Building Baby Steps: How Small Goals Lead to Big Changes in Ocean Conservation and Climate Action

really cool video that I saw. It was a teacher teaching kids. It looked like boys at a school. And they looked like elementary school level. The teacher set out these different pieces of paper along the floor. And so those were the only things that this child could step on. He said, your goal of this exercise, give me a high five by only stepping on the pieces of paper. Pieces of paper were really short and

close to each other. And there were numerous ones. It was like five or six. The boy stepped on each piece of paper as he got closer to the teacher. And when he got to the last one, he gave the high five. now he kind of put it to all the other kids like how do you think friend will do if i take out a piece of paper so he takes out a piece of paper which lengthens the space between each piece of paper and so the child does it again he has some that are easier and then he has to make a large leap

at the end he makes it High five. And then he does it again. He takes out another piece, but this time he takes out two pieces of paper. So now there's only like three pieces of paper. There's one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. So the kid jumps. He barely makes it to the middle, barely makes it to the end, but he still makes it. Boom. High five. Now he takes away the middle. And he's like, look at how long you have to go before you

can reach the goal of giving me the high five. And there's a big space. There's probably about five feet of space, which is really difficult to jump from the beginning to the end without running up. So it's really difficult to jump five feet. I don't know if I could jump five feet. There's no way I could. The moral of that story was if you want to get to the goal of giving your teacher a high five, whatever that goal might be, it might be a big house.

It might be playing in the NBA or playing a professional sport. It might be a music career. It might be a family. All those goals are great goals. But they're the end goal. That's the prize. It's really hard to get to the prize when you don't have other goals in the middle. Those are the pieces of paper. Each piece of paper signified the different goals. So as you started to hit the smaller goals you started to build towards the

larger goal at the end. But if you don't have those small baby steps, it's really difficult to go from the beginning to the end, to the solution, to the goal, to the prize, without hitting those baby steps. And I think that's the same thing we have to think about with climate change. It's a great lesson for kids to learn, great lessons for adults to be reminded of, that you need to build up to get to that final goal. You need to take those steps in order

to do something. Welcome back to another episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. On today's podcast, we're going to be talking about how lost some of us feel when we look at ocean conservation, especially when it comes to climate change. As I'm recording this, New York City Climate Change Week is happening. Also, there's a hurricane that's barreling down on Florida, category four record storm surges apparently, lots

of wind, there's gonna be a lot of flash flooding. I hope people in the Florida, Georgia and Carolinas are gonna be okay. If you were told to evacuate, please evacuate as quickly as possible and be safe. But with that said, a lot of us feel lost and when we see storms like this happen, we see climate week happen and we're saying like, what are we doing? to actually reduce climate change. We hear from governments. We hear from people. We talk about

it. Some people are still denying it. When you talk about how do we pay for it, how do we get everything done, it's very, very confusing. And who do you believe? What kind of opinions do you believe? And where do you go for information? So we're going to be talking about all of this stuff, and how to get over it, and how to get more informed on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey

everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you could speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And for the past nine and a half years, I've been producing this podcast. At first it was Speak Up for Blue, then it was

Speak Up for the Ocean Blue, and now it's How to Protect the Ocean. so that you can get more information on the ocean so you don't feel this overwhelm that sometimes we feel when we see massive storms like the Hurricane Helen that we're seeing right now. When we see these massive solutions or supposed solutions like the Paris Accord or we see these conferences like Our Ocean and New York City Climate Week, And

we wonder, what's actually being done? Are we doing enough to ensure that we are reducing climate change, to ensure that we are addressing climate change, and we are adapting to climate change, especially those who are most vulnerable? And that is the difficult part. That's where a lot of people get lost. They watch stuff or they listen to things and it's really depressing and you get a lot of doom and gloom type of material out there. And then

you're just sitting here and you're just like, I don't know, I give up. I have no idea. There's nothing I can do from an individual perspective that could really help. And I don't agree with that. I feel as though if everybody just stopped and said, hey, you know what, we just got to forget it. then it's not worthwhile. I think that's a lot of problem. And I think the first thing we have to address when

we feel lost is misinformation. There's a plethora of misinformation online and wherever you can look for information, whether it's on TV, depending on the station, whether it's online, whether it's on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, these podcasts, like all these other podcast shows that have this questioning of conservation and climate change and whether it's really worth to actually do anything. And a lot of the misinformation in the past has happened and started with fossil fuel

companies. They would hire these PR firms, they would have a strategy, and they would spin this narrative that would be easy to understand and get in the minds of people, whether it be through newspaper back then, or radio, or TV, or celebrities, and say, hey, you know what? And politicians especially, climate change doesn't really exist. We're all just kind of freaking out. All these scientists are freaking out. Some politicians are freaking

out. But really what it is, it's just the natural changes in the climate. It's happened for years. We've only really been studying for 100 years, so we only know what's for the last 100 years, which is false, because the studies that have been done have dated back millions and millions, hundreds of millions of years, and we're able to see how the climate and how the planet has changed over time. That's the beauty of science. And to be honest, a lot of

people don't have the time to look up all the science. A lot of people don't have the ability to even understand some of the science. Because some of it's really complicated. Sometimes I look at climate models and I'm just like, I have no idea what this is about. I'll look at the primary literature. I'm like, I have no idea what this is about. And I've studied science for a long time. Some of it's really complicated. But

others, it's a little easier to understand. And to be honest, one of the reasons why I started this podcast was to help take that complex information, the ones that I understand, and be able to explain it to you so that you are more informed about the ocean, so that you can make better

decisions surrounding the oceans and speak it up to other people. that's really the point and so the goal of what you should be looking for is you should be looking for sources of information that you know you can trust and by trusting is that people are providing evidence whether it's be through speaking to experts like scientists or whether it be providing information that provides evidence you know like that's what you're looking for journal articles and so forth that

have been peer-reviewed have been gone through the the most strict criticism process that you've ever seen it's ridiculous how critical scientists can be of each other because we're taught to be critical that's what we're taught to do because you have to to be. You have to question, you know, when you see a scientific study in front of you, you got to question the scientific study to make sure that it passes the vigor of what the scientific process is as we

know and love and learn when we're in school. And so that is a pretty rigorous process where you, you know, when the final product comes out, you know that's the product like the study has gone through the criticisms gone through people looking it over not just the editors of the of the magazine that it's in the journal article but also other colleagues who have looked it over and if they don't agree they write a response in the next issue and then there's a little bit of a beef going on in

terms of the science not personal but it's in science sometimes it spills into personal But there is information that continues to go back and forth to make sure that we're bettering the studies, we're bettering the science, and we're bettering our understanding of the science. And that's how the scientific process works in today's world. The problem is when it gets outside the scientific community and it gets into sort of the places where you and I consume information. And

that could be on social media, that could be on TV, that could be on radio. There are a lot of places that it could be. And it just depends on who is providing that information. The source of that information really is important here. Right? It's important to start to look at, you know, somebody all of a sudden comes up with a new scientific process to explain something. You need to go through that scientific process in your mind. Like, where's

the evidence? Where are they gone? Has it been accepted into the wider scientific study? Now, there are times where scientists get it wrong. Doesn't happen all the time. So when you look at a study or you hear stuff and you hear scientists speak on something, it's usually because it's been out in the literature for quite some time or it's a new study or a new discovery that's happened and that we need to

get it out into the open. But talking to scientists, listening to scientists on podcasts like this and other podcasts out there that have to do with marine biology or science or anything like that is really important. It's really important to get information straight from sources like these, not just podcasts and videos and stuff, but also articles and nonprofit organizations and so forth that are reputable, that have the reputation to say,

hey, you know what? They provide really great information. They provide really great programs, governments, and so forth. You need to trust in them that they are giving you the right information. And I know there are some of you who have a little bit of the conspiracy theorists in you, but not everything is a conspiracy theorist. The theory, it is science, a lot of it science, a lot of it is science based and some of the decisions are science

based, not all the time. We just covered an episode last episode about the cod fishery and how politicians weren't getting it right and taking risks where we should be conservative in a scientific opinion, not just mine, but also the own government scientists who do the information, work up the information. So, getting back to my point and not getting too much on the tangent, when it comes to misinformation, making sure that you are looking at sources that

are correct, sources that can be trusted. And you should be questioning each and every one of them. And if they provide evidence, then you can be like, okay, now I'm starting to get to know this thing and now we're starting to get somewhere. So that's important as well, right? So misinformation, tackling misinformation by going to the right sources is extremely important. Trying to tell the right sources, you look for evidence-based, evidence that's given when somebody's trying

to put something together. If there's no evidence and it's just conjecture, that's exactly what it is. It's just conjecture. Somebody proposing their theory of what they think happens, but it's not always right. So the source matters, the magazine matters, the website matters, all of it matters to make sure that it's a reputable place that puts out

good scientific information and people as well, like myself. I've been called out before on covering some stories and I've come back and I'm like, you know what, you're right, like I never thought of it that way. Here's some evidence to back it up. And this is why I was wrong when I first said something. And I think that's really important to understand and take the responsibility for putting out misinformation by accident or not understanding an issue properly and being transparent with

your audience. If you have that, then you're looking at a really good source. And I think that's really important. The other thing is that you're taking in so much doom and gloom that you just feel apathetic towards a topic, say climate change. We hear the doom and gloom. We hear about the hurricanes. We hear about the flooding. We hear about the droughts. We hear about the wildfires. What else do we hear? Increased

storms. a lot of And it's very dire out there and it's something that we need to continue to get on and act. But we can't have people who are listening to information on doom and gloom always just feel so apathetic that they're just gonna stop listening to the information. They're gonna go somewhere it's happy. After listening to things that are really bad, it really affects your mind. And I'm gonna give you a bit of an analogy. of something recent that

I've kind of come up on my social media feed. I'm a big hip hop fan and the news coming out of Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Diddy, whatever his name is, the allegations that are coming out about him and the lifestyle that he's led and the disgusting things that he may or may have allegedly done, It's taken up a lot of my time. I'll tell you what, it's taken up a lot of my time listening to interviews, listening to conjecture, listening to rumors, and you're just kind of like, wow, all

this negative talk really makes me look at the world differently. Some of the stuff that's come out could change the way we view musicians that have been some of our favorite musicians in the past, as well as some of our favorite actors in the past. This goes pretty deep, if everything is true, and it makes me think, This is really bad. This is horrible stuff that's coming out. The way some of these people have been treated is absolutely awful.

and it affects your mindset. That's all you think about. It's like another, that's a real life situation, but it's like some of the times when we watch a TV show like Criminal Minds or Law and Order SVU, if you got into that a little bit and you start to watch it on a daily basis now with the ability to binge, you start binging things and you're just like, the world is a little messed up. Even though these are stories, the world is a little messed up. And it's affecting the way I think about

life in general. Well, that's the same thing that happens with doom and gloom stories constantly being told to you by different types of media and by different types of way you consume information. And so you're always hearing the doom and gloom of the ocean, the doom and gloom of climate change, the doom and gloom of plastic pollution. Well, there are optimistic and there are good news stories out there about the

ocean. And it's up to us like the communicators to get that information to you and it's for up to you to consume that

information. It's okay to consume good news. And there are a lot of creators out there, especially on TikTok I've seen where they're sharing, like they've got this post and it's like you swipe across to a couple of different images and they just summarize these stories, these good news stories about climate, these good news stories or climate reduction or action and these good news stories on ocean action

and you just kind of feel good about yourself. You're like, oh, there are some good projects that are going on in the world. I may want to know a little bit more, so I'll dive deeper into it. But for the most part, it's pretty cool that there are some good stories that are happening. It's pretty cool that there's some optimism that's happening. And to be honest, a lot of the times I

find those stories and I put them on this podcast. It's one of the reasons why I started this podcast was so that we can get information to you, the audience, you who are listening to this, who are looking for that information, not always doom and gloom. And you can see that there are fishing villages that put a climate bank together, their own climate savings, where they You know, they contribute a certain amount of

money per month or however it works. And then so that when there's something that catastrophic that happens where they fish, marine protected areas destroyed, they have to wait to rebuild that. They can't fish until they rebuild that. But in the meantime, they can draw money from the savings that they've been contributing to, taking a little bit of money from their portions, and they can contribute to until that area rebuilds and is OK and safe to either, not

the protected area, but around the protected area to fish again. Story like that are happening and there are organizations all around the world that are working with communities to make them more resilient against climate change, more resilient against these massive storms, more resilient against plastic pollution, sea level rise, all these things that are happening around the world that we don't know about because the mainstream media doesn't think it's important enough to

actually put out. But that's the beauty of the internet is it democratizes the way we put out information. So if we want you to see projects that are happening around the world that are good news and that are building towards something bigger, we can do that. And that's what I try to do partly on this podcast is bring you the good news. Now, I have to talk about the doom and gloom stuff, right? Because it's important that we know and

we're aware of it. But I always like to finish it off with ways we find solutions. with ways that people are working towards building a rapport, building a relationship with local communities, building a way that they can work together without being invasive, without being overbearing, and without taking information and not sharing it with that local community. Seeing that ocean justice being served, making sure people have a voice, making sure that conservation is not just

about science, but it's about people as well. Mostly about people and how people manage their slice of the ocean. And that's the hope that it gives me. When I put out a story like that or I've just finished an interview where I talk to somebody about doing that, I feel great. I feel wonderful. And so what I do is I go out, I tell my wife, I tell my kids, I tell friends, I tell my mom, I'm like, hey, There's this cool project out

and I want to talk to you about it. And then I put it out on the podcast and then people are like, wow, I didn't know this was happening. I'm so happy that it's happened. Now I'm in a happier mood and I feel good about the ocean. When you feel good about something, you get all this optimism, not all the time, but when you get this optimism,

you start to want to chip in. You start to want to feel good about helping out and where you can do, maybe volunteer with an organization, maybe volunteer with like a marine life center or volunteer at a museum or volunteer in an educational facility to teach other people how they can protect the ocean or how they can protect the planet, how they can reduce climate change

either on an individual level or on a volunteer level. Get involved with local organizations where you organize or work with people who are organizing riverside cleanups and coastal cleanups and beach cleanups where you're taking away plastic pollution and any kind of pollution that is solid that you can take away to ensure that those areas are clean. Those areas can go through their natural processes and we can see a healthy, nice ocean coastline or river coastline

or lake coastline. Those are really important, not just for sort of the vanity of it all, but also for the healthy functioning of those ecosystems, of those habitats. That's extremely important. We don't get enough of that. We get a lot of bad news. We don't get a lot of good news where we can take action. We feel like we want to take action. That's what we hope here on this podcast, what I hope to inspire you

to do is to take action. whether it be on an individual level or whether it be on a level where you vote or you work with organizations to help other people vote, or you start to get out and work with, uh, volunteer with, you know, politicians who are doing great things for the ocean and for the planet. That's what I hope that this podcast does is inspire you to, to go out there and change the way you think of the ocean and change the way how your lifestyle affects the ocean or

influences the ocean. That's the goal. And that's what I hope you get out of this podcast. Like the first thing, like you've already done the first step. Anytime I talk to an expert, I have a guest on, I always ask them like, what do you think people can do? And the big thing people say is educate yourself. Find out what's happening with the ocean. Find out the cool things that are happening and

find out some of the not so cool things that are happening. right and inject yourself where you can to be able to provide value for the ocean whether that be in a donation to support a charity or support a non-profit organization whether it be to volunteer your time to do so whether being a board of director or actively going out and doing cleanups and making sure your area or local area is really good. I think that's making sure that you participate and feel

good about the ocean so that you can participate to be like, hey, you know what? I know we have a problem, but I want to make sure that I'm doing my part to get it cleaned up, to get it fixed. Yeah, you're only one person out of eight billion, but if more people feel this way, then that's great. That's what's really important. The other thing I want to cover, the last thing I want to cover is I saw this post on LinkedIn. And it was someone who had just attended a

couple of sessions at New York City Climate Week. And they were saying how they saw this project, a couple of projects that were being sort of exposed or being shared at one of the sessions during Climate Week, the New York City Climate Week. And there is saying that a lot of times when we get caught up in climate change, and this is one of the reasons why I did this episode today,

is when we look at climate change, there's a lot to handle. It's a big issue with multiple layers of consequence, and it's complex. So we always think about climate change globally. And when we think about globally, we're like, what can I do as one of eight billion to help out globally? But that's a hard pill to swallow. But this post was like, it's good to really think about when climate change first came out, it was like, think globally, there was a saying, think globally, act locally. That

was a saying. It was like, if we want to make an impact globally, we had to take baby steps. We can't reduce climate change on a global level unless we start reducing it locally. And that means everywhere. I've got, I've have the opportunity to speak to people every episode who are all around the world, many different countries over, I think 90 to a hundred different countries have listened to this podcast over the last 10 years or

nine and a half years, almost a 10. I have that opportunity to sort of influence you and help you think about the ocean by providing you that information and all of a sudden, you can start acting locally that will take those baby steps towards going to our final goal which is thinking globally. There's a really cool video that I saw. This is the last point I'm going to make. It has to do with this one but there's a really cool video that I saw. It was a teacher teaching

kids. It looked like boys at a school and they look like elementary school level, maybe grade 6, maybe grade 7, maybe even younger. And the teacher set out these different pieces of paper along the floor. And so those were the only things that this child, the child that was going up, could step on. And what he did, he said, your goal of this exercise is, and the teacher stood at the opposite end of the pieces of paper of where he was. So there was probably about four or five different pieces of

paper. So the kid stood at the beginning, and the teacher stood at the end. Your goal is to come over here, give me a high five by only stepping on the pieces of paper. So the pieces of paper were really short and close to each other. And there were numerous ones, there was like five or six. And so the child stepped on each, the boy stepped on each piece of paper as he got closer to the teacher. And when he got to the last one, gave the high

five. Great, no problem. So now you kind of put it to all the other kids, like, how do you think The boy will do, your friend will do, if I take out a piece of paper. So he takes out a piece of paper, which lengthens the space between each piece of paper. And so the child does it again. He has some that are easier, and then he has to make a large leap at the end. And he makes it. High five. No problem. I keep hitting the mic when I give myself a high five. Sorry about that. And

then he does it again, and he takes out another piece of paper. This time he takes out two pieces of paper. So now there's only like three pieces of paper. There's one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. So the kid jumps, and he barely makes it to the middle, barely makes it to the end, but he still makes it. Boom. High five. Didn't hit the mic. Nice. Now he takes away the middle. And he's like, now do it. And he's like, look at how long you have to go before you can

reach the goal of giving me the high five. And there's a big space. There's probably about five feet of space, which is really difficult to jump in space, like from the beginning to the end without running up. There's no room to take a run at it. And this is a younger child, so it's really difficult

to jump five feet. I don't know if I could jump five feet. There's no way I could. So he's just said, the moral of that story was the fact that if you want to get to the goal of giving your teacher a high five, whatever that goal might be, it might be a big house, it might be playing in the NBA, or playing a professional sport, it might be a music career, it might be a family, and having a, marrying your partner and having a family. All those goals are great goals, but they're the end

goal. You could have multiple goals, but that's the end goal, that's the prize. And it's really hard to get to the prize when you don't have other goals in the middle. Those are the pieces of paper. So each piece of paper signified the different goals. So as you started to hit the smaller goals, you started to build towards the larger goal at the end. So as you started to hit that, basically climb that ladder to get to that final goal, that's

how you do it. But if you don't have those small baby steps, it's really difficult to go from the beginning to the end, to the solution, to the goal, to the prize without hitting those baby steps. And I think that's the same thing we have to think about with climate change. It's a great lesson for kids to learn, great lessons for adults to be reminded of, that you need to build up to get to that final goal. You need to take those steps in

order to do something. So the first step you would take as You know, someone who's new to ocean conservation and climate change reduction is to look inwards and look at what you can do on an individual level. And it may not have an impact on a larger scale, may not reduce climate change, may not be your final goal, but that would be it. That would be what you need to look at when you are looking towards your final goal. You need to start with yourself. Reduce plastic pollution, your

own plastic pollution, right? Go to, you know, multiple use plastics or stay away from single use plastics, right? Start to look at reusable stuff. Like, you know, all these things can be done. There's so many ways we could talk about this in other episodes. Then you start to look at the next step and that could be like, who can I volunteer with that will have a bigger impact? Who can I support? Whether it be a monetary value or volunteer value,

right? Your time. Whether it be on a board of directors, or like I said, on the ground doing some field work or doing some cleanups. Then you build bigger, like who do I vote for? Who represents protecting the ocean that are my values? I want them to have the same values. Those are the people I'm gonna vote for, or that's the person I'm gonna vote for, depending on the election and what level, what scale the election's at, state, federal, or local, right? Then

you just keep building from there. Maybe dedicate part of your career to it. There's so many things you can do. before you get to that level, before we get, and then everybody has their own journey. And nobody's the same, and it doesn't have to be the same. There's no right or wrong way to go about doing it. But those steps, you've gotta take those baby steps to get to the final goal. Understanding that is a huge deal. And I want you to really understand.

If you feel lost, just realize it's not gonna be solved tomorrow. It's not gonna be solved 50 years from now. It's gonna take a lot of time. And I hope we start to see that reduction happen, but it takes the baby steps to get to that point. And once we get there, then progress is going to continue to make. We don't stop there. We continue to do it to start to see and chip off those pieces to see that end goal happen, especially when you want to reduce climate change and

protect the ocean. That can be done, but we need to take small baby steps. And that's sort of the lessons that I have kind of seen and observed and taken throughout my journey to live for a better ocean. That's the goal. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. This is something that we're building a community here. It's not just an audience listening to this podcast. This is the start of a conversation. I would love to hear your thoughts and continue that conversation. So please feel free

to reach out. You can comment on Spotify on this video podcast, or you can go to YouTube and you can put your

thoughts in the comment section below. or if you're listening on Apple podcast and or like an audio version of your favorite podcast app don't worry about it you can go and you can't get a hold of me don't worry about you can go to Instagram and you can just DM me at how to protect the ocean it's the name of this podcast all one word I would love to hear your thoughts on how you're protecting the ocean and the baby steps that

you're taking to get there and and where you think you need to go next because that's what we talk about when we talk about as a community share those ideas so that other people can benefit and you can learn something as well that's it for today's episode if you want to learn more and and you're right at the beginning of your journey and you want to learn more Sign up for my newsletter. Go to speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter. That's speakupforblue.com forward slash

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Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll