I wrote a book about the future I want to imagine and want to contribute towards, and the reason for that was to clarify for myself primarily whether we can achieve this, this being 10 billion people living on the planet in balance with the planet and equally wealthy on all five levels of muscle hierarchy of needs. And yes, I absolutely know that this is doable. Thomas Schindler is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovator's Magazine. A childhood dominated by dinner table conversations around ion channels, power, microscopy, nuclear war, and ecosystem collapse left its marks. Instead of becoming a rock star, which had been the original plan, Thomas became an entrepreneur driven by applying the power of science and technology towards making the planet a good place. This led to a series of for-profit and non-profit organization initiatives, projects towards that objective, which have been explored on this website, on his website, thomas.cr. Thomas is also the author of a couple books, which we will discuss in our podcast today, Mother and Jungle Factor, and has a wonderful TED talk, a TEDx Frankfurt talk, an economy that grows a happy planet instead of happy money. Thomas is also a very good friend of mine, and we've known each other for a while, and welcome my friend. It's so good to see you. Thank you, Marc, for having me on the show. It's amazing. You're absolutely welcome, and thank you for giving me the shorter version of your biography. You have been around the block and done many things over the years, so I know I could not, you actually left your books and your TED talk off of there, so I could have went on with many other fabulous organizations and things you've done over the years, people you've helped, but really, not only do you want the happy planet, but you also like to make people and organizations happy in your interactions with them and giving them a different vision of the future and the possibilities for a good planet. Am I getting it right? I think you're getting it right, yes, and I think to work good is a critical component in there, and I also think that the reason why there's not so much to talk about in the past, because I like to be biased towards the now and the future more than the past and the now, but picking up on the good. I like saying I'm trying to contribute towards making the planet a good place. I say good deliberately. I got that from Isabella Yende, so most of the things I say, by the way, aren't my inventions. I just might put them together in new ways, but I am inherently lazy, so I build on the shoulders of giants. And this one is Isabella Yende who said, better an increment is actually not an option. A better world is not an option. We have to build a good world. And the way I like to describe that is 14,000 kids under the age of five dying every day from preventable causes would be better, because that's 1,000 less than today. But is it good? Yeah, it's only this, like I said before, this going slower in the wrong direction. Yeah, correct. Type of thought process, correct? Correct, absolutely. And talking about what's good forces you to or trying to move toward what's good forces you to ask the difficult question of what that actually means. And that changes something in your mind and in your behavior. And then you're tied into that future of the good future, which gives you the possibility to act differently today. So in the best sense of live in the future and build what's missing, I'm trying to live in the future that I want to see and then by acting in the now I see and feel what's missing and try and contribute towards making that happen. But also the way you were describing it, creating happiness in the deepest sense, I think is a key component of the future. And that's why I try and do that. You have been doing this, like I said, for quite some while, you've had this thought process that started early in childhood. And like I mentioned, you've done the books, you've owned the companies, you've consulted for different organizations. I know, but my listeners don't know how you've weathered this pandemic, but has any of that past experience helped you get through this period better? And what does that look like? And can you kind of catch us up to speed of how it's been for you? So I think there's several things that I'd like to describe to set the stage for how this experience is and was for me. One is that for the past 20 years and more, I've been busy building organizations and building stuff from scratch is always a bit like falling. You're trying to assemble the airplane in midair while you're falling, something like this. I try to, what I've learned over time is that I'm actually not building the airplane, but that I am flying already. It's just my idea that there's a ground that I'm falling towards that I might hit, that is scary. But once you understand that there's actually no ground and that everybody is falling at the same rate, you can change your experience of falling and the scary experience of falling as flying, which is a totally different perspective, but you're still doing the same thing. So that's something that's been instilled within me over time through that tough training of building organizations and often failing and sometimes succeeding that has given me a tool to look at situations like the pandemic in a different way. The other component is that I expect catastrophes like this on a much, much larger level in the not-so-far-future. So from that perspective, I can see this as a training exercise. I mean, we're not sure how it will pan out. Maybe there is much, much more physiological harm done in the brain through COVID-19, which we don't know of yet. So it's probably a bit early to say, but saying it hyperbolically, this is the softest possible training exercise for humanity, and I'm thankful for it. I mean, there's a lot of harm and I totally acknowledge that, and I have lost the friends in that pandemic, but it could have been so much worse. So these two factors combined actually created a situation where I was almost enjoying it because all of a sudden people like in our bubble, all around the world, they were in their sub-bubbles, started connecting in an entirely new way. And I feel something emerging out of that that is powerful, and that can help the people that are having traumatic experiences right now and will have even more traumatic experiences in the next catastrophe or crisis to step beyond that and start using that as a potential into building a new reality. So I have to ask, and maybe we'll get into a deeper rabbit hole with this question. Are you telling us that we need to prepare for the apocalypse, the dystopian future, you know, get the gas masks and the spacesuits ready, or are you telling us that through this experience we'll have a different type of resilience and the future will look different regardless of those pandemics? What exactly are you saying? Is it optimistic? Is it hopeful or oh shit, here comes the apocalypse and let's get the the bunker in the mountain and that's that's going to be the future. Okay, so I think there's two things going on at the same time right now, and we tend to tend to mix them. The one thing is that we have reached a point of cultural complexity through globalization, through mainly through globalization, but through technology, etc. that is breeding a new perspective on the world. And this new perspective on the world is popping up in different places and shapes and experimenting and trying to come to life. And we don't know yet what it is, but it's we know it's going to happen. And some people call it the awakening and the global consciousness and whatever it is, it wants to come out, and it is going to come out. And that's a massive transformation on a societal global level. And at the same time, we have, and by the way, that the first thing is, I believe, wonderful and absolutely positive. It's the next step in the memetic evolution of mankind. On the other hand, we have burned 100 million years worth of trees in the last 100 years to bring a portion of humanity into, well, wealth on at least the two lower levels on mesozygias of needs. I'm not sure about the upper layers. And destroyed large portions of our home to the point that there's ecosystem collapse happening right now. So these are the two competing elements that we often tend to overlap. And that's not just the capitalistic organization's way of doing their own version of Burning Man, or is that, you know, are you saying that they're eventually going to be recourse from that? Or, you know, it's basically a geoengineering experiment that they've done on a much different skill, right? Well, so yeah, so to go deeper into the question of why we brought ourselves to ecosystem collapse is very much tied into a systemic configuration that we've created over the past couple of hundred years, and that has led to a point in 71, which I believe is absolutely fundamental and crucial, which is a point where we set up our most fundamental system of economic exchange money to be self-serving. So we have created a system where we need to create money in order to keep keep money stable. And in order to create more money, everything goes, anything goes, right? So this is, in order to create more people, in order to create more GDP, it's okay to externalize, to have negative externalities that are too expensive to cover anymore by society. And this is what is systemically moving us towards ecosystem collapse is actually a reward system for exploitation. That is a fundamental systemic problem. And everybody I speak with doesn't want that, right? It's a bit like the discussion about general intelligence. We're afraid of that machine that will be smarter than us and growing faster than us and learning faster than us, etc. Well, we've already built a version of that by designing the monetary system in the way we have. So we're locked into that. Just to give a brief example, I've had the pleasure of spending a weekend with the 20 people from boards of directors of a very, very large engineering company in Germany. And part of that weekend, we did an Ikigai exercise to identify the individual reason for being. And one question in the Ikigai Venn diagram idea is that you have to answer the question, what does the world need?  And I asked them, okay, so what does the world need? And I went through a process and then I came back with an answer. And the answer was love. So I see and feel that everywhere, wherever I speak with people, people want to get to the same mountaintop, right? Just the same summit. They see the same thing. It's just hard to get there in a world that is not set up for that systemically. So that's the one end. The other end is the question of, okay, through all of this complexity, something new is emerging. And there might actually be a fit. There might actually be a fit in the way this new thing is emerging and the problems we need to solve. And what we're exploring and what is being propelled by the current situation of the pandemic as a global conversation is, what does that look like? And I currently, I like putting it in the following terms. There's five possible rough directions of the future. There's extinction for mankind. There's what I call Mad Max lo-fi, which is basically what you see in the Mad Max movies. Very dystopian. Dystopian, people competing based on the scarce resources. Then there's what I call Mad Max high-tech, which could be something, a mixture between Mad Max and Matrix, like people running the Matrix to enslave everybody else. And that's a dystopian scenario. Then there's Star Trek high-tech, which is Star Trek. We use a lot of technology to bring everybody onto an amazing level of knowledge and prosperity and all of it.  And I believe that it is possible to create a Star Trek low-tech future with a high-tech option. So what do I mean? Let's take the example of an Earthship. So an Earthship has an off-grid building built with essentially the materials you find, more or less, works with the fundamentals of physics. So the air, cool air comes in at the back bottom and hot air leaves at the highest point, which is also at the hottest point. So you have a natural ventilation. You just have to open a window. Now you can open that window manually or you could have sensors and actuators to open those windows at some thresholds. That's what I call Star Trek low-tech with high-tech option. If the sensors break because there's a solar flare and all of the electric systems fry, no problem. We can just open and close it like that. So thinking in these terms and setting up a society that works on the Star Trek low-tech channel, the idea, the perspective, from the ground resilient enough to be able to do without high technology. The Star Trek is very science fiction, but tell me if I'm wrong. The high-tech option is it really only there because you and I or others are uncertain where the infrastructural grid of a renewable future of technology that is Star Trek or sci-fi or futuristic may not make it to the future to be there to give us that transition. And if we go beyond the limits to growth or have bigger collapses or problems with climate or whatever it may be unrest, conflict, refugees or climate refugees, whatever may influence that, that we have the manual regular Star Trek low version. Is that kind of also the thinking? That's the thinking, yeah. And so currently in my mind, currently there's a picture evolving of how to manifest that. And there's a second component to the high-tech in there. So we might want some high-tech, but that high-tech is a different form of high-tech than we're currently used to or are generally referring to when we say high-tech. It's more material science as high-tech. So what if humanity becomes a seafaring species, right? So let's just imagine for a moment that we manage to invent something like a floating island that holds a couple of hundred people that is fully self-sustaining. And by definition doesn't want to pollute the environment because that will feed directly back in. If you pollute the body of water you're sitting on, then you will ingest that directly. And so you don't want that. So you have a really, really strong motivation to be sustainable. So can we build something like this that's self-sustaining and sustainable in a way that it can scale up to 10 billion people? If we can create this in one small island for 300 people, we can scale this up. We can configure this into villages and cities and et cetera. We can move it into the parts of the world that are more habitable because of the temperature and storms, et cetera, that will become more unpredictable and definitely will move over the planet in new ways that we don't know yet and cannot really predict. So we're geoflexible as a species, but we don't know where we will get the materials from to make that sustainable for 10 billion people. So my hunch is that there's not only a massive opportunity but also if we think in these terms of if we create these types of artificial constraints, then we can say, okay, so we need something that's through and that shields us from the environment, like a window. Somebody somewhere in history tested what happened if you heat up sand too much and it turned into glass, but is that the only material out there that we can use to provide a window? Probably not. Maybe we find a clever way of growing windows out of the material we have in the sea. I don't know. I'm pretty sure we can if we ask that question to science. So it becomes a function of asking the right questions, asking the right questions from society, from scientists, from politicians, from entrepreneurs, from everybody. And how do you ask the right questions? You ask the right questions by creating an image of something worth living. Say, okay, what do we need to get there? Let's build it. So I believe what you're saying in many respects is that there are a lot of tools and facets that we could reach out for. One is the earthships. One is seasteading. Some other ones that I have in mind are going vertical, better efficiency of land and space usage. But I'm also hearing something else out and I want to make sure I'm hearing it right or if I understand it correctly. Are you saying that if we have 10 billion, 9 billion, 11 billion people in the future that no matter what, there's not enough resources on our planet to sustain all those? Or maybe I should throw in this caveat. Do you believe that there is a way to live within our finite resources and within planetary boundaries and still have those numbers and the population in the future if we use some form of circular economy and new methods of efficiency or ways of doing things? As you mentioned and I wrote a book about the future I want to imagine and want to contribute towards and the reason for that was to clarify for myself primarily whether we can achieve this. This being 10 billion people living on the planet in balance with the planet and equally wealthy on all five levels of massless hierarchy of needs. And yes, I absolutely know that this is doable. So just for example, if you look at the required area of land to feed a person, whether you do that horizontally or vertically plus comfortable space for living, plus comfortable space for recreation outdoors, at least according to my math and even if I'm wrong, it's still ridiculously small in comparison to the potential we have. We could comfortably put the entire human species into space of Europe. No problem. Feed everybody everything. So it's just in our minds the way we think about you say circular economy, the Thai king said sufficiency economy. King Ram the 9th said that. The sufficiency economy plan here. End of 90s, right? So he said okay it's pretty ridiculous that out of all people farmers go hungry really. So what if we put the well-being of our people first? Forget about import and export and all of that. Who needs that, right? What we need is small communities that care for each other. That's ensure that everybody has a good life. And then we can scale from there and make sure that the entire country is self-reliant sufficiency economy. The country can be detached from the entire world and it still functions. Are you talking about mother book or jungle? Mother. So mother is an experiment that came out of another experiment which started a couple of years ago which is a series of books that aren't published for a very simple reason. They provide a safe space for their participants. These are called 50 years hence and the reason why they're called 50 years hence is because this guy Winston Churchill sat down in 1932 to imagine what the world could look like in 1982. And in super strange images he came up with things like vertical farming and solar energy and gene editing and stuff we didn't have in 1982 but shortly thereafter or some of this stuff. So I was curious about what other people imagine the future could and should look like. So I started asking people about that and then we put those essays into a book which we only shared among the authors. And after a while I thought okay I have a feeling that there's something common in all of these essays but it's really really hard to go into that exercise really describe what the world could look like in 50 years. So let me sit down and try to get down into that nitty gritty because that's what we have to do otherwise we don't know what we have to build. And that's why I wrote mother. And to do that I had to find a way of describing all aspects of the human condition in a way that the aspects are distinct enough from each other but overlapping enough so that there's an understanding that yes we're covering everything. And I settled on six questions which are now also guiding a platform that we've built around 50 years hence to get even more ideas about what the future might look like. And these questions are how do we organize supply which is the question around the economy. But I put this on an abstract level to allow the thoughts to become bigger because at the moment we supply essentially says how do we find stuff that we can then put into useful stuff and distribute it to people. There's no rule in the book that says we have to use money and companies to do that. The function is to support everyone. So how do we do that? And then how do we structure society which is a question around governance. We tend to defend democracy at the moment. But maybe our configuration of democracy at the moment isn't really what we need. Maybe there's a better version of democracy. At the moment France and some other countries as well are experimenting with notions that are borrowed from our original template for democracy which is ancient Greece. Which was entirely different. We didn't have parties or there was no voting. But still it's considered democracy. How do we manage knowledge? How do we actually come to the conclusion that something is knowledge? How do we agree on that? How do we distribute it across language barriers, cultural barriers, etc. How do we relate to people? How do we nurture the body? At the moment there seems to be something broken. If you dig down into the food industry, I'm far from being a conspiracy theorist. But it could look like the food industry is set up to feed the pharmaceutical industry because it is essentially making us sick and the pharmaceutical industry is keeping us sick because they're set up in the same way. Is that a good way? Probably not. And then last but not least, how do we mind the spirit? Which is to say, what is that stuff that's more than a sum total of our atoms? And how do we deal with it?  So how do we deal with that stuff? So these are the six leading questions and have a lot of fun. And it's very interesting to have these conversations with people all around the planet, around these six questions. Because essentially, it's fascinating. And it's somewhat somehow tying back into these managers that found love as the most important thing that the world needs. People come up with very similar ideas. Very similar. They might have different images and words and different slightly different perspectives might be more tech or less tech or more. But essentially, what people are looking for is a community close to the Dunbar number that is self-sufficient. And that is also interconnected with other communities, preferably around the globe. Well, you probably answered like all of my questions already in one way or the other. But we're going to get more into specifics of that. One of my questions is about globalization. We touched upon that early on. You and I both did a workshop together, a moonshot workshop together in Lake Como, a beautiful place, type of a castle or a nice historical house sitting on Lake Como. And it was basically a moonshot about what the future is, thinking about the future, how to plan and think and get there, how to run scenarios out to achieve that. And we had some wonderful conversations there. So we've been thinking about this for a long time. We've been working about it. You've been writing about it. You've asked yourself the hard questions. And that's why I wanted to really know, has that helped you in this time? The answer that I hear out very easily is that, yes, you've been put in a better place to advise and bring groups of people together from all over the world. People have reached out to you. You've also felt the heartache and death and suffering of people who are been touched personally from the pandemic, but that you have yourself been prepared in a better, more resilient way to weather through this. It's seen as a very positive way because not only through this pandemic, more people are awakened.  And now, how can I be better prepared the next time, which you're saying there will be some next time? Am I getting it right a little bit? How I'm hearing that out? We know each other better so and speak often. It's something I kind of wanted my listeners to know as well. But also, I have access to your calendar. You have access to mine. We're so hard to get a hold of it and so busy all the time. So I really know, I mean, normally people would say, wow, this has been like a forced vacation. Now I get to be in my own human zoo, my own prison, but we've created something a little different for ourselves. So yeah, I remember that our meeting in Lake Como very well, especially our ride afterwards around the lake for hours in that bus, the six of us, and having the most amazing deep conversation I've had the entire year, I think. It was really, really, really good. And building on these images that you put into my mind with that gathering in that beautiful location, I think that's... Well, I wouldn't say that the situation has helped me so much, but I've seen something that I think is important. So the work you and Mika and Jussi and Harald and are doing around the moonshot or Manuel is doing with future modeling or what I'm doing with 50 years hence, trying to come up with these broad, big pictures that give us a compass. A compass in the best Jack Sparrowish sense. So the compass that shows us where we want to go. It's very, very crucial. And so that's absolutely vital piece that more and more people are beginning to understand, and I really don't understand the social dynamics behind why that happens in this pandemic. My guess is that there is a big pun now, but zoom in and zoom out happening. Big pun for sure. But the fact that we're sitting in our homes at the same time connected to the world and experiencing firsthand for the first time a global crisis, a real true global crisis that has personal individual effects forces you to become more clear about yourself, but also to zoom out and look at the world. So that's and zooming out and looking at the world forces you then to come up with questions or answers on. So how do we do this differently? That's number one. And number two, this is overwhelming to most people because now you're sitting here, you're clear about yourself, but you're also very, very scared. And you feel helpless and powerless because you're embedded in a mesh in the system. And then the question becomes, so how do we deal with that system? How do I even start to understand that system? How can I attempt to understand that system? And that is the reason why we or I came up with jungle to provide a framework that helps you map a system, create a rough map of a system that you're looking at. And then knowing where your moonshot is, knowing where you want to go, start moving towards that. And while you're moving, measuring where are you going in the right direction? Is this a good path in a system that you don't know yet that you're exploring? And why is that important? It's a tool that takes some of the risk out of being free for change. Because we've created a culture for ourselves where we tend to be more free from stuff, free from fear and dangers of any kind. And we employ politicians to protect that and to manage that freedom from fear for us. But that bubble is bursting. So we need to become free for stuff that we're exploring, but that's not for the faint of heart because that can fail. So what we do with jungle is we try to provide a tool that helps you move from being free from fear to be free for solutions. That's beautiful. And I don't know, we can edit this out if you don't want me to touch upon it, but so you weathered it fairly well through this pandemic time. But I must say, I was invited to your honeymoon. So you were supposed to have your honeymoon during this pandemic. So that through a big, personal, emotional, beautiful time for you, basically on hold because we couldn't travel anymore. Do you want to say anything about that? Yeah, that's actually the, apart from the death of one friend, the only real negative effect this has on me, because Vanessa and I got married in end of March 29th. That's an important date for us. So we did stick with that. But the hundred people that we'd invited to the party around it just couldn't come. We had this beautiful celebration set up in Costa Rica. And nobody could get there. So we hope that we can follow up on this a year later. We've already reserved the same spot. Beautiful. But we haven't seen each other in four months, except zoom in, zoom out. So I'm flying out there in a week, which is the first possible date. So I'm allowed in the country starting first of August. I'll be flying on the second. But that's been tough. Yeah. Oh, I believe that. And that's also created a plan between my son and myself. We've been spending our school holiday going around with our little boat. And now our plan is to prepare ourselves to be able to cross the ocean with the sailboat. Because even if we cannot fly anymore, we will probably have more time. And so crossing the ocean for a couple of weeks and isn't so relevant anymore. And then I can still be geoflexible without polluting. So that's what came out of it. You truly have a beautiful family. I love Noah and Vanessa. I'm excited to be there. The reason I go into that even more is to address the global citizen question.  Do you want to know what your feelings would be like if in the near future we would remove borders, nations, limitations, restrictions, holding us and separating us from one another. You know very well, my father's American. My mother was German. My grandfather was German. My grandmother was Austrian. I have family all over the world in businesses. We are all global citizens and whether that's a bad term or not, in some respects there's multicultural different languages that are married and together. And yet we're still dividing ourselves in this world. Can you kind of give me some insight of your thoughts and feelings on that? Yeah. So I'm global from the get go. I was born to Germans in California. I grew up all over Europe. My first wife is South African. My partner for life is Costa Rican. So I'm all over the place. And there is some fear of some people that if we don't have any borders anymore then people will start invading some countries and yes, there will be movement. But I think most people underestimate the value people give to the place they are and love and for the place and also for the people around them. So I think that people are more sticky in their places than we assume. And having that open situation I believe will help create situations where the negative effects of the ecosystem collapse and climate change can be mitigated wherever they still can be mitigated better on the local level. Which means that people will essentially stay where they are. They don't want to leave their country. They grew up there. It's beautiful. There are a couple of people that are by definition geoflexible and want to buzz around the globe and live in all sorts of places. And it might even be that we would want to incorporate something like that into our cultural setup where young people get the opportunity to move around and cross-pollinate ideas and genes. And I know for Germany there was this tradition in for carpenters. Once they had finished their education they started roaming the land until they settled somewhere. Probably usually either because they found a village where there was no carpenter or they fell in love or both. And I think something similar could be very useful. So I think global travel could be an important thing also in the future. Maybe at different speeds and for different reasons. Global understanding connectivity anyway. I just recently I can't remember the name but there's a company trying to bring people to the edge of the atmosphere in balloons democratizing the overview effect. Which I think could be actually very crucial to the survival of humanity to understand that this is one thing. This is Carl Sagan's pale blue dot. Looking at our planet from the edge of our galaxy as this fragile little pale blue dot in the vast nothingness. This is home. And once we grasp that then borders don't make sense anymore. That really transitions over to the deeper probably the first hardest question that I will ask you. I know you have the answer.  It's what's the future. So I am I'm convinced that once we either by force of catastrophe or by some nonviolent transformation revolution that's happening we will free ourselves from the systemic gridlock and amazing things will flourish. And I referenced earlier the outcome of the 50 years hence conversations. The future I mean this is totally overused but the future will be local and global. We live in local self-sufficient communities at a very very high level of well-being that is entirely possible. I'm not saying this is going to happen but I know it can. It is technically possible and I want this future.  I believe that's emerging. I believe that we need to realize that we're all crew members on this spaceship earth that we can put our hands on the steering wheel no matter how small our actions we can impact the the future. And I I do like when you say you know local and global there is that you understand your spot on the pale blue dot and and you understand that there's the same air we breathe is the same air in China and Germany and the US and the same waters we drink in the same everything is is all ours it doesn't belong to one nation or border so I really like that and it is possible to do both or to to have both at the same time. I think I think it's very related to to your global hectare idea. It is. Um and becoming a steward of the planet and and and more than that a steward of the living conditions of future generations. I think that's that could be the triggering point. There is a piece of like legislation that was put in place in Wales five years ago which is called the future generations well-being act. What that does is that political decisions have to prove that they in in several categories have to prove that they actually will have a positive effect on the future well-being otherwise they cannot be be be be executed and there's an independent commission controlling for that. So what if we implemented that in Germany and then in Europe and then in other countries? What would that change? I think it would change a lot and then then we would become the steward of the future which would then ask the question what is the future we want for our kids and grandkids and their kids and um and what is missing and let's build that now and I think that that will that will that could be this catalytic event that um unleashes all of the positive potential that is dormant and wants to come out but cannot at the moment. We've seen some experiments not only with my global hectare but also with a universal basic income you know Spain and a couple of Canada in some respects came out with some bailouts or some incentives that are very close broaching on universal basic income. I believe that if we had a fair distribution of finite resources that it was an inalienable right for each individual and that through good stewardship we really showed that we could not only be more efficient but live within planetary boundaries in this circuit that there's some there's some wisdom and things in there that really would help us go far for future generations. I mean to sustainability sustainable has been a big buzzword for a long time but what is it that means to sustain yourself your business your products your your yourself for future generations you know not just for one year but multiple years. So I see a lot of people trying to start to really experiment with this and and I mean I'm part of a bubble that likes to to think and talk and do things about it but my my concrete next step is to really put myself into that position. So at the moment I'm I'm looking for a buyer for for the house in Berlin and then we're going to get a ship to live on fully self-sustaining to experiment with that and also we're going to build an earth ship in Costa Rica to understand how that actually works. I want to know how that works because in theory it's all nice but I think that's the that's what I see emerging at the moment that there are more people that are trying to create these experience spaces for how does that actually feel and what do I actually need and and then usually it turns out that it's not so much that that we need and that we can do very well without most of the stuff. The one experiment some everybody can easily start today is something I started with my son five years ago. We stopped using single-use plastic. That's that sounds big but actually it's not that hard but it's only not that hard if you're open to adapting your habits a little bit and and once you start doing that you start noticing very interesting things like you will automatically feed yourself in a much more healthy way because you cannot buy packaged food so what do you buy you buy vegetables and fruits essentially now what's bad about that roughly nothing right so so then you then you notice oh I the things I thought I needed I actually don't need them and and then you can start experimenting with more and you start creating things yourself um I don't know mundane things like baking bread or making your own soap and so and then you can ask these questions how do I make soap ah there's some stuff in there that I cannot grow I can I might be able to grow some olives and and turn them into oil but that's not enough I need I need some what do you need salt water for alkaline yeah alkaline so it's super hard to create that yourself so I'd be very thankful if somebody came up with it with an easy solution to to to create soap locally that I can create with my kid um just as a tiny example right but this is um or or the beginning of the of the pandemic people went out to buy toilet paper I don't know why exactly because you could just get a hose pipe or a 20 buck thing that you can put on your toilet and turn it into a bidet some people did that but you need that image in your mind to be able to do it now we did it because we didn't get any toilet paper that wasn't wrapped in plastic so we we already had um performed that change but these are the little things tiny little switches and all of a sudden your footprint goes to close to zero right yeah it's that that's a beautiful way of of looking at that and I like that you're experimenting you're you're thinking and pushing those those boundaries of how you can do that for yourself but with that resilience or that um the English word is you know self-sustaining in German it's überlebenskünstler or self-sustaining type of lifestyle you are put in a unique position not only to help your family but then to show others what works and what doesn't there are a lot of examples out there of people seasteading or living on lakes you know uh uh different options there's uh so many choices not just the sea there's tiny homes there's you know living off of the land there's camping there's tons of different things out there that are very much a step in in that right direction now do we have to give all the creature comforts up to to live within our global hectare and to to do that no absolutely not I I believe that we can live a very fulfilling and rich and full life with plenty of food and there's numerous examples out there a lot of them are on the internet even now on the the tiktok craze but um um we we really need to grasp fully the potential of that I want to touch on just one other thing you talked about food and how your transition has been in that but it ties really closely to a couple things you you mentioned the maslow's hierarchy of of needs a few times the bottom two layers of that the bottom layer is our physiological needs the breathing food and water which is food which is more than food it's our most basic earthly and human energy source food is a caloric intake it regulates our body temperature keeps the motor running so that we can stay at a certain heat to survive and to have energy to do things it's our our energy and you know battery source so to say and then the second level is security of resources security of body that security of where we live and and and how we do that during this time a pause of this great reset of this pandemic one thing that has been a global citizen or had deep involvement on our whole planet was our energy source was food was still going in ships still going in boats still going in now and in passenger airplanes I saw them packing food and fruits and and things and at passenger airplanes it's one thing that did not shut down it cannot be shut down and to cheapen food is to cheapen life because it is our most basic vital resource and energy source and so now when you lock down people when you don't allow them to travel when you restrict them to come into your country your nation if you build up walls and borders you're really doing a big huge damage to to humanity in our world and the way our world functions not only within that mazl's hierarchy needs and so I think you touched on many of those things I I think it's very vital to address that and put that into relation to what you've said and what possibilities there are to live more resiliently and to live more sustainably in the future some things that you discussed were having this whether it's a collapse or a catastrophe happen that makes that push that nudge to get a mind shift a paradigm shift for humanity to start seeing we need to change we need to do things differently so that we can be around for future generations and that really leads me to my second to last most scary question and you've you've addressed it in some respects during this but it's a little bit different what does a world that works for everyone look like for you well I have to build that on the assumption that everyone essentially at the core is concerned about the same thing and that thing is ultimately the well-being of themselves and their loved ones so the only way to think about that world for me is to find a way to maximize the well-being of everybody without exception if it doesn't if it cannot do that then it's not it's not worth thinking about it but it's even more complex because well-being to you and me who are very very similar in in in in our upbringing and general embeddedness in society is might be something different from well-being for somebody else so that also needs to be taken account for and so that brings me back to this Star Trek low tech scenario where we enable ourselves to have local communities that are self-sufficient to a level where we're able to grow coffee and pineapple in area like let's say Berlin right and there are solutions out there to grow things like that within containers running on sunlight with small footprint on water and there are solutions where you could have a greenhouse that you essentially put into the soil with just a translucent surface on the top and so you can regulate climate through passive solar energy so what I'm trying to say is the solutions out there on between the low and the high tech to grow the coffee we want around Berlin no problem that's so that's what does it count for is that small communities can find ways to figure the way they think about well-being as a group while connected to all of the other little communities all around the globe so it's like a big index of communities and every community has its quirky specialities and because nobody has to compete for resources they're all they can all leave each other untouched but at the same time you can go and experience and visit them and see whether you might like some of the quirkiness and bring it back home or if nobody wants your specific quirkiness you can just set up camp somewhere else and maybe attract some people so it's very very local but at the same time we can interact and have to interact and are asked to interact with all of them on the on the entire planet to as a large global experiment of what works what doesn't how do we do things and the only two real important aspects are maximizing of the personal individual wealth and all five layers of mesle's hierarchy of needs for everyone without exception and implicit in that is care for the planet that's the only two pools we need and and these are globally enforced by a community and we could go into the question of governance around that for hours and like like we already have in other conversations but this is a rough sketch of what I what I see possible what I wish for um yeah we don't have too much more time so i'm gonna try to wrap it up with these last two questions but the you we've touched upon it um several times during during our conversation so mazo's hierarchy of needs you know that i'm a united nation sustainable development goal advocate and that after I show the um sustainable development goals in a wedding cake a pirate chart type of a graph then my very next slide is mazo's hierarchy of needs and I say they are for us and I liken them to uh mazo's hierarchy of needs uh especially the bottom two two layers it's um they're very closely tied to each other that with that knowledge and also knowing that we're limited on on how much time we can have on this podcast do you believe that there is a global plan out there for humanity to at least help us to reach 2030 or some plans out there that are unifiably known that that people can work towards or to see as a guide that also fall in line to many of the things that you've said here today okay so I haven't come across a clear plan yet that people unify around I see islands little ideas um there's there's of course the framework of the of the sdgs um and um that is probably the the the strongest um and most prolific uh sort of plan but um I don't like uh calling it a plan really um I it's a to-do list and and just like so I'm I'm a little wary about that to-do list because it could create a whole range of outcomes and some of them are more desirable than others and I like thinking about what I what I'm cooking before I pull the recipe before I pull the to-do list so I've what is the world what does the world look like with the sdg solved um is the question that I'm missing um and and I understandably solve because it's probably the hardest question when when I when I give my answer or even attempt an answer um I I get all sorts of accusations about being uh a megalomaniac or um yeah all sorts of negative things that that people can call me um but it's I think there's a misunderstanding it's not that I um dogmatically say this is what um this is the world that we need to live in it is what I currently believe is the world most worth living in and this is my view and we can all have a conversation around that and it and so I don't see that conversation happening yet I see bubbles and and and as I as I said earlier these bubbles seem towards heading towards the same summit but there's no coherent plan no I don't see it I have to disagree with you I have to be a little bit we've known each other long enough and you've heard me talk about it that that vision that you don't see or that you don't feel about that there you don't know what it'll look or feel like um December 2030 when the SDGs are the 15 year plan as as finished and for that specific reason you've probably heard me say this a few times but there's a phenomenon that um it's usually not until the fourth time that people say damn he's been saying it all along I just didn't truly hear it until now but for the sustainable development goals I wrote the manifesto the SDG manifesto for the UN I'd like to read it to you now just to see if you can get the feeling of what it would feel like December 2030 when we reach it imagine a world where there is no poverty and zero hunger we have good health and well-being quality education and full gender equality everywhere there is clean water and sanitation for everyone affordable and clean energy has created decent work and sustainable economic growth our prosperity is fueled by investments in resilient industry innovation and infrastructure and that has reduced inequalities we live in sustainable cities and communities and responsible consumption and production has healed our planet climate action has stopped and reversed the warming of our planet and we have flourishing life below water and abundant diverse life on land we enjoy peace and justice through strong institutions and have built long-term partnerships for the goals now the reason I wrote that is because the sustainable development goals were presented to us in the wrong way or not at all we didn't understand if they were for cities or communities or corporations we didn't understand how they were developed through back casting foresight modeling dynamic modeling through through many tools that we've used for a long time there's a certain amount of dollar figures behind them not only are they goals but there's targets and indicators behind them to reach them and it's really the world's first historical precedence set by humanity just like this pandemic is the worst first global wake-up call it's the first historical precedence set on a global level for humanity and it I believe it is a roman the problem is people don't know about it they don't know that vision and they don't know what it feels like if we achieve that one last caveat I just want to say and then I want to get your feelings and your opinions on that is that when those of us who know about them who've heard about them we still don't understand that it's a it's a new global operating system if we strive for any or all of the goals it is not just for one nation one country one border it is for all of us and in order to do that we actually have to change our current models and accept a new global form of governance a new form of doing things that levels the playing field for everyone on earth every nation on earth and it's it's a total reset in a new operating system most people think that it's just a tweak on the normal it's a little business as usual with a little couple tweaks well no it's a complete new operating system it's new economies it's a new way of thinking and doing things than we've ever done before and that's what people don't really understand they they still think you can have nationalism divisions and borders and you can have nations and countries but you can't you have to have an higher global operating system that those adhere to and still have your cultures and your borders and and your countries okay so I think it's extremely important that you wrote that manifesto because there's as I said this is to do list and it's missing the image and with that manifesto you've created a vision an image an image right so and so now there's there's directionality but my feeling is that this is not a plan yet and there are I don't know people like you know them all like like Jordan Hall and Daniel Schmartenberger and John Reveke and the rebel wisdom people Thomas Bergman and I could go on and amazing amazing people thinking about how that operating system might look like but whenever I and I you think about that I think about that we we have discussions about that and what always comes out of that discussion for me is since it's a new operating system the power structures the the will will change and plan a concrete plan for me would be a plan that helps the people that currently hold power or political power or financial power to come to terms with the fact that they will lose that power and and will give it up happily we need to have that part of the plan I think that's absolutely vital this is for example what we're trying to do with with Gita with the global impact tech alliance trying to come up with an understanding that yesterday's enormous infrastructure needed for that new operating system there are sketches of the operating system there's an image on at the at the end of it this is the world we're creating is a there's a whole framework how we can how we can roughly at least measure the stuff and and now we need to start moving that power towards building that operating system where it will lose the power I think that's the and that in a peaceful nonviolent way that's the hardest job there I think that's why I need to tell my listeners to make sure to go over to your TEDx Frankfurt because you address some of those and in your TED talk some of those those things and that's a vital to listen to because I think then they can also get on on the same page and align with with your thoughts and some of the wisdoms that you share and have shared today I truly do believe that true power for politicians is in the fact that they give it up and figure out a new global governance operating system that is probably not controlled by them that through that vulnerability and uh succeeding to a bigger operating system and model and uh one that maybe has a trustless system behind it whether that's distributed ledger technology or machine learning or something that is not as fallible and make short-term dictatorial decisions for a certain group of of humanity that impacts the entire world I think that would be a real step in the right direction I'm wrapping this up now with the last question and that is if you could go up to all the millions of people on our earth and give them one message a short elevator pitch message what would it be uh your leaving words or your empowerment that you would impart to them that's a hard question I think I would say that you should try and connect deeply with your innermost fears and desires and trust in what emerges from there because what emerges from there will always be love and whatever happens next will be good thanks my friend I really appreciate it Thomas it's been so wonderful as always we could talk for hours and um yes too bad the restrictions are we won't get listeners for hours so um thank you all the best thank you very much and uh we will see each other and speak very soon again yes thank you for being on Inside Ideas I appreciate it thank you for inviting me it's been absolutely a pleasure speaking with you again my pleasure


Now in business news, leaders of European Union countries will meet in the sales today for a two-day summit to discuss ways of winning the countries of a heavy reliance on Russian energy imports. A member of the EU-Russia Gas Advisory Council, energy expert Thierry Bross, said the EU relies on Russia for 40% of its natural gas needs to partner with only homes but also factories. He said that only an estimated 75% of gas imports from Russia can be replaced in the best-case scenario, with alternative exporters such as Norway and Algeria already running at full capacity, leaving the gap that would certainly spark a rise in electricity prices and lower industrial productivity. Now Bross said countries may have to turn more to coal plants to address the power generation needs, as front had done at the start of the year and prioritized happening the war over goals of reducing carbon emissions. On Wednesday pipeline operator Data showed that Russian gas delivered through pipelines continued to flow via Poland westward into Germany, while flows into Slovakia via Ukraine remained at recent high levels following threats to cut supplies. Also on the agenda at the first 10-11 EU summit in Versailles, a boost in Kyiv's links to the EU single market and to Europe's energy grid on the RIDS for enhanced partnership.


Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnock and today I want to show you how to color some reflections on some waiting flamingos and then at the end I'll show you some enamel pins just for card makers. The Sunny Studios stamp set with these cute little flamingos in it I thought would be perfect for an encouragement card. I love the sentiment, you're flamazing. Very funny and punny. I always love a good pun and I have chosen the pair of them. You can mix and match them but I chose the pair where one is kind of looking away in a shy fashion from the other. Kind of embarrassed when someone says you're flamazing that would kind of be me. I'm not really good at accepting compliments and I know a lot of people aren't especially women for some reason. When we get told we have a nice outfit on we tend to just tell them where we got it on sale instead of just saying thank you. So I thought this would be kind of cute because it reflects that in my mind, that expression. And what I did was stamp onto some Neenakard stock and I wiped off the feet before I did because I want to make them look like they're standing in water that they're waiting in the shallows. And I'll show you how to make the water and the reflections and everything when we get to that. But first with these little guys, I wanted to have the transition from dark to light go pretty quickly because I wanted a lot of light on the tops of their heads. So I reverse the order that I normally color in. Usually I do the base coat, then go to the dark, the medium and the light. But that puts more than one coat of the light color down because I cycle back through them. This way if you start with the dark color first, if you're confident enough to do that, then you can start blending in with your midtone like I'm doing. And the midtone is even eating away a little bit at the dark. So I can get rid of some of the extra dark parts if I don't like what I've already done by going over it. Just make sure if you start doing this that you don't keep going so far that you make it bleed because if you just keep going and going and going, you saturate the paper. If it starts feeling like you're saturating it, just let it sit and dry for a minute and then you can go back to it. So I'm using the midtone, the second color, to lighten the colors that are already there, but also to blend towards the light. And I'm leaving light on the top of the heads, on the top of the wings. But I also wanted to leave a little bit of light color on the very tips of the wings and the tail feathers.  And I can go over that with my light color, but I don't have to. I can leave it just white as well. But it goes really smoothly to have just one coat of the lightest color when I do it in this order. You can see I've got that really nice bright pink, not very, very light, bright pink on the very top. And I wanted these to be in relatively light colors rather than going for a normal heavy saturation because I wanted this whole thing to feel like really out in the sunshine. And this, it's really super bright out. And if I were to make these guys look too dark, then I'd have to darken the rest of the background to match with it. So this seemed like it was going to work a little bit better. So I'm going to start in on the looking at the sand through the water. If you've taken the underwater scenes class, there's an underwater version of this. This is kind of the above water version looking at the surface of the water. So you get the little reflections across the top of the surface, but you see the sand right underneath, especially when it's right in the shallows.  But right in the foreground portion, it's going to be the sand that you see through the water. I'm going to add some water over top of it, but I wanted to have the sand underneath so that I get that kind of really interesting wavy texture. And I'm using an E42. There's a lot of different colors you can use for something like this. But I wanted that, that feeling of the sand. So next I went for my BG triple zero. And I'm just going to put some of that color in the background as I talked about the color moving from the shallows out into the deep. And you see less of the sand because you're getting just the water and not the sand portion. And I'm trying to figure out how high I want the horizon line to be. Did I want it to go past their wings or stop before their wings? If I go in with a light color to do this, I can play around with it. I can decide which way I want to go with it. And as I was putting my color down, my BG triple zero was running out of ink a little bit. So I switch, I can switch over to another color as well. I threw in a little bit of E30 to make that transition a little smoother before I went in with a darker color or I should say a better inked color, which is the B triple zero. And that worked a whole lot better to have ink in my marker. I don't know if you're like me, but I sometimes would rather just switch to another pen than go get out the ink refill bottles. I put all my markers in a drawer when they're needing re-inked if I can remember to get them in the drawer. And then I do one big day of refilling a whole bunch. All right, next up is the reflection. So RV13, the mid-tone color, I'm just drawing in a little bit of the feet. I don't even have to draw all the way down to the feet. I can just draw partway. And then I'm using the light color to just make some swooshes of color. I'm not making it solid. Notice that I'm letting some of those reflections come through. And I'm not drawing the reverse of the flamingos, which is what a lot of people try to do. They do the mirror stamping to try to make it exact. And you really don't have to. If you look at a reflection, you just sometimes see swooshes of color. And I wanted a little stronger color than the RV10. So I went for an RV11 to just add a little bit more to it. Little strength of color. And it really has that feel of light reflections without being really hard. Just a few strokes is enough to give it that reflective feel. So next it's time to make an island in the distance because they need to have a little island to look out on in the little bay that they're wandering around in. So I'm going to draw just a little mountain-ish kind of thing. I'm not really mountainous. It's more like rocks because I decided I'm going to put little trees out here. I'm going to do a couple of palm trees. When I go to the trip of my heart every year, I go to Puerto Rico and do some plein air painting. And I always end up sitting on the beach somewhere and drawing palm trees and painting palm trees. It is just so relaxing. And I've started to really look at how the wind blows them. And on a windier day, the whole palm tree kind of leans off one direction. A lot of those fronds come off the top and they all blow in one direction. So doing it at a little bit of an angle helps them to feel like they're blowing in the wind. But don't put them all out that way. Sometimes you need to have a little palm frond going the other direction just so it doesn't look like it's going to fall over entirely or that there's a hurricane going on. But I'm going to add another little layer of color with slightly darker brown to add some texture to the tree trunks and then a little bit of almost rocks or a feeling of rocks on the little island. Create a little bit of atmosphere for that. And next, I thought I'd also add a little bit of island grasses because, you know, any of the little critters need a place to hide that are out on the spit. And then it's time to make the sand look like sand. And even though you don't see a ton of detail, you can tell that it's sand. Well, hello to whoever is texting me in the middle of a voiceover. But you can tell that it's sand looking through it just by the color. But you can also add this little bit of texture, both with a marker and then also with a white pen to just add that little extra bit of detail. The last thing I wanted to do is add a little reflection to the island as well and those trees. And it's a little harder to do and make it look natural. So remember how soft the pink ones were. We want to make these along that soft side too. So use a lighter brown marker. And I'm going to even add just a few strokes to make a reflection of the land as well going across there. And when you choose your green, choose something really light because you don't want to have a whole lot of color down there. And again, make the stems or the stems, the tree trunks reflect the right direction. But the rest of it can just be blobs and then go over it with the blue color of the water because that's going to soften out what's there. And it'll just kind of pull it into being a reflection and it'll keep it really soft without having to basically redraw the trees upside down. So there's my sweet little card. I just put it on a card base didn't even add any embellishments or layers or anything. Just put it on the card base itself. And now I want to show you the pins. We rise by lifting others was my favorite show you the picture of it here with a nickel so you can see the size of it. And since this was such an encouraging card, I thought this would be a great day to show you these pins. There's a whole bunch of them for crafters by the gray muses. And I am just thrilled that they made these. So I'm just going to let you kind of look through them.  And she just got them in the store and then she added some more. And I was kind of excited. So I'm going to give you the link to the whole category of them as well as each individual one so you can see them. But a lot of them would make a great gift, especially when it comes to Secret Santa time. Now this one I love swatches. I wish it just said I love color because I don't love swatching. I just love color. Eat, sleep, craft, repeat. Is that not all of us? Oh my goodness. There's just so many fun ones in here. Down to like boy a bin of stamps, which is kind of nice. I mean there's just so many fun things that would be great for any of your crafty friends. If you need a birthday gift or something, or even just as a random act of kindness to send to somebody. I just think these are really sweet. I made an ink pen organizer. I am not an organizer, but I just think the idea is really cool. So check all those out. All the links are in the doobly-doo for the supplies and the stamps and the pins and everything. And go encourage somebody today. Give them a compliment just because and rise by lifting others today. I'll see you guys later. Bye-bye.


Past influenza was at 2023 and I am hanging out with the one and only Rhono. Hi, Rhono! Oh, Rhono in the building! You look amazing, girl. Thank you. You look amazing too. Thank you. Let me ask you, body goals, hey, hey, hey, how does it make you feel inside? When you look at me, say, this is the time to shine, now to put on the outfit. But I feel nice. I mean, yeah. Mentally, how are you doing? How is everything? I'm here to have a good time. That's where I am mentally, yeah. Very nice. Now, let me ask you, how is content creation especially right now in the 254? Is there any pressure to do more? Is there any pressure from the audience to give them more? How is it? Honey, I'm cruising, I'm vibing. I think, I'm having fun with it now. There's no pressure. There's never been pressure, yeah. Have you been nominated today and what category is that? Yeah, actually, I'm walking today but I've also been nominated, which is cool. Tiktok of the year, so we hope for the best, yeah. Yeah. What's going to change if you walk away with this award today? What's nothing really, I don't need any accolades. I'm Rono. That's enough. That's enough. Being me is enough of a blessing, so yeah.  Is there any project? I don't know yet. Maybe a baby. I think it's time, it's time, but no. Nukotu, I think just slow paste, slow paste, yeah. Nothing much coming up but slow paste. That's what I can say, yeah. September is over. What has been the highlight of that month for you? September was the ghetto but I loved it because financially was a good month for me and what else can I say? Yeah, and a lot of discovering it to enjoy time alone with one person, two people, yeah. I've not been going out as much, so yeah. All right, Rono, we wish you all the very best. We can't wait to see you win so that we can talk to you and know what it feels like and all the very best. Thank you. Santa is Santa.


Well, we're back. We're live. This is Energy 808, Energy and the Cutting Edge. I'm here with my wonderful co-host Jay Fidel, who I have always such gratitude to spend time with Jay. And I'm especially grateful and happy today to be on with my friend Eric Gleason of Next Year Energy. Eric and I go back now going on, geez, five, six years. And Eric's one of the most Akamai guys I know in the energy field. He has given considerable thought to energy dynamics here in the state of Hawaii, as well as energy in the US and energy across the universe, across the long and winding universe. So thank you so much, Jay, for being with me again. And thank you, Eric, my buddy for joining us again. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Hi, Eric, thank you for joining us today. It is a pleasure. Thanks. It's so nice to have you on the show. It makes me feel young again, which is not easy. So what are you been doing for the past couple of years? Well, we're trying to stay out of trouble, which now that I'm not in Hawaii is a lot easier. So I have two jobs, basically. You know, I'm obviously still with Next Air Energy, and we've got a lot of stuff going on. So one is I'm responsible for really a utility business in 11 states in Canada, and it's focused on high voltage transmission. So that's one piece of it. And then I have another day job, which is I'm responsible for strategy for what we call Next Air Energy resources, which is our renewable business and some other things as well. So between the two, basically, I'm very focused on the future direction of energy in this country and move into a high renewables power system as soon as we can and doing all the things we can to help facilitate that. You know, there's a lot of commentary one way or the other about how well the Trump administration has done or not during the four years just passed.  What, you know, how Next Air has participated or reacted? Well, we as a company did really well under the Trump administration. And our investors think we're going to do even better under a Biden administration. You know, if you watched our stock over the last year, depending on, you know, the ups and downs and expectations for both the presidential race and then, you know, the legislature. Every time it looked like things were going well for Biden or potentially a blue wave, our stock went up. The Georgia Senate race, you know, just outcome was like a 5% bump in our stock price.  And renewable energy does well regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are running the government. And so even though President Trump wasn't a big fan of renewable energy, the fact is a lot of renewable energy was was being installed in this country. And so we were doing well. But I think with President Biden, he's very focused on renewable energy. And so, you know, we expect to do even better. Yeah, there are, you know, the AOC crowd in Congress and a new green deal and all that. You, you would, you, I'm not sure where he's going to wind up because it's not yet settled exactly how green he's going to get. But but query, you know, how green do you think he will get? And how will how will that affect me? Could it be that we really move, you know, roll up our sleeves and move into green energy big time here in the next year or two? Well, we know the Biden energy plan because he published it. And it's even more aggressive than Hawaii's plan. The Biden energy plan is a zero carbon power system across the country by 2035. And net zero emissions economy wide by 2050, which I think isn't I think is in line with Hawaii. But the power, you know, ambition is about 10 years accelerated from from what Hawaii has set. And that's that's his that's his plan. I think even with a strong majority in the Senate, and all the so no real impediments to getting the plan enacted in law, because it'll need it'll need legislation to really happen on that kind of timeframe. It would be a challenge. It would be possible but a challenge, I think with with, you know, a divided Senate, it's it's that's going to be tough. I think that's not that's not our expectation. But I think the goal is is is noteworthy. It's certainly the most aggressive plan and targets by by any president of any party, you know, in our history. And and we think just based on economics, even if, you know, renewables don't come into that degree that soon, they're coming. And we expect that there's not going to be a lot of carbon emitting generation left in this country over the next couple of decades. I wonder, you know, if you look across the pond, so to speak, and to Asia, and make comparison about how things are doing or may do here. Are they ahead of us behind us? Do they have the same issues? Do they have the same aspirations? Where are we globally on this? Yeah, so I think so I think there's a couple ways to answer that. First of all, I think just in terms of actually getting renewable energy done. Right now, our our country's we can hold our heads high. Right. As a for instance, and this is just one example not to sort of beat our drum too much. But, you know, Next Air Energy is the largest, the largest power and renewable energy company in the world. And all we do is focused on the US a little bit in Canada. And so, you know, there's lots of giant energy companies around the world, lots of people focused on renewable energy, but no one's bigger than we are. So that doesn't say I'm not saying that to talk so much about Next Air Energy. It just says that our companies or our country is doing a lot of renewable energy. And so so that's one that's one way of looking at it. I think where we're behind is in terms of having a national goal for when we want to be at zero carbon emissions, zero or even better, zero greenhouse gas emissions, net zero. Most advanced, most developed economies in the world have adopted a goal of around 2050 for net zero emissions. And we don't have anything in statute or otherwise. You know, the individual states do, but as a country, we've really been a laggard. And so I'm hopeful that, you know, during during the Biden administration that we'll see that, that would be great to kind of join the rank of leading countries and, frankly, almost almost all developed countries and recognizing that we need to do something about climate change. And let's let's start with the things we can control, which is, you know, the energy system and then the economy as a whole. Yeah. Well, your point about Next Air being, you know, the biggest thing, I guess it's it's it's also because it's the biggest, it's also influential, if you will, in the in the energy sector. And there's a certain amount of leadership going on national leadership from from business from Next Air. What is what is Next Air's special sauce, Eric? You know, I'm not going to that's a great question. I'm not going to do it justice. I will say, I think we were fortunate in recognizing early, getting into the renewable business early. So we really got into the business in earnest, about 20 years ago. And that was key. And then we were consistent. We never stopped plugging away, getting better, learning, adapting.  But I think it really started with getting in early and sticking to it. And there's certainly, you know, it's not like we're the only folks in the renewable business. I mean, it's a very fragmented industry today. And a lot of people are coming into it all the time, because, you know, people can see the growth and anyone can see that this is a growing industry. It's important. There's a lot of socially responsible capital, you know, environmentally, we call environmental social and governance or ESG oriented capital that you would love to put money to work in renewables. So there's no shortage of people in the business and certainly no shortage of competitors that we have. But I think because we got in early, it's given us a leg up. You know, a few weeks ago, we heard from the intelligence agencies that Russia had hacked not only our federal government and various agencies within the government, but also large companies. And I wonder, you know, if that's a concern for you, either, you know, in the course of this current revelation or going forward, because we are, as you suggest, we are very dependent increasingly so on good energy, reliable energy and so forth. And it drives our economy. We all know that. So, query, how much of a concern would you have, would next era have about, you know, this initiative, probably right Russia, I would say by Russia to hack our systems? I would say it is a huge focus in our company at all the way up to Jim Robo, our CEO. And really in the industry, we're not unique. Cyber security is something we've all understood. You know, I guess I've been personally pretty cognizant of it for, you know, six or seven years. And I'm sure there are others here who have been focused on it longer than that. But, you know, China, Russia and other state agencies clearly are targeting our power systems as a way to totally disable our economy and our society. When you think about it, you could debate whether water or electricity is the most essential of essential services, right? You could debate because we obviously need water to live, but without electricity, you're not going to have running water at your home. And so it'd be very tempting for someone who, for a country, for a state actor that has bad intentions towards the United States to want to cripple our power system. And you've seen utilities have their systems hacked or penetrated. And so I can tell you it's a major focus in our company. I don't know that anyone's ever really totally safe from that. But, you know, we certainly are doing everything we can to make it very difficult for someone to do that here. I appreciate that. Marco, you must have a whole bunch of questions that you want to propose, propound to Eric. So let's have at it. Sorry, Eric. Thank you. God knows which follows now. Please, Jay, don't do this to me. I thought we were friends.  And because Eric, I'm sure, has a number of very interesting things to insight to provide. So we had this performance-based regulation, which the decision in order was issued by our Hawai'i PUC on December 23rd. Last week, Monday, on the 4th of January, Hawaiian Electric filed a 95-page motion essentially for clarification and or reconsideration. And I'd like to ask you, Eric, first of all, if you could kind of give us the basic primer about what PBR is, how it differs from the the current long-standing regime of cost of services, a model typically for investor-owned utilities, and why, if any, why should we care? Is it a big deal, a middle-end deal or a small deal? So take it away. Well, let me start. And I know that folks who watch this show are a more, I'll say, energy-wonkish type of group of folks.  So I've read the order. And I understand that there's obviously, there is this pushback from Hawaiian Electric on some elements. So setting that aside, that's related to where you set the bar for cost reductions going forward for the utility. So let's set that aside. I thought I was impressed by the order. I was pleasantly surprised. And I have a lot of respect for the commissioners and the folks at the commission. But I still didn't expect them to come up with what they did. I thought it was very innovative. And we'll come back to your first couple of questions. But I think really the bottom line is, to some extent, the truth is, you don't really know if it was a great order and a great, if it's a great framework, until you get down the road and you actually see how it worked because it's quite innovative. But my sense is that people in Hawaii who care about energy should be very happy with this order or with this framework that the commission and stakeholders have come up with. It seems like they've really tried to find win-wins, which we don't see a lot in our country in the way we regulate utilities. And this gets to what it does. So typically, the way rates are set, let's go back to the basics. Utilities are viewed as natural monopolies. And so in return for getting a franchise to provide service, the rates have to be regulated because otherwise they can charge whatever they wanted. We all need electricity. So the rates are regulated. And the system we've evolved in this country is the general systems called cost-to-service regulations. So whatever the utility has to go into the regulator and say, here's my cost and I need my revenues to be set at a level that will allow me to recoup my costs, including a return on my investment for my investors. And that's the general way that regulation works. And it's a setup that served our country well for something like 100 years. So it's proven. But over the last 30 years or so, there have been some innovations in terms of trying to find a way to not just focus on the cost and setting the revenues to the cost, but providing some more incentives for the utility to maybe reduce their costs or maybe achieve some other policy or other objectives and give them really more skin in the game in terms of their performance. So that's what performance-based rate making is. And that's what it aspires to do. And I would say just as a philosophical point that there is no, I have never seen in my career, and I'm responsible for 12 rate-regulated utilities and been doing this for a while. I've never seen in my career a pure cost-of-service utility where the performance of the utility didn't matter. And I've never seen, you know, and I'm familiar with places like the UK where they've really were early pioneers in this. I've never seen a pure performance-based rate-making regime where the cost of service of the utility didn't matter. So to some extent, these are ideals that don't exist, but most utilities are more at the cost of service end. And I think what the commission in Hawaii is doing is taking HECO more to the performance-based end of the spectrum. It's interesting because what it's going to do is incentivize the utility to be much more focused on cost, and then in addition to deliver, you know, roughly 10 or 12 other metrics that will can enable them to actually make more money or less money, depending on how they do. So, you know, if you think that the cost of your electricity is important and you think that some of these other goals like, you know, renewable integration or reliability or what have you are important, then, you know, I think you should feel good about this new approach. Does that answer your question, Marco? Did I guess, maybe you could elaborate a little bit on why you believe that it is truly a win-win or why you believe that as it, and granted, we were just the beginning. Well, not quite at the beginning. We're a ways into it, but we haven't seen the implementation of PBR yet. That will be unfolding over the months and years to come. What do you think are the tangible prospects and benefits that will accrue, in this case, to the 400,000 plus or so ratepayers across the five islands that Hawaiian Electric serves? Can you try to, I'm trying, for someone who's not up on the verbiage and the concept of PBR and cost of services, you know, to the average bill payer across Hawaiian Electric territories, what difference is it going to make to them? So, leaving aside the cost savings that are in, you know, being debated as to that will be flowed through to customers in 2021 and beyond. Let me give you an example. And this is really why I was surprised actually at how far they took this. So, the Hawaiian Electric companies overall have about two billion dollars of shareholder equity invested in their utilities. And that two billion dollars needs to earn a return and that return goes in your rates. And, you know, roughly speaking, that is close to 200 million dollars of potential income to Hawaiian Electric shareholders every year, which, you know, they put two billion of capital up, they should earn a return on it. What the commission has done is said, you can actually earn a much higher return if you can earn a much higher return. But in order to get a much higher return of like, you know, potentially, you know, of that 200 million, you could go up 50 million or more. But in return for that, you have to find cost savings. And if you find those cost savings or perform on some of these other incentives that we have, these are things that are important for us. We want you to give the customers a better experience or we want you to give better reliability or we want you to do a better job of, you know, interconnecting generators or whatever it is. If you do these things that matter to our customers, to the customers of Hawaii and the residents of Hawaii, and or you save money, you can make more money. So that in and of itself is not a normal thing. Now, maybe you'd say, well, is that good for customers? It isn't. Well, I think, you know, and maybe I'm a bit too much of a capitalist, but I think if you give someone some skin in the game and you give them an incentive, you're more likely to get the outcome you want. And the regulators able, the PUC is able to say, well, we don't want to pay too much so they can calibrate how much of an incentive it is for the outcome. So the PUC is in the driver seat here. And so if they're setting up incentives that and the utility is signing up to it, you know, to the extent they are, the utility obviously is motivated. The utility is going to have to manage your business in a way. They're going to want to try to get those incentives and everybody's going to be better off. That's the opportunity. And it's with cost savings, it's even better because the way this works is for five years, the rates are set. Then there's a new rate, a new review of rates. If the utilities found, let's say 50 million of cost savings at the next rate review, I would expect that $50 million of savings will be passed through. So the utility has an incentive to find the cost savings. And then ultimately those cost savings are going to be passed through for customers. So it's a balancing mechanism that I think to a large extent aligns folks. What's surprising to me about it is I honestly would, you know, I spent a lot of time studying regulation in Hawaii in a past life, as you know, I would, you know, honestly, I mean, like the consumer advocate would be worried about every little penny. And I think the way regulation rate regulation in this country works is it tends to be very zero sum. Okay. If the utility is making more money, then they're taking that away from customers. We can't have that. And this is positive sum. This is positive sum thinking. This is how can we create win-wins? Oh, if we're really clever about how we set up the incentives, we can incentivize the utility to do things that they maybe wouldn't do to the same extent otherwise, and then ultimately find a way to benefit customers. So that's really the idea. And I think they took it further than I would have expected, because frankly, the opportunity is there, you know, if they've said it right, and I'm not, you know, picking aside on heat govers is what the commission's put out in terms of cost reductions. But if they said it right, the utility has an opportunity to do really well. And then ultimately, you know, pass through those benefits to customers to extend its cost savings. So, you know, I would have thought, based on the way regulators worked in Hawaii in the past and consumer advocate and others that people wouldn't have wanted to let the utility do that well, even if they did an amazing job of cost reduction. So that's what impressed me about it. So maybe if I could somewhat simplistically interpret that in my, in the Marco mind, which is the more Hawaiian Electric saves, the more they're able to make eventually, in terms of return on their investment, and just as importantly, if not most importantly, ratepayers will see if not lower rates, stabilized rates that would be better for them compared to the cost of services model. Did that more or less like that again? Yeah. Yeah. No, you did a great job of summarizing what I've blabbed on about for five minutes. It's not a given that rates will be stabilized. But it's, but it, but, but if this is done right, rates should be lower than they would have been otherwise.  And there's various factors and variables and everybody can predict how it's going to work. Or is this something where the PUC is going to have to exercise discretion in order to allow these benefits or not? So I think Jay, the way there are, there are some off ramps. If things get a little out of hand, I guess I would say, if the utility is making too much money or not enough money and it becomes a concern. But generally speaking, what this is, is set the rules for five years and then let the utility go run their business. And so it's not just about, I don't think there is a secret formula because ultimately there's two elements to this. They're setting the rules and then there's a utility executing. But then there's a next step. And I've been watching, you know, I'm pretty familiar with UK regulation and they really pioneered this over the last 30 years. So what you're going to see, and I think the commission's envisioning this, they kind of talked about it in the order, is that at the back end of the first five-year period, they're going to look at what's working and what can be improved. And then they're going to tweak the rules and that'll set up, if they continue with performance-based rate-making, that'll set another multi-year period. So it'll be a work in progress. But I think for the first five years what this is really about is the commission setting the rules, taking a step back and letting the company execute with the confidence that the incentives are maybe more aligned than they were. And yeah, and with the full expectation at the end of that period, and conceivably before the end of that period, it'll have to be tuned based on how well it does, whether these, you know, goals are being achieved. One other thing I wanted to ask you is that it sounds like you're studying it because it may be coming to a continent near you. What I mean is, how much do we see PBR being implemented by regulators on the mainland and elsewhere? Is this something that's sweeping the country or what? So that's a great question. And that is one of the reasons why I've paid attention to this. You know, why is one of the jurisdictions, one of the really few jurisdictions that isn't just talking about decarbonizing the power sector, but is really getting after it. And so we follow it pretty closely. I think, you know, I suspect that, you know, some of the commissioners from the YEPUC are going to get a lot of questions from their counterparts at other commissions, because I think this version of performance-based ratemaking has some pretty distinctive characteristics. I think it's going to get some attention. Whether it is, takes the continent by storm, you know, probably not, I would say. I think the cost, the more cost of service, more traditional regulation has been around for a long time. Sometimes it works, you know, a lot of people are happy with their utility service and feel like they've got what they need. So maybe why change it? It's a huge investment of time and resources. I mean, this process has taken two and a half years in Hawaii and it's not done. So somebody's got to really want to make a change in order to initiate this. To this degree. But you know, it's not, it isn't unique to Hawaii. I mean, there were other versions of it in other places. As I mentioned, there's actually a more extreme version in the UK. I would say Hawaii is somewhere in between the UK model and the more traditional model. You know, in my business, we have a utility in Ontario that we've made an application for rates that's, you know, very similar to performance-based ratemaking. They call an incentive regulation. So it's not unique. I don't think it's going to take the continent by storm, but I do think it's going to get some attention. And I think in places, maybe in places like California or New York that have very ambitious clean energy policies, if I were a commissioner in one of those states, I'd be looking pretty hard at what Hawaii's done. You think this is ever going to be standardized on a national level, you know, where the federal government steps in and sets specific guidelines that would apply to all states? I think that that is very, it's almost inconceivable. But if I think about it sort of logically, how could that happen? I mean, if you had a strong enough democratic majority in the House of the Senate and the president had a policy like Joe, you know, President Biden's energy policy, President-elect Biden's energy policy, they might come to the conclusion that something like this. But I doubt it. I think there's just a ton of deference to state rights. We have a very balkanized power grid and regulation in this country is state-specific. It's always been that way. And we have a federalist system. So I don't think so. Okay. Marco, you probably want to ask Eric about Schofield and the project with Barcella, which we've had on the show here a few months ago, and what Eric wants to do, what next era wants to do in Hawaii going forward. You probably want to ask him that, Marco. Well, I beg to differ. Actually, I don't, Jay, because we're kind of short on time and I have a juicer question. First, let me make a statement before I question, which is I think it's really noteworthy and way cool that for a change, Hawaii is kind of leading the mainland in terms of PBR. And typically, we're followers rather than leaders. So I think that is way cool. And my question to you, my friend Eric, is it's been going on about six years since next year, first showed interest in getting in the game here with buying Hawaiian electric industries. So we're six years past that. My question to you is what, if anything, in your following things out here, what if anything has changed on the energy scene or not changed on the energy scene over the past handful or so of years? You have made Hawaii a particular focus of your interest. What has changed? What has changed to make Hawaii more of a focus of interest? Now, what has changed in terms of your history with Hawaii, which is going back now five, six years. How are things different now in terms of the energy scene here now in 2021 compared to when next era showed interest in 2014, 2015 and 2016? What as much changed as far as you can tell? Yeah. So I'm glad you asked the last part. I mean, the reality is I've been back to Hawaii, but not really talking to folks about energy. So I'm not as close to it as I used to be. So with that caveat, my broad sense is there was a period of time from about 2008 when the decoupling docket started until 2014 when we showed up publicly with Hawaiian Electric and then Meena Merida left the commission shortly after that. During that period of time, the focus of the commission was finding ways to basically encourage Hawaiian Electric to move towards renewable energy. Because before that, and I wasn't that close to it, but from talking to folks, really they weren't that interested. And so I think that was a very fertile time for the commission in terms of new initiatives, the PBR docket, and just encouraging the utility. And I think the utility responded. There was obviously a lot of uproar maybe over the merger and that sort of was a bit of a distraction for a while. But I think overall Hawaiian Electric has responded. They've talked a lot and I think they've done a lot around transformation. And my sense is that during that period from say 2014 to, and remember 2014 is when the commission published their inclinations and challenged the utility to develop a sustainable business model. My sense is from that time until basically the last year or so, last couple of years, and really Jake Griffin joining the commission and the commission totally changed you know. But during that time, my sense is you know, and maybe I wasn't close enough to it, but like under under Chair Wassey, I don't think they were very focused on new regulatory initiatives and really, really moving the ball. But, but you know, the utility to their credit was was working on their transformation. I think now you've got a commission again, for the first time in a long time, that is very focused on using all the tools at its disposal to encourage Hawaii's continued transformation and including the utility. And so I just feel like you've got a commission now with some real thought leadership that that is worthy of notice, you know, and discussion on the mainland that others could potentially learn from that. That's really what I see. Well, it takes me right back to the question that I that I thought that Marco might ask you, but I'll ask you. You, we know that you've worked on the Hawaiian Electric Facility in Schofield. And Varsilla has worked on that too, out of Helsinki. And I wonder, you know, what what that has been for you and what other what other projects might next year do in the future in Hawaii? So so we actually, other than during the merger and kind of being familiar with it, we really didn't have any role with the Schofield project. And I say that despite my first time in Hawaii, I was actually at Schofield Barracks with the Army. So I upon memories, that takes a while. We do have we have some solar projects on a Wahoo that are that are operating today. So we do have some ongoing operations, I guess I would say in Hawaii. Sorry, what was the rest of your question? What do you plan to do here? Anything more? Oh, what? Yeah, I think we're, look, we're a big player in the renewable energy business. Hawaii is very, very serious about moving to 100% clean, clean power and ultimately a zero carbon economy. We're gonna, you know, we've never stopped being open to doing business in Hawaii, where it makes sense. So, you know, we'll, I would expect over time, you'll see us do more renewable projects. Great. I think we're out of time, Marco. So Marco, why don't you take the lead on on saying thanks and farewell to Eric Gleason, next year at Energy. Well, thank you and farewell, Terry Gleason from next year Energy. It's always, always such a pleasure. And I really hope we can get you back on before too long because I think I know the energy situation out here, the energy dynamic, the energy scene is in fact very dynamic. And it is so way cool to have somebody like you, Eric, join us and give your both kind of insider combination insider and outsider perspective, which are relatively few people that I know can can do. So mahalo nui for your time today and may I'll go well for the rest of your being there and in beautiful Florida. Thank you, Eric. It's great to have you on the show. We go back, you know, and we really appreciate your interest in Hawaii. Thanks, guys. Always a pleasure. Aloha. Bye.