Paul Hawken on Regeneration and What Actually Changes CEOs

Forget fighting the climate. Paul Hawken argues we are part of it—and that single shift can change how leaders, teams, and communities act. We bring Paul into a candid conversation about language, agency, and the practical levers businesses can pull right now to lower risk, save money, and grow life.

Paul Hawken has shaped how business leaders approach climate action for over 60 years. "The Ecology of Commerce" inspired, amongst many, Ray Anderson's transformation of Interface. Drawdown became the definitive roadmap for climate solutions. Now Carbon calls for a shift from fighting carbon to fostering life.

In this episode, we go deep on:

• Why "fighting carbon" and "net zero" might be the wrong frame entirely
• The incredible story of meeting Walmart executives in a closed basement for 5 hours - and writing the speech that transformed the company
• What actually changes leaders and CEOs mind's on climate and social justice

Enjoy the episode, share it with your team, and leave a review to tell us which term you’re retiring first! 

PAUL HAWKEN'S BOOKS

Carbon: The Book of Life (2025) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/670480/carbon-by-paul-hawken/

Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation (2021)

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (2017)

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World (2007)

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (1999) Co-authored with Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins

The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (1993) 

PAUL HAWKEN'S PROJECTS

Project Drawdown https://drawdown.org/
Project Regeneration https://regeneration.org/
Paul Hawken's Website https://paulhawken.com/

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Beyond Zero (Documentary) https://beyondzerofilm.com/
Interface - Our Sustainability Story https://www.interface.com/US/en-US/sustainability/our-history
Ray C. Anderson Foundation https://www.raycandersonfoundation.org/Lee Scott's Walmart Speech (October 2005) - "Twenty-First Century Leadership" 

PEOPLE REFERENCED

Ray Anderson - Late founder and CEO of Interface
Damon Gameau - Australian filmmaker (2040, Regeneration)
Lee Scott - Former CEO of Walmart
Doug McMillon - Current CEO of Walmart
Jib Ellison - Founder of Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting
Toby Kiers - Researcher on mycorrhizal networks and fungal communication
Andrew Adamatzky - Royal Society researcher on fungal communication patter

Transcript

Meet Paul Hawken and his focus on Regenerations

Loreto Gutierrez 0:00

Welcome to the Green Fix, the climate and sustainability podcast for Australian corporations and their ESG practitioners. We explore the top challenges and opportunities in the industry and how it impacts your business and your work so that you can keep your sanity. I'm your host, Loretta Gutierrez.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

And I'm Dan Leverington. Today we're in conversation with Paul Hawken. Paul Hawken is someone known to many through a multitude of different frames. To some, he is the author of The Ecology of Commerce, the groundbreaking book first published in 1993. Its core message about business being both a significant environmental problem and the key to solving environmental issues has become more resonant now more than ever before.

Loreto Gutierrez 0:38

And to others, he is a trail-blazing entrepreneur, putting the environment front and center of his business since 1967. He's an influential advocate, championing regenerative business to be the status quo within economies around the world, by consulting with heads of states and CEOs on economic development, astral ecology, and environmental policy.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

And to others still, he is the prolific thought leader responsible for many books, including the best-selling Drawdown and Regeneration, and now Carbon, the Book of Life, in which he calls for a paradigm shift from fighting carbon to fostering life. Paul also worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 as the press coordinator for the era-defining Selma to Montgomery March during the US civil rights movement, just when he was 19 years old.

Loreto Gutierrez 1:23

Paul's overriding approach is one of hope and agency, demonstrating time and again that humanity already possesses the tools needed to not just mitigate, but actually reverse the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. One of our guests, Damon Gammel, was kind enough to introduce us to you, Paul, and suggest live on the podcast that we should interview you. And we're really honored that you have accepted our offer to come on the Green Fix. So big welcome and thank you again for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Thank you so much. And I'm glad to be platformed by Damon, of course. Anytime. And I guess Loretta, we met once before, or not maybe nine years ago here in the audience when I was in Byron Bay.

Loreto Gutierrez 2:05

Yes, and I'm really delighted to have the opportunity to meet you one-on-one this time.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

I wish I was there in person, actually. I'd love Australia. I have two children that are Aussies. My first wife was from Adelaide. She's an Adelaide girl.

Loreto Gutierrez 2:17

Well, hopefully we'll see you on this side of the world sometime soon. Paul, I wanted to start today maybe bringing us into a comment that you make around the paradigm shift from fighting carbon to fostering life. At what point did you start thinking that we were using the wrong terminology or focusing on the wrong thing? And tell us a bit more about this concept of regeneration instead.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

That was from the beginning. Uh and I learned about climate at Stafford Research Institute quite a number of decades ago from really good scientists. And at a time when there was very little public discussion or in the news, it it just wasn't there at all. But we knew everything then that we need to know now. I mean, there's nothing that is surprises science since that time. But I never use the word fight, combat, tackle. Uh is one gender really loves those verbs, you know, and guess which one it is. But the reason I don't use them and the reason I suggest not using them is because it's the mindset that caused the problem. And that mindset is you're othering. Okay, you can't fight and tackle and combat something unless it's other and you want to defeat it. It's ridiculous, really, to use that language because basically it is blind to the incredibly inextricable connections and intricate convoluted ways in which life intertwines with itself and we are part of that life. And so uh as soon as you go to those type of verbs, you know, very male sports, war metaphors, really, then you just you're way out in the left field somewhere, you know, and you're not really part of the conversation at all, in my opinion, because your mind has basically seen the climate as something separate, distant, other than in fact you're breathing it right this second and you're exhaling into it. And to every cell in your body is getting by the air, you know, obviously the atmosphere, the oxygen that's in the atmosphere, and the climate is simply how the atmosphere responds to heat and to uh water, you know, and circulation and wind and ice and so forth, you know. So the climate is this complex relationship, you know, to the earth, and that it's the biosphere, which we're a part of, that creates the climate. It it's it's inseparable. And so when people focus on the climate, you want to say, well, where is the climate? When in fact, you know, every exhalation, every animal, every bird, every insect, every landmass, every ocean, every waterway is adjusting, changing, creating the climate that we so benefit from. So that's why I say to call it a climate crisis is also the same thing as saying combat and tackle, because climate cannot have a crisis. That's impossible. We are having a crisis for sure. So I'm not denying the reality of a crisis, but it's not a climate crisis. The climate is simply adjusting to what's happening in the biosphere.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Yeah. It's a really profound way of looking at it. I I haven't heard anyone describe it like that before. And I think that leads into your usage of regeneration rather than sustainability. And uh I'd love if you could just unpack that for the listener.

Why Language Alienates The Public

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Aaron Powell I think it it came about when I was, you know, bef even before before I draw down my blessed unrest, Ecology of Commerce, and these books came out and the word was being bandied about sustainability, people ask me about it, you know. And I remember once being in LA, which then was more polluted than it is today because the clean air stuff and the cars have changed and so forth. So it was just a hot, muggy, smoggy, polluted mess, in my opinion. And and I'd say, well, everybody raise your hand. Who wants to sustain LA? No one. Okay. I mean, so to use that term means sustain what? And then what is that ability? I understand the intention of it. So I I praise the intention. I I'm not here to criticize any human beings for caring about the Earth, you know, but I'm just saying the language, what I'm concerned about is I think the climate movement has failed in producing a narrative that engages people because it uses net zero, net zero, okay, what's the net? Who says who? Zero what? I urge people who think the terminology in the climate movement is to go out on, do a man or woman on the street, which I have done, by the way, it's a fake microphone, and say, hi, my name is, and I'm doing interviews with people. Can you tell me about 1.5 C means in the United States? Okay. C, what's C, they'll say. I'll say centigrade or Celsius. I have no idea. And why would you ask? How about net zero? Net zero when and what and net zero carbon emissions, but but who's measuring it? How about decarbonization? There is a good one. I mean, the carbon can't go anywhere. It's here somewhere. It's either up there or it's down here. You can't decarbonize the planet Earth, you know. And carbon neutral. Oh, well, is there the UN gonna, I mean, this is a there's a neutrality, you know, tipping point, direct air catch, carbon removal. I mean, all these terms which are very useful. I mean, again, I'm not trying to Mau Mau people and criticize them. If you're a surgeon, are you two surgeons and somebody's on there and they're in serious trouble, they're gonna go dot bot dot in jargon. Makes total sense. Jargon's very, very useful. But when you're talking to the other 99 plus percent of the people who do nothing on a day-to-day basis and maybe empathetic or sympathetic or think it's happening, but they don't do anything. Well, why is that after 50 years? Why have we created a greater emission carbon emissions in 2024 than we ever have since this was first brought up, you know, quite a bit more. Uh and it's because of the way we're talking, the way we're communicating. If you're in business and that's your thing, or that's you're an NGO, you can learn all this language. But to the general populace as a whole, we have to reimagine what our language is and what the story is, what we're saying, what we care for, what we imagine, and w and and and and why we are leading our the lives that we lead.

SPEAKER_03 8:21

After the uh last presidential election, Scott Galloway made a comment that those on the progressive side of the ledger need to realize that they can be right or they can be effective. That's exactly what you're saying. You can feel good being right while you're losing. Yeah. But if you genuinely want to make change, you need to be effective.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, Scott is right on on that one. I heard that comment too, and he's really brilliant and pragmatic. The movement to restore life on earth, you know, both on the biodiversity side or temperature side and the heating, global heating side, um, needs to be pragmatic. It really does. And I work with two of the biggest corporations in the world on soil, ag and food and heat, water, and soil. I mean, that's that's the triumphant, you know. And they have such amazing power in in in in the world. They don't think so, by the way. But that's so interesting. Um but uh influence and really to start to look at those dynamics, you know, that have produced uh a food system that's so toxic both to people, to animals, to the soil, to water, and to the environment as a whole, the food system we have is just, you know, a big pile of pollution. And because of chemicals, you know, the pesticides, the uh herbicides, you know, the runoff, you know, the 500 dead zones that came from ag, you know, uh in the oceans today, the nitrous oxide, the CO2, uh, but also the methane. And if you actually do the math like and then throw in the nitrous oxide from, you know, chemical fertilizers, it's neck and neck as to whether for creating animals, the way we create animal food and fossil fuels, as which is the greater contributor to global warming. And the reason you say, well, now how could that be? And I don't know about it, nobody said that, is because the third group of the IPCC, the intergovernmental panel on climate change, they calculate global warming potential, GWP, another bit of jargon, but you know, the GWP over 100 years. In other words, what will this gas you over 100 years? Fair enough. You've got to look ahead, you know, look far ahead. Well, carbon dioxide will stay there past 100 years, no problem. But methane in 10 to 12 years breaks down into CO2 and water. But we count it as as if it was gonna last for 100 years, then you divide it by almost a factor of 10. So you suppress its actual warming, it's not warming potential, it's just plain old warming right now. And and so you we have a very skewed way of looking at uh global warming in terms of a cause and the way we raise animals um in the world today, whether it's in Australia, in America, is very close to being the number one cause of global warming.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

I was fortunate to watch the interface uh documentary that you were in, uh probably like end of maybe 2018. It it it unlocked a piece in my brain of the role that that business has to play when it comes to the environment, to nature, but then also the the positive influences that transforming a company's operations to a circular economy-focused model. And I know that that came out of Ray Anderson reading uh The Ecology and Commerce. You had such a ripple effect from writing that book. I'd love to understand now, writing carbon, why you felt like it was the right time to write this book.

Business As A Lever For Change

SPEAKER_01 11:52

They sort of recited in that list of jargon, you know, there's this over-emphasis on carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon. And uh we have 1.2 trillion carbon molecules in every cell of our body. So to talk about it as this thing, we are that thing. And without carbon, there there's not a shred of life as we know it, or anybody else, or anything else. Um, so just like respect, you know. As I said earlier, I don't blame anybody who's working on this issue. I don't criticize them, I don't go, wow, wow, wow. No, I just think thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. God bless you, you know, or anybody else, the Buddha or anything, whatever you want to be blessed by, I'm offering that blessing to you, you know, whether it's a child or you're 84 years old, it doesn't matter. You've woken up to something and you're making an effort to do something that will actually honor. So thank you. Having said that, however, the thing that's blocking much of who we are in terms of being able to uh partake and engage in activity that is life-changing for our media environment, for the future, for our children, for our grandchildren, for ourselves, our friends, is a lack of awe. We don't know where we live, we don't know what's living here, we don't know how it works. And the more you learn about the living world, the more jaw-dropping it becomes in all of a sudden this colonial human being looks like an idiot, actually, in the face of what we know scientifically about creatures. And there's 3.4 trillion creatures on our earth, but we know very little about our earthmates, and there are earthmates, you know, they live here too. And what we do know now is that all of them are communicating every single day. There is this amazing amount of communication going on that is now being parsed and broken down and understood by scientists, and it's so fascinating. This assumption that, you know, we're on the top of the food chain. We're the most evolved animal the earth has ever seen, and you have to say, really? Because none of the others destroyed it. Do you call that evolution? So the question is, can we hear, can we listen to all the voices? And what are they saying? What are they saying to us? And they're talking pretty loudly in terms of their the effect we're having, like the effect on them, you know, whether it's the fish or the whales, or whether it's the antelope or whether it's the pollinators, you know, you name it, all of life as we know it is being basically murdered and poisoned and killed and pushed off the land and habitats are being destroyed. And we're all doing that to extract wealth. We're taking, taking, taking, taking, taking. To say we're colonial, we're extractive is true, but it I don't think it takes. But awe, wonder, like look at a child, that is there in us still. And that is what changes us. And the reason children are so awestruck by the living world is they don't see it as separate. And then we have to teach them that they're separate. We have to send them to school. And we need to uh get out of school. And whether it's just by the the great books, great podcasts, you know, or whether it's seeing movies by uh Damon Gamot, or whether it's actually spending a lot of time, you know, uh in the ocean, in the sea, on the beach, in the forest, in the desert, and if possible, with people who know those places, you know, who've been there for hundreds of years. People who co-evolved with those environments, with those landscapes and with those animals and those things, and have learned so, so, so much. I mean, the song lines there are, I don't know how many thousands of years. Those song lines were very specific instructions about how to move uh west to east and back across Australia. So it was a song of the land and this beautiful interaction, how you can be uh uh alive and well within that landscape, you know, which is very challenging, as you know. I think we're missing something, which is what a beautiful, extraordinary place we live. Yeah.

Loreto Gutierrez 16:17

That's really beautiful, Paul. That was one of the parts of the book that I enjoyed the most, how much you highlight the wisdom of indigenous cultures, how they understand the earth. And one of the areas that I really loved so much and I haven't stopped thinking about was the chapter called Parlance, which was around language and indigenous language and what a huge loss of knowledge that relates to the world we live in and what we're losing. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Well, I quote at the beginning Tiokasin goes for a Lakota man. And he c he calls them conscious languages, as we say indigenous languages or whatever. And conscious languages do not require a logic of believing, but rather a logic of knowing. And um that the earth does not lie ever and only speaks the truth with conscious respect for all beings. That's what we hear, that's what the earth is saying, that's the language of the earth. Nothing in nature lies. It's always telling us the truth. So we can uh ignore or we can listen. No, the earth wants to save you. Imagine that that's who we are relating to. You allow this extraordinary intelligent planet, it's 3.4 trillion creatures involving over, you know, 500 million years in terms of life itself, and and uh it figured a lot of things out. Um trial and error, you know. Um but right now all our errors are on trial because it's actually killing our mother, you know, killing the earth, killing the source of life. Uh and uh so this is a perfect time for awakening, realization. And I think it's not about giving up, but it's about giving in. If we if we just read the headlines, what's happening and the the rate of species loss, you know, heating the the decline of the uh of the earth really. Who wants to witness such losses? Nobody. But I also think there's a gift in there too. And that gift is what carbon was about. We talked earlier about soil, you know, a guy, uh Professor Hutton, who uh years ago decided to find out how many roots there were on a single kernel of rye and planted it and and grew it and using electron microscopes, uh counted 14 million roots on one kernel of rye. Now, each of those roots has a hyphae on it, which is connected to the mycelia. It's connected to fungus. And the thing is that they are communicating. And the plant has got sugar, saying, look, I got some sugar, and communicating to the mycelia, I need nitrogen, I need phosphorus. There's no zinc here, my god, I need zinc, or I need selenium, or I, you know, even some odd things, you know, but mostly it's phosphorus and nitrogen. And uh the mycelia swaps it, swaps it out. So, okay, here's your phosphorus, you know, thanks for the carbohydrate. And we can see now Toby Kears, this beautiful, wonderful woman, has learned to light up the mycelia. And so you can see the things moving back and forth, and not just one way, but they're moving against each other too. This, you know, these are like molecules of of nourishment. And the Royal Society has basically been doing work on the communication of mycelia, which is that if you actually listen to it, it sounds like a sperm well or the San people in Bolswana. It's a clicking sound, like Morse code. And that clicking sound repeats itself in packets. So Adam Asky, who is leading the work in the Royal Society, says, uh, those are words. The Morse code is the same, right? A combination uh of uh longeurance are is a word, and then you can put words together, and what you have is a sentence, you know. And he says, to much criticism, by the way, saying basically these are sentences, these are complex sentences in the mycelia, and as complex as Indo-European languages, you decide for yourself. There's the pattern, there's the sound, you decide. So that is that is just one kernel. And if I look out, I'll show you what's I see outside my window, I see 80 redwood trees. And some of them, I couldn't bring my arms around them. They're so big, right? They've been there for over a century or more. How many roots do they have? And what is going on there between in the soil and so forth? So I'm saying that's why we don't know where we live, because we think soil is stuff. It's a it's a medium, growth things in, but in fact it's an organism. It it it is exactly like an organism, except it doesn't have a skin. It doesn't stop as an organism, just like mycelia doesn't stop, really. It can stop, of course, but it doesn't have a boundary. And uh so that's why we don't know where we live on. Um and I would say that's true about our human body. We have no idea how it works. Again, profound respect to what we do know, but our microbiome is similar to the soil microbiome, is is incredibly complex.

Loreto Gutierrez 21:36

Paul, uh I just wanted to uh first of all, I just wanted to thank you. Um, because the feeling that you're describing, that awakening in the sense of oh, I felt it when I read your book and um just wanted to congratulate you on this really wonderful publication. One thing that was on my mind as I was um reading it is I was just thinking, who did Paul write this for? Who were you thinking about when you were writing this book?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

My editor asked the same question. They were like, who's your audience? But I I didn't w I didn't I didn't want to think about it. I felt there's something I wanted to share. And the next two books are the similar. There's a kind of a trilogy. And um I had to stop thinking about my market for drawdown, you know, in 18 countries. I mean all my books all together and thirty c languages and over two million copies. That's not why I write. It happened. So thank you. But I didn't want to write a book that was positioned into the Zeitgeister right now. I wanted to write a book that touched somebody and touches people. But I I I didn't feel like my job was to really put that back in people's faces. We're screwing up. And uh we are. But but not not to stay there and and to really go uh into the complexity and the beauty of where we are. And also I talk about the misunderstandings and the ignorance that preceded it in many ways. For me, writing is always about curiosity. I never learned to be a writer, I was never trained, I never went to school to be a writer, never took a class. To me, it's always just about curiosity. I've been curious since I was a lad, and I still am, and I still feel like, gosh, I don't know anything. I don't feel smart at all.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

It's the curse of curiosity, right? You always know that there's more to learn. Um for our listener who is often operating inside organizations driven by metrics, um, risk mitigation. How have you seen others in your journey communicate this regenerative mindset to stakeholders who prefer to drag their feet when it comes to approaching corporate sustainability or or regenerative activities?

SPEAKER_01 24:05

It's a really good question. The way I approach it now, first of all, is that regeneration is also like sustainability. It's become a weasel word in the sense that people kind of use it casually or it can mean this, it can mean that, and what you know, but it sounds good. And what I say to them is like, you can just put the word away. I don't care whether you use the word or not. What I do care about is that is the future, and your company's smack dab in the middle of that future, you're gonna be here. So what what are you what are you gonna do? How are you going to change what you do uh in order to be around and to actually serve your customer better and well? The fact that I emphasize mostly is the rate of heating because climate models we know it broke, and that is that a model that'd been developed over 40, 50 years, because they were iteratively changed every year they put in last year's data, and then the model became more and more accurate. And then the last 18 months, climatologists freely admit they couldn't explain what happened. It didn't comport to a model that had been developed over decades. I don't think it's just an anomaly. Something broke. What broke was our belief and understanding that we had the understanding of how it works. Okay, that's what broke. Climate can't break. Climate's just being good old climate. And if you're not dealing with heat, then you're not serious about sustainability, uh, be able to persevere. And then heating soil and water are the triad of which people kind of disaggregate in a way. They know that heat has a big effect on obviously crops and soil. They know water, the presence or lack thereof. They know that they interact. But really, the only way that you can actually create a sustainable food system that is one that's going to endure is to change the soil. Because we're locked into the dynamics of an unpredictable climate, you know, atmospheric activity. Every one C degree hotter the Earth becomes 7% more water in the atmosphere. So right now, there's 10% more water in the atmosphere than there was, you know, in 1950. And it's going up every single year. And what happens in that in that water, it tends to concentrate, and not surprisingly, and then you get these lash floods and tremendous amount of rain coming down in areas where it has done that occasionally, but now in a much more forceful way. And then in between those concentrations of water, you get drought. So you're getting whiplash of effects and impacts. And the the way a company that is in food can deal with that is to really educate and work with their farmers, their growers to grow in such a way that the soil holds and absorbs more water. That water up there should be down here. But the way commercial agriculture is doing the opposite, it's like bare soil and the the increasing heat is actually causing evapotranspiration, causing more water to go up there. So, you know, it's a fool's error. What I point out is that this way leads to savings. You save money. This way leads to more expenses. So I'm always emphasizing cost. Like you got the most costly way to do it right now. And I'm not here to make a believer out of you. I'm here to help you be pragmatic. Because that's your job. You're the CEO. Your job is pragmatism. And it it is not pragmatic to pretend that it's not going to get hotter and hotter and hotter. And the impacts are not going to devolve upon you, your company, your farms, your food system. It's not a come to Jesus and it says, Do you believe? You know, like, no. It's like, do you see? It's pattern recognition. Try to wean off the jargon or the weasel words, and wean them away and stick to practice uh and get better at it.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

I love that because I I think the word pragmatism is often used as a weasel word for traditional business executives as well. Like, oh, we can't do that. We need to be pragmatic. Well, if you're being paid to be pragmatic, let's be pragmatic.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Right.

Communicating Regeneration In Corporates

SPEAKER_03 28:09

Yeah, exactly. Well, well, uh we'd really like to talk about your thoughts around the importance of decentralized and community-driven actions. In the Australian context, there's often a focus on big picture national policy and large-scale projects as being the solution to get us out of whatever current problem that we're in. But how do you believe companies need to be supporting localized initiatives instead of this large multi-stakeholder undertakings?

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, nature is not top-down. So you're fighting it if you think you have a top-down way or solution to it because it won't work. I mean, nature is entirely composed of from your cell and your body to everything of communities. It's all community. So what you want to do is to really recognize that and what strengthens community. And because community is about connection by definition. And so what are you doing possibly that is messing up community, you know, breaking it up and disaggregating it? And what can you do to do the opposite, to bring people together? And it doesn't mean writing big checks. That's very good and very important, but it's actually about the company showing up. People see that you're a part of a healthy community. Your business wants to be a healthy community. And people who work in a business can tell you right away whether it is or isn't. And so if it's not a healthy community, well, what what would it mean to be a healthy community, you know? And that involves listening, respect, communication, understanding. Understanding includes education and you know, awareness. And if that's not there or failing or been put in secondary, that that company's not gonna do very well.

Loreto Gutierrez 29:50

Absolutely. We really wanna talk about the future and your advice. Um you have this incredible business background. And decades later we're still having this issue of bringing capital to the right places that are actually gonna allow us to live in a more regenerative way. Is there anything else you would add to that?

SPEAKER_01 30:11

I still take away the adjective regenerative. Regeneration means to create more life. That's it. Because that's what life does. That's the default mode of life, period. End of subject. It is binary in a sense, and whatever your company is, your position of company, you can just ask yourself, are we creating life or destroying life? And be honest, be real, do your homework, don't bullshit. But I'll tell you the interface story once where they had a in one of the manufacturing places, they brought in executives from different companies to teach them the interface way. And sometimes people would be sent there and they really didn't want to be there. And there was a vice president, I'll tell a guy, it was Sarah Lee, big baking product food company. Anyway, she wasn't really having it. You know, I mean, she was asking very sort of provocative but sort of pointed questions. Anyway, finally she said, by the way, where's the loo? And they said, Oh, well, just follow the blue path. Because it's a warehouse, it's an active warehouse of manufacturing and storage, forklifts and things. And so they said, Oh, just follow the blue path and that'll take you to the loo. And so she did. And then she she stopped because there was uh a forklift that was coming the other way. And she said, Tell me, what do you do here? He said, Ma'am, I saved the earth. What do you do?

unknown 31:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

She was like, this is a guy in the warehouse. Um and they talked some more, and then she went to the came back, and she was shaken up. And but that happened because Ray spent time and money in sharing and informing and educating every single person in that company what the mission was, and they had a mission. But sustainability, with all due respect, is not a mission. Regenerative, fill in the noun, is not a mission. It's an act, it's nice, it's good, better than nothing, that's not a mission. So the company needs a mission that brings people together, that they understand, that makes sense, you know, and bring in missionaries too. You can bring them in for the outside, you know, who maybe know more than you do. Who knows? But end of the day, it has to be nested in that place, you know, and be part of the culture. And that culture can really do amazing things, you know. That's community. Culture and community are the same thing. It was actually in Australia when I was giving a talk, and somebody asked me about Ray Anderson's, what makes a difference? What makes the biggest difference for a CEO that you've seen historically? I said, Oh, that's an easy question. And they said, Really? Easy? Yeah. It's pretty much all the same thing. What it said, it was their daughter coming back from college or school saying, Dad, what are you doing? I saw it again and again. Not their son, because they'll get defensive to their son, not to their daughters. And it was a genuine question from uh the daughter that the father loved and she loved her father. But on that, she wanted to know what he was doing, what he was thinking. It's fascinating when you think about because it's those really intimate moments, those things of vulnerability and trust that actually are the pivot point.

Loreto Gutierrez 33:26

It's really beautiful. And it's also empowering, just reminds us that it could just be a personal connection that you have with someone in an instant that act makes a difference to the other person. And it's quite empowering because we often feel like there's nothing big enough that you can do so beautiful. So thank you, Paul.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

If we had more time, I would tell you uh the Walmart story because it's such a fascinating story.

Loreto Gutierrez 33:54

I mean, we've got the time for.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Yeah, okay. So 20 years ago, a friend of mine, Jib Ellison, uh, River Rafter, had been working with Walmart for two years, taking executives are to you are what you eat trips to stations on Mount Washington and into Virgin Forest. They couldn't take their um phones or anything anything. They had to just be there, sit by a fire, talk uh for two, three days, you know, go back to being CEO of Walmart's CEO of Sam's Club, which uh, you know. Anyway, he did it for two years. And uh he called me and uh he's a friend. Um known him a long time, and he said, Would you consult with Walmart? And I said, no. And uh he said, why not? I said, because they have a terrible reputation and I'm not interested in doing anything for the reputation. That's their problem. And then he said, okay, right. Then he called me back and he said, Well, what are you interested in? I said, systems. I love systems. I'm fascinated. They have the biggest commercial system in the world. I said, if the whole system is not up for discussion, I'm not interested. And so he called me back again. He said, they want to take one thing off the table from the system. I said, What's that? He said, Growth. I said, Okay, you can take that off the table. They got back to me, he said, okay, they want to fly up from Arkansas and and kick the tires. And I was standing outside, I was looking looking down on my feet and going, There's no tires there. And the answer is absolutely not. And then they called back and said, Okay, okay, you can come here. What do you want? And I said, I want 20,000 a month for 12 months guaranteed. And he inhaled, he said, Oh, well, I'll go back to you. And he got back to me and said, They don't do that. I said, Fine, I'm cool, I'm happy. He called me back, he said, okay, they've accepted it. And so I flew down to Bentonville to meet with the CEO, the incoming CEO after that, Mike Duke, and then Doug McMillan, who is now the CEO, and Eduardo Castro's head of uh Walmart America's head of legal, and I forgot Jib was there. There was one other person anyway. Flew down there and we were meeting in the closed basement of a restaurant. There was no food. I don't think there was even tea, there was water, but we met for five hours. And the first thing I said, because I sat next to Lee, I said, Lee, I'm not taking any of your money. He said, Our money is not good enough for you, you're too good for us. And I said, No, I have three kids in Ivy League schools, I desperately need the money. And he said, Well, why aren't you taking it? I said, Because I want you to believe everything I'm gonna tell you. I got nothing on it. And that was five hours. And I said basically in many ways, but I said, here's the environment, here's social justice. It's like one thing. Because they had really disaggregated it w entirely. So at at the end of the thing, I talked about what they've done, what they know, what and how difficult it is, and I said, Well, you should go give a speech, you should come out. You should come out. You you're coming out to me, you're coming out, you want to do something about the environment, come out. And uh he said, Well, we we haven't done anything. I said, Well, that's the first thing you've said. We've studied this for two years, we haven't done a thing. And and then I said, the second thing you tell them is you think you know what true north is. You may not, but you think you do. That's Jib, and that's the two years of you are what you eat. And the third thing, just say, give us help, watch us, give us feedback. We're learning. That's all you have to say. Just be honest. No claims. And uh anyway, and then after when I got h uh, I paid my way home and then I wrote him a three-page letter. Just and then Jim said he carried around. Um, he would do the New York Times crosswords when he was in the private going around to all the different Walmart C and so and then he pulled a letter out. He looked at the letter from quite a while and said, Is Hawkins serious about this? And he said, Oh yeah, Hawkins serious. I thought so. He put it back in his book. And then in October of that year, uh Ruben, who worked there, a really nice guy, a friend, said, Would you write Lee Scott's speech? And I said, Why me? You know. I mean, I wasn't being paid, you know, it wasn't like I'm a speechwriter. And he said, Well, they've gone through 30 versions of the speech, it's getting worse and worse every time. And I said, Well, send me the content and I'll get back to you. So he did. And twenty minutes later, after I read it, I wrote back and he said, Nobody could write a speech. There's no content. I said, No wonder you haven't got one. And then Lee was copied, or B seed or C seed, I don't know, I didn't notice it. You know, Lee Scott, and he called me up in his inimitable Arkansas accent, sounded like Bill Clinton, you know. Paul, this is Lee. I thought about it. I I want you to write this speech. You know, I said, You're not saying anything. And he said, I want you to write the speech I should give. Can I read that back to you? You know, should. I said, okay, if you want, I will. So I sat down and write it. And I called for 100% renewable energy, zero waste, I mean, uh a rise in the minimum wage for the whole country, not just Walmart. And I compared Walmart to the US government because we had Katrina, which is a horrible hurricane and just devastation. There was whole Walmart stores that just were blown away by wind and flooding. But Walmart, there's this woman, Jessie, she was the assistant manager of a store in Waveland, Mississippi, and it was all flooded, the store stores flooded, the whole town was flooded, there was no electricity. And she got a front loader and she went into the store and she just made an aisle down the store and told people in town, anything that's dry, you can take it if you need it. Help yourself. And I told that story in the speech, and I said, This is who you are. This is you, this is who Walmart is. And um he gave the speech. But before he gave the speech, he sends the 700 people in the company, and every person except one said, Do not give this speech. Do not give this speech. And and then the chairman of the board, Rob Walton, said, Don't give the speech either. So and so Lee then sent it back to everybody and said, I want you to read this speech again, because I am going to give the speech. The only person who said to give the speech was Doug McMellan, the CEO, today, the head of Sam's Club. He said it. And then Rob Walton, who's the chair and, you know, worth what, twenty, thirty billion dollars or whatever. So he said, Would you talk to Rob about this minimum wage thing? He said, he doesn't that's the that's the thing he's uncomfortable with, because it's a government thing. We don't interfere with the government. Right. And um, so Rob finally called me and he just got off his roof in Arizona. He was fixing the slate tiles and you know, and talking like it all the time in the world. Really polite, that southern quality of really being super polite and friendly. And finally he brought up the minimum wage thing on and he said, I I just don't feel comfortable about that. I said, Oh, that's interesting. I said, because 95% of Americans want the rise to minimum wage. He said, They do? I said, Oh. I said, they gotta be your customers, man. Actually, if anybody would benefit the most from this, it's you. But that's not why they do it. I said, every minimum wage earner in the country shops at Walmart. And so I didn't, he approved it anyway. So Lee did give the speech. They did water it down in the wording. I have both speeches. I can see what they watered down and what was the my original speech, you know. But he did all the same thing, renewable energy, rise in minimum wage, you know, zero waste, I mean, triple truck mileage, the whole thing, it's all there. And so this is the 20th anniversary this month. And it's called The Speech Note. And uh so I get to go on stage with Doug and Lee and Jib, and we're gonna talk about it and just joke about it, really, because there were so many funny things that happened. But but that whole company changed from that point on in terms of sustainability. Absolutely changed.

SPEAKER_03 42:02

What's fascinating about that is that just like Ray Anderson, Lee was the one who was taking significant political flack and using a lot of their political capital because they could see the direction that the company had to go in before the majority of people could see it, because they didn't even comprehend that the business could survive and do this at the same time. And so we love our listeners sharing this podcast with their executive team because we're constantly talking about the, as you said, the pragmatism about making business decisions that are in the best interests of the company long term. And that involves taking political risks, knowing that you are coming from the right place and heading in the right direction to be that steward of your company as a leader. That that's an amazing example.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Fascinating about it because they did do the you know, not finished complete, but on renewable energy. Um they are solarized to the max, you know, on the storage distribution centers. And right now in the United States, you know, because of AI and the threat of AI data centers, electricity prices are just skyrocketing where they are. And uh they're making money. They're cashing in. In that sense, if you compare, okay, if we buy it on the open market, they're making money because they're selling it on the open market. In other words, not only are they not paying, but actually they can sell it. It's a revenue stream. Yeah, that's a revenue stream. If you're just looking by quarter by quarter, you have 90 days, you gotta report out, okay. But if you step back and say, well, what can we do that's actually going to benefit this company in the long term because don't we all want to be here for the long term? And so what makes sense? Yeah, they're very, you know, um very careful about how they spend their money. You know, they didn't have extra money flying around. And they did it, they executed really, really well on all those things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

One of the things is as a I was listening to you um share that story with us. You're such an amazing systems thinker. When did you first realize that you were a systems thinker? And that the way that your brain works is not necessarily how the majority of brains work.

The Walmart Speech And System Change

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Well, that's a right. Well, that's an interesting, interesting question. It came it comes so naturally. I think it was, you know, Dana Meadows. I think it was just where I was reading, you know, the books I was reading. I was so influenced by people. And they're they're quoted a lot in the Ecology of Commerce, you know, you'll you'll see um the influences, you know, that that really helped create that book. But also I I just feel like and we can see it to this day, all of us, you know, just how the the harm and self-harm and other harm that comes to the world when you don't think that way. You know, when there's so much suffering. Look at Netanyahu and Gaza. I mean, the the penultimate othering uh of of the world, you know, right now. But it's also in Syria and Sudan. But you see with businesses too, because of greed and people going for the short term, going for the big payout, big this and that. And then you see it Meta, I mean, what they've done, Buddhists slaughtering Muslims because of what they heard on Meta. And this is in Myanmar, which is a very ancient Buddhist country, because they were believing what they were reading on social media. So we're in a very strange time, and and I I think the company itself, a company itself with leadership, has the ability and the potential to bring people together in a way that they want to be brought together. Not no like, okay, well, he's talking or she's talking, and we better listen and she has a plan or he has a plan. No, because it really depends on also listening and engaging, not just pronouncing, not just knowing, but not knowing. After Ray Anderson read my book, interesting to uh listen and read his first speech to his staff, to his whole company. That that speech is very, very beautiful and it's humble and it's strong. You know both. But uh he's a rare guy. So, but you know, I can't think of a better country in some ways than Australia for you guys to make that kind of difference. Um I really do. I I spent a lot of time there in uh I have family there in Adelaide. You might not use this word, but there's an intimacy, there is a quality that Australians have that you cannot see yourself that is very beautiful and visible. There's something in Australia, something in the water, I don't know, but that I think would be a natural progenitor of the qualities and directions that you know the greenfix is talking about.

Loreto Gutierrez 46:49

Yeah, thank you for reminding us of that. I think we naturally feel it, but we sometimes forget it because we feel so far away and so small in comparison to the rest of the world. So thank you for reminding us.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Wow, I mean yeah, small but important. Really, really important.

Loreto Gutierrez 47:08

Paul, um one last question. Uh you know, you've written drawdown, then regeneration, um, now carbon. What what is the next frontier for you? And you're thinking, what can we expect um to see from you in the next couple of years?

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Well, at least one more book takes a couple of years to write a book. And I've never said anybody outside to you, so you're the f this is the first time you'll hear about it. The name keeps changing, but right now it's called the Alliance Failure. And it is a NGO, but that's not the point. It gathers the nonprofits of the world who are working on restoring life on earth and the children and the schools and the farmland and the rivers and you know all the different manifestations of humanity that was in Blessed Unrest. I don't know if you read Blessed Unrest, but that's an important book to read right now. And uh there's a typology, the addendum has this typology of all the different types of nonprofits in the world, and there's over 300. And who knew somebody supported us to spend a year trying to find one out? And um, but it it's gathering just the URL, the people um focus, obviously, uh location, you know, very simple sort of information, you know. And then you can click on it and go to the website and get more information, okay. But what it's gonna do is two several things. One is um we've got about 15,000 organizations in it so far, you know, which we've you know, placed in ourselves, you know. And it's gonna have a uh AI function internally, not externally. And Damon might be using this too, so maybe it'll change the name. It's called the Earth Oracle. So you can type in and say, who's doing deforestation, working on deforestation in Botswana? The Oracle scrapes the websites and then it then you know gives you the information. And um the idea is that um that there is this extraordinary capacity of human beings to renew, to restore, to revitalize, to regenerate, to rebuild, to connect, to remember. And we don't really see it. We don't know it. We know it from our friends, from the people we are in touch with for sure, but you never read about it, you know, in the Herald, you don't read about it in the New York Times, you don't read about the Financial Times, The Guardian doesn't report except if something does something unusual, somebody gets killed, like in Brazil and Amazon, you'll read about it, right? But otherwise, how do you know it's there? Yeah, no one knows, and no one talks about it. So that's why we're bringing it together so that you can start to see, well, this is humanity. This is what we are doing and what we care about, uh, you know, and uh and so it it it it it it it has a lot of other little facets to it too, but it's it's not the it's not a top-down organization, you know. Oh, it's got an ED, it's got staff, it's got a director, you know, no. I mean it's got people in the background. We're gonna have a council. And a council just means that if there's any questions, you know, then that need to be answered. Or, you know, that it's a very deliberative, wise council of men and women from all around the world and different cultures, maybe 12 people, you know, and everybody else is just a worker bee trying to make the thing work and uh run, but it has a language translator. So now you're from Botswana and you're going to say, you know, Australia, and then you've asked the question and up comes Damon, maybe, you know, from the regenerators, right? Okay. It is 105 languages and translate it like that. So now you can start to read and communicate with each other in a way that eliminates that barrier, which then will increase people's sense, I think, of connectedness. And so that's what AI is used for. But like I say, it's not AI to solve things that are outside of the circle. It's gonna stay in the circle. There's just a slogan um the way you heal a system is to connect more of it to itself. Wow. Simple.

SPEAKER_03 51:26

But it's so profound. And particularly because the the sense of dislocation that people have often leads to crumbling systems.

Systems Thinking And Leadership

SPEAKER_01 51:35

Yeah. I mean your brothers and sisters are out there and they're beautiful. Um I would probably end with a few um sort of co-ans here. But uh the thing is, net zero is impossible. Abundance is possible. Seek cause before cure. The natural world cares about us, not you. Climate is a teacher, a guide, not a crisis. Increase productivity, and this relates to business. Increased productivity is a gerbil wheel. It is a Jebins paradox of human endeavor. True breakthroughs break nothing. Create products that die peacefully, and then don't save the earth, it wants to save you. Oh, well. That is amazing.

SPEAKER_03 52:17

Thanks, Paul. You're so welcome.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

Thank you both.

SPEAKER_03 52:20

This is just being yeah. Absolutely wonderful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Yeah, my pleasure. Next book comes out. It's called Upstream, by the way. That's like See Cause Before Cure. It's that whole Bishop Desmond Tutu thing you heard many times about pulling people out of the river and then finally somebody says go upstream and figure out who's throwing them in the river. And so Yeah. Let's figure out the cause and stop trying to fix it downstream, which is what we're doing.