KHC 160 - Benji Backer

Benji Backer - Founder & CEO of Nature is Nonpartisan, the largest right-of-center environmental organization in the country. In this powerful and wide-ranging conversation, Cam sits down with Benji Backer to discuss politics, leadership, the environment, and finding common ground in a divided world. From death threats and conspiracy theories to public land sell-offs, affordable housing, screen time’s impact on mental health, and the future of American conservation, this is one of the most honest and thoughtful political discussions you’ll hear this year. Whether you’re left, right, or somewhere in between, this conversation proves that love for nature and clean communities can unite us all. Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Follow Benji: https://www.instagram.com/benjibacker/ Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Getting into Politics, Death Threats, and a Love for the Environment 00:09:06 – The Government's Approach to Leadership & Their Focus on Social Media 00:15:37 – Senate Caucuses, Conspiracy Theories, and Corruption in the Government 00:24:26 – Van Jones, the Best Advice Benji Has Gotten, and the Public Land Sell Offs 00:31:54 – Public Land Sales, Affordable Housing, and the Importance of Connection to Nature 00:46:16 – Screen Time, Depression, and Rewarding Leaders with an Environmental Plan 00:50:34 – Discussions with People Outside Your Circle 00:58:26 – Aaron Rodgers: Respect for Someone That’s Always Evolving 01:02:53 – United by Nature, Trump on Public Lands Stance, and The Big Beautiful Bill 01:12:40 – Improving the Health and Cleanliness of our Communities 01:16:51 – Mineral and Energy Extraction, Mining, and Climate Change 01:25:35 – Environmentalism and Climate Change & Finding Truth in the Movement 01:30:27 – Earning Trust While Building a Movement 01:34:36 – Making a Difference Without Pushing an Agenda 01:37:51 – Final Thoughts

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Cameron Hanes?

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• 0:43Cameron Hanes?

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• 1:28Cameron Hanes?

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• 1:55Cameron Hanes?

  All right. This is the Keep Hammering Collective with Benji Backer.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  What's up?

• 2:00Cameron Hanes?

  That's a good name.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:01Cameron Hanes?

  Benji Backer.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

• 2:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah, no. So normally, kids hate their name, but you got a good one.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  I got Benjamin first.

• 2:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  And then I was like, Ben's too basic. Got to go with Benji. And then everyone's like, oh, can't wait till you change that when you become an adult. And I'm like, I'm not changing it. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why you guys like plans for me, but.

• 2:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  It's gonna be Benji till the day I die.

• 2:24Cameron Hanes?

  Okay. Well, it's, it's good to have you here, Benji.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Great to be here.

• 2:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I've been, um, yeah, I've been seeing what you've been up to out there. Uh, right now, the public lands are in the news. I mean, I don't know if you saw, did you see 60 Minutes the other day?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, it's a, it's a thing. So people are talking about it. What's a, how did you get involved?

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Well, I first got involved like most of us did with the public lands the first time, which is just recreating in them from childhood. I grew up in Wisconsin, we were talking about before this, but conservative vegans were my, were my family. So very strange dynamic, but you know, my parents were entrepreneurs, capitalists, and built a business when I was growing up. And every weekend, we would spend in the outdoors, fishing in the lakes of Wisconsin, hiking, camping, just looking at wildlife and being part of nature was, was a huge part of my upbringing. And so I just couldn't believe that there are people who didn't want to protect those places or conserve those places. And so that kind of

• 3:28Speaker 01

  fast forwards to where we were a few months ago, which you were super helpful in helping us stop. But really, it, this love of the environment and also early love of politics was kind of how I got to where I am today. I, in high school, started campaigning for candidates and my parents were not political at all. It just was like a random interest that I had.

• 3:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, why?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  I had hurt my ankle and I was on crutches for a year. Okay. So I couldn't play sports. And my parents were always about like, you gotta be productive, you gotta be doing things. Right. And I was like, well, how am I gonna spend my time if I'm not playing sports? So it was actually the 2008 presidential election was the first election that really inspired me. And I was watching the debate and I was like, man, I wanna volunteer for candidates and be part of the process. So I started door knocking and phone calling. Very quickly started getting news stories about that. Spoke at CPAC, this big conservative event, my freshman year of high school. Charlie Kirk saw that. Hmm. And this is before he started Turning Point. Hmm. And he was like, hey, we should team up and start Turning Point USA.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Which is, which was his idea and he wanted me to be a part of the founding team. So I was. And even though we kind of grew apart in recent years, just due to like my focus on the environment and his focused on, um, his continued focus on the conservative side of things. Uh, it was a really important moment in my life because for, for a second, I was doing a lot of news media when he wasn't. And I had a news hit that broke, that got me death threats from my own high school colleagues. Hmm. And I didn't know who they were. They were calling me on my landline. They were texting or they were tweeting from anonymous accounts. But they were from my high school. Like other kids? Other kids. Hmm.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  And my family almost had to move outside of the city. It was so bad. Hmm. Just because of my political beliefs. And Charlie and a few others were really the only people who were there for me because in high school, it's all about who's in and who's out of the clique, right? Yeah. And if you're like kid getting death threats. Yeah. You're not in the clique. No. And I really realized at a young age how nasty politics could be. How few friends you're gonna have if you stand up for what you believe in. And Charlie was one of those first people who was there for me. So. You combine the love of the environment that my parents instilled with this political activism, and you end up with where I am now, which is trying to basically recreate the conservation movement culturally in America again.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  There really isn't one. It sort of showed itself for a second there in June with the proposed public land sell-off. And I'm hoping that that catalyzes it into, you know, the next generation, which, which we can talk about more.

• 6:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, well, that's a, you, you've had, I mean, for as young as you are, like I saw a clip, I think on Megyn Kelly from 12 years ago. You're like a little kid.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  I have beaver hair.

• 6:24Cameron Hanes?

  You're like a little, you looked like Justin Bieber, but uh,

• 6:28Speaker 01

  A little less handsome, but.

• 6:30Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know if, how you can, can you sing?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  I can actually. We're not gonna do that today, but uh, there, there are some dark web, well, dark web as in my dad's old YouTube account of me singing. So if someone finds that, kudos, kudos to them on that.

• 6:45Cameron Hanes?

  But yeah, I saw, um, yeah, I saw so from 12 years ago, a kid in high school that was, um, I think that was about faculty didn't like your political, I think you were conservative at that time. I don't know if you still are, but uh, um, that was like the Tea Party movement. I, you know, I remember that back then. I mean, what I remember about 2008, I think was that when Palin was in it.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was McCain Palin.

• 7:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. So it's a, yeah, I, I remember that and, and I'm a lot older than you, but haven't always paid attention to politics. So I was paying attention to that one. And then of course, everyone since, but you're right, politics. I mean, has it ever been so toxic, and I hate that word too, but uh, so toxic that you thought about, what am I doing? Maybe I need to just step back instead of dealing with all this hate and negativity just for, for standing up what you believe it, for what you believe in. And even like Charlie, you get, some people get killed for what they believe in. And you had death threats, you know, people have all these stories about this. Is it worth it?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Right. It doesn't feel worth it, which is why I kind of pivoted to conservation and the environment. Because also, what I've found is that when you are focused on the issues that divide everybody and inflame everybody, I'm not really sure we get to the answers that we need on the topics that we care about. Like, since politics has become more and more divisive, more and more toxic, if you want to use that word, we've gotten less done, the country's worse off, the issues have gotten worse, and they're now even harder to solve. And then we think that playing the same game of trying to say they're evil or they're evil is going to solve anything, it doesn't. And I'm not sure at one point our country realizes that this

• 8:34Speaker 01

  vitriol we have towards each other actually is the sole thing that's holding us back. So when I saw these death threats come through from my own peers, like, these are not random people, these are from my high school friends, or people that knew, you know, were close with me in high school, who just turned on me because of my political beliefs, I was like, I don't want to feed into that. That doesn't mean I'm justifying what they were saying. But I want to start looking at how do we actually solve problems, and I'm not going to solve every problem, so why don't we try to focus in on some one issue that I care the most about, which is the environment. And what I've found is that there's actually even more alignment across ideological spectrums than you would think. Like, as you can probably tell by the way I look, like, I'm kind of the weak environmentalist conservationist,

• 9:19Speaker 01

  right? I'm the guy who's hiking and skiing and kind of that sort of recreationist. The people who are like me want to protect and conserve the environment in the same way that somebody like you, who goes out there and shoots big game and spends time recreating in a totally different way, wants to do. Like, you have the same passion I do. It just is exhibited in a different way. And that is not how we are showing up politically right now. And our adversaries love it. China and Russia love that we're doing this right now. I mean, now we can see that they're all over Twitter and we've been kind of been pushed by these people to hate each other. But I keep going back to this hatred towards each other because...

• 10:00Speaker 01

  This country was built off of people who were willing to sit down at the table and have tough conversations with each other.

• 10:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  And we can't even go to the same Thanksgiving dinner with our family anymore. And it is breaking our country in half. So I don't think that the division is worth it. That's why I don't try to take personal attacks anymore. You know, there's really no reason to, to, to make this a warfare. We're too, we should, we should be evolved as a species enough to know that like literally killing somebody over a disagreement is not, uh, what helps us solve problems. In fact, it makes everything worse. And until we realize that, I think our country is going to continue to struggle. And I, I right now don't believe that our country is headed in the right direction until we figure that out.

• 10:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Is, um, do you think our current leadership can change the way they approach things? Cause you know, the first time, you know, I, I, and I've said, I campaigned for Trump and, and 20, I think it was 2020 now that I'm thinking of it. And, um, just because I didn't like, and 2016, I voted for him, but I didn't like the way the, the country was going on the other side. And so I'm like, well, maybe this isn't perfect. And then he was into the, the mean tweets and people made a big deal about, about that. I didn't really care, but now you get down. So what are eight, 12 years down the road or eight years down the road? And you're like, are we still doing this?

• 11:27Cameron Hanes?

  Or he's kind of scaled back on the mean tweets and the whatever, but he has his moments. And it's, you know, if I'm thinking about it personally, I want a strong leader. I want the other countries to respect our leadership. I don't think that was happening with Biden. Do I, am I crazy about the, the mean tweets and stuff? No, but I don't care. But it's like, is this still the best way to do it? Can we, you said we're an evolved species. Can we just like be more professional and respectful and have discussion? It's like, it doesn't seem like that's too much to ask.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  I don't think it should be, but it is for most politicians right now. And I would say that we're complicit in that. I mean, you look at, I, I kind of was thinking about this, this morning on my run, which I was like, I don't think I can hang with you, so I'm going to run by myself. And I was thinking about the fact that during 2020, during COVID, remember those Tik Tok videos of the, the doctors and everyone's like, what are you guys doing? Like, shouldn't you be like talking to patients and not filming Tik Tok videos? That was like one year of the medical world. That's been the last 20 years of politics.

• 12:34Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Our leaders are more concerned about TikTok videos, Twitter, Instagram, getting attention than they are solving problems. Like, I don't want to call it certain politicians, but when's the last time you saw your favorite senator, who you know, you know, a famous senator on either side, get something actually done?

• 12:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  And if you can think of one or two, that's still not good enough.

• 12:58Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Right? And, and then you're, you know, the, the other argument to that would be like, oh, we don't want the government solving problems. Well, the government's involved in everything right now. And when they refuse to act, we are all losers. That's why inflation's worse. That's why affordability is worse. That's why our environment's getting worse. And instead of worrying about getting attention, they should be worried about solving problems. And that's why, like, you don't see me with this, like, massive social media following, because what I try to do every day is, like, most of my day is spent talking to leaders, trying to figure out, how do we get cleaner water? How do we get cleaner air? How do we get better recreation for people? How do we make sure that we have a forest that we can actually hunt in for the next generation? Right? Like, that's, that's not sexy Instagrammable,

• 13:44Speaker 01

  TikTok-able work.

• 13:45Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  And the, the people who I work with on that, in the Senate or around the country, the NGOs, there's some amazing NGOs out there doing it, too. They're not famous.

• 13:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  And, and I think that's the, that's the problem, though, is that we're rewarding the worst actors for their behavior. And those people tend to be, become the faces of politics. And that's the worst thing that could happen to this country.

• 14:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. You know, they are rewarded by the clickbait, the, you know, AOC. She, she looks good. She's like, got a big personality. She says crazy things. And now she's like, a presidential candidate?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:26Cameron Hanes?

  Conceivably.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Mondani is, too.

• 14:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, so it worked.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:29Cameron Hanes?

  It worked.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  It does work.

• 14:30Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, it's like, it shouldn't work. And can we get a, can we get something more productive, to your point? But it works.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:39Cameron Hanes?

  And it's just, it's... I don't, I don't know. I don't know. Um.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I, I think it's like, we need to hold our politicians, not by what they say, but what they do.

• 14:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  And for those who've been following AOC, I, I would ask them, what has she actually done?

• 14:54Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And I would ask people who follow like Ted Cruz, what has he actually done?

• 15:00Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  And, and look, you can like them and they might be good people. I don't know either of them personally. So it's not a personal attack, but it's like, does that model of leadership actually work? Is that leadership or is that selfishness? Are you putting yourself and your brand first or are you putting the country first? And I do think to put your country first, you have to have some outcomes and as a people, we have to be better at saying, what are our leaders doing? And stop seeing politics as entertainment, but as a means to an end for how to take care of the country. That's what it is. It's not about us versus them.

• 15:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I'd a hundred percent agree with that. I'm so burned out on.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 15:39Cameron Hanes?

  Even the parties, the politics, all this. That's why I like.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  The outdoors. That's why I like the outdoors.

• 15:44Cameron Hanes?

  I like the outdoors, but I also like what you're doing with the, the focus on non-partisan. Partisan, partisan?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Partesian.

• 15:53Cameron Hanes?

  But, but that's like, isn't that your organization? What's it called?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Nature is non-partisan.

• 15:58Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, perfect.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  It's exactly what it sounds like.

• 16:02Cameron Hanes?

  I like that. It's, it's, uh, and then I think you were back in DC and I, I thought that I saw that you were with, was it four senators from each side?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 16:12Cameron Hanes?

  And, uh, yeah, that's, I mean, perfect. Because right now where, where I get frustrated is, you know, I've voted Republican forever and whatever. I don't even know. Well, I, I, I know why I did before. Now I don't even know that makes any difference because I can't stand either side.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:30Cameron Hanes?

  But there are good people on either side.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:32Cameron Hanes?

  Like I know there's a Martin, is it?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Heinrich.

• 16:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, in New Mexico, right?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's awesome.

• 16:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And he's, he's a Democrat. So normally back in, you know, years ago, I'd be like, no, screw that guy. Wrong side, blue, right?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 16:46Cameron Hanes?

  Now I could care less. He seems.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:49Cameron Hanes?

  He seems like he's fighting the good fight.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  He is.

• 16:51Cameron Hanes?

  I like Zinke in Montana and I don't, people, they, they say, well, you know, what's he really up to? What's this, that? I don't know. It seems like he's fighting for public lands from my perspective. I worked with him when he was in interior, uh, Secretary of Interior. I had a position there and he seemed. He seemed legit to me.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  He's legit, yeah.

• 17:11Cameron Hanes?

  And, and so, just, I say all that to say, I don't really care what side. And that's why I liked seeing what you were doing. And I thought that was important work. And how's, how's that going?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so our, so just to give context, there's this thing in the Senate called caucuses. And it's basically like a little committee group on a specific topic. So there's one on, like, skiing, there's one on, um, there's a hunting and fishing caucus. There's a caucus on different topics. And we started one on stewardship. So it's kind of the blend of public lands, private lands, conservation, clean air, clean water, recreation, and a little bit of hunting and fishing too, in partnership with that other caucus. So we got four Republicans and four Democrats to show up during the middle of a government shutdown to kick this thing off.

• 17:57Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  And it's amazing, because they are A, going to accelerate good policies for conservation, which we need desperately. Forest fires are getting worse. Our recreation access is getting worse. Our forests are less maintained, our grasslands are less maintained. Everything's just going on a downward trajectory from an environmental perspective, not doomsday-esque, but just, and we all see it when we go out in these places, the invasive species, I mean, the list goes on. There need to be good bipartisan policies, and bipartisan policies last, that's why it's important, and that caucus will help do that. But going back to your point about Heinrich, I would have, growing up in conservative politics, said, I would never vote for Martin Heinrich, he's a Democrat.

• 18:39Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  I will be the first to say I would vote for Martin Heinrich every single damn time that I could, because I don't care what he is.

• 18:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  I know what he stands for.

• 18:47Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  And we've, I think, there's enough of an awakening happening in American politics where it's like, it's la, it's literally not about the R or the D anymore, it's about, what do they stand for?

• 18:58Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Because if you follow one party 100%, you're probably not thinking for yourself. You know, we all have different experiences that create the identity that we have. And if we're 100% in line with somebody, then we aren't like literally letting our own shared experience.

• 19:14Cameron Hanes?

  We adopted their mindset.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  We adopted their mindset.

• 19:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  So Heinrich's great. She, he's great. And Montana, they're the two co-chairs of this caucus. And, you know, people who question Zinke if he's legit or not, it's like, let his actions speak.

• 19:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Don't worry about some, like, conspiracy. I get these all the time. Like Benji, you have some, like, you're either bought at, like, Donald Trump told you to do all this stuff, and you're trying to greenwash his agenda, or, you know, AOC has put you up to make the Green New Deal look better. It's like, let's stop with the conspiracies about this stuff. What has Zinke stood for? He stood up against the public land sell-off, and he was integral in getting that stopped.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 19:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Like, you can-

• 19:54Cameron Hanes?

  You don't need to know anymore.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  You don't need to know anymore. And if the next time he does something that you don't like-

• 19:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Then assess that.

• 19:59Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  But it's like, it should be a case-by-case thing. It shouldn't be like, we're always looking for ways to hate people, even though a lot of them are doing good stuff. So, you know, John Curtis in Utah is one of my favorite leaders. He's a senator, and he gets attacked nonstop by both sides because he does what he thinks is right. And I would ask people, you know, are we gonna start supporting people because we are thinking creatively about why they're doing what they're doing? Or are we gonna do it because they're not, are we gonna support people because they only toe a certain line? And at that point, we're just sheep. We're just sheep for one side or the other. And anybody who goes 100% right or 100% left is a sheep for whatever side they're supposed to be on.

• 20:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, uh, they'll say bootlicker, too.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Bootlicker.

• 20:46Cameron Hanes?

  But that's, I just, where I get frustrated, I love, I love what you're involved in, for sure. Sometimes, because I've been involved in stuff back in DC also, you wonder, is this doing anything? Are we making a difference? Because we meet at these councils, at these committees or councils, or we do all this stuff, and the paperwork looks good, everything looks good. Doesn't do anything. Are we accomplishing anything? Because where I get frustrated, not on this one, but like say if you're the FDA and you talk about the red dye forwarding and all this shit. And then they're like, it's a big focus because RFK is in there. As soon as this administration is gone, they'll go back to right putting shitty ingredients in the food because they can make more

• 21:28Cameron Hanes?

  money. So it's like it, it, it's, I get frustrated because you want to do good work. You want to make a difference, but you just want to know that it, it is having that impact.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  This is what keeps me up at night because the odds are stacked against us as people to actually move these balls down the court, whether that's on food, safety, or the environment.

• 21:49Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Industry is against us. The two-party political system is against us. The news media incentives are against us. And I think that the new counterculture is the get shit done movement.

• 22:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Like, we are not allowing our leaders to capitulate to these special interests anymore. And that's the thing that Donald Trump has really tapped into that I think should keep going. Like, he's going to be gone in, you know, two and a half, three and a half years. We need to be able to think about our leaders that we're voting for also following this counterculture of like, we don't care about the special interests. We just want to get shit done. On the environment, for example, you look at something like sustainable agriculture, which every farmer wants to be sustainable and more conservation minded, every single one. And they all are already. They just need some of the resources to be, to equip them with tools to help them be even more efficient ranching and farming advocates. The big farm companies don't want them to have it

• 22:49Speaker 01

  because they want to keep things the way they are.

• 22:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, control it.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  They want to control it and they like stability and they like consistency, even if things could be better. And so they stop every policy that would help farmers become more efficient, more sustainable, that would put more money in the farmer's pocketbooks.

• 23:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  And the farmers are reliant, though, on these big companies to survive. So this is, this is true in the food world. This is true in, in all of the different, you know, parts of, of how we solve problems, but. We have to realize that on AI and data centers, it's the same thing. Like, these tech companies have bought out these politicians. And they don't want to stand up to say, hey, maybe we should be thinking about where we're putting all these places. And, you know, they're kind of ahead of the curve in terms of legality. We haven't really created a legal structure for this new, this new institution of data centers. And what is happening with the water? What is happening with the energy? And do we, like, we want to win this AI energy race, but for, to what end? Like, what is that going to actually do for the country?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  No one's having that conversation because all the power is in these companies. And that's a, that's a thing that's changed. Like, when I was growing up, it was all about fiscal conservatism, capitalism to no end. But it's like, some of these companies and these people have way too much control. And they are buying out the government. As somebody who has worked behind the scenes for the last 15 years, they have completely gotten a stranglehold over our leaders. And the counterculture of the future will be the people in this country who vote for people based on how they get shit done. Not what they say, not what party they're, they're a part of, but if they actually solve problems. But that is the biggest hurdle. And for the rest of my life, I'm, you know, dedicating to making sure that this caucus or whatever in politics actually does get something done. Or at least we give it the best chance we can.

• 24:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I, I like that. I, I guess what we can do is you take each individual battle, like this one that you're involved in now. You do the best you can. You try to get a win. You try to make advancements. You try to make improvements. And then hopefully this is a good example for people to see, and so they trust you. And then when the next one comes up, say, okay, we did that here. Now here's what we're going to take on now. Because you said it's the countercultures to get shit done. It's like, keep doing this and keep celebrating it and keep talking about it. And hopefully in time, because.

• 25:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, the curtain is pulled back and it's just like it is money that controls everything, which we should have known anyway, but I didn't realize how corrupt DC was and how corrupt these people are and how little they care about the Amer- they actually care about Americans.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:24Cameron Hanes?

  They care about their little group that they hang out with. They go and get drinks or do whatever. They care about the lobbyists who can get, get money in their pocket. But as far as the American people, so I want to celebrate people like you, people like Ryan Callahan over at Meat Eater and BHA. I, I trust him. Um, I, Zinke, I trust. I mean, and that's, I guess we're just gonna figure out along the way who's on our side, who gets work done, who's, you know, aligns with this. And, um, yeah, go from there.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  There needs to be a new, a new leadership kind of structure. And I, and I think you, Ryan, Zinke, and, you know, the Meat Eater crew. I mean, they're, those are great examples. Van Jones is somebody that I've really gotten to respect over the last few years.

• 26:09Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, I don't know him.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  So Van Jones is-

• 26:11Cameron Hanes?

  I know, I know who he is, but-

• 26:12Speaker 01

  So I was on the phone with him actually earlier today. First of all, the best advice I've ever gotten is from that guy, but in terms of how to treat other people. I mean, he, he knows how to treat other people really well. But what he, I mean, he has taken on this like anti-Semitic thing in a way that like the pro Palestinian group on the left has just completely rocked his world in terms of the pushback that he's gotten. And I don't have a stance on that, but-

• 26:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  That topic. But the point is, he's gone against everything he was supposed to say.

• 26:41Cameron Hanes?

  Learned some lessons.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. But he also goes against everything he's supposed to say. Like he works with Donald Trump on criminal justice reform, not because, and he lost so much because of it. He just wanted to do, because it would help get people out of prison who shouldn't be there anymore.

• 26:55Cameron Hanes?

  Well, he believes in it. He's standing up for something he believes in. That's all I want.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:59Cameron Hanes?

  Do you believe in what you're saying? If you do, I can get behind that.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Right. And even if I disagree, and, and that's the thing, like, I don't know anything about the Israel Palestine situation. Honestly, I'm not, I also think that's part of the problem with politics is that we all have to have an opinion on everything.

• 27:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  And it's like, I'm blatantly so unclear about what's happening over there and I don't really need to have an opinion on it. But I see that he's saying what he believes. To me, that's enough.

• 27:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  And I, he could be really wrong.

• 27:23Cameron Hanes?

  I respect that. Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  But that's, I think that's the future of politics too. You can sense passion in someone's voice, right? And you can tell if someone's telling the truth, actually pretty clearly.

• 27:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  And you might disagree with it, but I just feel like there's so much bullshit. The amount of times that I go into a senator's office and they're like, well, I wish I could say this, but it's like,

• 27:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  You've already lost with me.

• 27:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  You don't wish you could say anything and not say it.

• 27:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  You gotta just say it if you actually are gonna lead. And if you're scared of retribution, then I'm not sure we're really living in the democracy that I want to be living in.

• 27:58Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  And I've even had to have my own, like, come to Jesus moment on that. Like, there are a lot of people who kept telling me, do not say anything about the public land sell-off. Do not say anything about the public land sell-off because the certain senator has a lot of leadership over these issues. So I'm gonna shut up on something because I'm told that it would maybe risk something down the line, even though I believe it and but but then be okay with three million acres of public lands being sold off? Like,

• 28:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  If you're not gonna stand up for anything, then I might, you might as well just not even be involved.

• 28:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, but that's how most people have have advanced.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Because it's comfortable.

• 28:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's easy.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  It's so easy.

• 28:37Cameron Hanes?

  It's like, oh, what am I supposed to say? Okay, then then you did a favor for them. Now you got a favor coming. You know, that's how it works.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  That is how politics works.

• 28:46Cameron Hanes?

  Instead of just like, hey, you might not like to hear this, but I disagree.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:51Cameron Hanes?

  And here's, here's why. And yeah, I mean,

• 28:53Speaker 01

  It was so funny at this caucus kickoff, Steve Daines, the Montana senator, spoke on stage, he's like, you know what this caucus is about? It's about cheap gun or cheap gas and good hunting.

• 29:06Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  And you can see Warren Heinrich in the back being like, I guess.

• 29:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And the thing is, they both got different languages, but they got the same end goal, like,

• 29:15Cameron Hanes?

  In Montana, that's what they want to hear.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 29:18Cameron Hanes?

  That's what the people want to hear.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  But it's also what he believes.

• 29:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  And you know what? They can align on the good hunting part, right? And that's what matters.

• 29:25Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  And and so team up on the areas where there's ways to team up and go separate ways. And you know, that's, those are my favorite relationships because that's also life.

• 29:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Right? Like, I can guarantee you, like, I don't know your family background, but my family is so political, and I don't give a shit what they believe. They're my family.

• 29:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  And that comes first.

• 29:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  And when I see these families breaking apart over politics, it just hurts me. Because it's like, it doesn't have to be that way.

• 29:50Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  I don't know if you've kind of seen that same thing, but it's, it's, uh, it's frustrating because it's also reflective of where we're at as a, as a nation.

• 29:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, I have seen that. Um. What I, you know, as we talked about voting along party lines before, like with this whole public land sell-off, this was, and people, people on the, say, on the Democratic side will say, well, you voted for this. Republicans are always about, like raping the environment, about mineral extraction, about, and you know, Mike Lee is the one who was pushing this so hard, the Senator out of Utah, and he's a senior, what, he's been in this position forever, so he's got a lot of power there. So with a lot of power comes a lot of people just do what you want them to do. And that was all Republican. He's,

• 30:42Cameron Hanes?

  you know, very tight with Trump. I, I didn't see anybody caring about that. They're like, no, we're not selling public land. I don't care what party you are. And then you think about dealing with people say, well, you voted for this. It's like, no Republican voted to sell off public land. And this was, this is how politics work. They get in, Lee's been in forever, and he's been trying to do this shit forever, and he's not, it's not gonna-

• 31:11Speaker 01

  It's never gonna happen.

• 31:12Cameron Hanes?

  Well, he's not gonna be done either. He's gonna keep trying it. But, yeah, and what, some of his language that drives me crazy, we can talk about all this, but he'll talk about, what did he say? Underutilized public land. Who decides that?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:29Cameron Hanes?

  What, 'cause he never goes there?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:31Cameron Hanes?

  There might be people been hunting there for their whole lives. So who's, who's to say it's underutilized? Oh, we're just gonna sell this land nobody's using. What do you mean, nobody's using it? How would you know? And that was 3 million acres, but that is just the start of it. That gives them, now we've got the precedent set, and like, oh, we're gonna, affordable housing, which is all BS, but- Hoyt began with a dream and a simple desire. Create the best bow hunting and target archery equipment possible. And since 1931, that is exactly what they have been doing. I'm skeptical every year that this year's bow will be better than last year's, yet somehow, their engineers seem to figure it out. I think that's what sets them apart,

• 32:12Cameron Hanes?

  is their engineers are all avid hunters themselves, so they take their bows in the field every year with intent to make them stronger, faster, and more accurate. Hoyt is actually my lifetime bow sponsor. Yes, I signed a lifetime contract with them. That is how much I believe in them. Hoyt is offering listeners of the podcast 20% off on all soft good items at Hoyt.com using code CAM. That's CAM. Out in the mountains, there's no room for weak gear. When I'm packing out meat in the heat or loading up for a long range training trip, I need a cooler that holds the line every time. That's why I use Grizzly coolers. These things are bear proof, rugged as hell,

• 32:57Cameron Hanes?

  and keep ice locked in for days, literally. I've had coolers on the trail, baking in the sun, still holding ice after hauling out elk quarters. That's performance you can count on. Whether you're running deep in the backcountry or just stacking meat for the weekend, Grizzly is built for that grind. Right now, you can get 20% off at grizzlycoolers.com with the code KEEPHAMMERING. And that's all one word. And I'm not going to spell it. Keep hammering. Again, keep hammering, one word for 20% off. Don't roll with weak gear. Go Grizzly. Give me your thoughts on, on that whole land sales and how we got there.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, I hope Mike Lee has seen that and realized that the American people, including his own constituents in Utah of his own voter base, do not want that. So to your point, people did not vote for this. Even Utah Republicans didn't vote for this. It's a very small percentage of Americans. It was 10% from some polling we did of people who would support a sell-off like that. So it's like overwhelmingly, I don't know who those 10% are, but the 90% of Americans that disagree with that are going to continue to speak up. And I hope that he decides not to take it on again because he's just going to lose again.

• 34:10Cameron Hanes?

  Well, the 10%, I think is, because when you frame out like, oh, we want to sell this land and build affordable housing, because we need housing, people can't afford, first time home buying is down, we can't afford it. So

• 34:22Speaker 01

  They know that it's not about affordable housing, no.

• 34:24Cameron Hanes?

  No, they know, but that 10% of people might be like,

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 34:28Cameron Hanes?

  That sounds like a good idea.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Affordable housing, yeah.

• 34:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. So I mean, that's how they do it.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  That is how they do it. And I think for this, I would argue that we have urban sprawled enough. We have more than enough space in our cities to have more affordable housing. We're just not being smart about it. I live in Arizona. Now, and the amount of empty space there is vacant parking lots and vacant abandoned buildings and all this stuff, Salt Lake City has tons of that. I mean, just endless vacant lots and vacant buildings.

• 35:00Cameron Hanes?

  Portland, Oregon, vacant buildings all throughout downtown.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Right. It's not an affordable housing crisis. It's a, it's a, it's a crisis of how it's being managed.

• 35:09Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  And Portland, fix the crime, fix the homelessness, fix the drugs, stop moving everyone further and further out. That's not how you solve the problem.

• 35:19Cameron Hanes?

  And they give up the downtown to like the homeless and the, you know, whoever.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:24Cameron Hanes?

  They're just like, ah, yeah, this isn't gonna work out. Let's just go, go somewhere where it's, I guess, nicer and more, they, we'll start over again.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  That's basically what we keep doing. Yeah. That's what we basically keep doing. Yeah. I mean, and you look at Europe, and Europe's got its issues, but they've got one thing right, which is that they've figured out how to make cities fun and enjoyable to go to.

• 35:42Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  There's a reason why people go to Boston, and there's a reason why people go to Chicago, even though the South Side's kind of sketchy and like, people go to cities that they want to go visit.

• 35:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  And Portland's missed that opportunity. Seattle's losing it. A lot of these cities are losing it. And instead of just trying to move people further and further away from the problem, it's like, there's a little cancer growing in a city.

• 36:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  People are moving further and further away. And if you just attack the cancer, and then you built up more housing there, where there's already space and infrastructure to do it, and you could build shops and all the resources people need, you'd get rid of this affordability problem. So, it's, an urban sprawl does not fix it. But I also, like, I, my hot take too, is that we, we need more nature, not less. Like, we rely on it for our livelihoods, and whether you hunt or you're recreating it or not, this is, this is how a country will thrive 300 years from now. Do you have places where people can actually have freedom? The environment is where people have freedom and that could be a local park or it could be

• 36:42Speaker 01

  a national forest or a national park, but we are so chronically online, we've become way more disconnected from one another and the answer to how a society evolves is not to destroy the limited amount of nature that we have left. We don't have that much left to begin with and you're telling me that we're building more housing sprawled into the mountains is going to make society happier, it's going to make America a stronger country? Not at all.

• 37:10Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  And America is strong partially because we still have, we still give people the chance to have the worst week ever and go out to the environment and reconnect with their selves. That's one of the best things that America has to offer. People come here from all over the world to experience that because they don't have it in their country.

• 37:29Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  So don't get rid of that.

• 37:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  And that is something, that is a hill worth dying on.

• 37:36Cameron Hanes?

  Definitely.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  And that's a hill worth every American standing together to die on and the public land sell-off was a perfect example of how that is possible and how it's needed, but also not just to stop bad things from happening, but how about we get some offensive good things done for nature and for conservation. That's the future that I see for the movement.

• 37:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that, I agree 100% with all that. It's like nature, you know, the mountains are energy, they are life. You feel more connected, you feel more at peace, you make better decisions. It's everything that was lacking in people right now, which is why medication is, or medicating people is up, depression is up. You get into the mountains, dude.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  It's all gone.

• 38:24Cameron Hanes?

  That shit is cured.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  It's so cured.

• 38:26Cameron Hanes?

  And people just don't know and I, and so it makes me wonder too, this whole public land sell-off, it was a huge thing out west, but back east, it's, public land isn't the same as out here. We've always valued our public land. I mean, I, I wrote this book on public land bow hunting in 2006 and it was just like what everybody out west wanted to do. Get, you camp on your back, let's get out there, try to kill a big bull elk. So out west, it's always been public land is the crown jewel. Back east, I don't know if it doesn't resonate the same because they don't have it. Because you can't just go and the Adirondacks have some good country for sure.

• 39:09Cameron Hanes?

  But it's not like the Rocky Mountains out here where there's national parks and Yellowstone and all these incredible places, the Frank Church Wilderness, Eagle Cap Wilderness here, Trinity Alps down in California. These are all iconic, the Grand Canyon, this is all public land. That is like, it's, you can't, it's, you look at it and you're speechless, right? The east doesn't have that and there's, that's where most of, you know, other than LA, that's where most of the people live in this country. So is it, are we fighting an uphill battle explaining why public land is valuable? When they're dealing with the housing crisis more than anybody back there usually.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I also think our leaders, like even the Western senators don't spend time at home anymore. And so they've kind of lost touch and the House members too of like what it's like to be in the environment every day too. So it's not even just the people out east, it's also the leaders out east because our capital is out there.

• 40:05Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  So you see a direct correlation between time outside, which has gone down dramatically for every single American. There's some statistic last week that came out, it was just a staggering drop over the last 50 years of people spending time outside and depression. It's like, it's completely aligned. And yet, visitation to national parks and public lands is at an all time high. So what does that mean? How can it make sense that people are spending less time in nature than ever before, but then this visitation is higher than it's ever before? People only go in the environment now on their like once or twice a year vacation, especially the people out east. The rest of the time they're on their screens and they're in their homes, not talking to

• 40:51Speaker 01

  anybody, not building community because we've been shut inside for the rest of our lives. And so I think out east, what we need to do is figure out how to build nature and conservation into the ethos there again with better urban parks, better community parks, better regional parks, better county parks. Like they're not going to have the big, you know, Yellowstone's, they've already developed these areas. Please don't do that out west to us out here, by the way, because it's obviously not making people happier, but. You know, you look at New York City, everyone on the weekend flocks to Central Park. Why? Because it's a green space.

• 41:28Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  That's what we need more of. And why is Baltimore having such bad, you know, crime? Why is, why is there such a problem with their downtown? I've been down there. It is the worst downtown you could go to. There's nowhere to go hang out. There's no green space. And so I think we need to integrate that into people's communities again. And help people connect with the outdoors because it doesn't always have to be this grand mountain majesty that you enjoy nature in. It also could be the tree that you look up at while you're reading in the park for two hours.

• 41:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  But you just, people need to disconnect. But if you're out east, where do you disconnect?

• 42:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  And the other thing is, a lot of times you need to disconnect alone. Or disconnect with like your partner or something. Like I basically only go out hiking with my girlfriend or with myself. Because it is, it's a reconnection time. And if you go to the one pier in your city out east and there's 600 people on it, that's not really connecting with nature in the same way. So we need to start building that back. And it kind of goes back to the fact that more urban sprawl and more urban development doesn't necessarily help us.

• 42:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a good point because where I run every day, Mount Piska over here, is like 200 and some acre park. I mean, that's not a lot of land. They have that back east. But so many people go to get to the summit of Mount Piska every day. And yes, there are some trails around that aren't part of the park. But that, that is enough for people to get,

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:56Cameron Hanes?

  walk on some dirt, get some fresh air, get to the top of a mountain, look over the city. That changes you.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:02Cameron Hanes?

  If you're having a bad day, you get to the top of that mountain, to that summit, you're not having a bad day anymore.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:09Cameron Hanes?

  That's what, that's what it, that's what connection means. And that's what the healing powers of nature are.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  And I fell in love with nature in Wisconsin where I grew up. In just a state park. It was just a state park with a simple lake. There's something crazy about it. But just seeing the birds, seeing the deer, seeing the fish, like seeing the frogs. Like that was part of my upbringing. And so, yeah, you don't need to have this like grand western mountain majesty. But people kind of just go all in on that or they don't do anything outdoors anymore.

• 43:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  And it also creates a disconnection from our communities, like.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  People, my sister lives in Boston and she does a good job of getting outside, but you know, most people there like they won't even know that like there's this beautiful park on the, on the wharf there, or they won't even know that there's, they just go out west to like, go skiing once a year or something.

• 44:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  And so it's like this disconnection from place too that we need. And there's this concept that I've really enjoyed hearing about lately called patriotism of place. Be like, you know, you have a lot of pride in where you're from. We should be focused on making those places better. And if you do that, you also got to put partisan politics aside because it's, it's, it's not team red or blue. It's team where you live.

• 44:28Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  And that's a team that you want to be a part of.

• 44:31Cameron Hanes?

  I like that.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  So that's where connection to greenery and urban settings could be really helpful. Um, and out east, they need that. You look at like these really struggling towns, especially in like the south or the mid, the middle part of the eastern shore, and they need community more than ever. So this is a great way to do it.

• 44:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I, I agree. Um, yeah, I mean, even I've go down to LA quite a bit. I always run up to Hollywood sign. That's good trails up there.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:59Cameron Hanes?

  And this, that's right outside of LA.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  There's stuff everywhere.

• 45:02Cameron Hanes?

  Everywhere.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Literally everywhere.

• 45:04Cameron Hanes?

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• 45:47Cameron Hanes?

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• 46:32Cameron Hanes?

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• 47:00Cameron Hanes?

  Top of a mountain, it's just like, it gives you a goal, hike up there however long it takes, just get out there.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  And water often does the same thing, right? A river, I mean, I went over, running over the river this morning, watched the sunrise, like, that...

• 47:13Cameron Hanes?

  That sunrise looked good.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 47:16Cameron Hanes?

  It was beautiful, wasn't it?

• 47:17Speaker 01

  It was awesome. I was like, I'm gonna come back and run this every morning. But it was like, that's just, you know, there's rivers everywhere, there's trees everywhere. Like, you don't necessarily have to do anything crazy. And that's something that I've been, you know, I moved out west to be closer to the mountains out here, but not everyone has that privilege. And it doesn't matter, there's something in your backyard, I can guarantee it.

• 47:36Cameron Hanes?

  Well, and, you know, you haven't big game hunted yet, but there is something about when a fish hits that hook. Like, when you got a fish on the line, I don't care who it is, a little kid, a grown, whatever.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  I know that feeling.

• 47:51Cameron Hanes?

  That is some, that's power.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:53Cameron Hanes?

  Right? And then if you can like, okay, catch and release, fine, take that thing home, eat it, then there's connection to food. But all that, that's not, doesn't, doesn't take like you have to be, you know, at the top of the Grand Teton or something. It's like, that's just water. In a city, they have fish. Sometimes they plant those, and that's fine, too. Just get out there, get a line in the water.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:17Cameron Hanes?

  It doesn't have to be crazy.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  That's how I fell in love with my, you know, with, with the environment with my grandpa up in that lake that I was talking to you about. So yeah, it's everywhere. And, you know, I think... We, there's, there's like those gardening clubs, like everyone's connection to it is different. And what you, what we've just forgotten about is just this backyard, like we have, we have a beautiful environment in our backyard. Go explore it. I mean, I live in Arizona, people don't even know that an hour outside of Phoenix are some of the best trails.

• 48:45Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, it's beautiful there.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  I, I can't tell you how many Phoenix people who have grown up there have never been out there, not once.

• 48:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, isn't that crazy?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  But they do travel to Colorado or Utah or something. And I'm like, but what about like, you could do like a day trip?

• 48:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  And have like the best weekend in the mountains imaginable. So I think that that's also something that we could all do better about.

• 49:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. I mean, that reminds me, I had the, um, oh, I had a few people over the other day. And one of them ran for Oregon, I think made the Olympic trials in, in the 15 or the five. Had never been to the top of Pisgah.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Do you take her?

• 49:21Cameron Hanes?

  No, this is a guy.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:22Cameron Hanes?

  But, uh, we were supposed to run that morning. I was hunting though. But, uh, so you can live right here.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:28Cameron Hanes?

  It's 10 minutes away.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 49:30Cameron Hanes?

  And just because you never made time to do it, had never been there, which, you know, it's fine, you know, these athletes have to train pretty hard. But I think to your point, that's just a perfect example of, yeah, there's stuff right around you. Just search it out, take advantage of it.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  I think the next generation of political leadership is going to realize that people want that more than they want more technology.

• 49:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Like I, I feel like we've just gotten this, this AI tech data boom thing. But data center boom thing, but people actually don't want that. You're seeing like this revolt around people a whole, like literally of every background. A- as well as nature times gone down, depression times gone up. Also the amount of screen time is directly correlated with that too.

• 50:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  And we, I think, need to start rewarding leaders who have an environmental plan. And what I mean by that is literally all of it. It means conservation. It means urban parks. It means trees, you know, around schools. Like what is your way to connect people to the literal planet that we live on? The, the, the grass?

• 50:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  The dirt?

• 50:37Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  The, the plants, the animals. Are we teaching that in schools? Are we allowing people to get outside? Are we investing in taking care of these places? Who has a plan for that? And I think most people, it's basically they think about climate change, or they don't have a plan at all.

• 50:55Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  And we've got to start similar to like rewarding leaders based on standing for what they believe in. Also, let's make sure standing for what they believe in includes touching grass again.

• 51:06Cameron Hanes?

  How, how do you get people to pay? Cause to explain that and like have a leader that, you know, is like kind of all encompassing from nature all the way to, you know, maybe less electronics. But to explain that position, you have to capture people's attention for a few minutes. That is harder nowadays. People like, if you look at an Instagram reel, usually they're, they're going past it in three seconds. You got three seconds, right? So that's, I'm not saying that a conversation face to face is that same, but people get, they get bored.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  They do.

• 51:40Cameron Hanes?

  So how do we explain that? And have people pay attention long enough? What, what does that take?

• 51:47Speaker 01

  I think it takes being bolder that this is the counterculture, right? Like that this is, it's, it's not going to be on reels, right? Like we can't compete with that.

• 51:57Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  And we're not going to be divisive enough for that. I'm not going to attack somebody enough for that. And I'm not going to say something crazy enough for that. Maybe occasionally when something, you know, hits that nerve, like the public land sell off or whatever. But the majority of stuff that we're talking about here is that face to face or the real human interaction. But I also think people are craving that. You're seeing people delete social media off their phones. I know a ton of people, including my own girlfriend, who doesn't even have social media anymore. Because it just, they're like, whoa, is this making me happier? No. Okay. Why do I even have it? And they're listening to more podcasts and more longer form things. Uh, so I think what we're trying to do with nature's nonpartisan, we're going to launch a movement in the spring called United by Nature. And we're going to have totally different people from like an avid hunter with a vegan,

• 52:41Speaker 01

  sit down over a campfire to talk about public lands. You know, it, it still is like bold where you're like, wait, these people shouldn't be sitting next to each other. Or like, it still should be interesting enough to get their attention, hopefully. But it's not trying to feed into the algorithm's cry for either division or craziness.

• 53:00Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  And I think we just have to accept that that's not good for us. Like it takes each of us to just accept that. I'm not, I'm not going to try to compete with that. I've tried for years to think about ways to do it. I'm six years into thinking about it. So I haven't figured that out. I don't think the answer is coming down the pike. So we might as well just try to create our own game.

• 53:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  And our game is, again, solutions and human connection. Like, I hope this is the first of many interactions that you and I have of building a friendship, because that's what this is about for me.

• 53:29Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  And I want to spend more time outside with people. I want to spend more time outside with leaders. And I also want to build real human communities again, because I think that's also a counterculture. The tech people want us to, like, build AI girlfriends.

• 53:44Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  I love my girlfriend. I'm not gonna stop. So that's the sort of future that I think we can build to defeat that. I'm not saying people should just delete their social media.

• 53:52Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  But I do think that that's not where the answers are gonna be, at the very least.

• 53:57Cameron Hanes?

  Right. I definitely agree with all that. And I think there is some hope there. I mean, I've seen that, like, about the polar opposite of me in general. If you had whatever, it would be Travis Barker. Vegan, LA, superstar, me, redneck, dipshit, bowhunter. But we run together.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 54:21Cameron Hanes?

  And it's great. And it's just like, that discussion is a different type of discussion, because it's not somebody who I talk to, a type of person I've talked to my whole life. I'm not the type of person he's talked to his whole life. So it makes these, this conversation interesting. And that's what it takes. It takes like, oh, people catch them off guard. They'll be like, wait, why are these guys together? And that is the key. I mean, I had Alexi Pappas too. And she's, you know, Ivy League, never hunted, went out, took her out to get her first buck. And that was a whole different.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Thanks for the invite.

• 54:56Cameron Hanes?

  That was a whole different discussion, having her explain something that I've done my whole life.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:01Cameron Hanes?

  In a different manner. But everybody loved that podcast, because they're used to me talking about this shit. And we talked about, too, like, it would be funny. I don't know what how this fits into our discussion, but like when I talk about hunting and why it's good and and you know why that connection to food is so important. People are used to like how I look. This is the same old me saying the same shit. So what if it was like the most gay talking guy ever, right? The most feminine guy ever saying the exact same thing I say. Would people be like not off put because I'm not, oh, he's MAGA, which whatever the

• 55:41Cameron Hanes?

  just lazy stupid thing. I'm not MAGA, but they can, they can write me off for being MAGA. Right. But you can't write off this, this gay guy talk, saying the same stuff. Well, are you listening now? Or like, would they listen and be like, that actually makes a lot of sense, just because it's not me. So I like having this discussion with different voices delivered in a different way, because it's going to resonate differently with people. Or their guard's down because it's like, yeah, this guy's always talking about that shit. But her or Travis, I haven't heard them say stuff like this. I think that's what it takes. It's just a new audience and a, and a fresh conversation.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, it humanizes it for people who need different validators, right? Like, we all look up to different people and have different backgrounds. So it's like, if you, if you're gay, you're going to be more likely to listen to a gay guy. If you're, if you're a conservative, ardent conservative person, you're going to want to probably listen to that. And if you're a liberal, you're going to want to listen to that, too. If you're a sports fan, you're going to want to listen to a sports star say something. But

• 56:46Cameron Hanes?

  The message is the important part.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  The message is the most important part. And I think, but what people feel like is like every hunter looks like you, but that's not true.

• 56:55Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  And, and that's increasingly not true. And I didn't grow up with people who kind of validated that. And now I'm like, all in on it because I've seen that now. So I, I'm so pro hunting in a way that I was probably, probably pretty neutral about it 10 years ago. I probably wasn't against it or for it. But now I'm like, the biggest hunting advocate out there. And it's because I've seen it from a lens that makes sense to my life, which is like, I care about conservation and the environment more than literally anything. And I know the important role that the hunting and fishing community plays.

• 57:28Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  So that's why it matters to me. And I had people who spoke with that message about it to me, and now I fully get it.

• 57:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  So that's the, I think that's also how we can start to break down these sort of barriers that we've set is like, because a lot, it's not this black and white.

• 57:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  And we've gotten into this, like, like to your last question about social media, not everything is explainable in a 10 second reel.

• 57:51Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  And not everything's explainable in a three minute reel, or a one hour podcast. Like, we could probably talk for hours about this stuff and still not even come close to everything we would want to talk about because it's complicated.

• 58:03Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  The political world's complicated, environmental policy is complicated, culture's complicated, and it's not as simple as we think. Hunters aren't just masculine men, right? It's something, it's like, and my parents are vegans. Everyone's like, oh, they must be like liberal hippies. No, they're conservatives, but also they're, they're not vegans because of animal rights. They literally just don't like meat, the taste of it. That's it. But everyone assumes based on the black and white, you know, way that we think about things.

• 58:28Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  We need to start having these conversations in a way that actually opens up those, those kind of barriers from our minds.

• 58:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And just, instead of just writing somebody off, like, because of how they look.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:42Cameron Hanes?

  Like, let's just, okay, I want to hear what they say.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:45Cameron Hanes?

  And that, that isn't really popular nowadays. It's really easy to write people off to say, you know, that pink haired liberal or blue haired liberal, me, like how I look. But I really, I love that you're really pushing back on, hey, let's listen to the message, let's have a long, a long form type discussion. And, uh,

• 59:06Speaker 01

  There's, there's this woman who created a conspiracy video about me earlier this year that I was like, I was set up by a Chilean mining company to help the Trump administration greenwash their destruction of the Boundary Waters in Minnesota.

• 59:21Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Crazy. I mean, it really went down this rabbit hole. But she's got a huge following on Instagram.

• 59:26Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  So I, I commented. If you don't take this down, I'm gonna look at suing you for defamation. Because it went viral. I mean, it had almost a million views within like a couple of hours. And I had people's parents from high school messaging me on Facebook Messenger. I can't believe what you've turned into. I used to look up to you, like all the stuff. I was like, and I got all these messages out of the blue and I was like, wait, what did I do? Like, and I had to find this video and I was like, whoa. And I just talked to her last week. Nicest girl.

• 59:59Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  And

• 1:00:01Cameron Hanes?

  So what was it?

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  She just genuinely went down this rabbit hole and believed something about me that wasn't true and convinced herself of it because of the fact that I was trying to work with Trump on this Make America Beautiful Again.

• 1:00:12Cameron Hanes?

  There's confirmation, but you can find any belief you have confirmed somewhere.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:17Cameron Hanes?

  So you can go down the rabbit hole and somebody will be saying, you're right.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:21Cameron Hanes?

  That's the problem.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  And everyone was commenting as if she was speaking the whole truth. Well, now I'm grabbing breakfast with her in two weeks and we become friends because I'm not like, life's too short. Like that personally did affect me because it like was about me.

• 1:00:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  But life's too short to hate these people who disagree with you. And then when they come after you, a lot of times it's literally off of pure ignorance. And they totally don't like when people call you this MAGA sellout, like they don't know you. And like, you just gotta, you know that and you just move past it. And I know that I'm not bought out by Argentinian or Chilean mining company. But there are, most people are just blindly following whatever they're, whatever they hear based off of how someone looks or who they're identified with or whatever. And I worked with Donald Trump on an executive order, fact. I'm trying to destroy the environment under the name of Donald Trump, not a fact, not a fact. I'm loyal to Donald Trump. No, I'm loyal to the environment. Guess what being loyal to the environment means?

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  You work with absolutely anybody to be loyal to the environment, whether you like him or not. I don't give a shit.

• 1:01:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  And that's something that I think you embody by, you know, having this conversation. And that's why it's like, I will have any pro hunting and angling advocate in the network possible as I will have somebody who's the hippiest, dippiest person. Because if we just share the need to protect these places and conserve them and allow recreation in them. Let's just go forward together. That's the philosophy we gotta have.

• 1:01:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, I, I think that's great. You know, uh, uh, looking at your hat, there's like, there's another person that played for Green Bay that's like pushing back on what the norm like, uh, you, you, uh, Aaron Rodgers fan or no?

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  I do like him. You know what I like about him? He's not right all the time.

• 1:02:12Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  But he A doesn't care. He gives zero shits.

• 1:02:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  He, he does stand up for what he believes in. You can tell.

• 1:02:21Cameron Hanes?

  For sure.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  And you know, he is, you can tell that he is really evolved into a person that is actually enjoying life.

• 1:02:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  And you know, whether that means that I agree with his behaviors or not, I mean, I didn't like how he left the Packers. I can say that. I thought he handled that poorly, but

• 1:02:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  I, I've always been an Aaron Rodgers fan and I also think like people who hate him, it's like, come on, like you don't know him. I, I can't, I can't hate someone I don't know.

• 1:02:51Cameron Hanes?

  Right. I know.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Except for like Bears players. Like, yeah, I hate them all, but that's a different story.

• 1:02:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. No, Aaron, he came here after, uh, kind of after he hurt his Achilles. But yeah, we did Spencer's Butte, which is another mountain over here in the snow and shot a bow, lifted, he's actually really strong. He's a big dude, but, uh, yeah, I've always been a fan just how he just

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  He's real. He's real.

• 1:03:15Cameron Hanes?

  He just says what he believes and he's also always learning.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Cameron Hanes?

  I, I can

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 1:03:21Cameron Hanes?

  I can respect somebody who doesn't. A lot of people think they know it all. And when you think you know it all, you're never going to grow.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:28Cameron Hanes?

  Cause you are, you already have all the answers. But if he's like one of the guys who's super smart, well read, but also doesn't know it all and is always trying to learn and evolve. I, I love people like that.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he's figuring it out. And I think like anybody who acts like they have life figured out is just really stupid because they don't. And I don't, you don't, no one does. And he's constantly evolving and being open about that.

• 1:03:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  He'll tell you, I was wrong a few years ago when I did this. And then people will be like, see you're wrong. See you're admitting it's like, no, give him kudos. Like

• 1:04:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  The dude's admitting that he's grown. And like, we all should do that. Like I've been wrong about a million things in the last two years and I'm probably wrong about half the shit I'm saying right now.

• 1:04:09Cameron Hanes?

  Exactly. Yeah. That's life.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  That's life and. That's also like what's scary about some of these politicians and like how how like the same views have been for 10 years. It's like, did you not learn anything? Like, nothing changed? Nothing evolved? Nothing grew?

• 1:04:23Cameron Hanes?

  It's nuts.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  It's crazy. But yeah, Aaron's great. And honestly, I think he set a good example for people that they can be outside the box, but still make it work in the real world.

• 1:04:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  And people hated on him so hard. And we're like, his career is over. No one's gonna look at him the same way. And nope, that was not true.

• 1:04:44Cameron Hanes?

  Throw a good ball, and that's all that matters in that game.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  But I also think most people who, like, most people probably like him, but it's kind of taboo to say you like him, so they don't. And so you feel like-

• 1:04:55Cameron Hanes?

  He's polarizing.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Cameron Hanes?

  But I'm good with, I love that.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Cameron Hanes?

  I like, I like people who, whatever, just stand-

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  They're willing to take it on the chin.

• 1:05:03Cameron Hanes?

  Whatever. I mean, I don't want people who just say what they have to say to survive. Say how you feel.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that also shows that they're willing to risk things, right?

• 1:05:13Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah. It's awesome.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Risk your job, risk, I mean, we're doing that all the time. And if you, there's bigger things in life than the paycheck, right? It's like, I talked about this with my girlfriend all the time. Like, if I stand up for what I believe in, and it ends my career, I'm literally so good to just go out to Wyoming and just hike for the rest of my life and just work at a restaurant, which I did in high school, and like, you know, just live paycheck to paycheck. Like, I don't care. And people, like, when you die, what are you gonna be proud of? Just going along to get along? Or standing up for what you thought was right? And it sounds cliche, but it's like, I think a lot of people in leadership need to have that reality check.

• 1:05:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I think so, too.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Did you have a spine? Did you not?

• 1:06:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. I know. That's all, I've said this on a podcast, maybe last one, the one before. I just want, I just wanna- I want somebody to make me believe in what they're doing. Just, just give me something to believe in, that's it. I just don't believe in hardly anything these guys say. I want to trust somebody, that's it. So what's, what's your, uh, you mentioned another thing you got going, but what are you working on right now?

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  So we're going to launch a cultural campaign called United by Nature, which is really designed, you'll see it, our first campaign is going to be about public lands, but we're going to tackle wildlife, we're going to tackle clean water, like a lot of the different critical environmental issues that there are. But the first theme is going to be public lands. And our goal is to really rebuild and reignite the conservation legacy that America used to have, and make people feel like they can actually buy into a movement for this again. And I know that sounds kind of abstract because it's not launched yet, but we're trying to make being active in advocating for conservation fun, engaging, optimistic, something that people want to be a part of, and make it easy for people.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  So, um, you know, we're not only teaming up with a diverse set of nonprofits, from the hunting and fishing NGOs to the traditional, you know, environmental NGOs, but we're also going to have some of the most surprising influencers and leaders a part of it saying the same things. And our goal is to show politicians that Americans actually want this in the public, that this is not something that should be halted when one side wins, or gone too extreme when one side wins, that we want consistent action. And it's really recreating what we had in the seventies and eighties in this country. Like, we had a rational movement, that's how we got the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act. Now, those laws are out of date and they're ineffective. One of the reasons why

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  we haven't been able to fix them is because of the exact problem we're trying to solve. But those bills passed 95 to 5 in the senate, because politicians knew that's what America wanted. It didn't matter what political identity. And so that's the movement we're trying to create. So, United by Nature. And it will make taking action super easy. We're going to build a software to make it super easy for people to be able to take action and also start to really support local community restoration efforts instead of just national policy. So that's launching in March. And then hopefully because of that ground swell of Americans who believe that conservation should transcend any difference ideologically, our leaders will follow. So this caucus is designed, the Senate caucus we've been talking about is designed to put

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  bipartisan policy across the finish line. And we're hoping that that prioritizes it. Because if you don't know anything about politics, it's basically you're focused maybe six hours a day on Tik Tok and Instagram videos trying to get attention as a senator. And then the other two hours of the day, you're trying to maybe think about passing a law. Well, if the environment's not in the top 10 or 15 priority issues, it will never see the light of day.

• 1:09:01Cameron Hanes?

  Anytime.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Anytime. So we are just trying to get it some time. That's the goal.

• 1:09:05Cameron Hanes?

  I like that. It should be like a perfect time for this, when you consider all the the public outpour of support for the not one acre, the public land. Is this, do I have this shirt on? Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, there it is. There's Teddy. And he's wearing your hat.

• 1:09:26Cameron Hanes?

  I know. I didn't even know that he had a Keith Emmerich hat.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  He did. I read about that in his biography.

• 1:09:31Cameron Hanes?

  But, yeah, so it's like, it should be an easy time. Here's what, here's where I get skeptical. Not on what you're doing.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  No, I want to know what you're skeptical of.

• 1:09:41Cameron Hanes?

  So you say you have a relationship with Trump. And is he supportive of this? Because here's, here's what I'm gonna lay out. I feel like he's supportive of Mike Lee also selling public land because he's a money guy. And people can say Republicans, they, you know, whatever, they're all about making money. But I wonder.

• 1:10:02Cameron Hanes?

  Does, would, is Trump saying the right things for public land, but also telling Mike Lee to pursue selling public land?

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  So this is why we need to build up this grassroots army, which we sort of saw again with the public lands proposal a couple of months ago. Because the reason that got stopped was not because Mike Lee had a come to Jesus moment is because he realized he was gonna lose on it.

• 1:10:25Cameron Hanes?

  Losing, yeah.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  What we need to show our leaders is that they can also win on doing the right thing. And what I don't think Donald Trump has seen yet enough of is that this is a priority for Americans, his base and those who voted against him, but also his base, his base cares about it. That is not clear to him. And so I think right now he's in this place where he's actually sort of neutral. And he hasn't decided which way he wants to go yet on conservation. And my message to his team is that there's a, there's a truly a winning legacy item and there's a losing legacy item. You do not want to be known as the president that sold off public land, which is one of America's greatest assets that we have.

• 1:11:03Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  You want to be known as the guy who made them better. And who put politics aside to find a way to maintain them better, to fund them better, to, you know, figure out how to get rid of invasive species and help fight forest fires and put money into wildlife conservation and support hunting and angling. That's the legacy you want to leave. Or you can choose the other route. And I don't think he's decided yet. We got him to sign an executive order called Make America Beautiful Again, which was, is a commission in the White House to tackle public lands issues, wildfires and recreation access in a way that solves, but is pro those things, like is, is, is, you know, is an

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  optimistic way of looking at it. He hasn't done anything on it yet.

• 1:11:53Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  It's but it's been five months or four months. So I'm not sure where he's gonna go on this yet and

• 1:12:00Cameron Hanes?

  But do you think that that that's a long that feels like a long time to me?

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  That's how it feels to me, too. And

• 1:12:07Cameron Hanes?

  That's what I get worried about.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  I do, too.

• 1:12:09Cameron Hanes?

  You sign this shit and it's like a big photo op and it's like, okay.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:15Cameron Hanes?

  Let's do something.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  And and I honestly think that that's partially why I think it's been frustrating for the administration to see me.

• 1:12:24Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Because I'm not banging the Trump drum because I haven't seen anything yet.

• 1:12:29Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  I will. I will celebrate the shit out of any conservation action he does.

• 1:12:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  I will be the first one to stand next to him or be a part of the team that helps make it happen. But if he doesn't do it, I'm not gonna support that.

• 1:12:42Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Right? And if he supports a public land sell off, I'm not gonna support that. So that's that's what I also think this administration hasn't understood yet about politics is that there are a lot of people out there who do just want to do the right thing, who aren't and are are willing to kind of call balls and strikes.

• 1:13:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  And like you are. And I don't think what they've realized yet is how much support they would get if they did the right thing on this.

• 1:13:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I think that I think you're right in that he doesn't. He hasn't taken a stance yet because I know on the big, beautiful bill, I think they wanted to push that public land sell off bullshit up until the very last minute. And I think Trump had to call Lee and say, get rid of that language because it's gonna screw up my bill. The bill isn't gonna pass with that in there because it was such like they were getting more calls than they've ever got. It was phones were ringing off the hook of all these congressmen, all these senators, and it was such a big distraction that he, whether he believed it or not, he was just like, no, this is not my big, beautiful bill. Get it out of there.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  But I think when he wakes up in the morning, this is like the 25th thing he thinks.

• 1:13:50Cameron Hanes?

  For sure.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  If it is that high.

• 1:13:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  25th issue. I I also know that there was a lot of mixed

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  like a mixed identity within the White House of how they felt about the public land sell off. There are some people who really wanted it and some people who didn't. And I don't know how that shakes out because a lot of the people in that White House actually are ardent conservationists. They care deeply about the environment. Doug Burgum, the DUI secretary, had a huge conservation legacy as the North Dakota governor and loves Teddy Roosevelt more than anybody I've ever met. However, there are also people who are develop, develop, develop, you know, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow at the expense of anything. And it's also all about owning the libs and it's not about substance. And which one wins on conservation has not yet to be seen.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  But there have been mostly rollbacks from a conservation perspective since he's been in office. And so what I've told the team is like, at the White House is, America wants, you can, you can see the polling, or you can see the real human backlash from the public hands off. Humans on this continent, in this country, who are Republican, want you to do good things for the environment. They do. There's proof. I don't need to, it's not hypothetical. It's your choice. And you're going to keep getting pushed down on this stuff if you don't lead on it. And I don't know why they don't just take it. I mean, it's such an easy win.

• 1:15:17Cameron Hanes?

  And you can't, you can't put, Trump can't put his picture up alongside Roosevelt when he hasn't done shit, to protect public lands and/or conservation.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  But he's got three and a half years left. And my message to them would be like, it's not too late to go all in.

• 1:15:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I'm on your side. And I have switched gears. And I like, I'm just going to call it out. I just, I just don't like this political BS going on. But like you, if it changes, and there is something like positive regarding public land, and you know, timber management, and protecting our ranchers, and everything that like, middle America cares about, other than the coasts, like, then I will celebrate that. And I will say, thank you, President Trump. But until that time, it's like, no, off. It's like, I can't, I can't support it.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  No. And people need answers. Like, 94% of water in the United States that we drink has microplastics in it. The Mississippi River is getting destroyed by nitrogen runoff from the farms. The farmers could keep that water on their property and actually recycle it if the government was willing to have that conversation. Like, there are solutions to this stuff.

• 1:16:30Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  But middle America does care, and it is such a stupid decision not to go after conservation progress. It's such a drop in the bucket. My goal, truly, in the 21st century is to build a second conservation corps.

• 1:16:45Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  I think that America needs a 21st century conservation corps that the government is helping to fund. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend on everything else. It would literally be cents on the dollar for every American every year to fund this thing. We could have a full-time workforce of young people who are not mission-driven, who have no idea where to go in life. They could go and help restore America's environment and help build stewardship for the next generation. You could have part-time people, and you could have volunteers. You could have a mom and her kid go to the river every weekend, be part of the conservation corps. It doesn't have to be a full-time thing. It could be a community-driven effort. They could partner with local nonprofits in each region of who's restoring what trails

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  and what rivers and what, you know, prairies, and make it part of the American ethos. Like, make it part of our pride and put people to work, and that's the sort of thing that is just such a winner. Every American could get behind that.

• 1:17:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  And it's not the climate corps, which is what Biden tried to do, which is very narrow, and it was more about clean energy infrastructure and social justice and stuff. It's literally about improving the health and cleanliness of our communities and our backyards and our public lands. That's what it could be about.

• 1:17:54Cameron Hanes?

  I like that, and I think that has to be independent, because, you know, when you get the government shut down, or you get the, I don't know, the DoD report or whatever, but anyway, they cut so many federal and government workers, and a lot of them were working on, you know, working for the parks or working for BLM, National Forest, and they got cut. So it's like... People think government is just pissing away money, taking money from the American people. It's too many taxes. So I think if you were independent and on, you know, your goal there, that would be more of a chance for success. It feels like to me.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  I think there could be a for-profit, a nonprofit and the government can all be involved in this together.

• 1:18:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, maybe so, yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  If the government was involved, it would be really easy to make it transparent from the get-go.

• 1:18:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that would be great.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Here are the metrics we're gonna have. We're gonna put this workforce to work. We're gonna restore these places and at the end of each year or every two years or whatever, we're going to assess how successful we were on these projects.

• 1:18:54Cameron Hanes?

  That's great.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  It's not that hard to build that. I mean, I, I'm 27 and I've built some nonprofits and I think I could just build that whole blueprint if they wanted me to. I mean, what happened to the government? Also, we're just reporting progress on things. Like, hey, we promised that we'd do this with this money and then we just never hear about it ever again.

• 1:19:12Cameron Hanes?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  We could easily say, we're gonna put $30 billion to a conservation corps. If it doesn't save 30 billion, then we're gonna, you know, we're gonna reassess or 3 billion or whatever, whatever number. But just like reassess it after a certain amount of years because if we could restore these ecosystems and help protect wildlife and create corridors with public-private partnerships and really just help kind of make the American conservation spirit part of our identity again, you could see a huge cost savings from disaster, disasters that are happening across the country from forest fires to hurricanes to everything like that. Track if it's working and then shift. Like this is, talk about evolution from Aaron Rodgers. We need evolution from the government. Like, oh, this isn't working. Let's, let's divert.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  And run it sort of, and this is where Elon sort of had something. Run it sort of like a corp, run a program like this, like a business.

• 1:20:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  I can't afford to run a nonprofit. To spend X amount a year and not get anything done.

• 1:20:14Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  So the government should be held to the same standard.

• 1:20:16Cameron Hanes?

  I like that. I think that another part of the messaging could be, you know, people talk about mineral extraction and, you know,

• 1:20:26Cameron Hanes?

  I guess, being more energy independent as a country. And I hunt areas in Southern Colorado, which they pull natural gas off there. There's wells everywhere and it's incredible hunting. So

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  There's a way to do it.

• 1:20:40Cameron Hanes?

  You can extract minerals and you're not, you're making amazing habitat.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:46Cameron Hanes?

  It's good for the animals. It's good for hunters. It's good for whatever, because if you go like on Highway 12 in Southern Colorado, where I hunt on this side is night and day different from the public land side. Because there's incentive to keep water there, to keep the roads maintained, to keep access, but also to create this amazing habitat. On the other side, there's not. So it's like, there is a, there's a story about, yes, it's natural gas and that used to be where coal mines were and now they're, it's not the coal anymore, but it's the same, getting the same results out of it. And it hasn't ruined anything. It's made it better.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:27Cameron Hanes?

  So, yeah, that

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  And that's, I mean, this mixed, multiple use mandate. So a lot of the Mike Lee people in DC attributed our opposition to the public land sale off is that we don't support multiple use. That's how they felt about it. It could be further from the truth, obviously, for me and for you as well. And we have to, I mean, we have to develop resources and we have to mine, we have to develop energy. And I don't care if it's oil and gas or, you know, figuring out how to get uranium for nuclear. Like, we got to figure this stuff out. I was shocked, and I'm not advocating for this. In fact, I think we don't need to do more of it in the Gulf, but I toured an offshore oil rig. And it was amazing to see the artificial reef that it created for the fish. There were so

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  many fish underneath this reef and I used to be so against it and I'm, you know, I'm not a huge fan of putting these things up in the ocean.

• 1:22:19Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  In pristine natural areas, but the fact that they were already there, creating energy for the, energy independence for the country and then you have these crazy reefs that they've just created.

• 1:22:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  All these fish flocking to it, like, there's a way to do it and I think that's also where the left really gets it wrong.

• 1:22:37Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Like, you can have both. I mean, I live in a neighborhood in Arizona where we have bobcats, we have coyotes, we have javelinas, we got all these wa- all this wildlife that's able to interact with the human ecosystem.

• 1:22:50Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Let alone like a well.

• 1:22:52Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  And so there's a way to do it and I think if that's always in mind, then we can use those underutilized public lands, not for more affordable housing to destroy it, but like have the multiple use mandate that Teddy Roosevelt talked about, which was, we're gonna protect these places. They're not getting developed for good.

• 1:23:11Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  They're getting developed temporarily for energy extraction. That's okay. We can still do that and have a healthy environment.

• 1:23:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, and then there's a way where when the well isn't producing, you abandon it. You just don't leave it.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Clean it up.

• 1:23:23Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and I think, uh, Landman has done a good job of showing like the wind energy and like, it's not just all roses.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:23:31Cameron Hanes?

  You know, I mean, what happens when these facilities aren't producing anymore? They're just kind of abandoned.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  That's been a huge evolution for me. I mean, I, I used to be kind of like a climate, talk about evolution, like, I used to think climate change was a huge deal and that we needed to have more wind turbines and solar panels everywhere and all this stuff. And I do believe climate change is real, but I will never support destroying the environment to quote unquote, save the environment.

• 1:23:59Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  That is the worst concept I've ever been lied to about, by the way, cause I listened to that for a while and I actually promoted it. You can probably find me clips of me saying it. And

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  There is no reason why we should destroy, like you look at what China's doing and at COP, this climate thing that just happened two weeks ago in, in Brazil, everyone was celebrating China for being this climate leader. First of all, they have the highest emissions out of any country by far.

• 1:24:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Second of all, they have solar panels that are destroying their entire country. I mean, you look at the farms that they have, the whole mountain ranges have been cut down to put up solar panels.

• 1:24:35Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  Why do we care about climate change if we don't have a natural world left?

• 1:24:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  Like we might as well just like burn the whole planet because we got a ticking time bomb at that point.

• 1:24:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  Nature matters more than climate change.

• 1:24:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  And you don't even need to care about, you, you shouldn't care about climate change if we have no natural world left. Cause if we have no natural world left, then I don't care about climate change. Just burn the planet up, honestly, because we don't have hope if we don't have nature. And so I think we are starting to see a more rational discussion about renewables. I'm fine with solar panels on roofs. I'm fine with wind in certain areas, like in Wisconsin, there's some really windy areas that didn't, kind of just had this rolling plains. Okay. But if you're destroying ecosystems to put up wind turbines or solar panels.

• 1:25:18Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Nobody should be for that.

• 1:25:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, there's nuance to all this.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:22Cameron Hanes?

  And it's just, it's not just black and white, this side, that side. But I do like that you said you, somebody can look up videos of you talking about climate change and, uh, and you have changed your stance. And it's just like, yeah, that's fine. That's, that's called being a human.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  I wrote a book and I don't agree with a lot of stuff that's in there. Like that's, it's, it's, it's called learning, you know, and, you know, I've voted for people whoever I've been voting for.

• 1:25:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  And like, all you can do is learn the most you can in a day and put the, put that day behind you because I can't control, I can't change what I did on the ballot box in 2016. People are like, who did you vote for? Who'd you, I was on a college campus a few times this fall and people are like, who did you vote for in 2024? I'm like, as if that was like a question that would dictate whether or not they took me seriously.

• 1:26:11Cameron Hanes?

  Right, right.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  And it's like. How do you know that who I voted for a year ago, I completely hate or love now? Like you have no idea?

• 1:26:18Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  And it's just like you, you do the best with the information you have. You move on, you learn, and I feel like that's something that in politics is not rewarded, but should be.

• 1:26:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, they want to put you in a box so they can dismiss whatever you say. It's just like, oh, because, because of this reason, but yeah, I mean.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  On climate, I've really evolved and I also just am like, you see what India and China are doing. And it's not an excuse for us not to care about our environment at all, but you mean, you can't even see the, the visibility is like a half a mile in these places.

• 1:26:54Cameron Hanes?

  And that's not, that's not going to get coverage because they control what's, what's on the news there. So where, where we have this, we can show whatever here and everybody sees all our skeletons in our closet in this country. That, those other countries are not like that.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:27:07Cameron Hanes?

  So you're not seeing the real story over there.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  And there's nothing they can do about it.

• 1:27:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  And if people in China wanted to stand up and say, hey, we actually don't want to lose 40% of our forest to solar farms. They couldn't say that.

• 1:27:21Cameron Hanes?

  No. Okay, how about jail?

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  I want to start a nonprofit. No, you're gonna.

• 1:27:27Cameron Hanes?

  You're going to jail.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Enjoy that from jail. Yeah.

• 1:27:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, we, we have, we have.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Powered by solar.

• 1:27:33Cameron Hanes?

  We have it good here, but uh, it's um, yeah, I mean, we can get, we need to get better. We have to get better. We have to get more.

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  And I do want to be a model for the world, you know?

• 1:27:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  Can you have?

• 1:27:44Cameron Hanes?

  If not us, who?

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Right. If, literally who? I can't think of anybody.

• 1:27:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  And we should be able to show the world that humans can coexist with the environment, that you can have economic growth, but still protect the places that we have left from a nature perspective. And I feel like maybe this counterculture that we talked about in the first part of this is like, also thinking about the long-term implications of a lot of these things. It's not just like, how much can we extract? Economically for the next year or two, but like, what does that mean for us 10, 20 years down the line? Because I'm 27 and I want to have kids. And if we drain all the resources for this AI boom, for example, and we have more economic wealth than ever before, but we've depleted everything.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not sure I want that trade off. And I'm not saying that that's going to happen. I'm not trying to fear monger AI and data centers, but I'm just saying, we usually think about shareholder value for the next year or our stocks for the next year or whatever. We, I want to show the world that you can have human ingenuity, human flourishing, but also make sure that we coexist with the natural world that we rely on for our survival. And we know that we do.

• 1:29:02Cameron Hanes?

  I like that. I agree with that. Gideon?

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  What are we missing?

• 1:29:07Cameron Hanes?

  You got any questions for Benji?

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Can I drink this?

• 1:29:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, you can. You can drink whatever.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Did you personally brew this?

• 1:29:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I did. That's got elk blood, all elk blood.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Straight from the garage. Hopefully it's like Aaron Rodgers.

• 1:29:21Cameron Hanes?

  Try it out. Try it out.

• 1:29:27Cameron Hanes?

  It's elk blood.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  I love elk blood.

• 1:29:31Cameron Hanes?

  What do you think?

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  It's actually really good.

• 1:29:33Cameron Hanes?

  You like it?

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Cameron Hanes?

  Good. There you go.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  It's got 25 milligrams of CBD too. It literally says elk blood on it. I totally missed that. I thought that was, that you're joking.

• 1:29:43Cameron Hanes?

  Well, that, no, that was what Joe said. Hey, do you want to come up with the energy drink? He's like, I said, yeah. He goes, what would you call it? I'm like elk blood.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Is an elk your spirit animal?

• 1:29:55Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know if I have a spirit. Do I have a spirit animal?

• 1:30:02Cameron Hanes?

  James's spirit animal is who? Who's that guy who wears makeup? That, uh, Charles, James, is it James Charles?

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  That's my spirit animal. I'm so sorry.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  This isn't Shit Talkers Weekly.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that just came out of nowhere.

• 1:30:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, sorry. Sorry.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  I think you could be an elk, by the way.

• 1:30:28Cameron Hanes?

  Me?

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:29Cameron Hanes?

  Okay. Okay. I'll think about it.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  You kind of touched on this, especially with like the climate change and everything like that. I feel like a lot of people associate being an environmentalist with that movement, with climate change, and then they kind of associate that with some of the fraud or dishonesty that they experience there. So how do you think we move away from people's thoughts about that as well as kind of companies trying to capitalize on that movement and just make money off of it? And move more to where we're sharing what we're actually trying to do and giving people the truth?

• 1:31:02Speaker 01

  Great question. First, the first wave of environmentalism was what you and I care about. That was the first wave. Second wave was this kind of Greta climate alarmism thing. The third wave is going to go back to the first, just in the 21st century. Like, we just got to take the movement back.

• 1:31:18Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  And I don't mean that in like an aggressive way. I just mean like in a way that the people who spend the most time in the environment are the ones who are advocating for it. I talk to people all the time who are, you know, hunters, anglers, ATV'ers, people who recreate, who don't fit the traditional environmentalist mold. And I'm like, you are an environmentalist. Reclaim that because you are. You literally are the environmentalist is somebody who is, loves the environment and is willing to advocate for it. That's what we should be taking back. So I think it's just redefining the movement and that's what we're trying to do at Nature's Nonpartisan. We don't have it all figured out yet, but there is a future where that's, that's the voice of the environmentalist movement and the, the people who are kind of secondary

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  to that are the people who have kind of dominated it. And for the companies that have profited off of it, I mean, part of the reason why the companies started to do this ESG stuff was because that's what the people were asking for.

• 1:32:18Cameron Hanes?

  What's ESG?

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Environmental, sustainable goals is like the DEI of climate.

• 1:32:22Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, I got you.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  I actually like will say that I think it was fairly well intended in the fact that they were just trying to meet the consumers where they were at and they were like, oh, the consumers care about climate change. We're going to have a climate change plan. Like, I don't think there was some like master plan. Let's just like, why, why not change it so that all these companies start investing in conservation? Like, use that to our, brands want to associate with things that are popular. At the time, climate was popular. And let's make conservation, protection of our wild spaces popular. End of story.

• 1:32:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I would wear a shirt that says, I'm an environmentalist because here, when people think about that, they think about like back in the early 90s, the spotted owl shut down old growth logging. Everybody here worked in the, in the woods, right? Their timber's the industry here. And so the, the crazy environmentalist is what people would say, chain themselves to trees. So you couldn't cut them down.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  And that's what everyone thinks of now.

• 1:33:23Cameron Hanes?

  So, yeah, but I am an environmentalist to your point.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  More than they are.

• 1:33:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And it's just like, that's okay. So taking it back, redefining what it means, it doesn't mean that you're, you know.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Driving a Prius.

• 1:33:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And, and out there.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Or it might mean that you are.

• 1:33:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, maybe, maybe, but you're not chaining yourself to a tree.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  No, or throwing stupid paintings or blocking traffic.

• 1:33:45Cameron Hanes?

  No, no, we care about the environment. That's it.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  And every time that you have free time, you're there. And every time I have free time, I'm there. That's what an environmentalist would do.

• 1:33:53Cameron Hanes?

  I like that. I like that. What else you got?

• 1:33:58Cameron Hanes?

  Or do you have something else?

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:00Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  We've kind of talked about this on when Cam and I do podcasts, but right now, it's, I feel like a lot of people are a little bit discouraged with politicians, everything. It seems like at every turn, you know, you're lied to or misled, or it's hard to get behind something like you guys have talked about and, and take it at face value. So the kind of what you're working on and the new thing that's going to come out, what are you guys doing to kind of maybe help defeat that feeling in people?

• 1:34:30Cameron Hanes?

  The distrust?

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Earn it. And look, I know that I have to earn it with people and I'm going to continue to have to earn it. And what, how you earn trust when you're building a movement, I might, maybe this will fail epically when I look back in five years, but it's to show results, like. We helped stop the public land sell off. We started this caucus. If the caucus doesn't do anything, that's our fault.

• 1:34:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, you're gonna be judged on that. That's okay.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  Right. And then I can admit that that was, that didn't work, or it did. But we need a movement that actually can produce results. And if I in two or three years don't have any results, then I should be seriously reevaluating what I'm doing in my life.

• 1:35:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  And, and so I would say for those people who are distrustful, stay that way. Like, it should be trust, it should be earned. And nobody should be blindly trusted. I actually think people trust too easily, right? Look at the, the reel we were talking about earlier with this lady who created this conspiracy theory.

• 1:35:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  And every single person who commented believed it. And I had people messaging me who knew me for longer, they didn't even know this girl, who were like, screw you, Benji, can't believe you'd do this.

• 1:35:42Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  We gotta actually stop trusting so easily and start looking at results. And I can promise you that I'm either gonna produce results with this, and our movement is, or I'm not gonna be doing it. Because I don't, I don't care about this, other than trying to get things done. People, I was on with Van, like I was talking about, we were talking about, do I care about recognition, or do I not care about recognition? The only way, the only reason I would ever care about recognition is if I got something actually done. People ask me, oh, you can write a second book, or you can run for office, or you can do all these things. Like, first of all, I would never write another book until I actually got something done to write about.

• 1:36:17Cameron Hanes?

  What did you write your first book on?

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  Kind of how I built the conservative environmental climate movement.

• 1:36:22Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  And what we got done with that, which we did get stuff done.

• 1:36:25Cameron Hanes?

  How long, when did that book come out?

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  Uh, 2020, early 2024.

• 1:36:29Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, nice.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  And that's kind of where, you know, what matters to me is building trust on what I actually get done. And so, stay tuned, I guess.

• 1:36:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Oh, that's, that's, yeah. Get judged on your results. I mean, I'm impressed. At 27, you got big goals. It's, uh, and I, and I like that you're, you know what you wanna do. It's, uh,

• 1:36:55Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know. Young people squared away always blow me away. When I was 27, I was like beer bonging, beer and cat piss and whiskey, probably. Wasn't really accomplishing too much.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  I can still play beer pong, you know, but.

• 1:37:13Cameron Hanes?

  You know what a beer bong is?

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I do know what one is. I think I've done that once.

• 1:37:18Cameron Hanes?

  Don't recommend it. But like normally you, people just pour whatever in there and then you just.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:37:25Cameron Hanes?

  Probably not the smartest thing. Anyway, so that's what I was probably doing. So I'm impressed with you for sure. You got, you got anything else?

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  This one time, the last time I took a beer bong, actually.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  Which was when?

• 1:37:37Cameron Hanes?

  Today.

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  About 15 minutes before this podcast.

• 1:37:44Speaker 02

  I did, we did like two beers in the top or whatever, did it. And then I was like looking at the tube. It was see-through and I was like, what is that?

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Cut it open and it was just chock full of mold.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  Oh, geez.

• 1:37:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:55Cameron Hanes?

  That's not bad.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  That, that probably actually helped you fight, fight off some illness.

• 1:38:00Cameron Hanes?

  Say it's like a mouse in there or something.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  No, that would be bad. Um, I did kind of have, I guess, I don't know. I'm trying to formulate my question about it, but you said, you know, results speak. And I think with politics, it's really hard. And you know, we've seen this is someone really does want to make a difference. Someone's trying to, they have good intent, but they're met with kind of this like, I mean, how politics are now, which is like people want their agenda to be pushed and you need to do these favors or you need to be bought off this way and that way. So how do you plan to kind of mitigate that and make sure that your movement is heard on all levels and that you aren't having to succumb to these kind of backdoor ways?

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's a great question because for 10 years I've been trying to figure that out. You know, I've been active with senators and house members since I was in freshman in high school or freshman in college is when we really started advocating and I had some relationships to, that I could build off of in, in the halls of Congress and stuff, but. The answer to that is you just keep trying different avenues. Like, I tried with this executive order with the president. I tried with this caucus. You try with the grassroots. You like, you just keep trying. Things will break through. And I'm not gonna stop trying because I have had so many. I had way more failures in trying to get things across finish line than successes. But then you don't try to beat the dead horse. Right? Like, right now, the president hasn't taken the executive order very seriously.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  I'm not wasting my, I only have the same amount of energy and hours in the day that everyone else has. I'm not gonna waste my energy and hours in the day in that. I already put a lot of effort into that. I will go back to that if there's a there there. But I think it's really just evolving for what the situation is. Right now, there's an election next year and the environment isn't a priority. But the public land sell-off showed some, some spark for people standing together. That's how we got this caucus stood up in the senate. Because these senators kind of unearthed themselves as people who could team up together. So like, you just take whatever the situations are of that moment and be like, okay, let's try a few things. And whichever ones are working, you just keep putting energy towards. And whichever ones aren't.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  The other thing that I've always had a philosophy on is that anyone who donates will never be allowed to tell me what to do. So, you can donate. I don't care who you are. You can be a Democrat, Republican, you could be a company that people hate or a company people love. If, the moment you tell me what to do, I'm done. And I would rather, again, lose my job and lose the organization than lose my moral compass. And, you know, that, that's something that I think also matters. I don't, I think doing the shady stuff works in the short term, but it doesn't build trust in the long term. And eventually, people see through it.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  And those people who you can kind of tell probably do that, end up getting exposed later for doing stuff that you wouldn't have wanted them to do. So I, I think it's just staying true to the moral compass and trying things non-stop. And trying to get creative and not being let down. I mean, I, I've had so many losses over the years that have hurt so deeply. And you just sulk for a second, and then you get right the [bleep] back up.

• 1:41:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's all we, that's all we can do. Um, I will say, President Trump, you signed an executive order with this young man. Do something, or it's over. My support's gone.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:41:33Cameron Hanes?

  So we'll, we'll call, I just, I liked that you got that done. You were back there. You were like making a difference, dude. And if nothing happens from it, that is frustrating.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:45Cameron Hanes?

  That is frustrating because you did your part. You got it. You presented it. You got buy off on it. You got the president to sign it. Let's do something.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:41:54Cameron Hanes?

  That's it.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  I mean, but I'm going to keep trying stuff like that.

• 1:41:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I love it. I love it.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  And I'll try that with the next Democrat administration. I don't care. You know, I think that's the other thing is like people are so afraid to be affiliated to. I got so much shit. I lost donors. I lost so many people in my life because I worked with Trump on this executive order.

• 1:42:14Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  I bet and I lost board members over it. Guarantee the same thing happens when I work at the Democrat the next time, but it doesn't matter.

• 1:42:21Cameron Hanes?

  That's too bad. I mean, it's a, you know, like I said, let's, let's listen to the message, not the messenger.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:27Cameron Hanes?

  You know, I mean, it's a, if the message is, is clear and makes sense and you can get behind it, who cares who's saying it?

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:35Cameron Hanes?

  And if we can move past that, I think that's a win, but uh,

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  I think the country's moving more towards that.

• 1:42:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm a big fan of what you're doing. I'm impressed. The fact that you're so smart, so young, so motivated to make a difference. It makes me feel good.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Well, I look, I look up to you a lot and the way that you stay grounded in life is something that means a lot to me. And you know, I, I, this, this was not easy. I'm not looking for pity, but it's definitely not easy. And you know, the way that you go through life kind of helps inspire me to keep going. So it's an honor to be here and at some point it would be awesome to, you know, go out there and spend some time in the environment with you.

• 1:43:14Cameron Hanes?

  Are you saying you want to hunt?

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like it's a proposal. Will you hunt with me?

• 1:43:20Cameron Hanes?

  I love it. I love it. We're gonna make it happen.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  Which will happen first, something on the EO or a hunt? You know, that's the real question of this. We'll have some betting odds.

• 1:43:28Cameron Hanes?

  The EO is already signed, so that should be, that should happen first. But yeah, thanks for coming. Thanks for sharing your story. I learned a lot today and I hope other people do too. But mostly I've learned that I want to support what you're doing because I believe in it. And yeah, thank you, Benji.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  Well, let's, let's be eyes for a long time. Thanks for having me.

• 1:43:49Cameron Hanes?

  All right. Keep having a good one. Thanks.