Ep. 4 - Locavore Action - With Megan Hobza

Megan Hobza - EP4

[00:00:00] Megan Hobza: The basic idea of what a locavore is, as someone who wants to keep. Money local and resources local because local self-reliance means that, you are better prepared as a community for, change. You're better, prepared for disaster and and you're also reducing your reliance on an extractive global economy.

[00:00:26] Rajeev: Welcome to episode four of politics and environment and everything in between. Hey, this is your host Rajeev. And this podcast is all about issues that affect all of us human beings. Because I believe today, everything is connected. In the past episodes, we had covered issues relating to water conservation, tribal identity and colonialism.

[00:00:50] Rajeev: In this episode, we talk to. Megan Hobza, a grant writer and community activist from Whittier, California. She specializes in locavore action, [00:01:00] which aims to keep the money local and support small businesses in her community. Thanks for making the time for the podcast, Megan. appreciate it a lot.

[00:01:10] Megan Hobza: I'm honored to be here. Thanks for having me, Rajeev.

[00:01:13] Rajeev: Awesome. That's great. So it's been what, more than a couple of decades, since I last saw you in Chennai.

[00:01:20] Megan Hobza: That's right. it was a really, it was a really cool part of that trip too, to get to see what your family, does. You all have such cool projects.

[00:01:32] Rajeev: Right. Yeah. I think my, my father-in-law was the one who,introduced you to, and he was working with NGOs. I think at some point.

[00:01:40] Megan Hobza: Yeah, this was an, I think this was, Grameen Bank's, pilot project to bring microfunding to rural women. So we got to visit this village. Where all the women in the village had each taken out a little loan and they combined their loans to buy a cow, and then they sold the milk from the cow every week.

[00:01:59] Megan Hobza: [00:02:00] And. Saved up money to buy another cow. And the bank had installed, ATMs in the countryside that, that took and gave smaller, coinage. so that, people with lower incomes could interact with them conveniently. The bank had installed, clean water resources in the village and also created, a central computer room.

[00:02:24] Megan Hobza: So there was internet access for the whole village. And it was just really inspiring. I mean, that seeing what small things could transform the life of a little community in some ways inspired the rest of my life and what I ended up doing locally in my own community.

[00:02:39] Rajeev: Right, right. I think it's, it's actually gone way beyond that today because, what's happened is there was this big push towards digitization and, I think the Indian government came out with something called the U P I or the Universal Payment Infrastructure.

[00:02:57] Megan Hobza: and it's like u p i is basically this, it's, [00:03:00] imagine it's like this structure of tracks or railroads all crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country and money travels on that And a lot of the local vendors now have QR codes. And because you have 4G LTE connections everywhere and everybody has a smartphone, you no longer accept cash. You just scan and pay the vendor. So, street vendors have smartphones and they have,they have bank accounts and. Digital wallets,

[00:03:30] Megan Hobza: Do they have to pay a fee to be allowed to have a digital wallet?

[00:03:34] Rajeev: no, it's actually, it's everybody. I think, you have the AAR card, which is like your digital ID and everything is connected to that digital id. And if you have to have the digital id, then you have to have a bank account. So everybody gets to open a free bank account. in post offices you can open a bank account now.

[00:03:53] Rajeev: yeah, so that's kind of transforming.

[00:03:55] Megan Hobza: that's amazing.Yeah. to, cut, stockholders out [00:04:00] of those transactions is what I think is so inspiring because that's been a big part of keeping money local is that it's always siphoned off to these. Kind of corporate Ponzi schemes.

[00:04:13] Rajeev: this has, really transformed large sections of the community. Of course, there's still a lot of work to be done, but they've done really well at, And especially UPI is, transformed, local, traders, the street traders, every shop you go will have a QR code now, so it's GPay. Become part the local language pretty much. Okay. I'll Gpay you, like Google it. So it's become part and parcel of, day-to-day activity in pretty much, more major parts of the country, I guess.

[00:04:45] Rajeev:

[00:04:45] Megan Hobza: Yeah, it just, it sounds like something that would strengthen local economies,

[00:04:48] Rajeev: yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. how does that tie in with what you do? explain to me what the term Locovore mean.

[00:04:56] Megan Hobza: So, the term locavore, which is, I think [00:05:00] that the basic idea of what a locavore is, as someone who wants to keep. Money local and resources local because local self-reliance means that, you are better prepared as a community for, change. You're better, prepared for disaster and and you're also reducing your reliance on an extractive global economy.

[00:05:26] Megan Hobza: every dollar that is, that's spent on local business, for example, cycles four times in the economy before exiting. So if you're purchase, if you're making your purchase at, a corporation with stockholders, that dollar goes out of your community immediately. So that undermines the strength of your local economy and it undermines the contribution that you make as an individual towards the self-reliance of your local economy and its contribution to reducing the effects [00:06:00] of climate change because the drivers of climate change are these extractive corporations. So people who consider themselves locavore are looking at ways to trade resources, right? Even not spend money at all, but, share and reuse as well as keep their dollars local, their money local.

[00:06:22] Rajeev: There's a lot of drive towards local business and small businesses as well, I guess.

[00:06:28] Megan Hobza: Right. So it supports local business, small business, barter, sharing, reuse, recycle, upcycle, all of those types of practices. worker owned business all falls under, loco or practice.

[00:06:44] Rajeev: Right. And what's your role in this? what kind of, activity or, work that you do in this field?

[00:06:51] Megan Hobza: So professionally, I work as a grant writer, which means that I develop funding proposals and, [00:07:00] big picture strategy for nonprofit organizations and nonprofit, also known as ngo O. Doesn't mean that an organization doesn't interact with money or have any extra money. It just means that there's a community benefit that is intended by this organization.

[00:07:17] Megan Hobza: So, it's not there to build a profit for an individual or for a group of individuals, but, any funds that are raised, are put into activities that benefit the local community or the national community in some cases. So, so I write sort of like business plans that are sent to funding bodies, government, private foundations, and and then those are assessed and then oftentimes, A grant is awarded to underwrite the project that's proposed.

[00:07:53] Megan Hobza: So that's my profession. and I do work with clients that do, locovore activities. A [00:08:00] vocationally I've spent over a decade. Doing some community organizing around, I guess you'd call it proofs of concept. so I've worked,I helped start at a time bank quite a while back, and I've worked with quite a few time banks in the Los Angeles area where I live.

[00:08:18] Megan Hobza: I helped start a backyard farm and, uh, a free store. These are projects where you're providing a platform, for neighbors to do the kind of, non-monetary sharing that I mentioned a little bit earlier is, there's, they're spending your local dollars and then there's the sharing, reuse, relationship building side of the locovore world.

[00:08:42] Megan Hobza: So, I guess I would say that between my profession and my avocation, I take. Maybe a holistic approach to being a Locovore.

[00:08:51] Rajeev: The concept of locovore, is it a new phenomenon or, What's the history behind it? And is it only in the US or is it [00:09:00] across the world?

[00:09:01] Megan Hobza: I'm not, a scholar of the term or the movement to the extent that I'm aware of how. How the word is used, maybe internationally, but it's certainly, in the United States, it's I think, a widely recognized, movement. it might be thought of as largely people who are sharing their backyard produce.

[00:09:23] Rajeev: like a farmer's market.

[00:09:24] Megan Hobza: Yeah. share sharing with your neighbors directly or buying from the farmer's market and, keeping their, your supply lines strong to folks that actually make a living off of, growing food. So food would be the first place where I think people would recognize that term being locavore.

[00:09:43] Megan Hobza: the idea of being conscious about where your food comes from means that you're doing your due diligence as a citizen of planet Earth.

[00:09:53] Megan Hobza: to make, to make your small contribution toward a sustainable lifestyle.

[00:09:57] Megan Hobza: Hypothetically, you could grow [00:10:00] all your own food and just eat that if you had an acre of land, you know, the fantasy about being living off the grid and all that stuff. I mean, that's also part of locavore cultures, the those fantasies and those lifestyles.

[00:10:13] Rajeev: I, and I'm not sure how many people actually know where their food comes from, because people think it comes from the supermarket, right?

[00:10:19] Megan Hobza: True. Right. and because it can come from all over the world, it's not, we don't eat with the seasons necessarily.

[00:10:24] Megan Hobza: yeah. There's this joke that I read on the internet People think, chocolate milk comes from brown cows, Right,

[00:10:31] Megan Hobza: I mean it's also, there's this big, consciousness towards using free range and also, farm to fork. A lot of these, are. I'm not sure whether they're nice marketing lines or actually happens. I don't know. especially this free range. You have those things labeled free range, but I don't know, whether it's actually free range, We, I mean, if you're concerned about,the impacts of, [00:11:00] animal husbandry on the environment or if you're interested in the treatment of farm animals, right? Those are two different things. big ag is going to have a pretty rough environmental impact. farming animals has a higher impact than almost any vegetable crop.

[00:11:19] Megan Hobza: and if you're concerned about, the cruelty side, which is less locavore and more vegan, but there, there's definitely overlap. There's greenwashing that prevents us from really making,a meaningful impact on our foodways. which is why people want to get to know more about where their food comes from and perhaps even have, be the own source of their food.

[00:11:44] Megan Hobza: Because you control the source of your food, then you're interacting with fewer questionable practices. the only thing of course is that what's also manageable with your day-to-day lifestyle, and so everybody ha has to kind of figure that out and make that choice for themselves.

[00:11:59] Rajeev: right. [00:12:00] Right. but, this era of, urbanization, more and more people living in cities rather than, in the hinterland. how does that work?

[00:12:09] Megan Hobza: I'm a big fan of waste diversion, half of all food that's produced, winds up in the landfill and we're talking about perfectly good food that people could eat. It just, the new food comes into the supermarket and replaces the food that's on the shelves. The food that was on the shelves five minutes ago was good enough to buy five minutes ago.

[00:12:32] Megan Hobza: It's still good enough to eat when it leaves the store, is a sunk cost for the business. It would cost them more money to take their staff and have them do something with it. And so it takes food rescue organizations like food banks and so on to coordinate with stores to pick up that food, to, to.

[00:12:54] Megan Hobza: Find new places, find people to eat it, or to compost it or take it to the [00:13:00] zoo. there's definitely ways to prevent that, perfectly good food from going into the landfill, but it requires funding and structure, to do that.

[00:13:08] Rajeev: Yeah. And also, the produce has to look a certain way for it to be sold in the supermarket as well. If it doesn't look polished and perfect, it gets rejected and, those also needs to have a avenue of being sold, right.

[00:13:24] Megan Hobza: I mean, if you take it to,if you take this, diverted food waste to a food bank,and put it out for people to take, they will take imperfect vegetables. They will take, boxes with the edge crushed and cans with the dent. at that point we understand that we're dealing with stuff that's perfectly good and we're getting it a bargain.

[00:13:42] Megan Hobza: so people feel less precious I think, when it gets to, to that point. And then, that's creating,a locally sustainable food culture where you don't have room to farm for everybody. I mean, you can farm on your porch, you can farm on your roof. If you have a backyard, you can farm in your backyard.

[00:13:59] Megan Hobza: But right. [00:14:00] Cities are more limited to the waste stream diversion, approach to, to, to making a local food way. Removes us from a reliance on corporate food culture

[00:14:14] Rajeev: And how much of a support is there,is it a movement that's supported by the establishment in terms of the government and stuff like that? Or is it a local grassroots movement?

[00:14:25] Megan Hobza: well in Los Angeles. food waste diversion. Is a practice of most local food banks, but, there's not a lot of government funding that's something that, that food banks need to, raise their own money to, to undertake. cuz you need to have refrigerated trucks and you need to have warehouse space.

[00:14:47] Megan Hobza: You need to have, you need to have infrastructure and, and a city or a county. Give you recognition, right? They might give you a certificate or an award, but they don't have dedicated, budget to make [00:15:00] sure that happens, in a,a fully structurally supported way.

[00:15:06] Megan Hobza: So it is grassroots by and large.

[00:15:09] Rajeev: But what are the components of a,of Locavore? I mean, for example, in my, in the neighborhood or the community that I live in, that is, um, Community garden that people can go and volunteer and they grow herbs and crops, and people can come and pick that up and, take it home like coriander and herbs and all of that stuff that they grow there.

[00:15:30] Rajeev: And also there is a local market on Sunday, which is extremely, popular. but other than that, what are the things that, the community can do apart from these kind of activities, in order to encourage, local business and locavore action.

[00:15:47] Megan Hobza: beyond food ways, and I wanna pause and say, people learning how to cook is really important for waste food, waste diversion too. so, so some other [00:16:00] issues that, that we see, where I live, and I think that this is a, global phenomenon. can people afford to live where they work?

[00:16:10] Megan Hobza: That's really. Do people have to commute out? Do people have to spend, 2, 3, 4 hours on the road every day to get to their jobs or can they walk to their job? the environmental impact of being able to work where you live is pretty obvious, right? Traffic, pollution. but the impact on a community, is.

[00:16:30] Megan Hobza: Is sort of invisible when you have your entire working class,gone for 10 hours of the day and they come home exhausted and all they can do is pop food in the microwave and sit in front of the tv exhausted. you don't have people in the community that are prepared, that have the energy or the bandwidth to go out and interact with each other, build community.

[00:16:53] Megan Hobza: Make trusting friendships and, try to make the community a better place. You're just tired you [00:17:00] lose the, you lose great people who could be sitting on city council. You lose, people who could be running organizations as volunteers. you lose all of this social capital That happens invisibly when people drive out of their garage at 6:00 AM and back into their garage at 8:00 PM you don't realize what you've lost as a community.

[00:17:21] Rajeev: Right. I completely agree. one of the things that, I went out and did was, make contacts in the local community. There's local art space, which is a safe space for young people to come and practice art and stuff like that. do photo walks so people can discover their neighborhood, You don't have to travel hundreds of kilometers to some remote beach to take beautiful photographs.

[00:17:45] Megan Hobza: That awareness of, engaging with the community is I think, very basic for something like this, Yeah. Well, and and at that point getting involved with, with local politics becomes important because, [00:18:00] your local city council, is the one that decides how many affordable units are built. Over the course of a year, you know what housing stock is approved in the city where I live.

[00:18:12] Megan Hobza: Uh, the city council, like most conservative runs, small and mid city, size. city councils has rejected all affordable housing and new developments, even though it's required by California state law. we just have been deprived of, I basically 30 years of affordable housing. We have a local college.

[00:18:34] Megan Hobza: I'm a, I'm an alum of Whittier College. I live in Whittier, California, and so we've got all these well-educated graduates who, right, they come in, they get their four year education, and they exit Whittier entirely because they can't afford to live here because there's no affordable housing.

[00:18:51] Megan Hobza: And,we lose people who have free time to give as community leaders. if they're, if they have part-time [00:19:00] work, can't afford to live here, to contribute their leadership. If, people retire and they're living on a pension, they cannot continue to live in Whittier unless they're a homeowner.

[00:19:10] Megan Hobza: So there's, there's this exodus out of cities like mine, of all the people who could give back to a community who have the time, who have perhaps the entrepreneurship, who have the education to really give to a community. What do you have left when you have, when the, when the sons and daughters, when the kids of the people.

[00:19:32] Megan Hobza: who had kids here when their children can no longer afford to stay in the community. That it hollows out a community and leaves you with

[00:19:41] Megan Hobza: not a lot.

[00:19:41] Rajeev: Is it because they want to protect the suburbia that they have there, or, what's the reason behind this?

[00:19:50] Megan Hobza: So, conservative city councils are about protecting the status quo. So by and large elected officials are homeowners and by and large homeowners [00:20:00] and elected officials are white. So there's a subtle racism going on. preventing the browns from home ownership, from being able to rent locally.

[00:20:09] Megan Hobza: And, uh, you know, it's not something that's said aloud, but it's part of the dynamic.

[00:20:14] Rajeev: Especially in such a progressive state like California,

[00:20:17] Megan Hobza: but you know, just a slightly less than half of the population. Conservative, right? It's just there's a slight major, or, the voting population, let's say, because, um,people who are racialized, marginalized are gonna be disenfranchised from voting. that's part of the deal.

[00:20:36] Megan Hobza: And so, and I could, we could go into a lot of detail on how that happens,

[00:20:40] Megan Hobza: but what happens is, the people in cities like Whittier who are voting are gonna be slightly majority conservative, and that's how city councils are conservative, keep their seats. Yeah. Yeah. And our, and Whittier is,70% Latino,

[00:20:55] Rajeev: Ah,

[00:20:55] Megan Hobza: So activating voters is a really important part of locavore [00:21:00] practice.

[00:21:00] Rajeev: Yeah. I think,that's a big issue, right? one is activating the voters on the other hand, conservatives don't want you to vote.

[00:21:07] Megan Hobza: Right. And so they'll do tricky things like,move the voting day for the city, away from the date that's used by the county and the nation. So it's some weird off day and people miss it.

[00:21:18] Rajeev: Even in, Auckland the percentage of, voting for local office, which is your mayors and in counselors, is pathetically low. and what's happened is people who vote are the older white people and all the young people don't vote and you get the wrong Yes. That's what happens here too,

[00:21:38] Megan Hobza: becausepeople don't wanna, people don't wanna pay attention sitting through a city council meeting, it is both boring and enraging. And neither of those things attract people to paying attention to what's going on. And this is why local journalism's so important to, to support, right? Because you want that filter of someone who's gonna have, be paid to sit through the city council [00:22:00] meeting, digest it, and then give you the low down so that you didn't have to do it yourself.

[00:22:04] Rajeev: true. Yeah. And that, that awareness is so, so, so important cuz it's, it comes back to by you in the ass because it happened in Auckland when the floods happened. We had a very incompetent mayor at the top and a very incompetent management. And they totally messed it up.

[00:22:22] Megan Hobza: Yeah. And we can look back just a couple of years to, the incompetent mayors of any city we may have been living in about how they handled Covid. There are people who, many people who died because, of incompetent elected officials, hundreds of thousands.

[00:22:35] Rajeev: true. I think local activism is very important and, the awareness of, being engaged with the local community is extremely important. I can't stress that enough, So now it's a nice, way to segue into your next topic, which is your interest in. in fashion or reusing fashion.

[00:22:55] Rajeev: can you tell us something about that?

[00:22:57] Megan Hobza: having run, the Whittier free store for a [00:23:00] couple of years,I was surprised by how many clothes that people tried to bring in that would be stained, ripped, torn, buttons missing. We weren't accepting any of that stuff because

[00:23:11] Megan Hobza: We didn't have staff, or volunteers that could handle fixing all of these clothes that were coming in that were damaged. We had to turn those away. But you don't wanna be the person who then has a bag of damaged clothes and puts it in the landfill. What do you do with your own stuff, right? that doesn't fit it no longer belongs in your closet as it is in this moment.

[00:23:34] Megan Hobza: So, it's great to have clothing swaps. It's great to have you. there's a thing called repair cafes where you can write, take your stuff and, get your buttons sewn back on, get your zipper fixed, get your electronics fixed. you have people in your local area who are willing to organize a repair cafe if you're willing to organize one yourself, that's a lot of fun.

[00:23:53] Megan Hobza: that's a neat pop-up to do, but it's sort of a daily practice, right? I got [00:24:00] interested in. how do I turn this problem into, an opportunity that is fun, exciting, creative, artistic, because, I'm not going to do stuff outta guilt. I will do something because it's fun. I think most people are that way.

[00:24:20] So I'm like, how do I make this? I had a navy blue sweatshirt and it had a little bleach stain on it, the size of a bea And, and it was a boring sweatshirt. I wasn't that interested in it, and I thought maybe I'd cut it up for rags, and I thought, what if I did something to it that made somebody else want it?

[00:24:40] Megan Hobza: And then I could give it to someone and they'd be excited about it. what do I have to do to this sweatshirt to make somebody else want it? So I,I'd seen on YouTube that people can do bleach, tie dye. you know, you put the rubber bands on like you would for a tie dye project except for then you, you spray it or dip it in bleach water.

[00:24:59] Megan Hobza: And [00:25:00] so I did that to the sweatshirt and it started looking cool. And then, the bean size bleach stain kind of went to the wayside. You didn't really notice it anymore cuz of all the other bleach, but it sort of looked like a night sky at that point. And that was really interesting to me.

[00:25:14] Megan Hobza: And I thought, what if I put a cartoon character on here, like with fabric paint and the cartoon characters, like somehow having an outer space experience. Right. And so I f and so I found this cartoon character named Tato, that, and so I put Tato on the couch where he belongs because he's a couch po Tato.

[00:25:37] Megan Hobza: and he's seen on the sweatshirt that I painted, he's seen hurdling through space on a rocket powered. into stars painted the rocket flame. And I have no personal particular attachment to Tato. I just think that he's cute.I just thought that'd be a fun thing to put in the night sky.

[00:25:56] Megan Hobza: And so I, I posted this on,on a creative [00:26:00] mending, visible mending Facebook group, and 200 people liked it. And people said, oh, you should sell those. I'm like, I'm not gonna make and sell t-shirts and sweatshirts. I'm like, I'm, I'm looking for the person who needs this. And and a woman living in Australia was like, I need it.

[00:26:18] Megan Hobza: I'm like, great. give me your address. She's I'm like, yeah, I'm looking for the person who needs a sweatshirt. So I sent it to her. Turns out she runs a Makerspace in Adelaide and she gives lectures to people about Creative Reuse and she wears the sweatshirt to her lectures. That was so rewarding to me.

[00:26:41] Rajeev: That's amazing.

[00:26:44] Megan Hobza: and I thought, I wanna make a YouTube channel about this because I'm having so much fun.

[00:26:48] Megan Hobza: I love seeing people do these kinds of projects on YouTube. I'll watch it, I'll watch for hours. People do this kind of stuff. So how about if I contribute to that [00:27:00] flow of information and kind of share with people how you can take this sad problem of a broken. And turn it into an exciting art opportunity.

[00:27:11] Megan Hobza: So that's my concept.

[00:27:12] Rajeev: It's interesting cuz we have so much, stuff in a wardrobe which just occupies space and.

[00:27:18] Rajeev: we never use it. And maybe when you do your spring cleaning, you need to take it all out, and maybe convert it into a weekend project.

[00:27:27] Megan Hobza: You know, just yesterday I spent the day, a couple hours of the day, I'm dyeing a couple of cashmere sweaters that were colors that I didn't like, so I made them a color that I like, I probably could have found a taker for a Cashmere sweater, but I wanted it. I liked the shape.

[00:27:42] Megan Hobza: I just wanted a different color.

[00:27:44] Rajeev: how big of a problem is fast fashion? I mean, this is a great way to actually reduce,unnecessary things going into the landfill. are there other ways of preventing, clothes, just what you [00:28:00] do with, unwanted food produce. Is there something that we can do for, unwanted fashion?

[00:28:05] Megan Hobza: Well, yeah, I mean there's certainly,the time honor our tradition of thrift stores, which. I've always loved a thrift store. thrift stores cannot handle the volume of donations that they get. generally only a small portion of the clothes donated make it onto the floor.

[00:28:25] Megan Hobza: So this is also why I wanna address ways that we can deal with visible repair, invisible repair. But you know, there are now retailers that will take your secondhand clothes and resell them for you online. So that's an interesting approach. I think if you have stuff that's in good condition, and you wanna make sure that it's not gonna end up, getting shredded because there wasn't enough room on the thrift store floor for your item, even though it's in good condition.

[00:28:57] Megan Hobza: If you send it to, thread up, if you [00:29:00] know it's in good condition and it's recent, within the last 10 years, they will put it up for sale. So this is there, there are options for diverting that waste stream as well.

[00:29:10] Rajeev: It's part of the circular economy,

[00:29:11] Megan Hobza: It is part of the circular economy if your t-shirt is full of holes and you've just, it's lived its life, you can absolutely cut it up and use it for rags. That's okay. You know, that's a second life.

[00:29:23] Rajeev: Absolutely.

[00:29:23] Megan Hobza: I have a friend who,Crochets award-winning rag rugs out of t-shirt scraps that we all give her. Lot of things you can do.

[00:29:33] Rajeev: I think this, whole,this mending thing that you're doing, and the repair concept has taken on a lot of steam in recent years, especially in, Consumer electronics where,people like Apple were totally against it and they were making products which cannot be repaired, but now I think, even legislation has come in, which,

[00:29:54] Rajeev: has actually forced their hand. And now you get, like kits where you can [00:30:00] actually repair iPhones. Which is a big step because if you open it up, the warranty is .

[00:30:08] Rajeev: So it's a big step you know, reusing old phones.

[00:30:12] Megan Hobza: right? I mean, talk about, major environmental damage. the rare metals that go into, creating smartphones.

[00:30:21] Megan Hobza: Reuse is always the first best way that, you know, we have available to us as individuals right. to prevent environmental damage. Right. We can be, we can get out there and we can vote. We can advocate for legislation, we can do things as community leaders, but on an individual basis, reuse is number one, way that we can benefit the planet.

[00:30:42] Rajeev: absolutely. But the good thing with batteries is,with the new technology, the new type of batteries is, has a longer life. And actually when we can repurpose them with paetrol, we cannot, right?

[00:30:55] Megan Hobza: Right.

[00:30:55] Megan Hobza: And I wanna put this thought out there too, cause I know we're coming to the end of our conversation. [00:31:00] we still have people who will, we will still need frontline workers. We still need people who are out. Doing physical work that supports all of the rest of us who are privileged to work from home.

[00:31:11] Megan Hobza: And I wanna mention this concept of the solidarity economy. which means that we're all looking out for each other because we are all the working class, we are all affected by, the global economy in ways that are similar. the global economy devastates us all. So if we think about how we're interacting with other people and sharing our privilege and, and being generous with other people financially as well, making sure that people don't, slip through the cracks.

[00:31:43] Megan Hobza: The solidarity economy also contributes to a strong local

[00:31:47] Rajeev: and where can people get resources about all this? Are there places that,you can read about this in terms of, how can I be locally involved? What are the things that I can do in my local neighborhood? in terms [00:32:00] of Locavore action, et cetera, do you have resources that I can share with the audience?

[00:32:06] Megan Hobza: in the United States, I would point people towards, strong towns usa They're a great resource for thoughts on big picture thinking in your local town.

[00:32:17] Rajeev: Sounds good. Are there any, any parting thoughts that you wanna close the conversation on?

[00:32:21] Megan Hobza: I think it's so important for us to find ways. To both understand the gravity of the situation with the climate, and the future of humanity, and also not get pulled under by feeling overwhelmed by it, feeling good about your life. joy is an act of resistance, so it's important to find ways to live your life.

[00:32:44] That are affirming and make your response to,to climate change and environmental devastation that make your life better, not worse. So embrace your joy.

[00:32:55] Rajeev: Awesome. That's a great thought to end the podcast on.

[00:32:59] Rajeev: Thanks [00:33:00] Megan for coming on the podcast. And I really enjoyed this conversation.

[00:33:04] Rajeev: What I'd take away from this conversation is that as individuals, we need to engage with the local community and contribute in any which way you can. Just being aware of the local issues is a great start. You can connect with Megan by email. Her email is meganhobza@gmail.com. I will put that in the show notes. As always, thanks for supporting this podcast. I aim to release one episode every month from now on. So I will see you in the next episode.

[00:33:31] Rajeev: This is Rajeev signing off.