How to Save Our Scorched Earth Before it's Too Late

Alexander McCaig (00:13):

So, I'm not really fond of Christmas. Yeah. If you're looking at the camera, I got my first article in Nat Geo and I was so psyched. So psyched. I've never subscribed to it. Nothing. And I'm like, "Okay." It shows up, and I'm like, "Wow! This is just totally, fucking depressing."

Jason Rigby (00:40):

Thanks, Nat.

Alexander McCaig (00:41):

Thanks, Nat.

Jason Rigby (00:41):

Are you depressed?

Alexander McCaig (00:45):

Okay. So, this Nat Geo broke down, what's going on in the globe, between climate, politics ... I forget what the other things were. It doesn't even matter. It's important that when we look at the data, we have to look at all of it. We can't isolate it and then say, "Oh, everything's fine." For instance, if I'm in Florida, central Florida. I walk outside, it's a beautiful day in the middle of winter. It's 70-something degrees. There's nothing wrong with the world. Plants are green. I saw a couple birds flying by. My limited perspective, the limited data input, I have-

Jason Rigby (01:29):

A few hundred pythons.

Alexander McCaig (01:31):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The limited data I have tells me everything's fine. But, what happens when I scale back? What happens when that individual perspective I have, I carry that across billions of people, and then we're all giving our input on it. We start to see that there is a theme, a narrative that's going on. The world is literally burning. We're poisoning it. We're, at a macro level, killing ourselves. The thing that actually gives us life-

Jason Rigby (02:05):

Our house is on fire.

Alexander McCaig (02:07):

We're choking it to death. Our homes are on fire. I was fortunate enough, before I get into the Nat Geo thing with the data ... I was fortunate enough to spend a majority of the summer traveling in a Sprinter van, seeing the United States. Do you know what I saw? Nothing. Do you know what I felt? Hot, the whole time. And let me explain that. Everywhere I went, no matter how far north I drove, I was in the hottest temperatures those areas have seen in a very, very long time.

Jason Rigby (02:43):

That's because you showed up, and you're extremely hot.

Alexander McCaig (02:45):

That's what it is.

Jason Rigby (02:46):

So you just [inaudible 00:02:49] ... We've gone to the mountains or whatever and you're walking and just melt snow-

Alexander McCaig (02:51):

Snow's just melting about me. My thermal equivalent's huge.

Jason Rigby (02:55):

Yeah. What is that when the people, they have super-high metabolism and their thermal energy or whatever is super high? Isn't there a superhero that has that problem? Is it Flash or somebody?

Alexander McCaig (03:06):

I don't know. But yeah, [inaudible 00:03:08]. It's his heat's just exuding. But, as I'm driving around, I had the ability to take this, essentially, micro view of my little world here in New Mexico, and then start to see what that micro world looks like for everybody else. And, as I'm driving, I can't seem to escape the heat. It's horrible. And, every time I went to go see a national park, or see something in the distance, I couldn't, because the United States was on fire, everywhere. Horrible, horrible wildfires. And then, I would drive by them and I would see the people, I would see the farmers. I would see the houses, that ceased to exist. I would see the scorched earth.

When I started to take all these little experiences and put them together, I saw that something is dramatically out of place. Something is so wrong that we have to do something about it. We need to come together with our micro experiences, what we know, where we live, what we do, our behaviors. And we have to share the data on this, because people, all of us in our little bubbles have a hard time putting this entire thing together. But when you can take all those little micros and make a very macro map of it, you see that there are major issues facing the United States and countries and people all over the world, in the Philippines, Indonesia, flooding. Okay? The lack of resources in food and fresh water in Ethiopia, in Kenya, okay? It's the scorched earth in the United States, throwing more ash into the air and reflecting more of that nasty stuff that we don't need, heating things up further.

There are all these self-reinforcing, human-caused issues through our behaviors that are literally shortening our lifespan here on this planet. And if we don't, on an individual level, make a recognition for what is happening ... Even though, we think everything's fine and we think, "Oh, climate change couldn't be real," right? You need to expand upon your view. You really need to see what is happening here and how interconnected all of these things are. Because, I can tell you with great probability and certainty, that if there's no change in this trajectory, there's no more human beings.

Nature is resilient. Nature bounces back. We won't bounce back. We've been the most parasitic thing to happen in a long time. Because we're not paying attention. We're not recognizing the course of our action and our behaviors. We haven't collectively looked at all of our behaviors together and analyzed them. And now we have the ability to do it. We have the ability to take a step forward. Using data, to understand the impacts of our human, daily lives.

Jason Rigby (06:09):

And, anytime we are parasitic, and I want people to understand that statement, because this is really important. Anytime we get new technology, whether it's a fire, whether it's a plow, whether it's a horse, whether it's a nuclear bomb, whether it's a plane, whatever it may be, we do two things with it. Consistently, for hundreds of thousands years, since humans have existed, we've done two things.

Alexander McCaig (06:30):

Yeah, go ahead.

Jason Rigby (06:30):

That destroy nature and kill other people.

Alexander McCaig (06:34):

We just create-

Jason Rigby (06:34):

That's what we do with our technology.

Alexander McCaig (06:36):

All we've done is create violence with our technology. And now we have to make a choice. If we continue this violence, we create violence upon ourselves. And the violence upon ourselves is the shortening of our life, or the generations after us, their lives.

Jason Rigby (06:50):

Because, and I want people to understand this. After World War II. And we've talked about this before. After World War II, we don't want any more world wars.

Alexander McCaig (06:58):

No.

Jason Rigby (06:58):

So there was a huge effort for global leaders to get together and say, "We don't want this to happen ever. We don't want nuclear weapons to be released. We don't want any of these things anymore."

Alexander McCaig (07:08):

Yep.

Jason Rigby (07:09):

Great. So, they began to take supply chains. And then, as we saw, during the pandemic with a circuit board, a silicon-chip, and we becam super interdependent upon all these different countries. Because, if we're trading, from South America to Africa, to Japan, to the United States and it's going back and forth, and we're all interdependent upon each other, we need each other. So, I'm not going to go over to Africa and fight Africa for the lithium, because that's a small part of what I need. So we're, we're helping each other.

So this became a huge thing to prevent violence, because that's unfortunately in our DNA, is we like to, if we're provoked enough, we will kill. But, the problem that we have now, and this to me is not just climate change, but it's everything. We have the ability to decentralize violence. And I don't want to make this show about violence, but CRISPR, drones. You don't even have to be a nation state. A small terrorist group can buy a drone and put some weapons on it and do some bad damage.

Alexander McCaig (08:20):

They can do anything.

Jason Rigby (08:21):

You can CRISPR and start changing DNA structure in a virus, in a basement. So, whenever we look at this ... And then what happened in World War II ... Then all of a sudden supply and demand comes up, because our lives, we're beginning to live better lives. We're living the most. So then, now I have one place that I can do shopping, one search engine that I go to, one social media, because they're all one. It's all super centralized. We have one bank. We have one Google search. All the other searches aren't even close to what Google search does. All the other social medias aren't even close. Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp rules the world in social media.

So, we have all this technology. We have the ability to be able to buy at a whim and get the same day, or worst-case scenario, two-day Prime shipping. That's controlling all our shopping. So, we've all of a sudden, like you said, that chart has gone through the roof of how much we're consuming. So, we've been chopping trees down and not being able to keep up with replanting trees for decades. I mean, we went from ... How many people did we have in the 1920s? A billion?

Alexander McCaig (09:33):

I don't even think that much. I think there was that much-

Jason Rigby (09:35):

And we have eight billion now.

Alexander McCaig (09:37):

Yeah. So how many more people-

Jason Rigby (09:39):

And we're consuming like fucking madmen.

Alexander McCaig (09:41):

Toilet paper.

Jason Rigby (09:42):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (09:43):

Think about how many trees you got cut down for toilet paper. I don't think anyone's ever seen a clear cut. Most people have no idea what that even is. All they know is that I'm going to go get my paper products and that's it. I don't think-

Jason Rigby (09:57):

[inaudible 00:09:57] ... delivered to my door.

Alexander McCaig (09:57):

And what we found is that, the interesting part about nuclear technology, they realize that when you blow up a nuke, everybody understands that radiation floats around everywhere.

Jason Rigby (10:07):

Yeah.

Alexander McCaig (10:07):

That's not a closed system. But, everybody thinks that what we consume in our daily lives is a closed system. When really it's this open inextricably, interconnected system, that's having negative effects anywhere, everywhere.

Jason Rigby (10:19):

We've stripped the oceans. We've stripped the mines. We've stripped the open lands. We stripped the jungles. We've stripped the rainforest.

Alexander McCaig (10:26):

We've poisoned the waters.

Jason Rigby (10:27):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (10:28):

And we're just continuing to breed more.

Jason Rigby (10:31):

Well, you heard last night, our co-founder Jonathan was talking about he couldn't even eat the barracuda-

Alexander McCaig (10:37):

Because, it's so poisoned-

Jason Rigby (10:39):

... that he caught.

Alexander McCaig (10:40):

The barracudas on the reefs are so toxic, you can't even eat it. So, what about the people that have reliance on fishing as the main part of their diet? They can't eat half the stuff. They're physically poisoning themselves off the thing that allows them to survive. We are raking this earth. I've seen it firsthand, us just crippling it. Our politics are highly polarized. We need to-

Jason Rigby (11:09):

Well, even towards ... Let's use-

Alexander McCaig (11:11):

Go ahead.

Jason Rigby (11:12):

Let's use climate change, or we'd like to call it climate stability.

Alexander McCaig (11:15):

Climate stability. Because, that's the goal.

Jason Rigby (11:16):

Look how polarized that is.

Alexander McCaig (11:18):

Of course. Yeah.

Jason Rigby (11:19):

Nothing gets done.

Alexander McCaig (11:21):

No.

Jason Rigby (11:21):

There's no common-sense climate-change policies.

Alexander McCaig (11:24):

Do you want to know why? Everybody thinks that all the data's a farce. That's what they think.

Jason Rigby (11:30):

On both sides.

Alexander McCaig (11:30):

On both sides. They don't know where it's coming from. But you know what you can guarantee, on TARTLE? You can guarantee that all that data on human behavior comes from a human being. And you're going to know, damn well for a fact, that this is what they're doing. And then all of us, if someone goes to produce a model or an analytical report ... I want them to take all of the transactional signatures of data providence, showing all of the human beings, all across the world, that shared their data, to come to this analysis. Not some one-off thing or some group that did a small thing and extrapolated it, get some percentage. This is legitimately what's happening. And some of these numbers on here ... How much was the loss? Economic loss?

Jason Rigby (12:13):

Oh, well there was a one-week cold snap. And this is here, for those ... This is central United States. In February, there was a one-week cold snap and an estimated damage was 21 billion.

Alexander McCaig (12:23):

21 billion-

Jason Rigby (12:24):

What could we do with 21 billion?

Alexander McCaig (12:24):

... in crop and livestock loss. $21 billion that had to get paid out, to help ensure against this stuff. Think about fixing supply chains or affording other people opportunity. Think about what $21 billion in resources can go towards. But, because all of us in our collective consumption and behaviors, have had a negative effect, where we need to pour money into something that didn't need to have money poured into it ... When that could have gone towards people that are at the bottom of the barrel with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Because, we burn up our earth here, it is killing people elsewhere. We need to pay attention to our behaviors. I know people are like, "This sounds morbid. I don't want to hear this shit." Well, guess what? If you don't pay attention, your children will cease to exist. Your children's children. There'll be no planet. There'll be no good, clean food for them to eat.

Jason Rigby (13:12):

Well. Yeah. We were hiring somebody from the Philippines and we were talking about climate change, climate stability, and I said, "You realize in 70 years, 50 to 70 years the Philippines are going to be underwater?" There's already islands. I was reading about this the other day. There's already islands disappearing. Small ones.

Alexander McCaig (13:29):

And they know that.

Jason Rigby (13:30):

Yeah. And they know that. And so, I was like, "Your three-year-old, that's sitting next to you ... You're going to be old, because you're in your twenties. So, maybe you're 80 years old, maybe you're 60 years old. Whatever. But that three-year-old's going to be 40, 50, 60 years old. And they're not going to have a home. It's underwater. Where are they going to go? China?"

Alexander McCaig (13:50):

Yeah. Where's their food going to ... ? And, when they do have a home, where's the food going to come from? What happens when the virus outbreaks get worse? These things mutate. I mean, you seen the mutation charts. It's got so many mutations.

Jason Rigby (14:02):

Yes. And, then you look at, some places are becoming unbearable to even live. Some parts in Africa, people can't even live. It's like 100 and ... It's almost like you could boil water outside.

Alexander McCaig (14:11):

I got no clean water. Disease is increasing. I have a lack of livable space. There's an increase in the human population that keeps going up. And consumption continues to increase. What does that tell you? What happens when-

Jason Rigby (14:24):

How do we need to get political about any of those?

Alexander McCaig (14:26):

None of those things are political. You want to know why? Because, it's all human life that is negatively affected. There's no politics in this. It's either you revere human life or you don't. And the thing is we haven't recognized that. We haven't looked back at it. What does it say for impact over here? So how much, over here on the right-hand side ... See those little bar charts?

Jason Rigby (14:46):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eah.

Alexander McCaig (14:46):

What's that saying down there?

Jason Rigby (14:48):

Oh, it says, "A human study found that humans have pushed the climate into dangerous new territory, under even the lowest-emissions scenario. The planet likely will warm 2.7 degrees in the next 20 years."

Alexander McCaig (15:00):

Okay. Our cars are becoming more emissions-friendly, correct?

Jason Rigby (15:04):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (15:04):

But, what happens when there are ... Okay. One car pollutes less, but there's five more cars getting produced. The net is positive for what is going on here, because there's more people that need to transport themselves. People have to go further to get resources now, because the well that had their clean water no longer exists. It's dried up. All of these things are self-defeating within themselves. We are reinforcing a very negative paradigm for ourselves. And the data here is so inherently obvious. And a lot of us don't have the ability to go around and see these things happening firsthand.

Jason Rigby (15:43):

But we do.

Alexander McCaig (15:45):

And this is where ... Okay. So, talk about my next point. Go ahead.

Jason Rigby (15:48):

The greatest change that you can do as a human being is to sign up for TARTLE. And we'll explain that here in a second. But, I want people to understand. Eight billion people on TARTLE is the greatest weapon against climate change.

Alexander McCaig (16:02):

Yeah.

Jason Rigby (16:04):

It's the greatest weapon against climate change. Period. There's nothing that's going to solve climate change better than TARTLE.

Alexander McCaig (16:11):

It won't.

Jason Rigby (16:12):

Think about it.

Alexander McCaig (16:14):

Why?

Jason Rigby (16:14):

Give me arguments on that.

Alexander McCaig (16:15):

You show me something else. You show me one other thing that collect collectively could bring everybody together and have them focus the resources and their thoughts, to generate truthful analysis on what is actually going on right now.

Jason Rigby (16:28):

We could take this 21 billion that was destroyed in one week, put that on the TARTLE marketplace, and I guarantee you, we could solve a problem.

Alexander McCaig (16:37):

Very cool.

Jason Rigby (16:37):

One of the big seven.

Alexander McCaig (16:38):

Very quickly.

Jason Rigby (16:39):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (16:40):

We would have all the data, all the information, all the wherewithal, to go take the right actions.

Jason Rigby (16:44):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (16:45):

We could actually know what we need to do next.

Jason Rigby (16:49):

And, people look at this and they're like, "Well, how are you so sure on this?" Because we're betting on humanity.

Alexander McCaig (16:56):

Yeah. I'm not betting on politics.

Jason Rigby (16:58):

Mm-mm.

Alexander McCaig (16:58):

I'm not betting on a government. I'm not betting on a central bank. I'm not betting on a big business. I am only betting on people.

Jason Rigby (17:05):

Because when people understand human rights, which is one of our Big Seven ... When they understand education and they have decentralized, free, educational access. When politics is out of the system and big media is gone, in these developed countries, and these underdeveloped countries realize that they can get safe energy, that they can work ... Through TARTLE, they can work and make an earning, a living. And understand that they can move up that Maslow's hierarchy, not just to consume more, but to have a consciousness and the ability to understand who they are and why they're here. Now, we have a revolution and I'm using it in a good way.

Alexander McCaig (17:43):

Give that right here. That's what I'm talking about.

Jason Rigby (17:45):

But, I'm just telling you. I always say this at the end of the day.

Alexander McCaig (17:49):

At the end of the day.

Jason Rigby (17:49):

Because this is the end of the day [inaudible 00:17:53] This is the end of days right here.

Alexander McCaig (17:52):

This data visualization is the end of days.

Jason Rigby (17:54):

Looking toward a troubled future is the top part. When we look at these, the data's showing us over and over and over again. It's time for change.

Alexander McCaig (18:04):

Yeah.

Jason Rigby (18:04):

And how is that going to happen? You've got to stop giving your sovereignty to the politicians.

Alexander McCaig (18:04):

You can't do it.

Jason Rigby (18:09):

You got to stop giving your economic sovereignty to the banks. We've talked about this 100, gazillion times.

Alexander McCaig (18:13):

Look at the history of it.

Jason Rigby (18:14):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (18:15):

It's never benefited you.

Jason Rigby (18:16):

Mm-mm.

Alexander McCaig (18:16):

But if you put the power back in your hands and we all collectively work together-

Jason Rigby (18:19):

Corporations aren't going to solve this.

Alexander McCaig (18:21):

No. They need to be told what to do.

Jason Rigby (18:23):

ExxonMobil's not going to solve this. Google's not going to solve this.

Alexander McCaig (18:26):

No.

Jason Rigby (18:26):

They may talk about it. And they have all these ESGs and funds and everything else. But, all they're going to do is raise the price of your energy.

Alexander McCaig (18:33):

That's all.

Jason Rigby (18:34):

And, it's going to help developed countries, but what about underdeveloped countries? You guys that are in Nigeria ... We have a ton of people in Nigeria that listen to us.

Alexander McCaig (18:34):

So many.

Jason Rigby (18:41):

What's that going to do to you?

Alexander McCaig (18:43):

Does that actually benefit you?

Jason Rigby (18:44):

Your government's go back and forth, back and forth. There's no stability. Hey, guess what? United States? There's no stability here either.

Alexander McCaig (18:50):

We got none.

Jason Rigby (18:50):

There's one thing that's stable.

Alexander McCaig (18:53):

Tell me.

Jason Rigby (18:54):

TARTLE.

Alexander McCaig (18:54):

All the time.

Jason Rigby (18:55):

It's all the time. 24,7. Willing to accept your work.

Alexander McCaig (18:59):

Never shuts off.

Jason Rigby (19:00):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (19:00):

And you can find the value for it. And you can help channel resources and data to those who are actively solving those problems, that fall underneath the Big Seven.

Jason Rigby (19:08):

We have a billion people that sign up for TARTLE that say, "Yes. We want to help climate stability." They each donate a dollar. To some that's a lot, to some it's not.

Alexander McCaig (19:20):

Yeah, but that's-

Jason Rigby (19:20):

I would challenge each country. If you're in the United States donate $10. If you're UK, donate $10. If you're in Australia, donate five, whatever. If you're in China, donate two. If you're in Russia ... I mean, based on what you feel is a good amount. A little bit of sacrifice out never hurts anyone. You get a billion people that do that. Through the marketplace, we have 21 billion just like that, raised, ready to go, to help assist-

Alexander McCaig (19:45):

Solving.

Jason Rigby (19:45):

Not-for-profits, NGOs.

Alexander McCaig (19:47):

And knowing exactly how to apply that capital.

Jason Rigby (19:49):

Yes.

Alexander McCaig (19:50):

Exactly where it's needed. That's why the Big Seven is so important. That's why TARTLE is so important. And that's why you and I, and the rest of the TARTLE team, we put all of our chips on humanity. And that's what we're going to do into the future. They're our biggest bet.