Unlocking Climate Solutions: The Role of Women and Nature's Rights

Welcome to this episode of the Climate Confident Podcast. I'm Tom Raftery, and today I'm joined by Osprey Orielle Lake, founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). Osprey shares her journey from early environmental activism in California's Redwood forests to leading WECAN, highlighting the crucial role of women in climate solutions.

We delve into the significant impact of women's political empowerment on reducing carbon emissions and explore the Rights of Nature movement, which seeks to recognise ecosystems as legal entities with rights. Osprey also discusses the practical work of WECAN, such as reforestation projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which have successfully restored vast areas of degraded land and provided sustainable resources for local communities.

Another key topic we discussed is the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, an initiative aimed at curbing fossil fuel production alongside existing climate agreements. Osprey underscores the urgency of transitioning to renewable energy and the need for stronger governmental action against fossil fuel interests.

Tune in to hear about the intersection of gender equality, environmental justice, and innovative strategies for combating the climate crisis. Don't forget to visit WECAN International's website for more information on their impactful projects and initiatives.

Don't forget to check out the video version of this episode on YouTube.

Transcript

Osprey Orielle Lake: 0:03

With just a one unit increase in something called the Women's Political Empowerment Index, which sort of monitors women's involvement in their country and politics, social activity, their ability to grow their personal economies, just women's, access and agency in a country with just a one unit increase. We see an 11. 51 percent decrease in carbon emissions

Tom Raftery: 0:28

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 172 of the climate confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of these podcast's amazing supporters. You were support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. Today on the podcast I'm talking to Osprey Orielle Lake of Wecan. And in coming episodes, I'll be talking to Constantin Ginet of Siemens, Tucker Perkins of Perc, which is the Propane Education Research Council. And Kathleen Biggins of C-Change Conversations. But back to today's show. And as I said with me on the show today, I have Osprey. Osprey welcome to the podcast. Who would you like to introduce yourself?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 1:39

Thanks so much for having me. I'm Osprey Orielle Lake, and I'm the founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network.

Tom Raftery: 1:48

Fantastic, Osprey. And why? What, what got you into climate? What made this an important topic for you? And, you know, led you to becoming director of, give me the name again, the Women's

Osprey Orielle Lake: 2:04

It's Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, but we can go with the acronym, which is WECAN. It's a lot easier to remember that, WECAN. And it's great to say we can, so WECAN.

Tom Raftery: 2:14

So tell me the back story.

Osprey Orielle Lake: 2:18

Well, the short version is, because of course these kinds of endevours, when you put your heart and soul into your life's work they're long stories, but, the short story is that I'd always been involved in environmental work. I grew up in the town of Mendocino, which is about four hours north of San Francisco in California on the coast. And I mentioned that because it's really the place I sort of did my first campaigning work to protect the ancient Redwood forest, which probably a lot of people know are the tallest trees in the world. They're just absolutely magnificent. Magnificent. And like a lot of forests, unfortunately, greatly threatened. So I was early on engaged with why are we treating the earth in such a bad way and what can we do about it? So fast forward quite a bit doing all different kinds of work. It was in 2009 when in the United States, the Obama administration had come into office. And a lot of us are very hopeful that there would be a transition in how we treated the climate emergency. And at that time, the annual UN climate talks were taking place in Copenhagen. And We really didn't see a drastic change in how governments were responding at the speed and scale necessary to address the crisis. And I was actually walking in the redwood forests and I just had this deep feeling, I don't know how else to express it, of just saying, you know, this is an all hands on deck moment, what can I do? And I started researching the best sort of nose of intervention. around the climate crisis and did not expect to learn through a lot of research that actually women are central to sustainability and climate solutions. And so that's why I started the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network because women are so, underrepresented in this space, but they have so much to offer. And also due to gender inequality all over the world, women are impacted worse and worse by the climate crisis. And I'll just give one stat to sort of ground this in, in a very practical way, which is there's a really powerful study that I did a lot of research on and have presented to the Scenarios Forum, which is a forum that then feeds IPCC scientists. And it states that with just a one unit increase in something called the Women's Political Empowerment Index, which sort of monitors women's involvement in their country and politics, social activity their ability to grow their personal economies, just women's, you know, access and agency in a country with just a one unit increase. We see an 11. 51 percent decrease in carbon emissions, which as we all know, people working in the climate space define something that reduces things over 10 percent as pretty significant. And and I could go on with lots and lots of stats. So it's not just that it's sort of morally correct that we need gender equality and we see the importance of egalitarian societies but it also turns out factually that you really need women at the table, and just I think something that we can also look to that I think people can grasp is you know, we've come out of the height of a COVID 19 pandemic, but in the deep throes of it. We see that countries all over the world that were led by women did far better with their populations and navigating the climate, excuse me, the COVID 19 pandemic, then countries led by men. And so there's a lot to be said about women's leadership as we navigate crises. It's not about putting men down, but about lifting women up and really involving them, engaging them in world problems. And so that's how we formulated the women's earth and climate action network to ensure that women from the grassroots to the top levels of business and the top levels of government are being really represented.

Tom Raftery: 6:05

And explain that one to me in a little more detail. How does increasing women's representation by 1 percent translate into an 11 percent reduction in carbon emissions?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 6:20

It has a lot to do with what women are doing in terms of their governance and the decisions they're making around environmental policies and also around economy. So those two factors specifically but it's, it's, it's a vast studies, but I'm just kind of giving you the, a little bit of the nuggets. It has a lot to do with governance and policy and the kind of decisions that women make and what kind of choices they're making.

Tom Raftery: 6:45

Okay. Okay. Interesting. And why do you think it is that the choices that women make tend to reduce carbon emissions?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 6:57

Well, first of all, I think it's really, we can talk about carbon emission reductions, but I also think it's much broader than that. So when we're talking about climate, I think it's really good to, you know, that was just one study that was done, but I think we can broaden the discussion to look at so many factors around 40 to 80 percent of all household food production in the Global South is developed by women. And when you look at United Nations studies that look at water and water conservation and care for water in drought stricken areas, if you don't involve women in these programs to protect water, they don't work because women are the ones who are caring for the water, caring for their families and are monitoring the water levels. So it's, it's a vast, conversation that's much broader in the sense of I think anytime you look at marginalized parts of society, you're going to see a lot of solutions there, actually, because those are the people who are being impacted the most. So when we look at women, or we look at indigenous communities, or we look at black and brown communities, the people who are on the cutting edge of being harmed by environmental degradation, or, economic injustices or racial injustices or gender injustices. Those are the people who are struggling. And they're also the ones who then need to go look at the solutions because they're engaged in the harm, meaning that they're trying to survive and figure out how to navigate society and navigate the harms that are happening to their communities or to their populations. And so I think this has a lot to do with why, when you look at women, or you look at Indigenous Black and Brown communities, you're seeing not just that they're being impacted first and worst, but they're also central to solutions.

Tom Raftery: 8:33

Okay. So how do we raise up the number of women being involved in politics and decision making?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 8:44

Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? So, we're all, we're all working on that. I mean, we struggle really hard on that. I would just, you know, since we're talking about climate, one of the things that we saw, just as an example, at COP28 in Dubai that there were 133 heads of state represented there, and only 15 of those 133 were women. So there's a lot of push, as an example, during the climate talks to have, gender equity and more representation of women. We saw, a It's a big struggle because we know women are key to solutions and, you know, people can go to my website at Wecan International and we have pages of stats on the role of women in these spaces and why they matter. But then we saw when the COP 29 presidency come in for the COP coming up this year in Azerbaijan, when they first put out their team, there was not one woman on it, not a single woman on it. And so you're asking, you know, what do we do about it? So a lot of the groups that I'm in coalition with certainly our organization and many others, basically sent a letter and protested and say, no, you can't go forward with an all male presidency and they changed it and they brought in, a cohort of women to join them. So, I think it's a lot about advocacy and pushing back and demonstrating why women are important to be in decision making spaces on climate.

Tom Raftery: 10:11

Okay, fantastic. And you published a book at the start of this year, called The Stories In

Our Bones: 10:17

How Worldviews And Climate Justice Can Remake A World In Crisis. Tell me a little bit about that.

Osprey Orielle Lake: 10:25

Well, it was really enjoyable to do. I will start there. And one of the things that I was looking at, you know, over the years now having been engaged in very practical ways from the climate talks where we go every year and bring delegations. We do reforestation work. We do force protection work. We work with a lot of frontline communities to stop harmful projects around fossil fuel extraction in their communities. And we work in many different arenas. We do campaigns for banks to divest out of fossil fuels and move their financing into renewable energy. So there's these very practical pieces of work that we do every day at Wecan, which I love and have been doing for, you know, over a decade. However, I wanted to look in this book upstream and have a deeper dive into what are the root causes of the climate crisis? What are the root causes of these systems that we live in that are so detrimental? And to name them explicitly when we're looking at colonization, capitalism, racism, patriarchy, they all fit together in these systems of oppression that are causing us to have this massive environmental degradation, species extinction, economic problems obviously the climate crisis that we've been talking about. And so I wanted to look at this because I can see that even if we save one forest, another forest can be destroyed. Or, you know, even if we could wave a magical wand and tomorrow the climate crisis was over, there'd still be over consumerism, an economic structure that doesn't, respond to the planetary boundaries, doesn't respect the planetaries boundaries, and we still would have environmental racism. We would still have these problems. So it, for me, it's like going upstream and saying, okay, what are the root causes and how do we address them? And how do we address society at a deeper level? And so the book goes into a deep dive about these root causes, but also in that process, what are different worldviews that we can have that create a sustainable, and healthy, and equitable future for our children and for the earth? Like, how do we actually get our minds wrapped around a different worldview that doesn't see humans dominating over nature? Or, you know, to put it bluntly, white people having white supremacy over everyone else. How do we actually dismantle these harmful structures that nobody likes and is only serving a small, wealthy elite?

Tom Raftery: 12:52

Okay. Now, how do we do that?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 12:56

Well, first of all we gotta get educated. I'm getting educated. I wrote the book to learn things. I learned a lot from writing the book and the book is really a roadmap to this conversation. It, there's no neat and tidy answers. It's, it's a journey of looking at where we are as a society, where these ideas came from and how do we dismantle them and transform them into something else? Because a lot of these systems that we're in, have to be composted and transformed because they're very dangerous as we can see from what's happening from, you know, what many scholars are calling a poly crisis all over the world. So what we're doing isn't working and like, how do we do it? I think the first step is to map out what are the root causes and how did we get here? Because it's sort of like when you go to the doctor. And you're not well, they can't just start prescribing stuff. What's the answer that you have to go through a whole system of analyzing and, and detecting what is wrong and having a diagnosis. And then from that root place of understanding the, the imbalance or the illness, when you have that diagnosis, you can then start to heal. So I think that's the stage we're in where we haven't even be able to name these problems and people face up to them. And once we do that begins the healing process.

Tom Raftery: 14:08

Okay. I mean, there's going to be a lot of pushback because these white people in power that you're talking about, they're not going to want to give up.

Osprey Orielle Lake: 14:21

No, we don't. And I don't expect that they will necessarily, but I kind of like to think about it like, maybe a good analogy would be like probiotics, you know, when, when you're, if your gut is really out of balance, You if you start taking a lot of probiotics, you kind of crowd out all the other things that are not good for your system by putting in good things into the system. So I think there's a lot to be said about certainly confronting the powers that be. They're not going to roll over. As you say, and just say, great, that's a great idea. We'll go out of business now. You, you, you take it from here. I don't expect that. But we do confront governments and we do confront financial institutions. And I do think there's room for direct interaction. And I do believe in interventions. So I think there's, you know, it's an ecosystem of things that need to happen. So as an example, we do have campaigns where we meet directly with major banks all over the world and bring frontline leaders to talk about what's happening in the Amazon rainforest, what's happening to their communities because of fossil fuel extraction and the cancer and the illnesses that come from fossil fuel extraction in their communities. And it does have an impact and we have had some major divestments of banks moving money out of dangerous fossil fuel projects, having heard from frontline communities about the impact. So I think there's some a lot more human exchange that we need to have and putting a human face on the harms and getting people in power to understand that maybe you are safe and your family is safe right now, but not everybody is. And these are real people and they have children and they have homes and they have a life and really creating that. exchange between people. I think that's one part of the ecosystem that we need to improve on is getting out of silos and communicating with each other. So that's some of the work that I think is really important is, is actually having direct interventions and campaigns and, you know, taking on the fight. But on the other hand at Wecan, we also believe in also demonstrating solutions and sort of like Bucky Fuller has always stated, you know, build the system you want and people will become a part of that because it's just simply better. So there's a lot of work we do around food sovereignty and food security and reforestation, and it's incredibly exciting work. Just to give one example, because I was just getting off a call earlier this evening with our partners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we've been reforesting for eight years now. And this is in the Atumbe region in the eastern DR Congo and maybe your listeners know, but, you know, second to the Amazon rainforest is the Congo Basin in terms of importance, in terms of carbon sequestration and, you know, mitigating the worst of the climate crisis is, of course, the boreal forest and the Indonesian forest, but the Congo Basin is also very key and in the Atumbe rainforest, there's been a lot of slash and burn and, like, total devastation to the land. I mean, some areas I looked at, there's not even any green left. It's just like a field with no green. And so after eight years of reforestation 25 percent of the trees we've grown go back for the communities to use for human use. And 75 percent of the trees we grow for reforestation rewilding. And what's happened now, and I didn't think it would happen as quickly, which really surprised me, is that now a lot of the communities don't need to use the old growth forests, which is great. That was the whole point is that they would use the trees that we grew. So now we're protecting 1. 6 million acres of old growth forest. We're almost there where we're not using any of it anymore. We're still using some, but it's getting to that point. So there's like incredible carbon sequestration in this one area of over 1.6 million acres that's being protected. And then what is amazing just last year is that because of all the trees that we've grown, it's bringing in moisture and the trees are seeding rain. And so there's a lot more moisture, a lot more rain, and the forest is now starting to rewild itself. And so even though we're having our nurseries and we're planting trees, the forest itself is now you know, nature is taking over in vast areas to, to rewild herself. And I've just find that real exciting to see how fast this regeneration happened. And of course there's lots more to go and we have a lot more work to do, but it just speaks a lot to when we decide to be life enhancing species versus extracting and extracting and taking from the earth. What a role that we can play that super positive as we interact with the earth in a different way.

Tom Raftery: 20:07

Okay. And so this is, you said it says 25, 75 split. So the people there are using 25 percent of the forest for their own use for whatever they need the wood for. And then the 75 is left to grow itself. Is that a model that you think can be kind of copy and pasted into other regions that are having similar issues or.

Osprey Orielle Lake: 20:28

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's something that we designed sort of out of you know, just experience and, and, and, you know, navigating on our own, feeling our way forward. But I definitely think it's something that's replicable. Absolutely.

Tom Raftery: 20:45

Fantastic. And I, I know that you have a strong opinion on the rights of nature as well as a topic. Can you explain to people who might be unfamiliar with the idea of what that is and why it's important?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 21:00

Sure. So, Rights of Nature, is the idea, but also a practice legally of giving or recognizing, I should say, that nature has rights in the same way that human beings have rights. And we have the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Humans. We're saying that, you know, in our current legal frameworks, we can't just see nature as property. It's been very detrimental. And our environmental laws are not really effective in the way that we need them to be. Or we wouldn't be in an ecological and a climate crisis. If these laws were working, the environment would be protected. So, yes, environmental laws have helped. protect some of nature and some of our natural systems. But most of those laws are regulatory laws, which means they regulate how much harm can happen. They don't really protect nature. They regulate harm. And of course, corporations get very involved in those laws and water them down and tweak them to their favor. So that's very problematic. And this idea of rights of nature is saying that that nature, forests, rivers, these ecosystems have the right to be healthy and thrive just like a human being, and we need to lift up those rights. And when they have rights, a forest has rights or a river has rights, they can be presented independently in a court of law. Because right now, you can't really protect any ecosystem. It has to be under the ownership of a human being. So, it's really turning environmental law upside down and inside out and saying, no, let's put mother earth, nature right in the center of the conversation. And it's not just a theory of legal practice. It's actually something that's being implemented right now. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to put rights of nature into their constitution. And there've been several rivers in Ecuador that have been protected now under rights of nature legislation. In the United States here, there's over three dozen cases at the local level in communities that have now rights of nature ordinances protecting communities from fossil fuel extraction and other kinds of harms. We see in Colombia, there have been rights of nature laws to protect the Amazon rainforest. I was just reading today that there was a river, I think, I might be mistaken, but I think even in Spain, you'll have to check it out because it just by my screen really quickly, but it's new. I think it just happened very recently since you're in spain I think you might be able to find that. And then I just mention one more as the Whanganui River in New Zealand was given personhood it was a fight over 100 years by the maori people to protect the Whanganui River which they view as a as a living relative, as their ancestor. And now they have a settlement with the government where there's a someone from the Maori people and the government who steward and caretake are the custodians rather of, of this Whanganui River. And it's this, again, since we've been talking about worldview, which is what my book is about, it's like, how do we have this worldview of an animate living earth? And they see the rivers as you know, their relatives as, as as ancestors as part of their family relationship, and I think this is really healthy and one of the things I think that rights of nature can do is not only change our legal frameworks and how we look at nature, but also it can start changing culturally, how we understand our relationship to nature and seeing nature as a living being, which the web of life is, and how do we really reclaim and regenerate something all of our ancestors had in, in ancient times of this understanding that we are part and particle of nature and that we're part of an animate cosmology. And I think we really need to reclaim this and understand this. And it's also why it's so important to lift up not just women, but we also work a lot with indigenous peoples because of their worldview and understanding of the living web of life. And how do we, really honor indigenous peoples and their understanding of nature and to recognize that 80 percent of all the biodiversity left on earth, 80 percent is in the lands and hands of indigenous peoples. And there's a reason for that, which is their worldview and their understanding of our right relationship in harmony with nature. And that also ties into this whole rights of nature movement, which many indigenous peoples are engaged in. And a lot of the seed ideas originate from, original instructions of indigenous peoples.

Tom Raftery: 25:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had, a solicitor on the podcast last year, Jojo Mehta, who's based out of the UK, and she's working to try and make ecocide as a crime recognized by the International Court of Justice, which would be a huge, huge step. It has already been recognized as a, as a crime in Europe. But not by the ICJ, the international, court of Justice, but it, they're working towards it. Is that something as well that, you know, you would get on board with, you'd see it as part and parcel of the Rights of Nature?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 26:00

Yes. And we've partnered a lot with ecocide campaigns and with ecocide leaders. And, you know, they're, they're in the same sort of umbrella of work I would say, you know, they're related. They're not exactly the same, but they're, In, in the same idea of putting nature into the center of the conversation and ensuring that there's laws to protect the web of life. And so it's, it's another sort of stream of thought along with rights of nature. It's connected for sure.

Tom Raftery: 26:29

Okay. And you also talk about language use and world views. So can, again, for people who are unfamiliar with , your views on that, give us a quick 1 0 1 on why that's important.

Osprey Orielle Lake: 26:44

So, I really enjoyed this is some of the chapters at the end of my book, The Stories In Our Bones is you know, unpacking a lot of things that we've discussed already, but then taking it sort of on a more personal level. Looking at actually our language and how our language affects how we think. So here's an example. We often, all of us use the term resources when we're talking about, you know, the Whanganui River or the Amazon River, or, the forest versus, talking about the boreal forest or the intricacies of the Atumbe Rainforest where we're working in the DR Congo. And these are all just resources. What are we doing with these resources? And just saying that word immediately reduces the river, or the mountain, or the forest, or the ocean to a language of a mercantile language, a language of extraction, a language of the commodification and financialization of nature. We're no longer looking at the web of life. We're no longer looking at an actual river by name. Or a forest, the redwood trees or the bristlecone pine trees were not. We're no longer talking about a living being. We're talking about board feet. We're talking about what we can gain financially from that resource. So that's just one example of how language can affect how we view the world. And so I think this is something that we need to look at. And I was with a colleague some years ago in Prague a Czech ish friend, and he was sharing with me some of the old Czech ish language around the names of the months of the year. And why I was really intrigued by this is because each month actually was related to what nature's doing like the month of ice or you know, blossoms blooming month and these names that actually tell you what nature's doing that month and how that affects our mind and our presence with the earth. Simply by naming what's going on versus, you know, in English, we say January, February, March, which I know in the back of my mind, it goes back to some Greek goddesses or gods, but I don't know which ones. It doesn't really mean anything that impacts me directly, but if I think about this is the month of ice, you know, it's in the middle of winter. It just changes, again, that relationship with nature. So what I'm really getting at with worldview here and our language and the way think is how do we rejuvenate this understanding that nature is alive because when we understand something's alive and we build a relationship, we care for it. It's very hard to care for something you don't know, you don't love, you don't have a relationship with. So it's how to really revitalize a relational language. And that's really what I'm getting at with that point.

Tom Raftery: 29:33

That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, language use and changing language use can absolutely have an impact on how people view things. That's, that's, that's an obvious one, but it's not one that I guess people might have considered particularly in the, the, the climate fight and the struggle to protect nature. Fascinating. We are coming towards the end of the podcast now, Osprey. Is there any question that I haven't asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 30:07

I think I'll just mention one of the things that, because you have a climate audience, I just want to mention one other thing I sit on the steering committee of something called the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty, and I think it's really important in regard to rights of nature, that's one portion of work legal I think that's really important, but also this Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty, I think it's very important because we, you know, we all fought for the Paris Climate Agreement, it definitely has loopholes and giant problems, one of the biggest being that it doesn't really deal with the supply end, of the problem. It deals with carbon emission reductions, which means the fossil fuel companies just can continue carrying on business as usual, which is a disaster. And what I love about the fossil fuel non proliferation treaty is it's a mechanism that doesn't substitute the Paris Climate Agreement. It can be developed side by side with the Paris Climate Agreement, and it really pushes forward the fact of how our country's really going to get off of fossil fuels, stop fossil fuel production. And. I think it's a very exciting initiative. And I've been engaged in it for several years, and now 12 countries have endorsed the fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty. And when we were at COP 28 in Dubai it was very significant that Colombia, signed on to the treaty because they are fossil fuel producing country. So it shows that even a country producing fossil fuels can get behind this idea, and I think it's really significant. It's something we should all be tracking.

Tom Raftery: 31:39

And how do I, or anyone listening as an individual, convince my government or the government of the country I'm living in that they should also sign up to the fossil fuel non proliferation treaty?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 31:56

Well, I think that one of the most straightforward ways is that we, we do know that governments, even though, you know, it's very weak agreed at COP 28 to move off of fossil fuels. It was stated, weakly as ever, but it was said, so like this moment is coming and the faster we do it, the more we're going to, spare ourselves from harm and it's economically intelligent to get off of fossil fuels as soon as possible. You know, the renewables are there. And, my goodness, everyone's spending gazillions of dollars on, climate disaster relief. And it's just an obvious thing to do. The problem is we have got to have government stand up to the fossil fuel industry. And until that happens, we're not in good shape. And so this treaty can help people sort of get their minds wrapped around a mechanism to do it.

Tom Raftery: 32:48

Okay. Okay. I'm on another screen here. I track the amount of Fossil fuel free energy that is being created on the Spanish grid daily and it turns out that today it's going to be 88 percent of the electricity on the Spanish grid will be created from fossil fuel free sources. So it's, uh, that's, that's, that's nice to watch and it's regularly, uh, it's, it's regularly well north of 70%. Which is, which is always nice to see. And 88 is pretty good, but it was 87 yesterday and 86 the day before, it's, uh, it's not unusually high at 88. I'd prefer to see it at 100, and we'll get there, because the, it's going in the right direction. All these things take time, unfortunately.

Osprey Orielle Lake: 33:33

Which we don't have a lot of.

Tom Raftery: 33:35

we don't, we don't.

Osprey Orielle Lake: 33:38

But we're going to keep going. And, you know, Never give up. That's what I say. Never give up.

Tom Raftery: 33:45

Very good. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Osprey, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Osprey Orielle Lake: 33:54

Thanks for asking. People are welcome to come to our website at Wecan W E C A N and then the whole word international spelled out. org. So WeCanInternational. org and all of our programs and projects are there. And yeah, thanks so much for asking.

Tom Raftery: 34:10

Not at all. Osprey that's been really, really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Osprey Orielle Lake: 34:16

Thanks so much for having me. Really fun to speak with you. Thanks so much.

Tom Raftery: 34:20

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.