Climate Reality Show with Jenny Pell & Guest Dwight Wilson

Dwight Wilson
Okay, yeah, you and I go back aways. And by the way, I don’t consider you an old friend, I just consider you a longtime friend. Anyhow, ya know, it’s yes, there’s a lot to catch up on. But yes, a lot for me really did start with Peace Corps, which I did right out of college, and served in, in both Chile and Honduras and most of the almost two years, you know, in the village of three 400 People in Honduras with no electricity, running water, sanitation, healthcare kind of thing. So I’ve long considered that my graduate-level work my master’s degree, I learned a ton more in those two and a half years, I think that I would have inside some IV walls somewhere. But you know, when I left the school in 1984, and finished it is, I remember thinking, Well, what a remarkable opportunity for me. But why couldn’t some talented young person here in rural Honduras have a similar opportunity, and then come back here, dedicate the rest of his or her life, to bringing up the community here? I mean, I did what I did, and a couple of years, I might have had a little bit of impact. But then, you know, I’m gone. I’m back in the US. So that got me sort of thinking, and then yes, I met the folks at the Earth Stewards Network on Bainbridge, Bainbridge Island, Washington, and they had a program bringing first US and Soviet young people together when there was still a Cold War. And I’d been doing similar work with an organization called Plowshares bringing us and Soviet citizens together to do good work together. And, and yes, we did free planting and reforestation programs around the world. And then and then lo and behold, an amazing thing happened in November of 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. And I don’t know if you remember where you were that evening, but I’ll never forget when I saw it on TV and my jaw just hit the ground. I mean, nobody in 1989 was prepared to believe that that wall was ever going to come down.

Jenny Pell
Well, you know, you might, you might remember that I used to live in the Soviet Union. When I was a teenager, my father was a journalist in Moscow for NBC News. And I went through Checkpoint Charlie, I lived at, you know, in Soviet Russia. And we used to travel, you know, from West Berlin into East Berlin. And so, yes, I remember distinctly where I was, the Berlin Wall came down. But didn’t you also do the great peace march through Russia? Wasn’t that one of the one of your young things you did?

Dwight Wilson
There was a great peace march across the US and that was followed by the group the peace walk across the Soviet Union from Leningrad and Moscow. Yes, I did. I spent a month somewhat walking we did more bustling than walking from Leningrad and Moscow when it was Leningrad. And which was a remarkable opportunity to meet Soviets on their home territory. And to really get a sense of how very much alive World War Two still was for every family there in a way that it never was in our country, for example. So yeah, that led to the Peace Park project that the Seattle 200 Seattleites built in Tashkent or Sister City in, in Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. So yes, through that, through the US Soviet Peace work. I met, I made some amazing connections and friendships and then the wall comes down. And I remember feeling very spoiled at a pretty young age to think, well, I could get involved in this field. Everybody said you’re never going to see the end of the Cold War, the Soviets, and poof, down, down comes the Berlin Wall. It didn’t mean at the end of the day, huge amounts of things change on the planet, but that was something just none of us really thought could or might happen in our lifetimes. So in terms of being able to think, okay, big change is possible, as difficult and as hard as it may be to believe, that did give me a huge, you know, jolt of hope and inspiration at a fairly young age around age 30. So yeah, fast forward through these Peace Trees programs, we wanted to do something in Seattle, a bit more formal, if you will, or long term. And so 30 years ago, I mean, literally 30 years ago now, because we’re about to have a big celebration in Seattle, a number of us created EarthCorps as the first International Youth Conservation Corps. Starting, you know, with the Civilian Conservation Corps, and then big programs like California, you know, the US has had many different Conservation Corps, but we’ve never really been an international one until Earth court.

Jenny Pell
And we back up one second. So when you did piece trees, that was youth from that were international that went, for example, to Costa Rica, and you did tree planting projects there. And through the peace trees, didn’t you meet some of your key colleagues moving into Earth core?

Dwight Wilson
Yes, good. Yes, that’s exactly right. A lot of the people who really liked that Peace Trees model said, Yeah, let’s do the Peace Trees programs were two or three weeks long, they were short. And to some degree, one of the things I learned is, any two people or 20, or 30, people from all over the world can get along for a couple of weeks of working together, planting trees, having a nice time, put people together for six months or 12 months, much more challenging, which a lot of us said, Yeah, let’s let’s do that. But let’s also try to create sort of a professional core that is doing high-quality work. And ultimately, what happened to EarthCorps being paid well to do that high-quality work. So yes, I had a great team that moved with me from Peace Trees, in 1993, to start EarthCorps in Seattle. And yes, and for 30 years now, that organization has brought together young adults, early-mid 20, environmental restoration young professionals from the US AmeriCorps volunteers, and from about 80 countries around the world. And for six to 12 months, they work in small crews, together in a wide range of environmental restoration and conservation projects, all throughout Western Washington actually really all over Washington state. And it’s really just been a smashing success, about 75 80% of their income is earned income because of the high quality of the work they do, they can compete for contracts. And, it’s led to a lot of options, smaller programs all over the world like buy call and in the Philippines, in Guatemala as Kenya, etc, etc. So it’s it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s just been a great success, it’s been a very solid program, it doesn’t get a ton of publicity. But for all the volunteers, it’s something every year, something like 10 to 15,000 volunteers in the community, broadly come out to assist on projects, I mean, in terms of teaching young people from around the world how to do volunteer recruitment and management. It’s remarkable. I mean, corporations, schools, you name it. So it’s really quite well known. And beloved. And I like to say that the second best thing I ever did was to start EarthCorps. And first best thing I ever did was to leave it. Because after five years, I really wanted it to go global. Because we have a lot of great graduates, people like Miguel and Collins, folks, you’ve known years, wanted to take it back to Chile, and to Kenya and India, Pakistan, etc. And everybody else that that’s great, Dwight, but way too early for that. And if you want to go do that, go off on your own. So a bunch of us a bunch of us did. So it was it was hard to leave. But I also think any founder has to kind of make that call at some point or the organization has to make it for him or her. And it’s an important, it’s an important milestone in the development of any organization.

Jenny Pell
Well, particularly if you can plan for the legacy shift. Like a lot of people, you know, the exit strategy, the elegant exit strategy is what makes the organization strong. And being able to move on and leave it with all the components that it needs is so important.

Dwight Wilson
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And we had really good people who had strong backgrounds in the Conservation Corps and youth development movement. And yeah, you know, I’ve seen so many nonprofits that were known as so and so’s organization, you know, the founder and I just that always rubbed me wrong and I don’t need my name up in lights. I don’t want to be known for that. I just want us to do some good work and a lot of it. So yeah, and literally, I’ll be in Seattle for the 30th anniversary celebration of EarthCorps and yeah, there’s a lot of good stuff to celebrate and they’ve really had there’s a big piece in the Seattle Times to say that they’ve taken a nice turn towards environmental justice and a lot of great community efforts led by our old friend Miguel, who’s whose back working at EarthCorps has come full circle after 30 years. So, yeah, there’s been a lot of good stories, and it was certainly, certainly the entity I’m most proud of in my, in my life, just, you know, it’s been a great story. And it’s a huge inspiration for what I’m doing today with World Climate Corp.

Jenny Pell
Alright, well, let’s talk about the climate stuff. So for me, like, I’m very transparent about it, my climate-ometer it’s pegged. It’s been pegged for a long time, I studied climate change in college, I believed in global warming when I was 18. I, you know, have been teaching and helping people understand and, and wrap their brains around, and I would say, prepare for isn’t the right word, but expect what’s arriving on our doorstep, you know, today, every day now. And I’m really keen to connect with people around the world who are like I said, they’re in motion, they’re making a difference. They’re there. They’re dedicating their careers now to various aspects of Climate Reality. And one of my colleagues said, she says, I don’t even say Climate Reality anymore. I just say climate instability. It’s the one that gets people’s attention most. So tell us about the World Climate Corps. I’m really fascinated.

Dwight Wilson
You actually, you know, now that you mentioned, you were one of those people, I remember upon first meeting, who, who got it and knew it and was talking about it with that same level of passion, that it needs to be communicated today. And you may recall, when you know, we were all living together for a while, and you were, you know, launching this sustainable yurt company and I was just getting EarthCorps going that I kind of on a lark in 1989, hauled off and bought an electric car. There was a big company company down here in California, who was taking old Renaud cars, and and in transforming them, just putting a lot of very heavy batteries in the front is basically what happened. And I got a whopping 15 miles on a charge, I carried 100-foot extension cord with me, and I had to use it at least once that I recall because it was not ready for primetime, not by any shot.

Jenny Pell
So also, I just wanted to jump in here. So Dwight was married to his wife, Deborah, and they had a young son Eli was about four years old, and they were also pioneers in the cohousing community back in the 90s, early 2000s, and lived in a causing community called Wise Acres. And when I was starting the Nesting Bird Company, Dwight and Deb invested in my company, and then they also housed us for several years, we all lived in community together. And it was just a really great experience. I look back on that with such fond memories. And it’s really great. And your son is now married, which is just crazy to me.

Dwight Wilson
Turn 30 married yet the whole the whole nine yards. And no, they were they were really good times. And I often sort of forget, I don’t quite know why that I’ve been a social entrepreneur for you know, since the late 80s. And really the first thing I got into was that intentional community of Wise Acres, that is still going, and a bunch of us put together and made happen. And that kind of got me hooked on creating, you know, new innovative ways for people to live together, work together, make change in the world. So, yeah, that’s and, you know, twice, lived in cohousing communities and miss it. Frankly, I think it’s still, particularly in the US a great way. A great way to build community and at a time when that’s not always so easy. So, yeah, that was there were some crazy folks. But it was, you know, amazing, amazing stuff got done, too. Yeah. So any rate, you know, on the climate front? Yeah. I mean, I remember reading The End of Nature. I remember Hansen’s testimony before Congress, and, you know, and it seemed like, everybody was talking about this coming down the road, but, you know, decades hats and what wiser voices chimed in and said, well, maybe not. But it was an easy thing for many of us much of the time to sort of put off to some degree. And, you know, I like to say to folks, you’ve got to put as much pressure, bring to bear as much pressure as you can on government doing the right thing. And there’s some times you have to wait 35 years for government to begin doing the right thing. at a federal level. I’m referred to here and in this country, and I think like you, I’m pretty sobered by the realities of climate instability. And my God, what you all have been going through these last few weeks on Maui is just, I don’t have the adjectives for it. It is heart-rending, I can only imagine how heavy heavy your heart is. And yet, it seems, it seems so much, almost everybody’s reality today. And I don’t know how much. I don’t know how much the world is really catching up to what, what we have in front of us daily. But it is a different world we live in.

Jenny Pell
Well, I mean, it used to be we talked about even a deck a decade ago, we talked in my classes, certainly about how the 100-year storms and the 50-year storms are now changing to the 10-year and 5-year storms. Well, another 10-month and five-months. I mean, it’s like the rapidity of it, I think is lost on most people. And it feels brackish to me like we’re at this Brink now we’ve come to the edge. For me, I definitely expected in the Climate Reality end of things to be where we are today. What I did not see was the sort of rising a third authoritarian nationalism, coinciding with it that I did not predict. But this is a natural outgrowth of famine, war, instability, natural disasters. I mean, we’re gonna we’re entering into a famine, there’s no doubt that that’s coming. And so how do we, you know, what, what’s our what drop? Are we putting in the bucket? Right? So the, for me, I usually wear two hats. My big hat is climate resilient. agroforestry. That’s my big hat. And my smaller hat is neighborhood food. How do you get people to hyper-localize? And I know that that’s, that’s probably embedded in your world climate corps. But let’s hear about the model.

Dwight Wilson
I’m pulling for many. And certainly, I go well, I do go back 90 years to the Civilian Conservation Corps, I go back somewhat to Peace Corps, there’s obviously EarthCorps, there’s a number of other great programs out there internship programs and whatnot. I would say, I’ll get back to the CCC in a moment. I think, given the severity of the crisis today and what we are facing, there’s no doubt in my mind, that national armies, if not a global army of national armies that are here, in good part to defend and protect I know they do other things too, ought to be dealing with climate for first, second, and third, first and foremost, or, at the very least, we ought to have an alternative for those young people in all nations, who don’t want to take up armaments to defend or protect, but do want to, you know, start companies to educate their their fellow citizens dedicate their lives to being climate community leaders in a way that, you know, bring about the changes, the big changes fast that we’re all going to have to go through. So I really, in some ways, look at this on the order of an army. And I was very pleased that a few years ago, Australia, initiated a Green Army and only lasted five years and engaged about 1000 young people. But I was pleased to see someone using that name, I thought that was that was a good one. But, you know, the Civilian Conservation Corps, I do look at in good part just because of the size of it. And it’s important to remember, here was the country, the US in the midst of a Great Depression, not to mention, you know, a great ecological reckoning to or ecological disaster as well, in 1933. Then in very short order, you have a new president in Congress, they find the money and they make it so that three months. I mean, it was an APR of 33 that the Congress and Roosevelt decided they had the money allocated to get it going. Three months later, they had 300,000 corps members in the field. Unfortunately, they were all young men, they weren’t there were no women in the program or just a handful at one point. But, you know, recruiting, training, and then managing 300,000 young people nine years ago in this country was no small feat. And they did that over 10 years, they average about 300,000 people a year, the equivalent today, if you had every nation do this in the world, we have today the equivalent would be 20 million young people here, given that kind of opportunity to be of service in their communities slash nations. So that’s a big number. And if I think about 20 million people, young people every year, having the kind of opportunity we want to innovate with World Climate Corp, and we’re sure as heck hope we’re not going to be the only ones by any stretch. That begins to be a game changer and terms of how you educate, prepare train young people for careers in, you know, in this field and in many aspects of this field. Now, ultimately, you’re going to need government and government money to do it on that kind of a scale. What we’re proposing is can we start, say with 20,000 people probably over four or five years, can we raise enough money and support privately to do that we’ll work with governments but we’re not going to be dependent on their money to do

Jenny Pell
Let’s look at those costs for just a short moment here. So Maui is probably going to receive somewhere upwards of six seven $8 billion in aid to rebuild. Okay, give a bunch of people like us 1,000,000,001 of those billion dollars before the disaster hits and there’s like the whole design for disaster, climate-resilient, windbreaks restored watersheds. You know, fields are not lying, no species are causing brushfires. So I’m watching also in places like Florida, where the insurance companies are pulling out. So the costs of cleaning up after disaster are stunningly high. They don’t even compare, the investment upfront and being able to stave off the disaster is it’s maybe a bit of a harder sell. I mean, we had FEMA come to our door last week, and I’m sitting in my little property here that has a small watershed that once run through it, like where’s the money to protect this watershed right now, and they said, we only give money if your watersheds destroyed, we’re only here for that after the fact, after the disaster, you have to go to state and county to get your money to do the emergency preparedness part of it. It’s a really, really slow and cumbersome reality navigating the county grant money to get your watershed restoration money on a small scale. It’s silly, you know that, like you just can’t even do it, kind of silly. So, you know, it’s interesting, while we’re talking, I’m remembering having conversations with you decades ago about, wouldn’t it be great if you could do two years of service in this, you know, menu of choices of service things as a young person, and it was at the early days, or maybe even the genesis of the AmeriCorps. Right. And we were watching that with great interest. And, you know, that program had success, and it didn’t get as big as I expected it to. But the World Climate Corps, I mean, to be able to tap into the army end of things of that recruitment process with that recruitment methodology.

Dwight Wilson
Right? Yeah. Well, no. And, you know, people have talked about alternatives to military services in this country for a long, long time formal that for which you could get paid or academic credit or some, you know, down payment on a house all manner of different things, you know, that we entice people with, but reward them for doing. And, you know, I think some other nations are certainly a bit further ahead. But what you don’t see much of is going beyond the national boundaries to say, well, in dealing with something like climate, that does not respect those boundaries, and in its high time, we bring people together as one human species to say, wherever you’re born, whatever place you can, or citizen of belong to. We, we need your help everywhere. And so what about global service, not just national service? And I got a little taste of that in Peace Corps. I mean, you could you could argue, I certainly did something that wasn’t within the US national boundaries, but as a single sole US citizen in a you know, in a town or village of 400 Hondurans. I felt pretty I felt pretty gringo. I mean, you know, I, you know, I, but if you have, which we saw with Peace Trees, we’ve seen with EarthCorps if you bring people together from all over the world, and have them work anywhere on reforestation, urban greening, restoration, you name and the kinds of things we’ll be doing with World Climate Corp. You develop a whole different mindset, and I think skill set as well, that’s going to benefit you anywhere. And so ultimately, you know, the heart of World Climate Corp is, we’re saying to any young person on this planet, age 23 to 26, roughly, I think it’s going to be wherever you are. World Climate Corps is gonna give you the opportunity to work, train, and learn anywhere else on the planet, with people from everywhere. So wherever you are, you can go anywhere and work with people from everywhere. What that means is, well, a team of 25 people in a team that could have three people will have basically every region of the world represented, there’ll be equal numbers of folks in the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Middle East, Europe, India, China, the rest of it of Asia. And those kind of 25-person teams literally can be working in any region, town city, eventually, on the planet. That’s, that’s, that’s the broad hope with this. And the idea is that within those teams of 25 people, there’ll be subdivided into groups of 234 people who will carry out work internships, if you want to call that fellowships with public-private NGO groups in localities, that already organizations public, private NGO, already carrying out successfully carrying out a range of climate solutions, and are looking for the kind of, you know, additional wealth, new insights, additional man and woman power, to help grow, you know, the good work that we’re already doing to do more of it better, and to be open to the idea of the kind of innovations that people from around the world are gonna bring with them. Wherever, wherever they go, whether that is Maui, whether it is Mali, in Africa, whether it’s, you know, Belgium doesn’t doesn’t matter. We’re looking for young adults who are going to be able to add greatly at a very local level, and also learn from people you know, that are just starting their careers and learn from the people who are mentoring them and employing them. And take that knowledge, you know, the things they learned in the course of the year, back home with them?

Jenny Pell
Well, we’ve been talking in our group here about the importance of building curriculum templates that cross over cultural and climate boundaries. I mean, I mean, place boundaries, right? So what’s the core curriculum that lets people take it home and fill it in with their own cultural values, their own plant species, their own watershed reality. And so it’s, it’s, a lot of people want a recipe, and in many ways, what we’re giving them as ingredients. And then we’re saying, take all these ingredients home and add all your local ingredients, and you guys are going to make your own, you know, cook your own stew. And that’s really important. I mean, I really feel strongly that the permaculture curriculum, would dovetail wonderfully with the world core curriculum, because it’s based on ethics and principles. And it’s all in there. And they had a years ago, we had a man and he was from Iran, Ali Sharif, he worked in Brazil, mostly, and he did something similar, he would get teams of five, to 10. And he would train them as a cadre in the different disciplines of permaculture it would be growing food, water, waste, electricity, natural building, and of course, the decision making invisible structures we call them but the, the social permaculture parts of it, and then there’s teams would go out to an area or a village and have amongst them a pretty broad expertise to be able to bring to bear same thing with Peace Corps. I mean, the Peace Corps could have benefited with a Peace Corps permaculture curriculum iteration that helped them be more successful, even if it’s just saving seed or just stealing water, or there’s all kinds of things that can it can build on the capacity of people that are in the field.

Dwight Wilson
Yeah. Well, and, and I think the version gentleman in Brazil, absolutely. Did it right with with having people work together in teams and go out and do it. And that, I mean, you see some of that, and theScore it’s not just individuals, but I feel like it’s in so many parts of the world. If it team can be so much more successful, especially if it has equal number of men and women, and, you know, then then when just one lone individual can do and I’m gonna, you’re gonna have to give me more info about that. But, but yeah, that that, that is somewhat somewhat the idea here and, you know, we envision worldwide, the workweek technique, you know, usually being four days, maybe four and a half days, 30 to 36 hours, whatever that comes to, but every Friday or whatever the you know, fifth day of the week is is a Training Education Day where everybody’s at the local WCC office, and is both sharing about what they’re doing, what their challenges are? How can how can you over there help us with this problem we have, etc, etc. But also Yes, going through a curriculum about a number of the things you just ticked off starting, starting with participatory decision making, or that’s right up there. Not to mention participatory democracy. But, and those and those, you know, those Friday opportunities for a whole team, all 25 people to come together, realize the power and strength of their, of their unit, and learn together, learn from each other. And yeah, like you say, mix and match all those beautiful ingredients from around the world. Because, man, you you create some damn good stew when you do that.

Jenny Pell
So where’s the pilot project? What’s that? Where’s the pilot project going to be?

Dwight Wilson
Well, still to be determined, we want to start with a pretty hefty, pretty large-scale prototype, with 1000, at least 1000 fellows working in probably 15 to 20 countries. So there’ll be two countries each in the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, Europe, etc. And I mean, we have some good likely candidates based on places where a number of my colleagues are working. So places like Kenya and Ghana and Spain and Estonia and Estonia, in part because of all the work they do in governance and participatory democracy. North India with a great green architect, firm there they went through earthquake 30 years ago, in South India with deepen Praveen, I think you might have met them over the years. Yeah. So I’m definitely you know, there’ll be a nice variety of big countries, small countries, quote, rich, poor, you know, a good variety. But we want to start this, we want to start this large, it’s got to be, it absolutely has to screen global, it’s got to, you know, have probably representatives of 5060 countries who are participating. And a lot of those folks, the whole idea will be to have them go back to their countries, and begin to launch similar similar efforts there. So that first Vanguard that first year or two will really be seeding the growth of this concept throughout the world.

Jenny Pell
So here in this spin this large launch of this, you know, pilot project is more like a fleet project, not just one pilot, who is backing you at this stage, who are you turning to for this really large capacity building that you have to do in the first few years?

Dwight Wilson
Right. So my hope is, the intention here is we’d really like to see, like everything else, the funding of this be very decentralized, very bottom up so that most of the initial participating countries that was hosting and some of the big ones sending the most books will actually be having philanthropists and or investors in their countries who are putting up half a million 1,000,002 million kinds of amounts. And that that added together, you multiply by 50 6070 countries, we have enough to get to, you know, a first a large first and second year going now, long term, Jenny, I think but I’m not sure because I need much more knowledgeable people than me behind, you know, joining to really make this decision. I sense that for this to grow in the way I’d like it to a very organic growth, it’s probably much more likely with a for-profit funding model, which is much of what Earth Corp has actually, then it will always be independent on third parties in a typical nonprofit model.

Jenny Pell
Well, I Okay, I’m going to jump in there, I encourage you to look at the charitable trust model as a legal structure, because everything can be a beneficiary. And last year, I had a series of meetings with attorneys, and I asked Can the mountain be a beneficiary? Can a river be a beneficiary? Can the forest be the beneficiary? And the answer is yes. And so you can. It’s a very different model of wages and payments and understanding how that’s done. But right, but you could have a board of advisors, unlike a nonprofit, where you really can’t pay your board. Right, you could actually have a board of advisors that you hire, and they’re hired to do very specific things like raise $50 million. They’re hired to find the locations of where the food forests are supposed to go in the folks from draw down the Paul Hawken compilation, you know, they’ve identified 2.5 million acres globally, that are best suited for agroforestry. And so there’s some colleagues there to sort of seek out as well, but what I like about the charitable trust model is that it’s kind of bulletproof with the IRS, but it also allows you to aggregate money very quickly, and how to have a different way of operating than a standard nonprofit. It’s meant to protect intergenerational wealth like it’s set up to hold onto your assets. I just want to throw that in the table for you.

Dwight Wilson
That’s, that’s very, very good advice. And I would, I will absolutely check it out. Yeah, I mean, the reality is I think once this has gone well, one thing I know, you know, we’re going to try to have third party’s fun the initial couple of years so that any young person can participate without having they are the people behind them having to worry about funding in any organization can host people without necessarily having to worry about paying them a stipend or a salary. Ultimately, the model to my mind works best and most ethically, when organizations around the world do pay people to carry out internships with them. I mean, that’s, that’s the bottom line. Earth core is still 30 years in Seattle, let’s say the last 25 as part of America, still dealing with the pittance that America allows people to make. I mean, just scandalous wages and many of them have to have second jobs, and they’re working really hard first job as an Earth Corp member. So in the long run, yes, if your organization, public, private NGO, anywhere on the planet is hosting 234 people for a year, you will pay them, you will pay them a decent living wage so that they can afford rent and food and all those good things. And there will be additional funds that come from organizations that are behind those young people who are committed to going back home and being climate community leaders in one way, shape, or form. So I do think I do think there’s going to be enough that young people worldwide are going to love about this. There’s no question No, no, I’m there. And I also feel like organizations, public, private NGO, worldwide are going to love about this, that the demand will be so great that I think I think it really has the ability to grow pretty, pretty organically. And it’s not making anybody rich, that’s not our intention, but it’s going to sustain a lot of decent livelihoods. And, and, and yeah, I so that that’s my hope long term. But that’s also one of those areas that I know I need, I need some good people around me in the organization, that’s not my forte.

Jenny Pell
Well, the goal has to simply not be to get rich anymore. So that think that model has proven itself to be a big fat failure. And when I look at the amassing of wealth into the few hands of a few uncaring people, it’s just the most frustrating, ridiculous, wrong failures, I can, you can just like get this list off all the egregious bad things about it. And then here we are, like I said, it feels brackish. We’re on the brink of this radical shift globally. And so what we want to do as quickly as possible is put together, you know, a raft of choices for people, but I’ve been working with some people in their 20s, also just recently, and one of them’s from Argentina, and he was in working in my garden. And he said, Yeah, I do other jobs. But really, the only work I want to do right now is stuff that’s moving into solutions for climate change. And that’s the overall sentiment, I have a teenager, I have a kid who’s 16 The kids are really sad. They’re really depressed, they don’t even feel like school, what why even bother, right? There’s no future. It’s so past the point of solutions at this stage that they don’t even know how to how to insert themselves in a solution oriented mindset. And so to be able to have their we talked about it growers magazine, how we’re brokers for hope, but to broker hope is so important. And to be able to be part of that, you through this training through these years, through these international colleagues through these global friendships that you’re going to make you come back home with this expertise. You know, you’re just you’re an ambassador of hope at that point, really.

Dwight Wilson
Basler is a great word and, different than you when you and I were growing up and coming up that ability once back home or wherever you go to next and the planet let’s not forget many marriages will come out of this to which has happened at Earth core, which I’m a huge, huge huge proponent of, but wherever it is, you settle wherever it is, you go wherever quote, home is, you’ve got this quite remarkable opportunity to have those colleagues and their colleagues, you know, at your fingertips in a moment’s notice. I’m always amazed. I mean, I just have my WhatsApp, you know, page in front of me and just and just day long. I mean, the conversations I’m having just around the world, you know, blows my mind. So, so very different than, say, Peace Corps where for a long time I lost touch with the folks in that village because, you know, just I’d moved they’d moved and you know, both not, you know, it was it was a different world. So yeah, it’s it’s, it’s the start of something And I know a lot of these folks are going to be dear friends, colleagues, fellow ambassadors for the, for the rest of their lives, which is a very powerful thing starting at age 2324.

Jenny Pell
Well, it’d be interesting to even look ahead, where it’s a mandated service, right? So you come of age, you have two years mandatory service, whether it’s in a military role, or whether it’s in a service role, or whether it’s in a climate. What’s the right word here, proactive climate mitigation role, there’s so many different, you know, ways that you can plug into that. So some years ago, I looked at doing a master’s degree in Copenhagen at the university there, they had a master’s in science and climate. And it was one of the only programs in the world is taught in English people from all over the world came. And they had everything from computer modeling, to taking ice core samples in Greenland, to agroforestry. To, you know, so that they had this long list of disciplines within their master’s program, which is, which has just matured and matured year by year. So, I’d like to see more programs like that, as well as people understanding the depth of career opportunities, in a changing world in climate in addressing the climate crisis that we’re facing now. Because let’s not mince words, here. It’s a crisis, the crisis, this is the beginning of the crisis. This is just the beginning of the crisis. And I feel deep in my core, like deep in this visceral way that people, most people, the huge majority of people really do not understand the breadth and depth. And the challenge is coming up very, very quickly now. And this spring, this is 2023. So this spring, I said to my, my family, my colleagues, and like, this is going to be the summer of hell for some people. And hopefully, by fall, which is now of this year, governments organizations are going to be ready and willing to finance even experimental stuff like solutionary things. So one thing we’re working on it growers magazine is we’re putting together the climate resilient orchard vineyard and all of growth. And then I have another colleague of me in my ear saying, Oh, no, no, we need to be doing medicinal forest. And I, you know, I’ve done a lot of food forests and I love doing food forests. It’s a great model. It restores watersheds, it puts a buffer zone on the ag fields, it’s pollinator pathways, it’s endemic species, it’s food, it’s timber, it’s all kinds of things. It’s grazing, whatever you want, in that, you know, in your food forest agroforestry model. But if we go to the bigger umbrella of that, and I’m gonna just sort of land this on you while you’re thinking about your organization is what we’re really looking at is the healing forest. So that’s the umbrella if we pop up the healing forest umbrella. Underneath that umbrella, you have medicinals, pollinators, gleaning people living in a culture, right, you have all you know, heals me, it heals the land, it hears the watershed heals the reef. So that’s the big umbrella that I’m thinking about now. And it’s I think, for some people, well, the first time you hear those words together, the healing forest, okay, there’s sort of woowoo meter goes off, but it’s not at all it’s really actually a way to regenerate through a variety of, you know, forestry solutions,

Dwight Wilson
Right. Yeah, absolutely. No, and, and I’m recalling now probably close to 30 years ago, when you were living at Wiseacres, you bought one of the permaculture gurus there for a weekend workshop. And it was very cool to see the land. It’s such as it was then through through your eyes. I mean, how you talked about it and saw it and his as well. And, and, and I realized that, wow, if he sees this, she sees so much more here than I see. It was it was beautiful. It was super inspiring. It’s like, yeah, okay, and both what’s going on, but also what’s possible. And I remember I was just super jazzed by that weekend. I mean, I was kind of on the periphery. But it was very cool to see the learnings that were going on and the connections that were made really cool.

Jenny Pell
I really hope we can weave some of the permaculture ways and you know, into the world climate corps because there’s just so much overlap. I mean that the more technical scientific end of things, there’s lots of opportunity there as well. But I think for the for, particularly in the village scale or particularly on the On the, well, I’m gonna take that back. It’s not me, it scales, that’s what’s so great about permaculture, its urban, its rural, its suburban, like I live in the suburbs, right now, my subdivision could probably get to 5% of its food in a few years. For us to jump from 5% to 20%, it’s not that hard, it’s really hard to get from zero to 20%. And so what we’re looking at is that fractal that, that, that that mosaic piece, that, you know, there’s a mosaic, there’s a piece here, there’s a piece here, and then as each of those grows, they grow closer together. And so what we’re looking at is that embedding the skills within the communities, this is what you’re talking about, is sending people home with the palette of skills, the raft of skills that allow them to, to go from very little to some, and then very quickly, we’re looking at the scale jump, it’s not just, it’s not necessarily this curve that goes up, it’s sort of like that first five, 10%, and then it goes up really fast. And so that’s, that’s what we want to inculcate in people’s, in their, in their open, like, when you’re that age, and you’re meeting people around the world, you’re so your, your mind is open, your heart is open, your ideas are sparking off, but we want them to have confidence of the scale jump, they want them to really understand what to how to prepare for, and how to jump back, that would be feel really important to me.

Dwight Wilson
Absolutely. And, and, you know, the, you know, our tagline for world climate corps, you know, are our three pretty simple keywords, climate, community collaboration. So it’s the CCC again, but I don’t happen to be the right three words to and you know, exactly what you’re talking about there that, that, that weaving together of community and reminding people that, that there is there’s great value in proximity and working with your neighbors, and, and using land together and having microgrids and God only knows, you know, preparing for, quote, natural disasters, all of it. I mean, it’s, it’s in so many places be a lost art or starting to be a lost art. And that’s, that’s not good for the human experiment, we cannot do that. Not a good idea.

Jenny Pell
in this, you know, in the last gasps of these capitalists, greed and rape of the land and, and mass amassing of wealth at the expense of anything, including all your descendants, this is one of the things I really don’t understand is that you’re willing to basically fuck up the planet for all your descendants. Like, I don’t, I don’t understand it, period. But here we are at this juncture of the failure of capitalism right in front of us, and how do you make massive change at this time? Because we have to, we have to have massive change. And that’s the empowerment of people to see themselves as an expression in Spanish. It’s like, no, gotta go to el mar. cuenta. Every drop in the ocean counts. You know, it’s like, you know, I’m a drop, you’re a drop, and then we were trying to fill our bucket or go on our buckets overflowing. Okay, well, let’s get the next bucket, you know, so we have to be prepared for the, for the, for the spring, you know, like we’re trying to fill up the well again, right, the wells are empty. And this is what happens to when you when you cut all the forest down, when you cut all the shrubs down when you you know, there’s no forest sponge anymore. There’s no ability, you know, and then, of course, the myriad creatures that live in those forests are gone as well. All of the subtle energies in those forests are gone as well. And so that, you know, looking at that metaphor of the spring, that that you yourself are a wellspring, but also that we’re, we’re intentionally teaching people how to recharge the spring.

Dwight Wilson
Right? Yes. Very, very, very much. Yeah. And I think, you know, there’s no question that one of the great ways to do that is to, to challenge people to go beyond what is comfortable to, you know, that great bumper sticker that says, do something good for your country, leave, you know, any leave and come back? I mean, we’re not saying just leave permanently and leave at least not in most cases. But yeah, but but to go beyond your boundaries, to see a new land to learn a new language or at least, you know, attempt to, and to, you know, I, I, it’s funny when you go to a place like Honduras, which, you know, 40 years ago, I can remember we all call it a Banana Republic, which was really the most offensive You know, and then of course, it becomes a store. But I was just saying to someone the other day that we do you know, the porch fest, music festivals that happen in people’s backyards. And fortunately, we just had one in the neighborhood I lived in, in San Rafael, just on Sunday, it was great. And a couple of people came friends and friends, and we were doing the introductions. And that very unfortunate thing, of course, happened that someone forgot the name of someone else that are making the introduction to I said, Well, isn’t it a shame that we don’t do what the Hondurans do that when you get together, say, I’m with someone and a friend comes, instead of having to remember the names and introduce them, I say to each other a friend, a friend, and those two people introduce each other to themselves to each other, it doesn’t matter if it’s my partner, it doesn’t matter who the family member, they did the introduction. So every culture, every place has got, you know, all kinds of wisdom that we can all benefit from. And, you know, but, you know, going, going out away from the safe and the familiar, is challenging. And then learning to work with people from all over the world, we, you know, has plenty of challenges. But you know, that opportunity, once you get through it, once you realize you’ve got this incredible support unit, with his team of 25 people from all over the world, they’re all going through it too, you know, we’re taking people to a whole different level, a whole different way of looking at themselves of looking at the world. And I think, I think the odds, the chances of feeling a great deal more hope, confidence inspiration comes with that it doesn’t always turn out that way. But I would say most times it does. And, and that’s, that’s a good part what all of us need, because, you know, we ain’t gonna get this work done without that level of hope and inspiration, and, and support and teamwork.

Jenny Pell
And also to, you know, let us know that you can leave this educational matrix and head out into the world and do something really, really different. That is skill-based. So I mean, I went to Georgetown University, I graduated with the degree from the School of Foreign Service, and I went to Canada, and I planted trees for years, I mean, so I would plant trees, all summer long up in the Canadian Rockies and off the Inside Passage living on a boat. And then I would come home in the off-season. And I would I worked in the trades, I learned how to do carpentry, but furniture I learned I learned got my truck driving license, like I learned I got all these other corollary skills which have served me all my life, you my education has served me too. But I would say that those skills have served me equally as well, if not more, and this idea that you’re not supposed to put any time or energy into your vocational end of things is ridiculous. So I would imagine that the world Corp, will Climate Corp is gonna have an element of that sort of can do, you know, hands-on training. Yeah.

Dwight Wilson
Very, very, very much. So. And, and I think that’s one of those things that I trust will sort of burble up quite organically that different people in different groups, whether they’re staff or the fellows themselves, young people themselves are going to find mentors and bring some of their skills to bear. I mean, you got, you got 25 People from all over the world with, you know, an incredible range of backgrounds and skill sets. Yeah, I think I think they’ll, I think there’ll be a lot of that, too. And I’m just, I can’t wait to see how these initial all, particularly as initial groupings, you know, just what it’s going to lead to, I think there’s going to be all manner of great surprises, so many unexpected ideas and innovations. And, you know, I, if we’re talking again, three years from now, you know, I’ll, I’ll have a whole lot of things that I never saw that coming mostly good, I hope. But, you know, that’s, that’s the cool thing about starting anything. Never know where it’s gonna go.

Jenny Pell
What are your next steps and when when is your anticipated first core going to be in motion?

Dwight Wilson
Well, we’d love to launch this, this whole thing you know, a bit more than a year from now, maybe a year and a half. It’s going to entirely depend on when we get the funds to do it and assemble the team. The good news is we got some great people all over the world who are ready to go on this. I mean, really, in the people that I both have known and worked with in many cases for decades, or colleagues are there so there’s a lot of people already kind of ready to go who’ve got great backgrounds and youth service and cores in restoration, reforestation, you name it. But yeah, we’ve, we’ve got to raise, we’ve got to raise some money, good amount. We got to pull together both a global team and local team.

Jenny Pell
I really look forward to following your progress on this. I think it sounds really vital. It sounds really fun. The scale of it is what really appeals to me. You know, just that To be able to imagine different countries having observed this branch, you know, for the climate is so important. We might had a colleague of mine who years ago, looked up, I think it was in California, where they built these berms in California to the TCC did back in the 30s. And it’s the most fertile green area, you know, they went Google stalking, they found it on Google Earth. And they it’s the most fertile green area in all of the areas surrounding it. So you know, these enduring designs and installations of things that will, will serve the ecosystem will serve the watershed will serve the people that live there will serve biodiversity, right, all all of that it’s so crucial at this juncture to have things that are stabilizing within the system.

Dwight Wilson
Right now, it couldn’t be more critical. And the time is now if it wasn’t really, you know, 20 years ago, but here we are today. And this has to happen. It has to happen fast. It has to happen big and I have no question in my mind that young people worldwide will respond in big time. And I think I think organizations worldwide well, as well, I just think when we, when we get that mix, right? You know, this is gonna this is going to go and grow and touch an awful lot of lives and ecosystems all over the world.

Jenny Pell
Well, I look forward to introducing you to some of my colleagues in different countries around the world that would be very interested in your project. And let’s plan to revisit next year, if not earlier, when you have an A when you have a benchmark reached that feels like you’re ready to talk about how it’s going. Let’s reconnect and get you back on the Climate Reality Show.

Dwight Wilson
I would love that, Jenny.

Jenny Pell
Well, thanks for joining us today on the Climate Reality show and we’ll see you next time.