Andrew Revkin

I would write a letter to a kid in West Cameroon, and he would write back.

And it took weeks, and it was a crinkly letter, and I never met him.

And now you can kind of connect with people, and that all...

Through my blogging, at the New York Times, I was doing my regular reporting, but I launched a blog in 2007 called Dot Earth.

Which was all about what you were just describing, the newest sphere, the connected world.

That's a term from a Russian guy, an early Vernadsky and a French theologian and scientist, which is so interesting, Teilhard de Chardin.

They had this idea in the early 20th century that we're creating a planet of the mind.

that human intelligence can foster a better Earth.

And I just became smitten with that, especially meeting kids in Istanbul slums who are on Facebook, looking at connectedness, what can you do with these tools, which is what drives me with my work now.

But then there are these counter-currents that if the connectedness can cut back, it allowed...

Al-Qaeda to recruit, use decapitation videos to recruit distributed, disaffected young people into extremism.

And there's lots of, these systems are not, they're just like every other tool, right?

They're just for good or ill.

And the efficiency thing, the economics of the world, which I also wrote about a little bit, you know, late 20th century, it was so cool that everything became so efficient, right?

that our supply chains are just in time manufacturing, you know, getting the stuff from where the sources of the material are to the car factory and to get the car to the floor just in time for someone to buy it.

And everyone got totally sucked in by that, including me.

It's great, you know, super efficient, cheaper.

And then COVID hit and the whole supply chain concept crumbled.

And one of the big lessons there, hopefully, and this is relevant to sustainability generally, is efficiency matters, but resilience matters too.

And resilience is inefficient.