ONE EARTH PHILANTHROPY : Karl Burkart + Voices of Progress
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And I think a lot of people with your background who you've been studying environmental work since you started school and you've been consistent in your career. And now here you are, the last, I guess, year and a half working at One Earth. So first of all, how is the organization doing as a leader in this industry? What's the temperature reading right now?
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:42
Here's a PS to this introduction. By the way, I talked about conservationalists, which is not a word. My tongue thought it was a word. I think I confuse conservationists with conversationalists, but I meant conservationists. But you can still think conservationists was a good use of the word. That isn't a word. That's what's so great about talking as you can make up things sometimes with ease. And then people correct you with ease
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:27
Hey, Carl, now there's three swells here. So it's going to be a good day for you when you come here and begin, I have to sing to you because it's your birthday April 1 here you go happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday, dear Karl, happy birthday to you can't wait to see
Karl Burkart
@greendig · 5:00
We had many, many interviews, a lot of that we published on the websites we ran and really, like, who's got the plan Where's the plan to save the planet? And it turned out that it didn't seem like anyone had one. People certainly had done tons of research and had pieces and parts of it. But it had never been kind of assembled into sort of a game plan for what does the movement need to do now? Like, how do we solve climate change?
Karl Burkart
@greendig · 4:31
So on the land side, the paper finds that about actually 54% of the world's remaining land is still in a natural condition, able to support biodiversity, and also very importantly, carbon storage, which is call it the carbon sponge. And land ecosystems absorb about a quarter of all of our emissions that we create through burning fossil fuels and other things. So we really need those ecosystems intact
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:23
But speaking of the partnerships, can you talk about the people on the ground who are in these places where there's devastation and where you want to work with them? Edward sent me an article in the New York Times about the global plan to conserve nature and about the Indigenous people who are actually on the ground, who could lead the way? Can you speak to how you form partnerships with Indigenous people, respecting the world they live in, respecting their culture? How do you forge those relationships?
Karl Burkart
@greendig · 3:39
And one of the reasons we started the One Earth marketplace was because we've just felt like climate philanthropy really needed to be disrupted in a healthy way. Like the power dynamics that have existed in philanthropy for century are very US and Europe Northern wealthy countries kind of coming in to regions often that they don't understand well with very complex social structures and ways of living that are foreign to us in our big cities
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:05
And I think that's really an important missing piece for this inclusion conversation. I want to ask you about the education system in terms of your perspective on what needs to happen there to grow better global citizens, and how active is one Earth in that space? And what are your hopes for that space
Karl Burkart
@greendig · 3:14
But, yeah, there's a lot of education I think that's needed, and that's some of what we're doing in terms of kind of really translating the science so that especially the youth leaders and other people in the movement are really armed with the facts and figures and key policy interventions that could happen to get us on a pathway to 1.5 deg Celsius, which is the ambitious goal of the Paris agreement, which of course, is a limit. We actually need to then gradually reduce global temperatures
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:16
Hey, Carl, thanks for that answer. It's so encouraging to hear your perspective on the future. And I agree with you just as a layperson's perspective. Absolutely. It seems. I did a project called Cool The World a couple of years ago, and I had kids sing a song called Cool The World, which I will. I think I'll link here, and it was wonderful working with them, and they let us on so many levels
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