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Nora Germain 1:13
Great, well welcome everybody to the newest installment of the climate and coordination RCast from RChain. This week we have a lot to talk about. Unfortunately, it’s not a very inspirational week, but I think it’s a really important time to show up and really like bear witness to what is happening, especially on the west coast. I first just wanted to mention before we get into it that today is September 11, which is a very emotional anniversary for a lot of people. So I just wanted to acknowledge that we’re recording this on September 11.
Nora Germain 1:59
And I also just wanted to start by mentioning a fantastic film, which I watched last night on Netflix called The Social Dilemma. And The Social Dilemma is really great film about social media, the age of disinformation, of the sort of fake debate on climate change, and it features a lot of people that RChain really gets inspiration from like Shoshana Zuboff, and Jaron Lanier and some other people. So if anybody’s interested in not just what’s happening in America with social media, but really what’s going on around the world and why there’s so much chaos and disorganization, I think The Social Dilemma is a really great film, so maybe we can talk about it in coming calls.
Nora Germain 2:55
But the main thing I really wanted to mention is obviously this disaster on the west coasts with the wildfires so far. It’s really affecting Washington, Oregon, California, all of California and Colorado the most, but I know that it’s also affecting Arizona and other states. And I compiled some just to get us started here, I compiled some facts about the fires, everybody knows that it’s orange outside, and it’s dangerous air quality, and it’s terrifying and all that but I really wanted to compile some actual data about what’s going on. So apparently, I’ll just start with these. Um, so, the days with extreme fire conditions in the state of California have doubled since the 1980s. That’s from CBS. 15 of the 20 largest fires in California history have recorded have been occurred have been recorded after the year 2000. That’s also for CBS, that’s a pretty severe statistic. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s very recently I have an eyewitness friend of mine who works at Caltech, which is a very important research university and also helps to staff the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is the basically the engineering and the launch headquarters of NASA that the bobcat fire is now within like eye distance view just means a couple of miles of those places. That’s very, very scary. Not really a fact but just something I’m really thinking about, because that’s local to me. More than 3 million acres have already burned in California in 2020 alone, and we’re still in the beginning of fire season that’s from BuzzFeed. The August complex fire just became as of Thursday, the largest fire recorded in California. History. And I really like that The New York Times here mentions it’s 740 square miles at least. And I think that an acre is kind of difficult area to understand, but 740 square miles is an incredibly large area. Just a few more here we’ve lost 1000 homes in Phoenix that’s from the New York Times from this year’s fires. Just in Phoenix alone, we’ve lost a thousand homes.
Nora Germain 5:29
There’s a town called Malden in the state of Washington that’s completely destroyed now. Apparently the fire took its library, post office, City Hall and of course, its fire station too. That’s from the New York Times. Um, at least 14 people have died so far in these wildfires this year and that’s from NPR.
Nora Germain 5:56
So basically, I just wanted to lay out the scale of what’s going on and how it’s different than in years past. And I also just wanted to open up a discussion about climate anxiety and climate grief, which I feel like is basically a new type of depression. It’s a new type of mental illness. And I feel that myself included, a lot of people are dealing with this really seriously. And if you just Google climate grief or climate anxiety, you’ll see that there are dozens and dozens of articles from, you know, major outlets about this.
Nora Germain 6:35
Um, so this is something that we’re gonna have to deal with. And, you know, obviously, we need to talk about how to coordinate around, you know, this terrible situation. So, anyway, that’s the opener. I would love to invite anyone to jump in and give their thoughts on this terrible, terrible moment.
Greg Meredith 6:57
I don’t think the feelings around Climate are a mental illness to be perfectly honest. Well, I think that’s a very healthy response.
Nora Germain 7:09
Yes, I agree with that, but unfortunately, even if you do have a natural response to something like abuse or trauma, it can develop into something much more serious.You know what I mean?
Greg Meredith 7:25
Yeah, sure. Understood. Yeah.
Nora Germain 7:27
No, I totally agree that if you’re not traumatized, then you haven’t looked out the window.
Darryl Neudorf 7:34
Yeah, but I think Nora’s point that that hits home for me is that I, I think we always have to kind of watch ourselves and make sure that we’re not overwhelmed by grief. Because that’s not going to help us solve the problem. And one thing that kind of, kind of, I have a hard time with struggling with is the information that that’s coming out that indicates that we’ve already kind of gone past a point where in my lifetime at least, we’re probably not going to see the results of any beneficial work that we do or not much. So it just for me, it’s hard for me to kind of reconcile with the idea that that on my deathbed, even if we kick butt on my deathbed, it will still be getting worse. And you know, all I can, all I can think about is just hopefully it’ll be better for my daughter, you know, so that that just that that kind of I that I struggle with.
Unknown Speaker 8:48
But yeah,
Darryl Neudorf 8:54
It’s hard to kind of just continually get this kind of… every week barrage of new news every day. And it’s and the wildfires just like, as an incredibly terrifying and, and, and and mortifying story. There’s other news that came out this week. There’s a headline rising sea level from ice melting Greenland and Antarctica match the worst case scenario. So scientists are now saying that they have to readjust their worst case scenario because of what’s been happening. And in this article, it talks about how rapid it is. And it was a quote from a scientist here that says: “I was forced to by what I saw with my own eyes face the realization that abrupt climate change is not just a possibility. It’s an absolute.”
Nora Germain 9:58
Yeah, I mean, it’s amazing how many different Things are happening around the world. I mean, there’s terrible flooding going on and all sorts of places. And I was just watching a very interesting video on YouTube about the carbon cycle, which is basically the way that Earth’s atmosphere, land and water all basically emit in store carbon in order to create this, the planet that we’ve enjoyed for the past, you know, 100 or so thousand years without really much disturbance until recently. And I learned something I didn’t realize before is that apparently warmer ocean water stores less carbon than colder ocean water, so not only as the ocean warms up, do we have the sea level rise and the acidification and all this stuff, but we also reduce the ability to store the carbon so it has to go off into the atmosphere which heats the water even more And that’s a really interesting aspect of, of the carbon cycle. But I really enjoyed a tweet that Greta sundberg put out yesterday or day before. And you know, she’s always really thinking about sort of global perspectives, which I think is incredibly valuable. And she was basically, you know, just calling attention to the climate crisis of the world. And she didn’t just post a picture of the fires, she posted a picture of this horrible flood, she posted a picture of Arctic ice melting, and the fires and all this stuff together. And it’s like when you look at all of it happening at once. You know, I think it’s easy for people to just say, one of these things is happening. And it’s worse than normal, but to say that all of it is happening and it’s all worse than normal, I think is a really important distinction to make. You know, because we’re living in a world and age in which It’s these disasters become normalized, like extremely quickly. And I think one like I was thinking about this late last night, too, like one thing about coordinating people that we talk about every week is how to coordinate people. I think one way that’s really effective is to, like bear witness to what’s going on. And to not just be the people that normalize it. Do you know what I mean? Because the more people that say, this is completely wrong. This is uninhabitable This is not right. This is not gonna work. Like, you know, like, this is a do not go down this path path, you know, the more that other people will also realize that and it kind of helps to coordinate like a consciousness around that versus just going on with because a lot of people will go to their jobs today, or do whatever they do today, and there’ll be no mention of any of this basically.
Greg Meredith 12:59
Yeah, Yeah, well, this is kind of what I was saying about healthy response if you think about with the with the pandemic, you know, a lot of human activity kind of got curtailed, and we did see some short term positive effects from from that the curtailment of human activity. And, you know, I, James Hellman pointed out that, you know, you know, there during these times, and we’ve seen sort of these epidemics of depression, if everyone just simply didn’t go to work, if they did just stay in bed, ah, then then you would actually see this remarkable transformation. Right, you’d see this transformation that is related to the fact that our activity has been effectively misguided. Right, if everyone didn’t go to work, it would you know, if it were done intentionally, that would be called a strike.
Nora Germain 14:10
And people are calling for general strike right now, of course.
Greg Meredith 14:15
Exactly, exactly. And this is kind of what I’m saying is that if we were to give in to the grief, if only for a while, and let the grief operate through us, and, and, you know, really, really let you know, feel it and and, and and feel the the tug of being overwhelmed. If only for a little while, it would actually have a remarkably healing effect. Mm hmm.
Darryl Neudorf 14:45
Yeah, yeah. I can see that. The grief needs to lead to hope and determination, not depression and despair. Yeah, but the grief can be a tool to get there.
Greg Meredith 14:58
Yeah, that’s that’s exactly Right and you know so the tear tears can wash away a lot of things and yeah,
Nora Germain 15:07
they say the cure for anything is salt water: tears, sweat or the ocean.
Greg Meredith 15:14
Yes, that’s exactly right.
Nora Germain 15:16
If those three things doesn’t solve your problem then you know, but no I do agree though that like a lot of a lot of emotional and mental you know instability in people when it starts like being acting out you know, and acts of self harm or you know, any kind of like, you know, unhealthy behavior I think usually comes from ignoring whatever it is for too long. Trying to live with whatever pain is happening for too long and pretending everything is fine. And then you see that people, you know, people develop these other problems because they have haven’t been able to acknowledge what they’re going through.
Greg Meredith 16:05
Yeah, exactly.
Nora Germain 16:06
I think there would be a really cathartic moment if we as a society could just, you know, because I watch the news briefs on these fires, like I watched them all and I’m like, they don’t mention the climate crisis. They just don’t. They say it’s another terrible fire season, the loss of life is devastating. How are we gonna, you know, what’s the, you know, price tag on the damage? You know, they interview a family that had to go through some harrowing circumstance and then they cut back to what they’re doing. They really don’t mention the climate crisis. It’s really frustrating.
Greg Meredith 16:40
Yeah, and and, you know, there are a lot of very sensitive souls. Who, who grieve for all the the animals that are die, right in the Australian fires last year.
Nora Germain 16:58
Oh, absolutely.
Greg Meredith 17:00
You know, there were there were, you know, like half a billion animals lost their lives.
Nora Germain 17:07
I think it’s actually the estimates now are that it’s higher?
Greg Meredith 17:11
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nora Germain 17:13
So want to know how many here now too, so
Greg Meredith 17:16
Yeah, exactly. And so so I but there are sensitive souls who really, who really are impacted by that. I know a friend of mine posted yesterday how her heart was just like overwhelmed, because she just, you know, she was, you know, thinking about the loss of all the animal life and it just was too much.
Darryl Neudorf 17:40
That was the first thing my partner thought of last night when she saw the fires.
Nora Germain 17:45
Yeah, there’s if you ever look up on YouTube, or if anybody who is going to listen to this wants to look up on YouTube, there’s great interviews with the the animal wildlife sanctuaries, all these different people who do this amazing work of trying to rescue these animals and They go out in trucks and find them burnt and they bring them back and they bandage them and, and the way they talk about it, I mean, it’s like they’ve lost a loved one. I mean, they really, they can’t even describe the fire without bursting into tears. It’s very, it’s very emotional and, and Greta not to get back to Greta. But you know, she’s kind of a personal hero of mine, and all of ours. She also started crying in the beginning of a speech that she was doing, I think it was at the UN. And she was talking about biodiversity loss, and basically the sixth mass extinction. She’s just started crying. And I think it really affected this room of adults really deeply that, you know, she wasn’t just seeing the facts she was there, you know, again, this idea of bearing witness to what’s happening, I think is really powerful.
Darryl Neudorf 18:52
Well, I think when you actually confront the thought in your brain fully, fully, completely It’d be hard not to cry. It’s just so few of us truly confront it .
Nora Germain 19:08
Yeah, personally, I feel like a feeling of like kind of paralysis. Like I feel like terror and paralysis and then I feel I don’t even like deal with grief. I just go straight to like depression basically like yesterday when the sky was like, the worst color. I can’t even describe this color here. It was like neon yellow mixed with black in the sky. It was like gray, but it was like, orange. It was horrible. It was horrible. And today it’s still pretty bad. But yesterday it was like it was just, it was horrible. This color like makes you sick just to look at it and it’s I like I had no energy to do anything. Because I was also just, like, biologically traumatized. I want to say or some kind of Like,
Greg Meredith 20:00
you can’t, you can’t underestimate the, the impact of the quality of the air. I guess. It’s like, you know, a lot of people, you know, might not notice that they’re not feeling as energetic, they’re not feeling as motivated. And it’s because of the air, they’re breathing. And it’s not you know, it’s like it’s not it’s, it’s not just emotions, it’s actually has a physical basis, which is the, the that much particulate, it really impacts, you know, the ability of your body to process and there are subtle effects as well. That if you really, I’ve said this over and over again, if you want to change the way you think, change the area breathing. It’s a real, it’s a real thing. So, so it’s no wonder that in addition to the sort of the worry and anxiety You know, when you’re breathing, that kind of air, it’s Just harder to think clearly it’s harder to to feel hopeful
Darryl Neudorf 21:05
and then there’s going to be an impact on your your health that could be felt for years if not be fatal.
Greg Meredith 21:13
Yeah, that’s correct. That’s That’s why you need to be really careful i’ve i’ve curtailed all of my strenuous exercise this week because I mean just as I’m I’m out here walking fiber and just as I’m walking I can taste the smoke with with every breath I can
Nora Germain 21:32
yes I experienced that yesterday Absolutely. I just went to my car and back and that was basically it but it was it’s it’s this disgusting, like chemically like, sulfur type but like smoky very like it’s like sour. I don’t know. It’s It’s gross. It’s horrible. And like wearing a mask will not help
Greg Meredith 22:02
Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s correct. That’s correct.
Nora Germain 22:08
You know, or at least the kinds of masks that all of us now are you know accustomed to mostly. Um Yeah, and I just think about like some of the I mean, maybe we discussed this in the past but I’ve just recalling some of the, you know, the freshest air that I’ve ever breathed in my life. That feeling sadly, I’ve never been to a rain forests, but I’ve been to many forests actually used to live in a forest. It’s the San Bernardino National Forest, which is in California. I went to high school there and I lived there for two years. And it’s basically in the total wilderness. I mean, it is in the wilderness. And it’s way high up in the mountains about a mile high and you know, when it would snow or rain There was a very special feeling, you know?
Greg Meredith 23:06
Yeah. Yeah. Very special feeling. Well, next time you’re in Seattle, let’s take a trip out to the Olympic rainforest. It’s only only a few hours away, and
Nora Germain 23:19
oh my god, we
Nora Germain 23:20
should bring people out there and make music. We should bring a whole group. Absolutely. Totally, totally. We should record something out there. That would be amazing.
Greg Meredith 23:30
It’s it’s totally. I mean, the air is hallucinogenic. It’s so clean.
Nora Germain 23:38
Yeah, I think all of us could use a good deep breath of fresh air, honestly.
Greg Meredith 23:43
Yeah, yeah. Remarkable. Yeah. Yeah, well, I don’t know if you guys had a chance to dig into the article I posted. I don’t want to change the subject. But it has been on my mind a lot. Since we, you know, the other side of this call is coordination. What did you guys think of that article about the the bill before Congress for us blockchain competitiveness?
Darryl Neudorf 24:17
Yeah, I kind of dug into that a little bit the COMPETE Act?
Nora Germain 24:26
That was the thing that you texted about China as well, correct?
Greg Meredith 24:32
Yeah. Yeah.
Darryl Neudorf 24:36
Yeah. It’s like the incentive or the least the way the article kind of puts it is the incentive to kind of put forth this act was to catch up with China. It seemed like that was kind of the, the angle that the, the legislators were coming from.
Greg Meredith 24:55
Yeah, exactly. And you know, it’s so funny because at the beginning of my career in computing, the Japanese fifth wave was used as an excuse to to motivate Congress to tear down some of the antitrust laws so that they can create research consortia in the US. So my first sort of high profile job in industry was working for MCC, which was the first US Industrial Research Consortium. And, you know, Admiral Edmund, who was instrumental in forming NCC was the one who went to Congress and said, Oh, you’ve got to be worried about the Japanese fifth wave. They’re going to be so far ahead of us in terms of artificial intelligence and other kinds of computing phenomena unless we have this this consortial research institutions. So that’s what that’s what pushed Congress over the edge to take down some of the antitrust laws to allow for these, these cross company consortia, effectively cooperation now, a similar kind of thing is happening where, you know, it’s, you know, people are using fear, uncertainty and doubt on the US Congress to help them get a little bit more clued in on what’s happening with blockchain.
Darryl Neudorf 26:29
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a guess it’s their way of getting getting involved. It’s like fear. Fear of a foreign adversary is a great motivator. Here I’ll read a sentence here. It says four key recommendations to Congress are to be made by commerce and the FTC including how to accelerate development of blockchain in the US a national strategy to In the United States business sectors position in the world, ways to secure the marketplace and supply chain of blockchain from foreign actors, as well as any legislation that may result in fast adoption of the tech. And then, McMorris Rogers, I can’t remember who that person is now, explained how it was critical to beat China in emerging technology, as we have seen in past global crises. And in recent months, the Chinese Communist Party will do whatever it takes to get ahead by stealing cheating and subsidizing their state owned enterprises. We cannot out subsidize China or beat them at their own game, nor should we. So this act as I kind of dug into it more it’s kind of it’s basically just saying, Hey, everybody, we need to kind of put together some studies, and we need to kind of spend a year investigating and learning. So it’s basically just saying, it’s just an act that they’re putting forward towards the house, to say, let’s start learning. And it’s six different sectors, of which, you know, one of them is blockchain. But it starts off talking about AI and then Internet of Things. And then I can’t remember the other ones. But you know, blockchain was number five.
Nora Germain 28:23
Greg, do you think it’s ultimately possible for the United States to I guess, I don’t know if there’s really an end goal with blockchain, but to really like, compete with China on like, effectively on on these issues?
Greg Meredith 28:38
So So the thing is, blockchain is global, that there isn’t there. There aren’t nation state boundaries, you can draw around blockchain, right. So it’s a gross misunderstanding. That said, I mean, one of the things that’s really striking, I think the reason that de-fi is so hot in China is because all of these instruments which are so clearly securities, are not deemed securities in China, if you would try to do the de-fi instruments. So de-fi is the industry term for decentralized finance. And all of these instruments are really clearly, securities, they’re all lending and futures instruments, and if you tried to if you tried to make those instruments here, the SEC would be all over you. But they’re not in China, at least to the best of my understanding. They don’t view them as securities in the way that the US and the European markets would deem them as securities. So there’s a lot more or there’s a lot less regulatory oversight in China and as a result, we just saw the massive market correction at the end of last week. So with these things, having lost, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars of investor dollars, which which we knew was coming most, the technologies themselves are not mature enough to bear that kind of risk, which is what I keep saying over and over and over again, you don’t want these technologies in mission critical places right now. Where, where you’re where you’re talking, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars or loss of life and lots of other kinds of property. And the technologies are just too nascent to, to, to reasonably bear that kind of risk, but in China, they’re willing to do it and people are just getting their hair shaved off as a result, because most of them, most of them are scams and even the ones where they’re there, they’re sincere and, and honest, they haven’t worked out the details to like anything like what’s reasonable. So that’s on the de-fi side. And I think what we really need to do though, is to foster safe exploration of these technologies. And there’s plenty of places to go for safe exploration. I just tweeted out that if you just do the analysis, click to play is far greater in most internet properties than click to pay? Right? You don’t have to think of the top five internet properties, Google, Facebook, Instagram, you know And they there and on and on and on Twitter. And you, you notice that there is zero click to pay. It’s all flick to play in the sense that what you know, your engagement with the application is to communicate or more or search for information or, or share information. There is no, there’s no payment insight for most users of those properties, and so there’s lots and lots of safe places to go with respect to the daily activity of most people on the internet that doesn’t involve, you know, risk of high high volumes of dollars. And so that’s a good place for blockchain to begin and still have impact on society. Right in the same way that Google had an impact on society and Facebook had it impact on society I don’t know if that makes sense. My little diatribe there but yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Darryl Neudorf 33:11
It’s it’s like the it’s still you know, really confusing thing for even you know, the most advanced and people who really understand what’s going on when you have a some type of a currency that can also be smart contracts like, what is that then? And like it’s just what what I’m still confused about and probably will be for a long time is exactly like China’s approach to it because it means that they’re open in some ways and extremely closed and others and, and the it seems like China, governmentally with their digital renminbi which i think you know, the plan would be to have that definitely a very controlled a top down blockchain based money digital money system.
Darryl Neudorf 34:26
Just how they’re going to implement that. It’s still a mystery.
Greg Meredith 34:42
Oh, yeah. No. The thing is that once you…. the analysis that I make, you know, it’s probably naive. I’m assuming it’s naive, but I think it still has some value. Money is clearly one of our coordinating super tools, right? If coordination is our superpower then and money is like Iron Man suit, in the sense that it’s it’s this, you know, it’s this ridiculously effective tool that primates that Homo sapiens have used to coordinate each other. But it used to be that in order to build something that had the properties of money, you effectively had to have a nation state. And you had to have a standing army and all these things to ensure that money was utilized within the parameters that was envisioned to be utilized. But that’s That’s no longer the case. The the cryptography and the technology makes it possible. too, with the press of a single button, create a thing that acts just like money. And so you can have all of this coordination superpower. without all of the all of the operational cost. You don’t have to stand up nation states in order to do that. And that’s the thing that people haven’t caught, caught on to yet. And it’s really, you know, when we talk about climate, it’s really important because so much of the climate problem is a human coordination problem. We need to coordinate ourselves better in terms of the way we live our lives, we also need to coordinate ourselves in terms of how we respond to the cross crisis’s that we have have created for ourselves and, and so on. So the idea that we have this new toolkit for coordination where we can explore many more coordination models, it’s it’s a godsend, like, wow, the timing couldn’t be better.
Nora Germain 37:17
Yeah, no, I completely agree. And one thing actually, I know that this call has been a little bit negative in the beginning, but just reality sorry. One thing I’m thinking about is kind of a silver lining and something I think about quite often with relation to all the calamities with our social networks and our public discourse, you know, politics and all of that stuff. Democracy you know, kind of being under attack and then also the climate crisis and all of the you know, all the trouble that causes it’s all really you know, human caused I want to say man made cuz I’m sure there are some women that participated to human caused You know, circumstances, you know, these things did not just fall from the sky, you know, as a random event in fact, the word disaster actually comes from this meaning bad Aster meaning star, because they’re in, you know, ancient civilizations. There are a lot of people who believe that whenever there was a certain type of a shooting star or some other kind of star, that would mean Oh, the plague was coming or something bad was about to happen. And that’s why we use the term disaster. But my point being is that we can solve these problems, you know what I mean? Like they are human caused. And that, to me is one of the places where I find hope. You know, when we’re talking about coordination or talking about the, you know, issues with social media or the internet or anything, you know, we can solve them. So
Greg Meredith 39:02
I I agree, I believe that I mean, I think as as Darryl said, you know, it’s not like we’re gonna turn around the effects of, of climate change in our lifetimes, but we can, we can ease the burden on the people who are going to bear the brunt of the
Nora Germain 39:25
Well, I would say that’s pretty, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to do that. But there are a lot of things that, you know, people didn’t ever think we were gonna be able to do. And then a few years later we did. That’s also true. And that’s that’s even like, we don’t know, if there’s some incredible carbon sequestration, you know, technology, you know, and then obviously, that would still take years to go into effect, but like, we all know, you know, I’m sure that there were times that people thought there you’d never be able to go from one end of the planet to the other. They’re in less than a day. But we can do that now. With an airplane.
Greg Meredith 40:05
Yes,
Nora Germain 40:06
yes. You know, and, and other things, you know, like video chat, FaceTime stuff that we totally take for granted now. But, you know, if you could tell people in the 1920s that you could do that. I mean, they would probably think you were insane. Or even in the 1950s, you know,
Greg Meredith 40:27
and that salutely right, you’re absolutely right. You’re so right. So, so I i always hold out hope. You’re right, just leaving
Nora Germain 40:36
a little room for miracles. That’s all.
Greg Meredith 40:39
You absolutely it’s really important to do that. I agreed, like, we shouldn’t hold out for that, though.
Darryl Neudorf 40:47
shouldn’t hold out but but I think you’re you’re, you really kind of made an important point and that is, in order to actualize a dream, you have to believe in it first. It’s it’s very practical, actually, you know, you have to have the audacity, to think that this could happen and then you and then you and then you start to execute on it. And that’s not pie in the sky hippie talk, you know, it’s like no, but it’s very, very practical.
Nora Germain 41:20
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one person who I continually learn that from is Elon Musk. Because obviously not just because he’s such an ambitious person and because I think his company’s you know, have a through line of trying to, you know, help society. The latest one being of course neuro link, which is really interesting. Um, but one great thing that Elon Musk well, I can’t say for sure he said it but I think he said it. I’ve seen it circulated around the internet is one great way to push yourself is to try to achieve your 10 year plan in six months and of course You know, you’re probably not going to achieve it. But you’ll get a hell of a lot farther than if you hadn’t set that goal in the first place.
Greg Meredith 42:09
Yes.
Greg Meredith 42:16
Or that’s one of the things I live by.
Nora Germain 42:23
Yes, we know, Greg.
Greg Meredith 42:26
Well, I mean, I just I just think, you know, one of the most magical things about, about setting an aim is that almost certainly your aim is off. Right? But it’s because we set the game and if you actually, you know, complete what you set out to do, then you get the chance for him to be improved. Right? Yeah. It’s not gonna, it’s not gonna work if you don’t do that. So, so see, so this is a real a real fact about about, you know, a human nature that we forget about and need to be reminded again and again.
Greg Meredith 43:12
I’m so so in terms of next week’s call, Darryl. Um, do you want to just, you know, give a little bit of a advertisement for who our guest is going to be?
Nora Germain 43:22
Oh, that’s a great idea.
Darryl Neudorf 43:25
Um, yeah, so we have lined up next week Dr. Pedro Baez from the blockchain climate Institute. And it should be really, really interesting call. He’s extremely well credentialed and very awesome guy to talk to. So I’m really looking forward to, to kind of it’s gonna be a pretty nerdy talk, I think, but it’s gonna be pretty exciting.
Greg Meredith 43:54
What’s his What’s his doctor in what’s he a doctor of
Darryl Neudorf 43:59
I believe he has a PhD in aerospace, aerospace engineering or something like that, I’m not a
Nora Germain 44:05
aeronautics engineer,
Greg Meredith 44:08
aeronautics engineering. So he’s a rocket scientist.
Darryl Neudorf 44:11
He so he’s literally a rocket scientist.
Nora Germain 44:14
So when you say it’s not rocket science, he’ll say, actually it is
Darryl Neudorf 44:20
um, and yeah, and so of course, he’s very passionate about blockchain and climate and actually, his area of focus in blockchain is finance. So he he can speak to that a lot as well. But yeah, very fascinating person and really, really a really fascinating organization that they’ve started it’s essentially a think tank at this point, but they are like, pretty, pretty well credentialed and yeah, it’s just going to be I think it’s going to be exciting.
Greg Meredith 45:02
That’s, that’s very interesting. That’s Yeah, I’m looking forward to meeting and talking with him. It’s good to see that there that we’re starting to get some consensual validation. Right last last week we talked with Manolya and what was her partner’s name remind me,
Darryl Neudorf 45:23
Basil.
Greg Meredith 45:24
Basil. Thank you. And, and they’re, you know, they’ve hit upon coordination, as one of the central aspects of addressing climate change, then and now we’re we’re talking to another Institute that’s looking at the role of blockchain, which is effectively a coordination tool in addressing climate change. So it’s great to start getting some conceptual consensual validation. This is a you know, an important direction to be in to pursuit of.
Nora Germain 46:03
Yeah, and all these people will be great to talk with about RChain as well, you know, because we’re going to be expanding the, you know, the RChain network with every person that we talked to you about all this. So?
Greg Meredith 46:19
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We want to. Speaking of expanding the RChain network. I was saying this, but I was muted about the congressional bill, whether it passes or not. I think it’s really important for us to reach out to the legislators and their staff, about RChain to just educate them and let them know, you know, what we’re up to what we’re about, you know, why we’re doing what we’re doing. And what makes RChain unique?
Darryl Neudorf 46:54
Yeah, yeah, I mean, when I’m just looking right now at the bill itself, and one part of it says, one of their goals is to establish a list of industry sectors that implement and promote the use of blockchain technology and establish a list of public private partnerships focused on promoting the adoption and use of blockchain technology. So there you go. Yeah, I think you’re spot on. I think we should, you know, reach out to them as soon as we possibly can.
Greg Meredith 47:24
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I think we’re getting close to the end of the call.
Nora Germain 47:33
We are, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for always being available to talk about all these really important subjects. I sort of consider it therapy, to be able to have a conversation about the climate, of course there’s so many other amazing things happening in technology and blockchain too, there’s plenty of that to talk about. But I do think it’s emotionally cathartic to be able to stay in touch about this stuff. So thank you all so much. And thank you to everybody who’s listened. And please join us next week as well for our fantastic, esteemed guest. And you can become a member of RChain at RChain Co Op, please subscribe to our chain on YouTube and follow us on Instagram and all of our other social media. And if you’d like to be a guest or know somebody who’d like to be a guest, you can email us at climate@rchain.coop So thank you so much.
Greg Meredith 48:40
Thank you.
Darryl Neudorf 48:41
Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Nora. you next week.