Season 1, Episode 15: Where are we going?
Jenny and Alex go live!
In this episode, you see Alex and I on screen for the first time! You hear us reflect on our journey, discussing our mission to communicate effectively across different expertise, from oil and gas to arts and carpentry. The conversation explores various topics, including environmental issues, social crises, and the importance of community and trust. You hear about the need for responsible resource management, the impact of policy decisions, and the significance of grassroots efforts in creating meaningful change. Alex and I also stress the importance of accurate information and the role of media in shaping public discourse. The podcast aim to empower you to make informed decisions and contribute to a better world. The Gravity Well podcast aims to break down complex ideas into manageable discussions, fostering collaboration and understanding to address societal dilemmas. Alex and I emphasize reconciliation and acknowledge their presence on Blackfoot Treaty Seven Territory and Metis district 5 & 6 lands.
Alex:
Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle. Our mission is simple, to set aside our differences and collaborate with others through conversation and processes. Together we can face our dilemmas and make our world a better place for everyone.
Jenny: Nice.
Alex: Jenny?
Jenny: In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we are in Blackfoot Treaty 7 and Metis Districts 5 and 6 Territory. We take reconcili-action by seeking the wisdom of elders and individuals who aim to restore water, air, land, life and community. A healthy living relationship with our homeland and each other is our guide.
I couldn’t think of anything funny at the end of that. That was way better. Anyway, okay. This has been almost a year in the making. I would have met you in May of last year. We are going to skip that story because we’ve told that a hundred times. We’re going to talk about our coffee. So when, as Alex was describing this morning, I peeled myself off the floor after running in the election.
In August, I finally said I got to reach out to Alex. I had met Alex, knew Alex was somebody that would be, help me see things that I’m missing in my thinking. And it’s been very consistent throughout this journey, which Alex has gone with me.
We’re going to do some reflecting today. We’ve had some feedback, really good feedback from friends and new people and supporters and, you know, critics, whatever. And so with that feedback, we wanted to take an episode, and actually one of my friends from a while back, a mutual friend of my friend, Naomi, Tammy. She got me thinking about taking a break in these and making sure we gave time to stop and just think about what we were doing and why we were doing it and just make sure we were realigned. We’ve made time for that, that’s what this episode is.
And our official live episode. We had a plan back in August, when we met for a coffee in August in Alex’s community. I said to him, I want to have a conversation. I’ve learned a lot and I want to, I want to tell people what I’ve learned and help people solve the problems that we have to solve in this province. We talked about what that looked like. Like Alex said, some of the things that he was concerned about, which I’ll let you say, Alex. I mentioned all my experience in oil and gas and running in the election. Hearing that people at the doors really don’t know what’s happening in our province and don’t have time to.
It’s not their fault. Sort of the way our system is, is everybody’s too busy to really, I don’t know, you can say it better, Alex. I’ve heard you say it better than I would there. I’m going to stop hogging the mic and just offer that. we’re going talk about some of the things that we’ve accomplished. We have a thing that we use. It’s a tool I learned from a leader years ago, Suzanne, which is accomplishments and commitments. Every time Alex and I meet, we have a running document that we use, we look at what we said we were going to do last time we met, where we’re at in that and what we’re doing now about it, and how we’re moving forward. We have this way of holding each other, not only accountable, but helping us both have a common language, a common understanding of what we talked about. It’s consistent and structured, all these things that helps us feel trustworthy and safe, quite frankly, in making decisions together. I’ll say a couple of things that I, we set out to by April 1st, we wanted to be live. We’ve done pretty good. We’re a month late. But I mean, considering we started this in August and have six, sorry, 14 episodes, 15 episodes, really, we had a bonus one in there under our belts.
Alex: You know, 14 episodes since January, and this is episode 15. We had trial interviews with a whole bunch of friends so we could get feedback before then.
Jenny: Oh my God. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, you go.
Alex: This is episode number 15 in four months. A little bit over four months, right? And that’s quite an accomplishment unto itself, you know. Just to go into the coffee that Jenny and I had, we both decided that we had some common concerns and things where we felt as though people weren’t communicating properly with each other. And we set out to learn how to communicate with each other because we, she’s an expert in oil and gas and geophysics. I’m an artist and a carpenter and, and, and so we may be speaking English, but we’re speaking different language. Yet, we kind of hold the same value sets. We want to make sure that families are protected, that people are protected, that communities are protected, that people are looked after, that we’re helping the disenfranchised, as well as encouraging maybe the less disenfranchised to see the incentive in helping the disenfranchised. We found that common ground and then we decided to take a course through Delft X University, the Netherlands. And it was an analytics course in August.
Jenny: That first meeting. Keep going, sorry.
Alex: No, it’s all good. And it was a five week course in analytics. And I mean, again, like I swing a hammer for a living, right? To just like jump into analytics, I thought, “What on earth am I actually setting out to do here?” And then by September, we want to build a website, we want to start a podcast, we want to do all this type of stuff, we want to have interviews. And I thought, “Well, I don’t really know how to do that.” Last time I did anything remotely close to that was back in 2011. All the software was like very simple and kind of like rudimentary back then. I had to not only learn how to do all this type of stuff on a Mac, but, you know, learn all the different software and how they interrelate with each other. And it was a very, very steep learning curve.
And there was that kind of behind the scenes work that I had to do, but there was also actively stepping out and listening to people from different areas of expertise and different walks of life. And absorbing their contributions and then doing my independent research so I better understand what they were trying to say in terms of their triumphs and their struggles so that I could kind of develop some sort of baseline. Jenny and I could develop a baseline of understanding so that when we set out in January to start to informal interviews, we could do proper problem identifiers or dilemma identifiers, which is the first step in the analytic process developed by Delft X University.
Breaking Down The Gravity Well Process
Jenny:
We started with “the why”. Can I just bring in some of my words that I would say there? We started with the why. That’s why the first two months, the first eight episodes, we were just trying to figure out why are we talking? Because when we first met in August, what I remember what was super helpful of our conversation was, “We have all these questions and all of these people and how do you help decide which questions to ask first, which people to speak with first, and any flow that would make sense.
If you’re trying to convey real life, day to day, the news, like we’re honestly, I picture, we’re a news channel, you know what I mean? In the sense that while we’re having these conversations, trying to talk to people get to know people in Alberta, the province where we live, trying to solve the crisis that we’re facing, which people want to call it how they want to call it. But I call it a social, environmental, and economic crisis. Whatever that looks like to you in that realm, there’s somebody in there that has a crisis right now. We’re just trying to be a space for people that are in crisis that want to understand and learn how to, as Alex said earlier today, interpret information in a way that is beneficial for not only yourself, but for the people around you in your life that you care about, right? We all want to make sensible decisions. Everybody does. That’s what this tool was going to be for us is this way for us.
Alex: Yeah, the tool was a way for us to have a system so that we could break it down, but do something thoughtfully and meaningfully for people and for ourselves. Yeah, I think, the analytic process actually really helped me in like a lot of areas of my life outside of The Gravity Well.
Jenny: Me too.
Alex: It helped me to interpret information and data in a way so that I could funnel it. Decision tree it, like problem identifiers, like key players, key actors. The key players are the people who make the decisions, the policy decisions that affect all the other actors involved. In that process, it opened my eyes to just seeing like cause and effect, intention versus outcome, you know, priority versus blowback. It helped me to see a little more clearly that sometimes policymakers may have the best of intentions. [They] can have adverse effects on the general population. And part of what Jenny and I talked about when developing The Gravity Well was, “How do we get those voices heard?” How do we bring them into the mix, into the discourse? When they really don’t, in terms of power structures, they don’t have any power. But these are the voices of the people that actually need to be heard, be it the Indigenous people, the disenfranchised, teenagers, you know, not being allowed to express their views.
Jenny: And us, quite frankly. You and I.
Alex: Yeah. Everyone in their own little compartments through intentional exclusion provided by the government.
Jenny: Thank you.
Alex: Right. Everyone’s stuck within their own little compartmentalized quagmire.
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. We’re all supposed to be against each other. And that’s the thing…let’s let’s stop for a second, if you don’t mind, Alex, and talk about. We have, you and I, are often in conflict behind the scenes.
Alex: Right. In the sense that but we’re we’re dealing with it.
Jenny: Right. We’re dealing with it.
Alex: We’re trying to confront it.
Jenny: We’re confronting it like I said to Alex today when we were preparing for this. I feel like there’s nothing with you and I that I’m like, “Oh, there’s that thing I have to deal with with Alex, that thing that I haven’t dealt with yet.” I just don’t feel that because he does a good job of holding me accountable and I am honest with him when I need to be honest with him, too. Right. We have a good and we somehow I have had many times said this to Alex. I’ve had many times where I think, “Oh, God, he’s just going to quit. There’s just no way.” And then he’ll say, “Oh, never mind. I see what you’re saying.” It’s like, “What?”
Alex: Because sometimes I just ask you to let me sleep on it. You know, you’re saying something. We allow each other enough freedom to like actually think about what each other is trying to say. It’s breathing space is really important because like as Brad Chapin was talking about. Right.
Jenny: Right. There’s a natural inclination to a fight or flight response.
Alex: But like when a person goes into a fight or flight response, they go back into the medulla, they lose their higher functioning and they get into a defensive or like a freeze or run away kind of mindset. Right. It’s like a monkey brain for lack of a better word. And I think one of the benefits to what you and I have done is especially in doing these interviews is we’ve learned from those people in their respective fields. And, I can see the indicators. Let’s take a 15 minute break recoup just enough enough time to kind of think about what the other person is trying to say rather than how. I’m going to respond, or how you’re going to respond and like, because when you go into the fight or flight, you just stop listening and you’re automatically waiting to respond. Then the people aren’t listening anymore in the conversation stops.
How Alex and I Challenge Each Other
Jenny:
That actually reminds me of something Ryan First Diver taught us, the first time we spoke to him was space can help us come back together. Right. Like sometimes when you’re too close to something, when you’re too charged, if you will, you need that space so that you can come back to it thoughtfully. And that’s what we’ve been able to do. And that’s not because we’re like special. Please don’t hear that. It’s that we just care enough. We think there’s we both think there’s enough importance in what we’re doing to to keep and quite frankly, we enjoy each other.
For the most part, we really are learning from each other. And and so like today I was saying we were going through this repairing and I left going, oh my God, yeah, now I understand that better. So I really feel like one thing we talked about earlier today was I said the word speculate. So I’ll pause for a second and back up and say why I said that we had a really good question from a potential guest who’s now planning. I hope to be with us in June. And so she asked a great question, which is like, where am I coming into the conversation? And more questions around like our intention and like who the audience is. And so I said the word speculate and Alex said, well, no, I don’t think we’re in speculate. I think we’re we’re still framing the problem. Like we’re still building out this half of the problem. And so I’ll stop Alex and just let you say better what I’m just saying about where we’re at in the year.
Alex: So what how the learning works from this program just so that we can help people understand what’s the baseline of how we’re stringing this conversation together. Well, I mean, we have a difference in terminology, but I think we have a similar goal. So like when I hear the word speculate, I hear it like a speculation or and or a predictive market or a predictive outcome. So like if you look at the economy, a speculatory market where people are speculating and betting on their speculations, right, versus the actual economy, the speculatory economy dwarfs the actual economy. And if you were to take the actual economy and try and pay off the speculatory debt, you’d still end up own a whole time. Right. So like, I believe more in exploration. Yes. So rather than speculation, I’m more for exploration in terms of just exploring ideas, exploring different experiences from different walks of life and trying to better understand that. Because like I’m not an expert. I’m a I’m a I’m a wealth of knowledge in many different areas, but I’m not an expert in any single one. So I’m trying to learn as best as I can from the people who may be our experts in their respective fields. Yeah.
Jenny: And and so for you, what’s interesting and I thought from our conversation today I took away is I am an explorer by designation like that’s what geologists and geoscientists are is explorers ahead of the the ideas that we put that we’ve developed. Right. We’re the ones who identify the location. Right. And and define it and describe it not just us, please hear other scientists, engineers. Right. We science is always science is all about exploration.
Alex: It’s like, right. People are still trying to prove Einstein’s general relativity wrong. They’re still exploring every other possible avenue. It’s like nothing is set in stone. And that’s the beauty of science. I love it.
Jenny’s Oil and Gas Development & Liability History
Jenny: For me, somebody who is an expert, as I was saying, I need to speculate. So to your point, Alex, I, I don’t want to be fixed in my thinking that I know all of the problems. And that’s where, you know, something that Colin Smith brought into our conversation and episode four is anybody who tells you that they know what your problems are doesn’t understand the problems that we have in this world. And yeah, exactly.
Alex: Yes. Head the hills, I’ll add if they’re saying somebody else is the problem, it’s not me.
Jenny: That’s awesome. It’s really owning that we only know a piece of this problem. You know, that’s what happened to me when I was in industry. I worked in the oil and gas industry for 22 years. And so I was trying to understand. So I’m I was an explorer, like Alex said, or we were describing and so doing development, working in that space and on the other side of the compartmentalization aisle. You know, all these disciplines over there was liability and I was so removed from it. And yet my spouse, my husband is an environmental scientist, but he could never get a job in environmental science. So that says a lot, you know, and then the the I never really got to interact with them much. And if we did, it was always like, oh, we’re trying to explore and you want us to stop and like put a well to bed like that’s boring.
You know what I mean? Nobody ever gave that enough attention. And so then I went into that world during covid. I was given the opportunity to look at that because we sold properties. I worked for a company that was a startup company in Calgary, and we sold properties in 2013, late 2013, when the prices were like $110 a barrel.
And we sold it and that was great. But I had like, oh, what if the prices fell out? What would that look like? Moment and started realizing what liability looked like. So that sort of happened just before the prices fell out in 2014. And we started a new company. And by the late 2014, if I remember right, is when the prices fell out and they dropped below $50 a barrel. And that’s what we called lower for longer. And so I became this liability person because it was something that I was aware of as it happened. And then I was just wanting to like, you know, and please hear, there’s lots of people like the Polluter Pay Federation, which are they’ve joined us on three or four episodes. We have Regan coming next week again to talk about the history of Alberta. I don’t claim to know the history and this is my problem is because I was in my compartmentalized explorer world. I don’t know a lot of the depth of the problems that we have. I only know the surface of them. And I think that’s true for all of us, right? But so we’re that’s why we’re trying to…
Alex: As a geophysicists with core samples in your history of expertise, you should know the depth of the…
Breaking Down The Gravity Well Process More
Jenny: Oh, well, this is my field, of course. So let’s move forward. We so we have the system. So we we started with why for the first two months we met with people just to describe the problem. Then in the last two months, we had we spent time looking at the framework of the of the power structure in Alberta. So we called it who’s who in the zoo, but it was all about again, this is based on the course order of operations was to look at who are the players and how do you describe it better? Alex. what’s the…
Alex: Who are the key players that is the decision makers, the ones that affect policy? And then who are the actors involved? So the actors involved are public servants, civilians, waterworks, anyone involved in in public service who are going to be directly affected by those policies, energy policy decisions get made, your gas prices go up, you know. Distribution policies or transportation policies that affects how many trains show up, you know, so that you can get to work. Policies restricting policing that’s going to affect overall public safety, you know, policies limiting fire departments from being able to respond in due course. That’s going to affect public safety as well. Then just civilians who want to, you know, maintain their properties and things like that. There’s there are thresholds that can be overextended by bad policy and the policies are the sole responsibility of the key players and decision makers and stakeholders. And we need to question whether status quo run amok unregulated is thrusting people into poverty and desperation, which is causing a whole host of other problems, starvation, crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, all these other types of things. So we want to bring these things to the forefront and question them, just not to say that we have the answers, but we at least want to bring the questions into the public discourse and allow other people to feel confident enough to be able to ask those same questions. Because, you know, politics and policy follows public voice, follows culture. So if we can give people permission to ask those questions and not feel ashamed in doing so. Then eventually that policy naturally will shift in a better direction.
Jenny: Yeah, thank you for saying it that way, because that is unfortunately part of the challenge with these conversations. So talking about the crisis, the social, environmental and economic, or and or crisis.
Alex: Take your pick, you know.
Jenny: Yeah, it’s how it looks for you. Totally.
Alex: There’s a vacuum of meaning. There’s a crisis of meaning that I think we discussed in previous episodes as well. If people feel as though they have no meaning and they feel as though they have no purpose or direction. Well, that that really is a crisis. It’s like if you got no purpose and direction, like, and you can’t do anything anyways, the world’s going to end in 12 years. Why would you do anything? Yeah, you know, depression and like disillusionment and it’s not good.
Jenny: Belonging, choice, and being good at something. Those are the three needs that we have to feel safe in society and to feel well like to like imagine, and that’s what we you and I have talked about with this. The opportunity and why Alex has been able to persist with this I think, correct me if I’m wrong, is you see the opportunity and in becoming the person that you always knew you were capable of like when I met Alex, just such a smart and engaging person, like I said, really helped me think well and think differently. So it was just, yeah, so I think that’s really why…
Alex: You did the same thing for me to the jetting like you know you extended some trust. Right. And that’s what this is. It’s a leap of faith, really. And, and, but it’s with good intention. We’re through second round, we met with. We did the who’s who in the zoo so as Alex said we’re looking at the people who are the players in in the space. So we have people and we have the power structure of people in that space. And as Alex said earlier in this conversation we want to shift the power structure from the people that hold the power right now that don’t understand the problems into the people that understand the problems, because they’re facing them. As you said, we’re seeing the, the, the edge of the, the taking that’s happening as Regan described in our first conversation with our third episode with him, which is that we have people, that we have a system that is centered around money and and media, and this information system is is representing reality but it’s not actually reality. And so we have to the, and it wants to work against us like it’s actually trying to promote information that isn’t accurate for us for our own safety so example being the climate crisis there I’ve said it, rather than calling it a social environmental and economic crisis some people can say it’s climate crisis. It’s a water crisis. It’s as you said an opioid crisis..
It’s a crisis of existential crisis. It’s a crisis of meaning, right, like I mean, you can pick your categories but then you’re doing the same thing all over again you’re compartmentalizing things right. It’s like it’s an existential crisis, like, for lack of a better word it’s like when you remove something bigger than you. Yes, it’s bigger.
Jenny: Thank you, you help me remember what I lost sight of.
Alex: It’s like, it’s like, like, for lack of being tactful it’s like, if you remove God from your life and all of a sudden you’re God and you can’t even clip your toenails. What hope do you have, you got no backup. Right. Like, people need to believe in something a little bit more powerful than themselves. Yeah, yeah, that doesn’t matter what it is. No, it could be the flying spaghetti monster it could be you know the prophet Mahmoud, it could be you know, Jesus, it could be Buddha, it could be Buddha, it could be like whatever you choose it to be that’s going to help you to understand that there are forces of play that are larger than you.
Jenny: Yeah, and, and we know them, and that’s the part that we have to own. And that, like, so we talked earlier about podcasts and what we’re hoping to be. That’s meaningful to us, which is, we want to be rooted in our mission statement, which is around restoring our environment and restoring our community. And what we’re rooting our conversations in is a commitment to understanding and making decisions that move us in that direction of a better environment and a stronger community, that’s everything we’re trying to do.
The Actions We Are Taking To Learn
Jenny:
We’re doing this in real life so please hear, as we’re having this conversation, we’re going to as Alex said to the people that are experiencing the front lines of the problems that we’re seeing, and we’re helping them get a voice so we met with twice, some groups that are dealing with gravel in their community. And you know, like my best friend who’s been very like supportive of me through the years like imagine knowing me for years Alex, this is a lot.
Alex: I was intimidated to meet her, like I knew that she was giving me the full judge eye when I met her.
Jenny: Yeah, yeah she’s such a good friend. Yes. Anyway, and so yeah she, she’s always like well why are you doing that, why are you talking to gravel people like she doesn’t. It’s a great question I said to her please know that feedback is always welcome because it’s, it’s, we’re trying to follow what’s actually happening so let’s talk specifically, where we have a water crisis not just in Alberta, but it’s Canada wide, and it’s worldwide, we have evidence we know that we’ve had times of droughts that could go on for thousands of years, let alone 10 or three years. This is something we’re all facing but it’s something that we feel locally, and it’s very hard to detect because it’s all very localized changes so that’s, I know this because I am on the Bo River basin watershed coordinating council I think I said that right. Anyway, and I get to meet.
Alex: Yeah, I’m BRBC, as well. Oh by the way, are you going to the one on the AGM on the 12th?
Jenny: I didn’t know about the AGM but I’m sure I will be there.
Alex: Yeah. All right, great. I’ll see you there. Great.
Jenny: And yeah so I’ve been going to all the watershed council meetings, Alex has been coming to some of them with me. Colin Smith who’s our collaborator in action has gone to several of them we went to one yesterday so it was the science forum. And then we went to a meeting with West Frasier is supposed to be logging our headwaters.
Alberta’s Water Crisis and Responsibility
Jenny: We have in Alberta, we have a very small stretch of mountains that serve the water for 95% of southern Alberta. And that water doesn’t stop at the border, it goes into Saskatchewan and it goes into Manitoba all the way to the Hudson’s Bay. And there are places in southern Alberta, only one river that goes into the states and goes all the way down to the Mississippi.
Alex: That’s actually that’s Milk River, where they emerged that Milk River, it crosses from southern Alberta into Montana, and splits into Idaho. And then from there. It’s not the Mississippi it’s the Colorado River right connects to the Colorado River and then the Colorado River out of the base the eastern basins right connects with all those and then it feeds 13 states from east to west all the way to the southern tip of Arizona. And then all these watersheds, watersheds actually connect, and they feed each other. So it takes like a huge amount of coordination between not only provinces and municipalities and rural areas, but also states and countries.
Jenny: Yeah, yes. Thank you. That was amazing. Thanks for that, Alex. I know nothing but here, here’s some facts and figures. I don’t know a couple things maybe off the top of my head. But no, so the…
Alex: I’m not just a pretty face.
Jenny: Yeah, these mountains are like the taps so if you picture we have a big tub of water. The, the eastern slopes are like the taps, and as we log, we’re shutting off the water as we put coal mines in these headwaters. We’re shutting off the water but we’re polluting the water for everyone downstream, and all of those things, roads, oil and gas sites.
We’ve been following people that are knowledgeable and care about community and the environment, and so Kevin Van Tighem and Lorne Fitch are, and Indigenous… we’re meeting with Harley Bastion in a month’s time, actually at the end of this month. And he’s like these are the knowledge holders of southern Alberta, and others, please hear. But in the 1870s, it was understood that we should have no infrastructure in the headwaters whatsoever. It was, it was the first declaration, anybody who’s going to live in this area, do not touch this space. This space is critical in terms of holding water in our taps. We’re shutting off the taps for not just Alberta but for everyone by all of this, taking away vegetation. We have to reverse this bus, and so that’s what we’re trying to do in real life, and not just in that area but everywhere. Like that is what is required of this transition. When we talk about this transition, it’s not an energy transition. It’s a social and environmental transition.
Alex: Well, it’s both, right? It’s like how do we, how do we produce renewable energy while protecting our headwaters? Like, and that’s, that’s quite the dilemma. That’s quite the quagmire because there’s, there’s an easy fix, the status quo, but it’s like the coal mine at the headwater wouldn’t be such a problem if you weren’t extracting gravel from the natural French drain that exists in the watershed. But if you’re going to do both, then you’re not capturing that carbon, right? And you’re not allowing the water to flow and clean itself. And then if you add a hydroelectric dam to that, right, then you’re getting stagnant water, you’re getting blue-green algae formations, and you’re getting microcysteines, and if left unchecked, at first the algae blooms are really good for the fish population.
Then eventually the algae overtakes all the water, right? And sucks all the oxygen out of it. Then it turns from green to blue-green and then from blue-green to red, and you get microcysteines. And then eventually, which are natural-born neurotoxins, by the way, right? And while it stays in the water, it’s fine, but when that water dries up, it becomes airborne. And then you get airborne neurotoxins from these algae.
Jenny: Yes, but we don’t want any of that, right?
Alex: Right. And according to the USGS and the GSC, that’s responsible for the past five major land-based extinctions, which is stagnant water. We need to keep that water flowing so it can clean itself. And we need to make sure that those gravel pits are done away from the watersheds.
Jenny: Well, or not at all anymore. Right.
Alex: You know, ideally, but I mean, geez, we live in Canada, we need gravel for the roads.
Jenny: Well, but we really don’t. Like, that’s the reality of where we’re at, is we have to stop and say, do we need to harvest? We were at this West Fraser thing yesterday, and one of the people that I heard across the room say, how much money would it take for you to not log this year? Like, and it’s only like two and a half million dollars or something, you know, not big for them to say no, you know what I mean? And the risk, yet the risk to our taps, as we just described, is hundreds, if not billions, like it could be hundreds of millions of dollars, if not catastrophic, to your point about extinction events. This is the potential.
Alex: Stagnant water is, that’s one thing, but you know, like, take for instance, the boreal forest, right, it has an average 40 year burn cycles, right, like the Dene, we’re talking about that, like all sorts of different indigenous groups are talking about that. But they recognize that, and they would like, responsibly log and responsibly use the thatch, so that you wouldn’t get these crown fires that just scorch the earth, and then you don’t get any regrowth, right? Rather than having clear cutting, we need to kind of take from what the Dene are saying, and then just kind of thin it out, grab the dead fall, build the houses out of that. Then there is, I don’t believe in win-wins, because I mean, ultimately the best solution leaves both people, both parties disappointed.
Jenny: No, no, win-wins aren’t, everybody’s happy.
Alex: But at least, at least it’s…You know, it’s like, if we were to say, like, let’s ban clear cutting, but let’s do responsible logging, we could create a ton of jobs, we could build houses, and we could prevent those crown fires.
Jenny: Well, and from my knowledge and history, there is a massive economy in wait in fixing Alberta.
Alex: Oh, dude, the boreal forest is massive.
Jenny: Yeah, we have a $260 billion economy in wait, which is the cleanup of the oil and gas industry. It’s a 25-year endeavor. Please hear when I say that. People are like, what, you want to shut us down? No, we unfortunately have to shut it down. That’s the reality of the situation. But it’s not expected to happen tomorrow. It’s expected to happen in line with what the earth can handle.
Alex: And what people can handle, what the economy can handle, right? It’s like, okay, take for instance…
Jenny: Well, but it’s all the same. In my view, it’s all, unfortunately, we’re at a place where if we don’t fix it, it will hurt people, right?
Alex: Right. You know, when we were speaking to Jerry Bietz, for instance, Big Hill Springs and that county, right? And I was like, okay, there’s 86 active wells, right, within your region. There’s two capped wells within that region. How is that directly affecting the water table right now? Right? And he was like, it’s not, because they’re so deep. They go way below the water table. So it’s not really affecting us. The prime issue right now is the gravel pits. Right. And then we started speaking about the fact that if you want to make a million bucks selling your land for gravel, you got to move 2.5 million tons of earth.
Jenny: Yes.
Alex: That’s like, my God, like really when you think about it. It’s astonishing. Like when I was speaking with Jerry, I was also saying like, hey, like the city of Calgary, the street sweepers that go around, what they do is they collect all that gravel. And then they pile it and they re-salt it and they reuse it and they resell it. So like, do we need to really like, so that was a prime example. And that’s where I…taking an initiative and saying like, maybe we don’t need to extract anymore. Maybe we just need to become more efficient in reusing it. Yeah. Well, and like you and I have said, some of the conversations around this go to, oh, well, we can’t just flip to electric vehicles and move on. Correct. We can’t. We have to stop needing to have multiple vehicles per family. We need to stop needing to drive and do everything we do that way. Right. And we need to recognize the…Yeah. Like we need like mineral mining. Like, you know, look at some aerial footage of mineral mines from around the world, you know. And the scars that it leaves on the surface of the planet.
Jenny: Let’s not stop there is is also oil and gas.
Sure. It’s oil and gas. I’m not disputing that. Right. You know, but these open pit mines are just these huge sores on the surface of the planet. Right. There has to be a more efficient way, you know. Yeah. Well, and to your point… And all these competing organizations, it’s like it’s got to be all solar. It’s got to be all oil and gas or it’s got to be all coal. It’s got to be nuclear. It’s got to be electric. It’s like, wait a second. If we just used less of each and made each of them more efficient and sustainable, you know, and competed with each other to make them more efficient and sustainable and we wouldn’t really have these like scarcity problems that are just driving the planet into the pits of hell. You know. Yeah. And I guess the way the opportunity I see is to start looking at, instead of something new, something reused.
Just refine the good technology. You know, the first electric car was called the Alexander Pope Phaeton Mark III. It was designed and built in 1883. It could drive for 30 kilometers at 30 kilometers an hour on a full charge. There was an electric car before there was an internal combustion engine.
Jenny: Yeah, it’s bananas. And like, this is the thing. We’ve gone down a path. And this is part of the problem, I think, too, you were talking about earlier, is that it’s really hard to look at solving this because we’ve been on this path. This like extractive, exploitive path for over 150 years. You know, it’s really hard for us to see outside of it. It’s really hard for us to see a different way, you know. And so we could debate that. But let’s say that for another day.
We in round one, we talked with my friend, Angela. So we talked about our saboteurs. So we learned about each other. So in a way that we can lightly give each other a nudge when we’re struggling, we can be like, I think you’re being a bit of a controller or being a little bit hyper vigilant there. So we just have a couple ways that we can sort of learn from each other. And then we talked about rules of engagement. So Melanie helped us with that. And so that was really helpful to have always this understanding of how we want to be. Well, it helped us form our mission statement. And so that mission statement is how we set the tone going into all of our discussions.
That’s our carrying every time we take that mission statement forward. That’s that statement of why we’re talking. We’re working in reconciliation, right? We’re having those conversations with the purpose of moving our solution space forward, right? Trying to understand in this, in this process of learning and educating as we’re going throughout the year. And so anyway, so that was the why we started there was to really be grounded in how do we do this well? How do we do this right? And as Alex said, we met with people even like months leading into that conversation to have that framework of like, how do we land? How should we say this? Ooh, that doesn’t land well.
Okay, we’re going to regroup. So we regrouped 100 times probably before that.
Anyway, and then I’ll just add one and then you can say another. But like, Brad really helped me with vague advice. So when he brought that concept of vague advice into our discussion, just be you man, just kill. Yeah. You’re right. Once you once you hear it, you can hear it. So what that is, is like you go into a room and it’s like, yeah, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna do carbon capture and storage. And it’s like, great. And then you walk away and go, how are we doing that? Is that happening? Wait, does that even work? Like all these questions and not there’s no actual like expectation of moving forward, right?
Regenerative farming. That’s carbon capture and storage. There we go. Yay. There we go. So yeah, so instead of being vague, we were so we have a language now with and we’re using this from the things that we learn as we learn, we’re saying we can use how what we learn to sort of hold each other in the same understanding, let’s say. And as Alex, we were talking about early on, I have this speculative approach, because I feel like I know, I know stuff, man. So I come from that place and I need to actually peel myself back and be speculative. So I when I say that word, I’m talking about me, man, like I just need, oh, what am I missing? Right? Like I need to back off and listen. And Alex is exploring. He’s just that he’s having fun. Like, yeah, he’s not there’s no judgment. He’s just like, no, it’s still it’s still an exploration. So so yeah. And then I’ll just talk about good faith. Do you want to talk about interpretation of information a bit what we learn there? Alex?
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Regan was talking about being able to source accurate media, and we kind of got into it in the episode, where it’s like you need to be able to cross reference multiple sources of media and you need to find the distinct patterns. Usually what is most obviously the lie is the pattern that’s most advertised. Right? Something that’s right, being pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed. Right? And like the truth is like, okay, so like to give you an example, it’s like, you got a picture of Britney Spears getting out of a limo not wearing any underwear. It takes up three quarters of the page. But then in the bottom right corner, there’s like a little paragraph that says, there are no international laws preventing the use of nanoproducts and skin products. And you’re like, oh, and then you never see that article again, because it wasn’t even an article is just a little paragraph, whether getting to pay what they’re getting you to pay attention to is Britney Spears getting out of that limo. and then they just sneak the truth in. So the truth is consistent, but it’s and it’s a very, very consistent pattern. But it’s typically not what you’re being told to look at. Yeah. So like when you’re being told to look over at the Middle East, what’s going on in South America? You know what I mean? Wherever you’re being like, where all your attention is being directed, totally. It’s not where
Jenny: It’s a sleight of hand.
Alex: Very slight. It’s very, very sleight of hand, but it’s also super obvious. And like Regan and I actually really identified with each other on that. And shout out to the Media Lens, you know, too, for doing their work, even around since the 90s. And they haven’t stopped. Right. And there’s a whole bunch of media organizations out there that do that. But they’re not the conventional ones that you’re going to hear about.
Media Lens is not your CNN. It’s not your CBC. It’s not your Fox News. It’s not your BBC. It’s not your Al Jazeera. It’s not the, you know, these are people independently dedicating their efforts to finding the patterns beneath the patterns.
Jenny: Yeah.
Alex: That’s one of my I’ve been doing it for a long time. And it was it was invigorating to speak with Regan about that because I actually felt like I wasn’t the only one finally for the first time.
Jenny: Well, and that’s for me because I’ve known Regan for yeah, Regan does that. I’m like, I feel like I’ve met my people when because you when it’s it’s a true quest for knowledge. Right. Regan is very committed to he operates in good faith. He operates with, you know, best intentions. And so and he’s thoughtful. Like he said, he takes two hours a day sometimes to go through the news. And that was Chris. So we had my husband and a gentleman from Northwest Territories meet with us. It was really great to talk about wildfire.
And so it’s interesting because, you know, I live with my husband and talk to him all the time. And yet I learned so much in that episode, which was just interesting because I think it was about well, for me, it was learning his language. Like he doesn’t just like when I speak to him about work. Actually, I often use the language of my work, which is why Alex is my interpreter in a lot of ways. But Chris is he doesn’t really feel that he can like he doesn’t talk in that style of work. It’s a certain style of speaking. Right. We all have it from our, you know, our acronyms or whatever that we use. And so anyway, so he talked about the concept of being incident commander.
And so that is basically like a delegation of leadership. And so it’s interesting because now I learned from him a bit about what that looks like to be able to delegate leadership. And as we were talking about earlier today, that really comes down to trust. You know, it’s really hard when you’re somebody who has the best intentions and you want to make sure that things are done well, it’s hard to know that you can hand it off to somebody and that it will be done in that way. So it’s hard to let go of that delegation of trust.
Whereas Chris, my husband, is really good at knowing to give, to give, empower people with that opportunity as soon as possible. Like that’s sort of what I heard from him is he might he likes to always plan for a worst case scenario so that nobody is set up for failure that we’re set up for success in what we’re doing. So anyway, that was news. Like I was of course I know that about him that it was neat to hear it said in different ways. Yeah. Go ahead, Alex.
Alex: Yeah. He, you know, what what he taught me was like, once you get to joint special operational command, right, when you’re trying to delegate leaders into specific operations, like it’s a whole other level of trust. And you have to be able to read your teams and their leaders and figure out which team is actually going to be best suited for which task. There’s a specific amount of pressure associated with that role because you’re a ticket holder, your command goes, you know, and you just hope that you made the right choices. You hope you made the right observations and sometimes you didn’t.
And like with our guest from the Northwest Territories, he said, Hey, you know, made the wrong call. And he had to step up and say I was a ticket holder on those decisions. I made the wrong call. So then they did everything they could to help everyone else out. Yeah, right. To make sure that everyone knew that it was like, we thought the whim was going to go that way but it went that way, you know, and, you know, like there’s, there’s, it doesn’t matter how these are the lessons that I took from not only Chris, but, but Mike Westwick, like a JSOC operator was, it’s like, it’s not an exact science, you know, the tides can turn, the winds can turn, like, you have to have humility. And you have to be able to trust in everyone around you and open yourself up to being responsible and accepting of that responsibility and owning your mistakes all the way through.
Jenny: Yeah, and he was saying that to not to not let let that ball drop right like to realize that it keeps going. And quite frankly, so we’ve also been collaborating with a group called Keepers of the Water. And they also did an episode about that those fires from an Indigenous lens. We’re trying I’m actually FYI trying to do some collaborating there so that we can come together on and some what do we how do we help everybody come together in that in these with these fires because right now we’re really dry and in northern Alberta, we were fortunate to get some rain here.
Alex: Although it’s like 100 mils on the in the eastern slopes it was really good. I am extremely relieved. I am, but we still have to keep on the ball in terms of this long term water concern and that’s the only thing that irks me is I hope people don’t think that this rainfall, although I’m extremely grateful for it and it does not take it takes away the urgent urgency. Ask me to pray for more. No one believes in prayer anymore. I’ve been praying for snow and rain it’s worked every time no one believes in it just amplifies it hey rain.
Jenny: All right, just ask me to do it. Yeah.
Alex: Okay.
Jenny: Yeah, I mean, if we could solve the climate crisis that way everything would be fine right now but yeah people just believed in it might work.
Alex: Yeah, never know.
Jenny: As long as we’re also doing regenerative farming which you offered earlier.
Alex: Oh, 100% like, you know, share seeds gather seeds plant native crops do whatever you can to contribute to the watershed and, and the groundwater.
And you know but there’s been some really good news actually from this rain like Northern California, Northern California is water table is risen for the first time in four years.
Jenny: Yeah, and it’s funny because they’re the anomaly again the other way which is just wild, but anyway…
Alex: Then Peru got way too much rain. There’s like four towns underwater.
Jenny: Brazil’s major city lost 87 people and it was massively flooded last week from a dam break. There are a lot of big things happening that are all, of course, related to what the, what we’ve done from our, you know, 150 years of exploitation, going…
Alex: did you hear about the flooding in Dubai, where they did. They tried to engineer the weather and they cloud seeded and then they got like two years worth of rain in a day. And it was cloud seeding.
Jenny: Cloud seeding isn’t new.
Alex: Right, it’s been around since the 60s.
Jenny: Yeah, so cloud seeding isn’t the reason for that, even if they did do cloud seeding that’s not the overarching reason the overarching reason is accelerated, like extreme events, like what Dixon has measured in southern Alberta, right, like extreme floods and stuff like that that are caused from our activities right with this is the
Alex: Cloud seeding included. You know, I think it’s like the more we try and manipulate nature to try and fix the problem we cause the more the more artificial the results right so it’s like artificial influences artificial results right so maybe if we just stop messing with stuff.
Taking Action To Protect and Restore Alberta’s Water
Jenny:
We have to stop messing with stuff just let nature come back. Everybody just chill, can we just back away a little bit not even a little bit, a lot. Let’s do it thoughtfully it’s a huge economy and it’ll make us feel really good about ourselves. We’ll all feel like we’re back in community instead of like you said in these silos and feeling really, you know, alone in our beliefs and things like that.
Alex: It’s either we build communities and plant seeds and share seeds and share food and revitalize these communities together. Right, or we get locked down to let nature repair itself for two years like last time.
Jenny: Yeah, this is just it. It’s gonna happen one way or the other. So let’s do it well.
Alex: Yeah, yeah, like, exactly.
Jenny: Let’s commit to doing it well. Okay, I see we’re almost at the hour Alex so I’m just going to wrap up I just want to make sure we give a nod to everybody that spoke with us.
We spoke about Ryan and our living relationship understanding with the land that was huge. Dixon Hammond really helped me remember that like stakeholders have to come first, what I mean by that is he spoke to his community first he had those hard times right away, and has always been committed to talking to his community and making sure they’re making decisions on their own land with the right intentions, everybody’s on the same page. It’s, it seems so simple and obvious, yet it’s, he’s tremendous, it just seems to come so naturally to him. We’re going to hopefully see him in June, as well.
Yeah, we talked about the urban and rural divide that we see like there’s a lot of what so the gravel groups that we’ve been talking to they feel very isolated. Nobody’s, well and it’s, it’s the way you talked about the government purposely excludes others from understanding what’s going on with them.
Alex: What are the rural needs for water, so that they can provide food and clean water and all that stuff. What are the urban needs and desires. And how can we find a way for them to communicate with each other, not by slinging mud at each other, but by saying hey like this is what we need to keep feeding you and hydrating you. And we need to know what you need in terms of those needs right like
Jenny: Yeah.
Alex: But there’s, but right now there’s no communication everybody’s just name calling and swinging mud.
Jenny: No, and it’s like the city’s taking from rural Alberta like that’s the, that’s quite honestly the way you just described it, it just occurred to me, and the city’s taking from the city please hear like I back on to what was a gravel pit to right so we’re all of we’re taking away too much again going back to that, and it’s impacting people, and instead of us dealing with the fact that we’re taking away and we can’t do that. It’s, we’re fighting each other, and are not fighting, or excuse me we’re being made to fight each other because we’re continuing unsustainable thing and
Alex: It is divide and conquer right like exactly just put the peasants against each other.
Exactly,
Alex: While we make off with the spoils.
Jenny: Yes, as Regan described we have this system. That is all this time is serving us, and it isn’t serving them please here and that’s why I can say that, you know, we need to work towards this 99% away from the 1% mentality because it helps the 1% to nobody. And as you said, this is a threat to it’s an existential threat, and we can’t move in that direction, it helps them for us to move them away from that direction too. We just need to find a creative way to convince the 1% that they can make a shit ton of money by doing the right thing.
Jenny: Yeah, just put the economy around water. Yeah, so that’s good it would be for PR to do the right thing sir. Oh my god. Yes, reports anymore you just have actual report. Yeah, like I’m not going to demonize you I’m not going to blah I’m just going to say like hey we can actually I got a great idea like let’s try this. It’s going to make a whole lot of money. You can stand at the podium and say look at how many little people I helped and but at least it got done.
Exactly.
Alex: And I, that’s my angle it’s like I’m not going to go on insulting anywhere. I’m not going to demonize is just like hey here’s a you know go ahead stand at the podium I don’t care.
Jenny: Right. Let’s get it done right. 100%.
And religion comes into this as you touched on really had a good conversation with Dwight about getting back to that conversation and remembering that we’re all just human and we’re all just trying to be feel like we have choice feel like we belong and feel like we’re good at something right nobody’s trying to.
Alex: And if they if people are in conflict, it’s because there’s something they’re struggling with or something they’re missing or something they’re desperate like there’s a desperation I don’t, that’s not a maybe fair statement but there’s a reason that people don’t do things. They’ve got a, they’ve got a void in their soul. Yeah, that they’re trying to fill with materials.
You know, but you can dump all the garbage you want into a black hole it’s never going to fill it.
Jenny: Right. Yeah, and that’s where religion comes in.
Alex: Yeah. And, like when people reach bottom that’s where they asked for God. Atheist to. Right. You’d be amazed. You know, just how many people come back to God so like, you know, that being said though it’s like, no one wants to be preached to no one wants to be lectured, no one wants to be sold a vacuum cleaner or a product. You know, they have, they have to come to their own spiritual awakening in their own course.
They have to hit their own bottom in their own sequence of events. Some people make it, some people don’t, you know, but the ones that find out, like part of the responsibility of walking the walk is, is to just be there. And it’d be like lending a helping hand and bring them up. Yeah, but other than that it’s like no you just walk the walk. And then if you’re going to talk about it at all, only talk about what you walk.
Jenny: That’s right. And that’s why this conversation is also a plan of action in real life where we’re trying to bring back people into this conversation throughout the year, be accountable to making sure that we’re following through in real life what what issues are happening and we’re trying to address them together. It’s just an effort of trying to help understand the problems that we’re seeing in this in this province, understanding how important it is in relative in relation to the rest of the world, and also just helping our communities to feel good about our friends and our lives and and feeling strong and safe again. I just want to say thanks to everybody if if we didn’t say anything specific for you, we’ve appreciated everybody who’s contributed to this so far.
I think in round three, that is where we’re talking about where we’re going so today we stopped to say where we’re coming from, and where we’re going next so we’re, we’re talking about where next, then we’re talking about what, and then we’re talking about how, no. When, yes, and then how. So we’re just working through the six W’s but asking the questions that this course gave us. And then we’re trying to match conversations like please here we’re being creative, you know we’re, we’re having a conversation and we’re allowing some, you know, wiggle room from this process but we’re always trying to at least when we reflect, we’re looking in that segment and what did we learn so out of round two, we’re going to have a summary which will say what we learned, and what we, what this framework looks like to us, Alex and I want a conversation where we figure that out offline, and we’ll put something out that we think is at least representative and then we’ll move into that from each round we’re going to have this takeaway that we’re the first round gave us our why, right, it gave us our mission statement, it gave us why we’re having these conversations, the second round gave us who are the people that we need to talk to who do we need in this conversation who is willing to be in this conversation yet should be in this conversation.
Alex: That’s the most important thing like who’s willing to be in it, you know, and like, shout out to everyone who has been, you know, shout out to Jerry beats I’m going to be heading to Biggles brings a lot this summer so I look forward to those pathways. Yeah, absolutely. Shout out to Dwight. You know we can talk about the religious things and they’re very contentious and sensitive issues and people who have faith, have a lot at stake. So those are going to be some interesting conversations coming up in round three. Especially at the end of the month, that’s going to be a particularly sensitive one.
But, like shout out to everyone who actually was willing to just kind of try and understand what we’re setting out to do. And if I could just summarize what we’re setting out to do is just try and get as many viewpoints from as many walks of life as possible, so that we can help increase the potential for a general knowledge that the public can have access to, so that they can maybe develop independently. And remember that they have the power to educate themselves and discern and analyze information under their own terms and their own accord.
Jenny: And with great power comes great responsibility.
Alex: Thank you Spider-Man’s uncle. 100%. You know, and with them a speech comes responsibility just because you’re free to say it doesn’t mean you should.
Jenny: Exactly. So and that’s, but when I say that I say that from a place of action for myself, right, I feel a sense of responsibility and I’m asking the audience quite frankly to own a bit of this responsibility. We can’t, Alex and I aren’t going to change Alberta unless we get people in this conversation and in action in the right direction here.
And we’re, as you can see, we’re working and flexing to come together in our in our knowledge and desire for good here. So thank you again to everyone that’s contributed and we’re looking forward to more looking forward to Regan next week and everybody who’s stepped up for this next round.
Alex: Thanks again, guys. God bless.
Jenny: Have a good night.