Youth climate activist and Otomi-Toltec Mother Earth defender Xiye Bastida talks with Green Builder Media CEO Sara Gutterman about how growing up in central Mexico shaped her activism, and about eco-anxiety, the growth of the climate strike movement, and rebuilding people's everyday connection to nature.
00:00:03:29 - 00:00:26:27
Mike Collignon: The 2024 Green Building Media Sustainability symposium Existential Solutions. I hope you enjoyed yesterday's sessions and if by chance you weren't able to join us, Build the Media will be sharing information on how you can view those sessions in the coming days. Every registrant will receive a link to the recording. Now, yesterday's all male lineup is balanced out by today's all female lineup.
00:00:26:27 - 00:00:56:11
Mike Collignon: We've got Xiye Bastida, Ashley Piper and Sarah Gutman for you today. They'll be putting the focus on climate activism and rebuilding consumer trust with authentic sustainability messaging. You know who else utilizes authentic sustainability messaging? Our sponsors. Otherwise, they wouldn't be sponsors for this event. And who are those sponsors? Well, I'll tell you. Strange technologies is a world leader in creating comfortable, sustainable and efficient environments with a bold set of 2030 sustainability commitments.
00:00:56:12 - 00:01:23:29
Mike Collignon: Training technologies is challenging the status quo and taking decisive action now to create a sustainable future where communities thrive, where equality is foundational, and where the environment is protected for future generations. We also have whirlpools of sponsor, and the Whirlpool Corporation is committed to being the best global kitchen and laundry company. They are in constant pursuit of improving life at home, which is something I think we all appreciate in an increasingly digital world.
00:01:24:01 - 00:01:50:01
Mike Collignon: The company is driving purposeful innovation to meet the evolving needs of consumers throughout its iconic brand portfolio, including whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag, console, brass, temp, Amana, Barnett, Gen Air, Indesit and incinerator. All right, I'm now going to hand it over to CEO of Green Builder Media and the impeccably dressed Sarah Government.
00:01:50:03 - 00:02:13:19
Sara Gutterman: Mike, thank you so much, as always for being our fearless moderator for all of our virtual events. It's always a pleasure to have an opportunity to work with you. Thank you also to Mary Kestner, our production manager. She is the wizard behind the curtain, as I like to call her, making it all happen. For those of you who attended yesterday, you know that it was really a wonderful day.
00:02:13:19 - 00:02:37:09
Sara Gutterman: Very heavy and fairly intellectual. Lots of big picture, thought provoking concepts and information. And for those of you who were not able to make it, as Mike said, we'll send out the recorded versions of the sessions. I really encourage you to listen to them, because I know I learned a tremendous amount from John Crites, Michael Barnard and Jeremy Rifkin.
00:02:37:12 - 00:03:04:09
Sara Gutterman: Today we have a little bit of a different tone. We're taking it to the streets, so to speak, starting with with Shia Bastida, who is one of my absolute favorite youth activists. She is a renowned, not only a renowned youth climate activist, but she's also a mother Earth defender, mobilization speaker, author and thought leader. Hailing from the autonomy Toltec indigenous community in central Mexico.
00:03:04:10 - 00:03:32:17
Sara Gutterman: She has been actively involved in organizing climate strikes and protests since 2019. Co-organized the largest climate strike in New York City with 300,000 participants in 2020. She co-founded the initiative focused on providing resources and knowledge to frontline communities, and in 2023, she was named El Woman of the year. Very cool and ambassador to the UN High Level champions.
00:03:32:20 - 00:03:55:27
Sara Gutterman: So today I get to have the pleasure and the opportunity to talk with Shia about how younger generations are using their voices to combat climate change and to take action, calling out a broken status quo and really demanding an urgent reckoning and the quest for a radically better future. So Xiye, welcome, and we're so happy to be here with you today.
00:03:56:00 - 00:04:08:20
Xiye Bastida: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here and share my perspective with everybody who's listening. So thank you all for coming and being open to hearing about the experiences of youth activists.
00:04:08:22 - 00:04:22:07
Sara Gutterman: So let's start with your roots in climate action. Tell us about your childhood because it's so interesting. And how has growing up around climate activists shape your worldview?
00:04:22:10 - 00:04:48:03
Xiye Bastida: Yeah. So I always start my story by saying that my parents met at a climate conference in 1992. So I have been a climate activist ten years before I was born. That's I always like to say that just because honoring the work that my parents have done. My dad is Mexican and my mom is Chilean, and my dad comes from a community called the Artemis Topic.
00:04:48:05 - 00:05:09:23
Xiye Bastida: And we live in a small town called San Pedro in central Mexico. And growing up around not only parents who were heavily involved in the climate space, in negotiations, spaces at the UN, but also with a very strong ties to the land, with indigenous philosophies and indigenous kind of groundings. It just shaped the way that I saw the world.
00:05:09:23 - 00:05:47:18
Xiye Bastida: And for me, the world was one where, you know, my parents were kind of the only people talking about climate. And I thought they were a little weird because nobody else was talking about it. But at the same time, I understood the deep relationship that my community had with Mother Earth, with principles like reciprocity. If we take, we must give back to the land, to ourselves and our community principles of respect, of seeing the environment as having intrinsic value, and also the very important factor of intergenerational cooperation and collaboration and intergenerational cycling of wisdom.
00:05:47:18 - 00:06:10:17
Xiye Bastida: So we have a lot of youth and elder spaces, circles where we learn from the wisdom of elders and stories, and that is anything from songs to dances to actual medicinal knowledge on medicinal plants. And I would like to think that we give our elders a lot of the energy needed for the community going, because we're so excited.
00:06:10:17 - 00:06:37:15
Xiye Bastida: We want to see things change, and growing up with that very acute knowledge about climate and at the same time, with very strong connections to the land and seeing the reality of what was going on, it just felt like a total disconnect. So my community is located around one of the largest industrial sites in all of Mexico, with ten industrial parks and over 290 factories.
00:06:37:15 - 00:07:08:01
Xiye Bastida: And that means that it's kind of it is supposed to be regulated. But at the end of the day, all of the pollution does end up in a river. It does end up in our air. And we have high concentrations of people who are sick. And more kind of it. What hurts me the most is the fact that because of this extraction of resources on water by Mexico City, we lose our culture, we lose our way of life.
00:07:08:01 - 00:07:32:06
Xiye Bastida: So we used to be very much in tune with our legume and our water and our practices of fishing and weaving tool. And over the last 90 years that Mexico City has been extracting our water. Our aquifer has depleted by almost ten meters per year, I mean, per decade. And that means that we lose our who we are.
00:07:32:06 - 00:07:54:03
Xiye Bastida: And for us, it's super important to tie our identity with the land in my in our original language and not the me. The word for our skin is the same as the word for the outer layer of the earth. And my name means soft rain. My brother's name means vital energy. All of our names just have some type of connection to the area.
00:07:54:03 - 00:08:21:08
Xiye Bastida: So that is where I come from. That's what shaped me. And when I saw that disconnect, I decided that I needed to do something about the climate crisis. I think as a youth, we're always asked, what are you going to do when you grow up? And I think we have this feeling of not having to grow up to do something because we see the injustice happening, especially with something like the climate crisis that is an intergenerational injustice we see.
00:08:21:12 - 00:08:47:04
Xiye Bastida: We feel even more called to say in 2015 when all of your decisions are being targeted towards. That's when my kids are going to be like, probably my age. My mom is in her 50s now and I'm 20, so hopefully by 2050. I'll be 48 years old with children and that is something very tangible to me. It's not, you know, just a number on a piece of paper.
00:08:47:06 - 00:09:31:22
Sara Gutterman: So I want to just ask a question about something you said before we move on to the next question in our script, which is, you know, I think the fact that you grew up in a community that had that generational learning passing down of stories from generation to generation, I think that's so important. And I feel like that in conjunction with the priority of being very connected with the Earth, is something that's special and rare, and we've stepped away from as we've embraced technology and as people in general have lost that connection to, to a large extent with nature and with the Earth.
00:09:31:22 - 00:10:04:28
Sara Gutterman: And I feel like that is contributing to greater eco anxiety and, you know, just climate angst, just because we feel so removed and there's a sense of helplessness and a little bit of despair there. So can you talk about that connection between the generational learning, the connection with the earth and what needs to happen right now to motivate people and to address the growing crisis of eco anxiety?
00:10:05:01 - 00:10:35:09
Xiye Bastida: This question is super important. And actually, my class conducted a survey on this to survey our kind of student population under climate and city and what they do about it. And it's the statistics. And obviously this is based on our student body. So it might not be generalizable to all youth, but 60% of students said they feel some type of climate, and about 17% had never heard of the term climate.
00:10:35:09 - 00:11:03:07
Xiye Bastida: And so there's also like a communications gap. And other people said, you know, they're very worried, but it doesn't necessarily translate to and that's because they're engaged in activism, because there is this notion that being engaged in activism and doing something and changing your community, that's what makes you really feel like you're doing something larger than yourself. Other people said exercise really comes there.
00:11:03:07 - 00:11:34:25
Xiye Bastida: And so that's just another note. But that is something that I have personally seldom experienced climate. And it's because, like I know the extent of the crisis, I know that we're looking at three degrees of warming by the end of the century. I know all the statistics about how hot is going to get. In some places, 17% of the world might be uninhabitable by 2017, 1.5 billion climate refugees by the by half by mid-century.
00:11:34:27 - 00:11:56:02
Xiye Bastida: All of these things are super real to me and what I do about it, and I want my peers do about it, is do everything in our power to make sure we don't get to that type of catastrophe. And because we see how things and the climate movement just kind of exploded so rapidly, I still with my own parents, when I asked them, how long did it take for you to feel like you were being heard?
00:11:56:02 - 00:12:24:02
Xiye Bastida: And they said, honestly, until your generation of youth activists started to organize the climate strikes and be on every single news outlet, we didn't feel that we were going to be heard. We didn't feel that the work that we had been doing for decades would actually be monumental enough to be talked about everywhere. And at the climate conference, as we're going to get so popular that before there were 10 to 30,000 people going to the climate conferences, and now there's demand for 100,000 people.
00:12:24:05 - 00:12:54:04
Xiye Bastida: That's how many people went to Dubai, to the cop in Dubai. So because we have that very strong kind of conversation with activists before us, we know how things are advancing. We know that we can measure change. We know that we can measure success. But that's not the case for all of my peers. And when people were asked, what do you wish people did about the climate crisis?
00:12:54:06 - 00:13:18:20
Xiye Bastida: A lot of people said, I would love if people did more. I think people should learn more. Did you take more climate classes? And when asked, what do you do about the climate crisis, more than 50% said, I ignore it because I don't have enough time. And that I found super interesting because for me, I don't see my connection to nature as something related to having time, because it's part of how I live my life.
00:13:18:22 - 00:13:44:20
Xiye Bastida: It's part of how I walk on this earth, this part of, you know, just feeling gratitude for being able to experience, like nature and, and all of her teachings. So that's where a lot of the disconnect is. And I do believe that in order to gain that connection to the Earth, we need to put ourselves out there in that position where we are building community with the natural world.
00:13:44:20 - 00:14:09:04
Xiye Bastida: And the United States has a history of national parks that literally cages nature in and others nature, so that we see humanity as separate from nature. So I actually think national parks have been harmful and conservation has been harmful in how humans see our connection to nature. And the fact that it's okay to drive hundreds of miles to a national park.
00:14:09:05 - 00:14:42:27
Xiye Bastida: And you think like only nature has to only protect it in there and not everywhere. Because in my ideal world, cities look like vibrant ecosystems as well. In my ideal world, there's birds. In cities, there's wildlife in cities, there's breathable air in cities and trees, and that reduce the heat island effect, etc. and people get so disconnected from it that even in New York City, when I lived there, I promising people forgot we were in an island surrounded by water.
00:14:42:29 - 00:14:57:16
Xiye Bastida: And that is the type of small things that we can change in even our mindset, so that nature does become part of our everyday lives. And we don't feel like it's not because we don't do things because we don't have enough time, for example.
00:14:57:18 - 00:15:13:20
Sara Gutterman: That's a very interesting perspective. Thank you for sharing it. I know that you also have interesting insights into how movements development. So can you talk about how the climate action movement has developed over the years and apply that specifically to your peer group?
00:15:13:22 - 00:15:28:17
Xiye Bastida: Yes. So I think we had a bit of a tendency when, you know, in 2019, five years ago when I was 17, actually today is my birthday, so I'm 22 now, which is crazy.
00:15:28:20 - 00:15:33:17
Sara Gutterman: I didn't know that I happy birthday. Wow. Thanks for sharing it with us.
00:15:33:23 - 00:15:55:25
Xiye Bastida: Yeah, it feels crazy to say, like I started my activism at 17. It felt so new all of these years, but now that I'm in my 20s, it feels like so, so long. But when we were 17, when we were in high school, when we were organizing this strikes, we had this misconception that we were kind of inventing a climate movement.
00:15:55:26 - 00:16:32:07
Xiye Bastida: We didn't have the kind of a respect for history. I respect for past movements, I respect for past organizers. And that's why political education of movements in general is super important for activism groups, so that we can recognize that the reason why we are able to do certain things is because the farm workers movement did this and put pesticides on the map, and the civil rights movement put a lot of emphasis on how communities of color and black communities were targeted by noxious facilities and and polluting industries.
00:16:32:07 - 00:17:02:08
Xiye Bastida: And the indigenous rights movement are about sacred sites and making sure that all isn't poisoning sacred water. Water places and water bodies. And every single movement has added something to how we understand our interconnectedness with the climate and with each other. And it makes us understand that the climate crisis isn't about the parts of million of carbon in the arms sphere, which is the technical way to see it.
00:17:02:08 - 00:17:37:23
Xiye Bastida: And yes, I want the parts per million of the sphere to reduce, but it is so much more than that. It's about really seeing, kind of our, our role in the movement as connectors so that we can honor other, other, other histories. And same with our tactics of how we actually do activism. We thought we were the first ones to, like, hold cities or block a road or do, and which I understand that for some people that is annoying, like seeing climate activists just block roads.
00:17:37:25 - 00:18:13:06
Xiye Bastida: So that's not something that I particularly like too much, especially because I think it is something that's super reactive. And I think the tendency to do actions that are very, very disruptive are come from fear, come from not learning about the climate crisis and kind of being shocked about it and having to react really strongly about it. I think that when you learn about the climate crisis framed as, as, as a place for a lot of solutions, you're when how you come to the movement is very different.
00:18:13:06 - 00:18:40:05
Xiye Bastida: So yes, we did organize massive strikes, but it's to invite people in not to make people feel like this is not something that can be part of. And so that's how it started with us holding very, very small strikes of 5000 people, 600 of my kids in high school walked out with me, and then we just all kind of got together, organize it from across the city and said, we need to make this huge because all of the precedents are coming to the United Nations for the UN General Assembly.
00:18:40:05 - 00:19:02:18
Xiye Bastida: And if we get all of these students to show up and show adults, show decision makers, that we care so much about our future, they must do something. And I think that's where the framing is so different between youth activist and just people who work in the environment or sustainability is that for us, it truly, truly feels like our future is being stolen from us.
00:19:02:19 - 00:19:23:05
Xiye Bastida: We're not seeing the nuances too much about the economic and the, you know, all of these institutional things. For us, it's really looking at this assertion makers in the eye and say, do you realize that the world that you grew up in is going to be massively different than the world? My grandkids are going to grow up, and that is not fair.
00:19:23:08 - 00:19:50:00
Xiye Bastida: So we do bring fairness into it a lot. And after the strikes and the massive amounts of media that I created, the pandemic happened. And so we had to rethink the way in which we showed up. And the pandemic was a lot of it was a time for introspection, for the movement, because we were able to analyze a lot of the ways in which we actually wanted to show up and the demands that we had.
00:19:50:06 - 00:20:12:28
Xiye Bastida: And I would say that the second stage of the climate movement, the youth climate movement, is to be in rooms where decisions are made, and that means going to conferences. That means being at the UN. It means actually learning the words of the negotiations. I have been to the past four cups, and when I first started going to the cups, we went to organize protests.
00:20:13:02 - 00:20:39:20
Xiye Bastida: Now we go and we look at the text and we look at the words that are being used, and we see the difference between a phase out of fossil fuels and face down a fossil fuels, and how that's fully two different agendas. And the face down of fossil fuels opens the opens like a lot of room for gray areas and double counting of emissions, or a lot of funding into carbon capture and storage.
00:20:39:20 - 00:21:02:17
Xiye Bastida: That might not be very fireball or a lot of weird situations. Whereas a phase out of fossil fuels means we recognize that fossil fuels are part of our past. And that's okay. We're here to say that's fine. Like they had their moment to shine. They heard a lot of people. They're warming our planet. It's okay for fossil fuels to be in the past, and we need to create a new economy around renewables.
00:21:02:19 - 00:21:30:04
Xiye Bastida: And being part of this decision making places. It's it's incredible. It's also a huge responsibility because when you show up, you represent not only yourself, you're present a movement. And I would say the third stage of how climate movements are beginning to shape is through legislation. That's why when I talk to a lot of businesses, I tell them, look, I could tell you what to do, what not to do, what I think you should be doing.
00:21:30:11 - 00:21:53:22
Xiye Bastida: The reality is that legislation is going to catch up to you. The reality is that if you don't already are working on transparency, if you're not already working on reporting your emissions, you're not working on a path towards reducing emissions. You are going to get fined a lot. You're going to get sued a lot if you're greenwashing. Europe is making greenwashing illegal because it is deceiving, aligned to the consumer.
00:21:53:22 - 00:22:22:23
Xiye Bastida: And in the United States, about 78% of companies were found to greenwash who claimed that they were doing sustainable things, but they were not. And so that is what I'm telling the private sector. And also a lot of the people in, in politics there, every single movement now is working on legislation. One example is a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty working on the full phase out of fossil fuels.
00:22:22:23 - 00:22:42:07
Xiye Bastida: And it's based on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, saying we need a fast, fair, and equitable space that Apostle fuels. Another example is rights of nature. There's a lot of places where things like water are privatized, and rights of nature is going to come and fully counter that. Something different is like a conflict of interest policy in the United Nations.
00:22:42:13 - 00:23:03:00
Xiye Bastida: In Dubai, there were over 2000 people representing the fossil fuel industry in climate negotiations. The president of the of the climate conference was an oil CEO. And that's a blatant conflict of interest. So we're going to push for a conflict of interest policy within this decision making spaces. And another example I can give you is the Future Generations Tribunal.
00:23:03:07 - 00:23:28:16
Xiye Bastida: Me and some of my friends are working on something that will give a legal framework for the rights of future generations, specifically on what world they deserve and what obligations that gives current generations to preserve the environment for future generations. And I will apply to the private sector, to the public sector, to everybody, because it is just the reality that we need to be thinking not only about the next quarter, but seven generations in the future.
00:23:28:16 - 00:23:49:18
Xiye Bastida: And further. So that's the development of the climate space. And I think all movements kind of develop the same way with like protest action policy and then legislation. And, and I think it's just a cycle and it will keep going around and around. But that's a bigger bit of a picture of what it's looking like.
00:23:49:20 - 00:24:18:18
Sara Gutterman: Well, I agree with you. I think legislation and also litigation are going to have a big impact on climate action and commitments. I'm going to be talking about both of those things in my session later today. But let's dovetail Shia into some of the things that you're most excited about right now with respect to climate action, and also talk about some of the specific topics that are most important to you right now, as well as to your peer group.
00:24:18:21 - 00:24:50:27
Xiye Bastida: Yes. So the most important thing will always be how we actually phase out of fossil fuels and into renewables like that is our top priority. And I remember a time where that was super political, where in the United Nations you couldn't name fossil fuels, call and gas weren't included in any official document until this, until last cop. So I took 20, like almost 30 years for the UN to recognize that fossil fuels were causing the problem.
00:24:50:27 - 00:25:16:01
Xiye Bastida: And that's because the industry had a lot of interest there. So that's always going to be our priority. And I hope and I pray that every industry will just truly have a decriminalization plan. Like that is what we want, and that's what we need. And something else that I'm super excited about is a new way of seeing climate science, which is called the planetary boundaries.
00:25:16:01 - 00:25:41:12
Xiye Bastida: And many of you might have seen the news that there were surpassing six of the nine planetary boundaries. It was a pretty popular article that came out a few months ago. The planetary boundaries basically give you a safe operating sound of humanity in the planet, and it includes things like the biosphere, climate, the ozone layer, and just nine different ways of seeing stability in the planet.
00:25:41:14 - 00:26:05:10
Xiye Bastida: And we are surpassing so many of them. And we could get to a point of tipping points and a point of no return. So this planetary boundaries show us that we need to kind of go back to the safe operating zones. And it is the first time that I have seen climate science be thought of in a holistic way, in an intersectional way, in a way that connects climate and biodiversity.
00:26:05:10 - 00:26:30:11
Xiye Bastida: That for me is makes so much sense. But for people out there, it seemed like it didn't. Right. And also how you can tie in like the health of communities and the health of people and the amount of diversity and ecosystem health all together into one framework. And it also has a success story, which is the ozone layer.
00:26:30:11 - 00:26:54:06
Xiye Bastida: We had passed the boundary of the ozone layer, and now we're back in going back into the safe operating zone. And out of these planetary boundaries. There's a group now called the Planetary Guardians, and I'm one of the planetary guardians. Other people include Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, some indigenous leaders and and a lot of economists.
00:26:54:06 - 00:27:16:25
Xiye Bastida: So it's people that would never normally get into the same room. And now I'm talking with somebody who used to work at the IMF and somebody who defended, you know, half a million of acres in the Amazon altogether, thinking about how we're going to take climate science in this holistic framework and put it out there for decision making purposes.
00:27:16:28 - 00:27:43:06
Xiye Bastida: And it's a huge task. It's a huge task. But I think it really has the potential to. And the scientists that came up with the boundaries, Johan rostrum, he just got and an environmental prize they called the color prize that's equivalent to the Nobel Prize in the climate science space. So it's truly, truly groundbreaking. And the planetary guardians were going to be acting as messengers, as communicators of this science.
00:27:43:07 - 00:28:06:29
Xiye Bastida: Because for me, it's super important that people are looking at the health of ecosystems and how indigenous communities are taking care of biodiversity. 80% of biodiversity in the world is stored by indigenous peoples, despite only being present, despite only being 5% of the global population. But none of this is truly translated into data, and that is what this is going to give us.
00:28:07:00 - 00:28:23:16
Xiye Bastida: A yearly planetary health check and pathways to resilience and emissions reductions. So for everybody out there that wants to know how to holistically think about climate solutions, the planetary boundaries is going to be a major, major player.
00:28:23:18 - 00:28:44:26
Sara Gutterman: That's interesting. I look forward to seeing how that develops and love the diversity of individuals involved with planetary guardians. Now, Shia words matter in terms of effective communication. Tell us about the importance of language and how the climate conversation is being reframed today.
00:28:44:28 - 00:29:11:00
Xiye Bastida: Yeah, I think communication is so fascinating. And I might do my masters on that, on climate communication. Just because I think there's a huge gap between what people, what people know and what they do. But that's another area for me. Language and how language develops around climate is truly kind of the standard of how we're moving forward together.
00:29:11:00 - 00:29:35:23
Xiye Bastida: So for example, we used to talk about global warming, then climate change and now climate crisis, and now we used to talk about environmentalist. And I will talk about environmental justice and the way in which these frameworks start to change. I think it truly gives people the ability to connect to, to the climate movement in a different way, and it shapes it really finds her priorities.
00:29:35:23 - 00:30:00:28
Xiye Bastida: For example, sustainability and sustainable development is still huge in every single circle that cares about the environment. We have this 17 Sustainable Development Goals. But what does it really mean to have sustainable development? Are we doing a development that is sustainable that just keeps growing? Are we doing development in a sustainable way? Are we sustaining? Does make sense.
00:30:00:29 - 00:30:26:16
Xiye Bastida: Like are we developing sustainability? It is a very gray kind of term and for me it means something. But for you it might mean something different. And I truly do believe that sustainability has become a buzzword, and it has become a very flat way of describing what we need to do, because the system that we are currently living in, it is not longer sustainable, and it hasn't been for a while.
00:30:26:20 - 00:30:53:03
Xiye Bastida: We're currently using 1.8 Earths, meaning we are using the Earth's resources 1.8 times faster than it can regenerate. And a lot of companies are still talking about having emissions, but doubling output and doubling growth. And that's just not possible. We truly need to question the way in which we have thought about just infinite growth, because there's not infinite resources.
00:30:53:08 - 00:31:30:10
Xiye Bastida: And so the word that I'm using to replace sustainability is now regeneration. I think it's a lot more intentional. And we do need to start thinking about how we regenerate ecosystems. We regenerate trust. We regenerate a lot of yeah, just the way in which humans interact with the world. Another one that I really love is that this is very specific to the climate space, but we have kind of forgotten about the three hours and using, recycling, reusing and reducing because those things have not worked.
00:31:30:11 - 00:32:11:26
Xiye Bastida: And we are reframing it again to reimagining, reconnecting, redefining. That's why my organization is called initiative, based on that framework of doing things differently. For those who might not know, only 8% of plastic used gets recycled. And that, for me, is a huge floor of the system. If you're telling everybody that the solution to environmental problems is to recycle and that system is broken, we're just lying to ourselves and living in this type of world that is not really being working.
00:32:11:26 - 00:32:36:13
Xiye Bastida: And so much soil is lacking nutrients. So many like oceans, coral reefs, every single ecosystem needs to be helped. And a lot of this work can be done through community engagement. So that is why I think language is so important in reframing the climate conversation. It can also give people a great feeling of agency.
00:32:36:15 - 00:32:50:15
Xiye Bastida: And the goal at the end of the day is that people feel that they can do something about climate solutions. We should even say that, not something about the climate crisis. Do something for climate solutions.
00:32:50:17 - 00:33:20:08
Sara Gutterman: Thanks. Yeah. Let's stay on the topic of communications for a minute, because I know we have a lot of business professionals in our audience today. What are your best recommendations and tips for businesses when they're communicating about climate solutions, aka sustainability? What are some of the themes and the messages that are really resonating with you and your peers versus the ones that are not?
00:33:20:10 - 00:33:46:20
Xiye Bastida: Yeah, I think the coal concept of greenwashing comes up again here. I will say this over and over again that if you greenwash, you just risk losing so much of your of trust from your consumer base. And for me, it means so much more that a company tells you we're having these issues on supply chain. We're having these issues on scope three emissions.
00:33:46:20 - 00:34:11:17
Xiye Bastida: We're having these issues on tracking where this comes from. But this is our plan and this is where we're heading. And this is our our pathway to emissions reductions. It's just so much more valuable that we are being transparent and honest. And as we become as our purchasing power increases, because, you know, when I was 17, I didn't have any money to spend on my own.
00:34:11:18 - 00:34:32:19
Xiye Bastida: As I'm graduating now, I'm going to get a job, and then I'm actually going to be able to be conscious consumer. And there is a trend on social media now on the influencing because, you know, everybody knows about influencers. But now a big thing is the influence and telling people, actually, you don't need to buy this. You don't need to be consuming all these things.
00:34:32:19 - 00:34:58:07
Xiye Bastida: And I think that scares businesses a little bit, because they do not want a consumer base that doesn't want to consume, because, you know, that's just how business works. But that is the reality that we're looking towards some a reality where we're not looking for the cheapest thing that's made out of plastic and polyester and gives us all of these plastics in our body, or, you know, those type of things.
00:34:58:07 - 00:35:19:09
Xiye Bastida: We're looking for things that are durable, that are long lasting, that are quality made. And I think my generation is willing to pay for that, to like things that we know where it comes from. We know how it's made. We know that the people making it are being treated fairly and respected. And I know in like this hyper globalized world, it's hard to track supply chains.
00:35:19:09 - 00:35:45:10
Xiye Bastida: Things are very fragmented. Usually businesses don't know everything about their suppliers. But I also know that that system was built intentionally. I know that fossil fuel companies have over 30 different contractors in rigs so that if something goes wrong, they fossil fuel company doesn't have to assume the blame because it was the fault of the contractor, for example.
00:35:45:12 - 00:36:18:01
Xiye Bastida: And that's something that is widely used in this type of extractive industries, where systems are so fragmented. So you can push the blame onto somebody else. And because I know that that system was built intentionally, I know, especially with the technology that we have today, that we can build systems of traceability and systems of transparency and systems of circularity, because the biggest issue that we have right now is one of the big issues that we have right now is all of the waste that we have created through our consumption patterns.
00:36:18:01 - 00:36:42:14
Xiye Bastida: And if we want a circular economy, we need to learn how to use waste to create new things. And that's what Mother Earth has always done. When a tree dies, it becomes nutrient for the next tree that's going to come alive. And if we're not mimicking nature in our economic system, we're going to break all of those important connections.
00:36:42:14 - 00:36:52:03
Xiye Bastida: And the wisdom that Mother Earth has been gathering for millions of years of evolution, that's how I see it. And so.
00:36:52:05 - 00:37:37:12
Xiye Bastida: What we want from businesses is to truly be groundbreaking in this. And Patagonia is one of those examples. There's so many businesses like big corporations, and having those type of stamps, it means a lot to us. It truly does. And maybe again, I don't have the purchasing power to make all those decisions yet. But we will. And our organizations, you know, in a way, because we have nonprofits, our private 1C3, we are becoming part of the system where the movement is kind of being institutionalized in a way, and we're trying to make the best out of that and even tell philanthropy, for example, you can fund use movements out of all of the funding that
00:37:37:12 - 00:38:06:23
Xiye Bastida: goes into climb, out of all of the philanthropic funding that there exists in the United States, only 2% goes to climate or environment, and .76 percent of that goes to use letter organizations. And that's just the funding gap is just really, really wide. And I think if a lot of these businesses want to help, they could start funding environmental nonprofits, youth, nonprofits that are doing the work on the ground, etc..
00:38:06:26 - 00:38:32:23
Xiye Bastida: And the last thing is the importance of having youth as part of your business in decision making. It's not the same to have youth employees. It's not the same to have internships or fellowships. What's really important is to truly listen to the next generation in when you make decisions. Does that look like I use advisor? I use advisory group.
00:38:32:25 - 00:38:54:07
Xiye Bastida: I know that, for example, Ikea has a youth advisory group, and they are one of the first businesses that have been able to grow their value while reducing their emissions. And they started the US advisory group like 2 or 3 years ago. And I have like four friends on it, and they truly do engaged youth in their decision making.
00:38:54:07 - 00:39:27:06
Xiye Bastida: And the United Nations secretary general also has a surprise for Group one used from every continent. And they bring in all of this knowledge from what use are feeling in the ground? And also from a business perspective, in my opinion, if you have somebody who cares about the future and the sustainability of the business to be existing in that future, you're just going to get a massively different approach to how you conduct business.
00:39:27:09 - 00:39:53:09
Xiye Bastida: I am myself in a lot of different advisory groups, and it is very different when we are called in once a year or twice a year to have a meeting, and then her picture is on some website versus true engagement, where we are checked in with every month, or we have a youth lead in the company or the organization that keeps track of us, asks us for feedback on reports.
00:39:53:10 - 00:40:13:25
Xiye Bastida: And I would also say, if you're in the private sector, compensating youth is very important. We don't want to. This is not like an opportunity for us. This is work, and work needs to also be compensated for for that. And, you know, it's taken us a long time to say that. And I think when you're 16, 17 you're okay volunteering.
00:40:13:25 - 00:40:41:17
Xiye Bastida: But once you activist and environmental professionals are working age, this becomes part of a new sector. I think of, of almost like environmental consulting. So yeah, that's that's some of the things that businesses can do. And, you know, this for this Earth Day. I know all my friends were doing like so many panels with so many different organizations, and this is one example.
00:40:41:22 - 00:40:59:12
Xiye Bastida: But it shouldn't only be during Earth Day. And I think this is great because you're appealing to a large audience of businesses and different sectors that want to learn more. And then this is an invitation for everybody to bring this back to your organization or your company.
00:40:59:15 - 00:41:15:13
Sara Gutterman: Thank you. She has some some good advice in there. Now I want to shift gears. The world feels so divided. How can climate action efforts exceed in today's fractured culture?
00:41:15:15 - 00:41:44:00
Xiye Bastida: I think a lot of the division perceived in the climate space is also very US based. The US is the only one of the only countries where climate denialism is a thing. And what I always remind, remind people of is that climate denialism exists because apostle fuel industry funded climate denialism. And so that's why it's so important to be intentional about our communications.
00:41:44:02 - 00:42:18:10
Xiye Bastida: And I'm not saying because every single issue and this is something that you'll hear from a lot of activists that are involved in any political space or that are from certain politicized identities. Everything is political. And I hear a lot of people saying the politicized climate climate shouldn't be Partizan. I'm not saying climate should be Partizan. I'm saying the decisions that are made about people's lives are political because they're made and chosen by politicians, and that legislation is passed by politicians, and that makes it political.
00:42:18:12 - 00:42:49:14
Xiye Bastida: And whatever the United States chooses to do is have these impacts across the world. And that is also political. And so I think shying away from that and trying to call it nonpolitical or something apolitical is a mistake because it discourages people from actually engaging in their communities, organizing, creating petitions, introducing legislation, and finally voting for people who represent those perspectives.
00:42:49:14 - 00:43:12:24
Xiye Bastida: It prevents that type of political education that's so important for movements to be like, nuanced and talk through, not just shouting one slogan, because what does it mean if I'm on the streets and I say, we want climate justice now, it doesn't mean anything if we don't have the the depth of of legislation that we can back up or some specific demand.
00:43:13:00 - 00:43:44:16
Xiye Bastida: And so I do think and this is something that a political climate scientist communicator, Catherine Hedgehog, says a lot, the best thing we can do about the climate crisis is talk about it. And when you talk about it with your community, with your family, just normalize talking about solutions and how public engagement looks like. I think the world changes and climate has been in education in the Stem sector.
00:43:44:18 - 00:43:57:20
Xiye Bastida: It hasn't really been in the humanities. It hasn't really been thought through as kind of a social thing in terms of our interactions. So.
00:43:57:22 - 00:44:29:05
Xiye Bastida: Maybe I'm not going to give you the answer, because I don't know the answer about how we really remediate a divided world. But what I can tell you is that my generation is one of the most united there, I see, and that we have really clear vision of what we want the future to look like, and that before we were very opposed to kind of adults in the space saying, like, you stole our future, why would we want you in our space?
00:44:29:05 - 00:44:53:05
Xiye Bastida: Or but now it's all about collaboration, and it is about recognizing the work of people who have done this for a long time, who have built companies and industries around solutions, and truly doing that collaborative work. Because we don't have decision making power, we have a voice and we have a movement. So we need to work with those that have decision making power.
00:44:53:12 - 00:45:16:00
Xiye Bastida: And I truly, truly believe in our ability to to change the ways, the way that things are the the way in which, you know, the current system is very, very new. And that's a lot of the things that give me hope, how humans are so imaginative and creative. And I think we have used their creativity for bad things.
00:45:16:02 - 00:45:39:01
Xiye Bastida: Usually creativity has a connotation of positive, but I think you have to be super creative to say that nature that is more valuable than nature alive. It takes a special type of creativity to say that, and I think we want to bring back a creative that is constructive and one that truly values nature and our place in the natural world.
00:45:39:04 - 00:46:08:12
Sara Gutterman: Very interesting. All right. I've just got a couple more questions, and then I know that Mike has some questions that are coming in from our audience. And speaking of which, if anyone in our audience does have any questions, please just type them into the questions box in the control panel. So she there is a power shift that's occurring in the West, with boomers retiring in droves and younger generations taking over leadership positions and business, government, media and society.
00:46:08:12 - 00:46:31:23
Sara Gutterman: So along with that, there are tens of trillions of dollars being transferred from older to younger generations. How do you see this power shift impacting climate related decision making, not just in the West, but let's also talk about the global South, where 87% of youth under 30. This is a stat from you that you gave to me live in the Global South.
00:46:31:23 - 00:46:40:00
Sara Gutterman: So what does that mean in terms of the impact on the climate with respect to leadership and global solidarity?
00:46:40:02 - 00:47:07:12
Xiye Bastida: Yeah, I that's the distinctive shocks me a lot because that means out of in a room of ten youth, nine are from the global South. And it seems that a lot of the representation about climate activism and environmental ism comes from the global north. And I think that's because of access to resources, access to knowledge and access to the platforms and, and just places that will encourage this type of, of conversation.
00:47:07:14 - 00:47:32:09
Xiye Bastida: And when you talk about the transfer of wealth. I mean, for me, I the more and more I learn about finance, the more shocking I found it. How much of investments go like retirement investments, for example, in schools? A lot of the even my own school, University of Pennsylvania, all of my professors. It doesn't matter if they don't care about climate at all or if they're climate professors.
00:47:32:16 - 00:48:09:04
Xiye Bastida: Their retirement funds are invested in, well, in many things, but also in fossil fuels. And so it's just so counterintuitive and weird to me that your retirement fund is funding companies that are making that future unlivable, because what world are you retiring into? And maybe for boomers that are retiring in these years, you know, it doesn't really matter that much what world they go into because it's a stable world.
00:48:09:05 - 00:48:29:26
Xiye Bastida: But when our retirement funds start to fill up, what are we saving up for? What type of of world do we want when we stop working and we want to enjoy the world, or we want to see our grandkids live and thrive and go to school themselves and make their own decisions and create beautiful things. And that is the type of questions that we always bring.
00:48:29:26 - 00:48:52:28
Xiye Bastida: And, you know, we could get also very technical about this and say, my university has almost $1 billion invested in in fossil fuels. And they they'll say, yeah, but it's only one scope. Oh, it's only scope three emissions or scope one and scope two are already divested from. Or they'll say we will divest from future investments. And they try to go around and around.
00:48:53:00 - 00:49:23:14
Xiye Bastida: And sometimes I feel like I just need to look somebody in the eye of the board of trustees and say, do you realize that you are funding and unstable future for us? And they use that. You're educating, you're not preparing them for this new world. And so I it is my hope that my generation will be just much more financially literate about where our money goes, how we're spending it, how wealth is distributed.
00:49:23:14 - 00:49:54:01
Xiye Bastida: And a lot of it comes from the fact that because we're so global and so intersectional, all of us have friends all over the world. I know people from every continent, many countries. We have summits where we bring youth from 30 different countries. My organization is present in 27 different countries. Trying to have calls for anything is super hard because of all the time zones, and everybody who's involved in global organizations knows that you have to have 2 or 3 different calls for everybody to be present.
00:49:54:02 - 00:50:23:17
Xiye Bastida: But, you know, I have friends from island nations that are trying to get legislation passed so that their island nations have a cultural and national identity after their underwater. Like that's the type of people I'm talking to. And so when you know about this, scenarios, you're not thinking about how can my country accumulate the most wealth or how can we be better than other countries?
00:50:23:18 - 00:50:52:09
Xiye Bastida: We're thinking about what does the world of my peers look like in other parts of the world, and how can we make them more equitable? And sometimes I say these things and I realize how different and different different how drastically different generations have been around this type of things. And I think that that the movement of global justice is just getting more and more traction.
00:50:52:09 - 00:51:00:22
Xiye Bastida: And that's going to change the way that finance financial systems, global financial systems work.
00:51:00:24 - 00:51:17:09
Sara Gutterman: Thanks. I have one last question before I hand it over to Mike. You. I've heard you talk about the fact that it's important who we teach and who we learn from. Can you elaborate on that concept a little bit?
00:51:17:12 - 00:51:53:01
Xiye Bastida: I mean, education has this narrative around it that is just on by it and maybe not unbiased, but it's just like education. It's great. You know, it has this very positive connotation. Like you have to be educated. We have to. But education has the discourse in it. When I moved to the United States at 13 years old and I went into eighth grade, native communities were only talked doing textbooks as being in the past as being almost like ancient and unreal communities.
00:51:53:01 - 00:52:17:09
Xiye Bastida: When there is so many native communities across the United States, across the world that are still living and trying to thrive, and because education has that discourse and education, the way that the education system has been set up is for us to fit right into this world of extractive ism. And how do you we work for a company that makes the most money, and where is that money coming from?
00:52:17:10 - 00:52:43:03
Xiye Bastida: The extraction of resources and something that one of my professors, her name is Bethany Wiggin. She's working on projects about public environmental humanities and redefining pedagogy. I don't know if I said that word right, redefining the way in which not only is climate thought, but how things are taught in general, like changing the way in which we do.
00:52:43:03 - 00:53:12:29
Xiye Bastida: So many like individualized tests and learning curves versus project based assessments and things that will have a real impact on the world. So now for my class. We're all creating projects for how to engage people in environmental humanities, and it makes you think big and white. And my project, I'm actually using it to apply to fellowships, because I believe that this project shouldn't just stay in my class and have a great for the class.
00:53:12:29 - 00:53:34:13
Xiye Bastida: It's a project that can be long lasting and live outside of the classroom, and that's the type of education that we want, one that is truly engaging. And it's not just based around competition and who gets the best test scores. And the best GPA is what type of person do I like? What type of education do I need to be?
00:53:34:13 - 00:53:49:29
Xiye Bastida: Somebody who can change the world and be a critical thinker and fit into a changing environment? We should be engaging people to be that, not just competitive machines.
00:53:50:01 - 00:54:01:13
Sara Gutterman: Such a suit. Comments. Thank you so much, Mike. I'd like to ask you to join us. And I think we've got time for maybe one more one more question from the audience.
00:54:01:15 - 00:54:35:00
Mike Collignon: Yes. So we had a question from Fatima. It's kind of a two parter, but it's all it's all connected. I wanted to know where can anyone learn more about the Earth system boundaries and share some of these facts you've been sharing with us, maybe on their website or something? Where can people get some of this information so that they can carry it on to other decision makers that maybe they have connections with?
00:54:35:02 - 00:55:04:12
Xiye Bastida: Sorry. Thank you for that question. So the planetary boundaries science there's a website that they have. So you just Google planetary boundaries and it should come up. And for the planetary Guardians you can look also look up planetary guardians I believe and all the information should come. And there's so many great resources and videos that are apt for for example, showing to your organization or your company.
00:55:04:12 - 00:55:44:11
Xiye Bastida: And there's many videos of Johan Rocks from the chief scientist who that explains really well how this banner is work and my organization initiative. You can also look it up online, and we do have a lot of toolkits and information and statistics around using it, but we should now that you ask, we should just have like a consolidated like hub of knowledge because yeah, I, I all of these things that I share are either from personal experience or from all these readings that I do for school because I'm an environmental studies major, but it would be great.
00:55:44:11 - 00:55:52:02
Xiye Bastida: This is a good starting point. Maybe I'll share it with you later that you can share it with people, just like a hub of resources.
00:55:52:05 - 00:56:13:06
Mike Collignon: Well, you know what's better than she is? Many. She is. So if we can, if we can somehow get those kind of messages out to many other people and just it grows your influence, it grows your group. And I want to say a quick thank you to our our producer, Mary. She put a link in the chat box for Planetary Guardians.
00:56:13:06 - 00:56:40:16
Mike Collignon: And so she if you have a specific link as well that you wanted to share with our audience, I think you're able to do that as well. I do really appreciate it very much. And, you know, I want to make sure the audience understands, you know, I don't remember what I was doing at 22, but it wasn't some of this incredibly influential and moving action that she and her group is taking.
00:56:40:16 - 00:56:52:14
Mike Collignon: So really, really appreciate your time today. I don't know how you balance this, all the work that you do and your studies, but hats off to you. I really appreciate you joining us today.
00:56:52:16 - 00:57:00:12
Xiye Bastida: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this and I hope you keep having an incredible summit. Congratulations.
00:57:00:14 - 00:57:02:28
Mike Collignon: Yes. And happy birthday to you.