Crystal: [00:00:00] I’m Crystal DiMiceli, and welcome to the Forces for Nature show. Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom you hear of these days? Do you feel like you, as just one person, can’t really make a difference? Forces for Nature cuts through that negativity. In each episode, I interview

Welcome to another episode of the Forces for Nature EarthX Conference series, where I bring you [00:00:45] behind the scenes of my experiences during that week, and up close and personal with some of the incredible presenters. One of the most shocking panels I saw during the week was shocking because of how surprised I was with myself.

The title of the panel was Media From All Sides and it had Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, which is a right wing conservative news outlet, and David Fenton, founder of Fenton Communications, which is left wing liberal. I fall somewhere in the middle left, and I was sure that I would cringe at whatever Chris Ruddy had to say.

The opposite happened. Both men were to introduce [00:01:30] themselves briefly before kicking off the panel discussion, and Fenton took that opportunity to have a ten minute keynote about the climate crisis and the dire need to stop all fossil fuels and how we’re all going to burn in a fiery hill. Those were my words, but that was his sentiment.

A few minutes in, and I was like, oh my god, Guy, you gotta stop. He was discrediting himself before the panel even began, by coming off as an extremist. He talked about wanting solutions, and even during the panel how he wanted the two sides to come together for solutions, but he seemed to only be accepting of the solutions that he put forth.

What made it worse was that Chris Ruddy was level [00:02:15] headed and pragmatic. He accused Fenton of fear mongering, and I found myself agreeing with things that he was saying. I mean, I wish that level headedness and pragmatism could carry over into Newsmax, but that’s not gonna happen. The part of the reason that it won’t may be explained by what Jurian Camp, the facilitator, said at one point.

He’s also a journalist, and he said that if, quote, I focus on the problem, I have a bigger paycheck. The media system is broken, but that’s another discussion for another day. I do have in my notes that Chris Ruddy did say that hurricanes are less in number and severity now than they were in the past, which I don’t even know [00:03:00] how he could come up with that, so he did not convert me, of course.

But if you were to put a neutral person in front of the two of them, people would have certainly sided with Ruddy. Everyone I spoke to afterwards did. David Fenton felt closed off to solutions, other than his own, at least to me, but very much unlike my guest today, who has spent her life looking for them.

Eleanor LeCain is the creator of the Solutions Summit, an event where she brings together some of the brightest minds and boldest thinkers whom she calls solutionaries. These are people who not only come up with amazing, game changing ideas, but also work directly with [00:03:45] decision makers who can implement them.

The Solutions Summit is a culmination of Eleanor’s 30 years of work in hunting down solutions to our biggest challenges. From climate change to democracy, economic security, and health, she’s built this platform to get these solutionaries and policy makers in the same room, ensuring that these life changing ideas don’t just stay ideas, they get turned into reality.

In this conversation, we dive into her personal journey, the evolution of the Solutions Summit, and some of the most actionable climate solutions out there right now. Eleanor has such a powerful perspective, flipping the script on climate change as this overwhelming problem. And instead [00:04:30] seeing it as one of the biggest opportunities of our time, the way that she frames it.

I can’t help but want to agree.

Hi, Eleanor. Thank you so much for joining me on Forces for Nature. It’s so great to have you.

Eleanor: Wonderful to be here. Crystal. Look forward to our conversation.

Crystal: I’m so excited to have met you here at EarthX this week because you work on the Solutions Summit and I love talking solutions. First, tell us what is the Solutions Summit?

Eleanor: Well, Solutions Summit is kind of the culmination of 30 years of work I’ve done around a treasure hunt for solutions that can help make life better. And what I did was [00:05:15] pull together the best of the solutionaries, I call them, visionaries with bold solutions that are really impactful, and bring the best of them together at the Solutions Summit.

And one of the things I discovered in my work was that often the solutionaries who knew what to do didn’t have the power to implement the solutions. And at the same time, those who do have the power to implement them were not aware of what were the most impactful solutions to actually be working on.

So what I did at the Solutions Summit is I brought the solutionaries. together with the decision makers that could implement them so they can engage with each other. And the idea is by doing that, we can [00:06:00] identify what is really going to help us, and then make sure that they are accelerated in implementation.

Crystal: And there were four

Eleanor: main categories, right? Right. In four categories, I have a four day solutions summit. Uh, each of the days was climate, then democracy, economic, Security and health. So those are the four topics, and obviously all four are interrelated. So I wanted to have the four of them close in time together.

Crystal: And all are incredibly important, but I’d like to hone in on the climate solutions that were discussed. Did any really stand out to you?

Eleanor: Absolutely. And in fact, that’s one of my [00:06:45] objectives with the Solutions Summit was if we could come up with the top three or four actions in each of these areas that would really be impactful, and then try to get as many people focused on those solutions as possible, working at the local, state and federal level, so we could accelerate implementation.

So on climate, for example, I could share with you what we came up with on it. Number one was to recognize that this need to go green and to decarbonize is the greatest opportunity for business creation and job creation in the history of humanity. It’s a phenomenal opportunity and too often the [00:07:30] mindset is, oh my god, this is too big, it’s too hard, it’s too expensive.

And yet, we can flip that around and go, what an incredible opportunity. And it’s going to generate many trillion dollar industries coming out of going green, the renewable energy industry, the electric vehicle industry. All of those things are business opportunities and job creation, and we had one solutionary at the summit, Gil Friend, is an advisor to businesses on how to become more sustainable.

And just one of his clients, who he showed how to be more sustainable, figured out the math around it, and they said, when we [00:08:15] implement what you’re advising for greater sustainability, it’s We will generate additional revenue that’s greater than the current total global revenue of the company. Oh, wow.

They would like more than double in size.

Crystal: By being sustainable.

Eleanor: By being sustainable. So there’s massive opportunities here and I think we need to have an opportunity mindset, not a crisis mindset.

Crystal: Are these ideas just ideas in theory or are any? on the ground now in practice.

Eleanor: Totally on the ground. Like Gil Friend is already advising companies on this.

And I went by the way in 1990, I was invited to speak at the first environmental conference in Japan. And I spoke about this [00:09:00] idea of the greatest business and job creation opportunity in the history of humanity. And then the Kyoto Businessmen’s Association invited me to talk to them. And I, it was like Toyota and Mitsubishi and all these big Japanese CEOs.

And, um, I said, here’s what you can do. Here’s the opportunities. Here’s just some of the opportunities that we see. And then they sent me on a, the Shinkansen railway to go speak to the parliamentarians, the Japanese Diet, to say, what are the policies that the government can follow that will spur the creation of this whole green industries that are coming.

That was in 1990. So we’re talking. 34 years [00:09:45] ago. Um, so did they make those changes? Yes. Some of them did. I mean, look at Toyota. I had like the, it’s become the best selling cars in the world. And why do people want them? They’re fuel efficient. They’re inexpensive to run.

Crystal: Very simple things, right?

Eleanor: Exactly. So some of that’s already happening.

And in job creation, you say, these just ideas, or is it really on the ground? So, There are twice as many people in the United States now working in the renewable energy industry than work in fossil fuels. It’s 3. 3 million people working in the renewable, industry. and they’re growing faster than the jobs in the fossil fuel industry.

So it’s absolutely [00:10:30] where it’s headed. So, yes, these are very much on the ground, and, um, another example of what we can do, you know, the first one is understand the opportunity here. The second thing we need to do is stop the subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. So right now, globally, there’s About 7 trillion given in subsidies, direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industries worldwide, according to the International Monetary Fund, that is putting our foot on the gas and exactly the wrong direction.

We need to decarbonize not release more carbon at a [00:11:15] minimum. What we need to do is stop those subsidies and create more of a free market level playing field. And by the way, even with the 7 trillion subsidy support to the fossil fuel industry, The renewable energies are still less expensive than fossil fuels now, even at that tremendous disadvantage.

So we should at least move to free market, stop the subsidy, or even better, take those subsidies and shift them and redirect the subsidies to the creation of the clean, green energy and the clean, green economy.

Crystal: A gentleman last night was actually trying to tell me that coal is subsidized, but not oil and gas.

That’s not correct. Who was saying that? Yeah. Someone [00:12:00] from

Eleanor: ExxonMobil, maybe?

Crystal: Um, he, he used to work for some oil company and as I was about to, like, interject, uh, somebody else came over to the table and sat down and like stopped a conversation, but I was like, wait a minute, man. Like,

Eleanor: no. And I

Crystal: even know

Eleanor: that.

Right. You, you are right. You are right. And in fact, I watched the congressional hearings with the heads of all the major oil companies at Congress, and they were talking about the subsidies made by the United States towards the fossil fuel companies. And one of the members of Congress said to them, gentlemen, would you please tell me, your companies are making record profits.

Now, and you’re making huge amounts of [00:12:45] money. Does your company really need subsidies from the American taxpayers? Or would you be profitable and be fine without them? And every single one of them said, yeah, you know, we’d be fine. Oh, it’d be fine. So um, they don’t need it, but they use their money and their power and their influence to get the subsidies from the government, make their, uh, make their investors even richer.

So it’s, it’s not necessary, um, and it’s really putting heavy foot on the gas pedal in the wrong direction.

Crystal: Absolutely. You know what I’m realizing? We, we need to take a step back. Um, because you brought up what you did in [00:13:30] 1990, tell me, how did the Solution Summit come to be? Like, what have you done? What’s your background?

Eleanor: Oh, that’s great. Uh, before I get to that, can I tell you the third solution? Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. That’s all right. No. So one is mind shift to opportunity. Second is stop subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The third is shift as rapidly as possible into renewable energy. And we, we have plans. For every of the 50 states and 145 countries around the world on how to shift to 100 percent clean green energy by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University has put that already together and we have Uh, some countries are [00:14:15] already doing it.

There’s nine countries that are 98 to 100 percent renewable energy already. So this is entirely possible. It’s starting to happen. We have a lot of the technology and know how we need, and what we need is to absolutely accelerate the current trend. It’s moving there, but we need to move there faster given what’s happening with the carbonization in the atmosphere.

So that’s number three. Is moved to a hundred percent renewable energy. So to answer your question, how did this happen? Um, it’s been a great adventure for me. I, uh, I actually, uh, was doing consulting for Boston Edison on. How to [00:15:00] conserve energy, how to have greater energy efficiency, and I had a wonderful time doing that, and they invited me to stay on.

They said, Oh, you’ve got the qualities we want in management to bring the company forward for the next century. Would you stay on in a management role here? I thought, oh, this is a cool six figure job, I’m gonna get a nice house, buy a nice car, take care of my daughter’s education, have a nice vacation. I thought, oh, and then I had a dream that night, and in the dream was this woman with long red hair speaking, and she said, you may think you can become a manager in your company.

And you [00:15:45] can, but what you will find at the end of your days is you have become the captain of the Titanic. This was in your dream. This is in my dream. Oh, wow. The challenge of our day is not to rise to the top of existing structures, but to create new structures. that allow human creativity and love to flourish.

Crystal: And so everyone can rise.

Eleanor: So everyone can rise. I’m adding that. No, absolutely right. So I, I, you know, I’m not Carl Jung, but I got that, understood that message. And I went in and said, thanks, but no thanks. I’ll finish up this project. And I didn’t know where it would lead. But I did focus then on [00:16:30] what are the breakthrough solutions that are showing the way to a better America and a new world.

And I, that started me on a treasure hunt that’s been going on for 30 years now. And what I’ve done career wise is advise candidates and elected officials on what are the solutions you can have. Your program when you’re a candidate, what you’re going to say you’re going to do when you win, and your, your way of governing when you’re in office.

I’ve been an advisor to people in office. So, last year I realized the United States was in such a crisis situation in, in many ways that, you know, I can maybe help five or [00:17:15] ten candidates a year get elect. I said, even if I do ten and they all win, it’s not going to be enough. So I said, I’m going to take the best of what I know and the best solutionaries in these four areas of climate, democracy, economic security, and health, and make it available to every elected official.

Every candidate at the local, state and national level, every citizen across the country, and I’m going to give it to them all for free. So, that is the genesis of the Solutions Summit. So, it’s my gift to our country, uh, about here’s a pathway forward that we can all get behind and actually we can solve all these crises and, and here’s how.[00:18:00]

So, I stepped forward to do it, I brought the solutionaries in, I connected with the decision makers, I got invited to broadcast it from the U. S. House on Capitol Hill. Pretty amazing.

Crystal: No big deal.

Eleanor: No big deal. And then I brought in Republicans and Democrats and Independents, and the head of the National Governors Association, Governor Spencer Cox of Utah.

He, uh, participated and, uh, brought together the solutionaries with the decision makers to say, this is what we need to do. Let’s accelerate implementation. Excellent.

Crystal: Thank you for doing that.

Eleanor: Oh, it was a great

Crystal: pleasure. Now what I love to do most on the show is. [00:18:45] Like, I’m, I’m on board with all of those three things that you said.

What does that look like for the individual? What can the individual do, what can the listener do to take advantage of any of those things in their everyday life and choices?

Eleanor: That’s a great question. And before I answer that question, may I add one fourth? It’s one of my favorites. Yeah. But I’m slipping it in here.

Please. The fourth bold solution that would help us with the climate crisis is expanding public transportation. So if you look now, the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is in transportation. So we have to address that area. And, uh, [00:19:30] we have to both reduce the greenhouse gas emissions for each vehicle, And we need to reduce the number of individual vehicles that are on the road.

So in terms of the first aspect of it, we’re well underway of shifting from gas powered to electric powered vehicles, and that’ll help. Obviously, we need to get green energy into the grid and the electricity, so when people charge up their batteries, it’s being charged from renewable energy. But that shift is well underway.

The piece that is not happening Is the reducing of the number of private vehicles on the road. Here’s where there’s a tremendous opportunity. And that is expand public [00:20:15] transportation. So people are not so dependent on having an individual car. They can use public transit to get what they are. So now we have, for example, about 5 percent of American commuters use public transit to get to and from work.

We need to triple that. to 15%. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be 15%. And then we should triple it again to 45%. So, huge opportunity there for expanding public transit. More money in, make it cleaner, more modern, more efficient, well staffed, commuter friendly.

Crystal: I think there’s also, um, There needs to be a culture shift [00:21:00] or a mindset shift with public transportation.

I think these people have been so disenchanted for so long that it just doesn’t work. They, they, they need, they need to be reassured that it’s coming on time. They’ll get to where they need to go, you know, easily enough.

Eleanor: I totally agree with you. And you’re talking to me. I live in Washington DC, not too far from my house some years ago.

There was, you know, commuter train crash and, you know, and sadly some people died from it, but you get on the train now and I go, it’s kind of like going to Disneyland. Like, this is an adventure. Will we actually arrive?

Crystal: Arrive alive?

Eleanor: So, I totally agree, but it’s a matter of attention and resources. So, [00:21:45] And this is something, by the way, my husband works on, safety standards for public transit and also training for the transit workers so they are trained in safety and know what to be doing and really making sure that they are safe to ride on and comfortable and getting newer equipment.

You go to Boston, the public transit system in Boston, Some of those trains are 40 years old and a lot of the tracks, so it needs to be modernized. We had trains that went faster a hundred years ago than we have now, like with some of these Amtrak trains. So we were right out front in building the Transcontinental Railway, but we kind of got, fell behind here.

So, um, but [00:22:30] anyway, so we have, we just need the attention on safety, on training, and money for the capital equipment. to really modernize the whole public transit system. And that’s where, that’s where we need to have collective action through government, because that’s at the scale of what government can do.

As an individual, you’re going to go to your car if you have a car, because it feels relatively more safe and convenient. You cannot, as an individual, build a monorail system that’ll get you faster where you want to go. That’s a collective government decision and that needs to be done. So that circles back then to your question, what can we do as individuals?

[00:23:15] So one of the things we can do since transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, with transportation we can drive as little as possible. We can drive an electric vehicle or a hybrid vehicle instead of a hundred percent gas powered vehicle. Uh, and we can push our elected officials.

to build more public transportation. And, uh, so it is both our lifestyle choices that we make, as every dollar we spend, we’re helping to create the world that we’re in. Um, and it’s our vote and our voice as a citizen to get what needs to be done through government to be done in the right direction. And, [00:24:00] So, asking for more public transit is good, and driving our cars less is good.

You can have bicycles, you can do walking, you can, like I live in a place where it’s ten minute walk to a metro station, and we drive our car like once a week to the co op to go food shopping. You can design your life in that way. So that is one set of things we can do as individuals, um, and in terms of renewable energy.

You can do this so much happening now with like solar panels in your house or geothermal and really what we can do is we can turn each home into a power generating station. So if you have, geothermal or solar [00:24:45] power, and you’re using less than what is coming in and being collected. You can generate that excess and often sell that to the power company, like, so this creates now a revenue stream for individuals, not only can you do the right thing for the environment, but you can make money doing it.

And that starts to get some of the money flowing into the people taking the right direction in their own lives for reducing carbon emissions.

Crystal: Thank you so much. That’s great, because I really like the takeaways. And what was your panel about? Remind me.

Eleanor: Basically climate solutions and its connection in with government.

Crystal: Was anything [00:25:30] else talked about that? Would be good to add here.

Eleanor: Well, I think, you know, that question always comes up. What can I do? And that is really the key. So there’s some of those individual lifestyle things we talked about in terms of getting renewable energy, getting out of your car and into public transit or bikes or, uh, using Cars that are less, uh, you know, more electric vehicle as opposed to gas powered.

So those are some of the key things individuals can do. Of course, light bulbs, uh, and energy efficient appliances. Most people don’t realize your refrigerator is like a huge energy hog. Uh, so, and there’s people here at this [00:26:15] conference, a woman came up to me and said, we have a thing now that will.

dramatically cut the energy demand from your refrigerator. No, your

Crystal: existing refrigerator.

Eleanor: Yeah, exactly. So, uh, yeah, so that was one of the things we talked about, but we gotta look for candidates who are running for office who support this clean, green economy shift and use that vote. And vote for people to get into office who will support these kind of community and nationwide changes that we need.

We need a national renewable energy electric grid that will be able to absorb the renewable energy sources that are starting to pop up all over the [00:27:00] place. We don’t have a good national transmission system yet. That’s going to really be very important. And so we need to vote people in on that. And I just encourage everybody.

Whoever you are, wherever you live, please vote and, uh, we’ve got an election coming up in November, which is extremely important and I do want to say President Biden, whatever you may think of him, has passed the most impactful climate legislation in In the history of the country and anywhere in the world, he is really given a big blast to help move us in the right direction.

So we really need to keep on that track and keep going [00:27:45]

Crystal: and to that note. Um, so what he passed was the inflation reduction act. where you can get paid back for making your home and your life more efficient, and greener.

Eleanor: Right. And part of that IRA bill that you mentioned is the tax credits if you buy a hybrid or electric vehicle.

It’s like up to 7, 000. if your car is made in the United States or enough of it is made in the United States. So there’s a lot of incentives out there now, right? Incentives, yeah. Incentives for solar panels and centers for going geothermal in your home and centers for driving more. Um, uh, less polluting vehicles.

So it’s, it’s a big push out there to [00:28:30] move us in the right direction.

Crystal: This has been great. Eleanor, thank you so much.

Eleanor: Oh, it’s my great pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And if people want to see the recordings, the Solutions Summit is, uh, go to YouTube. To Eleanor McCain YouTube channel, and I’ve got the recordings of all four climate, democracy, economic security, and health.

They’re all up for free on my YouTube channel.

Crystal: And the book that you already have.

Eleanor: Yes, that’s right. I have a book called Breakthrough Solutions with an introduction by the Dalai

Crystal: Lama. Yeah. Very cool. All right. Eleanor, thank you for all that you do. You’re making a difference.

It’s clear [00:29:15] that the solutions to our biggest challenges is. including climate change, are out there. And Eleanor believes that with the right people and strategies in place, we can make real, lasting change. What I love most about her approach is the idea that these challenges are actually incredible opportunities to build a better, more sustainable world, and that each of us has a role to play.

Not only what we can do individually, but how we can push for broader systemic changes too. In the show notes, I’ll include some links to organizations that email out petitions all the time. In my opinion, this is a great first step in pushing for systemic change. What are some other things that you do?

Send me a note and let [00:30:00] me know.

Don’t forget to go to forcesfornature. com and sign up to receive emailed show notes, action tips, and a free checklist to help you start taking practical action. Do you know someone else who would enjoy this episode? I would be so grateful if you would share it with them. Hit me up on Instagram and Facebook at Becoming Forces for Nature and let me know what actions you have been taking.

Adopting just one habit could be a game changer because imagine if a million people also adopted that. What difference for the world are you going to make today?