72: No Room for Being Cynical with Ted Danson

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Paul Dickinson: The organizing principle.

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Christiana Figueres: It's an organizing principle. That's big.

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Paul Dickinson: That's huge.

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Christiana Figueres: Because you're saying, you know, it's about food, it's about pollution or hopefully less pollution, it's about drilling, it's about energy, it's about temperature rise, it's coral reefs. I mean, it's just so many things. And so, you use the oceans to communicate all the relationship between all of these different human endeavors and natural ecosystems, and they all belong together.

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Ted Danson (guest): Yes. And it really is, it's really a mirror. You can look at the oceans and you can see how we're doing on land. You can see everything we've done and aren't doing. So, yeah.

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Paul Dickinson: No, I think of all the nations, you know, all these little lines on the map. And we were talking to this wonderful astronaut, Jessica Maia, and she was saying like, you know, from space, you just, the nations aren't there. And then she also said, and the ocean is everywhere and it's one ocean.

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Ted Danson (guest): Yeah. I mean, our job, I think, as people who love the environment and talking about climate change and oceans and all of that, you know, you always bump into how can people not believe in this? How can people not believe the science and all of that? So I always I think it's healthier to say, OK, what are we not doing right in our communications? I mean, I'm sure there's some people beyond reach, but, you know, what are we not doing right? And so I always, besides all of the stuff that we were talking about, that has most the scientific and spiritual bent to this, I could make an argument about this whole conversation from your pocketbooks point of view. You know, from a financial jobs point of view. You know, I can talk about it. We can talk about it from a social justice point of view. You know, so everything you want to do to make America better, do the right thing for the oceans, and you damn near will have to address all of those issues.

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Paul Dickinson: So let me ask a specific question about Oceana, if I may. I mean, there's a fantastic story about forming, you know, the leading kind of non-governmental organization or, I don't think we've ever found the right name for the plural sector or the third sector, but Oceana has been so effective over such a long time. And I even heard you talking about over your journey, like not throwing bricks, but becoming friends with oil company executives or whatever, and trying to find that middle ground. With your incredible experience, can I ask you, what do you think has been the way Oceana has made the greatest interventions? And what lessons there are for the thousands of activists that are listening to the show about how you can make change in the world? What are you really proud of having achieved with Oceana?

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Ted Danson (guest): I hope I'm going to answer this, but I will probably ramble a little bit. Oceana was started with Pew Foundation money, and they set up international foundations all over the world to participate so that there was a $14 million budget kind of right off the bat. And because the thought was...

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Christiana Figueres: Not a bad start.

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Ted Danson (guest): No, no, no.

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Christiana Figueres: Not a bad start.

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Ted Danson (guest): But the reason was...

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Christiana Figueres: You're going to make many NGOs very jealous about that little piece of information.

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Paul Dickinson: No, it was earned. It was earned. But please, sorry, Ted, carry on.

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Ted Danson (guest): But the point was, we're not going to be able to come... be a membership organization which takes so much time to set up and costs so much to bring back that dollar. You have to spend so many dollars that the crises facing the ocean are so urgent that that was the thought behind jump-starting it with that kind of money. And we've moved past that and beyond that. We no longer have the pew money. But so anyway, they looked at what the state of the oceans. They did a state of the oceans study for many years. And they looked at that list of the most pressing things. And then they looked at what they felt. I should say we felt, because I joined early on, we felt we could make a difference. We didn't want to just educate and take a swing at things or jump up and down or throw bricks. We wanted to change policy to put more, well, it turned out to put more fish in the ocean. Because the most pressing thing, it turned out, was overfishing. There was a study by Daniel Pauley from the British Columbia, University of British Columbia, that mid 80s, 87, fisheries around the world were starting to decline. More and more boats going out with more and more sophisticated equipment that could point to that fish over there. And yet, they were coming back with fewer and fewer fish. We were literally overfishing our oceans. And over the years, we found out why and had programs addressing that. But it was all based on putting more fish in the ocean. And you then have to do all of the things that you would have to do just to preserve biodiversity, you have to do to put more fish in the ocean. And you have to approach it from all these different ways. But that was the organizing principle for Oceana, was change policy. We will have three or four or five or six campaigns that deal with oceans, that deal with putting more fish in the ocean. We're not going to scoot over here and take that. We're not going to be opportunistic. We're going to focus on what we think we can do to make a difference. And then that led over the years to realizing everything that we were doing really was talking about save the oceans, feed the world. If you do those three things, stop destroying habitat, stop overfishing to the point where and wasteful fishing where you throw overboard dead or dying, one third of the world catch because it's not your fish or it's too small or the nets are so indiscriminate. And if you use science to set the quota for how many fish you can take out and still be viable, then you could, if you can quantify fish this way, you could provide a billion fish meals a day sustainably to the world. So now you're talking about saving the oceans and feeding the world. And all of a sudden, when we did that, money started to pour in from people like Bloomberg Philanthropies, because that feeding the world is a much more of an eye-catching statement than saving fish. You talk about saving fish, I can put people asleep in about five minutes.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: You should hear us talk about greenhouse gas emissions. That's quite good as well at doing that, yeah.

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. When we get into numbers. Ted, I can totally see that policy changes are really critical to reducing or eliminating overfishing. That link is very evident to me. Now, these days, overfishing is as important in people's attention as plastic in the oceans, or differently said plastics in the oceans, has risen as a topic of attention quite precipitously. I would love to hear you explain if you believe, and if not, whichever way, that policy changes can be equally effective with ocean plastics as they are with overfishing, are they?

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Ted Danson (guest): Yes, yes, we believe that. I mean, talking for us, for me, talking about plastics then it comes under the category of climate change, greenhouse gases, it comes under petroleum products. So it's kind of the same conversation, but let's just talk about plastics for a minute because, yeah, I mean, we all see the pictures and it's sad and fear. You know, there's so much plastic in the oceans now. And we also see the pictures of birds and sea mammals being strangled by the plastic fishing gear and other plastic. You see the stomachs of birds that are just full of undigestible plastic. And a lot of critters in the ocean do that. It looks like a jellyfish. It looks like something small that they can eat. So then their stomachs fill up with it, and then they starve to death, because they are full, but full of plastic. So there are all these emotional things about plastics that get people's attention. But then there's also what, from the fracking and drilling and producing the oil that makes the plastic that goes into making the plastic, and then the how do you dispose of it, the plastic, when you want to recycle it or get rid of it. That life cycle of plastic is a huge contributor to climate change, to greenhouse gases. And the reason why we talk about that from an ocean-only organization is climate change has the ability to come and undo literally all the work that we're doing. Climate change is warming the waters. So, coral reefs are dying. Fish that are local in your area that have been plentiful are swimming following the cold water north, and they're in Canada now, not in your backyard. Acidification, which comes from the oceans not being able to absorb any more carbon without changing the pH balance, which means the little critters can't make the shells that allow them to be the bottom of the food chain. All of that. So, plastic is a huge subject for the oceans, and it's kind of tied in from, in my mind, to part of the climate change. So, what we've done, one of the campaigns that we have is to reduce single-use plastic, to do away with that. I mean, when you think about bottles that are water bottles that are used and soda bottles that are used for single-use, they make a product that will last literally forever, in one form or another, it will last forever, and it's to be used just once. So, that doesn't make sense. So, you go after the corporations, the companies that are making them, but you also go to the public and you say, hey, because the corporations say, we have recycling, plastic companies say we have recycling. You all are just not recycling well enough. But the truth is, 9% of all the plastics ever been in the oceans have been recycled, 9%, you know. So, it doesn't really complete, it doesn't work. It doesn't mean stop recycling, but it does not work. And, you know, we know for a fact that oil companies are telling their stockholders, I know we're going to lose money on transportation, but don't worry, plastic is up and running. And they're going to build nine new plastic company factories, huge ones all over the world, and you know, supposed to quadruple by 2050. So this is a huge problem. So anyway, back to public, you know, here's what people can do and what they deserve. Give us a plastic free option. When I walk into a store, you know, I should be able to say, actually, I don't want any plastic. Or Amazon, please don't use plastic in shipping me what I need during this day of COVID. You know, they need to give us options because when you do a survey, which Oceana did to Amazon customers, 86% of them are worried about the amount of plastic you can want to be able to have that plastic-free choice. Wow. So it's about trying to change minds, and it's going to be big. All these problems are huge, but we have to.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.

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Ted Danson (guest): We literally have to, and that's one way. Sorry.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: No, no, no. That's so interesting. That piece about changing minds is, I think, so fascinating because you're right, there has to be a policy solution to all of these different challenges, and we have to push for that. We need to find the pathway to it. But the piece that we've never really cracked, I think, in climate change, and I think this might be true for oceans as well, is that the historical abuses that we have visited upon our world are the outcome of our cultural assumptions and our norms around our role in the world. You can make historical arguments for what that looks like and why that might be the case. We now need to make a cultural transformation about how we see the world and our role in it that might be realistically expected to take a couple of generations and we've got to do it in 10 years. So that transformation is quite exciting and quite overwhelming. And it feels now, particularly in this age of COVID, that we've moved into a phase where everything's changing and everything's possible. So it could reform in this positive way and it could also sort of start to fall apart really quickly.

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Ted Danson (guest): Well, I mean, politics, who knows, people's, we're all full of human foibles, including selfishness and greed. We're all, we're a mixed bag. Of course. Can we evolve in time? Yeah. And can politics gather around and can we be smart and think about science? All of that is up for grabs. But here's what's not up for grabs. A virus that's shut down the world, shut it down. And that is, I don't know that I can prove it, but you do know that it's connected to climate change. You do know that more of this is coming our way because everything is moving towards the equator or north, things that we haven't dealt with before because of climate change is going to come into our sphere. Climate change is not going away. We can argue, we can shake fists, but this is coming our way. I think that hopefully we will have learned our lessons that, and one more thing, sorry for using quick words or phrases to explain what I'm thinking, but Black Lives Matter is not going away. Social injustice, racial injustice, systemic racism is not going away. It has reached that point. COVID is not going away unless we do those smart things. Climate change is not going away unless we start doing these drastic makeovers on society. The good news is, if you get people's attention, you are going to create jobs. You are going to do all these things that are better for all of us, you know. It's tricky.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I mean, in that, it's really interesting. Black Lives Matter is fascinating. You know, I mean, Colin Kaepernick was taking a knee, all these other things were happening. It kind of was a bit on the fringe and people were criticizing it. Then all of a sudden it's everywhere, obviously, as a result of an outrage that happened in Minneapolis. But how, I mean, there's relatively few people like you, who have been in the public eye for decades and have always had this concern about these broader issues around environment and you sort of made that part of your public persona and you've pushed for it consistently. But from where we're sitting, it feels like that's a really important part of culture change, is people who shape our culture in this sort of celebrity focused world that we're in. People like you and the career you've had over many years and so many other people shape what so many people think, but relatively few people choose to use that platform in a consistent, dedicated way for change. Why not and how can we persuade more of them to do it?

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Ted Danson (guest): I think you'd be surprised. I bet you there are more people than we are, even I realize. I think there are more people out there doing this. I mean, look at Fire Drill Friday. You know, people showed up out of the woodwork to be with Jane Greta. You know, obviously, Thunberg is has motivated people. I you know what? He is, you know, where I'm dancing around this, you know, what we need to do is is elect a new administration because right now we have people who are literally denying that science and, you know, climate science is real and a lot of them know better, but they are willing to say, you know, Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. A lot of the Republican senators went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton. They know what's real. But, you know, it is, well, there's oil, there's oil money, there's a whole bunch of kind of toxic mixture of stuff that makes people want to deny it. But we do need to switch out the administration and let science have its day again. But I do think people will listen a little bit more because science is saving their lives now in hospitals. I think, you know, we're losing jobs all over the place. Well, guess what? If we do the right thing, and as much as like the Green New Deal scares the crap out of half the world or something, it is not a bad blueprint, not us. We like it. Yeah, it's a blueprint. And people who don't want it because it threatens their way of making money, oil companies and people who are hooked into oil companies will fight it. But the truth is, you're going to create more jobs, places. The inner city will be better because you will make sure that dirty energy is not getting dumped on their laps as always. You can make sure the jobs go to those parts of the world, including the rust belt and including West Virginia. Anyway, boy, I haven't had coffee for like 12 hours.

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Paul Dickinson: More coffee, more coffee.

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Christiana Figueres: Wow. If that was all on no coffee, now can you imagine with some coffee? Well, Ted, just in the last few minutes, you've gone through an amazing array of issues that make you angry and outraged, and an amazing array of issues and facts for which we can be grateful and quite excited. That's basically the reality, right? That's why our podcast is called Outrage and Optimism, because we feel we should and we are still intensely outraged about many things that haven't happened yet, and we're optimistic about how much is happening and how much more can happen. So at the end of every conversation, we ask our guests to place themselves in this spectrum. Where are you as such a long-term activist with all the changes that you've already seen, but being fully aware of how much more we have to do? Are you more on the outrage side? Are you on the optimist side? And you can choose to answer that question either for the November timeline or beyond.

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Ted Danson (guest): Well, first, let me confess that I think I'm squelching my outrage because I'm 72. We're quarantined in our house. I don't know that I want to jump on the ramparts again. And I look at my friend, Jane, and I'm embarrassed. So I'm probably more outraged than I'm letting on. But here's how I feel about outrage. I think yes, but quickly, yes, absolutely. Within a healthy for your body space of time, be outraged, but then switch gears immediately. Because if you stay in outrage, that's right next door to fear. And it's fear that nothing will get done. So it's outrage, if it leads that way, is immobilizing. So I think it's great to be critical, but no longer do we have the right to be cynical. We need to...

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Christiana Figueres: What an important difference.

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Ted Danson (guest): Yeah.

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Christiana Figueres: What an important difference. Wow.

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Ted Danson (guest): You know, it's like science... I mean, there's room for pure science, but now it's like everything needs to be applied. We need the smartest people, the best knowledge, the best inventions and things to come to focus on this. Here's the optimistic part.

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Christiana Figueres: Okay, we're ready.

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Ted Danson (guest): This is a bit of a cliché now coming out of my mouth because I say it so often.

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Christiana Figueres: All right.

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Ted Danson (guest): And my wife Mary goes, no, you got to stop saying that. Here's what makes me when I'm...

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Christiana Figueres: We won't tell her that you said it again.

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Ted Danson (guest): And you don't say it to kids in the room. But at 72, I can say this. And then you die. So what are you waiting for? Who cares? Get up, do a Jane Fonda, strap on your boots and do the best you can. Because it's not like you're going to get this You Save the Oceans Award. Ooh, here's your immortality card. You know, you are just like everyone else, Ted. And, you know, this all has... This gift of life is just here, this part. I don't know what happens afterwards. So go for it. You know, why not? Odds are you're going to feel better.

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Christiana Figueres: Totally.

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Ted Danson (guest): You know, you're going to have fun talking to people. Anyway, so yes, I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic that kids are going to vote. I'm optimistic that, you know, the people in the street, I'm hopeful that they will continue to protest and the violence will go away because that's counterproductive. I'm hopeful that people are listening to Greta, and the Gretas of the world are going, wait, this is our world?

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Christiana Figueres: Yep, it is theirs.

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Ted Danson (guest): I'm hopeful that technology, can I just do a quick technology thing? So, you know, you do all these wonderful things, policies and rules and regulations for the ocean to make it better. Then how the heck do you, you know, if you're a small country, do you regulate that? How do you tell China to bug off and don't come in our water? Whatever it is, how do you police that? So, Oceana, a satellite company whose name I'm blanking on, I think it's called Skytruth, and Google got together to create Global Fishing Watch, which allows you, if you go to Global Fishing Watch, you can, anybody, it's for free, go on and you can see in near real time, which I think means about 12 hours now, or the name and placement of every ship on the water over 300 tons. And that number is going down. It will be smaller and smaller vessels. So you can see when a vessel enters your water and starts to zigzag around instead of steaming right through it, because that means they're fishing in your waters. You can start to see and police and meet them at the dock or go to the insurance companies and say, hey, you're insuring a vessel that does all this illegal stuff. I love it. Yeah. So I have hope in technology as well. I think technology will help us as well.

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Christiana Figueres: We're also technology enthusiasts among other things. Well, Ted, thank you so much. Thank you for taking so much time with us today. Now, I'm sorry to say that it is our time to do a cliche thing. Instead of saying goodbye and thank you, we're going to say cheers to you.

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Ted Danson (guest): Cheers. Cheers to all of you. I can't tell you how much fun it was to spend this half hour with you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

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Christiana Figueres: Thank you very much. Loved it. Yes. Seriously. Thanks very much.

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Ted Danson (guest): Bye. Bye. Bye.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That was so amazing to get a chance to sit down with Ted Danson. What a legend. What did you guys leave that conversation with?

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Christiana Figueres: You know, just at the very beginning, when he was speaking about his childhood, I was really taken by how in his childhood, through his father, he was exposed to science, although he says it didn't penetrate him. He was exposed to spirituality through his mother, although he says he didn't pay any attention to it. And then through his own friends, exposed to indigenous and aboriginal wisdom. And I thought, you know, what a fantastic childhood to have had, because commonly we think of science, spirituality, and indigenous wisdom as sort of being in very different spaces and mutually exclusive of each other. And they're not, right? And the fact that he draws from all three of them now in his adulthood, and so beautifully, I think, weaves them together in the way that he sees the world and in his environmental activism. I just thought it's so beautiful, because we have this conversation constantly about, is it nature? Is it nurture that determines personality, right? And it does seem like here we have a beautiful example of both. Coming together for him to have this beautifully integrated view on life.

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Paul Dickinson: And that was beautifully put. I picked on exactly the same thing, this notion of science and spirituality, or let's call it the mind or facts, but combined with the heart. And it's putting those two together that is the sort of essence of any kind of effective action. And I also loved him talking about how sort of friendship and action were together. What a lovely phrase. He said, he's not that interested in just kind of meeting people to go for a beer or something, but he says, around a specific project, I can't wait to hang out with you. And I've mentioned this before, Brian Eno's idea of not genius, but scenius. This idea that there's a whole kind of scene where people are looking after each other, there are different people contributing in different ways, and ideas take root and people try them out. And I think that's one of the things I think so excited about the community that's building around Outrage and Optimism, in fact, is that when work is play for mortal stakes, that's the thing that I thought that he exemplified so beautifully.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, it's really interesting you say that actually, because the thing I picked up was when he said, it's just a throwaway line at the end, he said, it's great to be critical, but we no longer have the right to be cynical. And I think that really captures where we are in the world. And I thought it also was a comment on him. I mean, I don't think I've ever met anyone less cynical. He was, I mean, he was very clear, we need to elect someone else. This president is against science and very clear about what was necessary, but didn't seem remotely cynical about the situation. He was prepared to engage full of optimism, full of joy, amazing person.

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Christiana Figueres: I also love the part where we engaged him on using his platform for big global issues. And I just love the one line where he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when people come up, you know, I say, thanks for watching, cheer. And let me introduce you to this marine biologist. It's a great line that I think summarizes what he has done with his platform. This amazing platform, you know, celebrity platform that he, yeah, thanks. Thanks for watching. And here is where I really want you to focus. It's like Jane Fonda, right?

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: His great friend, Jane Fonda said, be a repeater, amplify the message.

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Paul Dickinson: And what was it that Jane Fonda said she was at this event and your friend Joachim Fenix was there and he just won the Oscar or whatever. And then he said, hi, I'm Joachim Fenix. And I'd like to introduce this person who is the person at the heart of the matter, whether it's a witness or an injured person or a scientific expert or whoever it was. And it's just another dimension to fame. I think it must be very tough for a lot of people who are kind of famous. I'm not suggesting it's easy for them to sort of suddenly be put into a world where kind of everyone recognizes them on the street and all that crazy stuff. But what I would say is that there's such a latent potential there for people with that platform to make such a significant intervention in everything that needs to be done on climate change and the whole broader sustainability crisis. I'm just waiting for the A-listers now to phone me and I'm ready to take their call and help them. I can help them.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Paul's absolute lust for world fame and domination was so well disguised in that statement.

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Paul Dickinson: It's good you put it like that and I mean, an increasing number of A-listers are actually in contact with me. I can't give you any specific names, but in some people he's just incredibly famous and having a fantastic time, spending a lot of time with me, being kind of cured and helping.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER — please verify: Right.

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Christiana Figueres: You helping them.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. He's available. Well, we help each other.

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Paul Dickinson: It's a big thing. It's like it's holistic, it's a whole concept.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: He's available at weddings, bar mitzvahs, whatever you need. Yeah.

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Paul Dickinson: Exactly.

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right. Okay. So we've got a very different and amazing piece of music for you this week from London rapper and singer Jelani Blackman, who will perform his song Pretty World. Now his sound swerves stereotypes. It blends the hard with the soft, the dark with the light. We asked him about his motivation for writing this song and he said that he had the idea of writing the story of a vulnerable girl. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he was describing how he felt we had treated the planet. And digging deeper into the metaphor, he used it to describe how neglect and exploitation has contributed to the state of the world we're in. And he's also deeply thoughtful about the role of the artist. He says the artist's role in climate is to channel their art to contribute to a message. Art is a reflection of society. And the more that art engages with the challenges we face, the more people will be confronted with those issues. And the climate emergency is one of the most significant issues we face as a global community. This is Pretty World from Jelani Blackman. It's a different kind of song, but I think it's brilliant. You'll really like it and we'll see you next week. Thanks for being here.

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Nolan (podcast producer, covering for Clay): Hey, everyone, this is Nolan covering for Clay while he's on holiday. He'll be back next week. Wow, that was a great episode to hear. I'm here in the US., and it was a week of frustration and outrage, I have to say. So it was very helpful to hear from Ted Danson this week, to hear about his story, his optimism, and his hope for the future. That track by Jelani Blackman, Pretty World, was amazing. You can check out more about his music by clicking on the show notes, and I would encourage everyone to check him out freestyling on a Fire in the Booth episode on his YouTube channel. It's pretty great. All right, so here's the credits. Outrage and Optimism is a Global Optimism production, and is produced this week by Nolan Rossi. Our executive producers, Marina Mancilahamun, thanks to the entire Global Optimism team, Sarah Law, Katie Bradford, Laura Richardson, Sophie McDonald, Fran Newman, Sarah Thomas, Sharon Johnson, and John Ward. Our hosts are Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres, and Paul Dickinson. Thanks to our guest today, Ted Danson, and to Caroline and Amanda from Ted's team for helping us set that up. Thanks to Tracy Schaefer, and a special thank you to a guest appearance by Tom's cat in this episode. You can find us online at Global Optimism on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Take some time today and rate us and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and let us know if there was enough outrage in this episode for you. Clay will be back with you next week. It's been a pleasure filling in. Please subscribe and we'll see you next week.