🎙️Exploring Climate Adaptation with Doug Parsons, Host of America Adapts Podcast
🌎 Designing Nature’s Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast
In This Episode:
Guest: Doug Parsons, Director: America Adapts Media; Host: America Adapts: The Climate Change Podcast
Topic: Doug shares climate change adaptation insights obtained over the course of his career with multiple Federal and state agencies and, more currently, as a podcast host.
Key Discussion Points:
[01:44] The Path to Adaptation: Discover how Doug first dipped his toes into climate adaptation in Queensland, Australia, before making waves across Florida and eventually at a national level through his podcast.
[05:21] From Policy to Podcasts: Hear about Doug’s transition from working within government agencies on climate change initiatives to creating a platform that informs and influences policy through storytelling.
[13.37] A Growing Network: Find out how America Adapts has become an essential resource for professionals seeking guidance on adapting their careers or organizations’ strategies towards resilience against climate impacts.
[27:59] Impactful Conversations: Uncover insights from nearly 200 episodes, in which diverse voices discuss everything from urban planning challenges due to rising sea levels to community-based adaptations in Africa.
Key Takeaways:
The natural resource sector has been pioneering adaptation efforts long before it became mainstream attention.
Communication plays a critical role. Podcasts can serve as powerful tools for education about wonky subjects like climate change adaptation.
There is potential yet untapped synergy between fields such as landscape conservation design and broader adaptive measures discussed throughout various sectors impacted by changing climates.
Resources:
Transcription:
S1-E3: Exploring climate Adaptation with Doug Parsons, Host of America Adapts Podcast
[00:03] Intro: Mind Matter Media presents Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast, where discussions center around the most current and innovative approaches to landscape conservation and design. This is the show for stakeholders who want to adapt to the climate crisis, halt biodiversity loss, and change the world by designing sustainable and resilient landscapes through collaborative conservation action.
[00:32] Rob: Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode three of Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast. I'm your co-host, Rob Campellone.
[00:43] Tom: And I'm your other co-host, Tom Miewald. So, Rob, who do we have on deck this week?
[00:48] Rob: We have a great episode ahead, Tom. We're going to discuss climate adaptation with Doug Parsons. Doug, the Director of America Adapts Media and the host of America Adapts: The Climate Change Podcast.
[01:05] Tom: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this. I've been a big fan of Doug's podcast since becoming aware of it. I started listening to a lot of podcasts during the COVID years, and America Adapts has been kind of a regular one on my podcast playlist. I really like how it covers and explores so many different corners of climate adaptation with examples of different geographies and how different communities are adapting to climate. There are interviews with politicians, thought leaders, and even artists. I recently listened to the Ultimate Guide to the National Climate Assessment. It was a great way to boil down a complex piece of work, and so it's just a great way to keep up to date on what's happening in climate change.
[01:44] Rob: We're intentionally opening up the podcast with two episodes about the climate crisis and guests who could speak to not only the enormity of it all but also those who could provide helpful insight on how to combat it. In that light, it only made sense to bring Doug in for a discussion. For those who don't know Doug, he first started working in the adaptation field in Queensland, Australia, focusing on the impacts of climate change on agriculture. Upon returning to the United States, Doug joined the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, where he quickly assumed the duties of their very first climate change coordinator. And in that position, Doug developed a first of its kind climate change training course that the federal government and the state of California have since modeled. Then, Doug took a position as the climate change liaison with the National Park Service. And now, Doug runs America Adapts Media, which is focused on using podcasts to spread the word about climate adaptation. So, with that in mind, welcome to the show, Doug.
[03:06] Doug Parsons: Hey, guys. Wow, thanks for having me on. And Tom, I want to take your recording and your plug for the show and use it on my podcast. That was fantastic. I don't think I've ever used that kind of stuff. So, thank you, and Rob, thanks for having me on. And congratulations, rats, on this podcast. It's important work that you're doing and important conversations, and it's just a privilege to come on and look forward to this conversation.
[03:26] Rob: Appreciate that, Doug. So, before we begin, did I miss anything from your bio that you'd like to add or highlight?
[03:34] Doug Parsons: No, I’d like to say, and as you guys would probably appreciate this, I think the natural resource sector has been doing adaptation before everyone, and you see people in the built environment and national security space in the last 5-10 years get into it. We were doing this 20 years ago. And so, yeah, first people involved, and it's been kind of an interesting career journey for me. I felt I was in that conservation space, and now I feel like I'm out of it. But those guys were doing it at the beginning, and I learned from people in Australia. So, it's been an interesting development.
[04:07] Rob: In preparing for today's show, I listened to a few of your podcasts, and the first episode, actually from 2016, really resonated with me because you had Dr. Nick Fisichelli discuss scenario planning. Tom and I have some history with Nick as well, and it was good to hear him speak about scenario planning. Our background with Nick was we were co-authors, along with other representatives from different organizations and agencies. We all worked together to publish a paper on landscape conservation design and published in 2018. So right off the bat, I think that demonstrates the unique relationship between not only our podcasts but our fields of expertise. Tom and I are in landscape conservation and design, and you are in climate change adaptation. What could you tell us about your podcast, America Adapts? What do you hope to achieve doing it, and do you feel like you're having an impact?
[05:21] Doug Parsons: Yeah, that takes me back. Nick was my very first guest, so I look fondly on that. He and I worked together in the conservation field, I mean, the Climate Change Response Program at the National Park Service, and then he went off to the Schoodic Institute up in Maine. And those first few months, I was looking for folks. Hey, do you want to come on my podcast? And I'm sure folks were like, what? What are you doing? What's this about? But they're like, I'll do it. And so, it was fun, it was exciting, and Nick was a great guest and obviously just a top-notch scientist. I've always been obsessed with how to communicate the issue of adaptation. I like communication I've done a lot of public speaking, and so sort of the end of my kind of natural resource career, I was really looking for ways to talk about adaptation because it's still this wonky subject. Even today, if you go out and ask the public like, what is climate adaptation? 99% of the public will not be able to give you even a definition. And I guess I'll give you my own sort of informal definition: How are we going to adapt to the impacts of climate change, like wildfire, sea level rise and everything in that area? And then I think we'll get into the idea of resilience. But with the podcast, I started it as I was between jobs, and I'm like, okay, this will keep my mind sharp. And it was a chance for me to have fun conversations, interesting conversations. And since I know the space, I think I can ask a decent question or two. And then it just turned into something that I really enjoyed. And listeners started coming out of the woodwork. One listener in particular, I knew I hit on something that was resonating. Jesse Keenan, who you just heard in that most recent episode, The Fundamentals of the National Climate Assessment, reached out to me. He was at Harvard at the time. He's like, Doug, I’m a huge fan of the podcast. I love what you're doing here. And, of course, I'm like, wow, a Harvard professor listening to this podcast. And so, I immediately invited him on, and he does stuff with the built environment and architecture, and he's brilliant. He does a lot of adaptation research, and he and I have become really good buddies. He's actually the executive producer of the podcast, and it helps with recruitment and just introducing me to folks. And so, I knew I had something, and so I started looking at, you know what, maybe I should do this full time. And I turned it into a small nonprofit. And there are 197 episodes in the first six months or so. I was doing an episode every week, and that was just too much. I burned out. And my episodes are long form, so you got to be ready to listen to a long interview or multiple interviews in a longer episode. But that's my niche, and I'm just there to explore what climate adaptation is. And like I said before, it's just been this amazing journey that I was in, the natural resource, space conservation, and it's a much bigger universe. It's going to be everything. And so, I've been able to connect and meet people from all walks of life, urban planners and landscape architects, and I'm doing two Department of Defense episodes. And so, security has come into this. It's been very exciting, and the people that I've met have now become my friends, and I actually get to travel a bit with them. I've gotten to Africa, Australia, and Mexico, so it's taken me to quite a few places. It's been a fun journey, and I guess to your point. And what I'm hoping to accomplish with this is actually influence the field of adaptation. It's still this emerging area, and a lot of people really are just, it's trial and error, and I'm bringing people on who are in the thick of it, doing this work and exposing my listeners, who are a lot of the most influential people in the adaptation space to these things. And so, I encourage my listeners, if they work in the space, to reach out to me so that I know who you are. And I hear that the highest levels of government listen to it and so influence even potential legislation. So, I'll brag a little bit here. It's probably the most influential I've ever been in my career, and it's this kind of odd thing that you built from scratch, and that's very satisfying. And of course, it's based on the guests that I get on who are doing amazing work, but just who my listeners are and then using that information and, yeah, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing, and hopefully I'll be able to keep doing it.
[09:26] Tom: Yeah, that's a great story of how you're getting impact and how you're building topics. So, can you speak a little bit more about that? Like I said earlier, your podcast really intersects with a lot of different aspects of climate adaptation, with going into art and theater and finance, and there are just so many different niches that you're going into. Can you speak a little, like, how do you find these topics? Do you find a topic, and then you just get into it, or do you search out the right guest, or do they come to you, or is it kind of a mix of those?
[09:59] Doug Parsons: It is totally organic, and it used to be where I would read something or I would reach out and like, oh, would you please come on the podcast? And then, over time, as I got a listener base and as more people, you'll get this, too, with your podcast. But you get on these media lists, too, and these PR people reach out, and they give you a lot of ideas for guests, and 99% of them are just not even relevant. They might be energy and all that. So, the more people I meet, the more that they recommend people that I should interview. And then also there's just getting into the logistics. I have interviews with experts, like a long, hour-long conversation that is a pure educational podcast. But then I get sponsored to do episodes, so I collaborate with different groups. World Wildlife Fund has sponsored me for like ten episodes, and so they really set the content for that episode. But it has to be climate adaptation. But they're the ones who took me to Africa, and we looked at community-based adaptation there. And so it is random, but what is kind of nice is a lot of it is just my own curiosity. And so, if I do read an article or I hear about something, I might randomly reach out and say, hey, I'd love to talk about this, but I only publish every two weeks. And then all of a sudden, that's 25 episodes a year, more or less. I try to be somewhat timely, but over the summer, so much was happening with extreme heat that I stepped away from it, even though I've done several episodes on it. I waited until the end of the summer, almost early fall. Then I had lad Keith and Kelly Turner on just as sort of a wrap-up. And so, the thing with podcasts, you have to be disciplined, unless you are a daily kind of thing like the New York Times daily, is that it's hard to be just newsy. Like, you're just so keeping up with something that just happened. Because people listen to podcasts six months from now, a year from now. And so, I try to make mine really evergreen. And then, with subjects like climate fiction, I think you're probably alluding to that climate. That's totally random. Those are just kind of fun episodes that are really related to adaptation. But I like to shake things up once in a while.
[11:56] Tom: It's a great mix.
[11:57] Rob: Have you had any episodes devoted to the topic of landscape conservation, Doug?
[12:03] Doug Parsons: Oh, well, good question. I think you know the answer to that. Well, specifically to the field. And no, not per se. I mean, I've done episodes around nature-based approaches to adaptation and those things where there's certainly lots of overlap. Right. There's just that. And I don't think they're necessarily using that language. And so, Rob, I know you've been doing this for a while, and specifically, no. And that in itself, I think. Do you go to the National Adaptation Forum? They do every couple of years. Do you guys go to those?
[12:34] Rob: I'm retired now, Doug.
[12:37] Doug Parsons: Well, and the reason I ask, I know, okay, the panel discussions there because obviously there's a lot of overlap. But yeah, I guess, you know, you've brought it to my attention. Obviously, it's something I need to learn more about how that really does integrate because adaptation planning is this kind of new thing. Still, it does overlap with so many other previous efforts. Do they align, or are they complementary, or does one need to evolve to sort of adjust to the other? I'm not quite sure.
[13:02] Rob: Well, I think there's definitely a relationship there, and I know two folks that might be very interested in coming onto your program, Doug, and talking about it.
[13:12] Doug Parsons: All right, well, it sounds like we need to work on sort of an outline and sort of the areas to cover in that and stuff that I need to read to get a bit more grounded. But no, I like this idea.
[13:22] Rob: I believe there's an increasing awareness of the climate crisis not only at the national or corporate level but, more importantly, at the individual level.
[13:37] Doug Parsons: So, I do think the media has gotten much better reporting on climate change. Remember back in the day when you'd have pro and con, they don't really do that anymore, maybe just on Fox News or something, but they don't. Okay, here's a famed climatologist who is going to write a column, and then we're going to bring conservative environmental economists to give the other viewpoints like this is madness. And so, they stopped doing that. And I think that's a really positive development. And I think in the last two or three years, they have really got their heads around climate impacts, and they're starting to tiptoe into adaptation. Of course, when you talk about the impacts out there, you can't help but talk about how we are going to respond to it. But they're still not, I think, looking at adaptation as its own discipline, its own area, like the national security sector. Well, the adaptation is its own sector. The media, I still think is just generalizing a lot of things, but they've gotten so much better. And I think the heat coverage that they've done over the last two summers has been really good. So that affects people that they see that. And I think universities, hopefully, your average young person, are thinking about this more. You see some of the polling out there, the cynic in me, even though I'm very positive on the podcast, the cynic in me is like, I don't give too much credit to a lot of these surveys, what is it, the six Americas and the Yale climate. I think those are almost kind of push polls or like, all right, do you want to do something about climate change? And then people are like, okay, sure. I am a big fan of regulation. A lot of people are. You think about recycling; it's like no matter how good it gets, you might get 30, 40% of people recycling because it's this voluntary thing. At the end of the day, the government needs to mandate some areas, and I think we're going to have to head in that direction eventually. But we're in this transition phase. But I'm with you overall; I'm optimistic. It's just exciting to see a lot of people come into the space, and I hear from my listeners who, they reach out to me and they ask me, how can I get a job in the adaptation? I don't necessarily have access to specific jobs, but we brainstorm, like university programs and different areas that they get into. And so, I think there's an army of young people that really want to dedicate their lives to this. So, I guess I'm halfway with you on that. It's hard. A lot of people don't necessarily mean anything bad. They don't care. It's hard to get over that sort of apathy around these really important issues.
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[17:24] Tom: Yeah, I see a lot of interest in the younger generations about climate change and climate adaptation, and you've been following this pretty closely within your podcast since 2016. Can you describe some of the evolutions or kind of- I don't know if trends are the right word- some of the things that have really taken hold in the adaptation space that you've seen and that you've covered over the years?
[17:48] Doug Parsons: All right, well, back in the day, natural resources, there used to be kind of just this kind of canned approach of all right, let's do some scenario planning, and then it's a mixture of scenario planning and a vulnerability assessment, and then we'll do an adaptation plan, and it's just gotten so much more sophisticated than that. So that's been a really interesting development because when I was at the National Park Service when I was working in Florida, that was just your standard way to get started. And when other sectors get involved, that's great. I don't know if you're going to have specific questions about resilience, but resilience has taken over the word adaptation, and I don't think that's a good thing. I use resilience a lot, too, because they've co-opted me in some ways. But there are about 500 definitions for resilience, just a few, like a couple for climate adaptation. And now you're getting people talking about personal resilience. It's very confusing, and I don't think it's very helpful when it comes to doing technical things and people really cities and everyone trying to get it here. And it's understood why the government co-opted resilience because they're here to protect; they need a climate-proof society. Adaptation, I think, as I describe it, is sort of like the umbrella approach to it. And resilience might be sort of a tactic underneath that. So, the strategy is adaptation, but we want to make this inland community resilient to wildfire. That's one thing. But are you going to make Miami resilient to 8ft of sea level rise? Probably not. So, what's adaptation? Then, we start talking about managed retreats. So, adaptation lends itself to saying, all right, we might not be able to make everything resilient to what's coming, and people just get sloppy with the definition of resilient. And I was going to do a whole episode, I was going to call it adaptation versus resilience, and I never got around to it.
[19:40] Tom: That gets me back to what you were just talking about with the models. It's really interesting to have all this data and information that's out there and have different stakeholders be able to look at all these different climate models. I'm interested, going back to what you were talking about, the Wild West podcast and I listened to that too. I thought it was really fascinating. What are some case studies of where people are really using the climate data? Communities are using climate data to make decisions about their communities and their landscapes. Have you run across that?
[20:14] Doug Parsons: Yeah, and here's a specific one. Actually, this episode hasn't come out, but I'm working with a group called Forerunner, and they do some climate modeling. They have some software, but I got to interview some local government folks who are actually using it. So, it's been really interesting. And of course, part of the problem here is like, well, of course, there's a flooding event, and the modeling software helps with projecting that. But if it's making 30, 50-year projections, you're like, all right, well, I'll come back in 50 years, and we'll see if you are right, if this was worth the money. But just talking to those local government people, it's really useful to have this software that allows them to look at existing planning processes. And so, you guys are probably familiar. Is it FEMA? Now I'm blanking. But here's the one in-100-year flood idea, right? That concept. And so, a lot of planning, a lot of building that happens. They think about this: what is the floodplain? But those systems are so out of date. The one in 100 years is, in fact, the one in 500 years is almost becoming silly. And with this new software, with this modeling, it's allowing them, they have to still plan within that system because the federal government is as slow as molasses when it comes to a lot of these things too. But I do think it's opening up the imagination of local planners into responsible planning and what the future is going to hold. And what you just mentioned, too, is landscape planning used to be like, okay, let's look at the last 50 years and then kind of plan around the next 50. It's just like, no, we're a brave new world now. And you can't plan around the past. Of course, that can inform decision-making, but you need models that are going to get you to really think outside of that, right?
[22:05] Tom: You'd hope that it would provide at least a range of possible future possibilities and then let people develop strategies around those potentials in the future.
[22:16] Doug Parsons: You brought up a good point. And I have trouble. I do a lot of public speaking associated with the podcast too. And I have a slide and it shows coastal sea level rise and just like 2050, 2099. And that is so hard to communicate with people. Like you say, okay, the oceans are going to come up 8ft by 2099. And that means nothing to everyone because it's like, okay, well, is it just semi-normal until 2098? And then we have 8ft for them to visualize this gradual elevation. It's so hard to get your head around. And so, when I do see a scientific presentation where they're doing that, I'm just like, I get why they have to put that there, but it's pointless. It's pointless. It's just so abstract to most people that when you say 2050, it just means almost nothing. I don't know necessarily the solution. It's just more, I think, confidence in saying this area will be flooded relatively soon in a way that's going to make it hard even to live here. What is the solution? But that's what makes communicating climate change so difficult. So even though we're seeing impacts today, and as I said, the meeting is getting much better when we talk about, well, by 2100, that means nothing to most people in regards to the urgency that they place on the issue. So, it's really difficult to work with climate change. Right.
[23:40] Rob: Let's shift from planning to implementation. Do you have a sense of what the state of implementation on the ground implementation, regardless of the scale is occurring? Anything there?
[23:59] Doug Parsons: Well, unfortunately, Jesse Keenan did all the heavy lifting. That most recent episode with the national climate assessment. They are listed in the adaptation chapter. They mapped out where, like communities and, I think state governments that are doing adaptation plans. And I'm blanking on the number now. I don't know if either of you remember it, but it was significant, and there was a lot of progress made. But, I mean, it's still a fraction of a lot of communities that need to do it. And so there are people out there that are trying to measure those metrics and see where we're at. And that's not even factoring in. Like, is it a good adaptation plan? Right? Do they create an addendum to their local plan where they just say, we need to consider the impacts of climate change? All right, you're getting credit for adaptation planning. So, a ton of progress has been made. Ten years ago, it was places like Massachusetts, California, and a few others that were really doing some sophisticated adaptation planning. There's a lot more going on. And then you've got corporations that are doing even in states that might just be hostile to it, there's things that are happening like Charleston. I did an episode on Charleston as a professor at Susan; my mind has to reboot itself. But she wrote a book about Charleston and how that local government is dealing with climate adaptation. And so, it was somewhat critical. But in the big picture, it just kudos to Charleston for doing a ton of stuff because if you look at the state government in South Carolina, heck, a lot of nothing happening going on. But Charleston's like, we're not waiting around for this. We're going to start, really, because it's bread and butter. They're right there, and it doesn't look good for Charleston. But they're trying. They are really trying. And they have a legacy of dealing with race in ways that are just so complex that are also factoring into their adaptation planning. So, it's a mixed bag out there.
[25:55] Rob: Do you have a sense as to what the state of adaptation finance currently is?
[26:00] Doug Parsons: Doug, JP Morgan just released several reports on how it's impacting the health sector and some of the built environment sectors. And so, the fact that Morgan dedicated staff to start saying, all right, here are some opportunities for investment and thinking about finance. And so, I think quickly they're coming on board. And since so much money is involved with the Infrastructure Act, you have to factor in climate change. So that's what gets me excited because I'll be honest, you two might not appreciate this, but I did conservation for most of my career. But I'm sorry, but in some ways, it's not as influential as I think. We diluted ourselves into thinking it was. And it's just reality. And you look at the money that's being spent; it's just not there. And so, when you get the big corporate folks starting to think about this, I get excited. Doesn't mean they're going to do it right all the time, but it's just like big pots of money, the insurance companies. And so, Rob, to your question, I think finance, they're getting their heads around it. They're starting to try to figure out what climate modeling areas they want to focus on to help their investors get involved. But they're getting involved in a big way. And the episode is just very early days of an outline of what we're going to cover. But we're going to have a bank involved, and we're going to interview some CEOs, maybe with some startups that are looking for a finance investment dollar.
[27:23] Tom: Yeah, that's fascinating to hear. Climate finance is really interesting to hear how the government grants are not going to get us there to be fully adapted and resilient to climate change. So, getting some new ways, innovative ways to finance, I think that's a great idea, building off you were talking a little bit about Charleston as having some inspiration of success. Out of the hundreds of podcasts that you've done over the past years, what have you seen that has been the most successful or most memorable efforts that you've seen as part of your podcasting?
[27:59] Doug Parsons: Oh, man. When you think of 197, it is all just blank. And I'm sorry I blanked Susan Crawford. She's a law professor at Harvard, and that's why I was blanking on the Charleston book that she wrote. And I apologize for that. So, I just did a recent episode, and it's very interesting. I went to San Diego for a climate summit that the climate science lands put on. It's a relatively small conservation group, but they punch above their weight belt. And so, I went there and covered, and they work with tribal groups really closely. And so, I was fascinated by their model of partnership building. And I will be the first one to roll my eyes about, like, partners are so important. Okay, yeah, I get it. But they have really integrated that into their DNA, and it's allowed them to really make inroads into the different kinds of people who should be involved. And then, when it comes to their adaptation planning, they've come up with a whole structure of how they do this. And again, it's California. There are just a lot of supportive people in humanity that allow them to do that. But for a smaller model, I was really impressed with what they're doing. And this was a student-led thing, and it's been a while, but the Harvard Graduate School of Design, I went up there and interviewed some students, and they were working with East Boston and people, like, communities around the airport. And so, it remains to be seen they had kind of a community meeting that I was there capturing. But that was exciting that these students were out there working with that community, using their obvious expertise to come up with specific things that that local community can use when they think about planning because apparently, I didn't even know this. The airport, Logan Airport, is under serious threat of sea level rise. That even though Boston has done some amazing things, they've got some issues coming up. So, I could go on and on. But I went to Australia. I had some listeners in Australia, and they invited me from the Victoria state government. They brought me down to give a keynote there. But I also did an episode and just that sort of state-level integration of adaptation planning. I was just really. I mean, Australia's just done. I mentioned I used to live there a while ago, and things obviously have changed, but it's just when a state in the state government's there, and they're only like seven states or eight states, and they take governing a lot more seriously than a lot of our states do. You get health care and environmental planning, and then, of course, they don't do everything right. But all right, we're going to provide resources and grants and get the staff on it. And so, Victoria, they were doing some really cool things.
[30:27] Rob: So, you mentioned partnerships and the importance of them in adaptation projects, and I totally agree with you there. We use the term landscape conservation design, designing sustainable and resilient landscapes both within a socioecological context. And part of the design process is actually the design process itself is stakeholder driven. And so we agree with that statement about the importance of partnerships. Is there anything else within your realm, within the realm of adaptation, that you could speak to that kind of promotes the success, generally speaking, of course, of adaptation projects other than, say, the partnership aspect of it?
[31:31] Doug Parsons: I guess the point I would make in answering that is just partnership is obviously very important. But what's exciting about climate adaptation is that even though people have been doing it for 20 years and other people say they've been doing much longer, it's just really specifically, it's still this emerging sector, it's still this thing where people are starting trying to figure it out. And what I've just encountered is this energy of, okay, this is an area that I could actually influence. When I was in Florida, we were doing things that no one had really done before, and no one was telling us we couldn't. And so, adaptation was something different. And so, I find that energy in people who are getting into the adaptation space that they can do something on the mitigation side with carbon. There's this resignation that, of course, we have to handle things, but it's so difficult. Everyone agrees, and then this is about cutting things, and you've got to step back on your lifestyle. Whereas adaptation, what I hear from my listeners is that like the sort of can-do attitude of we're doing something though in response. So even though these are grave, really urgent things, it's just like you can get your head around about making a community more resilient to wildfire. And I think that is a common pattern that I'm seeing. You know, the National Adaptation Forum, they do that every couple of years, and I think they're more natural resource focused. But you're seeing more, I mean, additional conferences coming into the resilience and adaptation space, and there's just that new energy of, okay, you can actually influence this new field like architecture. It's been around for forever. It's hard to have an innovative design or something, but it actually influences the fundamental nature of the sector. You can't do that very often, and that's what's happening with adaptation, and that's what you see out there, and I think that's incredibly exciting.
[33:23] Rob: Well, Doug, I'm afraid we're running out of time, but it's been great having you on as a guest and having a great discussion. We appreciate your time, energy, and knowledge on this topic. Do you have any parting thoughts to share with our listeners?
[33:38] Doug Parsons: Thanks guys for having me on. Those were fantastic questions. My goodness, you've made me shake the cobwebs off my brain. You forget how when you're the host, and you're just dealing with all these different topics, but you don't have to go that deep into them, you forget some of these things. So, I appreciate being on that side of it, and just yeah, if people are interested in listening, I'm sure you'll probably have it in your show notes. But I have a website, americadapps.org, that has links to all the websites, but just more additional information about what I'm trying to do with the podcast. And I wish you guys luck. These are early episodes for you, and this is an important conversation that you're bringing into the fold. So good luck.
[34:16] Rob: Appreciate that, Doug, and we'll definitely share that link in the pod notes. Tom, do you have any parting thoughts to share?
[34:24] Tom: No, I'm just very appreciative of Doug's time and thoughts. I thought this was a great discussion.
[34:28] Rob: Okay, well, thanks again to our guest, Doug Parsons, and thank you, our listeners, for tuning into episode three of Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast. I've been your co-host, Rob Campellone.
[34:43] Tom: I've been your other co-host, Tommy. Join us again every two weeks for another informative episode of Designing Nature's Half the Landscape Conservation podcast.
[34:52] Outro: Designing Nature's Half the Landscape Conservation podcast is researched, written, edited, and produced by Rob Campellone and Tom Miewald. Lucas Gallardi created the Designing Nature's Half cover art and logo design. Tom Askin is the voice behind the intro and outro, and the music was written and performed by composer Alexei Kislin via Pixabay. Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast is a proud member of Mind Matter Media, a startup multimedia network whose mission is to change the world by designing sustainable and resilient landscapes for people, planet, and prosperity.
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