Paul Hawken: Creating Restoration, Regeneration, and Community

Episode 47 Description

Welcome back to part two of our incredible conversation with Paul Hawken. Paul has been influential in Christine’s own work, both personally and professionally, for over two decades. 

In part two, we dive into a beautiful dialogue with Paul around restoration and regeneration, discover what it means to be an ally to our planet and one another, where we can start to make change, and the gift of building a relationship with nature. 

If you haven’t yet, take a listen to Episode 46 to hear part one, where Paul explains the importance of work at the collective level, listening, and connecting with ourselves, as well as nature. 

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author and activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. He is one of the environmental movement’s leading voices, and a pioneering architect of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices. 

Paul has started several ecological businesses, writes about nature and commerce, and consults with heads of state and CEOs on climatic, economic, and ecological regeneration. He has appeared on numerous media including the Today Show, Talk of the Nation, CBS This Morning and others, and his work has been profiled or featured in hundreds of articles including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Forbes. He has written nine books including six national and New York Times bestsellers: Growing a Business, The Next Economy, The Ecology of Commerce, Blessed Unrest, Drawdown, and Regeneration. 

He is published in 30 languages and his books are available in over 90 countries. His latest book, Regeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation, was published in 2021, which is his sequel to Drawdown. He is the founder of both Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration 

(regeneration.org). Project Regeneration is the world’s largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis. 

True lasting change begins with self awareness and understanding of the systems and choices that have brought our world to the place it is now. But this is only the beginning. Christine’s conversation with Paul moves into what action looks like, and how nature is actually a “laboratory of curiosity” from which we have much to learn. 

Paul’s shares the heart wisdom of moving forward with compassion and understanding, saying “Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Instead of guilt or self-punishment, we can accept what has already happened and choose differently. Be inspired to love and restore this beautiful earth and all of its inhabitants. Welcome. 

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Episode 47 Show Notes

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Key takeaways

• Once we become aware of and conscious of what is happening around us, and once we feel that internal pull toward shifting and doing differently, what comes next? Paul opens up about how to find your place in the broad equation of restoration and regeneration, and it all starts with finding your allies. 
• As humans we must eat to survive, but the systems we currently have in place for food production have actually become the number one emitter of greenhouse gasses, causing the greatest damage to the world. Paul shares the importance of understanding the lineage of your food and valuable questions we can ask. 
• We are inseparable from the world around us, and Paul seeks to cultivate his relationship with nature through differing pathways, including gardening. There is a wealth of knowledge to learn from nature and our environments, and Paul not only welcomes it with curiosity, but has come to understand the literal symbiosis we each have with nature as we step outside. 
• There is more life underneath us than there is above. Every single plant has a million connections from the mycelium to the hyphae of the plant. Whether you know what those are or not, the important part is the sheer quantity of connections. Paul shares what a recent study discovered about the complexity of these electric, amazing communications.
• The world around us is alive, and we have the potential to learn from and be in relationship with land. Paul and Christine share a kindred experience of forming a bond with the earth around them.
• In parting words Paul taps into the guilt and shame we may sometimes feel with our past choices. Using an example of a former president, he explains the value of not only holding back on being hard on yourself, but the importance of compassion for others and the journey they may be on.

Notable quotes

“More life doesn’t just mean the forests, or the grassland, or the farmland, or the soil. It means in our bodies… It means in our communities. It means in the cultures that we have disrespected, or ignored, or don’t even know about… It means respecting other people’s ways of knowing that are different from ours. It means how our children are educated and how they’re protected or not protected. Regeneration is all of those things. It is the lens and a framework within which we have a meaningful place in the world.” 

“People ask me, ‘what’s the single most important thing I can do about regeneration?’ And that’s an easy answer. It’s food. The food system is the number one emitter of greenhouse gasses, the number one cause of damage to the world, to ecosystems, biomes whether they be forests, fields, grasslands, farmland, soil, or wetlands, or oceans, it’s food.” 

“Even if you can name all the plants and the birds and animals, insects, you still don’t know what’s going on, because science doesn’t know what’s going on yet. And so it is just a laboratory of curiosity, where you are joyous in not knowing as opposed to being a ‘know it all’.” 

“When you’re outside there is no right. There’s just a beauty and majesty and community and intricacy and mystery and sacredness… And you’re inhaling it literally.” 

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, or what you wish you hadn’t. You did, and you’re going to make mistakes in the future too… Welcome to being a human being. So to really feel that acceptance, and grace and forgiveness to self. That, I think, provides the basis for understanding and compassion for the whole of the world and where we are right now.” 

“It’s really about developing that sense of connection and understanding how we became who we are, how somebody else is becoming who they are… At the end of the day, we cherish that experience of actually being connected and conjoined.”

The Yes! We Rise podcast features solutions-seekers, change-makers, and those creating a resilient future. We share stories and strategies to inspire action to build resilience and community transformation. To create change, people need to feel like they belong and that they are part of a growing movement. They need to know their voice matters and that they have the inspiration, agency and ability to transform their lives and their communities. They are the key to a resilient future.

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