Natalie Kyriacou: I would say that we should all be a little bit more like birdwatchers. I, like that sort of gentle act of noticing the world around you. The willingness to see the world for going outside this sort of slowness and attention to the world. That birdwatching teaches us to pause and to listen. It shows us to care. It shows us that, it’s not just about one bird. It’s the entire ecosystem and everything that sustains them. And I just think it’s a really, if there’s one simple thing that we can do, it is to just step outside. Feel that wonder and, look up and appreciate it. I think that’s really important because I personally think that if we are going to protect nature to protect something, you need to fall in love with it.

Mike DiGirolamo: Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your co-host, Mike DiGirolamo, bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists and activists working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal Land. Today, on the Newscast we speak with Natalie Kyriacou, an Australian environmentalist founder of the organization, My Green World. Author of the recently published book, Nature’s Last Dance. I was provided an advance copy of the book to review, and I highly recommend it. This book expertly unpacks numerous topics we’ve covered on the Newscast, including narratives and myths about nature and how these influence, culture, society, and the natural world. It paints an unflinching portrait of the drivers of our self-inflicted ecological destruction, but at the same time offering undeniable actions and solutions we can take to solve these problems. Laced with humor, honesty and a deep fondness for nature, the book implores readers to see this beauty for what it is, how we depend upon it, and how we are abusing it. In this conversation, Kyriacou stresses some of the social, economic and cultural shifts needed to value and protect nature, which I think it’s fair to say, require intentionality on behalf of our governments, but also ourselves from how we perceive nature itself to how we consume technology, and ultimately what we as a society choose to prioritize.

Natalie, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It’s great to have you with us.

Natalie: Thank you so much for having me.

Mike: And I have to say congratulations on this book. I, immensely enjoyed the whole thing. It’s a huge accomplishment. You expertly outline this wide array of political, social, cultural and economic drivers of ecological destruction and also what we can do about it. It’s a really well told, you explained this a bit in the book, but I would love for you to inform our listeners what initially compelled you to write this book.

Natalie: First of all, thank you so much. Writing, it was such a joy. I was compelled to write it really simply because I care. This is an important topic and it’s nature is often seen as something that is quite niche. Somebody might imagine that it’s somebody that just enjoys looking at trees or likes wildlife, but it is so much more than that. It is the air that we breathe. It is the food on our table. It is our whole existence and it is heavily wrapped up in all of our understandings of culture, politics, society, economics. And so I felt it was really important to share that story, but also to try to appeal to a mainstream audience to get a nature book in the hands of people who wouldn’t traditionally read a nature book and hope that they would fall in love with nature and feel compelled to act and prioritize nature.

Mike: The opening section of the book has this really wide array of examples of how animals convene, mate, cooperate, and reduce conflict, that challenges and upends a lot of the biased assumptions about nature that people have. Some of the misogynist thoughts of Darwin and these traditionally narrow thoughts of leadership, which you note are still persistent to this day. And I love how you highlight the egalitarian and the female-led nature of a lot of animal societies such as bonobos, elephant societies, ring-tailed lemurs. What do you wish more people knew about the animal kingdom and non-human societies?

Natalie: I think first of all is that a lot of our understandings of nature and humanity’s relationship to nature are based on Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution and Darwin brilliant though he was, he was a product of Victorian era society, which deemed women inferior, so he likened female animals to wives and claims that males were superior to females. So a lot of these biases shaped his theories, and he focused almost exclusively on males or the males of a species that he portrayed them as dominant and courageous while largely overlooking women, or thinking the female of a species was passive. And so that has come to dictate our modern narratives around both species, but also humanity. I think what I was hoping with this book was, first of all to outline that these biases have persisted today, that, for example, less than 10% of the research we have on species actually focuses exclusively on female species. There’s a huge amount that we still don’t know. But also that nature is just full of surprises, of spotted hyenas where the females are the aggressors. There’s seahorses where males carry their babies, female lioness, they are central to pride survival. So by studying and understanding the wide variety of behaviors and animals, maybe we can have more acceptance of the diversity of humanity and realize that the role of a human woman is not just to be passive and weak, like the male is not just to be dominant. These are stereotypes based in biases. So I think that looking to the diversity of nature, it does help us understand ourselves a lot more, and some of the biases that we’ve been– that have infiltrated society today,

Mike: There’s a section in the book where you discuss the concept of offset markets. Specifically biodiversity offsets. And I have to note that the Australian government seems really keen on these things, in addition to private investment. And if you’ll allow me to, explain some context. I attended the Nature Positive Summit in 2024, and there was a lot of talk about these things, but there was virtually no government commitments or leadership on protecting biodiversity for its own sake. A big overarching concern I have and a lot of the experts I’ve spoken with is that this lack of acknowledgement from the government that losing the amount of nature we’re losing isn’t sustainable environmentally or economically. They, the government, so I’ve heard it say, seems to see nature destruction as necessary to sustain the economy or something that can be pursued at the same time as protection. But they don’t seem to see the ecological cliff side we’re approaching. And so my question is, shouldn’t it be enough of a financial incentive to protect nature for its own sake since we can’t really quantify its full value.

Natalie: You would think, but unfortunately it hasn’t been. Australia has been having the same arguments for decades and decades on just the most common sense things. Whether we should protect the very thing that allows us to exist. Whether it is worth protecting, what is the economic value of it, how we–and we are sort of environmentalists are finding themselves trying to come up with different ways to prove to the government and to industry why this is important. When it really is, it should be common sense. Think that in Australia, we are a victim of a very serious lobbying efforts where it is just really difficult to get anything passed through government that will protect nature because that is seen as something that comes at the expense of industry. So there has been a longstanding clash between those two, which is strange to me because industry relies heavily on nature and cannot exist without nature. And so I think the Australian government, rather than regulating, rather than having their environmental laws, that actually protect the environment, they’ve chosen to try to incentivize nature protection, which they’ve tried to do through the nature repair market. I don’t see that as being an adequate solution. I don’t really see that as being much of a solution at all. But right now, that seems to be all we’ve got.

Mike: Yeah, you note the gigantic decline of wildlife populations over the recent decades, and the extinction crisis, which is really pronounced here. We have the highest mammalian extinction rate in the world, and even for our most recognizable iconic species such as the Koala, we really seem to struggle to prioritize it. So I would love to hear your thoughts on this situation, particularly the koala where we have been promised a great Koala national park, but we don’t actually have it and it’s currently being logged. What are your thoughts on that situation?

Natalie: It’s madness. And how embarrassing for Australia, which is a country that is famed for nature. I mean, our biggest draw cards are the Koala, the Great Barrier Reef, the kangaroo people travel from all over the world to come to Australia for those very things. It is strongly tied in with our culture, and yet we treat it with such disrespect. The koala is in strife and it will continue to face–I mean extinction, if, first of all, we don’t protect its habitat, and second of all, we don’t address climate change, which as we know, the bush fires, that was one of the reasons that much of the koala populations were wiped out to begin with. The intensity, increasing intensity of the bush fires, and we have the great barrier reef that you know is experiencing year on year, it’s worst ever bleaching. It is a shame. And not only that, but we have industries and livelihoods that are heavily dependent on these things that not just our tourism industry, but our fisheries industry. It is a huge business for Australia. I found the government’s response–there’s been no proactivity, but the government’s response to these crises, really disappointing. I think that in Australia we had, we voted for the environment. The Australian public turned up and they voted for the environment. There is very strong public opinion for climate action and for nature protection, and the government has not responded in a way that I think many Australians are happy with, and when they do respond, it seems to be bandaid solutions. We need a little bit more than just a biodiversity offsets market. These aren’t systemic fixes to the problems. We need to have strong laws. We need to have a transparent government with integrity. These are things that are important, and without them, we are not going to be able to make meaningful change for the environment.

Mike: Now you detail how some, obviously not all, denuded ecosystems can recover, if not to their former state, to maybe like a new equilibrium. And you highlight this really well with the recovery of the sea otter. So I’m curious to hear what other stories of recovery do you think people could learn from as we contend with the massive amounts of human impacts that we’re experiencing right now?

Natalie: In Australia, the humpback whale, that’s a huge success story. And for us in Sydney and what we get to see humpback whale quite frequently, whereas they were, near extinction, was it four, four decades ago.

Mike (note): Globally, the population of humpback whale was estimated to be less than 5,000 by the 1960s. But on the east coast of Australia, the situation was particularly dire, where the population was just over a hundred in 1963 before the whaling industry was shut down, according to the Australian government. Subsequently, the population increased by 10 to 11% every year since then. And as of 2006, there were 8,000 on the east coast of Australia.

Natalie: And having stronger laws, outlawing whaling, and protecting these species has seen a huge rebound in the species. Now I think we have, I mean it’s a, in Sydney in particular, I just, I’ve felt like I moved from Melbourne to Sydney a few years ago, and I can feel this real cultural connection with marine life in Sydney and with whales. It’s a big deal to us. So there are incredible success stories of nature coming back from the brink, but also there’s the most extraordinary stories of people who just go to the most insane lengths to protect species. And I think that is really important to highlight and that’s what I wanted to do in the book as well. When you read these stories and the lengths that people will go to protect a species, it is just inspiring. It makes you want to do more. The women that have been–that were dangling upside down from a grate in the ground to rescue a little lorikeet, the 12-year-old girl that stands in a forest and guides adults through it to teach them how to protect it. There’s people that give up their houses so that they can shelter animals that have been scorched in bush fires. Just people that are truly extraordinary. And I think that’s what we hang on to right now because I know that there is, there’s a lot of negative stories. The success stories, they’re, few and far between compared to the stories of failures, but the people, that’s where something really special is happening.

Mike (note): Hello listeners, and thank you for tuning in as always. If you haven’t yet subscribed to the Mongabay Newscast, please do so on your favorite platform. And if you want to help us elevate our visibility, leave us a review and let us know what you think. It’s the most direct way you can help us grow our audience. But also feel free to reach out to us at podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com. We are a nonprofit news organization, so if you’d like to donate to us, you can do so by clicking on the donate button in the upper right corner of the landing page at mongabay.com. Thanks so much for listening back to the conversation with Natalie Kyriacou.

Mike: Yeah, those stories you outlined were definitely inspiring and the amount of support of that comes together when people see just one person selflessly protecting nature, it seems to have this domino effect and I found that really inspiring to read. There was a quote in the book that really struck me, and it was from Peter Bickerton and he said. Right now the cure for cancer or COVID could be going extinct. And with this in mind, don’t you think that perhaps governments would, surely they know this, and don’t you think that perhaps governments or pharmaceutical companies would be sounding the alarm and trying with every fiber of their beings to find that cure before it is lost and gone forever?

Natalie: You, would, again, you would think, but I don’t think that this mentality of how we are heavily dependent on nature. We are part of nature, has really proved for a lot of people because even the pharmaceuticals industries at the moment, the way they approach it is if they, they see a cure, a potential cure for something in nature, they just extract and extract harvest. Until that species is at risk or until that species isn’t in the wild anymore and is just, exclusively sitting in a lab. So I don’t think there is this understanding that if you pull something out of nature, it can set off a domino effect, that there are a series of relationships that they’re disrupting. So I do think that there, there is a part of a–perhaps lack of care, perhaps lack of awareness, and understanding of how ecosystems work. But I also think that we have an opportunity to change that through stories. So for example, and this wasn’t in my book, but, the Madagascar periwinkle, and that’s a little pink or white flower, found in Madagascar. But it’s now known, it’s more widely known in the medical community as the cure to childhood cancer. That little flower and the extracts for it have became the cornerstone treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia. In the fifties and sixties, those were death sentences for children. And today the survival rate is over 90% in most developed countries. I mean, that’s extraordinary. And so, I guess seeing nature is something that we shouldn’t have to look at it as something that just directly gives us value, but if that’s the way that we need to communicate it to industry for them to protect it. But I think we need to go one step further and say it’s not just about, okay, it’s we’ve got a flower here that’s, that can help us. It’s, we need to make sure that we are maintaining the conditions necessary for nature to thrive, which also allows humans to thrive.

Mike: Yeah, there is a–there’s a section in the book where you outline the debate on the financialization of nature or like its monetary value, which, we don’t have to get too deep into it, of course, but we’ve covered the subject on Mongabay before, and I’m curious to get your perspective on something. So I’m probably in the camp that tends to balk at the prospect of putting a price, like a fixed dollar amount on nature. We had–we spoke with an Indigenous economist named Rebecca Adamson, and I thought she had a really great point. She said an Indigenous economy is an economy designed to meet the most needs for the most people. So I’m just kind of curious to hear your thoughts on Rebecca’s words here. What do you think about this suggestion in terms of looking at nature in this way?

Natalie: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s really interesting. I really struggle with this too. The financialization of nature–the points that I put forward in my book from people that heavily criticized it, I put through a, range of views on this, but I tend to agree that the financialization of nature, I’m not sure it’s going to work, and also it’s icky. And I just have this feeling that we, the economy is a human construct. We made it up. It was made by, I guess a ruling class or to protect the interest of a certain amount of people. But fundamentally, what an economy or political systems are meant to do is to protect humanity, to help people that are living on earth. But if we have an economy that is not working for 95% of the global population, then what is the point of it? Genuinely, I–and it is a human construct. We can change that. It is not set in stone. So the way that we talk about the economy is, okay, no, we need to get our global population up to this and no, we can’t, protect nature because it’s at odds with the economy or–and I’m thinking, let’s…let’s change the economy. We made it up. If it doesn’t work for things like human wellbeing and health and nature and giving people enough money to be able to afford to live, then who is it working for and why are we continuing down this path? So I think that we need a little bit more than tweaks to the economy to–or financialization of nature. I, do think we need fundamental overhaul of the systems that we have sort of stood by for centuries that no longer or if ever work for the majority of humanity and nature.

Mike: This is kind of piggybacking off of this because I, and I’ve heard you talk about it, in other interviews and videos. There is this thing that you identify called conspicuous consumption. And I really enjoy talking about this topic and to some extent I think it’s very understandable for a lot of us to want to strive for the things we think this consumption are going to bring us, such as wealth and status. You outline sort of the evolutionary evidence for this, but you also outlined pretty clearly that it doesn’t have to be this way because what we’re currently experiencing is sort of what I think you identify as manufactured demand. So can you talk about this concept of conspicuous consumption and why we as consumers don’t have to participate in it?

Natalie: So conspicuous consumption. It was a term that was coined by a man named Thorstein Veblen, and he basically said that it describes the way that the wealthy display their wealth to gain social standing. So he said it wasn’t sufficient merely to possess that wealth. You have to put that wealth on display, on evidence. And so we see that play out in society today, especially on social media. Social media and corporations amplify it. It’s designer handbags who has the biggest mega mansion. It’s yachts. It is when we tie…sense of self, our self worth and our value to goods and materials. And those goods and materials obviously are extracted from nature, but, and this whole system works around that. And it’s…it creates a landscape where everybody wants more. Everybody feels that they’re not enough. Everybody has to show their worths through this sort of materialism. And corporations thrive off this and social media thrives off this. So you have, you only need to go on Instagram to see this playing out, or any social media platform. Brands can sell a lot more. Influencers will be showing off their latest purchase. You’ll have, people, that have wardrobe—have wardrobe changes multiple times a day. It is excessive. We do not need that much. And I’m not saying we sort of need to survive off one outfit and you can’t enjoy shopping and you can’t buy nice things for yourself. But we’ve gotten to the point now where we’re selling multimillion dollar handbags and there’s, microscopic handbags and mega yachts, and it is just–and this is how we show our work. And so my argument is, as idealistic as it is, that we need to challenge this. We need to challenge this culture because this culture is driving mass production and consumption to the point that the planet cannot handle it. And what if, you know, wild thought, we actually started tying our worth to things like acts of service and acts of kindness and connection to community and volunteering. And I make the example of if you scroll through Tinder or a dating app, you’ll see people that are leisurely reclined in a first class lounge or leaning against a Porsche. And I can understand that, there is, and I’ll talk to that in a minute, there is sort of perhaps an evolutionary basis for that. But it is, it’s in excess where we don’t need to show our worth through those ways. There’s other ways on dating apps and on social media to show our worth. But it has been interesting because, evolutionary psychologists, they’ve waded into this topic and there’s some really funny and interesting papers and research around comparing men who drive Porsches to peacocks, whether there’s some sort of evolutionary basis to these conspicuous consumptive behaviors. And there is a little bit because we are wired to put our best selves forward to demonstrate our fitness to potential mates, to—in social groups. The way we have chosen to do that is through a yacht —so we might be genetically wired or biologically wired to demonstrate our fitness. How we choose to demonstrate that fitness is a social construct. There, there’s nobody, there’s nothing in our biology saying you actually, the only way that you can demonstrate your fitness to a social group or a potential partner is by [buying] a yacht or having a $5 million mansion or anything like that. These are the things that society creates and so, I think that we need a cultural shift. And that’s, as we know, one of the hardest things, I think that’s harder than shifting anything else, culture and what we as society deem attractive.

Mike: You explain it really well in the book. The sort of pros and cons of social media, how it helps and how it has harmed. And you kind of, you don’t just kind of, you definitely connect the dots on how technology is complicit in ecological destruction. And your critique about what it incentivizes is very, prescient. So I was wondering if you could share with our listeners what exactly–how social media is harming our environmental systems and how people might use it more responsibly. What do you think we could all do collectively to sort of, I guess, for lack of a better phrase. Hold social media and tech companies feet to the fire on this?

Natalie: Yeah, I told a couple of stories in my book, and one was around when a couple in California, they set off a huge wildfire because they wanted to do a gender reveal in the forest. So they set off a smoke bomb and the color of the smoke bomb was going to reflect the sex of the baby or something like that, and it ended up setting off a huge fire that burned for over 70 days and it killed somebody. And so the couple ended up being charged with manslaughter and that behavior is maybe we’re seeing to…to impress social media followers. And it’s, I’m not trying to criticize individuals because we all feel that pull. It is–we are seeing more and more people that are going out or going to travel destinations and it is all geared around how this is going to present on social media, but it is–it’s creating a lot of damage. So some of the damage is environmental, so it creates bushfires or you have huge events where you’re seeing thousands and thousands of balloons to celebrate a one year old’s birthday or something like that. And you think that’s quite excessive, that carries a huge cost to the environment and is it worth it? I mean, is it worth the cost? Are you aware of the significant cost for the environment for something like that? And it’s getting more and more excessive as we consume more and we showcase more. And it’s creating this sort of loop of desire where people think it’s…things are never enough for them. But then there’s also, it has links, social media has links in with wildlife trafficking. And I made the example of the slow loris, which Mongabay actually reported on really well. Where we have lots of videos of people cuddling wild animals, and for most people they see these and they think it’s really cute. It’s not cute because what it does is often these animals have been ripped from the wildlife, kept in captivity, in, in know, in an environment where that they certainly aren’t adapted to, and it creates demand. And so more and more people then want those animals and that can set up illegal wildlife trade. And so it happened with the slow loris where as soon as a video of a loris getting cuddled or tickled. It sent that species to near extinction in the wild because everybody wanted one as a pet, and so it’s driving a lot of these behaviors that are terrible for the environment, but not just that, it’s creating a culture, I think, of deep insecurity. Social media does not make us happy. There have been ample studies of the insecurity of young women and young men who engage with social media every day. It has been connected with disordered eating. It has been connected with people that are trying to live beyond their means because they feel the only way they can fit in is to shop like their favorite influencer that has been connected with more violence, more isolation. And I think these things are the antithesis to what we should be as a species, we should be centered around connection to community and acts of service and being outside. We are meant to be outdoors a lot more than we are. And so I think social media is driving some, some behaviors that [are] really counter to the direction we should be moving forward in society. And I don’t, this isn’t meant to be an attack on any individual because I feel it too. I feel this, pressure to demonstrate a certain sort of self on social media. Or if you don’t have this item of clothing, then you know, you are not going to fit in. Or what do I need to do on social media to get more likes? It is this constant loop. You’ll never win it. You’ll never beat it. You will never be, you will never be enough. You’ll never feel enough. And that is the way the system is designed. It is a profit-based system where the people using it do not win.

Mike: You have an Instagram account and I’ve seen you post a lot of actually very good information on there. It’s really educational. So would you suggest that more people perhaps use social media in this manner, in a manner to help educate others about these issues.

Natalie: Thank you. My Instagram’s a bit loony at times, but yes. I mean, I think talk about your passion. It doesn’t, whatever your passion is that’s fine. It’s not, I’m not saying that, if fashion and shopping is a passion, absolutely do that. That’s great. But I struggle to see when I see somebody like the Kardashians and the billion or so followers that they collectively have. And then I look at pages like the Red Cross or Nature Conservancy or any wildlife and environmental charity or Mongabay and their fellow account doesn’t even come close. And I think. Why? Because it’s not, this isn’t an insult to Kardashians, but I just think who we are, it’s a reflection of what the things that we’re choosing to prioritize in society. And it would be nice if we want to prioritize this sort of, human rights, environmental care, community, friendship, kindness, then those things should be reflected in who we follow online. I think we need to be really careful. It’s almost like every action that we take online, it’s a vote. So we should be voting for the organizations and the people that are really championing the values that we want to see in society, whether it’s kindness or acts of service, whether it’s reading or community gardening, whatever it might be, or charity. I think we should be drawing more attention to that. And I do think that I understand the desire by people to sort of switch off sometimes. And you know that they read that, they see the news cycle and it’s dark and maybe they wanna use social media just to scroll and have a bit of fun, but they can still do that while potentially having a little bit of a focus on one of those values, whether it’s an act of sharing, an act of kindness, or a raising awareness for a charity or promoting an Instagram page. And there’s ways to be creative with that to make it fun and interesting to engage other people. But yes, I would like, in an ideal world, I would like to see social media truly be used by more people as an overwhelming tool for good to raise awareness for hidden–the voices that we don’t hear from very often to talk about the cool stories of nature or the funny stories of nature to talk about communities that are doing amazing work to share case studies of countries or cities that are doing incredible things to help their people or the planet. That…that would be a nice form of social media that I would like.

Mike: I wholeheartedly agree. And that was a great metaphor you just used there that following someone is a vote. I hadn’t thought about it that way, and that’s really enlightening actually. There’s a section in the book where you mention President Figueres’s decision in Costa Rica. I believe in 1945 to abolish the army.

Mike (note): I was wrong. It’s actually 1948.

Mike: And I don’t think enough people know about this. This entire section–I don’t wanna spoil it because it’s such a moving section, but Natalie, what do you think Costa Rica’s vision for how they conduct society or how they have reformed their society tells us about what is possible in the future?

Natalie: Yeah, the story of Costa Rica is incredible. So it was, in 1948, Costa Rica had just come off the back of one of its bloodiest, or its bloodiest civil war, and the leader of the victorious rebel army, Jose Figueres Ferer, he stood before the citizens of Costa Rica and he had a sledgehammer in his hand, and then he turned and he smashed a hole into the wall of the army barracks. Then he announced that he was abolishing the military in Costa Rica, and then he handed the keys of the Army barracks to the Minister of Education and declared that from that day forth, the military barracks would be known as the National Museum of Costa Rica, and it would be a place that wasn’t of war and weapons but of learning and culture. And then he redirected Costa Rica’s military budget into education, health, peace, and nature, essentially. And what happened next was just the most remarkable transformation. I think one of the most extraordinary environmental transformations on Earth, it was, change swept right across Costa Rica. Free education and free healthcare were granted to all citizens. Farmers were given incentives to protect nature. The population of citizens of Costa Rica were granted a constitutional right to a healthy environment and all of this worked. So Costa Rica became, had the highest literacy rates in Latin America. They run almost entirely on renewable energy. They had one of the highest deforestation rates in the world in the 1950s and today they’ve restored the majority of their forests. And also remarkably they’re regarded as one of the most peaceful countries on the planet. And today they’ve managed to have an economy that is actually built around nature, where they–Costa Rica draws tourists from all over the world for its nature, for its ecosystems. So they’ve, it’s been able to fuel its economy. It’s a celebration of its wildlife. And that love of peace and nature runs deep in Costa Rica. You can feel it when you are there. It is part of who they are. It is a sense of national pride. And yeah, it’s an extraordinary story. And so the leader with this sledgehammer, he had a daughter, he had a daughter and a son. One of his sons ended up being president. Then his daughter is Christiana Figueres, the architect of the Paris Agreement. Arguably the most towering figure in the environmental movement ever. So, pretty powerful family in Costa Rica is just, it’s just, it’s a beautiful story.

Mike: Yeah, that entire chapter really opened my eyes ’cause I actually wasn’t aware of the abolishing the military myself. And that was quite a revelation. There’s something else you outline in the book…is the crafting of the Montreal protocol. And, I love how you tell the story, by the way. It’s quite humorous the way you frame it. But suffice it to say you fairly describe it as saving human society and the planet. And it makes one think, why can’t we just have another treaty like that to, say, address something like phasing out fossil fuels. One such piece of possible legislation could be like the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. And so I would like to get your thoughts on that. What do you think of the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty?

Natalie: I mean, I fully support it. I fully support who it’s been driven by. I fully support that there is a lot of community backing in it as well. The Montreal protocol was really interesting ’cause I talked about it in my book. It was, and it is a little bit, I, enjoyed writing it because it was when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan teamed up and saved the world [haha]. And these are two people that were not in favor of regulation and they ended up crafting this great piece of regulation, that you know, stopped the hole in the ozone layer. And it’s really funny now because I hear people talking about, oh, remember how there was that scaremongering, around the hole in the ozone layer and that didn’t happen? I’m like, no, it did happen. It, they fixed it. That’s what a strong international treaty does. This is what the Paris Agreement could do. This is what the, the non-proliferation treaty could do. So I think today we might be missing, there’s a few ingredients. It was. One: really bold, leadership, with a personal investment. And one that was…that Margaret Thatcher was a scientist. Having a leader, having a global leader that understands the science, we need that, we are missing that from the global stage, I think. Two, Ronald Reagan had suffered from skin cancer, so he understood the risks. He respected Margaret Thatcher, he listened to her. So together, they were unequivocal in their belief and their desire to put forward the Montreal Protocol. That sort of leadership and commitment, I don’t think that we are seeing, in the treaties and the agreements that we have today. It is…I’m seeing a lot of leaders sort of walking into these events knowing exactly how they’re going to go. They’re going to…announce some sort of target, a watered down target, and then they’re going to come back to their home countries and they’re not going to do much about it. And so, a lot of them don’t, they don’t have much teeth. There’s no, we don’t have the incentive structures in place. We don’t have strong regulation. We don’t have, we don’t have enough leaders that are really pushing for it. I will say that the small island nations and Pacific Island leaders, they’ve been quite extraordinary. I think they’ve carried a lot of the weight of these agreements, pushing for them to be stronger, showing really bold and quite inspiring, leadership. Even that the speeches that they give, they’re fact-based, science-based emotive storytelling, bringing people along the journey with them. I would like to see more leadership like that, that we’re seeing, particularly from the Pacific Islands, reflected in other world leaders. And industry knows that government’s not going to regulate. Government has just been really timid or governments all over the world have been quite not all over the world, particularly in Australia and the US have been really timid in putting forward. They’re scared to put forward any regulations, so we’re not seeing the outcomes that we did from the Montreal protocol. And it’s difficult to use one example and say, okay, why can’t we just do exactly what we did with the Montreal protocol, and they’re all different. It’s the same with in Costa Rica. Other countries have tried to abolish their military and it didn’t work. It didn’t go well. So every country and every treaty and every initiative we put forward, it is slightly different. But my case was in the book, I sort of, I go through the Montreal protocol and I talked about, and I won’t go into too much detail, but I talked about why it worked. What were some of the levers that we could apply for the current treaties. So what can we learn from it? What do we need to make our international agreements actually have some teeth. How can we have future environmental agreements that have the same level of success as the Montreal Protocol? But I think unapologetic leadership is one of them.

Mike: Yeah and perhaps and overhaul to our current consensus based negotiations, like as we just saw with the Global Plastics Treaty. I believe like a relatively small number of nations, namely the United States and Saudi Arabia sort of derailed that even though there was a large majority consensus on that treaty. Yeah.

Natalie: I do think I agree with that, but also even if we did get that agreement, what has happened over the past two, almost two decades with nature agreements, climate agreements, desertification agreements, is that we repeatedly set targets and we never meet them. So even if we set that plastics target, I didn’t have a huge amount of faith that it would get met. And so I think it is, yes, we could do some changes to the structure and the consensus rules and things like that. But I also think they need more teeth. We actually need people to move beyond just setting targets, because we’re just gonna be setting targets for the next a hundred years if we keep going down this track.

Mike: Yeah. At the end of the book, Natalie, you outline nine levers of change of action for readers, and they’re quite detailed, and so I recommend everyone take a look at those. They’re excellent. But what final words do you have for our listeners here, about your book that we haven’t covered that you would like them to know?

Natalie: Thank you. I’m glad you liked it. I think, I mean, one of my favorite chapters was a chapter I wrote on birdwatchers, which I actually, I amused myself with that. I found it really funny to write and read about and everything. I know you’re not meant to say about I, I found myself funny, but it’s just, there’s some really quirky stories in the birdwatching chapter. But I would say that we should all be a little bit more like bird watchers. I like that sort of gentle act of noticing the world around you. The willingness to see the world for going outside, this sort of slowness and attention to the world that birdwatching teaches us to pause and to listen. It shows us to care. It shows us that it’s not just about one bird, it’s the entire ecosystem and everything that sustains them. And I just think it’s a really, if there’s one simple thing that we can do, it is to just step outside and feel that wonder and look up and appreciate it. That’s…I think that’s the…I think that’s really important because I, personally think that if we are going to protect nature to protect something, you need to fall in love with it. And the way that you can fall in love with something is just by going outside and looking around you and feeling that sense of wonder and awe. It is incredible what we have around us, and we are missing it. We are missing this extraordinary world because we’re, a little bit addicted to our phones, or the constant news cycle. But there is still so much beauty. So we should just look up.

Mike: I have an anecdote for you regarding birdwatching. So, when I first moved here, I was in Coogee and I saw an ibis and I didn’t really know the cultural perception of ibises in Sydney, and I looked at this bird and it was approaching the street and it stopped when it approached the street, and it looked both ways before crossing.

Natalie: [laughter]

Mike: And I have to tell you, Natalie, it changed my life.

Natalie: [laughter]

Mike: I was forever an ibis fan from that moment forward. It made me look at every single bird here and just with just adoration to the extent that I think people were like, what is wrong with this guy? [laughter]

Natalie: They’re so amazing.

Mike: They are amazing birds. And yeah, I can’t agree with you enough. Birdwatching has changed my life. So, thank you for writing that chapter. It is a joy to read, so I don’t want to spoil it for people. Thank you.

Natalie: Thank you so much for having me.

Mike: If you want to read Nature’s Last Dance, you can find a link to purchase a copy in the show notes. As always, if you’re enjoying the Mongabay Newscast or any of our podcast content and you wanna help us out, we do encourage you to spread the word about the work that we’re doing and tell a friend, please also leave a review. Word of mouth is the best way to help expand our reach. But you can also support us by becoming a monthly sponsor to the podcast via our Patreon page at patreon.com/mongabay. As mentioned, Mongabay is a non-profit news outlet, so when you pledge a dollar per month, you’re making a very big difference and helping us offset production costs. So if you’re a fan of our audio reports from Nature’s Frontline, go to patreon.com/mongabay to learn more and support the Mongabay Newscast. You can also read our news and inspiration from Nature’s frontline at mongabay.com, or you can follow us on social media, find Mongabay on LinkedIn @MongabayNews, and on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and TikTok, where our handle is @Mongabay or on YouTube @MongabayTV. Thank you as always for listening.