319: Climate Conspirituality

Summary

Conspirituality Podcast – Episode 319: Climate Conspirituality

Release Date: July 30, 2026
Hosts: Derek Barris, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

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Overview

In this episode, the Conspirituality hosts confront the collision between the escalating climate crisis and its deepening denial in the worlds of New Age spirituality, alternative wellness, political populism, and mainstream media. They investigate how climate disinformation—and its outright denial—gets weaponized by conspiracist wellness influencers, the alt-right, and even religious institutions, undermining global efforts for sustainability. The discussion covers everything from wild conspiracy theories around wildfires, influencer grift, and “regenerative” cultic spectacles, right through to the disturbing collapse of climate journalism and the ambivalent responses of major world religions to climate catastrophe.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Climate Denial: From Wildfires to Wellness Grifters

• Climate Catastrophe is Now Personal:
  Derek recounts the increase in tornadoes and extreme weather on the US East Coast, reflecting a new normal formerly unimaginable in New Jersey.
  • Derek Barris, [04:09]: “Never once in 35 years that I lived in New Jersey did I have to worry about tornadoes... Now it seems tornadoes and extreme flooding are just part of life on the east coast... Climate change is no longer in the future and it's ramping up.”
• Conspiracist Explanations Take Over:
  Julian details how rather than accept climate science as the cause, conspiratorial communities reach for bizarre, scapegoating narratives—directed energy weapons, land grabs, or “planned Smart Cities,” often mixed with culture war rhetoric and antisemitism.
  • Julian Walker, [05:04]: “Any explanation but man-made climate change.”

2. Case Studies in Climate Conspirituality

• Maui Wildfires & The “Unjected” Movement:
  The 2023 Hawaii fires unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories, including claims that Oprah instigated the disaster for land acquisition, or that military satellites were to blame. The “Unjected” anti-vaxx dating site leveraged this paranoia, spinning conspiracy-based narratives for profit.
  • Julian Walker, [06:54]: “As a treat, here's a short trailer... It's just to show the overlap, right, between climate denialism and other kinds of conspiratorial investments.”
• LA Fires & Far-Right Blame Games:
  During LA’s catastrophic fires, Proud Boys and influencers like JP Sears framed the disaster as a result of “wokeness” rather than climate change, often descending into antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ narratives.
  • Julian Walker, [09:30]: “People like Alex Jones had to join in on the old false flag claims... that the fires were a deliberate precursor to the planned Smart Cities initiative.”
• JP Sears’ Satirical Climate Denial:
  Sears is cited as emblematic of influencers blending climate and pandemic denialism, social justice resentment, and gender panic for their followers.
  • Derek Barris as JP Sears, [12:27]: “I'm so angry at climate change deniers... My measurements show that the sea levels had devastatingly risen to the exact same level they've been for 300 years.”

3. Spiritual Solutions—Or More Magical Thinking?

• Zach Bush & “Origin” Event:
  Bush, a prominent wellness influencer, plans a global “Seed the Dream” event pushing a mix of online “biological renaissance,” New Age unity, and pseudoscientific claims about coherence and collective meditation’s power to shift global outcomes.
  • Zach Bush, [18:15]: “We are going to stand alongside of this being of Mother Earth and present something spectacular... maybe the mirror to show her how beautiful she is.”
  • Matthew Remski, [22:38]: “There are no leading scientific organizations studying coherence... likely pseudoscientists starting with a conclusion they want to reach.”
• Critique of New Age Activism:
  The hosts compare such spectacles to past mass meditation stunts (like attempts to “levitate the White House”), commonly used for data harvesting, building influencer downlines, or soft-selling wellness products while repurposing real environmental concern for grifty or spiritually vague ends.

4. The Collapse of Climate Journalism

• Media Layoffs & Government Sabotage:
  Derek presents the recent wave of layoffs and climate desk closures at NPR, CBS, the Washington Post, and the LA Times, many traced back to hostile right-wing political interference and direct suppression of federal climate data.
  • Derek Barris, [29:21]: “Eileen's story is part of a much larger issue... NPR disbanded its climate desk... CBS gutted its six-person climate team... Washington Post laid off at least 14 climate journalists... a 38% drop in global climate coverage since it peaked in 2021.”
• Decimated Federal Research:
  NOAA and EPA have shed thousands of jobs and shuttered vital programs, making weather tracking less reliable and concealing climate disaster data from the public.
  • Derek Barris, [32:26]: “First, stop providing tools climate reporters need... Second, cut so many jobs that those agencies themselves are unreliable, which lessens public trust.”

5. Why Isn't Climate a Voting Priority?

• Psychological & Social Barriers:
  The podcast reflects on the numbing effect of endless bad news, competing crises (like COVID), and how both media models and human psychology discourage sustained attention—or single-issue voting—on climate.
  • Julian Walker, [45:10]: “Why are there not just millions and millions and millions of single issue voters on the fact that we're hurtling towards, you know, Mad Max territory here?”
• Narrative Marginalization:
  Personal and professional examples illustrate how climate reporting and activism, no matter how robust, often sinks into a cultural void unless transformed by direct personal experience or immediate disaster.
• Market Incentives:
  Even progressive outlets rely on clicks, and climate coverage consistently underperforms, incentivizing editors to ignore the issue.
  • Derek Barris, [37:34]: “My editor told me that the worst performing articles... were about climate change.”

6. Religion’s Mixed Response to the Climate Crisis

• Five Major World Religions Issue Statements (2015):
  Ahead of the Paris COP21, Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist leaders all issued climate manifestos, yet their impact proved mixed.
  • Islamic Declaration (2015):
    • Julian Walker, [56:50]: “The same fossil fuels that helped us achieve most of the prosperity we see today are the main cause of climate change. Excessive pollution from fossil fuels threatens to destroy the gifts bestowed on us by God.”
  • Buddhist Declaration:
    • Derek Barris, [58:15]: “If political leaders are unable to recognize the urgency... we need to challenge them with sustained campaigns of citizen action... We join with the Dalai Lama in endorsing the 350 ppm targets.”
  • Hindu Statement:
    • [59:35]: “The earth is my mother and I am her child... Such action must be scientifically credible and historically fair... We need not wait to see what others do.”
  • Pope Francis’s Laudato Si (Catholic):
    • Derek Barris, [63:21]: “This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we've inflicted on her... Nothing in this world is indifferent to us.”
    • However, the language of Laudato Si is poetic and non-confrontational, failing to directly name antagonists or offer binding targets, leaving accountability largely to market forces and individual goodwill.
• Instrumentalization & Hypocrisy:
  The hosts highlight nationalist eco-rhetoric (in India) and the contradiction of oil-rich Islamic nations signing green declarations while stonewalling climate negotiations.
  • Matthew Remski, [72:03]: “Saudi Arabia... pushed hard against binding phase out commitments. Some co-authors of this statement built careers inside Saudi state nature conservation planning. But then when the rubber meets the road, the petro state blocks them.”

7. The Cost of Performative Morality

• Religious Statements vs. Systemic Change:
  Grand gestures from both religious leaders and spiritual influencers often fail to materially shift climate policy, providing, at best, ethical cover or marketing language for business as usual.
  • Matthew Remski, [73:26]: “It doesn't feel as though institutionalized religions are able to really do much more than liberal democracies. They're functioning at the level of persuasion and moral appeal. And I don't think capital really listens to that.”
  • Julian Walker, [74:04]: “As substantive as a lot of these declarations are, I see it as largely performative... now we move on to business as usual in terms of our policies.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Conspiratorial Blame-Shifting:
  Julian Walker, [05:04]: “They tend to lump the climate crisis in with pandemic mitigation and social justice initiatives. Which is to say, they see it as an illusory concern manufactured by elites who just want to control us and exploit our fears.”
• On Data Obfuscation:
  Derek Barris, [34:42]: “NOAA discontinued its billion dollar disasters database... a widely cited data set tracking the cost of major weather and climate disasters.”
• On the Diminishing Space for Science:
  Matthew Remski, [33:14]: “How many people are doing good level research or graduate degrees in meteorology who are looking at the possibility that they, like, just have to turn around? ... It's like everybody's flying blind.”
• On the Futility of Media Coverage:
  Matthew Remski, [42:24]: “There's this unattributed quote... ‘Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.’”
• On the Culture War Drowning Climate Urgency:
  Julian Walker, [51:52]: “It is the absolute crime of the century that concern with climate has gotten woven into culture war discourse. It's the most evil, despicable thing.”
• On Religious Soft-Pedaling:
  Matthew Remski, [63:49]: “...there's this kind of floating feeling that climate catastrophe is kind of agentless. I don't know, even not divinely ordained, but it's kind of a mystery. A mystery like the weather itself is.”
• On Performative Spiritual Activism:
  Matthew Remski, [73:26]: “It doesn't feel as though the, the institutionalized religions in general are able to really do much more than liberal democracies. They're functioning at the level of persuasion... I don't think capital really listens to that.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:37] East Coast Tornadoes & “New Normal” Weather
• [05:04] Conspiracy Interpretations of Disasters
• [09:30] LA Fires and Right-Wing Culture War Narratives
• [12:27] JP Sears’ Satirical Climate Denial
• [14:04–23:00] Zach Bush, “Bio-Renaissance” and Pseudoscience
• [28:51] The Decline of Climate Journalism
• [33:14–36:34] Federal Agency Cuts & the Disabling of Climate Science
• [41:34] Shocking Scientific Findings Hidden from the Public
• [45:10] Why Isn't Climate a Single-Issue Movement?
• [51:07] Jordan Peterson, Fossil Fuel Money, and Culture War
• [52:33–67:55] Major Religious Declarations on Climate
• [72:03] Islamic Oil States: Green Rhetoric, Black Gold
• [73:26–74:04] Limitations of Moral Appeals vs. Behavior Change

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Tone & Overall Takeaway

The episode is urgent, sober, and critical, laced with the hosts’ characteristic blend of dark humor, exasperation, and philosophical skepticism. It candidly exposes the disastrous intertwining of climate denialism, New Age spirituality, and culture war anti-intellectualism, further exacerbated by media collapse and the limited sway of even the world's largest religious institutions. The hosts ultimately paint a chilling portrait: the fight for climate action is being lost not just to bad actors or misinformation, but to collective psychological avoidance, structural economic incentives, performative activism, and the paralyzing scale of the problem itself.

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For Listeners:

This episode is essential listening if you want to understand how cultural, spiritual, and political dynamics are sabotaging urgent, science-based responses to climate change. While the hosts find grim humor in much of what they dissect, the overall message is a warning: without substantial structural change—well beyond performative activism or moralizing statements—the climate crisis will only deepen, with blame, confusion, and exploitation growing apace.

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Transcript

[Matthew Remsky]

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[Julian Walker]

Go easy.

[Matthew Remsky]

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[Julian Walker]

Pickup fees may apply.

[Derek Barris]

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll

[Julian Walker]

love the I Can't Sleep podcast.

[Derek Barris]

I help quiet your mind by reading

[Julian Walker]

random articles from across the web to

[Derek Barris]

bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to

[Julian Walker]

hold your attention and then your mind

[Derek Barris]

lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

[Julian Walker]

That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster.

[Derek Barris]

Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.

[Matthew Remsky]

I'm Matthew Remsky.

[Julian Walker]

I'm Julian Walker.

[Derek Barris]

You can find us on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod, as well as individually on Blue Sky. You can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on [e-mail] conspirituality or you can access our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.

[Matthew Remsky]

Conspirituality 319Climate conspirituality Climate reality keeps colliding with denial, erasure and rebranding across media, politics and religion. TEMU conspiritualists weave melted stories about the origins of wildfires while the higher class guys run meditation and regenerative farming spectacles backed by Exxon money. So Julian's on that angle. Today Derek will be telling us about how climate journalism is collapsing faster than the climate itself with mass environment reporting. Layoffs at npr, cbs, Washington Post, the LA Times, Trump gutted the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and EPA web pages have been scrubbed of human caused warming language. But how about religious institutions? Are they doing any better? Well, in 2015, five world religions, Jewish folks, Catholic leaders, Islamic leaders, Hindus and Buddhists independently issued climate statements ahead of the famous Paris Cop 21 talks. So I'll be looking at how they struggled to challenge the global economies they depend on.

[Derek Barris]

Now.

[Julian Walker]

At 11, severe storms leave a mark behind. Trees toppled across the area, like here in Queens, where they fell on cars. The heavy downpours caused streets to flood and traffic crawled on Route 208 in New Jersey as crews worked to clear storm drains. And then in the Bronx, the Bronx River Parkway inundated with water. Hours later, it is still shut down. Good evening to you, I'm Christine Johnson. And the big story tonight is two confirmed tornadoes touching down in New Jersey.

[Derek Barris]

I can't express how weird all this is, but suffice to say, Never once in 35 years that I lived in New Jersey did I have to worry about tornadoes. Now my sister tells me there's been regular warnings throughout this summer. I do remember that In September of 2010, a tornado tornado ripped through Brooklyn and it came mere blocks from where I lived in Park Slope at the time. The next morning, I went out with my camera to photograph the damage. It had missed my block by only a few hundred feet, but there were trees on top of cars and actually took down buildings, the facades of buildings nearby. But that tornado was an outlier. And now it seems tornadoes and extreme flooding are just part of life on the east coast, which is something we have to live up to now. Climate change is no longer in the future and it's ramping up.

[Julian Walker]

It's ramping up. And our dyed in the wool conspiratorialists tend to deny it or try and explain it through some kind of outlandish hypothesis. They lean into contrarianism and stigmatize knowledge. They reject institutional expertise. And they have some, shall we say, idiosyncratic ideas about science. They tend to lump the climate crisis in with pandemic mitigation and and social justice initiatives. Which is to say they see it as an illusory concern manufactured by elites who just want to control us and exploit our fears. Ironically, because they never let a good tragedy go to waste. In recent years, these proclivities were on full display when the catastrophic Hawaii wildfires of 2023 triggered a wave of conspiracy theories about directed energy weapons and planned destruction secretly enabled for profit. And over about eight days, 5,600 acres and 2,200 building were destroyed there. Over 100 people killed. The damage was estimated to be at about $6 billion. Some said in the conspiracialist circles that Oprah must be behind it as part of a nefarious land grab. They also suggested that the fires were a pretext for a military takeover. Others were terrified by rumors that satellites were targeting specific homes. So Maybe mine will be next. And Derek, back then you reported on Shelby Hosanna who lives on Maui and not only is the co founder of an anti vaxx dating site called Unjected, kind of brilliant, but also spun up a book alleging that these kinds of conspiratorial origins were behind the fires. About two and a half months later, by the way, I looked her up. And Derek, you'll be pleased to know that the Unjected movie is coming out this fall.

[Matthew Remsky]

Oh boy.

[Derek Barris]

Oh, it's on my calendar.

[Julian Walker]

So as a treat, here's a short trailer from their website of this. And this is really just to show the, the overlap, right, between climate denialism and other kinds of conspiratorial investments. The visuals that you're that go along with what you're about to hear are of traditional, patriotic white American lifestyle. You know, the white church house, the bar where you can ride a mechanical bull and then there's like this open floor where you can lasso an Elon Musk style robot calf on the parquet floor. Like you try to catch it around the leg as it's trying to get away from you. Totally normal stuff. You know what? You just messed with the wrong people this time.

[Matthew Remsky]

She cooks, she cleans,

[Derek Barris]

she doesn't take vaccines. When I look in her eyes I

[Matthew Remsky]

don't see no fluoride she's gold Nobody changed our minds. My objected girl, she's a queen takes my breath away

[Derek Barris]

My objected girl, girl never taken away. So sorry that unvaxed people are hotter

[Julian Walker]

and you couldn't handle that. Sorry to subject you to that listeners, but it was worth it to see Matthew's face as we heard. She cooks, she cleans, she doesn't take vaccines.

[Matthew Remsky]

I just have to say like this, this website, this brand has come up a number of times. I cannot get over how bad the branding is. The word unjected, as you know, pretending to be some, something attractive, something that you would move towards. I mean, it just sounds so weird. It sounds like there's something like invertedly kinky about it. Right? I don't know, I just can't, I can't get it. It just sounds so disgusting.

[Derek Barris]

Foster Colson, the aviation and logging Canadian Air.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

Who started the wellness company he was invested in. Injected for a while because he has his Portfol site and then one day it just disappeared from the site. So I don't know what happened. If he didn't think that it was monetizable enough. Yeah, but he, he did have his hands in it for a little while. At least. But the fact that they now have spun a dating site that I don't think was ever getting a lot of traction into a movie of some sort. It's just. It just won't die.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So back to the mainland. We saw similar climate denial and conspiracies during and after the unprecedented January 2020 that hit us here in LA. And during those fires over a three week period, 56,000 acres and over 18,000 structures burned by multiple fires which were made exponentially worse by 100 mile per hour winds. In the beginnings of all of this, 31 people were killed. Many others have apparently suffered the side effects of what those fires did to the environment and so the death toll may actually be higher if you factor that in. Those fires were blamed on supp hires, of course, in the fire department and city government. 0% contained, 100% DEI, said a post from an official Proud Boys channel. And that post showed LA's first female and first openly lesbian fire chief. Another of their posts said woke has consequences alongside all of that, Holocaust denier and former bounty hunter Stu Peters blamed the fires on Jews who control the water supply, while others said the Jews were losing their homes and they brought it on themselves by making God angry. And then Jackson Hinkle, the MAGA Communist who recently went to the Ayatollah Khamenei's funeral, said the money flowing to Israel and Ukraine had left the fire department underfunded. People like Alex Jones had to join in on the old false flag claims or that the fires were a deliberate precursor to the Planned Smart Cities initiative because trying to make cities more accessible with more services for more people, burning them down first. Yeah, you have to burn it down in order to make that happen. And it's all part of a plan to control everyone. QAnon proponents said that all of this was to destroy evidence of sex trafficking, especially under the Getty Center Museum. Or maybe it was about destroying evidence of P. Diddy's crimes because that was very much up in the news at the time. So as you can tell, any explanation but man made climate change Former YouTube comedian JP Sears, who once upon a time actually did make a satirical video lampooning climate deniers, is perhaps the perfect example of how the right word slide of formerly culturally liberal at the very least spiritual influencers inevitably leads to lumping environmental concerns in with wokeness and gender ideology. JP Sears, for anyone who doesn't know, really blew up during COVID for mocking what he characterized as fear driven blue pill people for accepting quarantine measures this is how he framed people concerned with the climate crisis in 2023, less than two months after the Lahaina fires in Maui.

[Derek Barris]

I'm so angry at climate change deniers. But before I engage you in a conversation about that, I think it's important to create a safe space. So I'd like to check in with you. What are the current pronouns that you identify with? He, she. You're two opposite things at the same time. That's a powerful truth. To live. Wait, actually, Zumzer, that feels true. I will affirm who you think you are as though it's who you actually are. And what are you so angry about? Climate change deniers. They make me so mad. Case in point, recently I went to Florida. Yikes. Fascist Florida. Yeah, people were running around all free and face naked, fascistly not dying from a disease that I still think is killing everyone. I wish they would have been dead. Me too, because then that would prove that we're right. Back to climate change deniers.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

So as soon as I got to Florida, I went right to the beach to check the sea levels, and my measurements revealed something disturbing. What? My measurements show that the sea levels had devastatingly risen to the exact same level they've been for 300 years.

[Julian Walker]

So, yeah, I have to apologize for that one, too. It's really, really grating and really offensive. But. But it's such a perfect example of the just, like, bundling together of all of these particular conspiratorial and political lazy, you know, reactionary ideas.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, well, he's doing bingo Tumblr on everything that he has available to him. And, I mean, it's not like there's any sort of attempt to make it coherent in terms of even comedy.

[Derek Barris]

All right?

[Julian Walker]

It's not all bad, guys. It's not. Get ready, because Zach Bush, M.D. is back and his very spiritual friends are going to do something momentous about the environment. Maybe this is his redemption arc. You remember Zach. He's everyone's favorite ruggedly handsome, germ theory denying, anti vaxx doctor who tried tried to tell us during COVID that viruses were like software updates from Mother Nature, and if we lived in harmony with her, we had nothing to fear. In fact, at one point, he even told us that death itself, the fear of death itself, was the rot at the heart of our sick care system. We should really honor that. You know, a lot of people are going to die, and it's okay.

[Matthew Remsky]

And I have to say that his hook was a little bit unique amongst the people that we used to spend so much time with. Because he really did have this way of leaning into kind of a mystical self report with regard to, you know, his awareness of being one with the universe. And therefore, you know, diseases are part of organic processes and, you know, there's. There's no real reason to defend ourselves. And, you know, his most famous kind of rhapsody on this was a pretty viral excerpt of a speech that he gave on some retreat in Tuscany or wherever it was.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah.

[Matthew Remsky]

And it was about how he came to an awareness of his oneness with the material world by swimming through a school of billions of sardines, rippling their, you know, silver scales around him and separating and creating tunnels as he traveled down, like he was in some sort of, like, sci fi fantasy. And. Yeah. So he was able to very convincingly, I think, give people the sense that where he was coming from was this sense of mystical discovery that had changed him forever and that, you know, he could never come back from, and it had shown him the truth of the organic world.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. And even more than that, Matthew, in that particular story that he tells quite beautifully because he's a very good orator. The sardines start getting eaten.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. Yeah, that's the key.

[Julian Walker]

So. Yeah. So the birds come down and they start. And he talks about the sardines kind of jumping into the mouths of the birds and him just having this amazing sense that there's this powerful, mystical, natural embrace of the cycle of life and death and self sacrifice.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. And that. And that this sort of ecstatic participation or collaboration between the sardines and the pelicans is analogous as well, to the glory of walking into war.

[Julian Walker]

Yes.

[Matthew Remsky]

And that's where it wound up. Was that somehow those. And then the analogy was all, you know, we are facing some sort of existential crisis with COVID Might actually be a doorway into our, you know, personal, I don't know, attainment of mystical glory. It was a very, very weird speech and it got a lot of traction and. And people just really fell for it. At least, you know, the demographic that we were studying.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. Like so much of this stuff, if. If you're not really giving it this kind of critical analysis and you just go with it, it feels like uplifting poetry. But when you really think about it, it's like, wait, what?

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, this is.

[Julian Walker]

This is Covid sardines sacrificing themselves to pelicans and storming Normandy, sort of.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, I mean, I guess. And there were echoes of. Of Bhagavad Gita in there too, right?

[Julian Walker]

Absolutely.

[Matthew Remsky]

It was the it was the joy of action in complete devotion, even though everything is being destroyed. Include including, and most importantly, your sense of self, which was defending, you know, you from the notion that the world was dangerous and, you know, forcing you to live in fear and that's why you were dying an ignoble death. Just incredible stuff.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So immunocompromised people, rip off those masks and step boldly forward. We need your sacrifice. So that was then. Here's what Zach Bush is up to now.

[Matthew Remsky]

We are going to stand alongside of this being of Mother Earth and we will present something spectacular, which is maybe the mirror to show her how beautiful she is. And in that, we might just catch a glimpse of how beautiful we are.

[Julian Walker]

And that's where ignition of Origin really

[Matthew Remsky]

is going to happen, I believe. And so I'm so grateful that you've been traipsing the earth and your camera and your spirit, recording these moments that have proof that the new song of humanity is already here. Absolutely.

[Julian Walker]

So he's sitting in a beautiful natural setting. You can hear the sounds of rushing water and birds. There's like large leaf trees, greenery all around him. He's talking to filmmaker and photographer Deborah Anderson about an upcoming event that, as he said, will hold the mirror up to the beautiful being of Mother Earth. Zach Bush is the co founder of Project Biome and Farmer's Footprint. And those organizations are a big part of something that's coming up, a momentous occasion called Seed the dream. It's on October 17th and it's built on the website as a, quote, synchronized moment of global unity. Have a countdown clock on the website so you know when it's going to. When it's going to kick off. Depending on your time zone. You don't have to worry about time zone because it's just right there. And the. The whole event will be kicked off by a prayer for Mother Earth by tribal elders from multiple different cultures. And this will then be followed by a global anthem which is to be led by John Anderson from yes, who's composed this song with fellow musicians from multiple cultures from around the world. So it's kind of this, this Peter Gabriel world music kind of moment. Overall, the invitation is to be part of a biological renaissance, is how they put it. In fact, here's the description.

[Matthew Remsky]

Origin is an unprecedented worldwide event happening in person and online, bringing together ancestral wisdom, modern innovation and collective participation to reconnect humanity with its shared roots and shared responsibility. From living rooms and backyards to public gatherings in clubs, community centers, city parks and natural Landscapes is invited to participate. The climax of the event is a synchronized moment of global unity when millions of people around the world and across every time zone pause together to affirm a positive vision for a new Earth. So what's the monetization? What's the money here?

[Julian Walker]

I don't think there's any money yet. So we'll talk about this in a little bit. In terms of the model here that I know we're all familiar with, in terms of what it looks like, I can't really look behind the scenes. The thing that's left out of all of these flowery descriptions is you have to be close to some kind of device that has a WI FI connection in order to participate in this global event of coming home to nature. Because it all is going to happen online. Now, this is all very easy to mock. And anyone who's been part of New age spiritual circles for long enough will go, oh, this is like the harmonic convergence of the 1980s and all of the other global meditation moments that have happened since, including ones that Christiane Northrop promoted during COVID that have to do with auspicious numerology or astrology or prophecy. This is the time where if we all meditate together, we're going to create a quantum shift. It also looks like it's attempting to animate a series of initiatives around regenerative farming, rewilding of coastlines, improving soil quality, and getting inspired to plant trees and plants and even vegetables at home. So that's all very grounded in reality and there's nothing to criticize about that. Oh, but wait. They also refer to something distinctly Maharishi and Deepak Chopra esque.

[Matthew Remsky]

Supported by emerging research in the science of coherence, shared meditative focus has been shown to produce measurable effects on physiological synchronization and collective harmony. Origin will partner with leading scientific organizations studying coherence to rigorously measure the global impact of the synchronized moment, using real time data to track shifts in collective well being, connection and collective renaissance. We're not Renaissance. Collective resonance.

[Derek Barris]

There are no leading scientific organizations studying coherence. Likely pseudoscientists, starting with a conclusion they want to reach and then trying to reverse engineer to get there. But that's all I can actually imagine

[Julian Walker]

so meaning into this.

[Matthew Remsky]

But, but there's. There is literally no difference. I mean, you brought up the Maharishi before, but there's no difference between this and what was happening in the 80s. Nothing at all.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, yeah. And the Maharishi having these big meditations like there was that whole Thing where they were going to try and levitate the White House. Right. And they were going to. And then they had a long term project where they were doing these meditations regularly and tracking crime rates in D.C. the crime rates actually went up.

[Matthew Remsky]

Here's my question though. I mean Maharishi did this ostensibly as a very sort of complex marketing technique for getting people to sign up to first introductory lessons or visits and then courses and you come to this meditation event and so on. It would seem to me that this is a much easier, lower entry threshold way of collecting a whole bunch of data. But I struggle to believe that they don't already have enough data or the data that they want on the people who would attend such a thing. Like haven't they canvassed all of this already?

[Julian Walker]

I don't think so. I think that Zach Bush is really, really well known. But I'm about to talk about the co founder of this Origin organization and she seems like she brings a certain set of assets to the table, but she doesn't have a massive social media following. I don't think she's super plugged in. So it does as. As your eyes are telling you like a way to gain a lot of visibility and pull in a lot of people who might resonate with the particular spiritual and lifestyle messages.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Julian Walker]

About what they're trying to do. And to be fair, a lot of what they're trying to do is the initiatives they're trying to pull people into are environmentally, you know, sincere at the very least and could possibly have. Have a positive impact. But let's talk about who is this event? It's the organization is called Our Origin or just Origin. Maybe Our Origin is the name of the, of the Instagram page. It was co founded by someone named lamara Hartwell. She positions herself on her Instagram as and this is her, her descriptor, someone who mobilizes capital for a regenerative economy. And I think that that is probably like a phrase that, yeah, that gives Matthew hives automatically. She mobilizes capital for regenerative economy. Her reels on her page, which has just a few thousand followers, are filled with messages about unity and aligning with nature and then how prophecy and astrology tells us that 2026 somehow is the year to initiate the change by gathering in South Africa in what she's referring to as the cradle of humanity. So there's a lot of like, you know, know sacred geometry and astrology, numerology, prophecy. We got to go to this place where humanity first came from. So we can reset the timeline sort of stuff. And this is going to initiate the change by gathering in South Africa, while others around the world are joining in in what they call satellite locations.

[Derek Barris]

Wait a second. The cradle of humanity is generally known as Ethiopia. So why is she landing in South Africa?

[Julian Walker]

I don't know. Maybe they have the right kind of infrastructure for what they're pull off. Yeah, their, their tech stack is better, you know, and then of course, there are other people who will tell you that it's the Tigris and the Euphrates. I don't know. In some of her online bios, Lamar says that she is the great granddaughter of one of the founders of Exxon.

[Matthew Remsky]

Oh, great.

[Julian Walker]

And that's as far as it goes. I can find no clarification anywhere on who exactly he was. The bio goes on to say that she has, quote, become a steward of regenerative investing and environment philanthropy, igniting wealth stewards to join forces for a regenerative future.

[Matthew Remsky]

I'm sorry, that's a lot of words to say. I've got a lot of money that I spend on these things.

[Julian Walker]

She is igniting wealth stewards. She's got contacts to join forces for a generic future. It's good. I wonder how. I'm just picturing the meeting in which they settled on all of the language and that at the very least, maybe this is a redemption arc for her. Right. In terms of the guilt of her forebears. As we scroll down further, further on the web page, there is a call to all yogis. And this features LA yoga legend Shiva Ray Kundalini yoga elder Gurumuk Khalsa. And then Sting and Madonna's famous old yoga teacher, Danny Paradise. Remember him? And many more teachers who are leading yoga classes after the prayer and the anthem have happened. So you can synchronize your energies by practicing with these teachers online, I guess. I mean, they may even be live streaming from their yoga studios. Studios. So as you're saying, Matthew, I have the sneaking suspicion this is a bit like all of the other large collaborative, free online summits and conferences we've covered in the past. Many of the participants seem like they're able to build their downlines. And, you know, some of them are coming in, you know, really, really needing that exposure or wanting to sort of cross pollinate with each other. And all of it is sort of strategically organized around gathering for an inspiring performance of solidari and shared purpose. And then you've got the tribal elders singing and dancing in the background. It's. It's really Perfect. And it's all perhaps funded by an Exxon oil trust fund.

[Derek Barris]

Last week, Wall Street Journal science reporter Eileen Woodward announced she was leaving the

[Julian Walker]

publication with this post after nearly five incredible years. The Journal's last remaining dedicated science reporter that's has left Wall Street Journal. Following the dissolution of the miraculous Health and Science Bureau last October. Myself and a small number of others worked hard to continue our former team's legacy. But the time has finally come for me to move on.

[Derek Barris]

So I'm not sure if she quit or was forced out. She's being very civil with that post. But Eileen's story is part of a much larger issue going on with science reporting in America, media, and specifically climate reporting. Here's just the last two years or so. NPR disbanded its standalone climate desk in May 2026amid federal funding cuts. Two staffers were laid off while eight other reporters were folded into the national desk. And so a total of 10 journalists were cut. CBS News gutted its six person climate team in October of 2025, shortly after Barry Weiss was installed over there. Then correspondent David Schechter was laid off himself in March 2026, which left CBS with zero climate reporters.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's incredible.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah. There was one producer, Tracy Wolf, who went on to join the independent outlet Heated, which is sadly what many of these journalists are forced to do, given how few positions remain. Washington Post laid off at least 14 climate journalists in its February 2026 bloodbath in which over 300 newsroom jobs were terminated by one of the world's richest men. And you have Los Angeles Times columnist Sammy Roth, who was one of the paper's most prominent climate writers, and he departed after seven years. A year later, the newsroom cut 115 jobs, including a number of climate reporters. And you know, why would Los Angeles have to worry about climate change? This is all part of an industry wide reporting problem. Grist found a 38% drop in global climate coverage since it peaked in 2021. Media Matters found 35% decline in climate airtime on CBS, ABC and NBC between 2024 and 25. In total, about 10,000 journalists have been laid off in the past three years. While this is a media problem, it is not separate from an administration problem. We know how much Trump loves talking to reporters and hates it when they report on him. Project 20 specifically calls for the defunding of NPR and PBS and the disbanding of outlets like the Voice of America. Trump's cronies have done everything possible to make these happen. And when it comes to broader climate reporting. They've been successful in stopping journalists through agency cuts besides the outright hatred that they showed towards any reporting. Now, in terms of agencies, the big one, as we flagged in the intro, is the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is known as NOAA. And that agency has fired roughly 2,000 employees, which is 20% of its workforce since Trump took over. Again, it was one of the first agencies that Doge went after and these cuts affected regional media heavily. Thirty of the National Weather Service's 122 forecasting offices, including ones covering New York, Houston and Cleveland, now lack chief meteorologists. Some offices stop providing 24. 7 coverage because, you know, the weather takes a break overnight, too. And one instance of collateral damage is this. Louisville's office couldn't confirm tornado touchdowns for days after they hit due to short staffing. Also affected via noaa, twice daily weather balloon launches which provide core data for forecast models were suspended or scaled back at multiple sites. The agency also halted maintenance on polar satellites that track atmospheric systems.

[Matthew Remsky]

Know, Derek, you have done such great, you've both done this great job on tracking what has happened in terms of all of the research agencies under this administration. And one of the things that you refer to is who's coming up through the pipeline and what kind of world are they coming up into. And I'm looking at all of these cuts and I'm wondering like how many people are doing good level research or graduate degrees in meteorology who are looking at the possibility that they, like, they just have to turn around. They're not going to have to, they're not going to be able to do it anymore. Right. There's not going to be nowhere for them to be. And so it's like everybody's flying blind. But also there's this generation behind us that is going to have to bail on this career path, on this study, on this art form. It's incredible.

[Derek Barris]

In America, I got into this conversation on Blue sky the other day where I talked to a lot of people in medical and science spheres and they were just talking about how many have been offered jobs, jobs overseas. I, I would imagine that European agencies are, which the US probably isn't sharing data with, but there will be other places. But in America, it tracks along with the general education in terms of people just not even going for careers anymore. And yes, I think that's an actual intended consequence of what the Heritage foundation wants with Project 2025.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

Wasn't done with NOAA though, there. They also discontinued its billion dollar disasters database in May 2020 Widely cited data set tracking the cost of major weather and climate disasters. So again, not sharing data. The agency also ended its 15 year run of monthly climate media briefings in March 2025. The reason Axios reports it was out of quote, fear of angering the administration by discussing human caused global warming. Let's go to another agency. The EPA isn't doing much protecting lately either. In December of 2025, the agency rem at least 80 climate related web pages, deleted its climate change indicators and climate change impacts and analysis sections and rewrote remaining pages to downplay human causes of warming. One analysis found that there have been over 500 similar changes to federal climate web content since Trump retook office. It's an assault on multiple fronts. First, stop providing tools climate reporters need to do their job. Second, cut so many jobs that those agencies themselves are unreliable, which lessens public trust in their reporting. So I don't know about you guys, I grew up, there's always been a joke about the weather, the weather guy getting it wrong. Right. And there's always been a normal 2 to 3 degree derivation in between what is reported that has jumped to 5 to 10 degrees because of all of these cuts. And that's going to make citizens tune out even more often.

[Matthew Remsky]

It's also dangerous when we get into heat indexes too, right?

[Derek Barris]

Yeah.

[Matthew Remsky]

Like if you're, if you're five degrees out, you can get into a wet bulb temperature where like you're in real danger.

[Derek Barris]

Absolutely. You know, the reality is we've been tuning out already and this, this is where media requires a relationship with the citizens who consume the media. And I know this from experience, given how challenging it is to write about climate change. For nearly a decade I was a health and science columnist for Big Think. During the time, during that time which I wrote over a thousand articles, I covered a broad range, but I did like to focus on climate change. A few articles I wrote are we prepared for climate Change? Health experts say no. That was July of 2018. Climate change is here. It's time to begin managed retreats. According to scholars, it was August of 2019. How we view our environment impacts our well being, says Australian philosopher. That was in September of 2019.

[Matthew Remsky]

Was that about the guy who came up with the term solastalgia?

[Derek Barris]

Yes. Glenn Albrecht. Correct. Yeah, yeah, I got to interview him for that piece. He was a very nice guy. Very, very, very smart dude.

[Matthew Remsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

This one was fun. Jon Snow and Denise Daenerys Tarragon's Face to Face show shows the myopia of climate change denial. That was in July of 2017, and I included that for a reason. At some point, my editor reached out to me and told me to actually stop writing about climate change. Some of my top performing articles on that site got over a million views on average. They were in the tens of thousands of views. Like it or not. Their model largely relied on clicks, which I know that's its own problem problem. But my editor told me that the worst performing articles, and this isn't just by me, this is by all writers on the site, were about climate change. Big Think is a site dedicated to big ideas in philosophies, politics, science, literature and the arts. But the audience just didn't care to read about climate change. And this is not an isolated incident. I've interviewed authors who wrote about the topic as well as climate reporters, and it's always been an issue, even when we try to use pop culture references. That's why I was using Game of Thrones to try to write about climate change, to drive attention to it. And this doesn't mean that all climate writing is ignored. There are absolutely fantastic reporters out there covering how we are negatively impacting our planet and the consequences of that. But the day to day coverage has long been background noise to so many people. Maybe because the problem seems so large that we'll never get a handle on it. Or maybe because as often happens in life, until something affects us personally, the topic is placed in this sort of down the road bucket to worry about later, if at all. And that's in no way to excuse the Trump administration's just gutting assault on climate change reporting or mainstream media gutting science departments. I believe we need this reporting now more than ever. But industry wide, we're sliding backwards both in terms of our grip on the climate and our ability to talk about it. Even in collecting stories for this I have to turn to places like Nature Communications, Carbon Brief and Science Daily. And these are more aggregators than narrative storytelling. And you know, those are the places I discover stories like the following Public Health France doubled its preliminary estimate of the excess deaths from the extreme heat in late June of this year, from 1000 to 2000. And then they went back and they had to raise it to 5,700 deaths because of that heat wave. Here's another the UN World Meteorological Meteorological Organization raised its forecast for the rapid emergence of a strong El Nino in the coming months, warning that the phenomenon is likely to drive global temperatures higher. Here's another Oxygen is disappearing from oceans, lakes, rivers and coastal waters at an alarming rate, threatening aquatic life and weakening the natural processes that help regulate Earth's climate. Scientists warn that this widespread deoxygenation is closely connected to other major planetary threats, including warming, pollution, biodiversity loss, and ocean acidification. And I also recall a National Geographic article from a few years ago talking about how the jellyfish are basically going to take over the Earth, given climate warning. And we actually see videos of that starting to happen. All right, one more. The world's longest running soil warming experiment recently revealed an unexpected climate concern. After nearly four decades, researchers found that warming can cause microbes to break down stable soil carbon that scientists once believed was largely protected. And that releases extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, potentially accelerating global warming.

[Matthew Remsky]

Okay, that's a mechanism I've never heard of that. Microbial growth, like, accelerates, but they're consuming or breaking down carbon or letting it release. Oh, fuck.

[Julian Walker]

Shit.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah. And again, these are all on websites that I have to personally go to because they're aggregators of hundreds of stories a day to find this sort of stuff. These aren't stories that are being widely covered. And each of these stories should be covered broadly by every outlet imaginable. Like you didn't know about that, Matthew. I think people should know that we have another accelerant going on. And again, some outlets still continue to do this sort of work, which I appreciate, but these stories are buried among dozens, if not hundreds of stories that are churning through the feed on a daily basis. And we're likely not going to be aware of any of this until it's at our front door.

[Matthew Remsky]

That reminds me of this unattributed quote that's been floating around since 2024 where somebody said climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it. Exactly. I think that adds, like, another layer of paralysis, that somehow seeing it happening elsewhere can force a kind of psychic retreat almost, or just a freeze response. But I also want to spe speak to what happens, at least to one journalist I know, a friend of mine, Darja Mael, when there's no response to an immense amount of reporting. It wasn't about being laid off for Dar. He finished his war reporting and then he got interested in climate. And he spent about four or five years going to the major glaciers of the Earth and then talking to local scientists and then also local folks, people who would herd their animals in these environments or people who were foraging in these upper regions. And he got all of this firsthand reporting on what's happened to ice. And he came up with this incredible book called the End of Ice that won all kinds of awards. And it's like 600 pages long and just a sheaf of scientific studies and footnotes. And he just watched it kind of disappear into the void. I don't know. It's not like he's expected to become a talking head on cnn, but the lack of response to the sort of reporting that he did just felt so incredibly demoralizing that he really could only recover by saying, okay, well, now I'm going to turn to figuring out how first nations people in the place where I live in the Southwest, how they have survived all of this time through these terrible periods of time. And so he's gotten into first nations spiritual and figuring out, like, what do people do in. In the worst times ever? And so that's been positive. But it's, it's kind of like it was caused by this, this vacuum, this silence in response to what he had found.

[Derek Barris]

I DJ'd once with a guy named Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky. And he, I think it was after he had just gotten back from Antarctica where he recorded the glaciers cracking and breaking and then came back and produced an album with his Beats 2 that. To try to raise awareness and same thing. It was just like, cool project. Got some press guy who cared about it, literally went up there to see it and report on it in his own way. And then that album, I don't, you know, it was never talked about after that Little Russia press.

[Julian Walker]

And this, this says something, you know, not only about financial incentives and, you know, propaganda and disinformation, but also about human psychology in general. General that. It really says something to me that over the last two decades this has not become the biggest political movement on the planet in places where people can vote for who they want to represent them. Like, like, why are there not just millions and millions and millions of single issue voters on the fact that we're hurtling towards, you know, Mad Max territory here?

[Matthew Remsky]

I want to tell you guys a story that I don't think I've shared with you before. It's about what I was doing before we teamed up six years ago. So it's the summer of 2019. We had this string of heat waves here in Toronto. And you know, I clocked these events and other people did as well as part of this growing arc of this doesn't feel normal. And I don't know if you remember that in August There was this big news story about Greta Thunberg setting sail from Planet in the UK for New York to attend a UN climate meeting. And she was going by boat because she refused to fly, standing on principle. So there's lots of video with her with her dad and the crew on this tiny yacht on the open sea. I don't think she had the frog hat yet. And she wasn't as much of a kind of, you know, prominent figure as she is now. But I recognized in her something that I also recognized in my own kids. Kids, and our eldest was seven at the time. And, you know, then he had this fierce sense of justice, and he still has that now. And there was something there that sort of stimulated me. Like I'd been thinking about climate destruction and parenting. Like, how do these two things coexist? Like, how do you provide love and care and support for a child that you bring into a burning world? And I saw Greta on that boat and I had the image I needed to launch a book project on that subject to really chew on it. Like, I knew that I was transitioning out of, like, yoga and into the broader digital working class. I knew that I was going to expand my journalism beyond investigating cults. And so, like, I got into this meditation on how to relate to my kids in a creative way. When the world, you know, is suffocating with heat and wildfires and CO2, and then that is all interrupted by the writer rise of Trump and then the pandemic, and then we connect and we get started on this roller coaster of work. And so that sort of large. I mean, Julian, you said, why, why didn't this become a single issue, single issue voting concern for, you know.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah.

[Matthew Remsky]

The entire global North. Well, I think in many ways, many of us got interrupted by, by these. Not. Well, they are smaller, they're more ground level, granular stories of chaos and disruption that end up pushing the larger stories, or in the case of the climate, these story out to the margins. It's hard to think of climate when you might be getting long. Covid. Although there might be a symmetry between these things. It's hard to think of climate when ice is kidnapping your neighbors, but at the same time, the granular story of climate is always under your feet as well.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, and the reason I said it says something about, about human psychology is that, you know, this rise of populism that, that leans right all over the world is, you know, it's, it's. It's exactly what you're saying. It's, it's this Sort of misdirection, distraction that the rest of us who are opposed to that rise then end up having to battle those particular dragons while the, while the enormous one that's actually breathing the fire is in the background.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. And, you know, it made me think that, that you guys especially have been doing all of this work on public health, and it has a kind of similar structure to this microcosm that the major story, like the full plot of how we battle with our intelligence and resources and ethics to establish better conditions for material health gets pushed to the side by the chaos of charlatans lying about vaccines or selling supplements to vulnerable cancer patients.

[Derek Barris]

Well, it's also, there's just something very seductive that we've always identified with people who are confident in their solutions and they can sell them. It always comes down to, you know, ironically, to get back to your point about, you know, single causes, that what these charlatans do is they often attribute something terrible to a single cause, the COVID vaccine, and then they'll sell something. But that doesn't happen with climate change. And I, you know, I don't think single causes exist for Mary, very many things at all. But I would argue that if there was one cause we should be kind of uniting around, it would actually be climate change. Because. Because all the other causes are affected by that across the board. Public health, economic, society, everything happens there. But again, maybe it's. It's just too large to. To actually consider what, what would need to happen, because you really do need global participation to battle it. And that, that's just something we. We can't. We're. We're fighting in my neighborhood in Portland over a street plaza, you know, because people don't want to block off a road two blocks while other, like, people like me want a little park so that people can walk their dogs and not worry about the cars that race by. Like, we can't even, we can't even work on that in my neighborhood. So the idea that every nation in the world is actually going to disrupt their economies in order to make it better for everyone is just so far beyond any of our comprehensions.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, and there's a, there's an interesting, like, even, even closer overlap with all of this, Matthew, which is, you know, Jordan Peterson being involved in the alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which is this organization that he co founded with Paul Marshall, who's not only this massive sort of media tycoon, but also is heavily invested in all kinds of fossil fuels companies. And he and Paul Marshall and Jordan Peterson and Baroness Stroud host these events where they're blending all of this culture war stuff with climate denialism. Because forcing you to do Covid mitigation measures is the same as trying to force you to care about the environment. And all of that, of course, is connected to gender and to the loss of Christianity and to the immigrant crisis that's overrunning Europe. And it's just.

[Derek Barris]

It's.

[Julian Walker]

It. To me, it is the absolute crime of the century that concern with climate has gotten woven into culture war discourse. It's the most evil, despicable thing.

[Matthew Remsky]

I was wondering whether you were going to add suicidal empathy to your list there, because on the grandest scale, caring for the climate would be the. The biggest, the final boss of suicidal empathy. Right.

[Julian Walker]

Oh, just the virtual, the virtue signaling writ large. Right.

[Matthew Remsky]

Because.

[Derek Barris]

Because you.

[Matthew Remsky]

You feel empathetic for everything. Right. And so you must be maximally delusional.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, yeah. So pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is maybe equated to like, putting out the fires with your own urine or something. Right?

[Matthew Remsky]

Maybe.

[Derek Barris]

Right.

[Matthew Remsky]

So I wanted, for this last section, I wanted to go back before all of this, before even my little story about what I was doing before I connected with you guys to 2015, which seems like several lifetimes ago, to look at the positive but also mixed inputs of global religious culture to the climate question. Because, you know, Julian, we heard from Zach Bush and a bunch of other quacks in the beginning, and I'm just wondering, were there more legitimate responses from the spiritual or religious world? And so I want to look at that through 2015. World governments are getting ready for the November Conference of the parties, or COP21 in Paris. And this is kind of in the long shadow of what happened in 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen when there was a failure to produce any meaningful agreement on climate mitigation. By the way, Greta is on that boat in 2019 to go make a speech at the UN to cuss out the entire world for not acting on the Paris agreements of 2015, which were actually made and signed. So as the 2015 plans fall into place, no less than five global religions publish. This is independent of each other. They publish manifestos, hoping to guide the higher angels of the delegates. And these clerics are responding in good faith, in part to an invitation from the UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, and her encouragement of interfaith participation in the COP process. And that meant that religion played a significant role at the Paris meeting. There was a daily communications gathering. There was an interfaith Petition that eventually gathered 1.8 million signatures. There were like, you know, religious or faith based press conferences. And so in the lead up to Paris, preparation for all of this. The month of May saw the circulation of a letter called to the Jewish people, to all communities of spirit and to the world, a rabbinic letter on the climate crisis. It was drafted by leading US based rabbis representing Reform, Reconstructionist, renewal and Conservative denominations. To your point, Julian, it's like, you know, everybody wants to be like, even within the sort of purview of a single world religion, all of the denominations are represented. There's even Orthodox rabbis that are signing on to this after it's published. So yes, it should be this unifying issue. June sees the publication of Pope Francis encyclical Laudato Si. So I'll talk about that in a bit. August saw the convening of the International Islamic Climate Change Symposium in Istanbul which published something called the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change. This was endorsed by the Grand Muftis of Lebanon and Uganda and scholars from 20 countries. And then a week before the conference, a Hindu declaration called Bhumi Devi Ki Jai was released in Delhi. It was authored by the Oxford center for Hindu Studies in partnership with this is a blast from the Past, the Hindu American foundation, with the launch fronted by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and backed by prominent Hindu and Jain ascetics. And at the Paris conference, this is the last one. A revamped version of the 2009 Buddhist Declaration on climate change called the Time to Act is now was presented to UN officials. So I just want to work through these statements. The Rabbi's statement grounded the crisis in a distorted relationship between Israel and God. Israel, representative of the entire people, I guess, but you know, Jews, most specifically in relation to their own covenant. And it drew on teachings about the Earth needing a Sabbath, like a sabbatical rest, and that if we didn't give it a sabbatical rest, that it would take one anyway, right, and throw us out of the G. It also called for public assemblies during Sukkot to organize Jewish responses ahead of Paris. So that was that one.

[Julian Walker]

Then.

[Matthew Remsky]

Here's a quote from the Islamic declaration, Julian.

[Julian Walker]

The same fossil fuels that helped us achieve most of the prosperity we see today are the main cause of climate change. Excessive pollution from fossil fuels threatens to destroy the gifts bestowed on us by God. But our attitude to these gifts has been short sighted and we have abused them. What will future generations say of us who leave them a degraded planet as our legacy? How will we face our Lord and

[Matthew Remsky]

Creator so there's obvious, like a very emotive religious disposition there that leans into, you know, a kind of shame or guilt. And then it also takes this, this very specific turn too, because it starts talking about how industrialization has burnt up fossil resources that they calculate took 250 million years to evolve. They talk about warming driven Arctic melt is now spurring a new fossil fuel scramble. And then they got specific. They urged wealthy and oil nations to hold temperature rise to 1.5 to 2 degrees by leaving reserves buried. And that they should also, everybody should also prioritize, you know, planetary health and the health of the poor. They framed the growth driven exploitation of the earth as a form of moral corruption. And so then we come to the Buddhists. What do they say? A lot of science, similar things, but a few extra bits. Derek.

[Derek Barris]

If political leaders are unable to recognize the urgency of our global crisis, or unwilling to put the long term good of humankind above the short term benefit of fossil fuel corporations, we need to challenge them with sustained campaigns of citizen action for human civilization to be sustainable. This safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is no more than 350 parts per million. We join with the Dalai Lama in endorsing the 350 ppm targets.

[Matthew Remsky]

So he's the sort of key, most prominent name in the document. I think that's why he's foregrounded there, by the way, we're currently at 430 parts per million. I want to point out that there's this language, there's this very kind of Buddhist threat there if political leaders are unable to recognize, and it leads to this phrase sustained campaigns of citizen action, which sounds vague, but it comes more into focus when we learn that one of the three co authors is Bhikkhu Bodhi and he's been an outspoken advocate for civil disobedience, specifically on climate. So that's the school he comes out of. Now the Hindu statement is more of a consciously evangelical project. And it opens with a line from the Atharva Veda.

[Julian Walker]

The earth is my mother and I am her child. Today, with the 2015 Paris Climate Conference nearly upon us, members of the global Hindu community again urge strong, meaningful action to be taken at both the international and national level to slow and prevent climate change. Such action must be scientifically credible and historically fair, based on deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through a transition away from polluting technologies, especially away from foreign fossil fuels. We cannot rely on government alone to act. However, each of us has a part to play in reducing climate pollution by changing our inner and outer behavior. As Mahatma Gandhi posited, if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him. We need not wait to see what other others do.

[Matthew Remsky]

So there's some very familiar stuff in there. I want to point to two things. The pairing of scientifically credible and historically fair I think is important in the BJP Hindu nationalism context because, you know, their entire kind of civilization project is about building a kind of scientific credibility based upon their naturalistic and, you know, organic notions of how the earth works. And a lot of it is very beautiful, but they want to. They. They're always wanting to say that they're in the sort of scientific vanguard. And then historically, fair refers to, let's make sure that people aren't telling us that we can't develop in the way in which we need to develop based upon global inequality. So those are two key points.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So there's a lot loaded in there. And part of what I hear you gesturing at, correct me if I'm wrong, Matthew, is this idea within Hindu nationalism that there is an ancient, superior scientific spirituality that's always been at the heart of. Of Hindu culture.

[Matthew Remsky]

Absolutely.

[Derek Barris]

Amitav Ghosh wrote about this in the Great Derangement as well, about the historically fair. And that is one of the challenges that when you see people from, let's say, less developed nations that are currently developing their economies and their citizens want things that the west has been showing them through online networks for decades now. And then. And then you have white Americans, like, let's go back to the our origins sort of Kumbaya moment, saying, hey, everyone, let's stop doing this. And then people in India and Africa are like, we want these things. We've seen them. We can now start to afford them. And now you're gonna. You've had them for generations, and now you're gonna come in and tell us, no, you can't have them because you overuse them. And that's gonna be, again, one of the real challenges for any sort of global cooperation in any capacity.

[Matthew Remsky]

So this statement from this. This group of Hindu thinkers is kind of unique amongst the bunch because with anything that comes out of the Hindu American foundation, and then it's echoed in India by the rss. There's this globalized spiritual vocabulary, Mother Earth, Dharma, cosmic reverence. That language is always animating the Hindutva project. And meanwhile, Modi's climate record is poor. So there's this kind of eco rhetoric that functions to legitimate, legitimize a civilizational Hindu nation brand rather than driving actual climate policy. Then we come to Laudato Si, where Pope Francis invokes his namesake, the ascetic of Assisi, and he describes how Mother Earth. I'm going to make Derek read the Catholic thing.

[Derek Barris]

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we've inflicted on her by her irresponsible use and abuse of the goods which, with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as our lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. There's a little Zach Bush in this part, I got to say.

[Matthew Remsky]

A little bit, yeah.

[Derek Barris]

This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and malted treated of our poor. SHE GROANS IN TRAVAIL we have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth. Our very bodies are made up of her elements. We breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters. Nothing in this world is indifferent to us.

[Matthew Remsky]

So this letter is Francis's, I think, most enduring legacy, and it's more influential than any of the other statements that I've referred to by orders of magnitude, because, you know, there's a global constitution constituency of 1.3 billion, there's a state apparatus at hand for distribution in a way that's a lot more centralized than any of the other traditions have. A bunch of diplomats and UN officials credited this encyclical with shifting their own political momentum as they went into Paris. But I want to point out that Francis's poetry typically avoids pointing fingers and drawing boundaries. So there's no antagonists in this letter. There's no suggested fossil fuel phaseout date, there's no emissions through threshold. So the. The document is beautifully worded, but there's this kind of floating feeling that climate catastrophe is kind of agentless. I don't know, even not divinely ordained, but it's. It's kind of a mystery. A mystery like the weather itself is.

[Derek Barris]

I have to ask, though, you know, in that. In his writing and in the Islamic Declaration, and this is very indicative of sort of Western ideas in terms of religion. I. I see them both pointing to the beauty of. Of the earth, because God created it. But there's also an argument then, that if they have a God, that it would have created oil, and that I've actually seen Religious thinkers more in the Christian nationalist sense, but say that oil is actually a blessing from God. It allows society to perpetuate and to grow from it. So that contradiction is something I didn't see in the, in the Hindu or Buddhist. And generally I find them a little more broadly forgiving and understanding of how things interconnect. But I see that sharp divide, that binary in those two examples as a little disconcerting.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, you can't really make it all make sense with this language. So Francis does make a bit of a pivot in a follow up exhortation letter in 2023. It's called Laudate Deum, where he sort of sharpens this argument that he's making in Laudato Si. He actually admits that it was inadequate to the time. And he also strongly calls out climate denialism, even within Catholicism. And he calls faith in technological fixes homicidal pragmatism. So he's really sort of pushing on. There has to be wholesale economic solutions and holistic policy solutions rather than waiting for miracles, you know, to be produced by the same sort of techno capitalism that has gotten into, get gotten us into this mess. So he takes that position. He also defends protesters who he feels have been unfairly radicalized by the media or turned into people who seem to be overly radical. But he doesn't comment on what they should be doing. He doesn't comment on direct action techniques. So in the end, I think it's the more passive tones of 2015 that show the strongest policy influence among Catholic leaders. And I think the best example here is, you know, the most influential devout Catholic on the planet at the moment, who's my prime minister, Mark Carney, who wrote this book in 2021 called Values, which opens around this, you know, almost mystical meeting with the Pope and how he inspires Francis to, you know, better himself and to think clearly, especially on climate. So Carney even invokes Francis's laudat si language about the marginalized.

[Julian Walker]

Pope Francis emphasizes that perceive a situation most accurately when we look at it from the standpoint of those on the edge rather than those in the center during the climate crisis, the young, the unborn and those who live in vulnerable island states.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, there's a lot going on there. But you can imagine him saying this from the podium at Davos. Right. And the ironies involved in that.

[Julian Walker]

Absolutely.

[Matthew Remsky]

So this book is Carney's first act of self definition on the world stage prior to entering politics. And it shows, I think, that France is census's language can supply a kind of moral legitimacy and a spiritually inspired vocabulary of market reform as opposed to accountability or even urgency. I would say so. Carney cites laudato SI as inspiration, but then as pm, he kills Canada's consumer carbon tax, he fast tracks liquid natural gas expansion under Bill C5, and he's now busy dodging first nations consultations while signing deals for like cross country pipelines, line construction while the skies burn red. So I would say the most influential religious institution I'm discussing here, the Vatican, is etching out a legacy that largely avoids naming antagonists or setting testable targets. And Francis received a lot of reasonable praise for putting a more human face on many of these issues during his stay at the Vatican. But really, when push came to shove at several points in his career, I think he ultimately, ultimately followed the predictable path of this same church that, you know, does things like it's always more willing to give women hard limits on their bodily freedom than it's ever willing to tell capitalists to abandon capital or what it's doing to the world. So summing up, we have a Hindu statement that plays a kind of double duty by, you know, talking positively about what needs to happen climate wise, but also instrumentalizing climate discourse for nationalist soft power clout. The Islamic and Buddhist statements are much more direct in their demands. They name degree targets and the 350 parts per million mark. They demand fossil fuel divestment and corporate accountability. And then in 2024, it's the Islamic coalition that updates and sharpens their statement for presentation. It was authored by a wider spectrum of Muslim leaders than was assembled in 2015. These folks came from research and cultural institutions in the uk, Morocco, Turkey, Qatar, key conservation figures from within Saudi Arabia. So put a pin in that. The more ambitious document was reviewed by more than 300 Islamic scholars and institutions and it was titled Al Mizan. I'm probably saying that incorrectly. A Covenant for the Earth with Al Mizan referring to the Islamic teaching of equilibrium between humanity and the natural world. And this document endorses fossil fuel treaties phase out. It equates species extinction with genocide, which is interesting. It names colonialism as a root cause. So this is, you know, a year past October 7, so that politics is in there as well. And it condemns usury based economics. And I think that last point deserves its own segment somewhere when I do a whole bunch more reading because I'm learning about how the Quran forbids interest income, but the Muslim world pretty much runs on it just like everywhere else does. It uses some delicate Rationalizations.

[Derek Barris]

Does it like when you can rent a bride for a day?

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, I mean that's another issue. But like just in general, I'm talking economically. There's, there's a way in which they figure out how to, you know, do interest but not do interest. So I'm, I'm trying to figure out how. What, that's, what that's like.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, there's, there's, there's a, there's a trick there, there's a semantic trick there. But also, you know, so. Yeah, yeah. So so much of the, of the Islamic world runs on the oil economy as well, especially the people in power within those oil rich countries.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, that's what I'm getting to because one contradiction here is that Saudi Arabia has been a reliable obstructionist voice at COP negotiations because oil at COP28 in Dubai, Saudi Arabia pushed hard against binding phase out commitments. They've got a lot of money in the ground still. So some of the co authors of this statement built careers inside Saudi state nature conservation planning. But then when the rubber meets the road, the petro state blocks them. So I guess one of the many things a theocracy can do is to tolerate and maybe even platform a progressive religious commentary on what it should change instead of actually changing it.

[Julian Walker]

Which is fascinating. Right. Because in a lot of ways we're talking about something so much more substantive and science informed than the, the conference that, that I, that I talked about earlier, this origin conference.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

But what I'm noticing that's fascinating is the, the New Age conference doesn't have any of these kinds of leaders or scientific voices. It rather reaches further back into humanity's past and brings together a cast of what I would see as large, largely token tribal elders to sort of rubber stamp the spiritual, you know, authority of what they're doing.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. And, and I think, I guess where, where I'm left with is that it doesn't feel as though the, the institutionalized religions in general are able to really do much more than liberal democracies. Right. Because they're functioning, they're functioning at the level of, of persuasion. Persuasion and moral appeal. And I don't think capital really listens to that.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. And as substantive as a lot of these declarations are, I see it as largely performative in terms and especially performative from the political side where the world leaders are like, yes, absolutely, that's wonderful.

[Derek Barris]

Thank you.

[Julian Walker]

Thank you, Pope. And now we move on to business as usual in terms of our policies. It.