"I won't be able to live with the realization that I could have done more and I didn't."
In this episode of Reversing Climate Change, host Ross Kenyon engages in a candid conversation with Ed Begley, Jr., a seasoned environmental activist and Hollywood actor. Unpacking his Hollywood journey and introducing his memoir, To the Temple of Tranquility and Step on It!, Ed provides a humorous yet insightful look into his life and passion for the environment.
Ed's unique perspective on climate change, shaped by his experiences with addiction and an intense pursuit of the low-carbon lifestyle, becomes a focal point as he explores the healing power of honesty, both personally and globally.
What is the role of personal action? Find out how Ed has learned over the years that a 'tripod approach' is critical to moving the needle on actionable change. What should the balance be between mindfulness and standing still vs. anger and activism? Balancing seriousness with a touch of humor, Ed and Ross discuss the role of laughter in climate change activism.
Tune in to glimpse the joy of living a low carbon life from the Zelig/Forrest Gump of Hollywood.
More from the show
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Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
To the Temple of Tranquility...And Step On It!: A Memoir by Ed Begley, Jr.
This Is It: and Other Essays on Zen and the Spiritual Experience by Alan Watts
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
Matt Stone & Trey Parker’s animated lectures of Alan Watts
Begley’s Best non-toxic products
Act On DemandWater Heating
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast with Nori. I’m Ross Kenyon, and I’m one of the co-founders of Nori and the Director of Creative and Marketing here. Nori is a carbon removal marketplace based in Seattle, Washington. Today I have with me Ed Begley, Jr., an actor from so many things, including some personal favorites of mine like This Is Spinal Tap, the Christopher Guest mockumentary, Six Feet Under, and Arrested Development. He is a longtime environmental activist as well as an author, and recently published his memoir, the cheekily titled To the Temple of Tranquility… And Step On It! Thanks for being here, Ed.
Ed Begley, Jr.: Ross, thank you for having me. It’s my great pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve been watching you since I really became interested in film and comedy, so this is a great little crossover for me. Your book was a great read. I had a lot of fun with it. It’s littered with Hollywood hijinks, so much so that you refer to yourself as a sort of Zelig or Forrest Gump figure of that time and place. The part that really knocked my socks off is about drinking with Tom Waits in the ’70s. I wish there was almost more of that. I’m a big Tom Waits fan, and that blew my mind, that you even had that experience. But the book is not merely that, but also an attempt to operationalize a sort of radical honesty about your shortcomings and addictions, too. What role do you understand honesty is having for your personal healing?
Ed Begley, Jr.: It’s been essential. And that’s our problem with climate change: we haven’t been honest with ourselves. You know, it is very much an inconvenient truth. And such was the case with my other addiction. We’re addicted to oil as a society, as a world. Unfortunately, you know, I was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and once you get real about that, you have a chance — a chance, I underemphasized and underlined — at recovery. So those of us who became honest about it back years ago, when we first heard James Hansen talk about it, we were honest about pollution in LA and places like that.
We cleaned up a lot of the smog. We’d proven that we can do it. But we weren’t honest about climate change as a whole, until finally there’s beginning to be a critical mass of people who believe it’s so, that man is the major culprit. And we need to get more people to own up to it, I’m afraid, because we’re all part of it. We all did it.
Ross Kenyon: You have a beautiful story about one of your sponsors — you making a call in the airport, and him saying that the mere fact that you called me means that you’re not going to drink. Is there something equivalent like that for climate change? What is the moment that might be that for us?
Ed Begley, Jr.: I think the moment is seeing the connection, because we act like we’re disconnected, you know, from the rainforest. We act like we’re disconnected from the coral reefs, but we’re very much connected. Their fate is our fate. And so as we begin to see, that is us. When I decide I’m going to hop in a plane instead of take my electric vehicle somewhere, you know, because I have to get there from Saturday night to Monday morning, or whatever the time frame is, from LA to New York — I don’t like doing that. Once in a while I do it. We all have our shortcomings, but I try to fly almost never, as in quite rarely, and I’m fairly successful at it.
But it’s that honesty to realize that I’m still part of it, with all my ballyhoo about the environment. As recently as a few weeks ago, I had to get to an event in Chicago, and I was looking forward to driving my electric vehicle there and charging along the way — all-electric, zero-pollution transport to Chicago and back. But I injured my right leg. I’m getting on in my years now, I’m 74, and I couldn’t drive more than about 50 miles without having to get up and walk around, get up and walk around, every 50 miles. And that wasn’t sustainable. So I had to get in the plane, and I hated it. But you know, I acknowledge that I’m still, for all my successes, part of this problem of climate change that we all are part of.
Ross Kenyon: You’re an example of someone that has taken this very seriously for a very long time. I had a question about how this might relate to your previous struggles with addiction. I watched clips from Living with Ed, your reality show, about you tormenting your wife with your environmental zealotry. Do you see, like, a competitiveness, or a really strong desire to be environmentally conscious? Is that a replacement? Is that part of it? Am I reading too much into this as a sort of continuity?
Ed Begley, Jr.: No. I, you know, very early on saw my connection with the smog in LA, back in 1970 when I got started. I knew I was connected because I used to have — I was very proud to have a Mustang when I was 18 years old. You know, that’s the kind of car an 18-year-old in the 1960s wanted, and got sometimes. And I had one, and I had a Ford Econoline van. I drove my stepmother’s Chevy Vega before that. So I had all these gasoline cars, and I studied about internal combustion engines, and I thought internal combustion engines were just great.
And then I finally woke up and saw the connection between me driving around my Mustang and the smog that we’re all experiencing; me leaving the lights on without needing to, and the smog from the power plants, the pollution from the power plants. So I got real about it and started to do something. And here we are: from 1970 to today, we have four times the cars in LA, millions more people, but a fraction of the smog. We’ve all done that. That’s a big deal. LA is a big city. And so if we can do it there, we can do it elsewhere.
And then after you have expert testimony in the ’80s — 1987, James Hansen testified about climate change and told us the facts as he understood them, and they were quite credible. Three paths, you know: low, medium and high temperature change, and all the consequences that came with it. And sadly he was quite accurate, and we’ve done precious little at our own peril. And we’ve got to get cracking, and I mean now, or the consequences are going to be dire. We’re not going to save everything. That’s over, that’s past, that’s done. But we can still save a lot. We have to save what’s left, and that is our responsibility, starting right this second.
And Greta gets it. She’s one of the few people that really gets it. You know, she is completely dedicated because she’s not distracted, as many of us are, by other things. Her condition keeps her very focused on just one task, and that task is waking us all up. Even people like me, who think they’ve solved it all and live in a LEED Platinum house — there’s more that I can do, and I have to do more. Otherwise I won’t be able to live with the realization that, you know, I could have done more and I didn’t.
Ross Kenyon: And say what you will about Greta, it’s hard to argue with someone who’s willing to sail across the ocean multiple times to commute to the Western Hemisphere. That’s commitment. That’s true commitment. What is it about you that drives this personal touch? Because it doesn’t impact the climate on the PPM level, but seemingly you’re very, very driven for the personal carbon output of yourself to be driven as low as possible. I’ve seen videos of your house and your gardens, and how you think about solar. Why is it? Is it competitive? Is there a game? Is there a creativity to it? What drives that beyond just the politics of it?
Ed Begley, Jr.: You know, I thought in my ignorance for a while, I just thought if I could just live this way and show that it’s not only possible, but it’s comfortable and you could save money doing it, then we’ll have won this battle. Personal action was everything for me for a while — me doing what I could and getting others to do the same. That’s like a tripod with only one leg. A tripod, by its very definition, has three legs to it. That’s why it’s stable. Not two, not one, but three.
And the three are personal action — give it credit, that’s important — which is also tied to the other leg, which is good legislation. The Clean Air Act is really how we ultimately cleaned up the air in LA. It wasn’t me riding my bike or taking the bus that was connected to it, because good legislation, in this case the Clean Air Act, enabled us to have more clean power plants and more, you know, clean buses and all that stuff. And the third one, connected as they all are, is corporate responsibility: companies making the equipment for cleaner power plants, companies making cleaner buses, companies cleaning up their act in their corporate headquarters, in their warehouses and their manufacturing plants.
Corporate responsibility, good legislation and personal responsibility — those are the three things. And they all have to be the same effort and the same strength and the same level, or things are going to topple over. You can’t have one really short: not doing enough personal action, not having the right legislation, companies not really getting involved, getting involved half-heartedly. Three robust, you know, legs of the same length, and you can get something accomplished. That’s what it takes. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ross Kenyon: The focus, or even the equal focus, upon the three legs — and personal action — has fallen out of favor with some, which I wish would come back a little bit more. Because your book, and what I’ve seen of your life and your home, and also reading books like Peter Kalmus’s book on this too: there’s actually a lot of joy that can come from living a low-carbon life. It doesn’t have to be one of sacrifice. You get a lot of pleasure, seemingly, from optimizing all of your actions and having a circular economy within your own home. This isn’t a sacrifice for you, seemingly. It’s something that actually is enhancing your quality of life.
Ed Begley, Jr.: Well, I think there is a connection between personal action. It’s not the main thing, that we had wrong for years, I acknowledge that. But companies go, listen, we’d make electric cars, but nobody wants to buy them. Well, people went nuts for that EV1 when it came out. Though you couldn’t buy it, you could lease it. People have, you know, put forth a great demand for these kinds of products, and that’s why they’re happening. That’s why, finally, you have to shame these companies and these legislators into doing the right thing. And personal action can influence that. Like it or hate it, it can influence corporations and legislation.
To stand before them at the County Board of Supervisors when they’re about to site a new landfill — as I talk about in the book, the Sunshine Canyon Landfill — you know, I said, well, I only put out in a week about a glove compartment’s worth of trash. I was just picking that out of the air, out of my ear, you know, that kind of amount of trash. I thought that’s what it was. And they came knocking at my door, wanting to see a week’s worth of trash. And I got it all together, and it was less than a glove compartment. So it gave me some credibility. So they all are important, I think, and you can’t have one without the other. One influences the other. They’re all very much connected.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s certainly true. You were one of the very first electric car purchasers — leasers. I remember you have something out there about buying a kit car and building it. Am I understanding the early days of electric cars, seemingly, as something that you were quite involved with?
Ed Begley, Jr.: The first electric car I had was in 1970. Wasn’t so much an electric car as an electric cart, with a T on the end. You know, it was like a golf cart with a windshield wiper and a horn. But I drove it around LA, and it was very cheap to operate, very cheap to fuel — much cheaper than gasoline to fill up — and very cheap to maintain. Didn’t have any big maintenance cost to it. So I drove those for a while, and then I had to go further than the range of the electric car, and I got a super-efficient internal combustion car for a while, then got them again, as you suggest: that kit car called a Bradley kit car.
They made an internal combustion version and an electric version of a Bradley kit car, which had a Volkswagen chassis and wiring harness that was underneath. Then there’s a fiberglass body with gullwing doors, and you can get it with an electric motor. The kit — I didn’t put the kit together, I bought it from somebody who had — and I drove that for a while, and that was, you know, the best I could get my hands on at the time.
But finally, when the EV1 came along and the major manufacturers were starting to make real electric cars, with good braking systems, good chassis that could handle the weight of the batteries and all of that, they were much safer cars, with the proper safety measures in them, than these kind of kit cars, some of which were not really safe, I’ll be honest with you. So, you know, we did that, and that influenced people to go on to the next level.
It’s been said many times that the purchase — the Pentagon buying all those personal computers back in the ’80s, and individuals also buying their Compaq, you know, and other brand personal computers — really influenced them to get cheaper and more ubiquitous and what have you. And I think that’s true. I think there are early adopters of any technology, and they help push it to another level. Pretty soon everybody can afford a computer. And I saw, I think, the people who got the GM EV1, albeit just as a lease, but showed an interest in it and a zeal for it and a love of it in the mid-’90s — I think that’s what led to nearly every manufacturer today having one or more electric cars to offer.
Ross Kenyon: It’s been amazing to watch how they went from being, yes, specialist, hobbyist sorts of vehicles, to all of a sudden now internal combustion engines are no longer going to be sold in certain states. Seems like the world is moving over to electric cars, and that’s a really powerful thing. Are there technologies like what it was for electric cars several decades ago that you’re looking forward to now? Is there anything that you’re excited for and hoping that you might be an early adopter of today?
Ed Begley, Jr.: There’s some new gadgets I have around the house that are kind of exciting, things that most people don’t know about. I have something called Act On Demand in every room in the house that has a sink, like the bathroom or the kitchen. Any of the bathrooms or the kitchen have something called an Act On Demand system. What that is, is a sensor, a motion detector up in the ceiling. So when you walk into a room, it turns on the pump, a circulating pump, which circulates the hot water to the valve and has it very close and hot, ready to use at the valve. You turn on the valve and you get hot water without waiting.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, twenty-seven Mississippi — you’re wasting all that water. People do lots of things to solve that. They shower with a bucket in there, and then they’ve got to remember to get the bucket later and put it out in the garden. There’s a lot of work in that. But something like that system, called Act On Demand, works very well. And you know, there have been circulating pumps for hot water, to have hot water quickly, for many years. But first of all, they use power. That’s a cost, environmentally and otherwise. And more importantly, they’re circulating it all the time. So they’re basically cooling the water by circulating it through the cooler parts of the house, under the house or wherever, and you have to reheat it, reheat it, reheat it all the time. So it’s using more energy on your water heater.
So this system solves all those problems. It’s not on when you’re gone. It’s not on when you’re asleep at night. No one’s in the room. And there’ll be more technology like that. That’s smart technology that nobody ever thought of.
Ross Kenyon: All of those appliances are deeply unsexy improvements that add up, if you think about air conditioning and heating versus heat pumps, and how much energy that’s predicted to save over time. But no one is getting really excited about that relative to something like a new Tesla, et cetera — except maybe nerds like us. Maybe we get excited about that. I have a heat pump and it’s been amazing. But a lot of those incremental improvements over time sort of blend into the background. I think a lot of what climate change mitigation and adaptation is going to take is going to be things like that.
Ed Begley, Jr.: There’s another one that I have in my house you might not have heard of. There’s a thing, it’s called Hot Sun H2O. Sun is a company, and they put this black tubing on the back, on the underside of your photovoltaic panels, basically glued to the back, and so then you can get extra hot water off the heat of the panels. And it’s a twofer, because what you want to do is get your panels cool, not hot. You know, you want the photons to hit them and to make electrons out of photons, but you don’t want them getting hot. Solar panels lose efficiency when they get hot — solar electric panels do. So if you can put some black tubing on the back and use that heat to heat water in your house or your pool, you’ve saved a lot of energy and you’ve done a wonderful kind of a twofer.
Ross Kenyon: Wow, that’s pretty genius. And in fact, I’ve seen that on houses before. I was on vacation recently somewhere hot and I saw that on the back of some solar panels. I was wondering what that is, so I’m not surprised someone figured that out. It’s pretty genius. I’ve also been very influenced by Alan Watts. I remember watching the videos that the South Park guys made that animated some of his lectures. I used to listen to hours of him lecturing in college. I’ve read several of his books; my favorite was The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. What do you think is there that people keep coming back to? He was featured prominently in Her, obviously — he has cultural resonance. What part do you think Alan Watts could play for the environmental movement?
Ed Begley, Jr.: I think he can help us a great deal because, you know, a very wise thing he either said or quoted one day — he certainly said, the essence of this is, don’t just do something, stand there. You know, and that’s, I think those are wise words. People would argue that’s totally contrary to what we need to do, and we need to get moving on it now. We’ve got to save the environment. The coral reefs died. The amphibians are dying. The rainforests are being destroyed, and all that is true. But you can’t — don’t try to do four jobs poorly. Do one job well. Get yourself centered first. Just stand there, get centered, and then perhaps you can go out and do one job.
One thing. You know, banning single-use plastic: work on that, and that alone. You may have some success with that. Start working on public transportation in a city like LA, get that improved, blah, blah, blah. Just do one thing and do it well. And I’m talking to one person right now, and you probably figured out who it is. Ross, it’s me. I need to learn that every day. Rather than do six things poorly, serve on too many boards and do six things ineffectively, do one and do it well. And the way to do that is to get centered first. And the way to do that is listen to Alan Watts, especially his wonderful book called This Is It.
Because this is it. Right now, here it comes, Ross. That’s all we got. That’s really all there is, is that right there. And again, this right here. Once again, it’s happening again. If you just tune into it and allow it, and realize this connection with you and sitting right here is as perfect a moment as I’ve had in my life, if you let it be.
I don’t have to try to get enlightened. I don’t have to strive and travel somewhere to get enlightened, to get to the temple of tranquility, and get there quickly. I don’t have to do any of that, because I’m already enlightened. I’m sitting here with you, and we’re both in a state of enlightenment — enlightenment, if we open our mind and our heart and our soul to it. And we can, thanks to this very smart fellow named Alan Watts, who somehow had great language to communicate to people like you. And to me too.
Ross Kenyon: This focus on mindfulness and tranquility and beauty and stillness is emphasized sometimes, but I think many people associate the climate movement with a lot more anger, with a lot more action. Do you think both have a place? What do you think the balance should be between the two?
Ed Begley, Jr.: They definitely have a place. Because, you know, we can’t all just be dolphins or koala bears, or whatever cute little animals you want to pick. You know, dolphins are pretty tough — I shouldn’t say that they’re cute. They’re cute and they’re tough, you know. But some furry little creature? And it’s not all that. You need sharks; they’re essential. You need leopards. You need snow leopards. You need leopards of every stripe and dot and variety. There are some animals — orcas are quite, some would use the term vicious, with the way they handle their prey. All those things are true. But you need the whole ecosystem. It can’t all just be kumbaya about things.
You need people who are out there and are vocal and are getting things done and aren’t quite, let’s say, as sedate about it as I am a lot of the time. And I can be loud too. I can be vocal myself, but I’m having a certain amount of success these days with reaching people through stillness, and with an invitation to join me in more, you know, kind of laid-back measures, if you will. That’s been helpful. But we’re not going to deal with just that. We need Greta out there — upset, angry, dedicated, not going to take a flight no matter what. There’s no compromises, no half measures. She does it all the way. So there’s many creatures in the ecosystem, and we need them all. Some of them look unattractive, but they all have a role.
Ross Kenyon: You have stories in there about being longtime friends and, seemingly, possibly neighbors with Arnold Schwarzenegger too, and about reaching across the aisle and some of your work trying to find common ground. Do you think that’s been successful for you in your life?
Ed Begley, Jr.: I think that Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown since Arnold have done wonderful things for the environment, possibly more. But by the time he became governor, and during his term, he did a great, great deal for the environment. You know, I didn’t always agree with him on some matters, with the nurses and what have you. I know he had some trouble with the nurses in California, and the nurses’ union, and I didn’t agree with him about that. Maybe a couple of other things. But a woman’s right to choose, sensible gun control, and the environment — he was an extraordinary governor. And for people to let their party interfere with working with somebody like that, you know, we do that at our own peril: that we wind up with somebody like Trump. And I don’t think that helps anybody on any matter whatsoever.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. And some of these areas where you have governors of a red state, governors of a blue state, or vice versa — it seems like there is a tendency where people can find more common ground, as opposed to communities that maybe agree a little bit too much. So I like to foster inside the environmental movement more disagreements too. I think there’s sometimes a tendency to have everyone agree on everything, but I think active debate among well-meaning people can be really positive and make us smarter and better.
Ed Begley, Jr.: I agree. I agree 100%. I’m grateful for my friends who are more vocal than me, and occasionally I join them to get a little loud myself.
Ross Kenyon: And I’m typically more of the convener, the middle-ground finder, that person. I’m less likely to hold a picket sign and yell at people. But I think there’s a role for that too. And I think I often have a better chance of reaching people who don’t already agree with me than the people who are yelling. I feel like it’s hard to persuade someone with a picket sign who potentially doesn’t already agree with you. I don’t know — do you think that’s true?
Ed Begley, Jr.: Yeah, I’m good at doing things my way. I have a good success rate. I’m just not as built for confrontation as others are. Others are really built for it, mentally, physically in some cases, I think even. But it’s my way. I’ve gotten a lot of people to follow and join in and help in the myriad ways, by, you know, just not yelling, by speaking quietly. Gandhi certainly had a lot of success. Cesar Chavez, a lot of success, by being more quiet than loud, and being nonviolent and accomplishing great things by fasting and other things of that nature.
Ross Kenyon: I didn’t even mention that as part of your Zelig-like life, but also having a Cesar Chavez intersection as well. I do want to bring up one of the zaniest environmental ideas I’ve ever heard of, which was almost without a doubt — it has to be Marlon Brando’s electric eel idea. Is there a future for that, actually? Will technology eventually catch up and prove him right?
Ed Begley, Jr.: I don’t think so, because the voltage is somewhat high, but the current is very, very low that they put out there. There’s not a lot of amperage to it, and it only lasts a second. They don’t even [unclear] it for a count of three, I don’t think. I think it’s one Mississippi — I don’t even think it gets to be one Mississippi. So I don’t know that you could by any means harness that power. But I’d love to be proven wrong. Let’s see, maybe there’s a way to do it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, fill up pools with electric eels. Find some way to harness that energy. They’ll clean off the algae of your pool — no chlorine. Seems like a really simple fix, but unfortunately not quite practical.
Ed Begley, Jr.: Quite possibly, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Is there anything else that you’d like to tell people about your book, to help convince them, if they’re not already convinced, that they should read it, that they should come and pick up a copy?
Ed Begley, Jr.: There’s a rule by David Brower. David Brower was a great man who saved the Grand Canyon from being, you know, flooded and turned into a dam and a power source. But he was not successful in stopping Glen Canyon Dam. But he had a rule — I think it was like rule seven or something, there was a number to it. David Brower’s rule seven was: don’t take yourself too seriously. It’s serious work we’re doing, but you have to laugh. You have to enjoy yourself and have, you know, those moments of serenity in your life. It’s very much tied to my thing about Alan Watts: don’t just do something, stand there.
David Brower had a rule — that’s, for the purpose of this discussion, call it rule eight — and it was to enjoy yourself and laugh. And I think that’s essential. That’s what I’ve tried to do with this book: to find the joy and the laughter, try and effect the change and do very serious work that could have quite dire consequences, but find some laughter and joy in your life while doing it.
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s so important, and so much of the show has quite a lot of humor in it. I think it’s important. I think climate people tend to take themselves really seriously. The distinction you’ve made is that the work is serious, but you yourself do not necessarily have to be, at all times, either. I think it’s good for mental health, and for people being able to sustain themselves and working on important issues. Being really serious or really angry, really insistent all the time is probably going to make your life more difficult, and not necessarily make you more successful at your ultimate goal here either.
So I think one way you could do that both personally, but also your work has often featured quite a lot of comedy too, and has brought a lot of joy to people. And I’m sure that feels really meaningful to you. I don’t know how you rate it against your environmental and climate work, but surely making people laugh — the role of the clown, if you will — I think is one that’s underrated, and I think is a really important role that people tend to overlook.
Ed Begley, Jr.: And I think laughter helps me carry on. It really does. Otherwise I have a tendency to want to give up, like everybody else. But if you can find some joy and laughter in it, I feel motivated to continue.
Ross Kenyon: Well, Ed, thank you so much for being here and making time. I really appreciate it. A link to the book is in the show notes, and also you have a line of products that you sell — by the way, I didn’t even mention that, but I actually bought some wrinkle release from you guys. Thank you so much.
Ed Begley, Jr.: Yeah. So Ed Begley’s Earth Responsible Products are available at Costco and online, and they work very well. Very nice non-toxic products. So thank you for mentioning that, Ross. It’s very nice of you.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I had to stick that in there. And links are in the show notes. And thanks so much for listening. Hope you have a—
Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts, or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com. Follow us on social media, and we will catch you next time.
