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Changemakers from the grassroots are the most inspiring people out there, but they need the right support to do their job well and make our home planet much better. Nick Mucha, Director of Environmental Issues and Strategy at Patagonia, talks about his latest book that explores how to empower intergenerational activism. Together with Corinna Bellizzi, he explains how to use art in elevating small actions against climate crisis and what it takes to boost skill-based volunteering. Nick also discusses the danger of monetizing public lands and why the smallest communities will be adversely affected by such a decision.

About Nick Mucha:

Nick Mucha is one of the editors of Tools to Save Our Home Planet. He serves as the Environmental Capacity Building Director at Patagonia. In this role, Nick leads Patagonia’s efforts to focus and deliver strategic grantmaking support to Patagonia’s grantee organizations while enhancing the effectiveness and durability of nonprofit partners. His work is born out of a deep appreciation for the vitally important role that nonprofit organizations play in tackling our most vexing environmental, social, and economic issues. Nick has 15 years’ experience leading conservation and community development programs throughout the world. His interest in this work was born while he and his wife served as Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras from 2004-2006. From that experience Nick founded his own organization supporting coastal communities that were grappling with booming surf tourism in southern Nicaragua. After running that organization for 7 years, Nick served as Director of Programs for Save The Waves Coalition with a focus on protecting surf ecosystems worldwide. Nick holds a B.A.in political science from UC Santa Barbara. Outside of work, Nick is usually serving up dad jokes to his three kids or scheming to get in a quick surf, trail run, or weekend adventure off-grid.

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-mucha-95a6964

Guest Website: https://www.patagonia.com

Show Notes:

• 00:03:02 – Nick’s Journey To Environmental Activism
• 00:07:56 – Motivation And Inspirations Behind The Book
• 00:14:03 – Helping Activists Avoid Burnout
• 00:23:26 – Making The Book Fresh And Relevant
• 00:26:32 – Protecting And Supporting Public Lands
• 00:33:07 – Supporting The Noble Mission Of Patagonia
• 00:40:19 – Picking Your Starting Point And Taking Action
• 00:52:54 – Taking Care Of Yourself
• 00:56:57 – Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

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Empowering Changemakers: A Conversation With Nick Mucha On ‘Tools To Save Our Home Planet’

Welcome to the show where we explore paths to regeneration of the planet, of our systems and of ourselves. As part of our commitment to environmental regeneration, we’re proud to collaborate with forestplanet.org. We’re planting a tree for every new subscriber, be it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and also on our newsletter at CareMoreBeBetter.com. That means up to four trees could be planted for you. Now, to date, we’ve already planted 8,400 trees roughly so far this year with our aim to reach 20,000 by year’s end. For all our long-time readers and brand-new subscribers, I just want to thank you for being a part of this journey.

I’m thrilled to be joined by Nick Mucha. He is the Director of Environmental Issues and Strategy at Patagonia and the editor of a new book, Tools to Save Our Home Planet. A Changemaker’s Guide. With over fifteen years of experience in conservation and community development, Nick brings a wealth of knowledge and passion to environmental activism. His journey from serving in the Peace Corps in Honduras to founding a nonprofit in Nicaragua and now supporting grassroots organizations through Patagonia has been driven by a deep commitment to empowering communities and protecting our planet. He is at heart an activist. Join me in welcoming him to the stage.

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Nick, it’s so good to have you here.

Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here and to join you.

Nick’s Journey To Environmental Activism

I’d love for us to get started by having you share a bit about your journey to environmental activism. What ultimately inspired you to dedicate your career to this?

My journey started as a commercial insurance broker. Funny enough, I was mindlessly coming out of college and trying to figure out what does it means to be an adult in this dizzying world. I had an opportunity to be in commercial insurance, and not really thinking about an enduring impact that I might leave in this world. I jumped at it, and I did that for about a year before I realized there’s much more to life for me than this. In that moment of considering what else I can do?

That was when I enlisted in the Peace Corps along with my wife. That was really my first instance in my life of devoting myself wholeheartedly to making a small change in some place in this world. I did that for two years. That was transformational for me, obviously coming from the corporate environment to living in Honduras in a very rural environment and having literally every hour of every day be focused on how can I meaningfully show up?

How can I, in some way, shape, or form, make a difference towards something better? Changing the status quo towards a future that’s more livable for all. That was revelatory for me. It was intoxicating. I realized that this is the life that I want to live, one where I am truly squared up to doing something of use and of benefit beyond just my paycheck. That unlocked for me just a journey, a circuitous journey that has been, not without its bumps and bruises, but has led me to this point.

At every chapter, what I’ve considered is what I’m doing right now, all that I’m capable of, or is there more? In doing so, am I able to have a greater effect? I’m more than happy to walk through any part of that journey, but that really is what has led me to this point of just every day imperfectly as I do, showing up to try and make things a little bit better than yesterday.

Your story resonates with me because my father also served in the Peace Corps. He did so in Brazil, really in the jungles of Brazil, and was busy digging ditches for things, just ensuring people had hospitable spots to live, because there were so many challenges with the water that they would drink getting contaminated with wastewater and things like that.

Doing some simple hard labor to fix some of those drainage challenges was really important. Given that he had an undergraduate degree in architecture and also botany meant that his unique skill set really came into play there. He also spent roughly two years like yourself. I think that’s a typical term that growing up hearing those stories, he also really helped me to understand and reflect on the power of helping other people, and what that did for his feeling of purpose. The fact that it was almost like an addictive thing, because then how do you go back? How do you do something that’s just a day job from that point?

You’re speaking my language, and clearly his stories had an effect on you because look at what you’re doing.

This is just a side gig in a way, but yes, absolutely.

That’s in its own way, affirming of us telling our own stories. It’s worthwhile. I would love to have a cup of Brazilian coffee with your dad at some point to hear more about that.

Perhaps some jungle chocolate. At any rate, he has many stories to tell from that experience. When you get a simple injury in the jungle and it’s five days by mule to the nearest hospital. No, things can get a little rough and stories along those lines, too.

You live your life, and you adjust your risk tolerance accordingly.

Motivation And Inspirations Behind The Book

That’s for sure. He definitely didn’t do that type of stuff while I was a young girl. By that point, he was working as a landscape architect. You settle down in other ways. Now, I would like to explore first some of the inspiration behind this book. I’ve had quite a few Patagonia authors on this show. From The New Fish when I interviewed Simen Saetre to The Blue Plate when I brought on Mark Easter and Swell with Captain Liz Clark. Just a few of the authors we’ve had on have come from Patagonia Press.

Each of those books really is about change makers and their own way, and one on how you can make the change from everything you eat on your plate, The Blue Plate, eating in a more sustainable way. I’d really like to know what the motivation was behind releasing this book and the intention that it’s meant to serve so that people can get a better idea of why they’d want to pick it up. Frankly, I think you all will want to pick it up. It’s a beautiful book, and what they can hope to gain from it.

You rattled off some impressive authors there. I’m humbled and honored to be a part of that chain. I think this book really is inspired by our commitment over the past 40 years as a company that has been very intentional about how we support the grassroots movement. Patagonia has been funding grassroots organizations for over 40 years. In that experience and in those relationships, it’s become all the more evident that grassroots activism, grassroots organizations are where really durable change can take place.

The story of Patagonia as a funder started right around the corner here from where I’m sitting in Ventura, California, where the Ventura River back in the ‘70s was being proposed to be channelized by the Army Corps of Engineers. It was looking like a done deal. However, there was a young activist who showed up to, oddly enough, a surf movie premiere here in town and made the case to a bunch of hippie surfers that this was an issue worth caring about.

As surfers know, the river’s health actually affects the surf break where the river mouth dumps, because that’s what transports all the sediment and the sand. Obviously, water quality is impacted by that. This graduate student, Mark Cappelli, rallied basically a bunch of otherwise like head in the clouds surfers. They showed up to a city council meeting that Mark Cappelli showed and made the case for the Ventura River still being healthy and not suitable for the Army Corps of Engineers project of that nature. Ultimately, they prevailed.

That was a real eye-opener for Yvon Chouinard, who’s the founder of Patagonia, that if one person who seemingly didn’t have resources, who wasn’t a formal or known entity in this world, if he can do that. Isn’t that the definition of power and change? That kicked off our relationship with Mark Cappelli. Opened up an organization called Friends of the Ventura River.

We gave him a desk and a telephone here in our Ventura offices. We gave him checks, but we also gave him additional support that enabled him to grow and strengthen as an army of one, but then others. That has become a 40-year journey for us, where we have our commitment to the 1% for the planet. We are giving 1% of our sales every year in the form of donations and grants to nonprofit organizations, starting here in the US, but now globally in all of our global regions.

That goes back to your question is why did we do this book? Thirty years ago, we realized that, yes, giving grants to these organizations is important, but what else can we be doing as a funder, as a brand, a uniquely positioned brand to support grassroots organizations and the work that they are carrying forward? In response, we created something called the Tools for Grassroots Activist Conference. Sorry, this is a long-winded response here.

No, I think it’s absolutely relevant. People need to understand the roots behind it. It’s just causing me to create new questions to ask you. Take a deeper look.

We started the Tools for Grassroots Activist Conference, which convenes upwards of 100 of our grantee organizations for a five-day intensive retreat where the grantees and the organizers, and the activists that are convened go through the fundamentals, fundraising, communications, lobbying, and strategic planning down the line.

You’re jumping me into another question, and I want to just bring it in right now because it’s right there. Essentially, what you’re saying is that the way you’ve organized the book is the way that you organize these five-day live sessions?

It is built off of that foundation, yeah. That is why we wrote the book was seeing how effective this conference is, but only being able to really offer that up in a small hundred groups at a time. This was our ability to package the top-line learnings and takeaways from that and disseminate it at large. That is my long answer to your question of like, why did we do this, and how it’s organized?

Helping Activists Avoid Burnout

You do have your own essay towards the beginning in the introduction, “Dude, F this I’m done.” Which was very relatable. It’s a short little essay about basically how to avoid burnout, I think, like, “You’ve got to be doing something that drives your passion, and how do we do that? How do we do it together? “Do you want to talk a little bit about that contribution to this book and then also perhaps a particular story from it, because it’s so essay-driven? There’s a ton of relatable stories, but one that just means something personal to you.

My little piece at the front where it really is my expression of why I am doing this job here at Patagonia, and how does it relate to this work? The answer is that, as somebody who cares deeply and has already said, I want to use this short life of mine to improve places and the people that depend on places. How do I do that? After fifteen years of devoting myself to that work, I was finding myself like burnt out, and the nonprofit sector is it is million beautiful things and inspiring things and an affirming experience, and is hard. It’s like this grind.

A million beautiful and inspiring things are happening in the nonprofit sector.

Non-stop startup culture. People seriously, if you understand working in high tech, high pressure environments, you really do understand what it’s like to work in almost any not for profit, where it’s like you’re constantly encouraged in a way to burn the candle at both ends because you’re not given more resources, but you’re often coming up with great ideas. It’s like, “Fantastic. Who’s going to do this thing?”

You get into the habit of raising your hand. Even just making those ideas yourself and then going, it has to be executed. How do I get to help me with this? Not really having, let’s just say this built-in ability to ask for help when you might need it. Like, even just volunteer hours, if you could find someone to support this initiative that you’d like to build. I think we start to just take too much of it internal, at which point the recipe is for burnout.

Very well said. It’s hard work, but people pour themselves into it because it’s very clear that they need it, but the resourcing and the incentives are difficult. Through that, I realized that I wanted to take on this role at Patagonia to help Patagonia answer, and continue answering, that question I referred to 30 years ago. How do we show up for this space, for the nonprofit sector, for the change makers out there, so that they are not, as I was, saying, “Dude, F this, I’m out.”

Help must be provided to the changemakers in the nonprofit sector so they will not get burned out.

How do we enable them and equip them to have the preconditions for maximum impact? That was what my little piece was all about, and it really has come full circle. I’d say are there are so many essays within this book that, frankly, they all speak to me. I had the great privilege of working with these authors to pull this together. Each time I would talk to somebody, be like, “This is the one, because it’s so relevant.”

I would say one that really calls out to me would be, I’m looking at my book right here in real time, is Annie Leonard, who ran Dream Piece, has an opening essay called Activism as a Lifelong Journey. I think that what this offered me was just this realization. I think I have enough years under my belt where I’m seeing this play out in my own life, but it’s not this one-directional, like there’s a beginning and an end to this work.

As I noted, I started off in the Peace Corps, and then I ran my own organization down in Central America, and I’ve worked in a variety of organizations here in the US, typically leading the programmatic or organizing functions. It has been a journey. I see that there is a cyclical aspect to this. Even over the course of a lifetime, how do we continue to refresh and regenerate and ask ourselves, “Based on my experiences and based on the world around me, how am I going to show up? What are the things I want to invest my time and energy into?”

Letting that be a restart for you, like over and over again, there is no end to this. What Annie said in that essay, this isn’t verbatim, but when you’re young, you think of this as a sprint. You’re going to just pour yourself into this work. You’re going to be the most effective change maker known to man, and you are going to do it yourself, and then you get a little bit older and you have a couple more years and realize, “This is a marathon. I need to pace myself because otherwise I’m toast.” As you get towards the end of this journey, you start to realize that it’s not a sprint or a marathon, it’s a relay race.

How do we be the stewards of the work and carry it forward, but also make sure that we are passing the baton to the next generation of leaders and change makers in a way that imparts our knowledge on them as well. I was really captured by that notion of this being a relay race and that baton passes, yes, to the younger generation, but it’s also to your neighbors, to your colleagues, to your aunts and uncles, like who are the other people that you need to pass that baton to get them in the race as well?

I was touched by that piece. I did get through all of that first section of the book. For me, the things that jumped out were this clean reflection, because it was an astute awareness that Annie Leonard shared just behind it, and the understanding that you aren’t able to do it alone. You will not be able to do it alone. There’s no such thing. We do need to take the climate emergency seriously, that there is a path, and that sharing in that journey is also important.

I have often seen, especially of late, that the stories that get coverage are often the new young activists. Even in the success of those new young activists, like Greta Thunberg, as for example. There’s also this moment’s reflection. I saw, for instance, the video capture of Jane Goodall and Greta Thunberg’s first meeting. When you see this, you see recognition from one person to the next. They’re generations apart, but each comes from this divine activism, this core strength of their own. You could see recognition on some very deep level, almost like soul to soul between them.

I feel like that is something that we need to bring forward more. There’s wisdom, of course, and the long experiences of those who’ve been at it for a long time, and everybody in between. This is a crisis that we all need to be a part of, not just the few. Each person can come at this from a variety of different angles, which is what’s well demonstrated through this book. I will say in that first section, you also have the undemning of the Klamath River, which is very recent. This happened in the last year, and there are still more dams yet to be crumbled.

You talked earlier about the Army Corps of Engineers, and this got me thinking about the fact that most of those dams have been built with subsidies, governmental subsidies by the Army Corps of Engineers. There has often been almost like, there’s this inborn budget built in. The Army Corps of Engineers is paid to maintain these things. Therefore, they just stay, they stay even in the face of crumbling infrastructure and a lot of new projects coming their way to redo a complete dam because they’re unpopular.

Even if it is supposedly green, it does destroy ecosystems, and we have more awareness around that now. The fact that the Klamath salmon is coming back so quickly is it shows us that we can make an impact, we can make change, and our ecosystems can return to a normal state at the same time that we can make way for new dam builders that are more natural, the beaver. I’m thinking about in particular in Northern California and our watersheds here, the work of Brock Dolman, who is persistently advocating for beavers and their reintroduction into areas.

Making The Book Fresh And Relevant

As we dismantle dams, guess what? More beavers are coming into these areas, too, and they’re creating these natural estuaries that help fish species to survive and thrive. Our ecosystems can be more complex. We can sequester more carbon on Earth, have less cement overall, and everybody’s able to get to that greener future more quickly. I also want to point out in this first section, there is Leah Thomas, an article she did specifically from her perspective as the intersectional environmentalist.

The Held versus Montana case. The reason I want to bring these things up is that they’re all very recent. The book is current, and it felt almost like as it was going to press, you might’ve been inserting new essays. I wondered if you could talk about the process because there is quite a bit in here. Even in that first section, much of it is still newsworthy.

I’m glad that’s the experience you have. That’s what we were aiming for. There was a book that preceded this called the Tools for Grassroots Activists book also put out by Patagonia Books, but that was back in 2016. I think it was when we published that. The job in front of us, what happened was over five years ago, we sat down to be like, “We should refresh this book. Much has happened. This was around 2019, 2020, right before COVID.”

We sat down to say, “How do we want to make this book more relevant to current events?” It took us five years to do. By the way, the world has transformed many times over in those five years. It was clear to us that we had to throw away the notion of making a couple of updates. This was going to be a net new book. Yet all the while we were trying to ensure that we were doing three things. A, keeping it timely and relevant, B, making sure that it was diverse in terms of perspectives and the authors ‘ lived experiences.

The types of issues and geographies that are represented. To that last point, be a global representation of this work because there is so much inspiration to draw from and lessons to learn from our partners all over the world. We hope that came through in this book. Certainly, like you said, some of these wins are very recent, and many of the work of the struggles and campaigns that are in here persist. You know as well as I do that this work takes time.

In some ways, the last chapter, the last essay in this book, is actually a reflection of this being intergenerational work. Aaron Hill, who is the last author in this essay, is taking that baton, so to speak, from his dad, who was a very effective advocate and activist. That intergenerational nature shows up in here too, that it’s not something, this work isn’t 10 or 20 years, it is more enduring. It lasts a long time, lifetimes.

Protecting And Supporting Public Lands

Now I want to talk about Yvon Chouinard for a moment. Founder of Patagonia. He has done some incredible things for this company and for the world. I will say there are a couple of things that really helped him in particular, and his leadership stands out to me. First is his unflinching commitment to our open spaces. Our open spaces are largely at risk.

We have the Trump administration wanting to say, “Come on in and take our natural resources, probably to the highest bidder.” The administration is called out in this book. This book felt more and more timely because of the fact that the election had been won by Donald Trump, and those in the environmental space know, “No, we know what that means.” It was not too surprising to see that national parks were essentially being gutted of their staff and of the people that support them.

I have an indirect connection to somebody who is basically leading the charge at Yosemite and has had their staff so decimated that they don’t feel they’re able to do the work anymore of keeping that park running to its capacity. How do you see, let’s say, Patagonia as a whole, working to try and go up against some of these challenges or support those open spaces through books like this, but otherwise, and I’d love your insights.

It’s really unfortunate. I would like to say that it’s unsurprising, but it’s not that there is the most formidable threat to our public lands and our basic way of protecting places here in the US specifically. It’s absolutely something that we care deeply about. We have a long history of grant-making in this space, showing up in terms of campaigns, making films about this, really pulling all the levers that are available to us as an outdoor brand to raise awareness. Hopefully, galvanize our communities towards making taking action in support of public lands.

That is particularly acute. We know that there are things happening behind the scenes. What’s challenging is that the way the information is shared is different than in administration’s past. It’s really hard to know what is going to be the next assault. All the while we are very actively considering how do we, in this moment, stand up for public lands.

How do we work with other brands and other nonprofit partners in a way that’s coordinated and focused? We are a part of coalitions like Brands for Public Lands, which is a coalition of, I want to say 80 or so outdoor brands, that’s being led by the Conservation Alliance, which is a nonprofit organization, to all lean into this moment. Make sure that the administration and the communities around us are very aware of how important the outdoor industry is. Meaning like the recreation community is around public lands.

There are local economies built upon the backs of public lands and, outdoor industry. It’s a big industry that will suffer as a result of this. In short, I would say that we’re taking it dead seriously. We are in very live discussions around what is the best way for us to use the mechanisms available to us to defend against these rollbacks. The opening of the Republic lands for oil and gas, and mineral extraction is the challenge in front of us.

There are local economies built upon the backs of public lands and the outdoor industry. It will suffer when they are monetized.

It is fresh for me. I just got back in February from Dodge Ridge. I went out there with my family to go skiing, and one of the locals gave me a tip. I said, anywhere you see on the side of the road, essentially, here is Dennis’s last forest. It’s a national forest. You can take your sled on any of those hills, and you don’t have to pay anybody because it’s public land. The very next day after I drove home was the announcement for basically closing all national parks for who knew how long.

We need to understand and respect that this is also a way in which people engage with nature. It is directly tied to our happiness. It is also directly tied to our pocketbooks. The fact is, we all pay taxes that are supposed to do things like preserve these open spaces so that we can have broad enjoyment of them. It’s one of the few things in this life that still doesn’t cost a truckload of money. I think that might be part of the reason that these things have changed to like, “I cannot monetize it.” I’m going to figure out a way to monetize it.

They’re looking at it on a balance sheet as an asset and a different type of asset. It’s an asset in my life. I look at all the core memories in my life with my family and earlier. It’s typically when I’m tapping into that deeper sense of exploration and wonder and connectivity to the natural world, which we get in spades on our public lands. To me, that’s an asset that is like one of the more meaningful parts of my time here. Unfortunately, this administration is looking at it from a different, a much more monetized perspective. It’s going to be incumbent upon all of us who understand its true value to really be vocal about that and not let that happen.

Supporting The Noble Mission Of Patagonia

I completely agree. The other piece that I wanted to bring up as it relates to this is I understand that Patagonia as a brand, as a company with 1% for the planet beyond that as well, is also supportive of getting that message out and will do so through social media and will do so in a variety of ways. I encourage people to follow the brand on different platforms.

If you’re active on LinkedIn, if you’re active on social media and other spaces, just follow the brand because you’ll be surprised sometimes by what is shared by the company. I’m recalling from when I was in grad school, getting my MBA, we did an analysis of Patagonia’s social media manually, meaning we couldn’t use another tool. We had to go through and basically code all your Twitter posts and everything else.

Try to understand what the brand stood for outside of just being outside. It was quite revealing and fun, but there was a particular limited edition pair of shorts that the company had made that basically had an expletive and a tag inside. Vote the A-holes out. It went really viral. I’m like, this is surprising, but also great. It’s just not often that you see a brand willing to do something like that. It’s part of what makes the Patagonia brand really renegade.

The fact that the brand also first talked about things like microplastics from polar fleeces. I didn’t hear about it from some outside the industry watcher. It wasn’t like they were lifting the skirt. It was the company lifting the skirt itself and then doing things like creating a bag that you could wash your polar fleeces in so that microplastics from that polar fleece didn’t end up in our waterways.

That initiative, that an educational approach to doing better by yourselves and by the planet, is something that you don’t see every day. I might have one item of Patagonia clothing, but I’ve been a supporter of the brand for a long time for all of these reasons. I really respect that he both founded 1% for the planet and has turned the company into something that will last for generations with the same ethos by changing its organization.

I must admit, as I already said at the beginning of our conversation, I came into this role 6 or 7 years ago and had only been in the nonprofit grassroots space. I had an open question in my mind as I transitioned into this company that I had been such a fan of for years and years. What will it be like when I’m on the inside of it? Will it reveal to me that this is a little bit more smoke and mirrors or is this real? I’m here today because I do believe that decision-making and values are in alignment with all the things that you just noted. It is energizing.

It is very rare.

Listen, we’re in one of those moments right now with the politics and what’s on the table as we’ve discussed. This is another moment where we have to look in the mirror and say, “What can we do about this? What are we willing to do and say in order to protect these places that are foundational?”

I had to stop shopping at REI because they seem to be in support of I’m seeing public lands at the present time. Like, “This doesn’t make sense to me. You’re an outdoor apparel retailer. What’s happening?” Even some of the brands that you would think of, or those stores that you would think are going to be in line. It’s something anyway. I don’t need to go further down that rabbit hole. If people have any interest and finding out more about Patagonia, I encourage you to read up on Yvon Chouinard and how he changed the organization of the company from being a standard S Corp to something much different to essentially ensure that his legacy lives on as he intended it, as opposed to becoming some other publicly traded company that is nothing of what it started as.

He’s definitely a handful of strides ahead of the rest of us in terms of his vision and commitment. As I said, in my small way, trying to live my life in accordance with my values. He’s the premier exemplar of that in this realm. I appreciate your words there. I did want to say one other thing, going back about three minutes in this conversation, which is that you encourage people to find Patagonia on their socials.

One thing I did want to note is in addition to that, for your readers that are interested in taking immediate action or learning more about the issues within your own communities. I do want to point out that one thing that we’ve been making available for, I want to say it’s been six years now, is Patagonia Action Works, which is our digital platform that we created to help bring our broader Patagonia community into connection with the grantee organizations that we fund. Anybody is able to go into Patagonia Action Works, you’re able to say where you are in the US, and it will show you on a map.

Who are the organizations in your neighborhood that are doing great work on healthy lands and water, or community-based work, or climate resilience, or whatever it may be? It offers up opportunities to volunteer with them. What are the upcoming events? What are the petitions? It really does just facilitate and reduce friction between those of us that are sitting at home or at work, and being able to see what things are happening this weekend in your own community that do align with this vision of addressing the climate crisis or conserving landscapes that are meaningful to you.

That now reminds me of another stride of the movement for regeneration. I had mentioned to you before we began recording that there were certain things about this book that reminded me of Paul Hawken’s work with Regeneration: Ending The Climate Crisis In One Generation. My listeners are already familiar with that work because I even did a chapterized podcast episode set of eleven episodes where I went through the book chapter by chapter and gave my thoughts and downloads, and specific action items from each of those chapters.

It was very much aligned in that it was the choose-your-own-adventure perspective of trying to find which area of activism resonates with you and then get involved with that particular one. What this book does differently is that it organizes along that grassroots perspective of these are the steps, and then here’s the example.

Picking Your Starting Point And Taking Action

It’s more aligned in process in a way while still hitting all of the same subjects for the most part, from what I can tell. How do you see this work as different? On the other way where you talk about Patagonia Action Works, that also reminds me of Regeneration Nexus, their website platform, and connecting with these different things. How do you see these as synergistic and different?

I think we did frame this book out to be hopefully reflective of the journey. The activism journey where it starts with curiosity, starts with some introspection of what do you care about. What are your values? What are the things that you’re seeing in the world that need to be addressed? Are there organizations that are already doing that work? Go volunteer with them. Put your pinky toe in the water.

See how you can help out one weekend. Starting just incrementally, ratcheting up your involvement. It is intentionally like an arc of an experience that starts with the introspection. You start working with organizations, maybe you’re leading organizations. Now you’re building coalitions. How are those coalitions coming together to support a movement?

How is that movement, then again, leaving you to a point of introspection anew and starting that cycle over again? I think that at any point in time, like we’re not expecting people to pick this book up and start on page one and say, “I’ve never thought about caring about something and doing something about it. You can thumb through this and say, I want to learn about organizing. I want to learn about lobbying, or I want to learn about communications.

You’re able to pick your starting point. I think that hopefully, if the book is structured the right way, at some point, you will have been able to read the entirety of it. Again, as I said, this is a cycle. The things that I’m passionate about and I’m pouring myself into will probably change 10 or 15 years from now. I need to restart that process and get involved anew. That’s the intent of that layout.

I will note, too, that just going through the book, I’m like, “There are a lot more people for me to interview on my show.”

Many people.

I don’t always know exactly who is doing what in particular areas. Sometimes it really is these regional stories that help you understand what your impact could be. Perhaps that’s the thing that inspired you about something somebody’s doing in Miami, and you might be in California like me. Yet you see the through line and how you might be able to apply something that’s happening there to your work.

Even if you’re in California, you’re focused on water issues, and somebody in Miami is a frontline organizer, you would think that those geographies and those issues maybe don’t connect, but there’s so much richness in there that can inform in both directions. I think we get a lot of inspiration, and we can actually learn new practices from other practitioners across geographies and across issues, which is not something that the movement is good at. We tend to get into our little camps, focus on the things that we’re focused on, and it starts to become stale air a little bit. How do you borrow from other movements and things that might be seemingly disconnected?

The section on lobbyists in particular, I just want to point people to that because I think so often, especially when we’re confronting these difficult times, and so far as our political systems are concerned. A lot of readers are going to be individuals who’ve been told to write to their congressperson or to do whatever. Now, how, opposed to just like clicking a link and doing something.

Sometimes it’s getting involved in the more local elections and getting involved in things at a different level. If you did want to go into a lobby day, what does that look like? How do you do that? How do you get in front of the people of your Senator? You probably won’t sit down with your Senator, but you’ll sit down with your Senator’s people and go through the process of pitching to them what your challenges are.

Getting to a space where you actually have that 30-second elevator pitched together so you can tell them what you’re concerned about without getting too rattled and while staying on point. All of those things are skills that you have to work at and develop, but it’s not impossible. If you’re really inspired to get involved at that level, read about it, learn from other people, and figure out what’s going to work best for you. Some of this you can do from behind a screen at your computer or over the phone, but a lot of it, getting in person, can make a better impact.

I agree. Absolutely that there’s a piece in here from Kai Anderson, who’s a longtime friend of ours. I think he’s been a trainer at 15 of the 16 tools conferences that we’ve hosted thus far. It’s a really good essay on what are the nuts and bolts if you want to get in front of your senator, and how do you engage with the staff. What’s the protocol? What’s the decorum? What do you not want to do the dos and the don’ts? To your point, it’s a very helpful guide for anybody who just wants to deepen their capabilities with lobbying and using that stage to advance the impact that they’re seeking.

I wonder if you have specific advice you would give to individuals who might be feeling overwhelmed by the climate crisis, but let’s say they’re eager to make a difference and they don’t know where to start to that point.

I’ll start with a quote that rattles around in my head always, basically in any dimension of my life, and it’s from Senator Cory Booker. I probably won’t get this verbatim right, but it’s something to the tune of like, “Don’t let your inability to do everything undermine your determination to do something.” I often feel like, “There’s no way. There’s just too much.” The zone is being flooded, as they say. The tendency is to just check out a little bit and not entertain what I can do. I think what Senator Booker and Yvon Chouinard have said time and time again is that the cure for depression is action.

Do something. Make it small. Make it almost seemingly insignificant, but it’s not. It actually begets more action. It begets more involvement and engagement. Cliche as that may be, I think that perhaps what we need to do is just lower the bar for ourselves to do something. Doing something that seems, again, insignificant is vastly superior to waiting a week or two to tune back into the news or to entertain that thought. Again, plugging Patagonia Action Works, which is a good place to turn your attention if you’re like, this weekend I should do something.

Doing something insignificant is vastly superior to waiting a week or two to tune back into the news or entertain a thought.

Let’s say that there’s a gas compressor station that’s being proposed in your neighborhood or the neighborhood adjacent to you. Figure out what something is that you can do around that issue. You can look it up on Patagonia Action Works, and it’ll let what are the petitions that you can sign or the rallies that you can attend, or volunteering at a 5K fundraiser that weekend. Those are all things that add up. It’s a really good way to take some of those initial small steps.

One other thing related to Patagonia Action Works is that we partner with a group called Catch a Fire, which there’s actually a piece in the book from an author. What this is, is skill-based volunteering. Really enabling people to think more broadly around activism. Activism does not mean you have to take to the streets and join every climate march, or go to climate week. It doesn’t mean that you have to go out on field days on your weekends. You can be skill-based volunteering, meaning whatever your skill set is. If you are a photographer, if you’re a copywriter, if you are a great fundraiser, you have business experience, you have a skill that can be leveraged to support organizations that are aligned with your values.

This cashifier enables you from your kitchen table or on the off hours to use those skills, your professional skills in support of nonprofit organizations that are doing this critical work and need support of all stripes. Those are two ways that people can override that tendency to get overwhelmed and check out. Don’t check out, check in, make it small, and maybe make it like a little bit less romantic than being out in the streets. Maybe it’s just like doing copy editing or helping somebody with their website or translating something. If you speak Spanish, you can help translate documents. All of that adds up.

It really does get the creative juices going. Now I podcast. This is part of what I do to get the word out there. What I’ll say is that so often, much of the inspirational work comes out of the arts. There are a few spots that you highlight this, like one in the book with this beautiful performance art piece on amplifying your voice. I’m just holding this up on screen for people to see that this book is beautiful.

It is printed on environmentally friendly paper, but soft-bound. You can literally review the pictures, see the people who are speaking. It reflects back on history and is a journey. I intend to keep it on my coffee table so I can leaf through it each morning until I have finished it. I will say, just as this reflection back, one of the things I do now is I’m writing more. I’m starting to write for certain publications that are focused on regeneration and publishing to them through their spaces.

The most recent one I wrote was a reflection on past podcasts where I had interviewed Tzeporah Berman of Stand.Earth and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Alliance. That podcast episode that I put into the world was heard by Donna Grantis, who is a very skilled guitarist and musician who used to play with Prince and bands. She’s been out there more recently. She has some collaborations with Dave Grohl as a for example.

For example, she’s current. She’s from Toronto. She asked me if she could take snips from this audio interview with Tzeporah and essentially build music around it and play those clips on stage at an ecological festival held in Toronto. Did that. Recorded it, released it as music, and then started building more music that she would then push out through Earth First, which is a charity started by Brian Eno to get their music into the world.

In those cases, Earth is listed as a co-author. Those pieces, then all of the profits generated from them, go to Earth First charities. There are so many creative ways to get your message and impact into the world. It doesn’t have to be just an activist shouting in the streets. We need those too but you can do it your own way. Your own way as an introvert like Donna Grantis can be this through music, through someone else’s words that she’s putting her music to.

Love that.

Taking Care Of Yourself

I feel like our interview is coming to a close. I want to thank you so much for your time. I’d love for you to share any thoughts you have of the future. How would you foresee this book being used, or just some closing words that you’d like to share?

First of all, it’s been an honor to be with you and to contribute to your body of work in one shape or form. I think the future for me is very personal. I have three kids at home, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t keep me up at night. It truly is impacting my sleep cycle. Just wondering what do the next four years look like and beyond. It’s hard. It’s frankly impossible for me to try to forecast what things look like in three months, let alone three years.

What this book looks like to me in terms of the future is I do intentionally keep it out for my kids to touch and look at and ask questions about Corinna, and hopefully having some of that, in part, that your dad had on you, telling you about his stories. Is this not going to be something that is internalized? Are my kids not going to potentially learn a little bit about what it means to like build a coalition?

If that’s just rumbling around in the background for them, does that not make them better equipped to navigate the uncertainties and the needs that we have to better organize, to find a lens that might not be immediately apparent? In closing, like Beth Cantor is talking about, really take care of yourself all the while. That notion of restoration of self is all too often an afterthought and therefore relegated to maybe a week a year. How do we embed that in terms of our routines so that we can continue showing up and taking those small actions and maybe big actions day after day?

Here, my ten-year-old is an outdoor enthusiast already. We camp all the time. We do all sorts of things in the outdoor world, and he, with his entire fourth-grade class, is on the O’Neill catamaran in the Santa Cruz oceans on Monterey Bay. Learning about our ecosystems and the oceans and everything like that, which to me, is something I continually reinforce as an ocean enthusiast, as a scuba diver, as just somebody who loves to be in nature. I look to them as the future of this activism. I think we make that imprint every time that we go off into the woods and pick up any trash that we find or take note of just the changes that we see in the environment, because we do see changes. It’s getting drier in the redwood forests, which is not lovely.

Bringing a full circle cheers to passing that baton. Yes, both to your kids, but also to the other people in your life who can take it and run with it in new and unknown ways.

That’s amazing. Thank you so much, Nick, for joining me. Nick Mucha, editor for Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker’s Guidebook. You guys can pick this up wherever you buy books. You can also get it as an audiobook. It’s really well narrated, too. I’ve been picking up pieces of it that way is what I go through and prepared for this interview. Again, thank you so much for joining me.

My pleasure. Thank you so much.

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Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

What a beautiful way to end my week, this Friday of recording. Is April 25th, 2025. I feel the need to timestamp these as time goes on because sometimes we’re a few weeks out when we release. Just to share with all of you all that we have really made a pretty serious impact so far this year from a greening our world perspective. If you haven’t already followed this podcast on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or our newsletter at CareMoreBeBetter.com, please do so.

While you’re on our webpage, I encourage you to visit the blog page for this episode. There, we will provide all of the links to where you can find this book, the past interviews that we mentioned, and resources that you can connect with. I’ll provide direct links to Patagonia Action Works as well. Thank you so much for joining me. This is a journey that we’re on together. Now until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and remember, when you care more, you can be better too. Thank you.

Important Links

• Nick Mucha on LinkedIn
• Patagonia
• Tools to Save Our Home Planet. A Changemaker’s Guide
• The New fish
• Simen Saetre – past episode – The Consequences Of Growing Farmed Salmon With Simen Sætre
• The Blue Plate
• Mark Easter – Past Episode – How Regenerative Farming Can Solve Climate Chaos With Mark J. Easter
• Swell
• Patagonia Press
• Tools for Grassroots Activists
• Patagonia Action Works
• Regeneration: Ending The Climate Crisis In One Generatio
• Regeneration Nexus
• Catch a Fire
• Tzeporah Berman – Past Episode – BONUS: Fighting Fossil Fuels and Advancing Climate Action: Tzeporah Berman on the Fossil Fuel Treaty and Sustainable Solutions
• Stand.Earth
• Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Alliance.