology.  And so I think we need to address that because when you start telling people, which goes back to capitalism and consumerism and growth, when we tell people to reduce, they feel like they're going to lose out on something. And I think degrowth and post-growth can, we can still have some regeneration, but we allow the planet to regenerate itself to produce enough products. I mean, there is that old principle in living systems that one plus one never equals two. It's that it's actually beyond an exponential because of the stewardship and the time of regeneration and let the planet kind of recoup. And that we're creating things, as you also mentioned, planned in obsolescence, where we're creating building products that are cradle to grave. They're one-way systems. We use them once and then they go to this landfill on a planet of finite resources that's never possible. But how do we close that loop? How do we close that system where we say, well, I have to reduce and plan on a day in the future where I'm going to have to go without that or I'm not going to be able to do that. Is that what you're saying? Or is there another model of that? I want to go a little bit deeper into that before we kind of talk a little bit more about some models out there. Sure. So first of all, thanks for mentioning the book of Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth because that and other publication are really important miles to understand what post-growth is about. And what's most important in that book in relation to this discussion right now is that growth and prosperity don't mean the same thing. And unfortunately, we are still led to believe through media and governments that growth means prosperity, that growth means well-being. And again, just in reference to the pandemic, when we suffered the crisis, the social economic crisis around the world, all the titles where we need to restimulate growth, our countries are not growing enough. And if we step back, it's like, wait, are we working towards social and ecological well-being or growth? So the first principle is prosperity doesn't equals growth. We can have a prosperity that is not growth-based and that's a first thing. I completely agree and thanks for pointing out that. Yes, I said that we need to reduce the resources, we need to reduce the economic activity and metabolism. And probably that is a thing that we need also to improve or I need to improve as an academic in the divulgation of what deep growth means. Because when we are led, since the second world war, we are led to think that growth and increasing is always positive. So suddenly decreasing or reducing, it means something negative. We can say that the growth means increasing the well-being, improving the well-being. And it's interesting, well, maybe because of my biological background, I always talk about the apoptose, which is the programmed death of cells. So when we are fetus, for example, we have skin through our fingers. And then the cells are programmed to die so that we have a functioning hand. So that programmation of reduction is not always negative. It depends what the outcome and the purpose is. So it's true that we think that reducing something means something negative, but I guess that... Missing out or less or suffering somehow. Yeah, but again, in reference to the pandemic, reducing for the privileged one, reducing commuting time or working from home or just having more time to cook, it was actually a good thing. So deep growth is about increasing well-being. From a material point of view, if we don't overproduce, if we don't produce all these object, gadget, how do we access them? Do we need to change our lifestyle completely? Well, no, there are other ways to reorganize society. Taking the example of the Brisbane Tool Library, which is an organization I founded in 2017, and is literally a library of things where people can borrow hand and power tools, camping gear, kitchen appliances, party appliances. There are many two libraries in Canada and the US, more and more in Europe as well, in Australia and elsewhere. So if we... Two libraries, they obviously give access to tools and other items, but the interesting part is that they teach a different way of using and accessing things. They prioritize access over ownership, so we don't need to own everything. We don't all need a loan war. We don't all need a camping tent. We don't all need a party appliances. And that introduced us to the fact that if you reorganize society in communities, we can introduce new models, right? For example, we talk about use rights. People don't miss out on any experience. They can still go camping and hiking and organizing parties, but the material consumption is reduced because we're not producing for each individual the same amount of objects. And this is like a small example on how communities can be reorganized, accessing the resources, having equal opportunities, and at the same time reducing that material aspects of the economy, dematerializing the economy as per the growth principles. And that is like... When I say that two libraries or in my work, I work towards recreating the commons. The commons is not just about accessing things. It's not just about shared resources.  And that's probably the biggest value that we can see with the Brisbane Tool Library. We became a family. And the volunteers are part of a larger community that creates a community resilience beyond the two library itself. So I like to take the example internally of the Brisbane Tool Library. Someone has a birthday party. If someone needs to move house and everything, there's like a team of people that raises hands to come up and help. So the commons is about that human relationship that unfortunately through commodity production, capital is broke because that's the only way to sell us products that we don't really need. I'm a big fan and student of Herman Daley in the ecological economics, study state economics and studied with him and I'm a big proponent of that. So we've mentioned post-growth and degrowth. We've talked about some of these other economic models. Most people don't even know that there's other economic models out there. Some have heard of the circular economy. Some have heard of ecological economics or donut economics from Kate Roworth or mission economics. But there are actually 21 at least that I know of and more coming every single day ecological economic models out there. With new ones popping up every single day, you mentioned another one, the shared economy. There's a platform economy. There's planetary boundaries. There's an ecological footprint economy model.  So my question is, are we operating them all at the same time? Are we doing one? Are we doing five at the same time? Does it depend on your community? How do we understand that? How does that system work? And is degrowth combined with other economic models? How does that work? How do we set up something like this in these communities? I'm a big fan of the tool library and other forms like that, that I don't want to call it the shared economy, but I do car sharing. I do tons of other sharing things in communities where things that I don't use every day that I, you know, I don't need every day to, I don't need to fill that ownership that I gladly give to the commons and to the community to use. And it's just a, it's a better model. And it's also this, you mentioned it before, it's this built built in obsolescence. Tends to, if we continually lease something, we know we can have it always and we can have the latest version of it and the best version of it. And it's one that doesn't go to the graveyard somewhere that'll be refurbished, recycled or improved for the latest model. I like that model. One of my mentors is a Bill McDonough, William McDonough who wrote cradle to cradle and upcycling and the circular economy. So I like those circular models. What's your views? And how are we to make sense of all these economic models out there? Yes, indeed, they're like many names of, you know, concept, but I would say that there's just two models out there. And one is a growth driven model. And one is that there's not growth driven model, which can be a deep road for a steady state economy. So steady state economy means just that we reach, you know, an equilibrium and, and, and we need to degrow to reach that equilibrium. And just I will jump back to the part you mentioned before about, you know, people being afraid of, you know, decreasing, you know, in, in any aspect of the life while I reformulated that definition in increasing well-being, right? The other maybe argument that comes out when we talk about deep growth is like, but global South countries, you know, poor countries need to grow and need to develop. And it's true. And that's why global North countries need to, you know, reduce their consumption so that we allow for material space for this country to build their infrastructure and to reach the basic needs that we need. So deep road doesn't mean that everyone has to degrow. It doesn't even mean that every sector has to degrow. It means that some aspects of our society need to be reduced and some other needs to be, you know, increased. So degrow just means rethinking the purpose of our society. Said that. So there's a growth-driven model, which is mainly fueled by capitalism. So production of things or others, offering of services just for capital accumulation. And then there's a degrow, post-growth perspective, which means ecological and social well-being. Once we frame these, then they're like all these other models you mentioned, unfortunately, get co-opted a lot by one or the other system, right? So just to talk about the circular economy. The circular economy, it's great. If you look at the surface, it's a great concept. It's easy to digest. It means we live in a linear economy. Everything is disposable. We need to change that and do something with the end products, right? And that's a problem. That's a problem of the circular economy now. It just became a synonym of green growth, meaning, yes, we need to grow, but in a green way. And that means that people pushing for that circular economy model are pushing for a relative decoupling, which means producing more and more things, but just doing it more sustainably. But that shows that capitalism has never been against producing more efficiently. Actually, all the opposite, right? If capitalism can reduce resources and increase capital for the same product, they would do it. So what we really need is an absolute decoupling, which means we need to absolutely reduce it. The material resources that we're using currently, and that's not happening. The other problem of the circular economy and, you know, the L and M Carter Foundation and all these organizations are pushing for a circular economy. But if you look at it, they're all very technocratic solutions, you know, saying we need equal design. We need to design the products better. We need to transform the material at the end of the life and reuse the materials. But none of those concepts, especially of the L and M Carter Foundation, which is, you know, the institution leading the circular economy conversation nowadays, no one says that we need to actually just decrease consumption. They just continue pushing for the idea that society needs to be based on infinite production and consumption, but just doing it more sustainably. And that is missing out, you know, a whole part of, you know, respecting the planet boundary we mentioned before, but also the circular economy as in the mainstream understanding of it is missing off the social aspect, you know, where which role do they have human in these circular economy?   What is this circle economy all about? So obviously we can use the term circular economy, but the question is, is it the circular economy for growth or for, you know, a de-growth steady state? A couple, yeah. Yes. So it's like, who's profiting from the circular economy? You know, it's always a good question to, you know, understand who's making most of, you know, economic advantage out of it. And if that answer is the same company that is producing the product or, you know, or a similar organization, then it's the wrong model. And unfortunately, you know, the good thing about using de-growth as a term, and even if my seems a radical, you know, term, which is a radical term, and I'm very proud of using, is that it's hardly being co-opted by capitalists because you can't, you know, be capitalist and support de-growth. And again, English native speakers and my mother tongue is Italian, are always afraid of these, you know, the word of being radical about something, but radix is a word that in Latin means root. So, you know, being radical means changing the root of something. So, you know, we have also to understand where words come from. So de-growth is a very radical stance of changing the current purpose of the economic system. Oh, I absolutely love that. That's perfect.  I really appreciate you breaking that down for us and helping us understand it more. It's so important because we need to have these discussions and we need to talk, take the systems view approach to get into the depth and substance behind a lot of these terms and things that we're hearing. So, you know, we need to have these conversations and conversations so that we can understand them a lot better. Before we get off the economic topic and growth. Totally. I have one last kind of a spark that I want to address. And I don't know if you followed it or how much you've heard. In 2018. John Elkington who wrote the book green swans. He said, I would like to thank him. I would like to thank him up with people, planet, and prosperity, profit model, the triple bottom line. For the earth. And 2018 after 25 years of the triple bottom line. He recalled it. He says we're using it as an accounting principal. product gets recalled they usually fix it or they do something or say oh no they never come out with it but normally they fix it and then they release it he still hasn't released what what the new model is that somewhere. And the re imperative is reuse recycle repurpose regenerate something in there. In his book the green swans and then in this whole process. He's, he's right on the cover says regenerative capitalism. And I love john he was on the podcast as well. I don't think we're aligned on regenerative capitalism on totally against capitalism period. And the growth that it puts there and what it's done for so so far but I wanted to know a couple things what you think about that. And such a thing is regenerative capitalism is that even possible is that just another term to throw on there that to fool assault into continuing business as usual. So, first of all, you know regenerative capitalism or green capital is you know it's just a way to sugar coat the, you know, the current system trying to make it look greener so it's greenwashing pure greenwashing.  And again, happy to, you know, comment on social media or wherever it is going to be published.  Don't get me wrong capitalism had his time capitalism is brought you know, many advantages, but at the expenses of someone else you know and that is someone else can be different population different social statuses within a country different ecological aspects. I don't think that you know regenerative capital would lead us anyway because the purpose of that going to remain capital accumulation you know. And, and even you know there's a lot of greenwashing in the social entrepreneurship area, which again such entrepreneurship is also another you know, social washing word. But you know people planet and profit but that's not true because it's, it's, it's simple, you know, you don't need to be an economist to understand that if there is that profit if there is that growth like in the seat in the sustainable development goal, then that's going to have to, you know, be at the expense of the expenses of people and profit. So if I want to produce something and I want to make a profit then I have to underpay someone. To relocalize in a country that has the you know, less environmental and social legislation, I have to externalize the environmental cost so you cannot have a profitable society that it's also sustainable so you can accumulate capital for the few. In that sense. Unfortunately, there are so many other theories out there that are unexplored, you know, and beyond the naming of, you know, the economic system, you know, capital is obviously money is we are in a money based society, but we can introduce ways of circulating, of that money. There was, there was a Silvio Gasel that already you know two centuries ago ago was talking about you know introducing money that expires and especially it was a original from Germany and migrating in Argentina and Gasel was saying that we need money that expires especially in a crisis which means that at that point obviously they didn't have all the digital technology that we have today. I found it fascinating that we never explored more in depth that idea so he was saying that if money has an end date that deadline you know like our yogurt or other products. Then people are obliged to make it circulate so you know people would spend it that people would use it and and capital would flow. And if people want to accumulate that capital, the money he was saying they would need to pay to reactivate that money so it would cost you more to accumulate and to flow that right, but there's also you know more modern great women macro economists that are looking at other ways to you know, pay you know for social and ecological well being, for example without taxing people because that's another problem right when we talk about this great social and ecological goals we're always afraid that we need to pay for it and you know taxes are a big burden etc but for example there's an entrepreneurial state which is a book I would recommend or like, how can we, you know, tax differently companies and not people you know how can eventually if you want to keep the intellectual property, make a corporation pay for infrastructure and social ecological well be. So capitalism has to, you know we need to shift away from capitalism, and we need to not be afraid of it because unfortunately and I can see it in my generation, you know my brother is younger than me. The thing that scares more capitalism is that we imagine a different society, and in fact if all you know these social media and digital tools etc they're trying to kill our imagination they're trying to let us think that capitalism is the only way to do it you know, but again capitalism is about 200 years old, and humanity is longer than that and across the world we have different population that managed, you know, society in different ways, with gift economies and different models so there are other models that needs to be explored and I think, you know me and you I don't know if you're going to see the end of it or hopefully I will try to, you know, have an influence in that change. But yeah, capitalism again sorry just to finish up, you were talking about the circular economy and reusing and refurbishing things and this push of, you know, putting a value on waste and parts is just because capitalism is dying and they need to find new markets so they're saying, well we sell you a phone that's still going to break down, but we can repair it for you and resell it because they need to expand the market so that you know capital keep accumulating for the top 1% Yeah it's insanity but yeah I appreciate you going deeper and explaining that for us. We've talked about communities and how vital communities are and to build those as well as in the sharing how that builds society and a community as well. So another economic model that we really haven't talked about is basically from Helena Norberg Hodge she also contributes in the book, but it's about local futures and local economies how we, we make sure to sustain ourselves and kind of build these local economies of goods and produce ourselves and have that when I sustainability is has many definitions and is not a legal term and by by any means, but to sustain our community or societies or organization over time with goods with resources with with however that society functions as is a fabulous model that I really like and I've seen work and in many, many ways before. And the other one is the one that we deal with with agriculture and food, an agrarian society, I used to say is, you know, 13,000 years old now we're getting word that it might even be 20,000 years old and it's the, the basis of how all civilization started how cities and communities and cultures grew based around our food in this community, this really this community and then as they, they've gotten bigger over the years we've kind of pushed them out into the skirts out skirts and outsourced that infrastructure basic need elsewhere so I want to know is, is this local economy, really in your mind, just another form of steady state another way of degrowth and bringing back that to, to local areas or what's your thoughts and feelings on that direction as well. Yeah, so, well, the work of the local future organization is really important because, as I often explained my work, there's, you know, we, and it goes back to the beginning of our conversation where do we need to catalyze chain from a top down level or bottom up and I spoke about communities which is what local future does as well. And that's the mezzo level, you know, we never mentioned the mezzo level you know we are very focused on individuals or the macro level but because of, you know, a government that they're influenced by big lobbies. We are not, you know, they're not working for us anymore generally speaking and individuals we mentioned that it's hard to act as an individual. So, suddenly that mezzo level, you know, because the, the connecting part and probably the more important part. I don't like to romanticize, you know, working with community, you know, it's always also in, you know, people working in this organization we always romanticize working with communities is great. And people usually generally like the idea except then when you have to work with other humans, human sucks right. And that's where the challenges. But again we have to, you know, unlearn, you know, to put our ego to pay to put you know and this is nothing wise I'm saying but it's really an exercise or, you know, and and unfortunately we lost that exercise of exercise of collaborating because of, you know, two centuries of influence of you know new liberal society. And, and you know, I just give you a practical example when I started the Brisbane to live in 2017. I spoke at many conferences people came to visit to library, and one recurrent question from the public and visitors was, what if someone steals the tools and doesn't return them. I think a lot of because it was a really recurrent question and then I started answering that will 99% of people are good people let's start with that, you know, so if I said saying if you had that in question in mind maybe it means you would do it, and people go I don't know I just talked about it right. So I think that we, you know, these neoliberal society that put us to compete for resources that, you know, create scarcity because that's what capitalist does you know create profitable scarcity and make us compete for them because of the quality there's abundance for everyone. And that, you know, and that mezzo level means having faith that other humans are as good as we are and and obviously, you know, crimes and other things happen and sometimes people are pushed by different people that that mezzo level working with community. The question is like how can we move away from a system that creates scarcity and make us pay for you know what we need to assist in the create abundance for all how can we, you know, access abundance how can we recreate the and although that you know the pandemic had this a disastrous effect on many aspects of our life. It showed us that relocalize in the economy give us resilience you know we saw that when you know the global market stops we start lacking of main products etc so Yeah, I think that you know that local futures or other projects or initiative like this low food movement do is you know keeping that authenticity of you know the local territories and that resilience of community.  So I think that just keeping up the idea that the different society can exist is probably the most important, you know, job that we have to do right now. I love that and I totally agree with you that you know there's that that thought process of scarcity or someone's going to steal something from you and what if they steal it or what if they don't return it in time or to return it broken. Well, those are things locally that we need to have an insurance plan for have it have a plan for that you know things happen, you know, things break down, but how can we work with more systems or more organizations that build a product that lasts forever builds builds products you know that you know you have at your whole life. I still wear clothes from junior high school believe it or not, which is highly suspect I have things from from my childhood still that I use almost every day and they're in great condition. And this this whole community thing the other thing that you really you address which which we need to talk about and we're kind of running out of time but we've got, we've got I really want to make what we touch upon these as you brought up neoliberalism and it's hard not to bring up neoliberalism and neo Darwinism at the same time. And I usually talk about it on most of my podcasts anyway and so I'm glad you brought it up. It's non existent this this this human condition or this idea that we've gotten into that the way the world works is through neoliberalism or neo Darwinism this competition this survival of the fittest natural selection only the strong by severe competition somebody's going to steal from you. Somebody's going to try to outcompete you or take something away from you. This fear of reductionism fear of reducing or going without something that is ingrained in a lot of the systems and structures are world. And I say it's non existent. It's definitely existent in our world, but it's, it's non existent and the fact is it's not real that's not how the world works it's not how the world has ever worked naturally and I don't know how. If you know a lot about Lynn Margolis or Boris Koplov or or any of the other great scientists out there that have written written about symbiosis or specifically the model and the way that our world works and that that model is a question that I'm going to ask you here in just a moment but it's really the world doesn't work in competition natural selection fighting against one each other, only the strong survive. That's something that has never existed in our world and it's a misunderstanding of Darwin it's a misunderstanding of how we structure our organizations and business. The way that our world truly works and functions and scientifically proven it's proven over all life is that it works in harmony and collaboration and cooperation and symbiosis with microorganisms with other species and including homo sapien in a much different way and so I wanted to touch on that because you mentioned neoliberalism but it's also your time to kind of put your thoughts are filling so on on that as well. When you answer this question and that is the hardest question I have for you today. It's what does a world that works for everyone look like for you. Before just getting on that I wanted to introduce one extra notion you were saying about you know your clothes that you kept for many years. And that is also in the book curing a fluency the introduce a important definition of being materialistic and being consumeristic. And sometimes we use the these terms as synonymous but you know I like the definition that in included in the book, being consumeristic consumerist means you know, having the love of buying of shopping the thrill of you know buying new things while being materialistic means loving the materials, you know the things. And so the book says that if you're really materialistic we love things we have to you know keep them to maintain them and that's what you know our parents or grandparents used to do you right to you to maintain good quality of things and then pass it down to the next generation while I think that I probably won't pass anything down because everything is produced is already disposable from close to you know digital technology. And that was that on the cloud. And I want coming specifically on you know new liberalism and new Darwinism but I'm aware of it and I have many colleagues that work on showing that from an ecological biological perspective, you know, most species collaborate you know and that that the competition is an artifact to justify the economic system that we live in but because it's not my area of expertise I rather not go into depth in there. And that idea of competition is a really important one because obviously it relates to the scarcity, the creative scarcity we mentioned, but it also and that's probably you know from a feminist point of view, an interesting subject that sometimes, you know, is spoken about in the media stuff about you know, if women wants to be equal to men they have to compete they have to adopt you know that. And that's again setting up in a patriarchal society saying well you want gender equality you need to be like men you know you need to compete, while you know again businesses or society can have other values you know they can have empathy they can have collaboration and more anarcho horizontal structure, and that would also mean success right if everyone works together. So that idea of competition and scarcity in capitalism is also entrenched to if you know, anarchy and and that's what probably the feminist economics and again I'm not an expert in there but I'm happy to eventually suggest some guest speakers they can talk more about to introduce another term, you know feminist economics and how that could you give more importance to care you know the work of care which is also not included in GDP, right because if we care about our community as volunteers, we care about that elders about our kids. None of that is included in GDP so in growth you know it's more convenient for a government to send you to work and send your children to childcare and pay for it, then for you to educate and keep your children at home. So yes you know is a again maybe going back to the beginning it's it's a big system problem that we have, and I think you know to maybe simplify a little bit, all these topics that we discussed is the main question is, what's the purpose, you know, for society, is it working for our well being or is it working for you know profit, you mentioned is how would the society works for everyone look like. I want to know for you I want to know what does a world that works for everyone look like for you not so your university but you I want to know what your thoughts are and if you if I'm sure you've thought about this in many different ways, what would that look like what the direction or how should we be looking or focusing kind of set that vision for us. I'm, I'm a very realistic rational person, and I would love to have more, you know, in imagination or futuristic imagination but I know great, you know, people out there that have more that long term imagination, what I think I'm doing and working towards this is just providing some kind of basic needs and prosperity for people in that basic needs, you know, we're not talking about, you know, big things your access to you know shelter food accommodation equal opportunity that you know the choice. And everyone to have, you know, good prosperity good level of life so that they can make choices that they want to, you know, to then reach that kind of happiness and that is not happening yet and you know, again, back to food systems. We have increasing since 2014, if I report properly from a FIO report hunger increased again and at the same time we have obese obesity increasing so obviously we are in disequilibrium and providing just those basic needs and accessing those basic needs that's what I really want to work towards and focusing. And then I will support other people that have more creative ideas on how society should be designed. I love that. Yeah, we could probably have a whole nother podcast just on some some form of twist on not universal basic income but universal basic rights for everyone that those those bear necessities for people in humanity are really covered. And intrinsically built into our economic models but into our community and society structure so that we're not worrying about those things and can strive and create and live the full potential that that I hope we're all meant to live. And Mark, that's in another podcast because we often mentioned basic income but we really mentioned income caps. So that's probably another question. I don't even I'm totally against UBI and universal basic income. I think it's, I mean, Nixon tried it and it's been around for a long time and there's some things that we saw COVID during COVID that really worked. It's good, but I think we need to do a twist on that that doesn't really involve income or growth in that respect it. It's more of a basic right of security shelter food, the basics for each and every human being on earth and I yeah that's a whole another podcast but I, we definitely need to talk about it. When the book comes out and will definitely need to get on another podcast and go into an even deeper dive. I have two last questions for these are more so for my listeners as kind of a sustainable takeaway for them. If there was one message that you could depart to my listeners that was like a sustainable takeaway that had the power to change their life or shift them in another way of seeing the world. What would that message be and it's okay if it's even a couple messages. Yeah, it's, you know, kind of question and I'm always feel, I'm not the appropriate person who answered this question because I feel it puts you like on a level of wisdom that don't believe I have right, but I think that we really you know if I try to think about which probably is not very wise anyway. I think that, you know was saying before capitalism is killing our imagination so if we need to fight for something is to fight for, you know, a different word so we need to imagine, you know that different word as crazy as you know you topic as we want it but try and keep that open imagination is everything and and then from there we're just going to work backward and try to you know develop some action and plans to achieve that imagination or idea of ideal society. I don't know too many creative or imaginative bankers out there or people with lots of capital there's a very few out there. The last question is, what have you experienced or learned in this professional journey of your so far that you would have said boy I wish I would have known that from the start I wish I would have known that it would change my path. So anything like that. I've talked a lot, you know, talking about, you know, criticizing capital is, you know, it's a taboo topic even if in some countries, it's easier to talk about it than in others. Talk about greenwashing pointing out and being critique of your own sector right you know, I worked in the social enterprise sector in Australia, and, and yes you get cut off a lot and for a little bit I'm very I'm a very direct person I thought that maybe I had to moderate, you know my critique of the system but I went back to my, you know, steps and thinking that we don't have time anymore because every time we don't speak up you know someone else is suffering so that's a risk to take you know to get cut off to get more obstacles or you know it is a challenging path and, and that's how it should be you know change has never been easy and if it's too easy then we're not pushing hard enough and so I guess that yeah I, I thought I had to moderate or be more politically correct at a certain point in my life, but then I went back to embrace my radicality. I love us. I really appreciate your time, thank you so much for letting all of us inside of your ideas, this has been a great podcast and look forward to future conversations. Thank you very much. Thanks everyone for your time from Disney.


for the record, bring hair from the Legislative Council. As the chair mentioned, at the last committee on H57, you heard from the Vermont Medical Society and had a request to prepare an amendment that addressed the scope of the practice issue that was raised during that testimony. And you can see that amended here in draft 1.1. It would be striking the entirety of section one, which is the legislative intent section. I'm replacing it with this language. The language in yellow is new. The rest of it is the same as the version that passed the House. You can see that the changes provided that currently Vermont does not impose legal restrictions on the right to abortion. That's changed from currently Vermont does not restrict the right to abortion. And then the addition of the sentence healthcare practitioners providing abortion care in Vermont make determinations regarding the provision of safe and legal abortion within the scope of their practice and license, and in accordance with the relevant standards of medical practice and guiding ethical principles. And then there's a small change to the beginning of the next sentence, which is just that the General Assembly intends the fact to safeguard these existing rights. And that change is intended to reflect the scope of those rights as curtailed by that second sentence. And the remainder of the legislative intent section is the same, not the provision that it's not intended to interfere with the legislative power of the legislature or the judicial power of the judiciary or to contravene the federal pressure for abortion. Does Senator McCormick have a copy on this? Yes. Oh my, so any immediate thoughts? Looks. Looks. Looks. Yeah, it feels better. Yeah, it does. Yeah. It feels a lot better. Yeah. So, what play for Senator McCormick? Senator, as we discussed on Friday, to have some change made to the intent section of age 57.  And I'm going to ask you to go through it one more time so that we're clear and so that you've had an opportunity to hear what the changes are in that section on the bill. Oh, do you mind Bryn, just going through one more time. Repetition serves us really well in there. So, as I mentioned to the committee, the changes, so this replaces section one, the legislative intent section just strikes it and replaces it entirely. But only what's in yellow is our reflect language changes from the version of the house. So the change in the first sentence is that currently Vermont does not impose legal restrictions on the right to abortion. That's a change from currently Vermont does not restrict the right to abortion. So that's intended to more accurately reflect that there are not legal restrictions imposed on this right. There may be restrictions within the medical practice that exists. The addition of the second sentence, healthcare practitioners providing abortion care in Vermont make determinations regarding the provision of safe and legal abortion within the scope of their practice and license. And in accordance with the relevant standards of medical practice and guiding it with principles. So that is a new sentence. And then the minor change to the third sentence is that the General Assembly intends this act to safeguard these existing rights, which reflects the scope of those rights as we're narrowly defined by the first two sentences. That's good. Yeah, that's so far so good. Okay, so what I think I would like to do with this is to allow for you to consider it overnight and we'll come back to it tomorrow. And then we can talk about where we are with the bill. That didn't take as much time as I thought. Where did all the H530s... All the H530s. Do you want me to let you know? I didn't page around. I'm not going to say anything right now. Will this change be going up online soon? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, we've seen it. We'll put it online. Thank you, Bryn. Thank you. I missed today. There's nothing we can do about it. So why don't you share with us what you have? I know that we've talked on Friday. Rich Westman and I both communicated with Katie over the weekend and then we had a short meeting this morning so we can try to get the semblance of a bill together. Katie McLean office of legislative council for the record. I did put a new draft together with the changes from this morning to get more out. And I think I should just hit send to Maya. I think I'm supposed to do this. Great. I'm tearing up entirely. So we have draft one and two. One and two, there we go. Okay. All right. So the first section is legislative intent. There's no changes to that section. The second change has to do with CC FAP. It's in the green books and there haven't been any changes to that section. The changes start on page three, section three. This is the CC FAP appropriation for fiscal year 2020. So we still have the 1.25 restoring the base. And then the change here is a 4.9 million appropriation instead of the 6.9 million appropriation. And so this, and this puts the market rates keep to the 2017 for existing powers. But then it bifurcates the preschool and school age. So for preschool age children, the market rate is 2012. And for school age, it's 2010. Well, that's just stuff on page four. That's on page four, yeah. So that is that change. Section four is the language about the existing stabilization grants. We're keeping that language that says that those grants are going away. That's 2.5 million. And instead there's a new grant program being created on page five, section 4A. And this is an ongoing program, grant program. And it's an infant and toddler child care provider grant. The new language says that there is established this new infant and toddler child care provider grant administered by the division for the purpose of enhancing reimbursement rates to child care providers serving infants and toddlers in underserved areas of the state. The division is to award grants to center-based child care programs with family child care homes that participate in the STARS program. In accordance with the formula set forth in subsection B. And B is the division is to calculate eligibility for infant and toddler provider grants on a quarterly basis. And in determining the eligibility, the division is to consider the average number of enrollees in center-based child care program and family child care homes receiving CCBAP subsidy. And also the average number of infants and toddlers enrolled in the center-based child care program or family child care home. The top of page six, subsection C, the division is to provide grants pursuant to this section as funds allow. Center-based child care programs or family child care homes receiving a grant shall remain in compliance with the division's rules, continue participation in STARS and maintain high enrollment of children receiving a CCBAP subsidy. So that's the ongoing language. And then the appropriation for FY20 is in section 4B. 1.25 is appropriated from the general fund to the division for the purpose of funding of this new provider grant. The next change has to do with the IT investment. Section five is mostly the same. The only change that didn't get bolded is at the top of page seven, subdivision one. It had read a project plan and timeline. It now reads an initial project plan and timeline. And then in section 5A, there's a few changes. First, in fiscal year 2020, we have, we still have, same thing that you looked at last week, 500,000 appropriated to begin. It used to say implementation of the project. Now it says development of the project plan that's established pursuant to section five. And then there's new language. Subsection B in fiscal year 2020, 1 million is appropriated one time from the general fund to the division to begin implementation of the plan. Then any unused funds from either the CZVAP appropriation or from the $500,000 in subsection A shall be reserved to begin implementation pursuant to section five. The next set of changes have that means there's a total of $1.5 million for the IT program that we're suggesting here. Yes, 500,000 is ongoing, I believe, in the 1 million is one time. Right. And that's how the reserve is built. So the next set of changes have to do with the various childcare provider incentives we have been looking at as it came over from the house. So there's a scholarship program and a loan repayment program. What I've done is I've deleted section six and seven of the bill to make it easier to compare the house version and the Senate version if we ever get there. But section six had contained the scholarship and repayment. And then section seven was the appropriation. Are you listening to our conversations? Yes. If we ever get there. If we ever get there. That's succeeding, I just summer and summer. Okay. Instead of section six and seven, section seven A creates a new grant incentivizing the childcare profession. So this language kind of takes a step back and makes money available for a variety of programs that incentivize childcare providers to enter and stay in the field. So in fiscal year 2020, 300,000 is appropriated from the general fund to the division for the purpose of establishing an incentive program that fosters an interest in the childcare profession among students, including students participating in the Dill education. That's something you talked about last Friday. The incentive program shall provide grants to fund a combination of paid internship opportunities, scholarships and hiring bonuses for childcare providers employed at a regulated privately operated either center-based program or family childcare home. In subsection B, the division is to administer the incentive program set forth in the section and adopt policies, procedures and guidelines for the implementation. Grants are available on a first come, first serve basis until the funds are depleted. In section subsection C, it says that an individual can simultaneously receive funds from the Department of Labor, Vermont Department of Labor to complete a paid internship in a regulated privately operated childcare home or center-based program while they're receiving funds pursuant to this section. Okay, remind me, this is one time. This is one time money. And then in, there's a new page nine. There's a new section seven B. This has to do with the technical centers. We had a conversation about this last Friday. In fiscal year 2020, 350,000 is appropriated from the child, excuse me, is prepared from the general fund to the child development division to facilitate the implementation of the council for professional regulations, child development, associate credential, curriculum, technical centers throughout the state. So that's to help get the technical centers caught up to speed and rolling out this curriculum throughout all of the technical centers. So, what, so wait, it won't cost that much to roll it out from the technical centers. So, if you could know how much. We don't know how much to invest in technical center development or finalizing this credential program. If we did, then we could take the rest of it and put it into implementation and providing funds. So, I guess my question is, does seven B require or incentivize the tech centers to participate? I think there were discussions about providing some incentives for them. I'm not sure education, the Department of Education is 100% behind the work of a requirement at this point. It's not saying that the technical centers must implement it, it's saying to facilitate the implementation. So, it's money to the commission to help. I would mainly use it as some technical assistance to them and maybe incentives for them to participate. Yes, okay. But then the other part of the money is to reward and provide funds for folks who have a certificate and then are employed or that's seven A, right? So, that was eliminated this morning that you had to have a tie in. We don't want to eliminate it unless we want as two steps. We want to have a step for, if you already have people who have the certificate, apparently they're you and Marcy's came or something, right? So, if they have that certificate then we want to be able to provide an incentive for them to continue to work in or to have a job or an internship. So, there's- Tell me about that. There's still language about having paid internship opportunities or scholarship to continue your study or a hired bonus but it's not, the conversation was about stepping back from the specific parameters around those programs and instead- So, the $350,000 it's here. That's not going to cost that much to do with us here. So, there's more than we need here. So, will that go up to seven A before those people with certificates? How will the access, how do we decide if we put that in? So, the conversation was about stepping back from the specific program parameters but what you could do is- That's in seven A. Yes, what you could do in seven B is add a subsection B and say any unused funds will go towards the programs, the grant program in seven A and you could either just leave it general any of the programs in seven A or specific and tie it to people who have completed the technical centers curriculum. I think the goal was to tie it in some way at least a portion of this to achieving a certificate. So, to encourage folks to A, go through the program in the first place and then B to get a job in the center. Okay, so we'll say in subsection B, we'll create a new subsection B in seven B. This is any unused funds are to go to the grant programs in section seven A specifically for people who have successfully completed the technical center curriculum. Yes. Okay. So then the question is, this is a huge number for this certification process. I think they probably can almost do it. They can almost do it with nothing but if they have the motivation to do that but if there are funds available, as Riva said, it would provide a center for them to get this work done. So, I'm actually looking at Riva and trying to figure out how much money would be required for a certification program to get itself going. Let me see if I can, I don't know that one with a detailed sample, let's see how much. Yeah, let's see. Okay, so it's this $350,000. We're not interested in having that go to all the technical centers around the state. We're more interested in having the ones that want to do this, to do it and have the bulk of the money go for incentives. So paid internships, I think they are. They are, yeah, okay. That could be really useful. Yeah, so maybe the division of the funds should be different, and I'm wondering if it's like $50,000 here and $600,000 there. Okay, I had no idea, but we'll hear about it. I'll put that as a place to work for now. So I'm gonna hear about a lot, so. I'd like to see a chart with the point of pay on what this final decision, I think, because when we saw this, this was a program where we were going to, families paid a percentage of their income for childcare, and then it didn't matter if they had one, two, or three kids in there. Yeah, we've got the CC-FAT, we're talking about the CC-FAT. It's like a scale, right, and I'd just like to make sure that, because we're only, you know, we're not bringing those up even present levels, the, well, the, all right, even the color of 2017, and yeah, I'm in the money committee. This is the longest up economy, and it hasn't been very up that we've seen here. We're due to do it down. I wanna make sure, you know, we did something obviously a number of years ago and haven't done anything since, because the money's been tight, till we reached the point where it wasn't worthwhile for people to put the kids in daycare because the cost was such a high percentage of their income. And I just wanna make sure that we're, that somewhere we say that it is our intent that these levels continue to rise with the market or that this is part of, that this is step one in what we envision as a moving towards. Can we put that in the intent? Yeah, but this is due to Senator Cummings I've spoken. Great. We're good with that. Yep. Well, that's good, I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, I think it's all in our heads, but, you know. Well, I mean, it was, it was just such, yeah, I mean, to me, that is the best place for families, for the economy, for everything that we could invest our money. And it is, but I've been here long enough to know we'll do one shot, we'll feel good. And we'll forget next year that we're supposed to, because there'll be other crime needs out there. Well, so according to our own chart, for a family that's a single parent that's only 15 years an hour, the subsidy will go from two, or the part that they have to pay will go from $250 to $165. So that's a good, that's a good direction. That's a good direction. So I'm, I am looking, I think that really the, that's the bulk of the changes. Mm-hmm. The other changes are just conforming changes about the report back. All right, so this is good. Yes, this is better. This is better. I'm sure you've got to be the easiest the far end of the hall. We're, we're getting better. We're not, we're like $750,000 away from what the house sounds. Six hundred. Huh? Six hundred. Six hundred. Well, only six hundred. Well, and we've done some work and we're, our goal of course is we're going to be looking at REACHA. We're trying to get something which will also help a lot of these people. Which will help a lot of these people. So it's a combo. All right, so Katie, thank you very much. You're welcome.