Todd Paglia Stand earth Using Geo Technologies to Drive Social Change Talks at Google

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Welcome. Everybody I'm excited, today to introduce. Stan. Dot earth and Todd Palio. In. Tech industry, we, have this notion of the, frenemy, two. Companies that compete in one area and partner, in another area and stand. On earth has taken, that approach to. An. Environmental. Activism. And. Their. Approach is to say we'll. Help companies, clean, up their act and, act. Responsibly with. Respect, to the environment and show them how to do that but. If they don't then, we'll bring the righteous, wrath of, the public down upon them. And. I think this is a great approach and it's. Proven to be very successful. Stan, has had great, success in transforming. The paper industry to. Use. For us more responsibly. And. In, saving, the great rainforest, we saw some of the pictures up, there from, when. I got a chance to accompany them up to British, Columbia and. Let's. Let Todd, tell you all about it and about, some of the opportunities, where, we. Can help. In this mission by. Bringing some of the technologies, that we have in, mapping and satellites and so on, welcome. To. Here. I'm gonna take you back to the founding, of stand on earth which, was in the mid 1990s about. A thousand, miles north. Of here on the west coast of Canada there. Was a line being drawn in the sand, in, a, place called clack, with sound a small, town of Tofino is, in clack with sound it was the last old-growth, rainforest valley on the, west coast of Vancouver, Island and, people. Had had enough. They. Began organizing. To try to stop the. Logging of this area, and it's, a. Rainforest. Valley of just, incredible, beauty. Thousand. Year old western, red cedar trees Doug, firs. Trees. So big that ten people linked, arm to arm could, barely wrap the, their. Arms around the trunks of these trees and they're being cut down to make, toilet. Paper. Newsprint. Two-by-fours. And, other products, so, the organizer started. What. Was. A very small effort in the beginning and little, by little gained momentum, getting, people out to this remote area to actually put their bodies on the line to, try to stop the bulldozers and, the logging trucks from coming in and, this, for, whatever reason it. Was partly at a time partly, so. Much had been lost already, people. Responded. It just struck a nerve and. Hundreds. Of people showed, up and, little. By little thousands. Of people showed up and. They began, organizing. Protests. To try to stop the logging. The. Media followed, it became, known as the war in the woods I went, on for months and celebrities. Start showing up and rock stars and everybody, wanted to come and get, arrested and stand on the line with the protesters, protecting. This old-growth, River Valley and. It. Culminated, with just a sort of international media storm. A. Thousand. Arrests the biggest civil disobedience, in Canadian history and. It. Didn't work it. Wasn't enough and, it, was from that sort, of going, exceeding. All expectations every, goal they said as far as turnout, Media everything, they did went. Way beyond their goals and they still didn't, stop blogging Macmillan. Bloedel the logging company just, kept moving right along and, it was from that sort of moment of desperation that. The, organisers. The. Founders. Of stand on earth decided. To think about who was buying this stuff so. Something's driving what's happening so, they took a very basic, approach. And. Went, out to the marketplace with, hundreds of letters to, any company, they thought might somehow be connected, to. The logging and clack would sound in the broader logging, on the coast of British Columbia and. Companies. Were concerned they, didn't realize that they're purchasing, dollars were destroying, this rainforest and for, the first time in British, Columbia and logging. Was King in British Columbia and had, been for decades for the first time the logging company was, on its heels, the, logging stopped they. Started having to answer questions. To. Their customers, they started having to work. To keep contracts, they started to lose some contracts, the company's not wanting to be part of what was happening in clack, wood sound and. That. Was the first time that the companies were really put on the defensive, and. The. Trees of clack, would sound the old-growth forests of Blackwood sound are still standing to. This day because of, that effort. At the tail end of years. Of protest to bring some transparency. And. I think it was this this little glimpse, of transparency. Of a tree. In a forest being. Cut five. Or six different mills, waystations. Middlemen. Two, big, branded, companies at the other end and it was just a little bit of glimpse of transparency.

That Changed the entire equation. So. We took that lesson of clack with sound and started thinking so, how do we build campaigns, from. The front end that yes, use communications. Organizing. Protests. You know all the traditional, tools but. Also start. To bring some, transparency, to, the. Issues we are taking on so from one old-growth. Rainforest valley we. Decided to try to protect, a hundred, of, rainforest, valleys in an area known. At that time as the. Midcoast, timber supply area quite. A catchy name. We, first. First, piece of business for. The groups working on this and there were a lot of other organizations beyond, stand. Including. NRDC, and Greenpeace, and reinforced Action Network and many others the. First first. Piece of business was to rename it we, renamed it the Great Bear Rainforest. After. The. Spirit bear which is the, iconic, symbol. Of the Great Bear Rainforest it's. The only place in the world where, one, out of every ten black bears is. Born white they're not albinos, they're not polar bears they're. Actually a white bear. Known. As the spirit bear and, revered. By the First Nations who have lived in this landscape for thousands of years, and. We started building into, the campaign. Transparency. Trying, to track from. This very remote area, wood paper, pulp, all, the way through, the entire system, to big branded, companies, so. We now we had a hundred valleys, three. Companies. And. Literally. Thousands, of big branded companies buying the product at the end of the line and they had no idea they were doing that so, it, was a major, sort. Of private eye investigation. Effort to figure out where all this stuff went to and. Then to begin educating the companies our. Methods got a little bit better at that point we. Went from just sending a scattershot letter to hundreds, of companies to. Actually, tracking the the wood paper and pulp using. A bunch of different methods some, of which meant. Just going to mill towns and hanging out in the bar and figuring out where. The where the customers, were so folks. At the bar would say hey we just got a big order from Home Depot we just got a bigger order from staples. We. Also ended up using anybody. Remember the LoJack car, device, so. We would use the loads that would track your stolen, car so, we would we. Would track our stolen, forests. And. Track, Trant used to use that sort of device to track from, especially. Rail shipments, all the way to the. Being branded companies and little, by little we sort of chipped away at, the transparency. Problem, we were having and a. Lot of companies just like in clack with sound didn't want to be part of destroying, a rainforest we. Over. Time it. Became millions, of dollars of contracts put on the line to, tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts put on the line and. Using. That power. We, were able to bring industry to the table at the, same time. First. Nations of on the coast of BC for, the for the first time in a long time got. Organized, in, a way that went beyond, individual. First. Nations they became. A collective, known as the coastal First Nations in. British Columbia they have not signed treaties, so they have actual. Somewhat. Undefined, but very powerful right to title and so they became a political, force of their own while, we were driving the marketplace, towards change, and. Through, a, series. Of negotiations we, went from the. Starting, point which. You can barely see here on the screen but almost. No protection in the Great Bear, to. A third of it being protected. 2005. We got to around 50, no 2009, we got to 50%, 2015. We put the final. Details. Into place. To get over 80%, of the Great Bear Rainforest protected. Off-limits. To logging and we. Created fiber sort. Of flow. Processes. For, the logging companies to have a lower impact but, may, be able to maintain their businesses, so it, was a real win-win and, what we found is once First Nations environmental, groups in industry were on the same page with a very detailed plan the. Government was more than happy to move forward and move, that into permanent legislation, so. Using these methods of really increasing. And building transparency. Into. Our campaigns, we have been able to move around 60, million acres, of old-growth and endangered forest towards protection, over, the last two decades and. We. Then started. Getting pulled into. Increasingly. Into climate change, one. Of the first issues that we had to address right, sort of in the middle of this map. There. Was a pipeline, proposed, by the Enbridge corporation. To bring a giant tar sands pipeline, right. At the point when we were going. Over 50%, of the Great Bear protected, heading towards 80 they. Thought it'd be a great time they're bringing a giant pipeline, right, into the Great Bear Rainforest, bringing. Hundreds of tankers into the Great Bear see. This. This was a fight that went on for, the.

Better Part of a decade. We. Were able through. Largely, through the leadership of First Nations groups to. Beat that pipeline back, tremendous. Organizing, on the ground and this, movement of, people all around, North America and beyond fighting. Oil infrastructure, has had incredible success you've, all heard about the Keystone pipeline which has been beating, a couple of times by now the Enbridge, pipeline were, in the midst of the fight of our lives with the Kinder Morgan pipeline coming, into Vancouver, the. Port of Vancouver we're. Hopefully, going to be able to turn that back but. As we as a movement succeeded, on pipelines the oil, companies developed a plan B the. Plan B was. Oil trains so. If they couldn't get their pipelines through and they were getting delays, and defeats on pipelines. They. Thought they can might be able to start moving oil by rail and this took everybody by surprise. This. Was something that. Heretofore. Oil, would occasionally go on on rail, but. Not, very often and not in any quantity that mattered, and suddenly, you were getting about five years ago thousands. Of percent increase every single year and, suddenly, there were more. Than two dozen oil, by rail terminals. New. Terminals, being sited all across North America, so. What we did is we were too far too small to take on this challenge ourselves, we. Started partnering with frontline communities. Developed. A network. Crude, awakening network which is 275. Groups strong at this moment everything from a couple of people working at the kitchen table to, the, Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, banding. Together we were able to begin to push back on this threat and one of the key components though was, getting back to the, issue of transparency. We. Created a tool called. The blast zone org. And. This map were, somewhere somewhere, over in here. Outside. Of the blast zone as well more and more oil by rail was, being shipped the. Trains had a tendency to explode more, and more often usually. Because. A lot of the rails are in in, somewhat, isolated, areas. There. Were not a lot of deaths thank, God but, in some places there, were in loc Megantic go. Back 47. People lost their lives in an, oil train explosion, we had a number of very close calls with for, example an. Oil train turning over in a tunnel in Seattle, during the summer didn't. Ignite but, there were so many close calls and, so many communities, were up in arms and trying to fight this that, we created this tool. And. It was really kind of the next iteration of transparency, for us this wasn't just information, we were trying to get for ourselves, it was information that we were trying to get and then sort of unleash it and see what people did with it so. You could put in any address anywhere, in North America and find out how far you were from from, the blast, zone which is the federally defined area. Where. You, can see from red this is basically almost. Sort of an incineration, zone, to, an evacuation, zone you don't want to be near any one of those and. They go right through many of our cities and towns so.

This Was an incredible, mobilizing. Tool while, we were able to allow. Groups. All over North America to use it and. They got the attention of the mayor when the mayor's house, was in the blast zone the city councilors house, was in the blast zone and when their, schoolchildren, that. When the school was in the blast zone and it, also led to a number of reports, that had never been possible. Before, including. Many. Of the areas that we were working on like. This picture here we're, in very low-income areas, and so we were able to actually use, them a curette demographic, data partnering. With environmental, justice groups to show that some of the new terminals, who. Was at risk in many of these places it was 8090, percent in higher low-income. Communities, and communities of color this. Also became, a huge rallying, point for these communities, to push their elected. Leaders to reject, the, oil train terminals, and. Over the course, of a. Few. Years we, were able with. This network. To. Beat over 20, L train terminals, and. Really answer a threat, that was sort, of popping up everywhere in an incredibly. Effective, way, and. A lot of it really came down to transparency. And access to the information. The. Blast zone has, been you know one of the best tools we've ever come, up with and it's the kind of thing that is really way. Out there for groups like us it, is it is an outlier and it's something that we actually need to see a lot more of I think in the future. Our. Work on climate change has gone from. Oil. Infrastructure, now more and more into changing. Industries, we're. Have. A new campaign, actually, launched as of this morning on the fashion industry, the fashion. Industry itself is. The, fifth largest. Contributor. To climate change if it were a nation so, that's about five and a half percent of total greenhouse, gas, emissions, and, again. Like we've learned over time we're, trying to build more and more, transparency. Into this system and there's a new sort of fledgling effort. By. A couple of our allies, IPE, which is a group run by mizune. The. Goldman environmental, prize winner and NRDC. Is partnering with this effort as well for, the first time to. Map. Factories. In China and. The. Brands associated, with them so you'll see Puma New Balance target, and. This is a voluntary, effort spree, is also part of this effort it's a voluntary effort to begin to show where. They're making the, shoes, and apparel, that they manufacture. And. This is paired with real-time. Pollution. Monitoring. Data so, any, lack. Of compliance. Is. Going to be known and. Local, people on the ground can access. This and actually go to the factories and see what's happening and. You. Know the, photographic, and other other information, you can get when. When. A mill is out of compliance will, lead directly to a, complaint, to the company. Is the ultimate buyer of what that factory makes and I think this is the big the very beginning, of what's, going to change the apparel, sector. We, can launch our campaign, our part of this is we, launched our campaign actually a few hours ago at, Levi's, in San Francisco. The. Iconic California. Jeans. Company and we. Are encouraging, them to get on the pathway to Paris, I think part of how they are going to be, part of the broader campaign, is to. Set a real goal to, reduce their climate impacts this. Campaign. Is well timed because it's very possible in fact they have a mill that's waterless, they, can be running their mills not on coal but on alternative, energy and, this. Is an effort that we think will drive. Companies, to produce. Real, long term commitments, and begin. Mapping their. Supply chains they're incredibly, complex, and. There's no way they or officials. In China can possibly, monitor, it and keep. Tabs on whether or not they're in compliance but. This network, of groups working on. Climate. Issues and local, pollution issues can so I think this is really. A. Whole. New world when we're looking at what's possible for. Mapping and. Giving. Access to ordinary, citizens let's. Say nothing of local government officials but what's, happening in their homes their towns and cities that might impact them and so, over time over, the last two decades I think that there's this trend, this is a very imperfect. Calculation. The. Kind only a liberal, liberal arts major would come up with, but. I really think that our, work has shown over the last couple of decades that transparency, plus strategy, equals.

Change And. We. Are people. Like me. You. Know who are lawyers. Campaign. Strategists, media people that's, most of what the environmental movement is about and lawyers and other folks and. I. Think we, need to increasingly. Build, a bridge to folks like some of the people, in this audience who. Know how to manage data, capture, data and provide. Simple. Access, to people to be. Able to see what's happening in their homes what's happening in the world what's happening with the companies that they do business with. And. I think this is the recipe for change that we really have to look at when I look at clock would sound the Great Bear Rainforest the. Oil train work everything. We've done for two decades as a pretty, small group, we've. Been able to move. Millions. Of acres to protection, change industries, and, transparency. Has been a big part of it in, the next decade you all know we have a huge challenge in front of us with climate change and, many other issues I think, that, the. Extent that we can get folks that are sort of campaigners. Working. With folks that are coders. With. Common, cause to try to map and provide. Access to information for, some of our greatest challenges that's going to be how we provide. The. World we want to hand off to our kids and to the next generation and. Here's. To, campaigners. And coders working together thank. You so much for listening. So. That's the, formal presentation we're, actually hoping to get into a little bit of dialogue. So I think you. People. Who work at Google and, other. Tech industries, probably know and have, ideas about things that we would never, even think of, so. I wanted to if you folks. Think about what you, do and some of the things that we're trying to do. You. Know there's a bunch of issues, that we're taking on beyond. Beyond. The apparel sector including, a new campaign against just the shipping sector I just, give you one quick, story. Working. With some indigenous. Groups in Alaska, and the Alaskan Arctic. Whose. Livelihoods, their, culture, depends, upon hunting. And fishing and the. Biggest single threat to, them, is cruise. Ships coming. Into their areas it. Would be a huge thing if they just knew when. The ships were coming and, what. Ship it was and, when they're arriving when they were leaving and there are ways to do that through. You. Know different mapping, and. And. Commercial. Vessel. Traffic monitoring. Monitoring. Tools but. Like how you take that information and, actually get it to something that's usable for somebody in. A First Nations community, indigenous, community, so, that they can certain begin to manage, this. Risk while we put, pressure on Carnival to stay out of there, it's. Just one of the one of the many things we're like somebody. Could figure this out this yeah but we can't so, I wanted to just open it up and see if you have first of all questions. Or. Ideas, on how you know sort of campaigners and coders might work together to tackle some of these things. Thank. You very much for coming and for your presentation, and, I. Think. That. You and I should talk later. Longer. I lead, the Google Earth outreach team here. At Google and where, our mission is to empower everyone, to use Google's mapping tools to change the world in, a positive way and we, focus on different social environmental, issues and I won't take up this whole time it's. Not my podium but. Fishing. Yet so you probably may have heard of global fishing watch so. That our team did that and it's. What, a cool idea to repurpose that same data apply. Different kinds of machine learning and proximity, alerts. To. Be able to give real-time, updates, to indigenous communities in Canada or wherever we. Work very actively with the First Nations and, eternal. Groups in Canada as well as New Zealand New Zealand and Australia. And of course US and Brazil and many others so I see a lot of things. That could be repeated and of course with Google you, won't you want to do it start somewhere and then repeat it and scale it so that everybody can have access and, so. There's, that I love. That idea so, yes we should talk that's a very cool idea, second. Supply. Tracking, is something. That we, were at Rio +20 and, Rio +20 what you. Know it was. Just. It was, really I remember, being this panel, with Unilever CEO, and. You. Know Richard, Branson, a couple others and they, were saying you know the consumer goods forum and I know that that's still active and I know people are consumer goods forum is is doing, great things. For. Sustainable. Management. Of goods but, I, feel. Like the tools out there. Aren't. Living. Up to their, to people's needs your needs for supply tracking, we've, talked to Patagonia, they're like, superior. And there's, kind of mapping. Their supply train for some of their products, they're also interested so there's a big, huge desire, for it but it's super complicated and, I think even though Google has data we.

Don't We. Don't we're starting to understand that for our own you. Know products how to attract our consumer, goods but, we, don't have the history, and the probably the breadth of knowledge that you have so I'd love to have a conversation about that how. We can, map those the what the map you had was fantastic, but, then how, do you map. You know how, do you track how do you tell that kind of story and we're good at selling stories but it's, a different kind of story and, you can't just throw it into some story template you have to really kind of understand pathway, ISM. Yep. I'd, have to be flexible and able to adapt, to changing circumstances. On. The ground that's, right yep. And the last question I'll have and then I'll let somebody else talk or. You can keep going is, I. Would. Love to know so I lead the effort to map, air, pollution. Worldwide. And. Get that data into everybody's hands. And. One of that is just there's a lack of measurements so we're trying to help that too and so. I would love to know when you talk about pollution. Have. You heard of the. Landsat group a pure Earth they. Were part of the Landsat, report. That. Just recently reported. That like 1 in 5 people died of pollution, there's lots of different solution but one in five people died in pollution in the world and. What's. Interesting about, that is they're. Trying to map it so it might be interesting collaboration. There but I would love to talk more about like when you said you connect, those supply, chain factories. With. Pollution what kind of pollution where do you get that data because in China that's very sparse I mean air is one thing I know about Arabic, I don't know about, well. So they're there actually. This. Is this is largely the work of IP ei, which. Is a very small group like us. But. They have been able to access. There's. Not a lot being done with the information it's real-time water, pollution information, on a bunch of different chemical, outputs. As well as air pollution, and. Because, the, government. Is relatively. Small and doesn't enforce, it. Nobody does anything with that data but it's there. The. The. Action the actual government is requiring, it. And. So what's. Happening is basically IP, e is tapping into that, data and just. Beginning to map it but. It's not leading to any compliance. Efforts by, the Chinese, government but. When something, gets out of compliance and people. Email these companies directly it, gets fixed right, so that expanding. On that and having. Something, other, than us and IPE and error you see doing this would be incredible. Yeah would I be supportive, well. In Chinese. It makes a lot more sense. Yeah. That. Sounds great thank you, okay. Thank. You very much I really enjoyed your presentation I, also liked a second I love the idea of transparency. As, a tool to, allow. People to do what they want. To do and Noah's right. I'm, part, of the geo organization, and my. Team's do, the aerial. And, satellite and. Street view geometry. And reconstruction, of all. Over the planet and I'm, also heading up the nascent geo. Augmented reality and. In. We, are interested, in, what. Kinds of applications. Using augmented reality so what this means is that Google. Has this incredible, asset, of a, very rich detailed. Physical. Model of the world and we. Can, marry that with people being able to create. Augmented. Or, content. Virtual. Content. And pin, it to, the, world and it's a cold and shared appropriately so, as you're talking I was thinking boy I could easily imagine applications. Of somebody holding up their device or there might be headsets, in the future you. Know looking at the dress in the window and not, just getting information about, the cost and, sizes, and so forth but the, source of, where. The material came from what factories, what the what, the environmental, footprint, of that and maybe even push a button that says, tell. The manufacturer, that you love this dress you'd love it even more if they were more responsible, you know something. Like that so we're I would be very interested in with talking, with you and your team about what, applications. Could. Be developed, using this ability to augment, the. Physical, a model of the physical world that's visible to anyone and would. Allow them to give them more information, about, the products, maybe holding it up to factories, you know in the city to tell you what that Factory is doing and putting it right in the hands of people in their mobile devices yeah, that's, great I mean one of the things that's been incredible.

Over. The last Oh. Year. Or so. Is. That we've had so many more people, wanting. To be active. Wanting to try to take control of the, choices, they make what's, happening in their cities and towns and, we've, had in some cases like added zero to the number of people showing, up for a protest, or demonstration and. So we have right. Now the appetite, for people out there to actually, have information they can take action on these it's higher than it's ever been in my 20 years of working on this stuff so that, would be an incredible tool to have and, that's just one, I mean this, group, in. Your real age that you know the Sun roof group of identifying. Good. Areas for putting, in solar panels I mean we could partner with stuff like that also again with augmented reality where, you could have virtual landmarks, to show you appropriate, places for, you. Know whatever this is a fertile, area for attention. In some way you, could do that with virtual, land marking, so. I have, a question maybe. For, you to but maybe for someone else so one of the things that we were thinking. About. With. The shipping issue. Is. The, you know these ships run a variety. Of different fuels and. We're trying to get you know permanent change towards much more sustainable fuels but, they switched fuels right, so in. Addition to being a bollock we have we had a very small system that, allowed us to track, was. Really funky and put together by volunteers, to track ships in Puget, Sound that, we're carrying tar sands oil that. We would kind of lose him at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and then they. Would show up elsewhere certain. Times it was very funky, but it was some, people really liked it because they they would be out in the islands and they could see a tanker and say that's a tar sands tanker. So. That you know that feels like that's something that's very possible the thing I was wondering about is because, of the fuel switching again. What. We've seen over the last 20 years is government shrinking, there's no enforcement, of fuel switching. But. Is there a way using. Satellite, data. To tell like if you look at this ship I mean. So. With it so this ship right here. It. Would still be horrendous, but there would not be a black, plume of smoke when they're within certain. Distances. Of the shore right and then they switch to a different type of fuel once they're a dozen miles offshore. But. Nobody knows that they're actually complying with what there's. Exactly. They mostly, use heavy fuel oil which is actually, a solid at room temperature it's it's like the grossest stuff you can possibly burn but, you, know is it is it possible to in addition to mapping the ships could you figure out how to map what they're burning, because. There's a footprint. Right the, vision of visit visible footprint, in many cases. Society, is going to have, more. Frequent weekend, intervals and, that's, good because. You know their mapping satellites. Are like you know one meter or five meters like you can see everybody. At. Least twice. A day I'm don't, quote me but you can imagine a world where you like twice or three times a day you, have you, can see a ship. Yeah, wow. That's. Good I don't look quite there yet I'm not a super, expert but we could we all talk. Hi. Thank you so much for coming I actually. Come from a long line of sustainability. Work myself and I was at the WTO, conference, in 1999. If you remember in Seattle. Yeah. Yeah me too. And anyway. So I've been, in the sustainability, movement for a very long time, you. Know ranging from United Nations conferences, to the WTO to a. Lot of others and what has struck me time, and again is, that, every time I'd go to these conferences, and then we'd go out for you know some of us panelists. Or attendees. Would go out to dinner and we'd. Go out we'd. Leave the hotel and there's the real world there are people walking on the street and, they're looking at their iPhones, and they're chatting and I'm like do. They think about these things you know, and, so over these years, and also because of a previous career in Hollywood being kind of um you know the other side of things and storytelling. It. Kind of dawned on me over time that what you really need, is storytelling. On a very emotional. Very emotive, level, right so and that has to start young I mean I have a seven-year-old daughter and, she. Loves minecraft, but she also likes little birdies I mean she'll stop dead. At you know and just look at hummingbirds and so, I think if we, can encourage. In our children, this this very real connection, to the real world not just technology, right it kind of has to go hand in hand I think.

Because. If not then we really become disconnected, and. I and I see that so so, what I'm actually, actively, doing is is in. My team trying to see you know how can we use technology to tell these stories not. Overtly, not, saying hey you know did you know that you, should not never go on a cruise ship because they pollute but tell. Stories through mythology. Through, through narratives, I mean I would love to see you, know Game. Of Thrones mentioned. Something about about. That. The. Google assistant yeah. And, so you know we reach out there and, we do have earth for example we have Earth Day content, and. I. Also, suggested, well if you do Christmas holiday kind, of suggestions, why don't you put in something about green Christmas, you know and so my team like that so, even little tidbits, like hey consider, the packaging, that you're buying because. The gift wrapping right gets ripped off and off it goes it's one use so. So. That's that's what I'm thinking about constantly. Is how can we. Tell. These kinds of very emotive, stories, and as young as possible yeah and I'm not trying to brainwash but, it's just it's, how we're biologically, wired we're biologically, wired for stories. For, you know the stories of our elders our elders, right now is our, movies know yeah, so and the environmental, movement needs, a lot of help with stories, because. We're getting a little better at it but you, know the story that everything, is terrible and we're all gonna die is really, not not. Working it, never did you. Know but there's there's you know this is we have a campaign right now against Starbucks, because, of their cups this, is just an example of like to, think about how we could tell this story better so, their cups are not, recyclable, everybody, thinks they are they're not they. Go through four billion of them per year and this is a car cup wall which. We hang in front of their headquarters every once in a while which is eight thousand one hundred and eighty one cups which is one minute Starbucks. Cups and so if you think about storytelling so you have a forest, and then. The process to make this cup it's, in your hand for twenty minutes and then it's in the landfill forever, nope. They're. Not because because, they just haven't been sufficiently, motivated, but we're getting there yeah. It's a plastic liner, yeah. I know, well the thing is they're they're, kind of like you know I joke about them being sort of like Canada like everybody because of health care and good things Canada does they think they're environmental. Same, thing with Starbucks because there are, really a good company as far as, Fairtrade. Good. Wages paper college hire, all sorts of you know different groups of post military refugee, like they're great but, they're terrible on this issue and there's, got to be a you know a way to tell this story that's, empowering, and, not like oh another, bad thing because, they're, gonna change it's gonna take us a little while but they're gonna change bits it's exactly, I think the kind of thing that we need to tell in a better way so. Tell. Me how to tell that story. Thanks. For the interesting talk so, in the spirit of what previous, questioners have done I'll start with my qualifications I was camped at the black hole in the summer of 93 you'll, know what that means. But. My question is about transparency, and, I'm wondering what the obstacles. Have been to that for example I would think a forest company wouldn't want its. Competitors, knowing who its clients were or. Apparel. Company knowing, you. Know pal companies competitors, knowing who. Its suppliers. Were. What. What obstacles have you run into with that and what. Can we do about him we, started tracking or, trying.

To Track, extreme. Oil so, oil from the tar sands, and. We. Were told by our allies funders, and. Companies. Who could not track it like it was not possible when. Not only did they not want it to be tracked they don't want it then, they don't think it did anything it was possible to track. We. Were but you know if you think about it it's a little bit like pulp and paper which, they also said was impossible, but. It's all connected like you you know with, oil it's even easier it's a pipe like it's a pipe from one place to a refinery and a pipe from there to somewhere else and then eventually its trucks, so, we started going about mapping. It you know not, in the way you folks, map it but you know very sort of like nope, and taking, tracking. A truck that wet left a certain refinery, that we knew had tar sands following. It to a refueling, station and then, seeing corporate. Semis. Come in and refuel their thus linking them to the tar sands and so, we we did that and, eventually. We got all of these companies to, agree, to. Get, off of using. Tar sands oil to fuel their fleets. They. Didn't like it because they just did they don't, want a lot of transparency it, results. In a lack of control. And. The. Whole idea that everything, is a trade secret is insane. And, that's what they usually trot out in one way or another. But what we have seen over the last 20 years is, once transparency, is sort of forced upon them that, they, actually operate just fine. Everything. From pulp paper to 2x4, is like yes there are some things that are actual, trade secrets. 99%, of what they say are trade secrets are not and. So we're willing to carve out that 1%, fine you, can keep that secret but. You. Know, the world I think is going in this direction and, Google, is one of the drivers and and I think that companies that are going to succeed in the next decade plus, are gonna be able to deal with it and. Those that can't are. Going to suffer I think in the marketplace. And. It's, not something they're gonna like, or be comfortable with but it's happening anyway and, every. Industry that we've seen that. We've worked with has said it's impossible and then was, able to deal with it so, I think, it's more myth than anything, else. All. Right well thank.

You Mr. Paul, yeah thank you everyone, for coming thank. You for your questions. You. You.

2018-02-28

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