I believe we have a duty to act as if the truth is real, and I believe that our actions are much, much more powerful than our words. As social animals, we pay attention to what other people do more than what other people say. And I think the lack of urgent action and the lack of political engagement by the scientific community is actually quite dangerous, because it sends the rose signals

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got a great guest on the program, Dr. Charlie Gardner. He is a professor at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology. He is has a PhD in conservation science, specializing in Madagascar ecosystems. He’s also a member of the scientists for extinction rebellion. And welcome to the program.

Thanks, Matt. It’s great to be with you.

So tell us a little bit. Dr, Garner about your journey and what brought you to the environmental movement and led you to teaching and doing being an activist as well.

So ever since I was a young kid, for as long as I could remember, I’ve only ever wanted to make a difference to the natural world. I grew up in in tropical countries in Mauritius and elsewhere, and some of my parents friends were wildlife conservationists. So since I was really young, I was aware of of the environmental crisis, and I’ve ever, only ever really wanted to do something about that.

My My professional journey since actually has been a bit of a quest to find an effective way of doing something about this crisis, and so I’ve tried lots of things for a long time. I was a conservation practitioner on the front lines trying to save ecosystems and threaten species. I then moved into research, thinking that, you know, if we have big, complex problems, then we really need the information to be able to address those problems. I have tried teaching.

I’ve tried communication, writing and communication to try and bring these issues to bigger audiences. And as you say, now, a big part of my focus is on political activism, because I think this is, you know, something. It’s one area in which I feel I have some power to make a difference, both as a citizen and explicitly as a scientist.

So tell us a little bit about your work in the political domain, and what are the efforts that you’re currently working on. What do you think has been kind of most effective at moving the needle in the political domain?

That last question is, is quite a tricky one. You know what’s been effective in moving the needle? Because, of course, things aren’t going well politically across the western industrialized world, where we’re seeing backwards movement from politically, from where we were on climate just a few years ago, we were getting a lot of talk in response to largely in response to climate activism. A few years ago, nowadays, governments seem to be backtracking on their promises.

So in terms of what I’ve been doing, I threw myself into activism in response to the launch of extinction rebellion in 2018 I went down to some of the first big sort of mass actions in London, and I felt that this was something that, you know, I waiting for for a Long time, as someone that has been aware of these crisis all these time, I’ve always been a bit astonished that nobody seemed to be treating them with the urgency that they require. And here, when extinction, rebellion and youth strikes came about, here were people treating them with urgency.

So I went along just as, just as an ordinary citizen, and I was talking to lots of people there, and I was astonished to meet such a diversity of people, but not to meet any scientists. So I thought this was odd, because, because it’s scientists that have told us about these problems, it’s scientists that have the greatest knowledge and understanding, and yet they weren’t out there on the streets.

So I went back home and and I wrote a journal article for for an academic journal, saying, you know, we’re in a scientist. We really need to be acting on our own mornings. And since then, I’ve been quite involved with trying to activate and mobilize other scientists into activism. I’ve written quite a lot about this in academic journals, and I take action with scientists for extinction rebellion in the UK and also a global group called scientist rebellion. And I believe that scientists have a particular.

The power and responsibility to do more than just publish our research and publicize scientific warnings, because I believe we have a duty to act as if the truth is real, and I believe that our actions are much, much more powerful than our words. You know, as as social animals, we, we, we pay attention to what other people do more than what other people say.

And I think the the lack of urgent action and the lack of of political engagement by the scientific community is actually quite dangerous, because it sends the wrong signals. I think you know if I was to tell you now that I can smell smoke coming from up the stairs and I think the house is on fire, but then I was just to consider continue recording this chat with you.

Then, of course, neither you nor your listeners would believe me when I say the house is on fire, because my actions just don’t they just make it seem like I don’t even believe my own words. Well, I think this, to some extent, is is what the scientific community is doing now. We’ve all sort of been brought up to believe that our role as scientists is just to provide the information and to leave the decision making, leave the policy making to others.

You know, where we’re just supposed to be neutral here, but I think you when, when we say it’s an emergency, and we we proclaim that everything must change, but then we don’t get up and do anything ourselves. I think that sends a very dangerous message. So I believe that as a scientist, I just feel a bit of a moral obligation to do more, because I don’t feel that simply publishing scientific papers is an effective way to transmit the message that this really is urgent.

That is beautifully said, and in particular, the analogy of the house on fire just kind of brings it home in a very real way about how, how people perceive the the information that they’re getting from the source, and if and if the source is not behaving as if there’s a fire going on. Then, then, why should I? And I definitely get that, I guess. I guess the question is, there you you address this, but which is the neutrality of science?

And I guess in the past, generally speaking, maybe governments didn’t immediately listen to scientists, but eventually they kind of made changes in accord with science. And maybe the other piece is that we’ve never faced an emergency like this in the past, and maybe that’s also a problem for kind of just the human consciousness to really get our head around the scope of this problem.

I think you’re absolutely right. It is, you know, there is this, this expectation that scientists should be neutral, as you say, it’s an emergency. And, you know, emergency times call for emergency measures. And so it makes sense to me that that academics should step beyond the bounds of our social norms, because these are normal times.

But the other thing also is that, as you said, there is this expectation of a relationship between governments and scientists, and there is this expectation that science eventually leads to policy that’s in the public good. And you know, as you said, it’s not merely wrapping enough, but it is the it certainly used to be the case, or certainly the assumption that that is the relationship between scientists and government. Scientists have a critical role as sentinels, and you know, our role is critical to the well being of society.

The problem is, firstly, I think, that there’s an issue that the pathway from Science to Policy has never been clear and has never been straightforward. But more importantly than that is that over the last few decades, there have been private interests, special interests, deliberately trying to disrupt this relationship between scientists and government, deliberately trying to stop scientists from playing the vital Sentinel role that we play.

Of course, I’m talking about fossil fuel industry, more recently, other big damaging industries, like agribusiness, aviation, motoring, construction, chemicals, plastics, all the rest of it. But on top of that, there are. Also neoliberal fundamentalists who are opposed to government regulation on principle, they believe in an absolutely free market where governments shouldn’t interfere with environmental or social legislation. So these these private interests have spent decades trying to obstruct the pathway from Science to Policy, and they’ve done that in two main ways, firstly, by by interfering directly with the political process.

You know, donations to politicians, political, corporate, lobbying, and the amounts of money here are just extraordinary. So I can’t remember the name of is it open democracy? I can’t remember the name of the resource. But so the kinds of money we’re talking about here are just extraordinary. Data show that in an average year, or in recent years, the fossil fuel industry has given about $250 million per year to US politicians in direct donations, and another 250 million in political lobbying. So that’s just one country in just one year and just one industry.

But there’s half a billion dollars in in private money there that is trying to prevent the kinds of legislation that would limit their ability to do business. The second way that these these corporations and others have tried to to stop effective government action on climate change is by trying to persuade the public that this isn’t the urgent crisis that we say is, and they’ve done that by undermining the findings of climate scientists.

You know, through through massive, decades long disinformation campaign, they’ve also gone further and not just tried to undermine and discredit the findings of scientists, but they’ve tried to undermine and discredit science itself and and your faith in in evidence based reason and policy. And this is fantastically, fantastically dangerous.

And so there was a recent paper that was just published last week that made this case very, very clearly was it was published by a philosopher of science, and they said, If scientists are not able to play their vital role in society, then surely they have an obligation to, you know, to step up and defend science so that they can better play that role. And I very much feel that, I don’t feel that we have a level playing field for information.

I, you know, of course, I and other scientists became scientists in the first place, not because we love doing research, but because we wanted to produce information that will be useful, and if that, if the pathways for that information to be useful are blocked by special interests, then I think we have an obligation to stand up and try and open up those pathways again.

I think that’s a fascinating set of questions. Kind of arise from that, and kind of the they’re playing defense to protect their profit centers and, and, and how does one kind of get around that? And kind of, from my Eastern philosophy, kind of Tao Te Ching perspective, maybe you go around the pathways that you do have.

And one of the pathways that I see, of course, as a litigator, is litigation, so that has had some degree of effectiveness against the the industry, but it hasn’t been as effective as we all would like, because it tends to be slow, and there are a lot of cases wending their way through the court systems around the world, attacking fossil fuel companies for their pollution and scientists who are teaming up with them to attribute the effects of global warming to particular individual fossil fuel companies, which is kind of the the bingo of of litigation is causation.

So scientists and litigators are connecting the dots to the pollution Trail, which I think is one way to do it and bankrupt them essentially at the end of day, or at least persuade them through the cost of pollution, getting the true cost of pollution borne by the polluters. Now there’s multi, multi prong front. But one thing I’d like you to comment on that, but also one other thing, which is you mentioned extinction rebellion and other youth led movements back in 2018 really having some energy.

And it seems as though those kind of high energy protests haven’t really been landing. In recent years, what can one do to kind of, you know, get that fire going again? I guess it’s, it’s a tough question, because obviously, if we knew we’d we’d do it, maybe. But what do you see as kind of the missing ingredients behind that effective mass movement?

I think you’re spot on. Unfortunately, a lot of the energy that was built in that time has dissipated. I think initially that happened because of COVID 19 and lockdowns, which sort of took the wind out of our sales a little bit more recently, I think a big factor has been legal crackdowns. So countries around the world have been implementing legislation to limit the rights to to peaceful protest.

Incidentally, often this, this, you know, legislation looks very, very similar in different countries around the world, and that’s because it is part of a concerted effort. It is in the UK, for example, the the legislation was drafted by a think tank called Policy Exchange, and Policy Exchange received fossil fuel money, and they are part of the Global Atlas network of fossil fuel funded right wing think tanks. And it’s these fossil fuel funded think tanks that are drafting legislation against activists that is being enacted around the world.

So this is yet another prong on the multi of the multi pronged attack by the fossil fuel industries. So yes, I think that the energy in in mass protest movement, social movements, has dissipated. What we see in the UK is that the energy hasn’t so much disappeared as dispersed. What I think really happened with the extinction rebellion is that it brought together and empowered vast numbers of people, but many of those people have subsequently gone on to then found other smaller things addressing one small aspect of the overall problem.

So I think there’s been a splitting from large groups into smaller groups. I don’t think that’s necessarily problematic, because it means a lot more is going on. And I think it highlights to me, there’s an important lesson there for me, and I hope for for many of our listeners as well, which is that you know you, you ask what we need to be doing. You, you and I have have very, very different approaches. You, your approaches through through legislation and mass communication, through your podcast, my approach is through academic work and activism on the streets.

And this highlights just what a a huge diversity of work is needed, and really there is no limit to the kinds of work we need to be doing. So I think what’s happened in the UK is that, as I said, extinction rebellion helped its members feel the agency that they have as individual agents of change, and have gone on to go and do Lots of wonderful things in in all sorts of domains.

At the same time, we’ve not been very successful in continuing to recruit more members after that initial wave in sort of 2019, 2020, I think, in large part because, partly because of the threat of legal crackdowns, partly also because of media demonization, we have been very much demonized across the media. We have been othered.

You know, the message is, these people aren’t respectable. These people aren’t like you don’t listen to them. Yeah, don’t join them. And so it’s left us in a situation now where I think there’s, there are huge numbers of of people that are really concerned and really want to do more. They really want to take action in their own lives.

But the only options that were really given either you could work on your own personal carbon and environmental footprint, and you know, 95% of all guidance available. It’s not hard to find a blog or a magazine article listing 10 things you could do for the climate, but 95% of them are all about your own personal carbon footprint.

And I think people can can see through that. It doesn’t, I think for a lot of reasons, people don’t think that’s adequate. I think people do want to address their footprints, but it’s not enough. You know, people It feels wrong that the responsibility is down to me, to, you know, change my shopping habits when the fossil fuel companies are just doing whatever. They want, and it also it just feels so completely insufficient. You know, on one hand, you’re telling me this is an emergency and everything needs to change.

On the other hand, you’re telling me that the only contribution I can make is to take the bus. It just, it just doesn’t make sense, and yet, this is the only guidance that’s available to us. The only other thing we can see is that when people turn on the news in the evening, they can see people getting arrested in on the streets, and for whatever reason, that doesn’t appeal to them, either, you know, either for whatever reason, you can’t afford to get arrested, or you just there are identity based issues there too.

You know, I don’t see myself as an environmentalist. I’m not a hippie, I’m not a tree hugger. That’s not my thing. So I think there’s the broader climate movement hasn’t been really successful enough up till now in making a home for everybody, for making a home for the you know that 80% of our populations, or whatever, 70% that actually want to do more, because the options we’ve presented are either insufficient or too much.

What I’ve found here in the UK is that a lot of people that were involved in extinction rebellion have since gone on to work in in types of sort of community action that are more, perhaps more palatable, perhaps more welcoming and open to the mainstream, to to to newly concerned people.

And so they’re working on, on Yeah, through organizations that address climate in locally, through community based organizing, and you’re working in the places where we all live, there are other organizations trying to get people more involved in transforming their their schools or their universities or their workplaces. So, so what? So?

Yeah, I think there’s been a an important diversification away from simple, from focused efforts on disruption in the streets. I believe that that disruption was important, and I believe it is important because it raises the profile, and it’s, you know, it makes this seem as important as it is.

However, I think it’s obvious that not everybody is going to join a mass movement on the street so I’m very encouraged by the blossoming of the movement in in lots of different ways that make it more attractive and more make it easier for other people to see how they might get involved and play an important role too.

Because what we need, whilst I do think we need a radical, Frank people doing radical things to keep climate in the news agenda that will only ever be a small amount of people, and we need to make space for everybody to get involved, because this is and will increasingly become everybody’s struggle.

I think that it’s a it’s an interesting point, a number of interesting points you make about the atomization kind of of the movement. And I guess, in part, that may make the the movement stronger, because it is dispersed and and it’s harder to stamp out a movement that has 1000 nodes to it, or a million nodes to it, versus that has one node so so that it makes it hard for an authoritarian government to to stop all of it.

It also, I think, as you said, kind of includes more people in the process, which probably is is helpful, because the sense of, I know, my personal sense being involved in a in an organization that has 10s of 1000s of people in it, I feel like, Hey, am I really making a difference here, versus a much smaller organization? I may feel like, Oh, I’m part of something in which my voice actually gets listened to a bit more. So I can see that there’s value in that.

And one of the things for me doing the podcast for now the last four plus years, is seeing just the breadth of the movement across the world, and seeing how many, really, millions of people, probably 10s of millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions of people who are involved in this work in some way, shape or form. So it is. It is growing, regardless of the governmental you know, restrictions or lack of listening.

I also see the government making plotting changes in positive directions, in many cases, in California or places in Europe that are, you know, I saw an article that the fins are getting off of coal. So, you know, tell us about, about the maybe some of the good, you know, green shoots of growth out there that are heartening to you.

I think there is a lot of good news going on, and we often don’t see it, because, you know, big, bad news happens in catastrophic events. Good news happens through lots and lots of people doing painstaking work to make it happen. We, we don’t always hear it, but it’s, it’s really important that we focus on it. I’m glad you asked this. Actually, it’s really important that we focus on it, because it reminds us that change is possible.

Some of the most exciting change that I see, and it’s only just beginning, it’s only grassroots changes, but some of the most exciting changes I’m seeing it’s not a governmental levels, but it’s within, within individual communities and and organizations, both businesses and non cultural organizations, like schools and universities and elsewhere.

I there’s a lot of I think there’s a bit of a tendency in our movement to think in terms of a, you know, top down or bottom up action as individuals, we need to change our lifestyles. But of course, we need strong government action. We need governments to change the rules of the game that we all play by. What I think this misses often is everything in the middle, which is homes, our communities, our schools, our workplaces.

And you know, when we when we focus on the need to decarbonize our societies entirely within decades, we often forget that that’s going to involve a lot more than governments changing the rules. You know, every single community and every single institution and organization has to not just fully decarbonize, but also adapt to the, you know, the very rapidly changing world that’s underway. And I find this very inspiring. You know, it’s you mentioned how the importance of feeling that you can make a difference. And psychologists are very, very clear on this, right?

We need to have a sense of self efficacy. You don’t do something if you don’t think it’s going to work. And I think that’s that’s something that holds a lot of people from getting involved in incline national I’m just one of the 8 billion people. What difference could I possibly make?

And when we think in terms of, you know, trying to change our nations, then of course, it does feel impossible. Why should I bother getting involved? Because, you know, I’m just one of 500 million people in this nation. I can’t possibly make a difference when we think back, when we when we bring the problem back to a more real, a more human scale.

Whilst you might not feel that you can utterly change your nation, you can change your children’s school, you can change your street or your village, you can change your workplace. And I think some of the biggest, most exciting, most, most heartening and uplifting change that’s going on right now is this, this change that’s happening in a small way, right across the board.

So we never hear about it. It’s It’s not news, it’s not news, even at a local level. But this is where real change is happening, and it is happening and it is unstoppable. And I take a great deal of of heart and good vibes from knowing that that’s the case.

For the pivot a little bit to your work in Madagascar. And how did you get involved in in that work and and what has that work entailed?

I spent 10 years living in Madagascar, mainly helping conservation NGOs so charitable organizations to implement who are working with rural communities to develop more sustainable ways of managing natural resources, and we were doing that through establishing protected areas, so establishing parks and reserves, but that were co managed by conservationists and local communities.

So Madagascar is a very interesting place because it’s one of the world’s top conservation priorities. It’s an island, so all the species that live there are unique to that island. They’re endemic. They don’t exist anywhere else. So if they go extinct in Madagascar, they’re extinct globally, and that makes it a big priority. It’s also the world’s poorest country, and that means it doesn’t have the capacity or the resources to conserve biodiversity itself.

So. So essentially, government of Madagascar, in the early 2000s declared that it wanted to to conserve its biodiversity and and create more parks and reserves. But it recognizing it didn’t have the capacity to do it itself, it invited foreign organizations in to do so. So I worked with WWF. Yes, and a marine constellation organization called Blue Ventures, and we were, yeah, working with rural communities to establish, establish more sustainable ways of managing forests and fisheries.

It’s, it’s very different to the work I do now, which is on climate change more than on the biodiversity crisis. But it is, it’s, it’s rural people in Madagascar that I do my work as a climate activist for just as much as I do it for for myself or anyone else.

In fact, it’s, it’s the communities I used to work with in Madagascar and the the species I was trying to conserve in Madagascar, who are very much on the front lines of climate impacts now and already suffering them much more than we do here in the UK. So yeah, very, very different ends of what ultimately is, is the same problem.

Kudos to you and the work that you’ve done there. I was curious if you knew a guy named Matt Hill, who was a from the University of Minnesota, who had started, I think, a movement, a green Madagascar and they started nurseries there to protect, I think, say, 80 different tree species that. And, you know, we use that nursery to spread them around the country there.

I’ve been in touch with with Matt. I believe by email, I left the country before his his work started. But I believe we’ve been in touch, yes, oh, that’s great.

Yeah, it’s well, that’s yet another point of connection, of of the amazing people that that just have contributed to the environmental movement across the planet. And you know, Matt, I guess, was inspired by his professor back in in Minnesota, and just decided to go to Madagascar and and make a difference. So I, I think so many people are doing similar things to that.

And I certainly, I think that’s the opportunity for you as an educator, is getting your students to get to take the torch and go out there. Maybe you could give us some examples of of your students who’ve gone out there and done, done great things.

So, yeah, I have, I have students working or former students working all over the world in in a range of of different capacities. Some have remained as researchers. Others have gone on to focus on, on, on conservation practice, actually, you know, coming up projects on the ground, rather than just collecting information about the crisis. Others have left to work in policy. Some now use the arts to publicize the environmental crisis.

You know, there’s a huge variety of things they’re doing. And of course, there’s a huge variety of things that need doing. And I find, I find that idea very uplifting too, because it means there really is a role for for everyone. Each of us has has different knowledge and experiences and skills. Everyone has different reach. You know, we can influence different people, or we can influence people in different places. Everybody has, has different interests.

And I think, I think there’s often a tendency you can focus to think, right? Well, you know, I’m not a scientist, so this isn’t my fight. I’ll leave this to the scientists. But this, you know, that’s a sad thought to me, because we do need everyone, and there, really, there’s no one that doesn’t have something valuable to contribute. You may not be a scientist, but you are a valued member of your community, and you can make change there.

You are someone that has a voice in your workplace, you are someone that your friends and colleagues listen to. So I think the challenge for all of us is to to think about our influence as individuals, to think about where it is and how it is that we can can shape the world around us and influence the world around us, and then go and do that.

Yes, we do need cultivation scientists going out to Madagascar and going out to to other countries to help build capacity there and to do things in the world’s biodiverse places. But, but, but there’s not, there’s not a spot on this earth that won’t be impacted by climate change. There’s not a community that doesn’t have to transform.

And I think that means that all your listeners, and indeed, everyone else can, with a bit of thought into where they can make a difference, can eke out a role for themselves, carve out the niche which. Uses their skills, which is fun and makes them, you know, gives you a warm sense of achievement, of having done something purposeful and worthwhile, and which does make a difference.

And I think this is the big challenge for all of us now to turn the climate story from from one where, you know, it’s a challenge for experts and everyone else’s role is just sit back and wait for it to be fixed. We need to change that to a story where every single person is doing what they can in their world and feeling part of the beautiful new world we’re building together.

Well said. Yeah, I guess I would kind of say it’s a part of self actualization now, and that, you know, to really be an actualized person, one has to be really involved in some way, shape or form, in protecting our climate from a stewardship perspective, Hey, what are we passing on to the next generation?

How are we protecting what we were given and and that is a question worth asking every single day, and that answer may change from day to day though every single day for us to do something in this regard, move the ball some distance, and it will help us. I mean that. I guess that’s the message, is that I feel better when I’ve done something positive to affect this problem.

So it’s not just for society, it. It is also a personal problem too, because when we face an existential threat of humanity, how are we going to feel 10 years, 50 years down the road, whatever it is when, if we said we didn’t do anything, where were you?

And kind of going back to the Henry the Fifth speech, you know, people who weren’t on the battlefield, who didn’t contribute that day will look at back at their lives differently than those who are engaged in the struggle.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s this is something that really worries me. I think, you know, as a society, we have a mental health crisis now, but it will be dwarfed by the mental health crisis we have in future, when people do look back and realize they had an opportunity that they chose not to take, I think, but it’s not just a future issue.

So psychologists looking at mental health and climate anxiety and related things in young people find that whilst a part of the reason why they feel so terrible is because of fear of what’s coming. Another big constituent of that is a feeling of helplessness. It’s a lack of agency. It’s that I don’t feel there’s anything I can do to contribute.

And you know, Joan Byers was right when she said action is the antidote to despair, it’s by becoming involved in something particularly collective action, you start to change it from being a a big, unresolvable problem that’s happening somewhere out there, to being something that you’re starting to manage and do something about, and Even though the steps you take might be tiny psychologically, the fact that you are taking some steps can help give you back some sense of control, and that sense of agency is hugely, hugely important in in just helping keep despair at bay.

So it is, you’re right. I couldn’t agree more. We’re not. This isn’t an altruistic thing that I do for society, for or for other species.

It makes me feel better too, also kind of dovetailing on that. It creates the community that we you know, everybody is saying we have less of than is good for mental health, as well as for many, many other reasons, there’s a lack of kind of human connection these days with our internet world, and just creating more actual contact with our community members. And sense of connection improves. I know my own mental health, and I assume you know, from what I read everybody else’s So yet another reason for everybody to get engaged.

Absolutely, yeah and yeah. It’s not just, it’s not just connections with any so. So all social connections are good, always. But this isn’t just connections with with any old person. This is making social connections with the best, most engaged, most interesting and most aware people.

And importantly, it’s making connections with people that feel like you making connections with people that share your fears and share your concerns. And this is a big constituents of the mental health impact. That many of us suffer too, is that we feel that we’re suffering them alone, because nobody ever talks about this so and you know, sometimes you can feel like like, like, we’re the strange one for paying attention to all this stuff when everyone else is just carrying on their days.

You know, just apparent, seeming to ignore it all, and feel being with people that take this as seriously as you are, it honestly, it’s just good to not feel alone. It really is.

Well, it’s been a pleasure having you on the program, Dr. Charlie Gardner. Tell us all where people can find you on social media or out there in the internet and or support the causes that you’re working on.

Thanks, Matt. It’s been brilliant to chat to you. So I’m on I’m on Bluesky and LinkedIn as Charlie J. Gardner, if you are an academic, then I would encourage you get in touch with an academic activist group.

If you’re in the UK, that’s scientist for extinction rebellion, or globally, scientist rebellion in the US. It’s scientist rebellion. Turtle Island is named, do, yeah, do find me. Do get in touch. And if you’d like to talk about get your own personal, rooted activism, I’d be delighted to have a chat with you.

Well, thank you again, and great talking with you, and hope to stay connected and continue this work together, because certainly, we’re more powerful as a group than we are individually.

Absolutely thanks for everything you do, Matt, more power to you.

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