Nate Hagens

You just start talking and communing.

Dare I ask if you have some vision and plan on how that might be accomplished, either in Colorado or in the United States or in communities around the world?

So what you're suggesting is that we, well, first of all, we look at forests as dollar signs for the most part.

The Vanguard is looking at them as carbon and the ability to sequester carbon.

But you're saying an even wider boundary is looking at them as part of your living systems management.

You probably maybe watched the podcast I did with Anastasia Makareva on the biotic pump and how she...

pretty compellingly to me argued that trees are not only important for storing carbon, but for also the managing the water cycle, as you've just mentioned.

So can we, like, is this actually a conversation that's happening in the state of Colorado that has a lot of trees?

How can sustainable forestry support this idea of managing for water rather than just carbon?

And is that conversation changing?

So it's not dependent on what's happening in the world.

No.

I mean, a little bit, but it's mostly dependent on what people have done to their local ecosystem and improved it and steered it in a little bit better direction.

I want to get back to the science and actually what we can do about this, but let me ask you this human question.

Do you think it's possible in communities across our country, the United States, and broader, maybe easier abroad,

that people can view their wealth and their meaning and wake up in the morning and be excited about what they do to do something like you just described, to help regenerate the plants and the soils so that our community, our little region here, our watershed,

gets a little bit more water every year and is more resilient to times ahead instead of the individualistic, you know, cultural traps that we're in now.

Do you think that culturally that could happen with the humans alive today?

I think it is happening.

Actually, I think, Brett, the truth is that when I would stop and someone was in the ditch, I wouldn't be thinking, I better stop because I want him to help me in the future.