Aaron Perry
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Trammell Crow is a Dallas, TX based businessman, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and innovative leader in business development and operations. He is the founder of EarthX, the “world’s largest” environmental expo, conference, and film festival celebrating Earth Day every April in Dallas. In 2019, EarthX saw over 177,000 attendees, 650 exhibitors, 6,500 youth, and 452 speakers. In 2020, which is the 10th anniversary of EarthX as well as the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the attendance is expected to exceed 200,000. (Learn more and register your organization at earthx.org)
In this episode, Trammell converses with Aaron Perry andJoanie Klar (Global Advisory Board member for the Y on Earth Community) abouthis Texas-style “Conservative Conservation,” which he considers an importantniche in society. The conversation also includes what can be done in the builtenvironment to enhance carbon sequestration, sustainability, and quality oflife. Trammell, who exhorts that “action is key” emphasizes thatawareness-raising IS action, and a critical step for the transformation of ourculture and our society’s practices. His EarthX event, which is a collection of9 conferences at once, has several focal points: Global Youth Summit, Ocean,and Investment Forum, to name a few.
Trammell recalls where he was on the first Earth Day in 1970, and, a long-time wildlife and habitat conservationist, implores the audience to support the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, which is restoring native wolves to Colorado – essential for the ecological sustainability of the region. December 4th is a deadline to achieve 126,000 signatures on the Colorado ballot initiative for the wolves – you can support the effort by donating at rockymountainwolfproject.org.
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth Communities Stewardship and Sustainability Podcast.
Today we are visiting with Trammell Crow.
Hey Trammell, hello.
Good to see you.
Good to see you.
You know that?
Since last night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is a very special episode because we’re also joined by Joni Clark, who is one
of our premier ambassadors at the YonEarth community and who’s also on our global
advisory board.
So Joni, so glad you could be here with us also.
Well thrilling and exciting, especially to be here in Dallas with you Trammell and all
you do.
So I’ve been working to do this.
And thank you for coming in last night for the half-earth day that we had April 22 being
our day, October 22 being half-earth day and we had 500 people, the fabulous celebration.
And another million in the sidelines waiting.
Mm-hmm.
They didn’t know.
I never made it there.
Once again, the invitation they’ll be here too.
Well, I’ll tell you, we got a lot to talk about and I’m really excited and before we
dive in, let me just share with our audience a little about you and your background, Trammells.
So Trammells Crowe is Dallas, Texas-based, businessman, philanthropist, entrepreneur and
innovative leader in business development and operations.
He is the founder of Earth Day Texas, the world’s largest Earth Day celebration, which in
2011 transformed into Earth X.
The world’s largest environmental expo, conference and film festival, which takes place every
April and Dallas, Texas, just keeps saying large, world’s largest.
Yeah, it’s a very Texas thing, right?
All right.
And just to give you an idea, in 2019, just this past year, the Earth X had over a hundred
and seventy-seven thousand attendees, 650 exhibitors, each of those representing often
multiple organizations, 6,500 youth, 452 speakers, and was an amalgam of nine different
conferences going on at once, which Trammells, maybe we just dive in right there, what, how
the heck are you doing so much at once?
Well, by not knowing any better, but consistently fighting all four than we can chew and definition
of insanity.
All right.
Good on.
All right.
So, tell us a little about what’s going on with these different conferences and what’s
Earth X all about?
Huh?
Earth X started as an expo for the public the very first year, nine years ago, around the
time of Earth Day.
We had a two-day festival with the exhibitors and forty thousand people.
I say exhibitors, and that means the Sierra Club, the University of Georgia, corporations,
little companies that sell solar paneling to the public, but mainly an educational thing
for the general public to come see, become aware, and learn more.
We all need to do that all over America, but mainly in Texas.
And it has become very multifaceted at first where you showed it, you know, maybe a couple
of movies a day.
Now there’s a full-fledged film festival and last year, I think it was, I think it was
69 virtual reality films all about ecology, so again, it was the largest, an investment
forum with startups and venture capital companies, but you say, how did it happen?
We just didn’t go by the rule book, and when corporations said they wanted to have a conference
for corporate sustainability, we did.
When we saw that Austin, Texas has an amazing environmental super conference, they call
it, of hundreds of attorneys, we started one, two.
Now we’ve an ocean conference for scientists and foundations, there will be the global
youth summit which we didn’t mention, we didn’t have this last year, but it will be in Dallas
and they’re moving their headquarters to Dallas.
Wow, that’s fabulous.
Those are 6,500 youth you were talking about, those are the organized school tours, there
are tons more kids than that.
So we did it by not knowing any better, it’s really, really remarkable, really remarkable.
You just see all the excitement and the activity, yours translates into action, which is
the key.
We’re trying, but if there’s a conference, if it’s just a lot of talk talk, don’t worry
about it.
There’s 177,000, 7,000 people who’ve never heard these things before.
So the awareness level is an action item, in my opinion, the Expo, just by environmental
groups showing what they do and kids and families walking by, that’s an action.
I wish this would happen in New York, and if it happened in Washington DC, the politicians
might learn a little bit.
Well that’s a thought.
Yeah.
Or take me think.
Yeah.
Well, you know, in Texas, and I mentioned to you, I lived in San Antonio for a little
while as a kid, you know, Texas is a, it’s a peculiar culture, right?
It’s a unique aspect of the American culture, and it’s a very interesting place to be doing
this kind of work.
And I’ve heard you talk a bit about the conservative niche, and I’m curious if you might expand
on that a little bit.
Yeah.
A good example is, when we first started this, nine years ago, we weren’t sure how this
was going to fly, because we want the public, the business leadership, the political leadership.
And so we started by not exhibiting all of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Directive
goals.
If we did, talk about all these wonderful things to say, but in the world, it would have
been branded as an overall left-leaning event, and that would have been the death knell
of it.
We have stuck straight to ecology, so the exhibits and the conferences concern themselves
with soil, land, air.
We talk about climate change, but we also just talk about air pollution to the populace
here, and they receive that message better.
We talk about wildlife conservation and animal habitat in many different ways, but one
way you can do it here, that you can’t do in San Francisco, is to talk about the benefits
of hunting and fishing for wildlife conservation, responsible hunting and fishing.
Well, that’s been the mainstay of the deer population in America for decades.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
You know, it’s interesting with the Wienerth community, as we’re doing community mobilization
events all around the country.
We’re often working in very conservative communities, and what’s really fun is we find
that caring for land, caring for soil, caring for water, caring for the health and well-being
of our families and loved ones, it seems not to be a partisan issue, it seems to reach
across all sectors of our culture.
Well speaking of hunting, we know also I’ve been Colorado that a whole lot of the land conservation
happening here is the result of a well-managed hunting and fishing framework, and there’s
something interesting going on in Colorado right now, isn’t there that we were just talking
about a bit?
Yeah, last night when we were together, Laura Sidel, of the Captain Planet Foundation and
all the great things that the Turner and Sidel families do, was here talking to us about
the Wolf reintroduction program into Western Colorado, which you say, 17 million acres,
I think, and what you call, are public lands, and I don’t know when people first started
shooting wolves, but the wolves got population in America, went from tens or hundreds of
thousands down to a few hundred wolves.
It’s been restored in many places, now in Colorado, they want to reintroduce the wolves
in the western part of the state.
They have to change legislation to do that.
They’ve got the funding in part of it, is because of the Turner and the Captain Planet Foundation,
and you know, I don’t remember the name of the group that Mike Phillips run, the Rocky
Mountain Wolf project, yeah, so what’s going on is in order to have this on the ballot,
they have to get 20,000 more signatures, yeah, they need a total of 120,000, they’ve got
126,000, yeah, 126,000, they’ve got to have it about December 6th, and I guess the way
the world works is that’s not so much a matter of saying you all go sign a petition because
it’s not online at this time, right, but of contributing to this fund, going to this
website, and contributing dollars so that the, what do you say, 20 different organizations?
Bunches of organizations, 34 groups, yeah, in Colorado, yes, they’re part of this
cloning thousand more signatures, yeah, I’m happy though.
So this is interesting, so folks can go to Rocky Mountain Wolf project.org to support
the effort, and as we know, increasingly there’s a bunch of really beautiful documentaries
on this, and a lot of research showing how wolves are essential to the ecological well-being
of Western landscapes, landscapes all over really, and especially Western Rocky Mountain
landscapes, so be sure to check that out, Rocky Mountain Wolf project.org and support that
effort, we’ve got just a little over a month at the time of this recording, and ordinarily
a little glimpse behind the scenes, we’ve got several recorded episodes between the time
of recording in the time of publication, and this is one will probably accelerate because
it’s such a time sensitive issue, and get this out sooner and later, so that folks hear
about this in the month of November, and can take action before that deadline in early
December, and you know, it’s all about action tremble, and it’s all about mobilizing,
and I’m just, I’m absolutely struck, and it’s so impressed by the way you’re mobilizing
folks all over, and I’m really curious, 2020 coming up to big year, right, tell us why
is it such an important year, what’s going to be happening in 2020, April 22, 2020 is
the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Earth Day, maybe you youngsters out there don’t know
how important that was, that was a galvanizer of environmental movement, and everything
done before that was really called contravation, and wasn’t something that pervaded our lives,
and now as you all know, it’s dropped by drop, bit by bit, picked up a piece of plastic,
biopiece of plastic, so that’s what kicked off in April 22, 1970.
This coming April 22, 2020 is the 50th anniversary, there will be many, many people and organizations
all over the country celebrating and doing other things, so the our 10th event, we will celebrate,
so to speak, this 50th, by April 22, in Dallas, having major figures from those errors, I don’t
know, we have, I don’t, Mr. Ralph Nader has not said he’s coming, but hey Ralph, we want you
to come, you’re right, a lot of active people, Senator,
Mrs. Nader.
Yeah, well I know, right, if he doesn’t, but we do along the lines, Senator Gaylord Nelson
was the guy, the governor of Minnesota, I mean, Wisconsin, and the senator of Wisconsin,
who said, there shall be an Earth Day, and he said it in September of 69, but he called
it a teaching, because that’s what they did back then, they sit in, they call it, we have
a teaching, by the time it rolled around in April, it was called Earth Day, 10,000 high
schools, and other schools, and 1,500 universities, all participate in America, it was mainly a national
event, and as a matter of fact, what I have read, is there are more people there, and
all over the country, rather spontaneously, than any civil rights movement event, or any
anti-war movement event in the world, oh my God, that was the environment, so that’s how
important Earth Day is, so Trammell, I imagine a few of our audience members maybe weren’t
yet born in April 20th, 1970, where were you, just take a snack, a little paint-to-picture,
what was different than the now, what’s the same, was that something for better, some
things were worth, obviously there wasn’t the climate change problems at that time, some
had begun, but they were imperceptible, there weren’t ocean plastic problems, there weren’t
ocean acidification, and coral reef dyeing problems, there was air pollution problem,
urban primarily, remember there was acid rain, remember, because of the sulfur emissions from
coal fire plants, and when rivers started catching on fire, and death rates climbed because
of air pollution, the general public rose up and called out, and demanded to be heard,
so Congress and the Senate and the White House were the governments that heard them, and
at that time it was Richard Nixon, so as a Republican, and we’re mainly a Republican
state here, he formed the EPA, and quickly passed various acts, I don’t remember which one
had the first, but the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, as a consequence of April 22,
1970, and through the 70s, many legislations were passed, I guess I didn’t, did I say,
rivers started catching on fire, so that kind of thing stopped, and by the way, let me
mention to those folks, in Santa Barbara, California, who had told me, oh, Tramwell, 1969 was the
first earth guy, okay, okay, they didn’t have it, or they per se, but that big oil spill off the
coast of Santa Barbara then, was really one of the single incidents that started the movement.
Wow, well, you know, we recently had on the podcast Matt Gray, the chief sustainability
officer of the city of Cleveland, and he was talking about the history there with the
river right in the city catching on fire, that’s the guy, yep, yeah, exactly, we’ve got a big
layer going on there, Joni, huh? Okay, let’s, can we just slide that bag over with that
help a little? Sure. This is live, coming at you folks, this is the real world, and we’re
having a real conversation right here in Dallas, Texas, with Tramwell Crow, and so Tramwell,
where were you on that first date? Yeah, where were you looking? All of you swimming? All of
you know, Highland Park High School, right here in Dallas, Texas, and I guess, in 1969, the
60s hadn’t quit quite hit Texas, you know, and so- They were just waiting. I don’t think that
it was on my radar, I don’t think I was even aware of it. I don’t know where it occurred in Dallas,
but it did, and there were old hands, they were there, and in Austin, so no, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t,
that the original, High School. And Joni, do you remember where you were on the first
Earth day? I was in Minnesota, my family had moved from South Dakota to Minnesota, so we were
just at those schools and listening and learning. But did you celebrate Earth Day on April 22?
Yeah. Oh, I did. Cool. There might have been a little more awareness, you know, in Minnesota than in Texas.
Well, and you know, you just love the outdoors as a kid, you just love the nature, and so it’s just
like yogi bear. You know, that brings up something that I think is part of what your organization
works on. Suburban sprawl, ironically, introduced city people to nature. That’s right. You know,
maybe not just having yards, but three doors down was the end of the neighborhood. Yeah, we’re
field. Yeah, field. We talk about that in New York. Absolutely. And that right now, one of the things
we can do in these suburb and communities is permaculture, the heck out of them, and get the
biodynamic soil activation going. It’s great infrastructure, actually, for food forests,
and so this is part of the work we’re doing promoting, not in communities all over.
Yeah, in one year, you can turn around your whole soil, exact bush in his farmer’s footprint,
creating the research on glycophate, creating cancer, you know, that we now have round up on the way
out so we can now restore our soil and restore. Can you say that again now that we have round up,
how can you wouldn’t know what is this? Well, doctors that push, there’s an amazing doctor
who did much of much of the research on glycophate, which is water soluble, went in
to round up being a plot. Round up being the pesticide. Yes. Yes. By Monsanto. Yes.
That people using their lawns and farm fields, yeah, throughout agriculture, throughout what has
happened. Well, it’s been water soluble. What has happened to the use of it? Yes, and it has
just destroyed the health of the people administering it in their soil. I thought you were saying
it’s been legislation now. So there’s now a series of lawsuits arising because of the science
that Zach Bush has been leading on and we’re seeing increasingly commercial farmers switching back
to organic farming practices, knowing that not only is glycophate poisoning food,
it’s also contributing to extraordinarily high rates of cancer in the farming communities.
Yeah. So this is it’s something we’re all working on. Yeah, you’re back yard. You don’t go
if you use it in your own backyard. Well, I’ve heard there are some states where it’s been banned.
Not yet. That’s interesting. I’m not sure where we are on that.
Well, let me let me ask you. We’re talking a little about the history, thinking 50 years back.
And I’m wondering, Trammell, for you, you know, here you are, you grew up in Texas
from a family and real estate and business. How did you get into the environmental and ecological
work that you’re now leading? Well, the original story of this is real simple. There’s no great
romance to it. My brother taught me three words when I was 12. He taught me other three words.
Yeah, I don’t know if we should say that. But well, environments, population, and politics,
and as soon as I learned those words, they became the most important things to me.
Thank goodness. Environment, population of politics. Yeah. Got it. I like to say,
and he proceeded to forget the first two because he started an active environmentalist.
But that’s not fair. But like many people, I just went about my way of school and college,
and work, and getting married, and kids. So I really wasn’t fully active until my
50s. Finally, I get to do what I want because I’m lucky to have to be able to work full time
and nonprofit. Most people cannot afford to do that. I guess the lesson there is don’t wait
until you’re 50. Don’t retire. You have to balance your life with working on things you believe in,
as well as a vocation. You know, one of the things that I talked about at length in the book Why
Honour is that increasingly as our economy is transforming, as the marketplaces transforming,
there are more and more careers, both for profit and non-profit, that are engaged and regenerative
in conservation oriented in restoration and sustainability oriented business practices.
And it’s so exciting doing a lot of work with youth knowing that they’re looking ahead to a future
where there are all kinds of job opportunities that are doing great work for the world, for the
environment and for people. You can go work in a green job and a plastic company. Who would have thought?
So a little while ago you said something about forest food, food forests. So this is mimicking
some of the natural stacking of layers of tall trees, medium height trees, shorter trees, shrubs,
etc. All producing different types of foods, nuts, fruits, etc. It’s a perennial strategy related
to permaculture to give more diversity and food production in our homes, our gardens, our yards,
which also has a wonderful side benefit of creating more habitat for pollinators for important insects.
So are you saying it’s a matter of where you plant the trees and where you plant the underbrush?
Yes, in different types of trees to grow the nuts and the fruits that are climate appropriate.
So what you might see in a food forest here in Dallas is probably going to be different than what
we would see up in Cleveland in terms of species selection. Where would I see a food forest?
In Dallas, we got to find one. We just did a fabulous tour of an evangelical preacher’s 3.7 acre
permaculture food forest with his family and his kids who did a soil activation. This was up in Ohio
outside of Akron and it’s an episode that will be published fairly soon. North Texas.
And North Texas up there in Ohio. But it would be really cool before
Earth
Cleveland for example, there’s an effort working with communities of refugees and immigrants to help take care of
food forests, getting established on vacant lots so that this is actually helping the cities.
Oh, you can go to a half-quad right there and do a food forest.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, I’m sure you’re thinking about this in terms of Texas food forests.
Oh, yeah, I’m sure you’re thinking about this in terms of Texas food forests.
There’s that too and that gets into the whole silver pasture
set of strategies that is being mobilized at larger scales where you’re doing a similar kind of
strategy of having different heights of trees producing nuts and fruits and also doing your
livestock grazing underneath that, which is a strategy for soil building, which we know is one of
the keys to sequestering carbon from that. Let me see here.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Oh, look at that here. There’s a little touch of that.
Yeah. It’s a very short, really.
It’s a travel.
It’s a travel.
Right, you can do that.
So I’ll steer your hand with it.
Yeah.
Yeah, you have a monstrous buck.
That’s why others, the other things, something’s heavy.
So, do you remember where you wrote about it here?
So, you know, in terms of silver pasture and what not, let’s see what’s in here.
This is so brief and so soil focused, it may not be talking about food forests actually.
So it’s all soil stewardages.
This is all soil focused and I got a funny quick story on this.
One of my old buddies that you’re up with played football and baseball with,
he called me after I sent him a copy of why on earth and it was about Christmas time.
And his name is Joe and he called me up and he said,
they said, Aaron, can’t you just boil this all down and tell me what to do?
And I said, Joe, I got the thing for you.
We’re going to in a couple of months have our soil stewardage of handbook out,
which is as full of activities people can do.
You send him the $400, the $400 page.
Yeah, that was the Bible.
But no, we could be doing more resources on the food forest strategies.
And I think it’s a really important angle.
One of the others that we’re starting to produce some content for is
what homeowners associations can be doing.
To stop identifying, to start building soil.
To do that.
Make it out of landscapes.
A manual for that.
That’s cooking.
That’s cooking.
It’s about our office.
Well, it’s probably just a few weeks before we have a very short document
and then probably about a handful of months before we have something a little longer.
Speaking of the biggest.
Yeah, I believe that the biggest homeowner
association management company, I think they’ve got 8,000 HMOs.
Wow.
What are we going?
Yeah.
And I forget.
Well, it might be 50,000.
It might be 20,000.
Right.
Yeah.
Mr. John Corona here in Dallas.
Who exhibits that?
I mean, it’s.
Oh, very cool.
You see me that at the beginning stage that I’ll send it to him.
That’d be great.
Yeah, maybe he could get started learning.
Yeah, you know, this is the kind of thing wherever we are,
whether it’s a big urban environment like New York City, whether it’s suburban,
whether it’s rural, there’s so much we can all be doing.
And what I love about Earth X is it’s so packed full of solutions,
of information about things going on worldwide, and of
ways people are mobilizing in communities all over.
Okay, so we build a part much.
Trammell Crow Company.
Residential.
Uh, what would a regular garden office, a garden apartment complex,
three-story apartment, you know, your occasional swimming pool, what not.
What would the, uh, property manager and the residents do there?
Yeah, that’s a great question.
So, uh, one of the strategies is to put in community gardens so that the
individuals have access to growing a little bit of their own fresh vegetables
or would have you, which also creates community.
It also, uh, reduces often, uh, crime in some cases where you’ve got more
community interaction, more eyes watching the streets so to speak.
You can also do the food forest strategy so that your landscapes not just
for the visual aesthetic, but is also growing foods,
and in some cases medicinal herbs.
Now, now a key is when we’re doing food in medicinal herbs,
we don’t want any poisons there.
So part of, part of this shifting in mentality and philosophy and psychology is,
hey, we’re not going to spray poisons to make sure that
there’s no blade of grass sticking up between the conqueror would have you.
And we’re going to stop toxifying our environments.
We’re also going to really encourage people to do composting,
which is soil building as opposed to methane producing because when those,
um, when those food wastes and waste paper and all that goes to landfill
we’re just exacerbating the climate crisis.
So as a real estate, we’re a residential developer.
Yeah.
What would I do to learn about, um, offering composting to tenants?
Well, golly, I guess we got to produce some resources for you.
Yeah.
And a whole lot like you.
Yeah, I think it’s a big opportunity.
But wait, you might have to get to know your neighbors.
Well, right.
That’s what they eat.
Yeah, I’m what they eat.
Yeah, I’m what they, I think a lot of us would agree that in our country right now,
we’ve got a real cultural crisis and we’ve got a real divisiveness out there
that we can heal upon the reasons because we don’t know our neighbors.
You know, part of it is, and I love there’s a quote from President Franklin Roosevelt.
He said, a nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
And I imagine there’s got to be a corollary there,
which is a nation that heals its soil heals itself.
And it could be that as our communities are mobilizing around these
soil installations, gardening, food forests,
that also means we’re healing our communities.
Well, you got that quote down.
I need that.
I need to use that.
I’ll give that to you.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I love that.
I think I’ll hang on that.
I got some more questions to you.
Yeah.
You already said that.
Also, you know, when asked when you met at R.D.
you met Jerome who did the, he’s at Promo Culture Guru there.
They’ve wrote the book on the Greenhouses.
Jerome Austin.
Yeah.
Austin County, of course.
A book, and if not, I’ll get you one.
But that’s a real important piece for developers.
When you send it to us.
I will.
I will.
So again, as a developer.
Yes.
Residential apartments, the gardens you said, the composting you said.
What about just a regular office building?
I don’t mean 50-storey building.
Check this out.
I think we’ve got a huge opportunity here.
I think that we know through the research that indoor air quality in office buildings is
particularly bad, because we’ve got a lot of materials off-gassing, computers, finishes,
paints, furniture, all kinds of things, carpets.
And we also know, get this, that certain species of plant are very, very good at filtering
air, carcinogens in particular.
The very best is the spider plant is the household name.
We can get the Latin name for you.
And in fact, on our soil stewardship webinar, which is available on the website, we talked
about this.
One of the things I think we’ll be seeing in the coming years inside of office buildings
is a whole bunch of living plants, spider plants, and others that are particularly good
at filtering the air.
I hope we see this in people’s homes, too.
We know childhood asthma is closely related to indoor air quality issues.
And that means you’re necessarily also bringing in soil.
So think about one of the ways we can sequester carbon and make these urban rural linkages
is by having these soil installations with living plants and helping to educate and connect
the dots for people about how these things are all interrelated.
So we need to recruit individual children companies who want to come to Earth X and sell
those types of plants to the public.
Yeah, yeah.
So be great.
And design, so you have the daylight and better design standards so that you have green
building it.
Well, that’s easier.
That’s happening.
Yeah.
We’re starting to do that in residential and the office buildings are really going that
way towards leads and all.
But to have a plant in the space doing that works essential.
We’ve evolved to live among and within living plants and trees and forests.
And we know there’s a ton of research from the medical and psychological community plants
for five minutes, measurably reduces stress hormones.
We know it’s related to cognitive performance.
We know it’s related to quality of life.
We know it’s related to creativity and some of these things we need in our businesses and
our workplaces.
So it’s, to me, almost a no brainer in a sense.
And I think there’s probably a lot of commercial opportunities as we mobilize these kinds of
strategies.
And it means we’re all healthier and then hopefully doing even more stewardship and regenerative
work, whether it’s in real estate or some other industry.
We all get to help shape and create the future together.
One of the Earth X-lings, one of us at Earth X, Bruce, has some device that detects the
carbon footprint where it is.
So he says, in his office, in his particular office, it’s 1,000 per part for me.
And that sounds good, but he says, again, that’s not unusual at all, 1,000 partners for
me.
Yeah.
We tell Dr. Oxfine down about this.
And outdoors is what, 400, 400 can enter something.
Right.
And just by way of reference for folks who may not know this right offhand, before the industrial
revolution, the carbon concentration in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million.
So now, as Tramwell’s saying, we’re over 400 parts per million.
And we’ve seen over 43% increase in carbon concentration in the atmosphere.
This is driving the climate crisis.
What’s beautiful about soil building is a 10% increase in soil carbon is the equivalent
of sequestering all of the fossil carbon we’ve released since the beginning of the industrial
revolution.
I said it again.
10% increase in soil carbon worldwide is equivalent to sequestering all of the fossil
carbon we’ve released.
So I don’t know how do I do this.
Yeah.
So we can get biodynamics going in the property.
There are certain plants.
We can grow their fast growing that are literally breathing in carbon from atmosphere and our
things.
We can do to them, including composting, some cases biochar, to lock that carbon back
in the ground where it belongs, we’d like to say.
Can you, can you, all the top of your head, say, what trees here in Texas, not our native
trees, but what trees?
We know that plant.
We know that plant.
We know bamboo and hemp are pretty fast growing in this area.
You got fast growing popular.
You’ve got a really beautiful forest here.
I’m just looking out the windows.
Even here at the lower level of the landscape, you could be doing a lot of comfrey, which
every fall, you would then compost.
It’s a very fast growing, it only gets a couple of few feet high, although it can get three,
four feet high.
Mine is this high in New York.
It’s a grass.
It’s a country.
It’s a leafy plant.
It’s a leafy plant.
It’s also very healthy for healing wounds and things like that, but it’s great for the
soil.
And it’s beautiful everywhere.
You could have it everywhere.
Yeah, when I travel around the country and visit different properties, one of the ways
I can identify that there’s a permaculturist involved, and there’s a bunch of girls who are
comfortable.
Yeah, yeah.
It’s kind of cool.
Bamboo is not necessarily a species specific.
Just most bamboo is good for this.
That’s a great question.
I don’t know the answer to that.
So it’d be good to figure out what you probably know, okay, we got a lot of bamboo.
And this is the other thing with the built environment, when we’re developing new buildings,
when we build with wood and bamboo, that’s effectively locking atmosphere carbon up for
a very long time.
So when we’re thinking about materials, selections, even for finishes and so forth, there’s an
opportunity to get back to some of these more natural materials that are ways to sequester
carbon based on the carbon.
Yeah.
And bamboo, their leaves are so good for so many things, teas and medicines and facials.
I don’t think we’ve ever taken a bamboo leaf.
Okay.
No.
Oh, you’ve got a beautiful, okay, hemp.
We have not planted hemp trees here, and we should.
Yeah.
The hemp.
Yeah.
I think we’re going to see an incredible mobilization around uses of the fibers for things like
clothing, and there’s some infrastructure that needs to be developed around the country
for that.
You know, what’s amazing is this nation is really founded on hemp agriculture.
We have talent for Washington, and we’ve said all over the place, yeah, hemp’s dead and
so on.
What do you mean, hemp dead?
Well, there are lots of towns and villages with the name Hempstead in the United States.
And, you know, it’s part of our heritage, and it’s a very, it’s a special plant.
The history has to why it became so demonized and just polarized association with marijuana.
That’s right.
Not, you know, that didn’t have the active drug, but no, it’s demonized.
Yeah.
It has been, and that’s one of the things we need to do a lot more of growing a lot more
hemp for new materials and for transitioning off of fossil plastics and so forth.
And it really can help the landscape, and in a lot of the agricultural regions of our
country, it’s helping the economics of the farmers also, which is just tremendous to
see that starting to kick in.
Yeah, because farmers have the highest suicide rate of any out occupation.
Even in America.
Even in America, not just India.
And part of it is because, well, that’s all the whole of the market, right.
But, you know, when you can’t, when you’re monocropping, you can’t have healthy soils, you
know, it takes the permaculture aspect to farming.
And then we have to put toxins in it, constantly, constantly, constantly.
Farmers, I’m a farmer.
I love my land.
You feel it when you’re putting that in, when you have to farm government policy that’s
been set up the way it has been.
Bad big business.
Yeah.
My big business.
That’s, you know, same thing with the food industry.
That’s why people get sicker now, because we don’t have healthy food.
You know, it’s shelf life, designed for shelf life and not human life.
But we’re changing that.
By, by, by.
By, by, by, by.
Let me, let me just remind our audience that this is the Why on Earth communities stewardship
and sustainability podcast series.
And today we’re having a wonderful conversation with Trammell Crow and his home here in Dallas,
Texas.
And I’m joined by Joni Clark, one of our board members.
And I want to do a quick shout out to our partners and sponsors who are making this possible,
as well as making our community mobilization work all around the country and international
we possible.
So these organizations include Patagonia, Earth Coast Productions, Waylay Waters, The Lidge
Family Foundation, the International Society of Sustainability Professionals, Beauty Counter,
Purium, and Madera Outdoor.
I also want to give a special thanks to all the individuals out there who have joined
our monthly giving program.
Thank you very much.
And if you haven’t yet joined and you’d like to, you can go to whyon earth.org, hit the
donate button or go to whyon earth.org slash support and select any level on a monthly
basis that you’d like to contribute to this work.
And when you do so, when you join, I’ll send you an email with a very special code that
will allow you to unlock all of our ebook and audiobook resources for free.
And you can share that with friends and family, so it’s a really wonderful win-win.
And you know, I’m loving that we’re talking here, travel about soil, about taking care
of our planet, about the outdoors and so on, and some of the connections we can make to
the built environment.
And I’m looking around here, beautiful home here, and I’m seeing so many different rocks,
special rocks and minerals and gems, and I see a bunch of malachites sitting over there,
and it’s clear that you have a real full affinity for, let’s let’s show them, yeah,
it’s a talk to us about this one’s going on here, I don’t know that, I don’t know, I
don’t know, I don’t know, it’s like a tiger’s eye on us.
It might be more later because they’re tiger eye, oh it is, okay it is, yeah, I can tell
you died already, yeah, so what, yeah, yeah, I’m just, I just enjoy having them in the
beauty of them.
But do you want to go get the malachites underground, some underground, some of them, of course?
Sure, yes, but just the feel of this and the beauty of it all, the magic and the history
behind it, and all the power it has, all the magic, you know, a stone shaman, kind of on
its own.
Yeah, you know, several people last night, we’re talking about the Tucson, Jim and
Interno show, a lot of rock amp, this one’s beautiful, beautiful malachite, which has
a lot of copper in it, I guess that’s part of it, yep, that’s gorgeous, yeah, so that’s,
you got a connection with the stones in the rock is there, right?
I just like, I just like it, yeah, they speak to you, buy me, bring me home, I don’t know
what, but I’ve never read any real silence on, on crystal power, you know, but a lot of
people seem to believe so, yeah, when I encounter folks who are super skeptical, skeptical
about crystals, I remind them, you know, the first radios that we use had quartz crystal
in them, and it was the oscillating frequency of the quartz crystal that somehow allowed
for this communication through the ethers or the airwaves or what have you, it’s kind
of interesting, there’s a lot more going on on this one of the radio waves, more attracted
to crystal.
Well, I don’t know exactly the mechanism, but the first radios had quartz crystal in them,
it was part of the way the devices were communicated, we don’t have to use them anymore, yeah, they
all made each other happy, but you know, I’m really excited, Trammell, about the opportunity
we’ve had to visit with you today, and really excited about the 50th anniversary of
Earth Day, the 10th anniversary of Earth X, 2020 in April, don’t miss it, go to earthx.org
to get more information, to get involved, there’s all kinds of resources on there, huh?
Yeah, I can’t say what they’re all, there’s a lot of stuff, volunteer opportunities, links
to other organizations, and then back to the wolf thing, also April 24, 25, 26th, next
year, there’ll be the wolf introduction program exhibiting at the event, and people speaking
about it, and we’re going to get Ornery, Texas Rancher, okay, okay, yeah, she doesn’t
like it, a single bit, and bring him in and have a debate, get on the pros and cons,
that’ll be good, hopefully that’ll be filmed, that’ll be really good, we’ve got lots of
things, we’ve got more of that kind of debate, you know, before we wrap up, but, Johnny,
I just want to give you an opportunity if you have any closing thoughts or remarks for
Trammell or for the audience, well, I just don’t want to say Trammell first of all, because
you’ve been so gracious as you are with all of us, you know, and your passion and your
commitment, and the beauty with which you do it, and the humor and the spirit is just…
And the oneriness, we hope our whole team helps bring them together, but it is these thousand
of comforities, scientists, exhibitors, participants who make it all happen, you know.
Now the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, okay, that’s what I see here with the
marvelous people surrounding you, because it’s like being magnetized to the fullness of life
in this way, thank you.
Well Trammell, if you would share any final thoughts, calls to action words of wisdom with
our audience.
I don’t have anything in the tip of my tongue, don’t shop, do vote, that’s pretty beautiful,
it’s concise.
Well thank you so much Trammell, it’s great to have you here with me, I appreciate it,
we’ve seen you seeing them, absolutely.
Okay, bye everybody.
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