A few moments ago, before I walked onstage,
I was aware that there was this story playing out in my head.
It was actually a dance between two stories.
One story was noticing the size of this audience
and the cameras that are around,
and was telling me that now would not be a good time to trip over a shoelace
or forget any lines.
And the other story in my head was telling me to be grateful
for this opportunity.
Go out, relish the experience,
and have fun.
I was aware that whichever story took hold
might impact the next 12 minutes of my life
and determine how this talk unfolds.
Therapists and psychologists tell us that the stories we tell ourselves
play a fundamental role in how we interact with the world around us.
Some people tell themselves that they are not enough.
Other people tell themselves that they're impostors.
And if you've ever seen the auditions of a television singing competition,
some people tell themselves they're a little better
than they actually are.
But apart from the individual stories we tell ourselves,
all of us are also taking part in larger, collective stories
that shape our behavior as a species.
A collective story enables people in India to treat cows as sacred,
while people in America cram cows into feedlots.
Our internal and external worlds are full of stories
that shape our behaviors.
Today, I want to talk about a collective story
that most people aren't even aware they're inhabiting.
It is a collective story that tells us that human beings are separate
and superior to nature.
It is a story that has taken us so close to the brink of an unimaginable crisis
that our survival now depends on telling a new story.
So ...
Once upon a time, in a land far away --
and right here, actually, on the lands that we're gathered today,
the majority of people on planet Earth
had a deep reverence and respect for nature.
They saw very little separation
between themselves and the world around them.
Many cultures saw nature as a giving parent.
The plants and the animals were their relatives.
Indigenous Australians saw themselves as custodians of the land,
while the ancient Chinese
considered themselves reverent guests of nature.
Even prominent figures of Rome, like Ovid and Seneca,
argued that mining shouldn't be permissible,
as it was too abusive to the natural world.
But then, things started to change.
A new craze called Christianity began to take hold.
Word spread that their one God sat above and outside nature,
and that God had made people in his own image
and given them dominion over the Earth.
"Sounds alright," said the people,
passing on the news to friends and relatives,
missionaries, kings.
"The world was made for the sake of man,
that it may serve him,"
said the bishop of Paris in the early 12th century.
The Christian craze had now infiltrated Europe
and was beginning its march into the Americas.
"But wait, there's more,"
said a couple of fancy-looking men in the early 1600s.
They told the people that they were from the Scientific Revolution,
and that they could empower the people even further.
"We must hound nature in her wanderings,"
said the first man --
Francis Bacon, the father of modern science.
"We must find a way, at length, into her inner chambers.
We must reveal the secrets still locked in nature's bosom.
Make her your slave,
subdue her,
shake her to her foundations."
"Yes," said the men. "It sounds alright."
The second man then chimed in.
His name was René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy.
He confirmed to the people that, yes,
they were superior to nature
and added that animals were mindless machines to be mastered
and exploited at will.
"Well, that's a relief," said the people.
"Now, we don't have to feel so bad about whipping our oxen."
The influence of these two men,
coupled with the religious craze,
meant that nature was no longer seen as a living thing
to be revered and respected,
but instead as a machine to be manipulated for the benefits of mankind.
This was a new and exciting story
that set free natural resources for humans to achieve social and economic progress,
even if obtained through violent and suppressive acts.
This new story was particularly enticing to the emerging capitalists of the time,
because a nature devoid of reverence and respect
was much easier to commodify.
And commodify they did.
The humans went to work,
entering and penetrating all of those inner chambers.
They tunneled her bosom for coal and metals,
they scraped and plowed over her skin with their tractors.
They took chain saws to her forests of follicles,
and they filled her waters with their waste.
The new story had spread across the globe.
Humans had asserted their dominance,
they built wondrous things
and improved the lives of billions of people,
particularly in specific regions.
Until one day ...
their scientists began to notice.
"Her animals are decreasing."
"Her atmosphere is heating."
"The soils are eroding."
"Our research is foreboding."
But still, the humans carried on.
You see, they couldn't hear the scientists,
because the facts don't matter much if they don't fit the story.
And the story was deeply embedded now.
In 2019, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency in the US
opposes regulations because, he says,
"We have a responsibility to harvest
the natural resources that we've been blessed with."
A prominent evangelist tells his followers
that refusing to use fossil fuels hurts God's feelings.
The story was so embedded
that the humans' nightly news bulletins measured their success
by financial metrics alone,
while the living world that allowed the gains in those metrics
was being eviscerated out of sight.
And the story was so embedded
that when researchers looked at the names of trees, birds, flowers
and other keywords relating to nature,
used across millions of books, songs and movies,
from 1900 to 2014 ...
they found a dramatic decline in the use of those words
across that period.
The humans were spending seven hours a day on their screens.
So not only were they experiencing
fewer stories and actual experiences of nature ...
but they were being bombarded by up to 10,000 advertisements a day,
largely for products that are inflicting even more ecological damage.
Nature was being hounded in her wanderings.
And yet, the humans remain trapped in their story.
Trapped in their cultural programming ...
like goldfish in a tank,
unaware of the unfolding chaos beyond the colored pebbles
and the artificial logs.
So when those same scientists resorted to blocking traffic
and tying themselves to poles
or screaming that the Amazon rainforest,
the most spectacular of all her forests,
was nearing a tipping point that would turn her into a savanna ...
still, the humans did nothing.
Because to them, those trees ...
those trees that were home to thousands of species of animals
and millions of species of insects,
those trees that sent nutrients to each other
via underground fungal networks ...
those trees that transpired moisture into the air to create rainfall
that would feed crops in countries thousands of kilometers away ...
those trees were just ...
timber for decking.
Pulp for toilet paper.
Or space for more cows.
Those trees were worth more dead than alive ...
because that's what the story had told them.
But then, something remarkable happened.
It started with the children,
who began to skip school and take to the streets.
It started with the farmers who chose to stop fighting nature
and instead rebuild their soils.
It started when the Indigenous people,
who, for centuries, had been reminding everybody of their story,
were finally being listened to.
And it started when nature herself,
through fires and storms,
through droughts and rising waters,
forced her way back into the people's lives
and demanded their respect.
A new, regenerative story about human beings and nature
was emerging.
But of course, it wasn't a new story at all.
It was the retelling of an old story.
But this time,
the old story was supported by the science.
And it was telling the people
that every breath they took was dependent on trees
and phytoplankton,
And that trillions of bacteria and fungi lived on them and in them
and kept them alive.
Viewing the natural world as separate to humans
was now empirically false.
Humans are nature.
But the science was also telling them that plants could see,
they could smell, hear ...
they could learn and store memories.
That dolphins gossiped and spoke in local dialects,
elephants held ceremonies for dead relatives,
grasshoppers could turn into locusts and back again in a matter of hours,
and that termites had built an underground metropolis
the size of the United Kingdom.
The same scientific inquiry that had led to domination and extraction
had gone so deep into nature's bosom that it was revealing her secrets.
And her secrets were divulging that she was anything but mechanistic.
That she was deserving of the utmost reverence and respect.
And that the original story had been right all along.
And so perhaps now,
the humans would no longer refer to nature as an unruly female to be tamed
or an "it" to be exploited ...
but would refer to nature simply ...
as kin.
Nobody knows how this new but old story ends
because it is still being written.
But if it is to have the Hollywood ending,
if we are to break free from our cultural programming
and pull off the miraculous comeback when all seems lost,
then the new but old story will have to be rapidly spread throughout the culture.
It will need to be embedded into all levels of curriculum,
particularly at the early stages,
so children can see the world as a living system,
not as a machine full of stocks and commodities.
It will need to inform a redesign of the economy,
so it values nature
and reflects the true environmental costs of the materials we all use.
It will need to revamp the nightly news bulletins
so we'd measure soil health, atmospheric pollution, species loss
alongside the financial metrics.
And crucially,
the new but old story will need to be amplified
by the storytellers.
The musicians, the artists,
those that can create the emotional connection
to the living world once again,
and paint visions of a nature-filled future
that people can see and feel and strive for.
Because stories shape culture.
Culture shapes leaders,
leaders shape policies, and policies shape the system.
And perhaps,
just perhaps, one day ...
a few hundred years from now ...
historians will look back to this moment, and they'll see that,
amongst the chaos and the nihilism and the fear and the extinctions
that there were groups of people who chose to turn the page
and begin to write a new chapter for humanity.
A chapter full of diverse characters, from a range of professions and places,
who came together
to create a thriving,
regenerative,
ecological future.
The end.
(Cheers and applause)