Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned activist, activist and teacher who has dedicated her life to fighting against globalism and corporate greed. In this episode, we talk about the need to find sovereignty in the seed, the need for individual sovereignty, and the victory that can be achieved against globalists and their corporatist agenda. We also discuss the role of the seed and the role that individuals can play in standing up to globalism, and how they can use their individual awakening to achieve victory against corporate greed and globalism. Stay Free with Russell Brand - Remember, there's an episode every single day, 7 days a week, to educate and elevate our consciousness together. Stay Free, and enjoy the episode. Music: Awakening Wonders - "The Seeds of Vandana Shiva" by Veena Shiva (The Seeds) We really appreciate you, our listeners, and want to bring you more content. We bring you in depth conversations with guests like Jordan Peterson, R.R.K. Jr., Sam Harris, Gabor Mate and many more. We will be delivering a podcast every day, seven days, 7 a week. You'll get a detailed breakdown of current topics that the mainstream media should be covering, but if they are covering, they're amplifying establishment messages and not telling you the truth. - Russell Brand - Stay Free With Russell Brand, and more content delivered by You Awakenings Wonders, wherever you download your podcasts. . To find a list of our sponsorships and show you what we're listening to, we'll be delivering the best of what we can do best - stay free, stay free with us everywhere else! Thank you, Russell Brand's Unfiltered - Stay free, Stay free! - Thank you for listening to Stay Free! , and enjoy this episode of Stay Free? , by You Awakening Wonders - a podcast delivered by Russell Brand. (Apostrophe (Podcast) - The Awakening Wonders Podcasts: A podcast by You're Awakening Wonders? - This episode is produced by You, I'll be giving you a chance to help elevate your consciousness and elevate your awareness of the world's consciousness together? (Coming Soon, I'm working on a podcast that matters more than you can do more than that, and I'm waking you up, so you'll get more of that in the next episode? )
00:00:00.000Hello there you Awakening Wonders on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you download your podcasts.
00:00:05.000We really appreciate you, our listeners, and want to bring you more content.
00:00:08.000We will be delivering a podcast every day, seven days a week, every single day.
00:00:13.000You'll get a detailed breakdown of current topics that the mainstream media should be covering, but if they are covering, they're amplifying establishment messages and not telling you the truth.
00:00:23.000Once a week, we bring you in-depth conversations with guests like Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr., Sam Harris, Vandana Shiva, Gabor Mate and many more.
00:00:31.000Now enjoy this episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:34.000Remember, there's an episode every single day to educate and elevate our consciousness together.
00:00:48.000Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand 2024.
00:00:52.000We could have no greater teacher and leader than Vandana Shiva.
00:00:55.000If you don't know about Vandana Shiva yet, she is a person that's bold enough to go full on against globalist, corporatist aggressors.
00:01:05.000She knows how to tie together a variety of complex ideas.
00:01:09.000She is able to explain that when the legacy media says, oh, these people are racist, it's a complete smokescreen.
00:01:17.000She is a galvanizing leader and a fantastic teacher.
00:01:21.000You should watch her documentary, The Seeds of Vandana Shiva, at vandanashivamovie.com to learn more.
00:01:27.000Today we talk incredibly about the ability to find sovereignty in the seed, sovereignty in the individual, sovereignty in the community, and how globalism is really truly about tyranny. We talk about oneness versus the 1%. In particular,
00:01:42.000how even when climate change is being used to legitimize authoritarian, excuse me, globalist
00:01:48.000measures, they neglect to mention that 1% of the world's population generates 66% of its
00:01:57.000We talk about the monopolisation of seeds and we talk about, importantly, the victories that can be attained against global corporatists.
00:02:04.000Over the course of this conversation, a vision is sketched out about how your individual awakening is a vital part of the global opposition movement.
00:02:13.000She talks about the language that we use, ways that we can unite that will terrify the opposition. Now let's go straight
00:02:19.000away to a woman that I regard as a world teacher and perhaps I should just spend the rest of my life
00:02:25.000finding ways to bring Vandana Shiva to as many people as possible. Certainly there would be a
00:02:30.000bloody value in it. Thank you for joining me today, Vandana Shiva. Vandana, it's been, since
00:02:37.000we've last spoken, I feel that there's been further protest in the agricultural world, more and
00:02:45.000more observable attempts to control food sources.
00:02:49.000The Netherlands, one of the second largest producers of food in the world, as I understand, seems like deliberately having its capacity to farm managed down.
00:03:02.000Can you tell me, what do you think is the broader goal in managing the world's ability to produce and control their own food sources?
00:03:16.000You know, ever since industrial agriculture began, and industrial agriculture began with the fossil age, age of oil, because every chemical in industrial farming is a fossil chemical, so many people are mobilizing on oil, Don't realize that they're eating oil.
00:03:33.000And when you put agrochemicals to work based on oil, you're basically depending on energy slaves.
00:03:45.000And you have to get rid of the farmers.
00:03:47.000So the profits that are linked to industrial farming, which are profits of big ag, big poison, big oil, farmers are an obstruction for them.
00:03:59.000And I remember when I started to work on the globalization of agriculture, you know, the W.O.2 Treaty Agriculture Agreement, and there was a quote of a secretary of agriculture in those days who said, you've got to squeeze the farmer off the land.
00:04:25.000So that's how they've always viewed farmers.
00:04:28.000And industrial agriculture, just like they see insects as nuisance to spray insecticide, they see farmers working on the land as an obstruction to their profits, because their market is displacing farmers with chemicals and machines.
00:04:43.000This has progressed much more in the current times.
00:04:47.000What we are witnessing today is they're not just wanting less farmers on the land, They want no farmers on the land.
00:04:55.000The slogan is farming without farmers, food without farms.
00:05:03.000Basically, the next step of industrial farming, which is a combination of fossil fuels, chemicals, and now the digital technologies, drones, I mean, they want drones to pick your apples.
00:05:18.000Look at the amount of energy this will use.
00:05:20.000You know, Emery Lovins did a calculation that if we take the energy slaves into account, the population of this planet is 3.5 trillion.
00:05:32.000But the real population is of the energy slaves, which means the fossil fuel industry.
00:05:37.000And what does food without farms mean?
00:05:40.000That we will not grow food that we can eat.
00:05:43.000There'll still be large-scale agriculture.
00:05:46.000And as Bayer has said, these openings are wonderful for us because we're the only ones who grow raw crops that can be managed by machinery to produce the raw materials for lab food.
00:06:02.000And of course the pretence, the terribly unscientific pretenses, this is a solution to climate change.
00:06:08.000No, it'll make the climate problem worse because 50% of the emissions come from an industrial food system.
00:06:14.000Hyper-industrialization will mean there'll be more emissions.
00:06:19.000It seems that this move towards globalism is being met with a rise of nationalism and populism and a simultaneous and ongoing vehement condemnation of nationalism as necessarily racist, anti-immigrant As retrograde, one of the things I'm observing, and even in your answer to the first question, when you outline the scale and ambition of the project to beyond industrialize agriculture, to technologize agriculture, so that it's entirely out of the hands of humanity, entirely beyond the reach of people,
00:07:12.000It seems that this will have to be opposed by a movement that is able to consolidate what seems to be at the moment a number of competing and indeed combative interests.
00:07:26.000In some of the countries that are being most affected by the issues that you described, notably the Netherlands, there are agricultural movements.
00:07:35.000There is an agricultural movement in Germany.
00:07:39.000Both of these are described by the legacy media as being racist and nationalist and it seems to me to a degree understandable that nationalism would be part of a response to globalism and anti-establishmentism but for in order to have a successful There's going to be a degree of, if not inclusivity, certainly alliance that's not been precedented before, or has never happened before, excuse me.
00:08:15.000I wonder what you feel about the current populist movements, both that are explicitly connected to farming and beyond farming.
00:08:25.000And indeed, what type of alliances are going to be required if something on this scale is to be opposed?
00:08:34.000Well first Russell, actually the big global media will cover protests in Netherlands and they'll cover the protests.
00:10:27.000When we started to fight globalization, which is corporate globalization, our basic commitment was to protect sovereignty at every level.
00:10:40.000The movement Especially from the South, but it's also in the North, is the movement of food sovereignty.
00:10:47.000Food sovereignty means you must be free to grow your food.
00:10:51.000You must be free to grow it in ways that's good for the planet and good for people.
00:10:55.000And you must be free to eat healthy food.
00:10:59.000The food sovereignty movement is both about localization.
00:11:04.000And national sovereignty, because if you don't have democratic systems under your control to make decisions, whether you'll get GMOs or not get GMOs, whether you'll ban a pesticide or a roundup or not ban a roundup, when you have no sovereignty, you basically have handed over all power to corporate control.
00:11:27.000And both with the nature of the corporations, the kind of things they produce, and the way they behave, I have called this phenomenon food fascism.
00:11:38.000Because when you take all freedoms of the people away, And you do it for profits.
00:12:08.000And, you know, the reason I am able to resist this nonsense is because, like, I've just come from a week in the village communities we work with, and they were celebrating their harvest festivals.
00:12:23.000And I get regenerated watching how the seed itself is the goddess in these communities.
00:12:37.000They will fight for the freedom of the seed and their freedom to protect the seed.
00:12:41.000But the beauty they bring to all of this, the celebration and joy that they bring to all of this, there's no divisions between nature and humans.
00:12:50.000There's no division between The sacred buffet.
00:12:56.000And I think that sacredness of seed and food and life lived in alignment with the larger laws is basically what is being crushed and what communities are holding on to.
00:13:12.000And I think when you said what kind of alliance, the alliance has to be An alliance that respects the rights of the earth and respects the rights of those who produce food in accordance with the rights of the earth.
00:13:25.000And if they've been forced to farm in different ways, well, give them a chance.
00:13:30.000Instead of putting 50% of European tax money at the service of the corporation, put it at the service of farmers wanting to make a transition to do ecological agriculture, build local food economies.
00:13:44.000And it has to be an alliance of All citizens, everyone eats.
00:14:03.000We bring the health movement together that's recognizing that ultra-processed food and poisons in our food is the center of chronic disease epidemics.
00:14:12.000The ecological movement, the farmers' movement, and the freedom movement.
00:14:19.000It's just that we need to create our own communication systems like you have, but communication not just in platforms, but communication in terms of the ability to understand each other.
00:14:33.000I think we should just never use the words the dominant system uses.
00:14:39.000I don't think we should call our movements populism.
00:14:42.000We should use our movements, deep earth movements, deep human movements, deep movements that are spiritual, deep movements that recognize we are one humanity on one planet.
00:14:55.000And our universal values are much deeper than the globalist greed values who only think for themselves and are willing to wipe out all the species on the planet, wipe out the last farmer and wipe out the last person by denying them food.
00:15:12.000It's very beautiful to hear that the principle of sovereignty can be pursued to the level of the seed.
00:15:32.000It's very interesting to hear that a war is taking place at the level of patenting an attempt to own the intelligence of nature as compounded in the seed.
00:15:47.000It's interesting to hear, Vandana, that there is no actual distinction between that which is sacrosanct or sacred and that which is material and profane.
00:16:00.000In practice, when you have communities that are Naturally celebrating their harvest, which I suppose must be the celebration of mutual endeavor, the requirement that the earth will return what we have given in faith back to us, that it suggests a necessary relationship of ecological respect that doesn't even need to be conceptualized in the manner that we would ordinarily suggest.
00:16:35.000I like too that you, excuse me, attack the language that we use, that we accept the language of the oppressor.
00:16:45.000Given that what you appear to be talking about is new forms of colonialism and tyranny, as an Indian, I wonder, do you feel That the successes of the Indian Revolution can somehow be deployed in this new form of oppression, or would you say that within the Indian Revolution were the kind of challenges that we now face in so much as a new elite class was able to take over India in perhaps the way that the British had previously governed India?
00:17:27.000I wonder, given that what you appear to be telling us is that there is a need for a unified, decentralized movement of the world's people that requires connection to the land, connection to one another, connection to the food and the lived experience of that which is sacred.
00:17:47.000That's what it seems that you described to me in that Harvest Festival.
00:17:51.000And because there is a requirement, as you said towards the end of your answer, for good communication, for good communication.
00:17:59.000And you also included in your answer that there are many protests that we never hear about.
00:18:04.000And I think you said that there are Kenyan farming movements that oppose the attempts by Bill Gates or whatever foundation Bill Gates was deploying to impose GM techniques and technologies on agriculture there.
00:18:18.000But because it's not reported on, we don't even have that picture.
00:18:22.000Because we use the language of the oppressor, we use their framing inadvertently.
00:18:27.000So I wonder if within these various Movements that at present may feel atomised, there is the potential in the way that you described is being naturally realised in the village where a harvest festival is an acknowledgement of the sovereignty of the seed, the sovereignty of the individual, the sovereignty of the community.
00:18:51.000I wonder if there are principles here that can be replicated and do they require Do they require new models, Vandana?
00:19:02.000Or are these models already around us and simply not being used?
00:19:07.000And indeed, again, to oppose figures like Bill Gates, who appears to have a truly globalist, colonialist project, whether it's the acquisition of farmland in the United States, his various medical projects that he's involved with, his agricultural projects in India and across Africa, appear to suggest a truly global project and of course he is obviously not
00:19:33.000I suppose what you're saying is that through individual connection and sovereignty, there
00:19:39.000is the possibility for opposition, for meaningful opposition.
00:19:43.000But it seems to me sometimes to be very fractured.
00:19:46.000I think a lot of people will say, "Well, the Netherlands are having this problem, Germany
00:19:50.000are having this problem, Sri Lankans are having this problem."
00:19:53.000It's it seems very difficult to Suggest a global solution because they've even co-opted.
00:19:59.000You know you use the phrase corporate globalism But there does need to be a type of globalist response doesn't there and even that sounds like it might be complicated We are going to have to leave YouTube.
00:20:13.000Because free speech is not hate speech.
00:20:17.000Free speech is the ability to discuss ideas that will by their nature be an antithesis, an antidote to the interests of the powerful.
00:20:24.000We're going to be talking about how we can attack The corporatism, the global corporatism, spearheaded by the likes of Bill Gates, shielded and veiled by the likes of the WEF.
00:20:35.000How agricultural movements from Iowa to Sri Lanka have more in common than that which divides them and that we must find ways to have a decentralized but unified attack against the forces of corporate globalism.
00:20:48.000If you're watching us on YouTube, click the link in the description.
00:20:50.000If you're watching us on Facebook, wherever you're watching us in the world, click the link in the description to see the rest of this fantastic conversation With a woman that is changing the world, with a teacher that can bring out the best in all of us.
00:21:46.000And then anything that belongs to the earth was made to look like it's inferior.
00:21:51.000And anything that was imposed was imposed as superior.
00:21:57.000Except that when you impose toxic chemicals and pesticides and Roundup, it's not a better place to be either for nature or humans.
00:22:07.000When you create non-renewable seed, it's not a better place to be.
00:22:11.000Now, when I attended a meeting in 1987, after having done my study on Punjab, because the Green Revolution was first introduced in Punjab in India, because it's the most prosperous part of India in the world.
00:22:28.000And it's Bill Gates who's taken the alliance for the Green Revolution to Africa, but the Green Revolution destroyed the most prosperous part of India.
00:22:38.000In 1997, I was called to this meeting where the industry laid out its agenda of patenting seed and said, this will be our future profits.
00:22:45.000And we'll be five companies controlling all seeds of the world.
00:22:48.000And we can only do this when we make it illegal for farmers to save seeds.
00:22:53.000And I said, whatever you're speaking is so wrong at every level, at the ethical, ecological, scientific level, because you don't make seed.
00:23:07.000Second, saving seeds is a human duty of being of the earth.
00:23:12.000In every culture, you see people have died, but they've never destroyed the seed.
00:23:17.000When people have migrated, they've taken seeds with them.
00:23:20.000That's how the world has got all the different crops.
00:23:24.000And I said, how can you forbid farmers from saving seeds?
00:23:27.000I'm going to dedicate my life to seed freedom, freedom of the seed to renew because your profits come from making seed non-renewable, and of the farmer to save and exchange seed.
00:23:37.000And because we were at that time, you know, our parliament listened.
00:23:44.000The government asked me to write a law on farmers' rights, and we wrote a law on farmers' rights, a law that threw out Pepsi's claim that all potato For the future was theirs.
00:23:56.000And they sued Indian farmers, 40 million rupees.
00:23:58.000Four Indian farmers were sued, 40 million.
00:24:01.000And I sent my book on the issue of patenting and this law on farmers' rights, Article 39, that farmers' right to save, exchange, develop, sell seeds can never be taken away because it's the first breeder.
00:24:15.000I sent it to the lawyers and judges who were fighting the case.
00:24:34.000But if I bring a brick into my building and then claim this brick has made this building, I'm the owner, I'm the architect, and you pay me rents, you know, who would accept someone?
00:24:49.000To take that claim, but we do it on the basis of living systems.
00:24:53.000So when I briefed Parliament, our Parliament wrote a clause, Article 3J.
00:24:58.000Plants, animals and seeds are not human inventions.
00:25:17.000What goes to the field of a farmer is a seed, because that's what farmers grow.
00:25:21.000And the attempt of industry has been to make seed non-renewable.
00:25:26.000Our work in Navdanya is to keep the renewability evolution of the seed constantly at work.
00:25:33.000Every time there's a cycle, the farmers now, because we've created community seed banks, are able to share seeds that are salt-soluble.
00:25:44.000If we hadn't done that at that time and saved the seeds as common, the disaster would have wiped out the farmers and then they couldn't build back because they wouldn't have the money.
00:26:59.000Agra, the force of truth, the power of truth.
00:27:02.000So in my book, Oneness Versus One Percent, Which really was written about Bill Gates taking over the UN system, at that point the Paris Climate Treaty, and you know he's just taken over the Food and Agriculture Declaration of the recent COP in Dubai.
00:27:20.000After they'd all worked he walks up on the stage, typically that's what he does, walks up on the stage, says here's this much money and now I'll run the show.
00:27:27.000And you know my mind at each of these points goes to how do we deal with this kind of Undemocratic, absolute, unaccountable power.
00:27:39.000And the three lessons from the Freedom Movement that I've learned, which are relevant today, everywhere, even more relevant because of the technological control.
00:28:43.000And so for us, for them, a very sick population is a very profitable population.
00:28:48.000You know, in my hometown in Bali, near our farm, farms are disappearing, but three giant Hospitals have come up because everyone's falling sick.
00:28:57.000I mean, just because growth is counted, not in terms of how well you are.
00:29:02.000Growth is counted in terms of how much profits can be generated.
00:29:06.000So sick people generate profits and healthy people don't.
00:29:52.000It's very interesting to me, Vandana, how quickly a conversation with you that can be about something very particular, like popular agricultural movements and its global connotation, or the immorality and illegality of patenting seeds, Become about very deep principles, like the sanctity of truth and non-attachment, a willingness to let go of the various, speaking for myself, idols that a man or a person, a woman, can accumulate over a life.
00:30:36.000The ways I found myself binded, bound to the world through obligation and attachment and fear.
00:30:47.000When you talk about the victories against Pepsi and the potential victories that can occur through stating that nature and animals and seeds are not human creations, when you point out that That there is a kind of almost unimaginable malfeasance alluded to at the heart of the globalist project to replace God, to replace God as the originator, to replace God as the indigenous condition and as the proprietor of almost the proprietor of the unmanifest, which is even beyond even many conceptions of God.
00:31:30.000It seems to me that even these Quite particular issues require of us a quite personal, a deep personal understanding of who we are and what we want.
00:31:46.000And my question to you is that it seems sometimes that you have had success in India, the successes that you described in your last answer in preventing the corporations being able to own seeds, being able to sue farmers, but Because the relationships between the state and corporations and the movement of globalism are so powerfully entwined, it seems now that you have people moralising.
00:32:20.000Like, for example, when we began our conversation, we were talking about, they will say that these farmer movements are racists.
00:32:27.000There are very sort of moral and righteous journalists.
00:32:31.000In my country that will say this is why the farmers movement is wrong and they use kind of very moral arguments and there are sort of there are what I would say they're like one of the questions we've got from someone on our chat are like you know from someone called Sandy Snoop on our chat what are your thoughts on the save the soil movement that has the ominous backing of the WEF and I'd love your answer to that question as well as the wider phenomenon Of NGOs and righteous media and the state itself claiming to be pursuing a righteous and moral path while apparently acting on behalf of the interests that, by your reckoning, have an intention, whether conscious or not, and I'd love your thoughts on whether it's conscious or not,
00:33:21.000there seems to be about as evil as I could imagine. The annihilation and the replacement of God.
00:33:28.000So what do you think about sort of agencies and groups like the WEF and these various globalist
00:33:32.000organizations that crop up to legitimize what appear to be projects of centralization,
00:33:39.000touching upon the Save the Soil movement and the various other apparently ecologically sound
00:33:45.000movements that seem to be advancing globalist interests under a veil of righteousness?
00:33:52.000You know, I actually wrote a book called Soil Not Oil in the lead up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit
00:34:02.000because I realized that everyone was looking towards the atmosphere and how many parts per
00:34:12.000And no one was looking to the plants and the soils that allow us to heal the earth and It's part of the self-organization of Gaia to cool the planet.
00:34:27.000The Earth brought the temperature down from 290 degrees that it used to be to 13 degrees centigrade through her power of photosynthesis.
00:34:53.000And that brought the carbon dioxide down from 98% to 0.03%.
00:34:59.000Now if we follow that route and we see the earth as teacher and say we will follow the laws of ecology, we will follow the laws of the earth, the first thing we have to do is the earth is alive, the earth is intelligent, the earth is sacred.
00:35:18.000The second thing you do is Shrink the human arrogance and anthropocentrism.
00:35:27.000Because we have started to think that till we are present, nothing happens, no?
00:35:33.000Till we intervene and make GMOs, there's no seed.
00:35:37.000Till we do these horrible carbon absorption, carbon dioxide machines, we shall have more emissions.
00:35:46.000And talking about farmers' protests, the big farmers' protests in America, in Iowa, is against the pipelines of CO2 being carried to bury it somewhere in the ground where it might be safe, because it can become very explosive.
00:36:02.000Farmers of Iowa are resisting these pipelines.
00:36:07.000They're resisting the false solutions.
00:36:09.000So the reason there are some NGOs and some voices who are louder and are heard more is because they are playing the message of the masters.
00:36:24.000And what's the dominant message of the masters today?
00:36:28.000A. We'll play God and nature must be extinguished totally forever.
00:36:35.000The second, all this we will do, we'll turn our pollution into the future markets and the future profits.
00:37:20.000Your methane problem is the way you treat your animals.
00:37:23.000It's not the animal that's the problem.
00:37:26.000But they want to criminalize the existence of the animal.
00:37:29.000They want to criminalize the existence of an insect.
00:37:32.000They want to criminalize the insect of a plant, which is why Roundup is used.
00:37:36.000And sadly, there are enough people with too little experience, too little exposure to pluralistic reality, too little reverence for either the earth or the people who work the land.
00:37:55.000What the big players want to say, so what the big players are basically trying to say is stop farmers, have lab food, let the buyers grow the raw material for lab food, and I've just finished my latest book, it's called Climate Change and the Future of Food, how Our climate change is a pollution problem, is a problem of the one percent.
00:38:19.000You know, they emit two thirds of the emissions and they're now turning to fake food, which is the next step of taking food sovereignty away from us.
00:38:30.000The solution and both aspects are so wrong.
00:38:33.000And you know what the literature is now showing, the scientists are working, they say get rid of the cow.
00:38:43.000And have lab-fake food, fake meat, and this will reduce emissions and it's a solution to climate change.
00:39:03.000It's the artificial systems that don't have an ability to recycle.
00:39:08.000So the land that will be used for lab food will be five times more.
00:39:13.000Five times more feedstock you'll have to produce, and so you'll destroy the land more.
00:39:18.000And worse, you'll have 25 times more emissions that will pollute the atmosphere.
00:39:23.000So we are in a moment where anything can be cooked up and be called science.
00:39:30.000And the best scientists can be censored and shut down.
00:39:33.000And the best experiences of humanity To grow food with love, to relate to other species with care, to let this planet flourish with diversity, cultural and biological, they would like to silence it.
00:39:49.000And our work is, in whatever space we have, to keep living the real life, eating the real food, growing the real food, and at least in our communities, to talk to each other.
00:40:01.000Let the global loudspeaker be with them.
00:40:05.000Our local conversations must be for real and for truth.
00:40:10.000Vandana, the climate change issue in the western media sphere is a very divisive one indeed, with many on what this culture currently calls the left regarding it as the most significant issue of our time.
00:40:29.000Many of the same globalist interests that we are discussing with regard to food sovereignty ...appear to be proposing that a reduction in the freedoms of individuals is the solution to the climate change problem.
00:40:45.000As you pointed out in your last answer, two-thirds of carbon emissions are caused by one percent of the population.
00:40:54.000What is, and on the other side of the argument, a lot of people believe that climate change isn't real, it's due to natural cycles of the earth, anthropomorphic, or genic, excuse me, climate change isn't a problem.
00:41:08.000So I wonder, I wonder, with this issue of climate change, which appears to be on one side being utilised to restrict the freedom of individual people, to legitimise, I would say, measures of restraint and to limit sovereignty and to legitimise, as you say, new forms of agriculture that again deny sovereignty to ordinary people and farmers in particular.
00:41:36.000How must we conduct the conversation around climate change?
00:41:43.000How do we address the idea of anthropogenic climate change?
00:41:48.000How do we create new spaces of unity in a currently divided public sphere?
00:41:57.000And it seems from what you just said that you believe it to be vital that all of us, all of us, learn to have a relationship with the land and a relationship with food.
00:42:09.000This is a truly revolutionary idea because it seems that the vision of progress that we are granted is a purely technological one in alignment with the types of colonialism that we've discussed for the first part of our conversation.
00:42:23.000And many people will see it as Atavistic, nostalgic, arcane to consider growing our own food, connecting to the land, a denial of progress as if progress too is a form of God, a natural unfolding of a true intention.
00:42:43.000So what, can you give us some clear guidance on climate change, some insight into what, how it is used by, you know, let's call it for simplicity's sake, both sides of the political and public sphere.
00:42:56.000I'm referring to kind of, you know, the kind of country that I live in, America, et cetera.
00:43:01.000And yeah, and how can we overcome that division and respond to it?
00:43:07.000Well, you know, I, right from, you know, I was present.
00:43:13.000And active in Rio at the Earth Summit, where the Climate Treaty was written and the Biodiversity Treaty was written.
00:43:22.000And both are related because, you know, the planet and a biosphere is what regulates the atmosphere and the climate.
00:43:30.000Because it's the power of the biosphere with its power of photosynthesis that really recycles And produces our basic needs and also is able to hold the climate in regulation.
00:43:45.000Now, just like junk food has created a huge epidemic of chronic diseases, which are increasingly being identified by the medical community as metabolic diseases, which have the same cause, but they have different symptoms.
00:44:03.000So, you know, You get obesity, you have diabetes, you have heart problems, you have blood pressure, but they're all symptoms of the damage done to your body by a diet that's not meant to be a human food.
00:44:18.000It's disturbing the metabolism, the ability of your body to manage itself and regulate itself for health.
00:44:25.000In my view, the whole issue of chemical farming based on Fossil fuels and fossil fuels themselves, not fossil fuels outside, have together, if you look at these maps they do of planetary boundaries, what are the three ruptures?
00:44:57.000Because that means addressing the nitrogen problem, not from the farmer's end, but from the industry end.
00:45:04.000The second is biodiversity disappearance.
00:45:07.000The same processes that are leading to emissions, high emissions, 50% come from food system that's based on chemicals and fossil fuels, but that same system is making the species disappear.
00:45:21.00090% species disappearance is because of an industrial agriculture model.
00:45:25.000Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and monocultures.
00:45:30.000Why do we have monocultures of soybean in the Amazon?
00:45:32.000Why do we have monocultures of palm oil in the rainforests of Indonesia?
00:45:39.000So the symptoms of our relationship gone wrong is climate change and biodiversity.
00:46:45.000There are hardly any who work at living systems.
00:46:49.000And to address both extremes, we have to turn to living systems and say, we are living on a living Earth.
00:46:55.000And here are the living solutions which will make our lives better, which will increase our freedoms in times of closure to face these climate colonizers and imperialists.
00:47:08.000And in addition to that, enhance life on earth for other species too.
00:47:15.000The Navdanya work shows we have more species on our farm, we grow more food, we have more freedom because we use our own seeds, and that's the conversation we need.
00:47:23.000That we have to expand our freedom in partnership with other species within the limits that the earth sets for us, but not the artificial fake narratives and false solutions of those who have caused the problem.
00:47:42.000It seems like there are many institutions that could be valuable that, you know, one would require or it could be useful to have various global bodies that are able to pass on recommendations, that are able to aggregate studies and pass on findings.
00:48:03.000But what seems to have happened is that these global bodies typically have been co-opted by Corporate globalists, so the recommendations are always beneficial to the kind of institutions that are responsible for generating the pollution and always make recommendations that inhibit and reduce the freedom of ordinary people.
00:48:27.000It seems like, in a sense, I've heard it said before, that many of the organs of a post-revolutionary world are already present, that the media is already present, that the communications miracle has already taken place, and that the information is available, and many of the ideals are available, but at the top there is a kind of A kind of a malfeasant intention that is difficult to overcome.
00:48:57.000One of the questions that we have from our community, Kay Kotwas, with all the money and power in the world, what do billionaires like Bill Gates actually want?
00:49:07.000And when earlier on you were saying that they seem to, you know, unconsciously or otherwise, want to replace God, I wonder what you feel about that.
00:49:16.000I wonder what you feel the intentions are.
00:49:19.000I wonder if you consider them to be conscious agents, or whether you consider there to be some sort of systemic inertia that has taken hold.
00:49:29.000I think it's a combination of inertia, but an inertia that's pushing you on the same path, but accelerating and expanding.
00:49:48.000You know, Einstein has said, a clear sign of insanity is to do the same thing again and again, expecting a different outcome.
00:49:56.000Now, we know that forgetting that the world Earth is living and treating it like a machine, the mechanistic worldview, forgetting that the world Earth is sacred, the universe is sacred, and treating everything as mere objects to be exploited, all of that forgetting is the playing God.
00:50:15.000And at this point it has reached its total peak, because the playing God is not just trying to displace God, it's trying to displace every aspect of a living Earth, from the seed to the Earth's capacity herself, and human beings too.
00:50:37.000You know, what is this project of Silicon Valley, you know, the Cartesian project of Silicon, transhumanism?
00:50:48.000We've got to enhance the human being by making them disappear into a machine.
00:50:53.000That's the crudest kind of thinking that you can have because just like a seed didn't get improved by making it a GMO, it got polluted.
00:51:05.000Taking away the autonomy of the human being as a conscious actor and turning them into raw material for data And data management and algorithms is, you know, again, that thing of, of, of fear, of fear from fear of others who are free and alive.
00:51:28.000You know, I think a lot of it just because money gets made, of course, profits and money and control is a big part of it, but it's more than control.
00:51:37.000It is also fear of others who are free and alive.
00:51:44.000And that's why the constant attack on freedom and the constant attack on life.
00:51:50.000So our freedom then is stay free and stay alive, you know, and therefore keep the conditions that give us life and give us freedom alive.
00:52:17.000I felt that there were lessons that could be learned, but definitely this aspect of,
00:52:20.000you know, particularly with regard to attachment, caring what other people think of me.
00:52:24.000Of course, even lessons about putting myself in a position to be vulnerable to such attacks with my years of promiscuity and selfishness, even if I never transgressed in the way that I was accused of.
00:52:40.000I wonder, on a personal and human level, how do you propose that I ought respond to those kind of attacks?
00:53:08.000Well, I think our integrity comes both from the deep consciousness That we are integral beings, but we are integral beings, integrated with other beings.
00:53:20.000And therefore, respect for all others becomes key.
00:53:24.000Our integrity rests on respecting their integrity.
00:53:29.000And the vulnerability just becomes a teacher of where your resilience lies.
00:53:44.000I think we are at the end of a mechanistic, atomistic age.
00:53:49.000Mechanistic in terms of the mechanical philosophy, but atomistic that we are all separate individuals, you know, unto ourselves.
00:53:59.000And I think the next step of human evolution, of deepening our integrity and deepening our autonomy, will be a deeper awareness of our interconnectedness.
00:54:21.000In the community that you are a part of, which I know has a sort of an academic component and that you run courses and we discussed before the courses that you run on Gandhi, can you tell us a little bit more about the principles under which that community is run and is it Are you already in practice living in the type of community that you appear to be saying will be the solution, the antithesis and antidote to globalism, sovereign communities with the self-sustaining sovereign communities that are integrated in the way that you just outlined?
00:55:01.000So, you know, like I said earlier, one of the problems has always been since colonialism, of this illusion that we are always the creators and the inventors.
00:55:51.000Hierarchies are created in In atomized systems with superiority and inferiority built into it.
00:56:00.000So, for me, freedom means self-organization.
00:56:04.000Self-organization with respect for each other, respect for nature, respect for the land, respect for the seed, and respect for the other human members of the community.
00:56:17.000Because that's where, together, you can mutually do amazing work.
00:56:25.000Do you think then that leadership in a community like that with those values is based on, well, obviously consent and exemplification?
00:56:35.000Is that the type of leadership that is offered in a community that is non-hierarchical?
00:56:42.000Well, consent is related to external interventions, you know?
00:56:53.000But just like a seed becomes a plant through its own capacity to be a self-organized and to be community with the soil organisms that are in the soil, with the mycorrhizae in the soil, each of them, through their intelligence, and I am absolutely convinced all life is The soil organisms are intelligent, the plants are intelligent, animals are intelligent, the bees are intelligent, and there's so much new research being done on this.
00:57:24.000But they don't have to, you know, it's not like, here's a decision, let's make it, let's talk about it.
00:57:35.000Each of them is giving their best with intelligence.
00:57:40.000So the mycorrhizal fungus pulls out all the toxics.
00:57:46.000It's just the right amount of minerals that that plant needs.
00:57:52.000And the plant gives it the food, the carbohydrates.
00:57:57.000This combination of mutuality and symbiosis, which is intelligence at work.
00:58:04.000I think that's what's missing because we are spending too much time assuming that we live in an atomized world and therefore we live in a disorganized world.
00:58:14.000You know, together we are with the Hobbesian idea that we do not know how to live together in harmony.
00:58:49.000Do you think that we have continually imposed metaphors on natural processes that advance ideas of atomization and dominion?
00:58:57.000Even the ideas from Darwin that were most popularized and most celebrated seem to indicate that ideas like competition were significant.
00:59:13.000Elsewhere, you I think there's the common idea that nature is about a kind of brutality and about like a sort of a carnivorous ongoing war.
00:59:24.000Latterly, some say that there's a kind of a degree of revivalist apocalyptism in the environmental movement where nature is conveyed as very fragile, vulnerable on the precipice of destruction.
00:59:39.000Beyond nature, the earth, the Gaia say the earth is a goddess.
00:59:44.000I wonder what you think it tells us about our kind and our consciousness, that rather than models of symbiosis, spontaneous cooperation, full autonomy, integrity, non-hierarchical systems of self-realization and cooperation, the models we impose are either models of violent fragility or Competitive brutality.
01:00:13.000You sort of mentioned Hobbes, and I wonder what other narratives and academic or theoretical myths we've imposed upon nature to legitimise power structures.
01:00:28.000Russell, you know, every big idea person Which is what has become the dominant ways of thinking of our time.
01:00:39.000Actually, there were a small group of people, just like today, the 1% is a tiny clique, a very small number.
01:00:46.000At that time, too, it was the beginning of colonialism.
01:00:49.000It was defining economy as colonial commerce.
01:04:44.000But then to take it seriously, we have to then take power back from those who are causing this damage.
01:04:51.000And give power back to the Earth by working with her in service.
01:04:55.000You know, it's our time not to pretend to be God.
01:05:00.000Or, on the other hand, to be totally powerless, but to reclaim our true creativity as part of the Earth.
01:05:08.000And as co-creators working in humility, knowing we're a very small part, do the right thing.
01:05:17.000As co-creators working in humility do the right thing to be able to handle the apparent paradox of our personal connection to this great power, this aliveness, this capacity for multiplication and manifestation.
01:05:36.000From a position of humility, not dominion.
01:05:39.000I see now that what's been mobilized is an ideology to entirely extract divinity from these processes and to claim for the rational, the material, and the personal, that which is divine.
01:05:55.000And I suppose that's, in a sense, a kind of, yes, a global heresy, a heresy against nature.
01:06:02.000Vandana, thank you so much for, as always, being able to weld together such complex, diverse, opposing ideas and finding always the confluence and the hope, because I can see how as an individual now I can participate in this by allowing myself to become a conduit for higher forces, by challenging my own integrity, my own willingness, To be vulnerable and to act authentically, my own willingness to let go of attachment.
01:06:28.000I can participate in this symbiotic miracle.
01:06:31.000Some people are putting quotes in the chat of things you've said in this conversation.