American environmentalist Dr. John Francis discusses the importance of understanding the connection between our relationships to each other and the environment.
By Paul Kilpatrick, 18 May 2010, www.sustainabilitytelevision.com
INTRODUCTION
Talk about relativity. Dr. John Francis has been asked this question before by people who did not realize they were asking the man dubbed “Planetwalker”. A walkable distance for Dr. Francis is unimaginable to most of us.
Thirty nine years ago Dr. Francis, living in California at the time, was so upset by an oil spill in the San Francisco
That initial day of protest back in 1971 turned into a lifetime of activism and included a remarkable 17 years of self-imposed silence along the way. A year or so after giving up travelling in motorized vehicles, Dr Francis often found himself arguing with people about his reasons for walking. He decided to try being silent and listen rather than argue with people over his choices. He found the experience profound and once again, one day of silence turned into two and so on until an incredible 17 years passed before Dr. Francis spoke again on Earth Day in 1990.
Along his amazing foot-powered, silent journey travelling across the United States from coast-to-coast and down the length of South America, Dr. Francis earned threes degrees, including a Ph.D. in Land Resources with a focus on oil spills. His Ph.D. work led him to a job with the U.S. Coast Guard writing regulations for managing oil spills. He was named a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environmental Program in 1991. Dr. Francis wrote a book about his extraordinary 22 years of walking called “Planetwalker: How to Change your World One Step at a Time”. His website can be found at: http://www.planetwalker.org/
“Even more difficult for me to understand is the burgeoning feeling of something spiritual and sacred in the ordinary act of walking. I start to feel that each step taken is part of an invisible journey, for which there is no map and few road signs. I am not sure I am prepared, and the discomfort both frightens and excites me.”
– Dr. John Francis from “Planetwalker: How to Change your World One Step at a Time”
INTERVIEW
PAUL KILPATRICK: I’d like to get your thoughts on something I’ve heard you talk about, and that’s to do with communication; about how our communications with each other impacts our relationship to the environment. I’m intrigued by that.
JOHN FRANCIS: I think as communication goes it actually involves a whole relationship with each other. The ‘environment’ to me has changed from just being about pollution, loss of species, loss of habitat and those things that we traditionally think of as environmental, to include human rights, economic equity, civil rights, gender equality, and all the ways that we relate to each other because if people are part of the environment (which we profess to be) then our first opportunity to treat the environment in a sustainable way – or even to understand what sustainability is – is through our relationships to ourselves and each other. How we treat each other manifests itself into the physical environment around us.
So it’s not a surprise that we have issues of pollution and we have issues of sustainability and those things that we’re now looking at and trying to address. But we do have to address those issues. Not only do we have to try to save the rainforest, and try to prevent and clean up pollution, but we also have to try to address the root causes of those problems. So peace - world peace – is a very important part of what I feel is really environmentalism. And I mean peace in a dynamic sense; that it’s something that we create together. We don’t just impose it on someone and say ‘this is peace’. It’s a co-operation; it’s where we respect and we listen to one another. We cooperate with each other, and in that sense it has to be a dynamic force that’s in the world.
So if we’re disconnected from each other, we’re disconnected from the environment. Is that an oversimplification?
FRANCIS: No, I think that’s true. One of the ways that I experience that is that when I’m walking across the United States
I also notice that there are no other people walking on the road now where there was a time when everybody did, or would move across the road with horses and wagons at a very human speed.
I’m presently walking back (I’ve already walked to Cape May , New Jersey from California ) across the United States west back to California Ohio
I’m sure that I could have counted on my hand the number of people that walked from one town to the next, which was maybe 10 miles. But even farmers – whose job it is, whose livelihood it is, to work on the land and in the environment the way that they do – would not have the time because of how life is, to walk from their farm to the town. There were very few places where that could happen. So it seemed as though the earth was crying out for that touch and people were crying out as well because nature is all around us, even on the highway, even beside the road.
In some instances though, there were communities of Amish still using horse and buggy to get from one place to the next, and in those instances you could still feel that there was a connection to the environment that was still happening in that place. But it wasn’t in every place…it was very spotty.
So that development was very clear to you in the 21 years since you’d last been through that area?
FRANCIS: Yes, there just been a huge amount of development that had gone on. Because in 1989 when I walked there were no places to stay, there were no motels. And then when I went back malls that had sprung up at the intersections where the roads had come together; and now there was a need for gas stations, motels and other businesses, shopping, and fast food places that we see all across the country now.
I thought a lot about that on the drive in [Vancouver to Seattle
FRANCIS: Yes, and we talked about that here [Living Future Unconference], about the human size communities where people can actually get around using their own power, whether it’s a bicycle or walking. It’s very difficult for us to imagine that, coming from a large city. As I walked across the country I purposely avoided large cities until I got to where I was going. Once I got to my place I could get a bike and ride around, but as I walked I preferred the smaller towns so that when I lived there I could walk and get around as opposed to a large city; sprawled out, dependant upon public transportation which sometimes either exists in some degree or is non-existent in others. But for me at that time I didn’t use any public transportation so it was walking, and as I said, I could use a bicycle once I got somewhere.
So in the bigger cities, is it that much harder to connect with other people than it is in smaller towns?
FRANCIS: Well, in some cases it is. But some cities may have a different tone, like in New York and Manhattan New York New York
So that doesn’t apply to every big city.
FRANCIS: No, it doesn’t apply to every big city and I think that would be a mistake to say that. But I can say for Los Angeles Los Angeles
So in that 21 years since you were last in Ohio
FRANCIS: I think the environmental consciousness has grown greatly. When I first walked across the United States, to say that I was walking for the environment or anything like that, it would be like I was out on the outer edge, or the fringe would be the proper term; ‘you’re on the fringe of society’. Today, we just had the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, which started because of an oil spill in 1969 in Santa Barbara
So I think that the consciousness has absolutely changed. The fact that there is someone or a group of people who are in the process of putting together a sustainability network [Sustainability Television]…you know, it wouldn’t even have been a word that we would have used when I first started! [laughing]
And not that long ago either…
FRANCIS: Yes, so at least now we’re having the conversation. I don’t have the answer for everything, or hardly even for myself, but I believe communication is a creative process where we all get together and we actually agree on what it is that we’re all trying to understand and communicate. And communication is also how we live; it’s not just in words.
There has been a lot of research about how approximately 23% of what we might communicate is through verbal means and the rest of it – or even more – is communicated through non-verbal means. A big preponderance of that communication, besides the visual cues that we give one another other when we’re talking (winking, nodding, hand gestures and so on), is in how we live our daily lives and that people learn and teach each other. So we’re always looking at one another and looking at how someone else is doing what they’re doing and how they’re living and how that works for them. Because we’re also living as well, other people are watching us. We’re learners, we’re students, and we’re teachers all at once, which is I guess the optimum way that we can all be learning and teaching each other.
What’s really important is our interaction; more important than reading it in the newspapers, more important than writing a book, or whatever else it is. Now, it’s an important thing to be able to write a book, but the most important thing is our authentic self and our authentic communication and our relationships to each other. That beats all of the words. We use words sometimes to hide from the truth, or to hide from ourselves, or to hide from what’s going on. But it’s very difficult to hide from our authentic self when we’re being authentic with each other.
What do you think about the new forms of media that we have out there now (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc). There has been a rapid change in the media in the last few years with the internet and social media. How do you think they influence or shape our communications?
FRANCIS: Oh wow, yes. We’ve watched the responsibility of journalism being wrestled from the control of a few into the environment or realm of the many. Now there’s the positive and negative of all of that. So it all remains to be seen how all that plays out, but I think it’s a wonderful change that’s happening that no one could foresee. We don’t yet fully understand the impact that it can have, but I look at it as a wonderful change. And while I am not a Facebook person because it seems that I don’t have the time because of all the other things that I do, but other people do it and other people put me on Facebook and they say ‘this is what John is doing’. I have a website which is very different than the immediacy of Facebook and Twitter and all the other social networking tools, but again…they are tools. The real change is not so much that technology, but in how we are going to change and how we are going to use it. That’s where I think the empowerment is. Yes, it’s in the technology but the empowerment comes from within us and how we use that technology.
It’s an exciting time with the new ways we can communicate and the speed with which we can communicate. It’s a little overwhelming at times, but it’s exciting to see that you can have grassroots movements where people feel empowered to communicate. In Paul Hawken’s book “Blessed Unrest” he highlights many efforts around the world of grassroots organizations, which is really uplighting and exciting. I’m really curious to see what happens.
FRANCIS: Well, we all are. We just had an election with a president who’s very savvy with the new communication tools. Because of the political process and the conservativeness that is within both parties at that time, they were just blindsided by that. They had no idea, no clue. It was almost like a badge of courage at the time for someone to say ‘I don’t even know how to turn on a computer’. That’s not what we want to hear. But because that’s what everyone’s doing [using new communication tools], at least you should understand it before you put it down. Even if you don’t want to put it down, but you just want to understand it. We don’t do or use everything that we can when something new comes along. When a new technology comes along you might say ‘I think I’m going to let that one go’. Not to say that there’s something wrong with or that you don’t like it, it’s just that you go into a store and there are all these things for you to get and it’s like ‘I’ll take this one, I’ll take that, and oh, that one looks so interesting…but I can’t afford that right now, but it’s really an interesting thing’. And then we can talk to people about it in a very constructive way, just to understand the power and the empowerment that the technology brings with it.
With the speed now that we can now put our thoughts and our ideas out there, it’s almost as if you don’t have the forced discipline that you might have had in past years where you have to sit down and write and think about what you want to say. I guess there are pros and cons to that…
FRANCIS: For me, after having spent so many years, say 22 years of walking and slowing myself down and 17 years of not speaking, and allowing myself to catch up with who I am – or go back to being who I am – because it seems like it’s such a race and things are going so fast and you have to get something done, or you have to be somewhere. Well, just being here is an important part of learning about place and learning about who you are. So having done that, I feel comfortable just being here. And I feel comfortable with letting you do this. I know you can do that. I’m going to be really comfortable with Paul getting out there and Tweeting, Facebooking, and all those things because there’s a place for all of us in this and if we can respect each other and what each of us brings to this big table that we’re sitting around, I think we’ll be more effective in making change happen. Everyone has their journey and their place and what they’re doing. When we’re listening to one another, can we hear an idea that we didn’t necessarily have, or we didn’t know about or thought about? Can we listen to that idea without feeling defensive, without thinking ‘that’s not what I believe so I won’t listen’. If we can do that I think we can really expand our lives, and learn and teach and continue to expand. We can get to that place where we can change that paradigm of ‘us and them’.
In 1971, you were profoundly impacted by an oil spill. And we now have the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico . How is that affecting you now to see the same kinds of things still happening 39 years later?
FRANCIS: Well, as I mentioned before, a lot of what happens to us when we’re looking at the environment and we see pollution, climate change, loss of species and habitats, and all those things are brought about by our inability to love, respect, and cooperate with each other.
There is a tremendous hidden cost to our carbon economy (the coal, the petroleum, etc.) that the average person just doesn’t have to think about when they’re filling up their gas tank. And I’m going to say that we are all part of the problem, so we all have some responsibility there. That’s a good thing because with that responsibility comes an empowerment to do something. Each person has this responsibility, but each person has this power to do something that will have an effect.
But I’m not ready to give up riding in cars now. I’ve done that so I know that you can do it. I think there are going to be people that are also going to do that (well, that are doing that!) I get emails from people saying that ‘I’ve given up riding in motorized vehicles and I walk everywhere and I ride my bike and I’m doing okay’. But even then, we can’t do that and say ‘well, I’m against people who do use motorized vehicles’, because we’re all going to be getting from the economy no matter how we stand in it; no matter how we relate to it. We’re going to be getting some benefit from people who do continue to do that. And so even when we stop, we have to realize that we’re still part of it and not to take sides; that ‘I do this and you don’t do this’ thinking.
But we can all make great effort to conserve, because without conservation, technology is going to be overwhelmed. Even as we create and new technology comes in that will help us live together and live more sustainably, we can’t live the same way we have been. Conserving the environment and rethinking our relationship to the environment so that we’re each empowered to understand and to act as if we are interconnected. If we’re acting as if we’re interconnected then we don’t look at people as outside of us; as others we can go to war with or whose resources we can take because the cost-benefit for us is acceptable so that these lives can be lost because we’re not paying their full value or we can pay less…or whatever it is.
That in itself is a great shift that we have to make, and we are making it. We’re all here together and no matter what we do, we’re really interconnected. To understand and start treating each other accordingly; to revisit and redefine what environment is to include us all. We need to revisit and redefine what our energy policy is to reflect that.
I know we’re not going to stop using petroleum anytime soon, but we can really conserve and we can make a concerted effort to look for alternative ways. If we practice conservation and redefine our environment and our energy policy and become part of that political process that does that…if we do those things with the same passion that we pursue happiness, then we’ll make such great changes on our planet.
We also need to redefine what it is to be an American. Being an American…means working and cooperating with each other. Respecting each other. And as we make those changes, that will go out to the world and that’s how we’re going to change the world; by changing ourselves. It’s not going to be legislated. It’s going to be something we find within ourselves.
We light our light; that light illuminates. Someone else lights their light; that light illuminates.
Other Dr. John Francis links:
Dr. Francis TED talk: “John Francis walks the Earth”
WGBH interview with Dr. Francis
http://www.wgbh.org/programs/programDetail.cfm?programid=12
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