I Met Peter Kalmus at a Servicespace Gathering in Santa Clara, in the Heart of Silicon Valley. All of Us Had Introduced

alone to strip down and jump into one of these mountain streams.

RW: Oh, yes. That is a deep experience.

Peter: So take another element—fire. Last year, I took my son, he was seven, and there was this guy teaching a wilderness course. One of the things he taught us was how to make fire with two sticks. We used a bow. You have to find the right kind of stick as a spindle, and you have to find the right kind of wood as the base. Then you cut a little notch and you rub this little hole. You spin the stick fast until you get a little glowing ember. You have some tinder ready, like a bunch of really dry grass. Then you carefully transfer that ember into the tinder and then very gently bring it up to your mouth and blow until it ignites. The feeling of succeeding in making fire with two sticks—that’s another thing I cannot put into words. It was such a satisfying thing at a primal level.
A lot of the deepest truths come out as clichés, right? Like the best things in life are free. The best things in life don't require money—you know, making somebody smile, making somebody laugh, or jumping in one of those cold streams. You just feel so alive.

RW: This is so beautiful. I’m wondering what it would it mean, as a climate scientist, to get in touch this way with these primal realities: earth, air, fire, and water?

Peter: That's interesting. I never really thought of it that way, but that's kind of how I've started to structure my life. Back to the basics. A few years ago I started really getting into gardening, and you can't grow plants without understanding soil.
When I started I planted seeds just in the soil that was there. I live in Altadena, which is outside of Los Angeles. The soil at my house is mostly clay and doesn't have a lot of nutrients in it. I planted my seeds and they grew into miniature plants. I didn't know why they were a third the size of normal vegetables. So I started learning about soil and appreciating it, loving the way it smells and the way it feels in your fingers. I started learning about compost and seeing soil as life, as like living things and being happy when I take a handful of soil and there are worms in it, because in the beginning, there weren't worms in my yard.
So let's talk about our place in the biosphere for a while. Sitting here and talking we can start to be aware of what that means to be sitting here and talking—to be aware that we're enjoying this house and this comfortable couch and the light—the photons streaming from that light. You can start thinking about how the electricity is generated that makes those photons. And how the generation of that electricity creates carbon dioxide, which is causing the planet to warm, and how the warming planet is putting stress on the biosphere, and causing a biodiversity loss. And having all of these effects that are going to ripple, possibly for millions of years, because it takes several million years after a mass extinction for biodiversity to return back to its normal level.
You can start to think how every little thing we do connects with other beings on the planet, connects with other people, and how it also impacts ourselves. How, if we act in a certain way, it can make us happy and peaceful, and if we act in another way it can make us suffer. So you start to eat in a certain way. If you're eating meat, you can ask where did that meat come from? How was that animal raised? You've started to examine everything that you do. When you get into your car and you turn the key and it burns gasoline or diesel, that's an interaction with global warming. If you can afford a Nissan Leaf, you get in and you turn that Nissan Leaf on, you're running off of the electrons in the batteries. That's also a conversation with climate change because you decided to buy that Leaf so that you don't have to emit those gases, but then there's a whole production system that created that Leaf. You're also perpetuating the system of technology. We have this faith in technology, but maybe instead of more stuff and more technology, we have to start backing down and being happy with less.
Eating is an important way to connect to the biosphere. When you take a bite of food, of course you digest it and it comes out poop that goes into fresh water, right? Of course, in California there's a big drought. Then you flush that down and you can ask yourself, where does that poopy water go? How is it processed and what do they do with the solids that remain? Does it all go into the ocean? Do they put it on a farm field?
If they put it on a farm field, are there pharmaceuticals mixed in there that get taken up by the crops and then people eat those? Or, if you're healthy and you don't need to take those drugs, you can do some research and learn how to compost it, and after two years you have perfectly safe soil that's packed with nutrients.
I'm fortunate to have a little bit of space, like a tenth of an acre and I've got like 20 fruit trees. So when I eat a piece of fruit, sometimes I think about the tree and how it just gives the fruit to us freely. It doesn't expect anything in return, but what it got in return, until we started flushing everything away to the sewage treatment plant, was our poop. That's what it wanted from us, basically. And that's how beautiful nature is. It's so easy for us to get that, and we don't have to think about it. We don’t have to make a sacrifice. We just do what's natural and that's giving back to the soil, and the process is closed.
But through our hubris, we've taken these closed cycles and we've cut them and turned them into these linear things because you can extract profit from linear processes more easily. So I think naturally, if you start to examine the relationship that you have with the land through food, and through fuel, and through your daily actions, then for me, at least, it just naturally happens that I want to start to close some of these cycles again. I find that very satisfying.

RW: You mean restore the cycles?

Peter: Yes. I made up a word for that. I call that "be-cycling" because it goes deeper than recycling. Recycling is an attempt to close some of these processes, but it doesn't involve me. So if I drink something from a bottle and throw it into the recycling bin, and then some truck comes and takes it away—that's sort of corporatized and it doesn't involve me being aware. In fact, it lets me be less aware because maybe I feel less guilty.
For example if I'm an environmentalist and I'm worried about the state of the environment, then I'm recycling, I'm “doing my part.” But that's a superficial action. But if we operate off of guilt, we need these ways of keeping our guilt in check, right? And recycling is one of them. Then we can just keep going and we don't need to examine things at a deeper level.
That's how I think of recycling. It's still kind of throwing something away, and this “away” is a nebulous thing, this vague place “Away”—with a capital A. We don't know where the stuff we discard goes. But if we take things back and become personal with these processes, then that's be-cycling. That's being awake; being a certain way.

RW: It's about being--and to be?

Peter: Yeah, to be.

RW: That's really nice.

Peter: It's made me happier, because my actions are more aligned with my principles. It's also caused me to emit a lot less CO2. It's about simple things like getting on a bicycle; it just makes me so happy getting on a bicycle. That's how I get my exercise, too. It keeps me healthy, and I feel happy not being closed in a car and feeling empowered that it's my own body that’s getting me there.

RW: You know “being” is a word we have, but it doesn't really mean much to us. We have very few associations with that word. We use the word “being” in a casual way like, “You're being impatient.” But that’s not how you’re using that word in be-cycling. It's about being, as the state of existing or dwelling here. We don't have good ways of talking about this. But when you say you love bicycling, well, your body is engaged, you're at a speed where you're still more in touch with your environment, and you're functioning more as a complete human being, meaning you’re actually being rather than just living in your head, which is where most of our living takes place today in this culture.

Peter: You said that much better than I did. I think that was beautiful.

RW: Well, I'm fascinated that the idea of being has appeared in this conversation, and we have very few ways of actually even talking about it. You can say well, “to be or not to be.” Yes. But there's much more to it than this simple either/or. We take so much for granted: air, water, light, living. There’s so much more very close at hand, as you are saying. We're kind of asleep in this way.

Peter: Yes. If someone's concerned about global warming and they want to do something to help, to make a difference, all they need to do is turn off the television and get on a bicycle. I mean, maybe if you need to get something from the hardware store, go get something from the hardware store on your bicycle—and just ride around the neighborhood and feel happy. I think we need to stop feeling guilty about how we interact with the environment. It's our birthright to be happy. Again, I don't know how to make it more simple, but to eat good food and to be part of that process of producing the food—it's so joyful. To get on that bicycle is joyful; to make music with people, to know the names of your neighbors, to give your neighbor a gift.
Sometimes, I'll save some fruit from getting thrown away from the supermarket or something and I'll turn it into jam. Because I'm too lazy to boil it and sterilize it, I’ll have all this jam, way more than I can eat, so I give it away to everyone. It makes me so happy and it costs me nothing, because it takes half an hour to make a big batch of jam.
I've gotten to a point now that I don't really know why everyone wants to have a lot of money. I do know someone who doesn't use money anymore. That's a deep practice, and he's gone very deep with it. It's not my path yet. I have two little boys and I'm trying to do climate science. I’m expected to dress in a certain way, to be available through e-mail, and so forth. But I think he really enjoys not using money. He's found it to be very liberating, and I think that's probably the right choice of words because he described his moment of giving up money as a feeling of freedom and profound peace when he finally set down his last $30.

RW: Wow. Where are you today, as a practicing climate scientist?

Peter: Well, the climate system, the air system, is ridiculously complicated. There's biology and chemistry, and there's physics. There are beautiful, turbulent, calm conditions. The sun is part of the game. The water is part of the game. There are forests. You can think about how water and ice are attracted to tiny particles in the atmosphere, and how that can form clouds. You can work with satellites. It's a huge system. You can work with some of the most intricate computer models that humans have ever made. I mean, there's just this vast playground of science. I still find it a little bit overwhelming, because you have to narrow down so much. I want to know the big picture about climate science, and that’s hard.
So over the last two years of being a climate scientist, I've learned that there's not such a thing as a “climate scientist.” The category doesn’t exist. You can be an atmospheric scientist studying clouds. You can be an oceanologist. You can be someone who studies the ice. You can be somebody who studies vegetation, and how the vegetation interacts with the atmosphere; there are so many sub-disciplines. I'm in awe, I guess, by learning how everything is so interconnected. Everywhere I turn in climate science, I just see more interconnection, and more intricacy and more beauty. It's just such a beautiful system.

RW: Yes. Gosh. I want to go back to water, this miraculous liquid that's part of almost all of life. It's not only just this amazing liquid, but then it's a liquid that, holy mackerel, it becomes a solid. And not only that, it becomes a gas. And it cycles through these changes just the right ways to make life function. Well, come on, that's just magic!

Peter: It has this magical property that when it's a solid, it's less dense than when it's a liquid. So that means the ice floats, which means that lakes and oceans don't freeze solid. Right? Which means that life is possible. So it's pretty wonderful.

RW: To the degree I've been able to look at it, it's just mind-boggling.

Peter: It is. And you know, scientists are just people who like to explore, who like to figure out how things work. But I think that in our society, we have this distinction between scientists and non-scientists. I mean, scientists work really hard and through all the hard work they know a lot. But they don’t know everything, and they're still people. I used to say, “I'm a scientist,” you know. And that was the egoic part of being a scientist. The myth of progress, at some level, maybe kind of lionizes scientists, but we're just people.

RW: That's a nice thing to be reminded of. I talked to a woman who is interested in water, Betsy Damon. I met her thanks to Sam Bower, who you know. She's not a scientist, but she has studied a lot about water. She described the water molecule to me as being the most flexible molecule. Do you have any insight along those lines as a physicist about the water molecule?

Peter: Yes. So I think it all comes down to the hydrogen bond. I'm not a chemist, but water's a dipole because of the electron structure of the oxygen and hydrogen and the way they bond together. That kind of means that water's a magnet, and that allows it to be an excellent solvent. It can electromagnetically attach to other things that you might want to dissolve into it, and that ability to be this excellent solvent is what allows all of the chemistry in our bodies to happen. The story of our bodies, and the story of our evolution that brought all of the life on this planet, the biosphere, the creation of this wild diversity of forms—that whole story was written on water. It relied on water.

RW: And then, sunlight.

Peter: Yes. We're back to the elements again.

RW: Not too long ago, I had this direct impression that all the things that are growing here, the life here, is because of the energy coming from the sun. I mean, to actually take that in is mind-boggling.

Peter: That's right.

RW: We’re talking about energy that travels ninety three million miles through space, and that's what’s causing all this life.

Peter: Yes. It's so hard to put that kind of realization into words. It's so interesting that these truths, that are intellectually obvious thanks to science, can contain the most profound spirituality—if you actually are able to experience the truth, instead of just hearing it like, “Yeah, water, sunlight. Yeah, sure. I learned about that in high school.” Or the fact that we all are made out of matter—just the same as this floor or the dirt, and the same as a cat. We're all made out of these atoms and molecules that have been recycled. Talk about be-cycling! They've been be-cycled through the eons. They've come from other stellar systems and have been brought here; then they turn into this planet.
Then there’s the process of recycling of matter; the matter comes into one form, and that form falls down (we say die) and goes into the soil and things eat it and then those things come up. And it’s all the same atoms and the same molecules. Then those things go down and come up again in other forms. This has happened over billions of years and every time the cycle happens, it changes and new forms arise. And all of this is made out of the same molecules.
If that's not a connection, I don't know what is! We're made out of the same stuff. We are the universe. We’re just matter, and this matter that we are is having this conversation; it’s thinking these thoughts, and being able to connect. That's the universe being aware, the universe exploring itself through forms, exploring itself through our thoughts and exploring itself through our realizations.
You know, nothing I've just said could be contested by any scientist. Right?—that these collections of molecules are having this conversation. It's so profoundly obvious! Intellectually, it's just a vacuous statement, but when you experience it, you can never harm another being. You can't hurt anyone, because you don't even see them as someone else, you know? But I don't think it's possible to put that kind of realization into words, really. You just have to experience it.