From Social Entrepreneurship to Climate Crisis Solutions: The Wisdom of Wilford Welch, JD

Living a Life in Full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode of Living a Life in Full is brought to you by ATI Physical Therapy. If you need physical therapy, choose ati. ATI offers exceptional care, trusted expertise and remarkable outcomes customized to your needs. ATI has over 800 clinics coast to coast in 25 states. When want to start feeling better fast? ATI can help address chronic pain or recovery from an injury or surgery expertly, quickly and conveniently. ATI's first program uses a performance based methodology to safely return injured workers to their workplace. FIRST is designed to increase strength, endurance and cardiovascular functioning. ATI's sports medicine provides athletic training services to help athletes get back in the game. ATI has hundreds of professional collegiate, high school, middle school and club relationships nationwide. ATI also offers a variety of specialty services including home health, hand therapy and women's health. To Learn more about ATI's advances in evidence based practice, clinical outcomes, and their innovative new smartphone app, please visit atipt. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. I'm very excited to have Wilford Welch, a former U.S. diplomat, author and futurist, as our guest today on the show. Wilford's been examining world affairs for more than five decades, which I can't believe. Wilford Aside from his diplomatic work in Asia, Wilford worked internationally in economic development. He was also the publisher of a world affairs magazine that appeared in 26 countries in six different languages, and he's the author of books that we'll discuss in detail today. Wilford developed future planning scenarios for CitiBank, Toyota, the US Navy, the Korean government, and the New York Times. Furthermore, he was the leader of a research team that developed the wealth of nations index using 63 variables to measure nations economic, information, technology, and social well being. Unsurprisingly, Wilfred's academic pedigree is just as impressive. A BA from Yale University, a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a a PMD degree from the Harvard Business School. Plus, he's an avid climber and mountaineer. If you're a frequent listener to the show you know that there's a humanitarian thread that runs through the work of most of our guests. For Wilford, this will be very much clear because it's been what his career has been. Hey, Wilford, it's great to have you on the show.

Thanks, Chris.

I think you and I first met back at a NPR Worldview event in Chicago and I think we had this coincidental thing that I had worked with your niece who was a medical director then. Is that, is that right? Am I remembering that correctly?

That is right. You say npr, right?

Yes. Uh huh.

Yeah. And on that note, I want to make a big plug for my sister. My sister, Carolyn Welch Jensen died seven years ago from multiple myeloma. But that's irrelevant. What's relevant is that she was the first employee of National Public Radio.

You're kidding.

Wow. She was. Went in the basement of a building for an interview with a guy who was just getting things going and he said, how about we need someone to start research to create this organization? And she says, okay. And that's what she did.

Well, that is amazing.

I had no idea. Now touting my sister again, she created a wonderful program called Radio Expeditions, which was going around the world and looking at that inherent conflict between economic development, capitalism and all the rest where people want to have more and more for good reasons and understandable reasons, and the natural world that can be at the effect of human beings. And so that was the focus of Radio Expeditions. It ran for many, many years on National Public Radio.

Well, there must be some genetic aspect, but she certainly sounds like she would be your sister, Wilford. And I think just kind of going back to that. And when you and I first had the opportunity to meet, I think your book, the Tactics of How Social Entrepreneurs are Changing the World had just been published and it was also the small world coincidence because I had just published a book set called the New Humanitarian. So is my memory square on that too? Is that about the time that Tactics of Hope.

That's Great. That was 2008.

Yeah. All right. Well, you have a beautiful tapestry of a life and work and I kind of want to go back and start. You know, it's hard to know where to start with you, Wilfred, just to be honest. But I want to start talking about your work as a diplomat. What was your role in establishing. Was it with China or. Tell us about that. What was your diplomatic career like?

Yeah, I mean, the fun story, which I like to add, is that in 1960 I was a. Between my junior and senior years at Yale and I fell in puppy love with a Swedish girl. So I got a job in Sweden for Volvo to finance my chase. And while I was there one Sunday morning in Shobda, Sweden for the Volvo Moto Fabriken where I was working, I panicked as to what the heck I was actually going to do with my life. I had already had the good fortune of done some international travel and I said to myself, this is, I'm quite now serious. I said to myself, what are the major events internationally that I could hook my star to over the next 10 or 15, 20 years? And immediately came, and I wrote it down immediately. The reconciliation between China, which had just become communist 12, 11 years before, and the United States, both the world's most powerful country and the world's most populous country. There had to be diplomatic relations. I knew nothing about diplomacy or China at the time. But the next thing that occurred to me within about two or three minutes was I remember going and watching as a 13 year old, the McCarthy hearings.

Oh boy.

And Senator McCarthy had destroyed the careers of those US diplomats by accusing them of giving China away, that is accusing them of being communists themselves.

Wow.

And I said, there's a major event that has to occur which is reconciliation. And there's a dearth of people who have the skills to do that with a clean record. And I said, that's me. Well, that's a ridiculous thing to say, but that's what I said to myself. So I changed my whole life and I started studying Chinese and I got up, I got a fellowship from a wonderful program called Yale China. Started as a medical missionary program in Changsha, China in 1901. And they had now, because they've been thrown out of Communist China, they were in support of a refugee college in Hong Kong. So from 61, 63, I was in Hong Kong teaching as well as studying Chinese during the summers in Taiwan and etc. And then I went to Berkeley. But I went to Berkeley because I wanted. There was one guy in the United States that knew anything about the Chinese legal system and his name was Jerome A. Cohen. He still is alive, he's in New York. A wonderful human being and he's the father of American scholars studying Chinese legal system. And I went to Berkeley to be his first student.

Wow.

And three years later I was finished. And a guy named William Bundy, George Bundy was his younger brother and National Security Council advisor to John F. Kennedy. And Bill Bundy was the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific affairs, that is the top guy in the US Government, having all the embassies, all the ambassadors reporting to him. And he said, come and work for me. So I came to Washington to work as assistant to him.

Wow.

And I stayed there through the Johnson administration. And then the next. The next Assistant Secretary of State was wonderful human being called Marshall Green. And he had been ambassador to Indonesia, among many other places, a professional diplomat. And he said, you stick with me. Let's continue on together. So on a trip in fall of 2, I haven't told too many people this in 1969, he said, let's the two of us go together. We'll go and visit all of the countries in East Asia. I will check out as ambassador to Indonesia, then I'll have my Senate confirmation hearings, but I will be prepared to answer any questions that the senators have for me. So we spent 30 days going to 10 countries.

Wow.

And during that time, I, as a young man, Foreign Service, I had the opportunity. I basically was saying what I set out in shop to Sweden to say, if you will, 10 years before, nine years before, we really need to establish diplomatic relations are not a function of who you like, they're a function of who you have to deal with effectively to make the world a safer, more effective place. And so that had an influence, obviously, on Marshall, and I certainly didn't do this. But three days after he got back, he wrote a memorandum to the Secretary of State that went on to Kissinger and then to Nixon, and it recommended a change in our China policy, initially with travel.

Wow.

As the step towards that. And so I feel that I played a small role, and I certainly. I certainly achieved what I set out to do about nine years before. I think what it says. Forget what it says about me. What it says is that sometimes you can be lucky if you have a clear intention, and people then begin to pick up on that. And before you know it, something very, very substantial can happen. And I've always been pleased that I had that opportunity.

Wow.

So, long answer to short question.

That's wonderful. Yeah. I was wondering if there was then, if that teed things up for the detente, so to speak, between the US With Kissinger and Nixon at that time. That's really amazing. I'm glad you shared that story. So after that time, then, was that the stepping stone to getting involved with international business and economic development, or what happened after that?

Well, two guys came into my office in the diplomatic service, State Department, and asked me if I would become the head of Asia for Arthur D. Little. Arthur D. Little was the leading consulting firm in the world at that time and up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I went up out of more out of curiosity. But I did accept the job and for the next 10 years was the head of H for ADL. And that gave me opportunities to work with the Koreans, for example, with a whole team of people in electronics industry to think through their 10 year strategy. Electronics. I did the same thing for the, for the government on Taiwan. I saw you were in your bio, you did a lot of stuff in Bolivia. We had a whole team in Bolivia.

Wow.

Trying to think through the. What Bolivia could do in the Andean common Market. Brilliant. And also worked for the Saudis on planning a city called Yanbu on the Red Sea. And so all those years I was either working on economic development programs taught in Iran, for example, all those things, but at the same time was working for corporations on their international business strategies. Citibank being one that I think you mentioned, which was the front end of their ten year strategic plan. Really thinking about what might the future look like and the probabilities of different kinds of futures over the next 10 years. That was their mandate to us, so that they could be thinking and aligning their strategy in alignment with the direction that the future was going. That makes sense. Which of course, but I did in, in my new book, yeah, Climate Change.

Wow. You really seem to have had a, a very sharply focused crystal ball. Because I mean now looking back at, you know, these are, you know, certainly name brands and, and just amazing to think back that, you know, you were there in the early age, early stages, early ages of these kinds of companies starting to, you know, try to crack the code of then what would become, you know, worldwide successes. That's amazing.

Well, I don't think I have a crystal ball at all. But what, but what I learned from particularly that Citibank job was the whole technology around scenario planning, alternative futures, driving forces. So that what, what has fallen into, into place for me as a way of being is that when I read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, whatever it may be, scientific murder. I am not so interested in the facts as I'm interested in what the facts tell me about the direction that, where we're moving. I mean, I was watching with Carol last night this wonderful program on the future of humanity, Future of Us I think is what it's called. And it was talking about artificial intelligence and, and I was thinking about where that is taking humanity. Just like we think about climate refugees or global warming or what are those driving forces that will impact social, economic, political, military, the futures in a region or in the world. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely.

So that's the way I think and that's, that gives me. And it's more systems thinking than it is looking and going down a rabbit hole of a particular discipline.

Right, right. Do you feel like a lot of the perspectives that you've had have been informed by like your, your travel and your exposure to different things? I know you also, you were involved with. Was it cross cultural journeys?

Yeah.

So how does that fit together with how you have your worldview?

Well, first I would say that although I am fortunate enough to have a good academic background that you mentioned, I think my real learning has come experientially, which is what you're talking about. I've been really honored in these five careers and all these years to have been to over about 100 countries and certainly been over 100 countries, that's for sure. And many of those have been working and some of those have been, of course, for pleasure. But what you were referring to is my wife Carol, established 27 years ago, sold it two years ago, but established a company called Cross Cultural Journeys, which initially was exploring the wisdoms of indigenous cultures and then broaden beyond that to the going to countries around the world and listening to what their wisdoms were rather than going as so many tourists do, thinking that the Americans have all the answers and therefore telling people how great we are. And so that I think has been good learning for me and a good opportunity to. I mean, I've probably been 20 some odd times to Cuba.

Wow.

Well, that, that's a good, that's, that's good learning. A lot of time in Ethiopia, many of these Bali and other, many other places. So you learn, if you're interested in learning, you learn from these other cultures. This what comes to my mind as I say that is as I think we're in such a. We're lost right now as a world as to what kind of world we're trying to create. Well, the Balinese have a wonderful Hindu phrase that is tri hita karana. And what it means is when they wake up in the morning, their philosophy is one of living in balance with the natural world, living in balance with each other in community, and living in balance with spirit. Well, my whole life is focused on those first two. And we as a society are totally out of balance with the natural world. We're takers from it rather than people who are trying to sustain it. We are so individualistic in this country of ours and we honor, as I do, individual initiative. Don't misunderstand me, but at the same time, we become so much more transactionally oriented of what is yours, is mine, if I can take it kind of thing, as opposed to how I can help you, Chris, make your life better and how you and I together can make our community better. So those are kind of learnings that I think are wonderful if one is open to listening to others and other cultures that have much to teach us, particularly indigenous cultures.

Yeah, I totally agree. I've on some of the medical missions I've gone on, you get faced with a very similar parallel to that of the cliche, you know, west knows best and this hubris that aren't you lucky to have us come over and teach you all these wonderful things? And it just, it creates a distance, it creates artificial barriers, it diminishes any kind of impact that could be mutual towards whoever's the visitor and to whoever's country is being visited. I think you raise a good point in the sense of being able to have that kind of openness. And, and I, I agree, sadly, that, you know, it feels like there is such a loss of community. There's beautiful pockets of it, but it is not as, I don't even think necessarily as widespread as it, you know, was on a trajectory for, you know, a few years ago. So it's, it's nice to hear these kinds of things and, and to read your work and see where that's, you know, been able to, to come from and where things can go. So maybe that's a good segue in. I want to talk about your work as an author and a publisher. You spent a number of years working with the World Paper. What got you interested into writing and into publishing?

Sure. Well, a good friend of mine, Crocker Snow, had been foreign editor for the Boston Globe. He and a couple of others started the World Paper. And I came in about six months before they were getting it off the ground and I became the publisher. So what it was, this was, this is very much in line, Chris, with what you and I just been talking about. The notion that was the core of the World Paper was that the Western world was not listening to the voices of the non Western world. There were impulses coming out of the non Western world that could substantially have deleterious effects as well as benefits to the Western world. But because all of the media was written, that is the economist for the sub, to some degree, certainly the International Herald Tribune, there wasn't CNN at that time. The Financial Times was mostly written by Westerners for Western AUDIENCE and we could see that what was going on in China was increasingly going to be important. What was going on with Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda wasn't formed at that time, but there were terrorists movements that were definitely afoot.

Sure.

And we were not listening. So we sought. The tagline of the world paper was the voices of the world speaking on their own behalf on issues of global concern.

Wow.

So we brought together the 14 leading, arguably the 14 leading journalists in the world, one from each region of the world. So Mukhtar Lubas from Indonesia, Yoshiko Sakurai from Japan, Chen Long from China, et cetera, from the Middle east and from South America, etc. And so the writing would be that the first page would always have one major issue. It may be the changing role of women or changing role of terrorism around the world. Let's take on the terrorism. And so we have that issue. I remember was we had a leading writer from Hamas, we had a leading writer from, from Interpol, and then we had a writer forgotten who the third one was. But it was always looking at a global issue from the different perspectives that actually exist. There isn't a right and a wrong necessarily. There are different forces getting back to that driving forces question, different forces at work that will influence the outcome. We did not have an editorial page because we thought our readers should be informed about the different perspectives and make up their own decision. And then we had, it came out every two weeks and it came out as a supplement, like the New York Times supplement is in the New York Times on Sunday. We had it come out in each of, as you said, in 26 countries, one paper or magazine per country in six language editions.

Wow.

And it was terrific. And that was always a huge learning experience for me and I think for everybody to be wrestling with those social, political and economic issues and sharing them with an audience of a few million

people around the world, that's brilliant. That's great. So I, it, I think oftentimes you have to. It's better today, I mean, obviously with the Times or the Wall Street Journal, but I remember not that long ago that you'd have to kind of go hunting to, to see what was going on in the world. You know, it wasn't an obvious kind of thing to just, you know, read the baseball scores, so to speak, and you know, what was happening at the local Bake off or something. So it's that, that seems very ahead of its time and certainly, you know, like you said, predates the availability of things like Al Djera and CNN and the other kinds of media that we can kind of get.

And the Internet. The Internet sort of wiped us out.

Yeah. Yeah, well, I guess maybe in a good way. So.

So absolutely.

Was it after that then that you published Tactics of Hope or. Or set us tee us up for that?

Well, yeah, I moved out to California, to San Francisco, and really started a bit in a bit of a new life. And I couldn't be the publisher of something that was headquartered in Boston and be out here in this wonderful area. And so I not only did a lot of things for cross cultural Journeys, that Carol was the founder and CEO of the travel company, but I then started writing and I wrote this book called the Tactics of How Social Entrepreneurs are Changing Our World. And I did it with a wonderful young man named David Hopkins who just got married two weeks ago and he was Middlebury. And I had spoken at Middlebury and gotten to know him and he worked with me for a couple of years and we ended up writing up, I think, 26 case studies of people like the Paul Farmers of this world, who you know very well, and others really looking at how this group of social entrepreneurs, the notion of social entrepreneurship, which is of course what I call private people doing public good, I like that. And how people with passion for solving, like you are medical issues in developing countries or educational challenges or population challenges, et cetera, can use business methods to create sustainable projects that can be of service. And it doesn't mean that you have to be poor doing it. And I'm distinguishing between a foundation that takes someone's money and puts out in the world doing good to maybe produce fresh water, but maybe there's another way of doing that in which you create a project in which money can be raised in the project to make the project self sufficient and maybe even have the person who's founding it also make some money for themselves to keep themselves alive, not rich, but alive and be satisfied. So that's what I sought to do in the book the Tactics of Hope.

Well, I have to give you a plug too, Wilfred. I mean, I have a copy of it and for those that aren't familiar, we'll put links to be able to get a copy in the show notes. But Bill Drayton, who's one of my heroes and founder of Ashoka and probably one of the best known hot houses or incubators for social entrepreneurs, said of your book, the Tactics of Hope is a practical avenue through which readers can connect with people, institutions and resources as well as ideas. Wilford's book is a wonderful contribution to the field, it is clear that he knows in a deep way what social entrepreneurship is. And then, not that there's a competition between endorsements, but Archbishop Desmond Tutu said about your book that it's innovative and inspiring. Tactics of Hope is for any individual looking to make a difference in the world. So tip of the hat, Wilford. Well done, my friend.

Well, I got to. If I could get off on Desmond Tutu, please, Because you asked about those years, Carol, myself and another woman, all from San Francisco, sitting around our dining room table in our house one day and said, let's create a major conference to highlight the pain that is out there in the world around many of the social issues that are and environmental issues that are impacting the world, which we didn't feel the Western world had much of a sense of. And we came up with the notion of in Bali creating a conference on these issues. And through a friend, I asked Archbishop Tutu if he would be a lead in that. And he was delighted with his wife Leah to come from South Africa. And it was a five day conference. And in 2004, right after the bombings, actually.

Wow.

In Denpasar, it was six months after bombings. We said we weren't going to back down.

Good.

We had to make sure we protected them. And we had 425 people from 24 countries.

Gosh.

And it was for five days.

Fantastic.

That may be easy in a Hilton hotel or a Sheraton Hotel.

Right.

But in Ubud, Bali, that's a hell of a challenge to pull up. And it was wonderful. It was wonderful. And he was, of course, a total delight. And I got to know him very, very well at that time. And then at the end of it, I said, hey, you want to do it again? He said, sure, let's do it again. So in 2007, we did a second conference of 625 people from 40 countries.

Wow.

And we had. It was powerful. It was powerful to get that many people around who quite naturally self selected as the people of conscience who were wanting to understand the world and to play a role in making the world a better place. Like the stuff that you're doing.

Wow.

And so that's how I got to know Tutu so well. And I'm honored with that relationship. And I hope he continues to live. He's. He's not as healthy right now as he has been, but he's 10 years older than I am, so.

Wow.

Not surprising.

Gosh, that's really fantastic. Well, I also have to say maybe this is a Good stepping stone into your latest book. But one of the cool things I think you did with the Tactics of Hope was that you committed to plant two trees for every book that was published or produced or something like that with a global relief. So I think that's brilliant. That's so you, Wilford. That's so cool. You also, if memory serves, you had a companion website. Is, is it still up? Can people still come and participate with that as well?

No, it's not. I only have one, I only have one website now.

Okay.

And it's called, and it's, I think it's a good website. It's called, strangely enough, www.wilford w I l f o-I d w dash dot com and it's totally devoted not to Wilfred Welch, it's totally devoted to really this whole work that I'm doing to address global warming, climate change and get people inspired. And it's this other book, of course, in Our Hands that you're probably going to talk about. And that is, that is, that is my focus now. And that's the only website, although it links to some other stuff.

Great. Okay. Well, that perfect, perfect segue. So in Our Hands, the full title is In Our Hands A Handbook for Intergenerational Actions to Solve the Climate Crisis. So this seems like an obvious question now after hearing, you know, the background of this, but what, what sparked you to do this? I mean, there had to be some kind of tipping point to say, okay, you've, you've been an activist, you've been around the world multiple times, you have connections everywhere, but there had to be some little something that said, okay, now I've got to, I've got to take action and I've got to put words to paper and, and put this book together. What was that tipping point for you?

Well, that tipping point is very clear. And it was in Ethiopia, southern Ethiopia, about five years ago. And it was a cross cultural journeys trip, one of Carol's trips. And on that trip in southern Ethiopia, I saw as a microcosm of what was going to happen if we were not careful on a worldwide basis. Number one, global warming was drawing out that part of the world and making it very, very difficult to grow crops. The Omo river was not as large as it had been, so that was increasingly a problem. So that's one, that global warming piece. The second piece was the Ethiopian government, under the guise of economic growth, was taking land away from. I'll get into trouble with the Ethiopian government with this. But that's just the way it is. Ethiopian government was taking away land from the tribes, people that are your ancestors and my ancestors, if you go back 3 million years, taking away their pastoral land, putting them in much smaller areas, taking that land, putting a fence around it, taking water out of the Omo river, irrigating it so it's very, very lush, and then leasing it off to the Saudis, the Chinese and the Turks.

Wow.

So in the guise of economic development, was damaging their own peoples. And it was very, very clear to me, as I just said, that this was a microcosm of how economic growth, if not exercised properly, can do damage and how global warming was increasingly going to affect people. So when I say economic, when I'm criticism, when I criticize GNP and GDP figures or measures they're measuring, they're not distinguishing between good and bad growth. They are talking about economic growth. That is the number of dollars measured in growth, economic growth at all costs. And the cost is sometimes to the people, as I just described in the Oval Valley, okay. And to the planet, which I also described just now, that metaphor. And so I, I saw that and I said, whoa, this is clearly the most severe crisis, that is global warming, specifically, that is coming down the pike at the human race. And I'm going to devote the rest of my life to doing whatever I can as an individual to be part of the solution, not the problem. So that was the spark, and I've stuck with it ever since, and sure as hell will.

Well, it seems like it, because I think listeners will get inspired by your message that once they start to scratch the surface on the web, they'll see that your books, your presentations, your lectures, your blog around climate change are very well informed and certainly shows a very synthetic commitment to wanting to. To make a difference. And I want to deconstruct a couple little things in your book. I am a. Anybody that knows me fairly well will know that I'm a big fan of Buckminster Fuller and his work. And I had the honor back in undergrad to have a correspondence back and forth with him about some ideas and things like that. And I have a background that it was initially spurred by architecture and just finding him as being sort of like a lodestone for things well beyond just design and architecture and his kindness to respond back to me and correspond as it was back in the day, pre Internet kinds of things, and had the chance to look at some of the works at his archive at Stanford and then was honored to be able to write his entry for the encyclopedia. So. So big buckminster Fuller Fan and I think there's a lot of similarities and a lot of parallels Wilford with your perspectives of looking at things. Remember his classic, you know, Spaceship Earth? You know, you, you have everything you need to sustain yourself on your little spaceship and your spaceship happens to be the world, you know, unless you screw it up, you know, so, so I think there's, there's, it just was a very touching and you make specific reference in some areas, but I really see sort of the ethos of that spirit which is just so wonderful to have. And I've read other pieces and other books by other authors where they're articulate, they're statistic laden, there's graphs and tables and predictions and very well researched know good evidence basis to what they're saying. And it's sort of like, okay, you've made your point, you've made your argument, now what do I do? And I found your book in particular in like chapter five. You have a section on there about action steps and they're scalable action steps. And there's things that a five year old can do and there's things that adults can do and there's things that no matter what your, your, your age, your status, your whatever, you know, your lifestyle, your economic socioeconomic status can do to actually make a, you know, a measurable impact on the world. So how, how did you come up with that? And what's your, what, what was the, you know, the, the inspiration behind those kinds of things to make it a, not just a treatise on the problem, but then also on some solutions.

Yeah, let me back up slightly on the problem and then I'll get into the solutions. Perfect. Perfect. So my, and I didn't articulate. See how well I'll articulate it now, but in the book I didn't articulate. You know, after you write a book, you think about a lot, a lot of talks. You get clearer and clearer and clearer about what your core message is. And my core message is essentially we're in deep trouble. The trouble has been created by this extraordinary outburst of economic growth since 1945 that has been driven by fossil fuels. I have been the total beneficiary of fossil fuels for which I take and thank fossil fuels for the plane rides I've had and the cars I've used medical devices to give all the plastic and the plastic straws and all the rest that have made my life very. That is now going to kill our future generations. We created the problem and we can solve the problem. We're not victims. We have total choice, and we're not exercising that choice yet. So that's why I have these two futures in the book in our hands. Because the question is whether we are going to sit back and feel sorry for ourselves or step forward as we did on December 8, 1941, and say, okay, I don't like to use the war metaphor, but it's not a bad one here. We're going to change our lifestyle and we're going to start doing something that's really important and it's going to make us feel really good. So I'm saying we have total choice, and then we get down to the individual level. And I said. I say we have the technology. The only thing we are lacking. The only thing we're lacking, Chris, to solve this problem is political action and political will and individual action, okay? We just have to step forward and do the things. Now you say, well, what are the things Wilfred, people should do? I say, the first thing you got to do is focus. People are in the debates for the last presidential debate. In 12 hours of debates, not a single moderator raised the subject global warming once. Because global warming and climate change have not been high on the agenda. That's because there's so much busyness and complexity going on. I'm not making anybody wrong. I'm saying in this cloud of all the other things that we hear on the news, we're not focused on this freight train that is coming right down the tracks at us. And we can hear the freight train is coming down the tracks. If we put our head on the rails and listen, we can. Even scientists could tell you how big that freight train is, how fast it's going and when it's going to run. Those are the scientists that have told us over and over again with great specificity in the last number of years that global warming is coming right at us with huge impacts. So now I'll get off my high horse on the cause and talk about what you asked about. And that is. It is everybody should just do their part. And the question is, what's the part they want to do? What do you want to take on? Just focus. And for example, example is how are you voting? That costs you nothing. Are you voting for people who are and asking your candidates if they are concerned about global warming, climate change, and they say, what are you talking about? I haven't even thought about it. I don't think that's someone you want to vote about. If this is the most serious crisis affecting the human race during your lifetime, that's Something I think is worthy of your attention and your vote. So I argue that voting, for example, is very, very high on the list. I would also mention that people have a choice as to the actions they take in their personal life. That is voting or signing up for renewal, local energy provider, or switching to on demand hot water or walking, bicycling, as opposed and to taking public transportation, things like that. But one is in your personal life. A second is in your community life. I'm spending all tomorrow with the Environmental Forum of Marin. And this is a group of citizens that are trying to think as a community. What can we do to deal with global warming and climate change and sustainability issues? That's easy stuff to do. Get. An easy thing to do is to. To get a discussion group going in your neighborhood and saying, well, I don't know a lot about global warming, climate change. This guy keeps on telling me it's important, let's talk about it. And I'm not hawking my book here because I'm certainly not making any money on a book. But you get the book in our hands and you get it as a Kindle or an ibook. So it doesn't cost very much. It's easy to read. And you get all the links to 180 different things in the back of the book. And you could get really informed very fast. And you get those six people in your neighborhood to just talk about what's important in the neighborhood, what's important in people's lives, trying to understand what's going on, and then choosing some very simple actions to take. Okay, I'm very focused on this thing about getting the generations going. I have meetings this week on the subtitle of the book, how do we get the generation? How does the older generation support the younger generation who now is saddled with the results of fossil fuels, and now the older generation can be supportive in money, contacts, experience, and time, which we have and they don't have.

I think that's one of the things too that I liked about your approach to your writing because you talked again back to the actionable kinds of things and to take a look at the differences between generational perspectives. I remember you have a, like a little graphic, animated graphic, you know, people rowing on a boat kind of a thing, and that there's certain percentages of people that, you know, one way or the other are just, you know, kind of neutral. And I think once people get an appreciation and understanding, you know, at a just a slightly finer grain, it can be their tipping point to saying Gosh, I could do this and this and this and not even miss a beat. And I appreciate your, your point about voting. It didn't cost anything to go vote, so that's brilliant.

Let me, let me get off on that a little bit. So the Yale. Forget that I went to Yale, but there's this wonderful organization at Yale which is called the Yale. What is it called? The Yale Climate Program, and it has been since 2008, polling people in the United States very systematically about how they feel about global war and climate change and the actions they're going to take. There are 21% of us who are in the front of that boat that you're referring to who are rowing hard. They're in NGOs, there's 350. Org, there's bioneers there, environment, the EDF, Environmental Defense Fund, et cetera, who have been doing extraordinary work. That's 21% of the population now, that is in the front of that boat. They're rowing hard, they're rowing well together. And that is not enough to get the United States to really change who is in power and the policies that we put in place. There's another, according to Yale, there's another 30%, which is 100 million people who say they are concerned about global warming and in reality are maybe buying a Prius, maybe separating the trash, and thirdly, maybe patting themselves on their back in the back, saying they're environmentalists. I'm not being cynical. I'm just saying that they are not focused and they are not recognizing how serious this problem is and how easily it can be solved if we roll up our sleeves and start rowing together. That is my audience. 100 million people is a lot of people. And a tipping point usually in any issue, usually doesn't require more than 10% of the population, not a majority, to get the media to start really talking about it, getting the politicians to recognize that it's serious, getting corporations to recognize they'll lose business if they don't be attentive to the problem, etc. Etc. So that, that's, that's the group that I'm focused on. And that gets to my third point about how people can be effective. They can do a lot of things in their personal life, and I have a long list of this. They do a lot of things in their community life, but they also, when they go to work, they can start saying, you know, we could save a lot of money if we change our packaging requirements for our suppliers. Why are we wasting plastic and petroleum this way? That is ridiculous and it can save us money. Why are we using fresh water in certain activities as opposed to recycled water? Why aren't we switching to renewables and getting the workplace to be response their workplace to be responsive to these issues. So people just need to start, as I say, focusing in their personal community and professional lives. Now I haven't given you a lot of examples of specific things people could do, but I could do it. There's a good article in the New York Times couple days ago in an example of, of not buying iPhones as

often

because the amount of energy required for a new iPhone is very substantial.

Wow.

Do we really need that next little, you know, boost? We should recognize that we should wait off on the boost that satisfies our whims and take care of the planet. So it's going to satisfy the lives of our grandchildren.

That's great. I think the scalability of a lot of the solutions that you have in the book are fantastic. And I would just also underline and emphasize the. I think it's the last chapter that have the resources and I've got your book on Kindle and it is, it's super easy to just you read about this link and then you can touch it and then it takes you to the website and it's much more ecological than the paper version.

Well, I really do because that's 33 pages of links.

I didn't realize on a Kindle how many that was.

Wow, 33 pages and 180 live links.

That's great.

So say I've got the book obviously right here. If you say, well you know this guy, he's really interested in renewables and all rest. But I'm interested in the question of species extinction. Well, there are three links on species extinction. Well you know now what I'm really interested is he's got these futures, these two futures, the probable future and the possible. This is Wilfred having it in this book. Well, what are some other futures that others have put together? And I've got about seven of those. One is the More Beautiful World Our Hope Heart Knows is Possible by Charles Einstein. Brilliant, just brilliant. Another the renewable energy revolution. Which project Drawdown is doing good work in the Rocky Mountain Institute or economic. And I believe that our economic system is so oriented towards economic growth at all costs is not going to dig us out of the hole, it's going to dig us deeper into the hole. Which doesn't make me an anti capitalist. It means that we need to use the power of market driven free forces and unfortunately, that means stopping subsidies and start encouraging people with subsidies to buy electric cars and things like that and stop using subsidies to support petroleum and coal and other things that are absolutely killing us. It's not that I don't like fossil fuels, that fossil fuels. Time has come and gone.

Right.

And it is killing us.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just a, it's a practical problem.

Yeah. I like your, I like your perspective of, you know, tip of a hat. Thank you very much. I appreciate what you've done. And now it's time to use better technologies and cleaner technologies.

Yeah, yeah. I want. It's not that hard, Chris. We just have to keep going.

It really is. And again, I think a lot of times people just sort of maybe in a fog or don't stop to take the time to think about it or kind of sleepwalk through the, you know, the daily ins and outs of the habits that they have in their lives where they can just make.

Well, there's a great book that I'm, that I'm working through right now by Per Espin, so from Norway, and it's entitled what People Think About When They Try not to Think About Global Warming.

Oh, really?

What a great title. And it's, it's, it's a very, very thoughtful book. And basically is, is arguing what I'm arguing. And that is people aren't bad.

Right.

It's. They're not focused. Yeah. And they don't realize that this freight train is coming down the tracks or if they hear, they hear it, they say, oh, someone else is going to get them. The government's going to solve the problem technology is going to come from. Not true. Not true. We have to roll up our sleeves and focus. That's my whole message.

That's great. Well, I want to have some little overlapping Venn diagrams with your perspectives and with your life here and some other additional areas in the remaining minutes that we have for our conversation. I know you're a climber. Did you. I couldn't find this in my research. Did you do the Seven Summits? I know you've, you've been on.

No, no, no, no, no.

Okay.

No, I've done less than you think.

Okay, well, here's a shout out for what I know you have done because you talk about, you know, these, you know, taking action, and I think you kind of took action in a, in a very large scale way because you. I believe if my facts are straight, so correct me if they're off, but around 1994, you did a trip to Everest to Remove trash and introduce the idea of leave no trace to mountaineering. Are my facts straight on that?

Your facts are straight.

Okay, tell us about that. What led to that and what was that experience like?

Sure, sure. Well, I got really involved with the National Outdoor Leadership School or Knowles back in the 70s and then became the chairman of the board of no for a number of years. And that's the leading program teaching wilderness skills in the world. I mean, and I mean, for example, we train all of the NASA astronauts, US Astronauts in terms of expedition behavior. Not. So do a lot of. I want to give a real, real boost to the National Outdoor Leadership School. But in any case, I went off with a group of Knowles existing and former instructors like Scott Fisher, who then died Mount Everest two years ago, two years later. And I was the leader of the support team, not the climbing. I climbed Denali or McKinley four years before at a 28 day climb. So I, I do have my, my feet wet in serious climbing. Three people died. Not on our expedition, but three people died on the mountain while we were on it.

Yeah, Denali is a no easy task. It's quite the cold challenge.

28 days. But back to the Everest thing. The notion, what we introduced as you mentioned, is the notion of Leave no Trace, which actually was program, a research program of the National Outdoor Leadership School, then was turned over to the National Park Service and the National Park Service. You go to any park, unfortunately they're closed right now, but you go to any park and you will hear about the Leave no Trace program. You pack it in, pack it out. And so we introduced that. The, the group introduced that to Everest mountaineering. And now that's pretty standard in most major mountains around the world. That if you don't just go up Everest because you want to impress your colleagues that you're a hotshot and you make it back and then trash them out in the process.

Exactly.

You got a responsibility just like we have a responsibility, responsibility to the world in our conduct. And right now our conduct is one that we are trashing the planet in a way that will really do damage to future generations. Just the same issue, it's just on a different kind of mountain. So that's what I did. I have to say that I had another bit of good luck. And that is in 19, 1980, I was in Tibet and came, came down from Tibet into Nepal and I went to the Everest base camp from the north side of Everest and I took some photographs up. Partly up the mountain, but not way up, but you're still up at 17, 18,000.

Yeah.

And. But still a lot of mountain to go. And I took a picture and Brad Washburn, who was the head of the national at the Boston Science Museum, he was over for dinner with his wife at our place in Wayland, Massachusetts. And he came up to me, very intense, 80 year old at the time. And he said, wilford, he said, you know the National Geographic climbing map of Mount Everest, it just came out in October. We've gone through 10,600,000 copies and we want to reproduce that map. He said, do you know of anybody who's taken a picture of Mount Everest from the Tibetan side in September of one year? And I looked at him with a something grin. I went to. I went into my attic and I brought down three pictures of Mount Everest from the north. It's Benton sod in September 11th.

Of course you did.

And I gave it to him and it became the photograph of Mount Everest. Oh, I just. Wow. It was just, just for an amateur photographer to end up with that kind of luck.

Wow. I did not stumble upon that little factoid. So I'm glad you shared. That is very, very cool. Congratulations. So, just to wind up, a couple of last little questions. You are such an optimistic person by nature. Are you hopeful for the future? Are you hopeful that we will get this constellation to line up of people wanting to be. Be involved? What. What are your thoughts?

Well, I'm really glad you asked that question, because the answer is yes, I am. If you asked me that question a year ago, I would have probably equivocated. When I wrote the book, my editor said, you're going to call these two futures. Now, I have, as you know, in the book, two futures looking back from January 1, 2019, 2050 to 2017 and 18. And one is the future that I called the probable future, which takes us down. So the world is essentially collapsed by 2050. And my editor said, do you really want to call that the probable future? And I said, yes, I do. Because what I'm saying is if we have total control, but if we don't get our act together, that's where it's going to take place. That's what's going to happen. So I didn't want to gild the lily within the last few months. I'm about to write a new blog about this. I am feeling that the tide is now turning and in. And I'm talking in the United States. I may be this worldwide guy, but if the United States and its people do not get our act together, we will fail. And Global warming will get up to that four degrees that basically wipes us out. Four degrees over pre industrial level centigrade. I think we're already going to hit 2 degrees no matter what we do. And I'm not a scientist and I don't want to people quoting me on that, but that's enough work that I've done. I'm now clear that we're going to have disasters. And I said before we got on the air today, where we are, we're on a houseboat in Sausalito. The tide is, the water is going to be 2ft higher by 2040 than it is today.

Wow.

Okay, that's a lot. That's real stuff and with real implications economically. And of course, the 13 federal government agencies that came out and said this is a really serious problem. And of course Trump dismissed it as bad science. His own 13 government agencies. When we wake this giant of ours called the United States, when it wakes up and decides to do something, it is extraordinary the talent and energy that can be, can be galvanized to do this. I think we're just at that turning point right as you and I talk. And I could give you a lot of reasons why I feel that, but I'm now getting quite optimistic that we can, we can pull this off and we will. Corporations, government. You see what's going on right here in the California government. It's amazing in terms of the energy we have. I went to this climate action summit here in San Francisco with Jerry Brown two months ago, whatever. And it's pretty impressive what's going on in educational domain, in the business domain. It makes me feel really enheartened. I'm very excited.

Good.

So, yes, I'm cautiously optimistic and I'm going to do everything I can to help turn this tanker in a different direction here, here.

So you mentioned your website, Wilford Welch.com, we'll have the links for that in the show. Notes. Are there other ways that people can learn more about you, your work, or reach out and connect with you that you'd like, I guess, to also make a note of?

Well, that's really the way what I really hope people will do is I hope that people will go to that website. I hope they'll look on that blog and I think there's a lot of information in those blogs. I hope they'll get that book. I hope they will start small discussion and action groups. That's what I really want is small groups getting together, saying now how are we going to play a role this is going to be a revolution with a small R and a big E. Evolution. And in my optimistic way, I feel that this crisis, existential crisis, although we created it, may be just what humanity needs to kick us into a higher level of evolution in which we now recognize, or in this new world recognize, that we are all one, that we must work in community and we must steward the natural world. And I even look at our friend Donald Trump, and I have a little note on my computer here at the bottom left, and I'm reading it right now. It says, trump the Great Awakener. And although, as you can tell, I'm not a Trump fan, it may be that this is that moment in history in which there is a recognition of the direction in which we're moving, from which he epitomizes that. And we have to take responsibility for that and we have to take action to deal with the consequences. And the major consequence is a global warming climate change, which I get back to every time I have a shot, because that is the issue. Okay,

that's very good. I think that's a very therapeutic reframe too, so that's good for all of us to hear. So, Wilford boy, thank you so much for your time today and thank you for the impactful work that you've done and you've already made the world a better place and you continue to take charge of that and to make it an even better, cleaner, sustainable place. And it's just, it's been too long for this conversation to happen. I'm glad we're able to do it and share it publicly. So I look forward to what comes next from you and encourage all of our listeners to check out your website and get involved themselves. Thanks, Wilford.

Super. Thank you, Chris. Take good care.

Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is fulfilled. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks. And until next time,