I'd like to invite Julie Griffin up who is a graduate student in geology at UC Davis. She is going to be introducing our keynote speaker. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us at the third annual YOLO Interface Climate Conference. I am Julie Griffin. I'm a graduate student in geology and I study paleoclimate or Earth's past climate history of climate on Earth. The debate on climate change has been raging since before I was born. As someone who is most comfortable with herself when she is outside, I have always felt a strong pull towards environmentalism. The preservation of wilderness is a logical extension of self-care for me. Listening to this desire, I took environmental science classes in college. I vividly remember the first time I was struck by the importance of managing climate change, ironically sitting in a cold lecture hall. We were viewing maps of the east coast of the United States that had been altered to show the landscape and coast when enough glaciers had melted to cause one meter of sea level rise. I was shocked to see the Potomac River flood over the region where I grew up, the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Rock Creek Park with the bunnies and squirrels that scampered from me as I ran the trails, the flowers that I love to pick, even the poison ivy that irritated my skin, would all be under water. Those furry animals would have to move and the flowers and ivy would be fish food. I realized that because of climate change, parts of the world that I grew up in would be gone within my lifetime. So I decided to study climate change. I got rid of my car and started taking the train or carpooling. I began eating less meat and carrying reusable bags. I work every day to reconstruct how the earth has previously coped with drastic climate changes. In the hopes of discovering some part of the climate system, some lever that we might be able to pull and reverse or at least slow the warming of our planet. I dedicate my time to educating students and others about climate change and try to pass along useful tips for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. Nevertheless, our planet continues to warm. In my lifetime, 26 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have risen over 50 parts per million. This rate of rise, two parts per million per year, is unprecedented in earth history. The natural feedbacks that mitigate rises in earth temperature have never before responded to this rapid of a change. The geologic record does show us that life on earth is resilient and will continue on through a dramatic change such as this. However, the life that occurs after this change will be, like my drowned park, very different from what existed before. Humanity must cope with this change. We must take action, like all of you today, to educate ourselves and mitigate climate change. And with this, I am pleased to introduce nature author, public speaker, and environmental advocate, Kathleen Dean Moore. She is a distinguished professor emeritus of philosophy from Oregon State University who recently retired to devote more time to climate talks and writing. She will offer her perspective on just what our work is as we stand at the cliff edge of climate chaos. I for one will be listening for a new path to understand who we are in the world that we have created because sometimes I don't know how we ought to live. Is my hope that her speech for us, as well as our conversations today, will help us figure out how to lower our carbon pollution significantly, even as we cope with the drastic changes that come with a rapidly warming planet. As a scientist, I think that life on earth will persist, but the question is whether humanity will be part of the new ecosystems that emerge. I am listening for Kathleen Dean Moore to answer her own question, where do we find the courage and the hope? I truly hope that this talk sparks the beginning of our work together towards personal and community ethical actions for our imperiled planet. Thank you, Julie. You're a remarkable young woman and I think the answer to the question where will we find hope and courage is in people like you. That's great. So they're going to want to know the story of this time, our grandchildren will. It's a pivotal decade when we either find our way forward or we do not. They're going to give this time in history a name. It's that important. The hinge decade, the last blessed time, or the end times, or the great turning, or the eighth day of creation. Let me just stop. Are we good on sound? I'm getting some indication we're not. Can you hear me? Can you turn me up? Okay, good. So our children are going to want to know, was it like this, they'll say, storm clouds building on the horizon and desperate people pushing across the borders, is it going to be about shouting and gunfire? Or will it be quiet? The simple disappearances, the lost opportunities, lost species, quiet as snow melting, quiet as desiccation. Was it exciting, they'll ask us, the new ideas, this new sense of empowerment, the weepy joy of relief and redemption. They're going to want to know if we saw it coming. They'll want to know how hard we tried. They'll want an accounting. They'll want a book filled with the prayers people prayed. They'll want jars filled with the last of things. The point is that we're the ones who are going to write the history of this time. What will it be? The story of these pivotal years of global warming could be a crime novel. In many ways I think it is a crime novel. It could be a horror story with zombie cockroaches. It could be scripture with all its terror and grace. It could be it will be a thriller with a thousand plot twists. Or it could be an absurdist nihilist farce. It's up to us. Of course we're living out the end of the old story now and that's a story that we tell ourselves that has driven this industrialist extractive growth economy for centuries. It's a worldview, it's a cosmology, a set of assumptions about who we are and what we ought to aspire to. That story is over. It has brought us to a dead end. So I was thinking about that old story when I was on a red eye. I said dead eye. A red eye on a 737 coming across the continent back to Portland. And we were over North Dakota. We were over the back in oil fields. Shale oil fields where this massive fracking operation is underway.  The whole plane, horizon to horizon, horizon to horizon from 35,000 feet up, was studded with flames. And being a writer, I always ask myself, how could I describe this? And so, you know, you've seen, you've been to Europe perhaps, or you've seen the military cemeteries with those closely ranked rows of crosses as far as you can see in any direction, yes?  Now imagine that you're in that cemetery and it's night and that all those crosses have burst into flame. Flames flaring off the methane from drilling rigs, closely ranked rows of flames as far as you can see in every direction.  Well, clearly what it is possible for us to do depends on the story we tell each other and the story we tell ourselves. What is this story that allows us to ransack the earth and think of us as good and smart people? What is the story that's brought us to this dangerous, dangerous place? I think that for the last 500 years or so, Western civilization has been living in a story that's basically an adolescent superhero comic book. The sort of cartoon fantasies of planetary subjugation and mastery that stir the loins of teenage boys and Wall Street bankers. The fantasy would have us believe that humans are the superheroes of the planet so different from and superior to the rest of earthlings that we might have descended from the sky.  The idea that we're the lonely heroes on a dangerous planet in competition with one another. That competition has winners and losers, that's the way of the world, and that losers should just be grateful to live on the toxic trickle-down excess of the heroes.  And even God is on the side of the superhero humans. He gave us this world. But in fact, who needs God? If we get into danger, our superhero technologies will save us. Who needs fresh air when you have oxygen bars on the street corners? Who needs fresh air when you have cigarette filters that you can stick in your nostrils as people are doing in China? Who needs predictable weather when you live in a techno bubble? Who needs other people when you have money? Who needs glaciers when you have desalination plants? Who needs earth when you have Mars? Who needs compassion? Who needs compassion when our superpower, our superpower, wait for it, our superpower is the iron grip of Adam Smith's invisible hand, this magical hand that supposedly turns uncontrolled selfishness and greed into community thriving? That story's over. It's gone. It's a failed experiment. The world doesn't work that way. We can't, in fact, destroy our habitat without destroying ourselves. It's based on an outdated view of a mechanistic earth, this worldview that's wildly inconsistent with what we know about emerging ecological, evolutionary understanding of an interconnected planet. And playing out that script has brought this entire planet to a cosmically dangerous place. So what's the next story? That's the big question, isn't it? What's the next story? If we're not careful, I really worry it will play out as an absurdist nihilist farce. Have you read Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett? You've got these two ragged men and they're standing by a dead tree and they're waiting for whom is not clear, for what is never clear. So I wrote a few lines of dialogue of a farce that we're playing out here. It goes like this. What are you waiting for, Vladimir? Not waiting. Yes, you are. And what? Waiting. Oh. Nothing I can do, just one person, kind of sad about the polar bears. Sad. See what I mean? We've got to come up with a better story than that. And whatever it is, that new story has to have as much power as the story of creation.  In the beginning was the great creative unfolding, petals unfurling, and it was good, and it was good the tiger lilies and the walrus and the laughing children. And now on the eighth day of creation, how can we imagine a story of a new creation, of another great unfolding of new ideas and new life ways, a new sense of ourselves in relation to the world, a blossoming, and it will be good, and it will be good, and it is good. Page five is missing, so I'll just tell you what it said. What it said, I can't believe this. Really, you're not here, page five? What it said is that the only story I know that's going to have that kind of power is a love story. It's going to have to be a love story. And so page five invites you to think really hard for a moment about what it is that you love too much to lose. And it could be a person. It could be a place. It could be a principle, justice, democracy, honor, loyalty. It could be a celebration, a cultural practice. There are many, many things in your life that you love this deeply that you would hold onto them with everything you've got. And then I was going to invite you to think about what that calls you to do. That loving isn't a kind of la di da, but loving is a sacred trust. And what you love calls you to honor it with every ounce of your being.  For profit. So when you think about what you love, maybe what you love is children. If that's the case, then you're going to be paying attention to the recent scientific consensus statement by 500 scientists led by a team from Stanford that said, if we don't take immediate action, by the time today's children are middle-aged, the life-supporting systems of the earth will be irretrievably damaged. What are we talking about here? The life-supporting systems of the planet. Well, one of the things we're talking about is the food supply in the ocean. This is very dear to my heart. When you add carbon dioxide to water, you increase its acidity, right? That's how you make Pepsi. Acid is corrosive. Think Pepsi. We're not talking about seawater that dissolves the shells of the oysters. It's way worse than that. It pits the tissue-thin membranes on the larvae of the oysters, of the krill, of the phytoplankton, these creatures that are the broad foundation of the food pyramid. One out of seven people on the earth depend on food for the sea. When that pyramid collapses, it will all come tumbling down. And what will the people eat then? Consider fresh water. 68% of the planet's fresh water is stored in ice caps and glaciers. When they've melted, the water's gone. And what will the people do then? And what will the animals do? The ice on the Tibetan Plateau waters 10 major river systems that provide irrigation power and drinking water for 1.3 billion people in India in that area. Nearly 20% of the world's population when those glaciers have melted, what will those people do? Consider agriculture. I read that by the time the century is over, if we don't take action, 99% of Africa will be unsuitable for agriculture. What will the people do then? This is hard to talk about, and I'm done with that. Do you love the plants and animals of the Senozoic era? These birds and frogs and wildflowers? Then you'll be interested in the millennial ecosystem assessment that said that every ecosystem on the planet is in decline or collapse. Coral reefs, great boreal forests, monarch butterflies, tropical forests, Arctic ice sheets. Do you love justice? Climate disruption is going to create the greatest moral disaster of human history. People aren't going to just suffer. They'll suffer unjustly, because the people who suffer the most will have been the least responsible for its cause. Do you love freedom? Then you'll be interested in Nicholas Stern, the author of the Stern Report on Economic Effects of Climate Change, quoting, Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and animals will have died. The trouble will come when they try to migrate into new lands, however. They will bring them into armed conflict with people already living there. End of quote. And when the wave of people whose lands are swamped or poisoned by rising levels of saltwater, when that wave begins to move towards high land, what can we say then about life and liberty and security of person? What can we say then about peace? One of my recurring nightmares is that the ultimate solution to climate change may well turn out to be the nuclear winter. But it doesn't have to be this way. That's the whole point. Scientists know how the chemicals respond. They know how the temperature responds to the chemicals. They know how the oceans and the weather respond to the temperature. Those are data points. That's geophysics. But there's a missing data point. What they don't know is how the people will respond. And that response has the power to set those models spinning and the arrows on the charts diving in different directions and telling a different story. So what I'm trying to say is that what is called for is action that is the moral equivalent to the power of our love. That's the measure. How much do I love children? How much do I love the whirling lives of the planet, justice and freedom? How much? That's how much is required of me. Easy to say. But how can we write that new story? How can we write this story of a second creation? How do you write a story that is so huge that it calls everything into question? How we feed ourselves? How we educate ourselves? How we exchange goods and services? How we work? How we answer the basic questions of the human existence? What is the world? What is the place of a human being in the world? How then shall we live? Every writer knows the answer to that question. How do you write a new story? You write a story by writing it. Sentence by sentence, scene by scene. Bird by bird. I'm referring, you might know, to Anne Lamotte, the writer who said in her book Bird by Bird, 30 years ago, my older brother, who was 10 years old at the time, was trying to finish a report on birds that he had three months to write. It was due the next day. We all leave things to the last minute, even climate action. He was at the kitchen table close to tears surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, he immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then Anne Lamotte says, my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder and said, bird by bird, buddy, just take it bird by bird. And that is how we will take it. That is how we will write this new story. We don't know how it will end. It's the work of a lifetime, it's the work of many lifetimes. Every chapter is the context for the next. You start with the place, you start with a couple of characters, protagonist, antagonist, and then you start making it up. The meaning and the worldview grows from the story unfolding. So writers, who's the protagonist in this story? That would be us. We're the heroes of this journey. We are Bilbo Baggins and Odysseus and Harriet Tubman, and I am not exaggerating. If there are heroes in this story, it will be us. Now that's good news, because we were made for these times. We are educated, we're experienced, we're interconnected like never before. We are absolutely to be sauted with life. We are powerfully in love with the children and the earth with justice and freedom. If we can't do it, it can't get done. So who's the antagonist in this story? We want to be careful here. We're not struggling against climate change. Our struggle is against the fossil fuel pollution that's causing climate change, and those are human decisions. Human decisions can be changed, and this means that our struggle is against those mega corporations or the just passively obstructive bureaucrats whose business plans are making fortunes while they're wrecking the ecosystems that evolved over 50 million years. Our antagonists are those people who are bullying us into living ways of life that we don't believe in. And the measure of our success isn't going to be how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. That's a matter of physics. Our struggle is to be sure, and the measure of our success is how many fossil fuels stay in the ground, whether it's by conservation or replacement, or because it's just no longer worth the trouble and the cost to get them out. We can't stop short on the chain of causation because that disempowers us. The melting of the Arctic, it's not warm winters. It's burning fossil fuels, and we can change that. The massive die off of the Taiga forests, it's not beetles, it's burning fossil fuels, and we can change that. The displacement of 55 million Bangladeshis by 2040, not by rising seas, but by burning fossil fuels, and we can change that. The second thing I want to be careful about is that we've been encouraged to be confused about who the struggle is against, and that confusion has all but paralyzed us. And it may be one of the biggest triumphs of big oil to make consumers blame themselves for climate disruption. I spoke about that last night. We have met the enemy, and he is us, we say, and we take on this burden of shame, and we allow it to disempower us and take away our license to speak out. Well, okay, for heaven's sake. Okay, well, here's what I want to say. This is going to test my memory. That's right. I can't wait to tell my husband. At my last speech, he lost my power cord and destroyed my PowerPoint presentation, so this will be fine for him. Lewis Mumford says that we have been offered a great bribe. We can have it all. We can have endless parties. We can have music on demand. We can have movies on demand. We can have anything on demand. Whatever we want, we can get it guaranteed two-day delivery from Amazon.com. We can have beautiful homes. We can have healthy teeth and bodies. We can have as many cars as we want, and they can be big as homes. We can have it all on the condition that we never ask the cost. If we look back to the past to see the die-off of the forests, to see the damage to the lungs, to see the peril to the earth, we've lost it. If we look forward to see the consequences of our great consumption, the lost chances of the children, it's over. We can't have it anymore. This great bribe has put us in the position of forcing ourselves to be blind to the cost of what we're doing. Okay, so we've taken on this great bribe. What's interesting to me and Davis are the ways in which that bribe is falling away in the face of alternative ways that are wonderful. And maybe that's one of the answers to the great bribe. Okay, so I've said that, but having said that, having taken on some of the burden of shame, I want to say that corporations are only too happy to say that they're responding to public demand, whereas it's very clear that they are manipulating public demand with all the skill and expertise and money that's at their, at hand. And that they're building and maintaining infrastructures that force consumers to use fossil fuels. When you criticize fossil, when you criticize or act against climate warming, someone always stands up and says, do you drive a car? As if that makes you completely powerless to criticize that whole system. Well, to me, the answer to that question is, yes, and now let me ask you why. Why do I have to drive a car? Why don't I have good public transportation? Why don't I have safe bike paths? Why don't I live in an area that has access to good food?  They're convincing politicians to lethally underfund alternative energy. They're increasing demand for the energy-intensive products. They're creating confusion, and this makes me very, very angry. The confusion they have sowed about the harmful effects of burning fossil fuels and their influencing elections on an, oh, I don't even need to tell you. California, how do you do it? How do you have, how do you elect people who are perhaps uncorrupted? Is that, am I right? It's not right? Oh, so here's the point I want to make, is that of course we should, of course we should spend and invest and work and travel more thoughtfully, and of course we should dramatically cut our use of fossil fuels. We've met the enemy, and I'm going to make sure it isn't me to the extent that I can, and as I said last night, but while big oil is externalizing all of its other costs on me, I'm not going to allow it to externalize the moral shame, the moral shame of its attack on the earth. When a corporate executive, in order to make astonishing and unimaginable profits, shows himself willing to take down the systems that sustain life as we know it on earth and cause suffering on a scale we have never before seen do this knowingly, intentionally, as part of their business plan, that's moral monstrosity on a cosmic scale. Now people call me a bad person for saying that. They call it vilifying, and because I'm in a setting with a lot of people from faith communities, I want to acknowledge that this is going to be a complicated love story, and it's going to require us to embrace paradox, which we're not necessarily good at. Can we name the wrongdoing? Can we call out the lies and the liars? Can we speak the truth about the destruction that is part of the business plan? Or do we need to be compassionate the way hungry dogs are compassionate? I am reminded of Jesus, not a bad person who said, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. But it doesn't take a logician to realize that this entails that we do have enemies and that there are people who persecute us and that we should love them. So I don't believe we're called to deny the wrongdoing that is happening on the planet. And I think about the Dalai Lama who says, survival on earth as we know it is by human activities that lack a commitment to humanitarian values. Destruction of nature and natural resources results from ignorance, greed, and lack of respect for the earth's living things. This lack of respect extends even to the earth's human descendants, the future generations who will inherit a vastly degraded planet if world peace doesn't become a reality. It's not difficult to forgive destruction in the past that resulted from ignorance. Today, however, the Dalai Lama says, we have access to more information. It is essential that we re-examine ethically what we have inherited, what we are responsible for, and what we will pass on to the coming generations. So okay, I can get with the program. If love means empathetic understanding, then it may be one of the most important things I can do is to try to put myself in the shoes of Rex Tillerson, who is the CEO, chairman of the board, and executive officer of ExxonMobil, and try to understand the forces that drive his decisions. But this is going to be fierce compassion. This is going to be tough love. So okay, our story is taking shape. We have the protagonist, we have the antagonist. How will this plot unfold? It's going to be a thriller. Whether we can stop fossil fuels in time. A global temperature rise of two degrees might be something that life forms, including humans can adapt to. A global temperature rise of four degrees, six degrees is something else entirely. So what happens next? Last night I talked about the way that rivers work, and I'm going to very briefly mention that same metaphor. I am overwhelmed by the ways in which we are being, why the river is sweeping down upon us. It's deeply embedded even in the lay of the land. It has engraved on the landscape. Harmful ways of acting are embedded, deeply embedded in the landscape that we live in. How are we ever going to stop that river? And we have this notion that we have to dam this river. But anyone who spent time as a child throwing rocks and rivers and building little structures that you don't have to dam a river to change it. That the river works according to certain rules. And that if you put a stone in the river you will see that the river, when the current slows, it drops its load and pretty soon sand begins to build up in front of that stone. And it gets bigger and it gets bigger. The force of the river itself increases the size of its own obstructions. Do you see what I'm saying? And that when you put a stone in a river the current will curl around it and turn back upstream. The river itself changes direction in the face of an obstruction. So our work in this world is not to build big dam across this thing. Our work in the world is to create obstructions to complacency. It is to place blockages to business as usual. It is to make small obstruction to profits. It's to create a better idea and then another and then another until the river has been altered and it's forced to reverse its flow or to change its course. So the point that really empowers me and makes me feel really hopeful is that each of us has lots of rocks. And our work is to choose the rock and chuck it in. First question, what are you good at? This is how you find your rock. What are you good at? What gifts have you been given? My friend, Pottawatomie Elder says the salmon has been given the gift of red flesh so its work is to feed the people. The robin has been given a gift of song so its gift is to raise the sun in the morning. What are your gifts? What has been given to you? That's question number one.  And how can that love empower you to use your gifts to stop anyone from damaging them? It doesn't matter what rock you choose. All these problems are interconnected. Just choose a rock. Technological change? Spiritual change? Find your rock and chuck it in. This is going to take lots and lots of stories. So what do we have to do? I think that three big strategies are going to drive this plot. I call them, sorry, the three C's. The first one is conscientious objection. Every refusal to go along with the system is a rock in the river.  Can we say hell no to an unjust and far more disastrous economic systems? Can we refuse to let big oil make us foot soldiers in their wars against the world? We know this, that every decision we make, how we travel, whether we travel, what we eat, what we invest in, how many children we have, what toys we buy or make for them embodies a moral value. Our decisions speak for us. Yes, I believe in this. No, I don't believe in that and I will not participate. This requires a radical imagination to think of new ways to live that are joyous and fair, the kind of radical imagining that is happening in your community. And don't for one minute think that your decisions don't matter. Study after study shows that the single most powerful way to influence people to change is to show them that another person, someone they respect, has made that change. I believe what Carl Safina says, this wonderful ocean ecologist, he says this in moral ground and I see that you've quoted it earlier. He says we think we don't want to sacrifice but sacrifice is exactly what we're doing. We're sacrificing what is big and permanent to prolong what's small, temporary and harmful. We're sacrificing our integrity, our children, our future, our species, peace all to enrich those who disdain us. It's sold of our ring but conscientious objection is joyous and liberating. This is divestment. This is the bicycle. This is local food. This is the well insulated home and the recycled paper and the second hand clothes. This is the potluck and the garden and the birth control pill. This is the poison free yard and the rosemary bushes. This is the life you believe in, claim the right to live it and refuse to participate in what you don't believe in. Conscientious objection, the first C. The second C, creative disruption. Creative disruption. What blocks can we... what can we imagine that is going to block this flow? They could be technological, new inventions, new ways of doing things. They could be cultural. They will be wildly creative and a lot of fun. Technological? No money driven economy, many of the disruptions will be alternative ways of doing things that are better, cheaper, cleaner and more successful than the fossil fuel driven technologies. Cultural? It's going to take creative disruption, imaginative action that uses music and theater and children's choirs and literature and all the beautiful human expression of grief and decency and celebration as a call to witness to tell the truth about the moral consequences of an oil-fueled future. If the truth is that big coal is going to destroy the dreams of the children then ask children to draw their dreams on paper and paper the railroad tracks with their dreams so that the engineer has to make a conscious decision to grind over their sweet hopes. That's the kind of thing I mean when I'm talking about creative disruption. Bill McKibb, and remember when he said well, we should have politicians put patches all over their suits that advertise their sponsors. The way that race car drivers do they'll be plastered with them. Well, we can't force them to do that but we can make a billboard that hose their picture with all those patches on it. This is the sort of thing I mean. Get together with your friends and have some fun. This is the hearse that's following the fracking trucks. These are the roadside funeral bouquets at the turn off to the logging site. I don't want to say it's easy but I do want to say that it's possible. Third C, courageous, relentless citizenship. And I mean two things here. We're citizens in what's supposed to be a democracy. Make your voice heard.  Put your representatives on speed dial. There are many, many ways to be heard. What do we need to tell them? We need to tell them stop, block, prevent all new infrastructure that expands the fossil fuel economy. No more coal port expansion. No coal trains. No liquid natural gas depots. No pipelines. No roads to carry the equipment. No fracking pads. No suburban mega malls.  The answer is who cared about a lunch counter in Alabama? Who cared about a photo of a single naked Vietnamese girl running with her back on fire? Number two, imagine number two in terms of what you do as citizens of a democracy is to imagine into existence. Imagine into existence a world without internal combustion engines. Whatever we can imagine, we can imagine into existence a world powered by the sun, by the wind, by the waves, or not powered at all in some cases because who needs more Barbie dolls? The first thing to imagine is the quiet. Imagine the abundance of open public spaces and gardens that used to be roads. Imagine the abundance of power. The sun is free to everyone and the wind blows on every continent. There is enough and no reason to fight over it. Imagine local sharing economies and a loyalty to place as strong as the love of swallows for a barn. But there's something far more important to say about citizenship. Even as we're citizens of the U.S. of A, we're also citizens of the planet. And ultimately, we're going to need a new story, a new cosmology that replaces this comic book Superheroes. A new set of answers to the questions about the human condition. We are the creatures who are deeply, we are creatures like all creatures, who are deeply entangled in this interdependent system of resilience and beauty and ongoing creation. We're the ones with the imagining minds. We're the ones who can imagine that the world might be different from the way it is now. We're the ones who turn back to the universe and try to understand its meaning and celebrate it in soaring songs and understand our duties to the earth to return its gifts by our own gifts of planting and gratitude. So here's the agenda.  Because humanity is dependent on the earth, we are called to defend and nurture the regenerative potential of the earth. Because the earth's resources are finite, we will embrace an ethic of self restraint. Because life on earth is resilient, we will take courage and guidance from earth's power to heal. And because humans alone on earth can imagine that things might be different from how they are, we will become part of the unfurling creativity of the universe as it blossoms into new forms. We are, as Thomas Berry said, the dreaming of the universe. We can dream a new future if we try. Let me close by reading you. You're lucky I'm not going to sing them. Reading you the words to a song that is called Winter Wheat by Libby Roderick. When I was young, I dreamed the earth was healed and whole again, creatures, trees, and rivers free and wild. Now I am old, I dream the earth is healed and whole again. The dreams are born forever in the heart of each new child. For we are planting winter wheat that other hands may harvest, after we are gone. We will plant shade trees that we will not sit under. We will light candles that others may see their way. We'll struggle for justice, although we'll never see it flower. Our children's children will live in peace one day. All the children will live in peace one day. We will write this love story. Sentence by sentence, stone by stone, bird by bird. This is our work. This is our joy. This is our sacred trust. This is what we were born to do. Thank you for all you do.


It's Hal Peller, and I'm in Brooklyn, New York, but I'll be in Avila, Spain this summer at the AIN Applied Improvisation Network World Conference Doing an AINx talk on us versus them That's right. Us versus them. It's very common, and I use applied improvisation to remove those barriers So I'll see it at the AIN conference, right? Right?


Have you been interested in the culinary art that is barbecue, but not sure where to start then you got to listen to barbecue and tech Hosted by Chris Ashley and Rod Simmons They take you into the techniques and technology that will grow your barbecue skills find it at barbecue and tech That's bbq and tech com Coming up on DTNS highlights from the Facebook papers a roundup of Tesla news and cryptocurrency has a big moment It may even be for real now This is the Daily Tech news for Monday October 25th 2021 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt and I'm Allison shared into the pod feed podcast And I'm Roger Chang the show is pretty sir We were sharing a lot of our opinions about a movie about sandworms tremors on good day internet You can get that wider conversation by becoming a member at patreon.com slash DTNS And that's where you can join our top patrons like Dale McKay he Scott Hepburn and Bjorn Andre Let's start with a few tech things you should know Well in videos g4's now game stream streaming service works in the Microsoft Edge browser now This means you can now use the service on an Xbox one and series access console If they're updated to the chromium-based version of Edge Speaking of Microsoft Microsoft announced the nobellum threat group previously behind the solar winds supply chain of tech Breached at least 14 managed service and cloud providers since May 2021 overall Microsoft said 609 customers were notified of 22,868 attacks between July and October although nobellum saw a low single-digit success rate imminent Amazon announced new programs to integrate its voice assistant into hospitals and senior living communities Senior living facilities can now use echo devices to send announcements and messages to residents rooms and residents can also use the devices to place calls and Hospitals echo devices can be used for nurses to communicate with patients Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles Bay care health systems in Florida and Houston Methodist are among the announced partners Twitter engineer Mata off lock initially showed off a way to show NFTs on a Twitter profile back in September and now reverse engineer Jane Manchin Wong found updates to these efforts in code That is part of Twitter's mobile app This includes a dedicated collectibles profile tab for NFTs of you to provide a close-up look at NFTs and a detailed information screen The collectibles tab looks to take the place of the likes tab on a profile if they implement it The Swiss federation the Swiss federal administration court upheld an appeal filed by proton a G The parent company of proton male ruling that email services are not telecommunications providers in Switzerland This means email providers are not subject to requirements to store data necessary for surveillance The Swiss Supreme Court ruled in April that email chat I am and void providers were over-the-top providers not telecom services All right, let's get into the Facebook papers folks and let me tell you there's more than a dozen news outlets Publishing stories based on these documents. We are not gonna cover them all you are Definitely going to not hear us talk about what you think is the most important one of these because there's too many of them But I I picked a selection that I think give you a good overview if you haven't heard any of these stories or at least point out Particular trends in the kinds of stories in here If you're not quite sure what I'm talking about Friday multiple news outlets publish stories about Facebook's policies and reactions based on Documents that had been provided to the US Congress and SEC the stories are collectively being referred to as the Facebook papers Most of the stories are based on documentation provided by former Facebook employee Francis Haugen she gave those documents to Congress and to the SEC and To these news outlets the reports provide more examples of previous allegations that Facebook prioritizes growth over safety And that it does not apply its moderation practice is equally something Haugen said to the US Congress and said to the UK parliament Just today. All right some some show the company being slow Facebook employees raised concerns about vaccine hesitancy in March 2021 But it took six months for the company to create and implement new rules like most people They were taken by surprise by the events of January 6th at the US Capitol as well Sometimes they knew a problem existed and took no action A policy set up in October 2020 to stop recommending civic and political groups to users was found not to be working Because it only looked at the last seven days of posts to decide if a group qualified as a civic or political organization On an ongoing basis. It might have been a civic organization But if it had seven days of post without that then it dropped out Of that block list several groups then Gamed the system by posting non political items long enough to pop back up into recommendations and Facebook has not Appeared to fix that one So that that's kind of a little bit of a mixture there right time We're talking about them being slow and bureaucratic like any big company And then knowing about a problem and not taking action But that's we were sort of almost into a third category there of where They did a fix but they did it poorly And now they know that it's not working and they're not fixing it yet Right. They they they did something that they thought would help fix But when it was shown not to be effective, they didn't go back and fine-tune it, right? Right, right. So we're almost into a third dimension of poorly managed so far Sometimes they also needed to be pushed apple threatened to remove facebook and instagram from the app store on october 23rd 2019 after a bbc news arabic report on instagram being used to sell domestic workers Facebook had been aware of the content but less than two percent of the content had been reported by users So they didn't think it was very widespread. They say after apple after apple escalated the issue However, facebook disabled a thousand twenty one accounts and removed a hundred twenty nine thousand one hundred twenty one pieces of content So So that's There there's somehow that much content and that many accounts But because less than two percent of the content have been reported by users. That's why they didn't do anything about it Yeah, part of this is I think it's easy to get in the headspace of facebook. There's mr. Facebook Mr. Facebook sits there and he knows everything on facebook But if only two percent of people are reporting it, he's going to be like It's not that big of a problem and you're sitting there going even if two percent are reporting You should look into this but the problem is there isn't a mr. Facebook There's you know several thousand facebook employees and they all can't do everything because facebook has billions of users So I think it's legitimate for facebook to say If something's being reported at a low amount we have to prioritize and address the things that are being Reported at a higher amount first. It's not that they only had this problem that day and ignored it It's that it didn't get up on their radar because it was being reported less often than other problems It'd be my guess in in project management one of the things you do when you're doing risk assessment is you not only look at what the The the the probability of that risk is which would be like this two percent thing But you look at the implications of that risk So selling humans I would suggest would be high on on that second category even though it's only two percent But you might also have 10 other things that are higher in that same category like terrorism, etc Well, yeah, Facebook has all of the human behaviors that you can think of on it Yeah, I guess I thought I I guess I thought selling people would be really high. But yeah, you're right I'm not trying to say selling people is not high. I'm just saying they have so many things that are high I could see them missing it on the other hand They could have seen this bbc news arabic report as easily as apple, right? Right, I have to wait for apple to threaten them before they investigated that right, right? Sometimes they tried something and it worked a team tested a new classification called harmful topic community for an aggressive anti-lockdown and anti-vax group in Germany That test led to a new policy called coordinated social harm In september So that is actually a piece of of effective Behavior out of this some internal facebook research showed that superinviders could quickly rebuild a group after it was banned Facebook has since changed a policy that prohibits persistent violators of its policies from creating groups or inviting people to other groups So once you get caught once you can't be released to start another group. You're you're done for that There were lots of examples of employees feeling overwhelmed by the situation. You'll see a lot of that This is the the less scientific part of it just people feeling freaked out about what they're A part of politico quoted an employee saying in october 2019 If we really want to change the state of our information ecosystem We need a revolution not an evolution of our systems If you don't have enough good content to boost it doesn't matter how much you downrank the bad The biggest examples of prioritizing growth over safety came around likes and reshares Plans to hide like counts on instagram were shelved because tests showed they hurt ad revenue And there was a worry that if facebook didn't hide likes and instagram did facebook wouldn't look good Next to instagram So instagram instead let people choose to hide likes if they want but it doesn't hide them by default Some employees recommended killing the reshare button altogether Or limiting promotion of reshared content in the news feed to only those from your close friends But facebook's head of ads john hageman Objected noting that quote if we remove a small percentage of reshares from people's inventory they decide to come back to facebook less Shocking right Yeah, uh, I mean a clear example of like yeah, that might help, but it'll hurt about a line So don't do it uh ceo mark zuckerberg allegedly stopped a plan to run spanish language voter registration on the platform for fear It would appear partisan facebook did run english language voter registration And what's that partnered with someone to run spanish language, but they didn't run it themselves So mr. Facebook did make that decision Well, they yeah part a very important piece of mr. Facebook made that decision in that case uh bloomberg reported that facebook's engagement metrics among young users have been falling and that the company may not be Properly accounting for multiple accounts run in order to hide certain posts so called finstas From parents and families haugen alleges facebook is misrepresenting its core metrics to investors and advertisers because of this Facebook responded to that saying it already notifies advertisers of the risk that purchases will reach duplicate account duplicate accounts So they're saying yeah, that's what's picked in after watching the The testimony By francis haugen. Um, I actually got rid of facebook and instagram off all my devices. I haven't officially quit But you didn't delete your account. You just got rid of the apps. Is that am I is that right? Right, right? I'm trying it on to see how it feels and you know what it feels fine Yeah, uh, in fact more and more people may be doing that, uh francis haugen Decided to release these all at once decided to work with news organizations to flood the market now That's different than what uh, we saw happen With uh, edward snowton where he leaked his things out slowly so that each one got its own news cycle Haugen did that because she wanted all of these out there Not only the day of facebook's earnings report, but also the week of facebook connect where they're going to unveil their metaverse strategy Uh an interesting way of going about this and facebook earnings did come out today Uh, they missed their estimates on revenue because of the slowdown in ads Based on tracking restrictions that have been put in place in ios And they also, uh had virtually no user growth during the past quarter monthly active users worldwide for facebook hit 2.91 billion Up seven percent on the air but flat sequentially so quarter to quarter they didn't gain any That's really interesting All right changing topics We've got a big one here mastercard announced a deal with the cryptocurrency firm backed To provide crypto options for merchants and banks on its payment network Banks and merchants that work with mastercard will be able to use backs technology to buy sell and hold cryptocurrency in a backed provided wallet and mastercard partners including not just banks But restaurants and other merchants could offer loyalty rewards in cryptocurrency as well as convert existing rewards Like airline and hotel points into crypto the idea is to keep customers from moving to crypto exchanges like coinbase There's more than 2.8 billion active mastercards and more than 22 000 banks and financial institutions on mastercard's network Yeah, it's it's hard to say how this will end up Appearing to you as a customer because what mastercard is doing is saying we're working with backs to make this available If you're a bank if you're a restaurant anybody that works with mastercard You can now take advantage of it, but it doesn't mean you will right So not every restaurant will take bitcoin because of this but some restaurants might Or they might just start giving you cryptocurrency As a loyalty reward if you continually go to that restaurant and pay with your mastercard stuff like that Uh, but definitely there will be banks that will Be able to issue a debit card that lets you access your bitcoin wallet For example, and like you said allison, it's they want to keep they basically mastercard is the first big traditional finance company to look at coinbase and all of these other wallets and exchanges and say You know what that's actually a real business and if we don't move now Everyone will go to them and we'll be left behind So i'm still trying to picture exactly how this would work. Let's say cvs who does royalty like Royalty loyalty like anybody else. Um, they they they take mastercard and they want to get in on this Is that where I go buy toilet paper and instead of giving me cvs extra bucks for a dollar? They're going to give me a dollar in cryptocurrency. That's going to go into my backed wallet Yeah, that that sounds like one of the things they could do I imagine there's other things they could do which is like let you then spend that cryptocurrency from that wallet into cvs Without necessarily taking bitcoin, but they could say like oh, we're just using this cryptocurrency as the way to track your loyalty points now Okay, okay, and then maybe you could convert that because it's already a cryptocurrency and say actually I just want to make that bitcoin and then sell it and they're you know That would be an advantage to their loyalty program as you could cash out your points that way so one of the advantages of of using crypto was Well, obviously of the authentication portion of it But wasn't there some elimination of the the speed of transfer of money between organizations? Is there am I mixing that up? And so that is a different that is a different aspect than this this is master cards saying Hey clients banks and restaurants Would you like to offer some cryptocurrency related things to your customers? What you're talking about is the banks transferring money between each other to say let's cut out the fees now There may be an element of master card Operating this and saying and we'll also do some you know fee reduction elements On the point of sale terminals and whatnot if we transfer through cryptocurrency That's not addressed in any of these these articles about it But yeah, that's a separate thing where they use cryptocurrency to to settle transactions faster and with fewer fees But this this is mostly not about that This is mostly about giving you cryptocurrency on your end and frankly because nobody's doing it yet It's we don't know exactly how it will be used most commonly It sounds almost like master card is saying okay You have this toolbox of things you can do now you have another tool So when you're ready to take that on we're already here. We've got back We're ready to go. We can offer that that service to you as well Yeah, let's say Your your bank works with mastercard your bank could could just come out with a wallet cryptocurrency wallet say hey Don't use coinbase use your bank. Where your bank use us You can have all your all your cryptocurrencies with us and then Mastercard is providing the back end. You might not ever even realize that All your crypto belong to us. Yeah, yeah A few bits of tesla news out there. I know you both have a dog and a car that go by tesla Yes, allison's dogs named tesla and she drives a tesla First up the company got an early christmas present from herts rental car Which announced the single largest ev purchase ever buying a hundred thousand tesla model three sedans Of course rental car agencies need cars because people are starting to rent them again. There's a shortage These will be delivered over the next 14 months for some context on how big this is herts reported its global fleet size in q4 2020 At roughly 568,000. So this is about a sixth of its entire fleet These will be available to rent major u.s markets and part of europe by early november Size of the order is about a tenth what tesla can currently produce in a year Customers will have access to tesla's charging network with herts building out its owner charger infrastructure If you want to buy a tesla yourself You're going to have to pay a little more base model s and x vehicles now started $5,000 more than they did While the model threes and y's are up $2,000 There was no reason given for the increase but continued supply chain woes might be one cause monday automotive news reported that panasonic has released details of a new battery it has developed for tesla These are not lithium iron phosphate batteries. Those are made by lg and catl for tesla However, panasonic Did announce that it will have five times the energy storage Which you could be good for your vehicle range and panasonic believes it'll cost 50 less to produce They didn't tell us any of the details of the chemistry though And you may have heard over the weekend the tesla briefly rolled back its full self-driving beta 10.3 software They reverted it to 10.2 But now they have released version 10.3.1 CEO elan musk said the company was seeing some issues. He didn't detail what they were The verge noted some anecdotal reports of phantom forward collision warnings a disappearing auto steer option traffic aware cruise control problems Occasional what they call autopilot panic where it just kind of freaks out on you No indication that these were widespread or indeed the cause of the rollback if they were but the rollback has now been rolled forward so Do you do you have this yet? Did you get into the beta? So, um, oh, I have so many thoughts on so many of these things, but uh, no, I have not Steve and I are both both have teslas and we've both been running the Safety test which is it watches you for several different metrics oddly enough you can speed as fast as you want You can accelerate like a bad out of the heck But you can't turn quickly You can get a collision avoidance warnings Those are those are terrible if you get those you don't have a chance So I went from 99 to like 71 because it gave me a one of those warnings I've managed to inch my way back up to 94 out of 100 But it's sort of like trying to get your gpa up in the fourth quarter, you know the last year It's it's it's quite a climb I'm really glad that they rolled back a beta if it had some problems and doesn't this just read like Company put out a beta product found some issues rolled it back and then fixed them and rolled it forward Yeah, which is what you want. I I think people still get freaked out that it's like my car is in beta I might crash And and so that that's what they hear. Yeah Well, and that's the thing is you shouldn't run the beta and and b None of these seem to have caused issues They were they were quarks that made it hard to use the program and like you said they did the right thing Rolled it back fixed them rolled them back out and remember all of this You can completely control by holding your hands on the steering wheel and using that brake and accelerator stuff That's all still there in the car So it's not like you don't have control of this and your car is going to just fly off the handle and do stuff on its own On the on the ev rental thing by Hertz. I thought that was really interesting I'm listening to bode grimm's Kilowatt podcast he talked about a company in germany That was renting out evs and they eventually got rid of all of their evs that weren't teslas because nobody would ever rent them And and I thought that was I mean that's really odd because there's some terrific Evs out there other than teslas But that would kind of point towards why maybe Hertz is going just teslas too. Yeah, uh, there's something to be said for branding You know, yeah, I was a genius at that I would rather there was variety because I'd like to go on travel and rent a different kind of ev I want to try out somebody try it out because you already drive a tesla. You know what that's like Yeah, and there's some really cool I'd listen to bode and I hear about all these cool options So, um, I'm definitely interested in that the last thing I wanted to say was the the price changes are so interesting Tesla's the only car company I've ever dealt with that is just constantly changing The price and the functions of the car So if you buy a model 3 on tuesday and somebody else buys one on friday It might actually have different features They're they're different that you don't know what you're gonna get exactly in this string of features Which is unsettling, but uh, I don't it's a cool car It seems to me that A price increase story for tesla is a story because tesla has fixed prices Whereas even though there's an msrp on cars. I may be wrong about this, but I feel like Car companies don't change the msrp. They just change what they charge the dealers and then the dealers change how they deal Uh to make up the difference whereas tesla. It's like, you know the price. That's what you're gonna pay done, right? You don't know what's in it Hey folks, uh, if you want to talk about tesla, you want to talk about rental cars You want to talk about the facebook papers joining the conversation in our discord? You can get that by linking it to your patreon account at patreon.com slash gtms Apple's new macbook pros are shipping i'm getting mine tomorrow. So is my wife. So is allison So is allison's husband And the first reviews have started to hit the web If you're thinking of getting one of these machines if you're starting to see all these reviews and you're like, hold on Okay, maybe i'll try to get one. I guess i'll have wait till december to have it shipped But how do I make sense of all the options allison has put together something to help you make that decision This this is brilliant allison your flow chart. Tell us about it Yeah, so when when the announcement came out like tom And i lean and steve we were we were all just sitting with our fingers poised above the keyboard ready to order right away And so when we got it we went uh, uh top of the line and we pressed all the buttons and we got day in day delivery So we're excited But we didn't have the time to sit back and really look at all the different model differences What's the difference between the m1 pro and the m1 max? And I decided to start just kind of trying to put it together to see if I could understand the model differences And uh as I went into it. I realized a spreadsheet wasn't going to be the way to explain it Which is where I always start things So then I moved into a mind mapping application and then that couldn't even do it I ended up going into using a tool called diagrams net Which lets you basically do little flow charts And I tried to describe in something very simple all the different configurations But it became more and more complex as I went along So basically you have two trees you're looking at one is uh the m1 pro and one is the m1 max And then it starts breaking down into the different number of cpu cores you can get and once you break down into cpu cores It changes how many gpu cores you can get and once you're down into that then you it changes how much ram you can put in it And then it turns out certain models which I definitely didn't realize at the beginning are only available as 14 inch I think there's three if I remember correctly. I'm not staring at it right now So I've got separate boxes to try to show okay this group of things or you can only get in 14 inch This can be 14 or 16 and then one of the models of the 14 inch We actually learned on dts has two different power supplies you can do So when I got all done, I had 18 different configurations you could actually buy And then uh, I realized all of a sudden. Oh, wait a minute. I forgot about the the disc size you could put in it There's five different disc options, which means, uh, you actually have 90 different configurations you can choose from and after I was finished talking about this on my show during my live show Steve piped in and goes allison. We forgot color So there's actually 180 different combinations that you can choose from But I think what what I tried to do was break this down in a way that you can look at it and you can follow down a path and go Okay, I want to be here Yeah, it's great. I mean at a glance I I was realizing things that I knew But hadn't really thought about like the fact that uh, the m1 max only has the 24 and 32 core gpu's like Just being able to see that separated In in your map here was great. And then, you know, all the different ram options And the way the gpu's and the cores of the cpu's flow together This is great. We'll have a link to it in our show notes at dailytechnewshow.com Of course, you could just go to podfeed.com and find it there as well However, that's not the only thing you've been working on You also recently updated your time shifter web app Which may I say I am very excited about because it's it's something I need Which is how to figure out what time it is for people in three or four different locations around the globe at the same time More than that in the future It's knowing what time it will be in the future. So it's exactly I need to schedule a meeting next Tuesday At 6 p.m. For me. What does that mean for Helsinki? Tokyo and london? You're your time shifter clock can do that for me Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. Uh, this was the result or the evolution from a project I started on the, uh, um Programming by stealth podcast taught by barb shots and me as the student in the class And uh, it's it's pretty cool. You can add I put no limit to how many cities you can add Dorothy tested it up to I think 30 and it didn't stop so you can add as many cities as you want You drag a little slider until it says the time you want in your time zone And then it's changing the time in all these other time zones and then you hit a copy URL And at that point you can paste that into an email and anybody who clicks it sees all of the times in all of the cities Exactly as it was when you uh, when you created it So if you need to schedule meetings with people all across the globe, I think it's a pretty handy tool I've been using an app called time scroller on ios since you recommended it to me like 15 years ago Yes, yes, so so this is great. This is going to be a nice nice little upgrade Over that because it's available on the web for free And you can put it on you can make it on your home screen on your ios To buy so it looks like a web app.  Well, you're not me, but that's cool I respect that. Uh, maybe you're just interested in a bit of ship spotting You want to see where the cruise ships are and not get on one? I'm with you there Well, either way chris christensen the amateur traveler has the perfect app for you This is chris christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute This tip comes via the this week in travel podcast that I was a co-host on for about 10 years And it's vesselfinder.com It's an interesting site because it helps you find ocean-going ships So for instance, if you were on a cruise ship and you're wondering where that cruise ship is now You can use vesselfinder.com to find it this summer I was on the wind star star breeze and I was able to find that ship is now in french Polynesia using this site It has other applications not just for travel If you want to see how screwed up the supply chain is just use vessel finders map and zoom in on long beach california And see those ships piled up So whether you're trying to find where that cruise ship is or some other ship vesselfinder.com And this is chris christensen from amateur traveler. I mean just to look at the long beach backup alone. I think that that's worth it Thank you chris Allison, let's check out the mailbag Let's do that tom. I was listening. Uh, let's see our first article is from uh from nick He wrote in I was listening to dt and s 41 34 And everyone seemed a little surprised by the snapchat integration into the pixel 6 I think this is probably because snapchat is a heavy google cloud platform user Kind of like how microsoft saw tiktok as a potential boon for azure when they were considering buying them I think snapchat is currently a success story for gcp On another note, I just want to thank y'all for the show I started listening to do to tech news today when I was about 10 years old and jumped over to dt and s when that Launch it helped foster my interest in both tech and science And I have now just finished the first month of my phd in computer science I think the work you and the team do has made an important impact on my life So I wanted to share that also hi from new zealand Hi nick, uh, thank you that that's wonderful. I really appreciate you adding that that second paragraph And your point about snapchat and google cloud platform makes perfect sense to me If snapchat is a successful google cloud platform user It would be in google's best interest to be like, hey, what else can we partner with let then a lot of times That's how these other conversations Get rolling. So good insight there as well. Thank you for that Keep those emails coming feedback at dailytechnewshow.com real quickly want to thank our brand new boss All you patrons, please welcome brand new boss And uh, brandon brandon boyle Bant brandon boyer just started backing us on patreon. Thank you brandon And if if you would like to be uh shouted out and welcomed into the fold tomorrow, we'll start backing us patreon.com slash dt and s Thank you, allison. Sheridan for being here today. Uh, sarah lane should be back in the next few weeks We wish her well. She's she's doing great. I was texting with her over the weekend But it's great to have you here, allison. Thank you so much real quick. Where can people find more of what you got going on? Well, everything good starts with pod feet dot com and you can follow me on slack or on slack on twitter at pod feet All right, we are live Monday through friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 utc you can find out more about that at dailytechnewshow.com Slash live We'll be back tomorrow with rich straffolino and trisha hershberg talk to you This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com I hope you have enjoyed this bro


Mr. Speaker, I stand to give proud support of the presentation of this bill, Health and Citizen Security Levy. Mr. Speaker, when the Prime Minister introduced the bill earlier on, he stated that history has a way of repeating itself, and went on to explain what he meant by that statement, and referred to the piece of legislation which was passed in 2011, a bill entitled Security Tax, which was debated in the parliament on September 22, 2011, in which at the time, it was actually September 13, 2021, which at the time was presented by the then Prime Minister who happened to be me, at a time when the government felt that there was need to raise resources in the fight against crime. At that time, Mr. Speaker, when I made my presentation to parliament, I said this, Madam Speaker, you would recall that in the budget presentation, the statement made by the Honourable Prime Minister for the financial year 2011-2012, a proposal was made to address the issue of crime and security in St. Lucia by adopting a strategic approach. Today, we are not here to deal with the strategic approach and the successes of the approach, but we are here to deal with the initiative that was announced in the budget to raise the necessary financial resources for the implementation of the strategic plan. That was on the 13th of September, 2011. Today, Mr. Speaker, on the 11th of July, 2023, 12 years later, we are here to undertake a similar initiative, but this time with a broader perspective. So, Mr. Speaker, we ask ourselves how has history really repeated itself, and why the need and the utility for a health and citizens security levy? The Prime Minister went into tremendous detail, great detail, in explaining why it is that at this time we are proceeding with this levy. A colleague member presented a clip which more or less demonstrated that the people of the country are saying yes to the health and citizens security levy. At the time, Mr. Speaker, 13 September 2011, I said that the bill provided that the security tax be levied on all goods imported under customs laws at a rate of 1% of customs value of goods imported under any customs law. So, whereas we are proposing the particular security charge, there are certain goods that will not be taxed. Mr. Speaker, in a nutshell, this almost mirrors what we are doing today, and it means Mr. Speaker that there is some commonality in the thinking of those, of the man who presented it then, and the man who is presenting it today, and my position, Mr. Speaker, has not wavered, has not changed. I stand strongly in support of this piece of legislation, the health and citizens security, security levy. But Mr. Speaker, I will not waste time on some of what has been expressed by the opposition. I will not waste time on these individuals who seem to have selective amnesia. Those who believe that everything now is wrong, and that we must follow the failed agenda of the five years previously when nothing happened except cheap talk and fancy talk. But Mr. Speaker, history is repeating itself, and in this case Mr. Speaker, what the Prime Minister has demonstrated is that he is highlighting two major sectors, two major sectors which require attention. Health and national security. Two sectors that we have over the years been persevering. Two sectors we have been attempting to make attempts to, attempting to bring some level of resolution in the area of health and security. And so Mr. Speaker, at this time, security and health are two of the major areas that this government has committed itself to, dealing with the problem of security. Security and health. And so Mr. Speaker, when you listen to the presentation of the Prime Minister and you go through the bill and what it attempts to do, it simply attempts to address those two areas. What are we experiencing presently? We have seen a country, Mr. Speaker, where notwithstanding all that has been done by this administration and the Prime Minister articulated the many areas of equipment, new vehicles, et cetera, et cetera, building police stations in the north and repairing those in the south and still looking to establishing halls of justice, et cetera, et cetera. We are saying we cannot sit idly by while our resources are diminishing, but we must make a concerted effort to invest in the security of the country, and that decision is a bold one in which we are saying to the people, now is the time as a people to take a stand, stand up and make that contribution. And the people said it on the video, they said it, each one of them said, I support it, I believe we need it, we need to bring some level of stability and confidence in the security of this country and its people. We need to show that we can take care of ourselves whereas in the past we can look to other countries, we can look to the RSS to come in, but we can never always have the RSS at our hands. At the time when I brought in the security level, we spoke of introducing cameras, I spoke of buying vehicles, of fighting crime, using strategies and suppressing crime. All of those measures, I spoke also about the building of the manpower within the police force, and today the situation has exacerbated. So whereas in the last two years, we have seen the Prime Minister going all out and increasing the mobility of the police force by buying more vehicles, we have seen him go all out and get equipment and get the necessary protective gear, et cetera, et cetera. The training and the buildup of the police force in recruiting more men, more and more there is a need for greater security in our country. We are now speaking, Mr Speaker, about the need to intensify cameras in the country. This is not the first time it was done in 2011 during the security debate. We installed cameras. The Labour government came in in 2011 to 2016 and installed cameras, and on this occasion there is still a need to install more cameras and more sophistication in the camera equipment to be able to monitor and to reprimand and to use the cameras as a means of dealing with the crime situation. So Mr Speaker, if we are to make any dent in the state of crime and security in the country, if we are to underpin the performance of the country, whether it's in tourism, in agriculture or manufacturing, we need to ensure that we stabilize the situation of crime in our land. And one fine example of demonstrating that we are serious is by saying to each and every citizen of this country you need to make a small contribution towards putting the necessary infrastructure for crime and security in this land. And so Mr Speaker, it is necessary. It is necessary to do it. And we as a government must not be ashamed to say to the people, you have to put your money where your mouth is. You have to demonstrate your commitment. It is your responsibility. But what this government, Mr Speaker, will ensure happens is that when we indicate that there is a 2.5% levy or tax security levy, that it will go towards improving the quality of security, the quality of policing in the country so that our people will feel safer. I believe, Mr Speaker, the time has come where we should see on our streets patrols throughout the day and throughout the night. Where people can feel comfortable at home, that in the community, that police is coming around, that their beacons are flashing 24 hours a day. It is only when people feel safe in their society, Mr Speaker, there will be greater economic activity. As we speak now, Mr Speaker, there are certain parts of this country come four o'clock, it's dead. It's dead. You see, no police officers on the street. The country is left at night to watch men, to a certain extent. And if there is something you call out the police and they would come out. But what I would love to see, Mr Speaker, in this country, is that not it's a police state, but it's a country where we can feel the presence of the police and the police are well equipped, that they can respond within quick time, they can defend themselves, and they can bring about a level of suppression of crime in this country. But the only way we can have that sophistication, the sophistication of equipment, equipment and material, the intelligence, the ability to investigate using intelligence, using the technologies that are available now in fighting crime, is only if we as a country invest in the security systems in our country. And therefore, Mr Speaker, I stand in support of this bill. But also, Mr Speaker, also we have to deal with the matter pertaining to health, because this legislation deals with both health and security. In help, Mr Speaker, our people have complained and complained about the quality of healthcare in this country. Successive governments have done things, successive governments. In the time of Sir John Compton, he spoke about a health centre within a radius of a mile in every community. So in the country you had health centres all over the place, and it was said you can get to a health centre within the radius of a mile. By 1992, there about, when I became Minister for Health, we spoke about national health insurance. We were able to get the Commonwealth Secretariat to provide a consultant to look at national health insurance, to develop a basket of health services that the people can access, and to get them to make a contribution towards national health insurance. It didn't happen. By 1997, when the then Labour Administration came in, they adopted national health insurance and came up with universal healthcare. And the intention was a more dynamic health insurance or assurance programme that will provide healthcare to all of the country. Every citizen creating that basket of services and started off with diabetes and hypertension and some of those areas where we were able to determine, based on research, science and research, to determine some of the non-communicable diseases that seem to be most affecting our people. Again, 2006, it went on to the shelf, and now we are back after a hiatus of five years under the last administration. Five years of nothing. Just a figurehead in health, talk of national health insurance, and nothing happened, and I think somebody said it, not even the necessary documentation can be found, because the intention wasn't for the government to initiate a national health insurance, but to find some private sector entity and hand it over to them and tell them do what you want. But today, Mr Speaker, as we speak here, you can feel that at the top, at the leadership of the health sector, in the Ministry of Health is a devoted, committed, dedicated and passionate Minister of Health who has taken the mantle and is blazing the trail for healthcare in this country. And we have heard of the many programmes that have been launched so far demonstrating that while there may be a bigger picture, which is what every solution needs, every solution needs, the Minister is saying, let us take it one day at a time, one step at a time, and introduce it incrementally until we can get that universal health coverage introduced to St Lucia where every St Lucia can benefit. Today, you heard of the many programmes and I'm sure when he speaks, if he does, he will again articulate the various programmes, the maternal and child healthcare programmes, the 80 plus programme and all the other programmes that have been introduced as part of a pilot to introduce universal healthcare in this country. But universal healthcare, Mr Speaker, costs money. It costs money first to have a very strengthened and if I should say a foundation at the community level, your primary healthcare services, it costs money because the Minister will tell you, they've got to put in the various facilities, make sure they have all of the diagnostic and also the programming to be able to control good health at the community level and then at the primary level, secondary level, to put in the facilities that will assist to be able to diagnose and to be able to administer the corrective health that is required and probably tertiary health within the tertiary level. But Mr Speaker, this again is an indication that we as a people must put our money where our mouth is and invest in it because we speak of our country as being independent. We speak of ourselves as being independent but we cannot continue, we cannot continue to believe that the responsibility for healthcare belongs to that of another sovereign nation. So we must sit back, relax, have a good time as a people and Taiwan must do it for us or the United Kingdom must do it for us or France must do it for us. They have been assisting us. The European Union came forward and built the OKEU Hospital for us, a modern institution. But where is our contribution to it? We have sent thousands of solutions to Martinique for healthcare. Where is our contribution, our individual contribution? What are we doing about it? The Taiwanese have helped us. They have trained numerous young people in health. The Cubans have made a tremendous investment in health. They have trained our nurses, our doctors and they have established here in St. Lucia an institution in health to take care of eye care, ophthalmology, etc. So we as a people, Mr. Speaker must commit ourselves to now saying let us contribute to the resources for the investment in health, the operational health and the advancement of our health program. And that is why it is so important and it is so encouraging that those who spoke on the streets when that interview was done whether targeted or done at random they all spoke intelligently and understood exactly what the government of this country is doing. Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that this Prime Minister when he gives his word, he means it. When he gives his word, he means it. And I think when this levee is passed when this levee is passed the people of this country will be proud of what this government will be doing. They'll be proud of a return of confidence to them in this country. Confidence in the security of the country because let me just say this, Mr. Speaker when people know that they can leave their home or when people know that the country is safe that they have nothing to worry about to navigate the country they can leave their home at any time and get transport and go to the city centre or go to Grozely or to go to view no matter what time they'll get transport back it means the economy begins to roll the wheels of the economy begins to roll because people will be able to move across the country because they know they are safe and that is the environment, Mr. Speaker that this is likely to create the fact that we'll be able to invest in the resources that are required for security in help, Mr. Speaker to be able to also give and instill and infuse that confidence in a sector, a health sector that will not only be there to respond but also to prepare our people to maintain good health by of course participating in the programs of the Ministry of Health as they are presented to them so that they can maintain good health and participate in the economy. This is the kind of thing, Mr. Speaker that this government is doing and I must admit, Mr. Speaker that what we have seen in the last two years by this government is the fact that the Prime Minister would make his policy statements during the budget presentation and immediately upon making it he's quick to action to make things happen those statements were made, Mr. Speaker on the 25th of April, they're about of this year 25th of April we're in July, beginning of July and we're in action dealing with all of those initiatives which are geared towards the people and you know, Mr. Speaker I mean I once made a statement here saying that I've got a panoramic view of the operations of the government of St. Lucia ever since 1987 and the reason I say this, Mr. Speaker is because I've seen one known admired Prime Minister who admired while he was while he was under him I joined him I admired him, did great for this country I've worked with other Prime Minister another Prime Minister, another one I've seen other Prime Ministers perform but Mr. Speaker, if there's one thing I can say that the word of this Prime Minister the word of this Prime Minister is his bond so when people when people are critical when it is said that you must protect the victory or preserve the victory Mr. Speaker when people give you their vote, Mr. Speaker they have invested the only the only power that they have that finger they've invested it in you they've trusted you with the power to manage your affairs we cannot take it and squander it we must preserve it we must protect it we must deliver to them what we promise to deliver to them and that is what it means the protection of the victory it is the protection of what they have entrusted us in so that when they look back they can say this government means well this government is doing what it says and what this government said it said put in people first what I said for people and for country and in every case we have seen the approach of this administration led by the Honourable Philip J. Pierre I believe it's a member early on who said in all of the policy decisions of this administration Mr. Speaker it is not one sided it is not about giving some who have nothing to offer thousands of acres of land and they do nothing while the poor sit by and just languish without any attention it is not about giving concessions to those who have access and who have connection to the government it is about taking care of everybody taking care of everybody with a measure of commitment a measure of consciousness a measure of fashion so what have we seen we have seen all of the initiatives taken to help students whether it's laptops scholarships bursaries given school books and school supplies we have seen all of the initiatives taken whether it's in housing repair et cetera et cetera we are doing one now we have done the one for the reduction or the removal of the pack on building the TV and then you can hear the spin that has been placed on it as if it's not intended for you it's intended for the poor people it's intended for the rich it is intended Mr. Speaker to take care of those who are reaching out who are seeking who are extending a hand for health to help them to continue to live and to contribute and participate in the economy of this country that is what it is about it is about giving opportunity it's about creating an environment it's about saying to those who should have known better to pay the taxes on time pay the back on time when you have collected it to be honest and to pay to say we forgive you we forgive you the penalty but please give it to us Mark let us have it to manage the affairs of the country do not take it, it's not yours and then to get away with everything so this is the nature of this government and I must admit I am quite satisfied in the manner in which I handled the affairs of this country the social programs all of those initiatives are intended to begin to transform a people who can believe in themselves who can have confidence in themselves and who can continue to trust those of us who they haven't trusted to manage the affairs of this country and so Mr. Speaker I stand proud I stand proud because I believe that this legislation will satisfy the needs of the people of this country this legislation will bring about changes, light changes that people will be happy about and I do hope that at the end of the day when we reflect on it when we reflect where we came from and where we are today when we get to where we want to go the people of this country will say to us that you have done a fantastic job and we would like you to continue to make this contribution to the country Mr. Speaker in the body of the legislation again there is a demonstration of consciousness there is a demonstration of passion there is a demonstration of understanding that people will care about the people the legislation of 2011 there were exempted goods and the prime minister took his time to go and to articulate in detail clinically to explain the various goods that will be exempted and those that will be taxed and I believe the prime minister did this deliberately so as to get people to understand because you come to this parliament a statement will be made like he said the last time when he made his statement yet still the opposition went out and said something else gave the people the wrong impression so in there you have a list of items health and other items essential goods etc which certainly the prime minister has indicated will not be will not the tax will look the levy won't be imposed so that it doesn't on duty affect the livelihoods of the people and so Mr. Speaker I believe that this bill is one that is commendable it is one that I believe when it is introduced we will see some improvements in our security and that I am hoping we will be able to find a way of recording tabulation we will see an improvement further improvement in the health sector and our people will be quite happy I support this bill