(Conversation recorded on December 12, 2023)
Show summary
In this episode, Nate is joined by Alexa Firmenich. Alexa Firmenich's work spans biodiversity advocacy, ESG investing, conservation tourism promotion, and podcasting/creative writing. Together, they philosophize about the importance of forging connections with nature and understanding the often overlooked but important functions of biodiversity to climate and other natural systems. Alexa also delves into ideas about new economic and cultural models for human systems that might function within the biosphere. How does recognizing our individual roles as part of the Earth's larger system give us a new perspective on what it means to live among other inhabitants? Externally Why does a system full of incentives from people end up inhibiting our natural prosocial tendencies? Can we rekindle our inherent connection to the land we live in, leading to a simpler and perhaps more fulfilling life?
About Alexa Firmenich
Alexa Firmenich is an investor, consultant and facilitator focused on climate and biodiversity. She is co-director of her SEED, a new center at the Krauser Institute at ETH Zurich. SEED is developing the world's most comprehensive measure of biodiversity, reflecting the complexity of nature everywhere on Earth at a variety of scales. Its aim is to guide financial and political decision-makers to translate the values of nature into the global economy. Alexa is also the founder of Ground Effect, an animist investment vehicle that supports early-stage nature-based solutions, scientific research, and new economic models. Alongside this work, she trains as a group facilitator in leadership development and ecological pedagogy and designs multi-day learning journeys through her role at Leaders Quest. She is also an author, the host of the Lifeworlds podcast, she is a founding director of Terra Habitus, a Mexican environmental foundation that operates large-scale landscape protection and watershed restoration, and she is a wilderness guide. .
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00:00 – Alexa Firmenich Works + Info, SEED BioDiversity Initiative, Ground Effect, Life Worlds Podcast, Art to Acres
09:02 – 80% of people set nature as their screensaver
12:31 – Jon Young, 8 Shield Method of Natural Connections
13:11 – EO Wilson, Biophilia
20:52 – Joanna Macy, the job of reconnecting
22:19 – Poetry by Kahlil Gibran
24:13 – The importance of biodiversity
24:50 – One in two breaths comes from marine plankton
25:13 – Plankton collection for omega-3
25:28 – Plankton seed cloud
25:35 – Keystone Species
26:53 – Nutritional rewilding can scale up natural climate solutions
28:56 – Tipping point, melting ice sheets, Amazon becomes carbon source
29:27 – Rewilding
29:39 – Derek Gow
30:08 – Diversity of animals identified as keystone species – Shukla – 2023
30:50 – Half the Earth
31:02 – 30:00
31:37 – Wealthy landowners buy up land and rewild it
32:41 – Reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone
33:02 – Past protection and removal of indigenous peoples from their lands
33:32 – Culling the Swiss wolf population
34:24 – 6,000 species of mammals
39:07 – What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of the Market | Michael J. Sandel
40:09 – Swiss town asked to become nuclear waste repository, financial incentives cut number of willing people in half
42:03 – Universal conservation income
43:37 – The origin of the word finance means debt repayment
44:16 – Capital Institute, Regenerative Finance
46:15 – How offsets work
49:30 – Carbon trading scheme
50:37 – Stream mitigation banking
52:15 – New York state bans propane stoves
53:29 – Task Force on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures, Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures
54:22 – Regenerative agriculture
54:35 – Focus on food at COP 28
55:37 – ESG
56:08 – Animism
58:09 – Natural rights
58:20 – Ecocide
1:01:18 – Michael Ableman
1:14:38 – Simone Weil
1:15:46 – Shit Spot
1:17:30 – Sensing Place Life World Episode
1:18:01 – Story of a place
1:19:48 – Weed observation, urban ecology
1:21:19 – Moloch
1:33:48 – Lewis Mumford, Technology and Civilization
1:32:12 – Seeing the Grain Like a Nation, James C. Scott
1:34:26 – Fridtjof Kapra