In this episode, Gil Jenkins speaks with internationally renowned economist, author, and activist John Perkins. John Perkins was formerly chief economist at a major consulting firm, where he advised the World Bank, United Nations, Fortune 500 corporations, and the U.S. and other governments—though much of this was a part of his previous work as an economic hit man he later denounced and became a whistleblower on, as he detailed in his New York Times Bestselling memoir, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John talks about his earlier life as an economic hitman — including his profound awakening around the evils of this work and his journey to becoming a crusader for transforming our failing Death Economy that destroys its own resources and nature itself into a flourishing Life Economy that renews itself. In the conversation, he shares a simple exercise in the form of five key questions we can all ask ourselves to shift our perceptions and move toward this Life Economy as he describes it. In the conversation, he shares a simple exercise in the form of five key questions we can all ask ourselves to shift our perceptions and move towards this life economy as he describes it. John also discusses his involvement with the Living Earth Movement—a collection of leaders in theology, business, science, activism, and academia passionate about combating climate change and preserving life as we know it. The Living Earth Movement was started around a righteous call for the U.S. and China to work together on climate. John’s next book, out in February 2023, focuses on the U.S.-China relationship. John and Gil also discussed Russia’s war on Ukraine and how that has dramatically changed geopolitical dynamics, focusing on energy and climate.
In this episode, Gil Jenkins speaks with internationally renowned economist, author, and activist John Perkins. John Perkins was formerly chief economist at a major consulting firm, where he advised the World Bank, United Nations, Fortune 500 corporations, and the U.S. and other governments—though much of this was a part of his previous work as an economic hit man he later denounced and became a whistleblower on, as he detailed in his New York Times Bestselling memoir, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
John talks about his earlier life as an economic hitman — including his profound awakening around the evils of this work and his journey to becoming a crusader for transforming our failing Death Economy that destroys its own resources and nature itself into a flourishing Life Economy that renews itself. In the conversation, he shares a simple exercise in the form of five key questions we can all ask ourselves to shift our perceptions and move toward this Life Economy as he describes it.
John also discusses his involvement with the Living Earth Movement—a collection of leaders in theology, business, science, activism, and academia passionate about combating climate change and preserving life as we know it. The Living Earth Movement was started around a righteous call for the U.S. and China to work together on climate. John’s next book, out in February 2023, focuses on the U.S.-China relationship. John and Gil also discussed Russia’s war on Ukraine and how that has dramatically changed geopolitical dynamics, focusing on energy and climate.
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Episode recorded: July 22, 2022
Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hannonarmstrong.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.
Chad Reed: This is Climate Positive – a show featuring candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers driving our climate positive future. I’m Chad Reed
Hilary Langer: I’m Hilary Langer.
Gil Jenkins: And I’m Gil Jenkins.
John: A life economy on the other hand is built on a supposition that the goal should be to maximize benefits for long term benefits for all life and pays people to clean up pollution, to regenerate destroyed environments, to recycle, to develop new technologies that don't ravage the earth. We've been on a pattern of making that happen.
Gil: On this week’s episode, our guest is Mr. John Perkins, the activist and author of numerous books on global intrigue, shamanism, and ecological transformation, including Touching the Jaguar, and the classic Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John and I began the interview by talking about his earlier life as an economic hitman --- including his profound awakening on the evils of this work, and how that subsequently led to him on his journey to becoming a crusader for transforming our failing Death Economy that destroys its own resources and nature itself into a flourishing Life Economy that renews itself. In our conversation John shares a simple exercise in the form of five key questions we can all ask ourselves to shift our perceptions and move towards this life economy as he describes it.
We also discussed the broader Living Earth Movement --- which was started around a righteous call for the U.S. and China to work together on climate. John’s next book due in February 2023 focuses on the U.S. China relationship. Lastly, we found time to discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine and how that has dramatically changed geopolitical dynamics, with a particular focus energy and climate.
I think you’ll find this a thought-provoking conversation with a very wise and dedicated human being. As a longtime fan of Confessions, it was a great honor and a pleasure to sit down with John. ¡¡
Hilary: Climate Positive is produced by Hannon Armstrong, a leading investor in climate solutions for over 30 years. To learn more about our climate positive journey, please visit HannonArmstrong.com.
Gil: John welcome to you, climate positive. It's really nice to meet you.
John Perkins: Thanks, Gil. It's great to be here with you. Really looking forward to this.
Gil: Your book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was deeply engaging and eye-opening text that's really stayed with me for many years now since I was a college student and first read it UMass I think 15 years ago. Today, we're going to talk a lot about climate and ecological civilization. To start for our listeners who may not be familiar with Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Could you give a brief synopsis of how that came to be and what you talked about in such riveting depth in your book?
John: You mean, what does an economic hitman do?
Gil: That's right. We might as well define it first and then share how you came to be one.
John: I think it's fair to say that we, economic hitmen, have been the front line of the march to expand what we are calling today a death economy, an economic system that's failing us, that's consuming itself into extinction. It's the global economic system today that we must change. It is the cause of climate change and income inequality, species extinction, so many of the crises that we face. They are problems, but the problem is the economic system that underlies all of that. My official title was chief economist out of Boston Consulting Firm. I had up to 50 people working for me at various times.
My job was to identify countries that had resources that corporations cut it like oil, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations. The money however did not ever go to the country that had the loan on its book, that had the debt on its books. The money went instead to our own corporations, the Bechtels, the Halliburton, the General Electrics, the Brown and Root, Stone & Websters that built big infrastructure projects in those countries. Things like electric power systems, [unintelligible 00:02:02] airports, highways, industrial parks. These were things that brought huge profits to our company, the ones that built them.
They benefited a few wealthy people in the country. The people who owned the industries, who owned the banks, who owned the commercial establishments. As it turned out, and I didn't understand this for a while, I have to say, I thought I was doing the right thing for a number of years until I under came to understand that the majority of the people in the country were actually suffering because money was diverted from health, education, and other social services to pay off the interest on the loans. In the end, we'd go back and say, "Hey, since you can't pay your loans," which in the end they couldn't pay the principal, "you're basically our slave. Let our corporations exploit your oil," or whatever resource we were looking at without many environmental or social restrictions or regulations.
"Let us build a military base on your soil. Vote with us on the next United Nations vote against Cuba." Things like this. It was a colonialistic policy. It was very difficult for leaders of a country, the president, or the finance minister, whoever I was talking to, to refuse. Because they knew that if they accepted these loans, they and their family and their friends would get rich. They own the industries and in addition to some minor types of bribery that would be going on, they also would benefit from these projects. They also knew that that behind me stood people, we call jackals, and these are really CIA assets.
Gil: Assassins, right?
John: Yes. People that either assassinate leaders or overthrow governments.
Gil: Whoever is listening, has not read this book, it will change you. You've updated it many times, at least a few times since, New Confessions, I think. This was a big decision for you obviously to put your life in danger in some respects reveal this work. I think you've talked about a moment where it all hit you. Could you share that story when you decided to take this book out into the world?
John: After 10 years, I realized what the truth behind what we were really doing. I quit. I wanted to devote the rest of my life to turning things around to transforming this death economy we were creating into what we call a life economy. I started writing a book. I wanted to write it as an expose. I contacted other people who had jobs or who had had jobs like mine and the jackals, also a few jackals who I personally knew. I immediately received anonymous phone calls, threatening my life and my infant daughter's. I took their calls very seriously because I knew these guys. I knew what they could do.
At the same time, one night I get taken out to dinner by the president of Stone & Webster, an engineering company. It was one of the biggest, if not the biggest engineering construction company in the United States at the time. The president took me out to dinner and he said, "You've got a great resume. You were chief economist at one of our rival companies. We'd like to use your resume in our proposals. You won't have to do any work for us. Just let us use your resume. I'm prepared to write you a check tomorrow morning for $500,000." Gil, this was the late '80s, $500,000 is nothing to laugh at today, but it was even more. [laughs]
Gil: [crosstalk]
John: Then he said, "Just don't write the book."
Gil: Oh God.
John: It was interesting because now I'm getting hit by a hitman. It's the same thing. I had told presidents of countries like, "Hey, buy my deal, and you'd make a lot of money or don't, and assassins will be there." What would you do? I took the money. In self-defense, I would say I didn't go out and buy fast cars or fancy yachts or big house or anything like that. I went back to the Amazon where I'd been a peace corps volunteer before I became a chief economist right after college. I began writing books about what was going on in the Amazon and the indigenous people. These were not books that attacked the system I'd been part of at all.
They were fun books about shamanism and the Amazon and Stone & Webster was fine with me doing that. In addition to the retainer of $500,000, they also paid me a monthly stipend, a pretty good one. I wrote those books. Then on 9/11, now my contract with Stone & Webster had expired some years earlier. 9/11, I'm in the Amazon. I formed nonprofits to help the indigenous people and to teach our people something called dream change, and eventually the Pachamama Alliance, which I'm a co-founder of. I was in the Amazon on 9/11. Afterwards, I flew up to Ground Zero in New York. as I looked into that pit, I knew I had to write this book.
I decided though that I wouldn't tell anybody I was writing it, I wouldn't put myself in that position. I would write it as a confession, a personal story, not an expose, and I wouldn't tell anybody I was writing it until I had it completed and in the hands of a very good agent in New York, and he would have it in the hands of publishers, which I thought would be my best insurance policy.
Gil: Let's come back to your time in the Amazon and another theme that you alluded to, how we can begin to transition into a flourishing life economy by changing our perception. At its most basic fundamental level, your time working with shamans. Tell us about what you learned, what you wrote about, and how you came to this concept of the death economy and the life economy.
John: When I was in the peace corps before I became an economic hitman, right after graduating from college, I'm living deep in the Amazon rainforest with a indigenous group known as the Shuar. I'm on my way to visit them again. I take a group of people there in a couple of weeks. I go every year, continued to from all these years. This was back in 1968, I went to the Amazon. As I'm living with these people, at one point I got very, very sick. I couldn't keep any food down. I was dying. I lost a tremendous amount of weight in no time. It was a three-day horrendous endeavor to try to get out of those forests and up into the Andes to any medical facility. I couldn't do it. I couldn't even stand up. I was resigned to dying.
Then one night, the school teacher who was the one person I could communicate with, he spoke Spanish. My Spanish was not real good, but I spoke some, and everybody spoke Shuar, he comes by and he introduces, he says, "I'm going to introduce you to the guy who can make you healthy." This little old Shuar shaman, I never heard the word shaman at that time, but he's quite small, but very strong in wiring, and he's naked except for a loin cloth covered with tattoos.
Gil: You're near near death at this point?
John: Yes. I cannot stand up and walk on my own. That night he takes me on a shamanic journey. He's chanting, and he is in the middle of the night in the rainforest. At one point, I'm in this trance, and I have my eyes closed. I see this amorphous shape in front of me and the Shaman, this is all done through a translator, the school teacher, the Shaman says, "Touch the jaguar." I open my eyes-
Gil: What?
John: -it's at the middle of the night, in the middle of the jungle, I'm looking all around. There are Jaguars in this jungle, I hear them at night. Like, "Where's the Jaguar?" He says, "No, no, no. Close your eyes and see the Jaguar". I closed my eyes and the amorphous form shape shifted into a jaguar. I touched it. When I touched it, I saw that the food and drink I had been consuming while living with the Shuar, every time I ate or drank this, I hear a voice, like my mother saying it'll kill you. In the Amazon, people don't drink water from the rivers because the rivers have organic matter, animals have died. Trees have fallen in and rotted and so forth.
The women make a beer by chewing and spitting [unintelligible 00:10:26], and it ferments and sets up a beer, and then you can add water to it. You got you drink a lot of this stuff because you got you rehydrate. It's the tropics. There wasn't any [unintelligible 00:10:38]. I see that every time I eat these squirmy white crumbs, or I drink spit beer, I hear this boy saying, "It'll kill you." At the same time, I saw how incredibly robust the Shuar are. People live to be very old, if they're not killed in a hunting accident or something like that. I saw on this shamanic journey that it was not the food and drink that were killing me, it was my mindset.
This perception had been drilled into me since I was a boy growing up in New Hampshire, where we ate very mild foods. After that, I was healthy very quickly. The shaman then came back, and he demanded that as payment I become his apprentice. It's 1969. I'd never heard of a shaman. I'd graduated from business school. There was no future in shamanism in those days, but the guy saved my life. I did. One of the first things he taught me was whenever something that's holding you back or causing a problem in you, you've got to touch the jaguar, touch it, understand it, don't run from it. You got you touch it.
When you touch it, you can ask for a perception change. When you change perception, you change reality. Now, this sounds very sophisticated, but these people, they're called a dream culture. They totally believe in the dream, not just the night time dream. They're big on that, but they also believe in the dream of perception, that as you perceive things, you create things. He instilled that in me. Of course, I later studied with shamans in many other countries and in Indonesia, and Iran, and Egypt, and all over Latin America. I found this to be true everywhere.
I also became to understand that this is the basis of modern psychotherapy and reality. We know that there's no United States. There's no China. There's no corporations. There's no religion. There's no culture until we perceive it. When enough people accepted perception are codified into law, it has a huge impact on reality. That's what gives us hope today about transforming a death economy into a life economy.
Gil: A good segue, define the contours of the death economy, which we're in, is being exacerbated and the green shoots you see on the potential to shift towards a life economy.
John: A death economy is based on the premise of the goal for corporations should be to maximize short term profits, regardless of the social environmental cost. That was really very strongly put forward in--
Gil: Milton Friedman.
John: Yes, 1976, Friedman won the Nobel Prize in economics. As a business school student, before that, I'd been taught that, yes, you need to make profits, but a good CEO also takes good care of his employees, and his customers, and the supplies, and the communities where his businesses are located. That was part of my education in business school. There was a growing movement that emphasized maximization of profits. Friedman really topped off that movement in '76 when he won Nobel Prize. He was an influential person around the world with Reagan and Thatcher and many others. That's the basis.
What it's created is an economic system where CEOs believe that they not only can but have to do whatever it takes to maximize short term profits. That includes destroying the environment, and it includes exploiting workers, exploiting resources. It includes bribing politicians. It includes making bribery legal, which we know now in the corporations and their stockholders have a huge legal influence through their donations.
Gil: Dark money and alike with citizens united that corporations or people--
John: This death economy is one that's consuming itself into extinction in the short run, it doesn't care about the long run. We're seeing an incredible example of that right now with people like Biden and many others who are pro doing things that'll stop climate change against fossil fuels, but now we're finding themselves in a position where in the short run, they have to promote fossil fuels. They have to go to Saudi Arabia, and try to get the Saudis to produce oil and gas just to keep the economy running. That's a dilemma that we have, and I'm not faulting Biden or anybody else for doing that. It's a very, very difficult position these people are in. It is destroying us, and it's creating most of the crises that we're currently facing today on this planet.
A life economy on the other hand is built on a supposition that the goal should be to maximize benefits for long term benefits for all life and pays people to clean up pollution, to regenerate destroyed environments, to recycle, to develop new technologies that don't ravage the earth. We've been on a pattern of making that happen. Benefit corporations, the green new deal, conscious capitalism has been a real movement in this direction and has been somewhat put on hold by both the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine and all the crises that have resulted from those events. We've been on that movement. It's our only hope in the long term.
Gil: I understand in your new book, you've got a 10-minute consciousness exercise that people can do to get in touch with shifting that perception. Could you talk a little bit about that exercise?
John: We all know there's a lot of things we can do to move into this life economy. We can cut back on fossil fuel production. We can be very conscious of what we buy and what we eat and so on and so forth. In addition to that, I think every one of us, because we're all different individuals, we've all got different goals, but we can all ask ourselves five questions. In the book, the new book coming out, I go into some detail behind this. I'd still encourage people [chuckles] to read the book, but I'm going to give you those questions right now, and a couple of examples. Number one, what is it I most want to do for the rest of my life? What'll give me the greatest satisfaction?
For me, the example I would answer I want to write. I love to write. I have a friend who's a carpenter, and his answer is, "I want to work with my hands in wood," the opposite end of the spectrum. The second question is, how do I do this in a way that transforms the death economy to a life economy? I would answer just by saying I will write books that inspire people to do that. My carpenter friend would say, "I will only use sustainable materials to build houses and cabinets and everything else." The third question is, what's the Jaguar that's standing in your way that's keeping you from doing this? What's the obstacle?
For me, a writer might say, "I don't have time to write every day." I know I need to write every day if I'm really going to be a writer. I don't have time. My carpenter friend would say, "My clients say, 'I don't want to pay the extra price for sustainable materials.'" The fourth question is, when you touch that Jaguar, what happens? How do you change your perception? As a writer, I'd say, "Wait, the Jaguar's telling me, 'Hey, you could turn off the television for an hour four nights a week and write, or maybe five nights, or maybe two hours.'" For my carpenter friend, the Jaguar says, "Hey, tell your clients that the extra price, if there is one, is not a cost, it's an investment. They're investing in the future for themselves and their children by using sustainable materials."
Then the fifth question is, what actions do I take right now? For a writer "I got to write. I got to start writing, got to write every day or four days a week," or something. The carpenter says, "We got to start using these sustainable materials. I got to tell my clients and their kids, 'Hey, look, your parents built this bookcase here with sustainable materials, and they built this house with sustainable materials because they're investing in your future.'" I think no matter what you are, a podcast host, a plumber, a teacher, a construction worker, a philosopher, whatever you are, you can ask yourself these questions, and we can all take different paths, but let's scope for the same destination of creating a life economy.
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Gil: I want to talk a little bit about the Living Earth Moveme
nt as a natural segue, and maybe you said it, but you can't make any money on a dead planet. Your criticisms of capitalism, and there's a lot of criticism of capitalism, are directed more towards what you call predatory capitalism, but capitalism itself isn't the evil, it's just the perversion of it and how it's led us down this path towards climate destruction. Let me ask you about the Living Earth Movement, which is the collection of leaders in the fields of theology, business, science, activism, and academia who are passionate about combating climate change and preserving life as we know on the planet. I know you're working with Dr. John Cobb on this, but how did you get involved with this movement? Then I'm going to ask you more about your book in US-China relationship.
John: They're tied together because John Cobb just celebrated his 97th birthday. He's very eloquent. He's a remarkable thinker and philosopher and human being, and he's been extremely influential in China, as well as in the United States. He is a process theologian. He promotes process philosophy. I think there's 36 institutions in China that he's formed around that over the years. I got involved with him because I was working on this book about China and the United States, and I knew that he had very good contact. I became part of the Living Earth Movement, which was formed around him.
At this point in history, it's not so much of a movement as a discussion amongst people, which is hopefully [inaudible 00:21:01] John Cobb last year, wrote a very short, concise, incredibly eloquent, powerful letter to both President Xi of China and Biden of the United States, pleading with them to come together to end climate change. He said, "You guys can disagree on everything else. You can disagree on politics, you can disagree on Taiwan and Afghanistan, and on and on, but please agree that nobody lives on a dead planet." He sent this letter off, and he had good context, people very close to Xi in China and he also was very close to Biden's priest in his Catholic church outside Washington, DC.
The priest said he would personally handle it to Biden. There's every reason to believe both of these leaders get the letter, but within about a month after that is when they had their virtual conference, the two of them got together and talked about this. We don't know for sure that that happened because of the letters, but maybe they'll let us have some influence. That point being the letters were extremely eloquent, and they emphasized the incredible need of these two countries to come together. We know today that China has basically outdone the United States that their economic hitmen have learned from the successes and failures of our economic hitmen and people like me.
They, today, are the number one trading partner and the number one investor in every continent in the world, including North America. Our two countries provide about almost 50%, I think it's 47% of the world's GDP and about an equal amount of the world's pollution, especially carbon dioxide. If these two countries can't agree to end this insanity that we're on, the creating climate change, we're doomed?
Gil: Why do you think it does seem so paradoxical for anybody to say we should be working with China on anything? There's the saber-rattling, and we're almost in a cold war. Biden has continued the trade war with China, politicians on both sides of the party regularly are up in tensions. We see what's happening in Taiwan. I agree with you. This is the most existential threat of our time. It doesn't work with the two largest economies and the two largest emitters not getting together. I applaud you for talking about this differently because the [unintelligible 00:23:35] conversation in China is not about this. It's about suppressing them and winning.
John: It's particularly true, I think, in the United States, the politics, in a way, dictates that anybody who wants to be elected or stay elected. The high offices in United States has to have an enemy, and right now the enemy is China. It's also become Russia recently. Of course, there's this attempt to align the two strongly with each other, and they have somewhat aligned, but not as strong I think as our politicians would like us to believe. I spent a lot of time talking with Chinese people. I taught in an MBA program in Shanghai to Chinese students. I did not find this to be as true in China.
I think that's changing now a little bit, too, because the United States has been so aggressive and making China the enemy, that it's put Xi in a position and other leaders in China. Xi has about seven top people that he reports to. He's not the all-powerful leader that we all think he is. He is powerful, but it's not what the Americans are led to believe that this guy is some Hitler-type, all-powerful leader. He's not. He's got a very strong faction that opposes him, a very powerful family that opposes him that he has to be very aware of. Anyway, when I was teaching in China these young MBA students who were singled out, they were members of the communist party. They'd been singled out to be the future leaders of China.
One after another, I heard them say, "We've grown up with terrible pollution. We haven't been able to breathe the air in our cities, drink the water and so forth. We don't want that for our kids." We've created an economic miracle." They said, since the mid '70s, China, almost 800 million people die of poverty." It had 10% on average economic growth for 30 years. No other country's done anything like this. They would say this, the students, they'd say, "We created an economic miracle, and it came at a terrible cost environmentally and socially, but we felt that cost, we've been on the receiving end of that cost. We don't want it anymore. We don't want it for our kids. We've proven we can create a miracle. Now we're going to create a green miracle."
I think they really believed that. I don't know whether they'll be able to do it or not, but I think they really felt the urgency. In the United States, our students also say similar things. I've found a lot of it and spoken at a lot of MBA programs and other universities here. In all of these cases, I try to get together, at least for an hour or two, a group of students at each college I go to and talk to them about these issues and more than anything, hear what they have to say because they're going to hear what I say of my lecture. I hear this concern now. I didn't hear it very much after the Confessions was first published in [unintelligible 00:26:38]. I'm hearing it more and more.
A major difference is that for us, it's relatively intellectual, which is important. It's important. Everybody's talking about climate change, but we haven't experienced the degradation, other than a few pockets like the LA area for a short period of time, relatively a short period of time. We haven't experienced the terrible pollution that the Chinese students have experienced. It's not quite as immediate. I find that interesting, but I do find that in both places, there's an understanding that we get to change. I also find this, of course, throughout Europe, Latin America, Africa, everywhere, people are waking up.
There's a consciousness revolution. We're waking up to the fact that we can't keep going the way we're going, but we've got to figure out how to come together to stop this. A key to that building that bridge is building the bridge between China and the United States, at least on this one issue.
Gil: Let's stay on geopolitics a bit. What are your thoughts on Russia's war on Ukraine and how that's changed so much, but maybe with a particular focus on energy and climate given our show and the acute nature of that?
John: It's a terrible tragedy. It's outrageous. There's no other way to express that. Whether you can look back at history and say Putin was pushed into it or whatever you can say about all of that. Some of it's may be true. The point is that it's outrageous, what's happening today. It's causing immense problems around the world. It's causing, as we all know, horrible food shortages throughout so many countries and shortages of fertilizer and other things. It's also distracted us from the real important issue before us of survival on this planet of moving from a death economy to a life economy, reversing climate change.
In the case of Russia, I think that invasion has just been an incredibly difficult distraction as well as a horrible tragedy of what's happening in Ukraine and the implications of where that might go next.
Gil: It's hard to say there might be a silver lining from something that is still an ongoing, horrifying tragedy. On some sense, do you think that the realization that maybe we don't want to be dependent on petrostates and their whims in global oil markets and energy security and what that could mean for speeding the transition over the midterm and long term? Just another reason in addition to climate change, but also that energy and national security, at least in Europe, I'm not so sure in the US, I wish it was more of a tailwind.
John: I agree with you, Gil. I think that it's driving the nail into the coffin of fossil fuels. It's a slowly pounding hammer. That's driving that nail. In the short run, the hammer has pulled a little bit of a nail out, but it was driving it, it's pulled some of that out now for the short run, let's hope it's just the short run. I can't imagine that Europe isn't going to come out of this, understand that it can't be so dependent on Russian oil and gas. I can't imagine that the United States isn't going to come out of this, realizing that it can't be so dependent on Saudi Arabia and other places in the Middle East and other places and that we just can't be dependent on oil and gas.
I can't imagine that that is not going to change. What's the short run? It, to a large degree, depends on what happens in Ukraine and with Russia, and where Russia goes from here. I think it's really important for people to recognize that the green economy is very, very dependent on China. Another reason for coming together with China. China controls most of the world's lithium, and a lot of the cobalt, and many of the other minerals that are absolutely necessary to solar and wind and other aspects of the green economy. China controls them. It makes most, the solar panels. That part may change. We can develop factories here and microchips the same thing.
China control the mines that mine these, and we're going to find more mines, maybe. Perhaps some more logical and more immediate solution is, let's work with China to make sure that we build this bridge that will enable all of us around the world to move increasingly toward non-fossil fuels toward green energy, and green transportation, and green everything else, organic foods and local production, and so on and so forth. There's a long list there. We need to take all of this very, very seriously.
Gil: Let's turn to the portion that we call our hot seat. I read that your parents were both teachers. I have to ask, what's the best lesson each of them taught you?
John: Values. The value of love, the value of life. They were people who had a hard time. We lived in New Hampshire, very rural areas. They had to sometimes kill insects and ants and things in the garden. They had a hard time doing that. I grew up really valuing life and realizing that times, you have to make exceptions. I think they taught me amazing values. They taught me that money doesn't buy happiness. They were teachers in a boys' private school. My dad made almost no money. Our house was given to us by the school. They took care of everything. [chuckles] All the plumbing, electricity, food. I ate in boys' dining room from the time I was four years old, all my meals, free food, healthy food.
We didn't have much money. I was taught that very early in life that money just doesn't buy you happiness. I think that was really important. I think that helped me. I think one of the reasons I was able to stop being an economic hitman, get out of that business where I was making a lot of money and traveling first class around the world living what I thought was the American dream, living what would have been my dream, growing up in rural New Hampshire, "Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm hanging out with presidents of countries and traveling first class." At some point, this value system clicked in. That was very important teaching from them, as well as the love of literature. They also taught me the love of literature and how powerful the written word is.
Gil: On literature, what are the books in your life that have meant the most to you?
John: Oh, my gosh, I tend to think very much in the short run right now. I recently read a book called The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba. It was about the fight for independence against Spain in the late 1800s and William Randolph Hearst and how important the perception was. Hearst was trying to use this example of this woman, what he call he most the most beautiful woman of Cuba, who was put in prison in Cuba by the Spaniards to incite America into the war. It's a powerful book because it tells so much about what my life was about many years later. That's an important book.
I love Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. There's been a lot a lot of books, you cannot beat Shakespeare's Macbeth. That's the ultimate story of an economic hitman and the jackal all rolled into one.
Gil: How do you connect with nature personally?
John: I live on this island that's got beautiful forests. I go into them almost every day. Here's a jog, I like to jog. I don't like to jog on asphalt. I would jog on forest dirt. Then I go to New Hampshire, and where I grew up, I spent a couple of months there every year in August and September after I go the Amazon, I go there. I go the Amazon.
Gil: Of course.
John: I'd love to get out into nature. When I'm in a city or someplace where I can't do that, and even sitting in an apartment or a hotel room, 50 stories up, 30 stories up or whatever, I'll feel that these walls are all built out of nature. This chair comes from nature. Everything comes from nature. I go into that. It's all the elements, and I'll do a little meditation. Nature is just everywhere, and it's within us. I'm connecting with it constantly, frankly.
Gil: What gives you hope today?
John: Young people, people I mentioned and colleges in the United States, and Latin America, and Europe, and China. I also spent time in Russia in 2017, before this invasion. I was speaking on the same stage as Putin, in fact, at a big economic conference and hanging out with people there with the Russian. I feel around the world there's a consciousness revolution. There's an awakening. Whenever there's a revolution, there's always pushback, the status quo tries to stop it. Good revolutionaries are agents of change use that, take energy from that.
I practiced martial arts most of my life. As a martial artist, I know that if I'm not against someone who's bigger and stronger than me, I can't try to overpower him. I got to use his energy against it, turn it around. That's what revolutionaries do with those who push back. I think we're at a time right now where everybody in the world or most everybody in the world is waking up, a lot of people. Let's say, a lot of people are waking up, and there's also this strong pushback by the status quo. We've been on a pattern of moving forward toward change. We've had a bit of a setback now with the invasion of Ukraine, as we've talked about, but I think we're still in that pattern. That gives me hope, and I get help from these young people I talked with all over the world.
Gil: Last question, finish the phrase. To me, climate positive means.
John: Transforming the depth economy into a life economy. Moving away from this idea of maximizing short-term economic benefits, short-term materialism, short-term profits to maximizing long-term benefits for all life.
Gil: Wonderful. John, thank you so much for coming on our show.
Gil: If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, please leave us a leave a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. This really helps us reach more listeners.
You can also let us know what you thought via Twitter @ClimatePosiPod or email us at climatepositive@hannonarmstrong.com.
I'm Gil Jenkins.
And this is Climate Positive.