Susan Bolinger and Thomas Lerczak

[00:00] THOMAS LERCZAK: Good morning.

[00:01] SUSAN BOLINGER: Good morning from Indiana. I'm waving to the West.

[00:07] THOMAS LERCZAK: Good morning from Illinois.

[00:09] SPEAKER C: Yes.

[00:10] SUSAN BOLINGER: All right. Well, so you've done at least one of these before?

[00:15] THOMAS LERCZAK: No, I haven't. This is the first one. I actually had one set up about a month ago and the other person never showed up. And so this is my second try.

[00:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, I'm glad. Good. I was one of the beta people, so I've done a few, and then a few of the people that I talked with carried on for a long time and will come back to having continued conversations with them. But I haven't done a new conversation in quite a while, so I'm looking forward to this. Well, hey, let's follow their procedure here. Let me ask you, Thomas, Why did you want to do this interview today?

[00:59] THOMAS LERCZAK: I found out about it on an NPR website that I was listening to and it looked like something interesting. I've always enjoyed having deep conversations with people. Now that I've been retired for seven years, I don't really encounter as many people during the day like I used to when I was working. And my wife, of course, every day, we talk to each other a lot every day, but other than her, there aren't really very many people in my life anymore that I have conversations with. And I always enjoyed that, getting into topics deep, trying to avoid debating and and getting angry and that, you know, I've, I've, I hope I've learned not to, not to do that anymore. But I do, I do kind of miss. I always felt even speaking with someone who doesn't agree with me at all, I always feel like it's a learning experience for me to hear someone else's viewpoint. And even though it might differ completely from mine, I enjoy that. And so why did you decide to do the interview for today?

[02:25] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, when I started doing so today, because it's been a while since I've engaged with someone new on One Small Step, but on the whole, it's because I have a continuum of beliefs within my family. And I find that it is refreshing, easier, less complicated most of the time to have a conversation, a deep conversation, to really hear someone who is not a member of my family, and that it's easier to, if all these topics are a big mountain, it's easier to see someone else's perspective from another side of the mountain without family and past experiences of, I don't like to argue, I just like to understand, but I find that sometimes not everybody has that take, right? So they'd rather argue a point or win, and I'd really like to come to understanding. So during COVID during the first election, I was able to approach people who had, say, Trump stickers on their, if they were obviously voting for Trump, if they've got a Trump sticker on their car. And say, tell me why you would like to have him be president and have a neutral conversation that I just could never have had with my family members. So to me, this is a really lovely way for people who are looking to learn and listen and just understand a little more about why people believe the way they do and without judgment just for understanding purposes. And I do miss that. I too am retired and I do miss that in my life.

[04:05] THOMAS LERCZAK: Well, it sounds like you and I are looking at it the same way.

[04:09] SUSAN BOLINGER: I think so. And I took that from your bio. So I was really, I'm eager, but I'm eager to ask, may I read your bio to you?

[04:20] THOMAS LERCZAK: Sure.

[04:21] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay. I have it on, I did a screenshot. Okay. I think you can probably still see me, but I can't see you right now. So we know you typically vote Republican. I'm going to say are three quarters of the way. Correct me if you change a different perspective or a different number on that continuum between liberal and conservative. I see your interest reading nature observation, especially birds and music. And you wrote, I am an individualist who believes each person has the right to pursue their own happiness and what fulfills them while respecting others' rights to follow what is right for them. I am against social engineering. I believe the operation of our government should follow the Constitution according to its original intent. The government should be as big as it needs to be. It is a complex world and increasing in complexity at what seems an exponential rate. I am for lawful society. So I have thank you. That is a I wrote my bio so long ago as a beta person that I should probably go back and update it, but if you don't mind, may I ask you some questions about? I found it to be fascinating, Thomas, and I'm so eager to have you share your views with me on this. So many things. First of all, we do share a love of birds. I too have become a real bird lover, but in terms of questions, Tell me, what does the term social engineering mean to you?

[05:56] THOMAS LERCZAK: It means where the government is promoting certain behaviors and perspectives, viewpoints that they're promoting these, trying to change society and the ways society thinks and does things.

[06:19] SPEAKER C: And.

[06:21] THOMAS LERCZAK: Almost in a.

[06:24] SPEAKER C: Well.

[06:26] THOMAS LERCZAK: It'S the government in, in place at the time for whatever they feel should, should happen. And then, you know, another Administration comes in and things switch, go in the other direction, and I think it just ends up being confusion. I don't feel that our Constitution gives the government that kind of mandate that they should be doing things like that. Promote the general welfare, you know, is in the Constitution. And that's such a broad phrase that that's where I think a lot becomes justified in the government not interfering, but promoting certain behaviors and viewpoints. I don't think that's the proper role. I look at the Constitution as being a sort of a guidebook, a manual on how to run the government. It says what the government should be doing, should doesn't say what the government should not be doing, but. So does that answer your question? Got off the track a little there.

[07:44] SUSAN BOLINGER: No, you're good. You're. It's all good. So let me go back here. So you quoted part of the Preamble to the Constitution, which I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, was originally part of the Constitution. We, the people of the United States.

[07:59] SUSAN BOLINGER: In order to form a more perfect.

[08:01] SUSAN BOLINGER: Union, established justice and ensured domestic tranquility.

[08:09] SPEAKER C: Right.

[08:10] SUSAN BOLINGER: General welfare, common defense, et cetera. So to me, when I hear that, I hear striving, right, in order to promote a more perfect union. Here are the rules we lay out for that. So in the preamble, my ears pick up you know, obviously, let's not do a history thing here, but because I really want to hear about your thoughts on that. So I, I don't disagree with anything that you said, Thomas. I don't. And I want to pull up your urban and rural divides that you also mentioned because I think that, does that also get to it for you? Tell me a little bit about urban and rather than me tell you what I think you meant, tell me what you how you would relate Urban and Rural divides to a growing, and you mentioned increasing complex Society from the time, obviously, that the country started. But, you know, where we are now, you move to a new Community, it looks like. Did you move from a city to a rural area?

[09:23] THOMAS LERCZAK: I grew up in Chicago and lived there until I was in my late 20s. And then I went off to college and lived in small towns ever since or the country. And for the last 30 years, I've lived in rural areas. And right now, we just moved here to another town about a year ago. Actually outside of town, out in the country. And so I've lived, you know, in a big urban area, and I've lived in rural areas, and relating that to, so to conservatism and liberalism and, and socialism and capitalism, all these things together, a city, a big city. Is a more socialistic environment where the government is running things. The government runs the public transportation, all sorts of things. And it's very complex. And you have to have a strong hand running things. Out in the rural areas, people are more on their own for a lot of ways. We have, you know, we use well water. We're on our own there. And just as an example. And so I think out in the country, rural areas, people are more individualistic and probably lean more toward conservatism than in the cities. And I think that bears out when you look at voting preferences. The Northeast, Northeastern states, big cities tend to be you know, blue and.

[11:15] SPEAKER C: The.

[11:15] THOMAS LERCZAK: Map of the United States. And you look, a lot of it is, most of it is red, but those are, those are counties, small counties, rural counties, and the urban areas tend to be blue. And so, you know, in rural, smaller rural areas, hunting is a big thing, very big. And I never, never was attracted to it. I'm allergic to fish, so I can't eat fish. I don't fish or hunt, and. But I'm. I'm very much interested in nature. My career was in natural resources and natural history, and the. The birding bird watching is one of my big. Favorite activities. So I'm really tied, heavily tied into nature and nature observation, but I don't hunt or fish. And so what I found is when I moved from, when I moved to a small town, everybody around me, all the men anyway, and a lot of the women too, were into hunting and fishing. And I always felt that I didn't fit in. And then in the urban areas, the birding, you know, you have these birding clubs and people go out and groups of people bird watching and probably hardly any of them hunt or fish. And some of them are vehemently against it and animal rights perspectives. So I've been in both environments and I fit more in with the urban people, I think, and perspectives. In that way.

[13:09] SUSAN BOLINGER: I grew up in Minneapolis and since then I've lived in several very large cities. I've lived overseas and I've lived in very rural areas out west, in the Midwest and in the southeast. And I really appreciate your comments about some of those rural and urban divides that I think people who haven't lived in both parts of the world in the United States cannot understand that when you're living in the rural area, you have to rely upon yourself and maybe a couple of close neighbors if something happens, but otherwise you're fairly on your own for issues that come up for maintaining, you know, the water doesn't just come from your property, but you have to do what you can do to keep your well clean so that you have clean water. You're not getting your water with fluoride and with, you know, it's sanitized by some company. It's up to you to take care of that. I have family members who hunted for sustenance when, like, my grandfather hunted for sustenance, because that's what they had to have to feed their families during the depression and after the depression. I don't have any problem with that, even though I'm a huge animal rights person. My issue is I've never been able to hunt for sport. And the idea of hunting for sport seems. I really struggle with that. And my husband has hunted before he knew me, and he continued to walk with people who would hunt for a while, and he would call it, you know, walking with a stick because he just couldn't shoot anything and kill anything. And, you know, there's that sustenance piece of it. There's also, when you live out west, and you're a rancher and there are coyote that are being reintroduced or whatever it would be that's a prey animal being reintroduced when you're a rancher. Those are, as you must know from your natural history or a natural resources background, those are complex. These ecological systems you're speaking of are complex. That's why they're systems, right? And not individual things that have no.

[15:35] SUSAN BOLINGER: Impact on anything else.

[15:36] SUSAN BOLINGER: So I'm grateful for the time that I've spent out west. I'm grateful for the time that I've spent in rural areas where I can at least, you know, not just put on my big city hat and judge someone for the decisions and the things that they make, even decisions and the ways that they might decide to live their lives, even if it's wholly different from my life in the city. And even if it was different from the way that I lived when I.

[16:03] SUSAN BOLINGER: Was out west or rural.

[16:05] SUSAN BOLINGER: I'm grateful for that Venn diagram overlap to understand a little bit about it, but I'm definitely more like you from what I hear you saying in terms of watching birds, loving nature, wanting to preserve nature. Do I hear that in your natural resources?

[16:24] THOMAS LERCZAK: Yeah, that was my title was Natural Areas Preservation Specialist. So, right, preservation.

[16:34] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well.

[16:36] SUSAN BOLINGER: Please go ahead.

[16:38] THOMAS LERCZAK: Not to the extreme where everything, we're saying that we can't use anything. Not at all like that. I certainly.

[16:51] SPEAKER C: Understand.

[16:51] THOMAS LERCZAK: I mean, and what you were saying about reintroducing predators out west. I immediately thought of wolves and like Yellowstone. If you have cattle or sheep or something and a pack of wolves comes over there and takes them, kills them, I really kind of sympathize with the rancher there. We have chickens and we have them protected in a metal fence fenced in area and a coop and we're constantly worried about raccoons coming in and foxes and coyotes and even owls and so we don't let the chickens run around free because if they were they would be taken. What I then say we should go out and kill all the foxes. No, we have to find a way to protect our chickens.

[17:57] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[17:59] SUSAN BOLINGER: I don't disagree with any of that, Thomas. I really don't. Let me swing back to the original intent of the Constitution. What does that mean to you?

[18:14] THOMAS LERCZAK: It's, So a manual, a manual for how to run the country and sets out the roles of the individuals, the president and everyone else, what their role is and what they can do.

[18:34] SPEAKER C: And.

[18:37] THOMAS LERCZAK: It'S the frustration I have with it. With all, with all legal documents really is the, the vagueness of the way things are worded. And that invites people to interpret it in their own way. And, you know, I, I always say that the, we, the Constitution means what it's, means what it says when it was written. That's what the meaning was, and you can't. Put things into it that today people, big, big issues, you can't interpret it for issues that weren't, weren't, people weren't really even thinking of, of, of then. We can amend it. If you want, if you want certain things to happen, have an amendment. Do an amendment. That's the way to do it. Not to, not to interpret words and parse words. In it to make it mean what you want it to mean. So I think that's when I say that I'm a conservative, that's what I mean. I think it's a conservative interpretation of what the Constitution is.

[19:53] SUSAN BOLINGER: Conservative, not in terms of political party, conservative as in terms of trying to stick to the intent as much as possible.

[20:01] THOMAS LERCZAK: Right, right.

[20:02] SUSAN BOLINGER: Is that okay?

[20:04] SPEAKER C: So.

[20:06] SUSAN BOLINGER: For amendments, like, so I'm not asking to poke, I'm asking to understand. Because when I, I was curious to know when you said the original intent of the Constitution, you know, being a Northerner, and then I moved to the South, I've lived in North Carolina and Georgia and almost lived in Alabama.

[20:26] SPEAKER C: I.

[20:27] SUSAN BOLINGER: Came away with a very different. And I'm white and I'm married and I'm educated. I came away with a very different understanding of what the original intent of the Constitution was, because I ran smack dab into a lot of in original thinking of the Constitution and race and women's places. And so again, I'm not poking, I'm just asking. So you mentioned make an amendment if something matters and enough people, I'm assuming enough people would agree with it that it's time to amend it. But like three-fifths of a person for black people, you're not saying let's stick to the original intent of that, right?

[21:13] SPEAKER C: Right.

[21:13] THOMAS LERCZAK: And I don't think the Constitution says that, does it?

[21:16] SUSAN BOLINGER: It does, doesn't it? Black people count as three-fifths of a person. I forget which section of the Constitution that is. And so that was amended during the.

[21:30] SUSAN BOLINGER: Civil Rights or, I thought it was.

[21:32] SUSAN BOLINGER: Civil Rights, but honestly, I haven't thought.

[21:34] SUSAN BOLINGER: About that for a while.

[21:35] THOMAS LERCZAK: But, like, yeah, I think that, I mean, there were amendments relating to slavery. And so I think that's been corrected. I'm pretty sure it has.

[21:45] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, I'm sorry. Does not exist any longer.

[21:48] SUSAN BOLINGER: I'm certain.

[21:51] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yes, but. Right. So corrected. And, you know, I. So I wasn't sure when I. When I read your bio and. And it doesn't sound like you're saying these things, but I ha. I have met original intent folks who would say, yes, no, that the exact. What it says in the Constitution is what I'm. Interested in. And so as a woman, I would say you're not suggesting that women should not be able to vote, nor should women who aren't married be able to hold land. You're not suggesting that because those were corrected in amendments.

[22:28] THOMAS LERCZAK: You're absolutely correct. I mean, the original intent plus the amendments, everything together is what I meant.

[22:35] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[22:36] SUSAN BOLINGER: Let me widen the lens. So you're, just to really make sure I understand. So you're talking about, oh, that the con, you said the Constitution means what it says when it was written.

[22:50] THOMAS LERCZAK: And so now I should have added and amended.

[22:55] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, I think you did. You said, and we can amend. So in a minute.

[22:59] SPEAKER C: So.

[23:01] SUSAN BOLINGER: How do you, you know, as the world becomes more complex, you know, complexity sometimes has a, a negative meaning.

[23:12] SPEAKER C: Right.

[23:13] SUSAN BOLINGER: But sometimes complexity can mean because we've let in more viewpoints, because we've let in more people who originally weren't, say, white men or white men of a certain background who come with different ideas because they've seen the world differently. It's operated differently for them. And so in, in and increasingly adding the amendments that we've added, that you could say it's complex and therefore not as. And you're not, I don't hear anything in what you're saying, saying that you're advocating for Simplicity. But how do you, how do you take, help me understand how you take that, the phrase that you said, which I'm not disagreeing with, means what it says when it was written and then plus amendments.

[24:01] SUSAN BOLINGER: How do you How do you take.

[24:03] SUSAN BOLINGER: Those concepts and apply them in a better way to managing a diverse, big, and hopefully still growing country with the urban and the rural divides, with the way the world is now, without some sort of, I'm going to use the term you did, social engineering. How do you bring all that together? Or can you not?

[24:30] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[24:32] THOMAS LERCZAK: It'S a difficult concept there because the world is so different now than it was in the late 1700s. And things today that couldn't have imagined that would be, for example, the Second Amendment, thinking about a gun. And the types of guns we have today, and automatic weapons, AK-47s and all that. Should the Constitution mean, I mean, by the way it was written, does it mean that everybody has a right to have this gun that can kill so many people at once? And then the question is, Do you need to have that weapon? What about nuclear weapons? I mean.

[25:29] SPEAKER C: So.

[25:31] THOMAS LERCZAK: The Constitution as it was written without you doesn't really fit so well with the world we have today. And that's why another problem is that to try to do things, the social engineering, The presidents are issuing all these executive orders, and one after another to change the world, to change things. Then another president gets in, takes them all out, wipes them all out, makes their own executive orders to override what was done by the previous administration. And it goes back and forth and back and forth, like the climate agreement with the UN. We were in, then we were out, then we were in, then we were out. And so that's why I don't think that social engineering is executive. That's what executive orders are part of. And it would be better to have a law, a change in the Constitution, an amendment that says exactly referring to the exact issue at the time. For example, abortion. If people really want to have this as a right to do, then it should be in the Constitution that says exactly that with that word. It doesn't. And to say that abortion is a right today and then referring to the Constitution, that word is not in the Constitution. What is in the Constitution is life in the Preamble. I can't remember the exact wording, but life, liberty and. Yeah, life, liberty and happiness.

[27:29] SPEAKER C: Life. So a.

[27:34] THOMAS LERCZAK: Unborn baby, no matter how you go, how far you go back, is life from the conception point of conception. That's life, human life.

[27:44] SPEAKER C: And.

[27:48] THOMAS LERCZAK: So I kind of forgot what I was talking about there. But, yeah, abortion is, it is, was one of the, one of the issues that I think needs to be defined and put in the Constitution as an amendment, if that's what the people want, and if they don't want it, If they want to make it illegal everywhere, then that should be spelled out and not rely on some interpretation that can be changed by the courts. Roe versus Wade, that was the law, the courts decided. Then they decided, no, it isn't. Then it is. Then it isn't. Well, that's something that needs to be nailed down.

[28:37] SUSAN BOLINGER: Boy, we have stepped into all of the really hardest, messiest parts of the Constitution, which I love this conversation because I can come back to the abortion, but to your comments about guns and gun rights and the Second Amendment, I mean, part of what is so challenging about living in a constitutional democracy, if it actually functions, as those two terms together in practice. What's so challenging is that in order to make it into the Constitution via an amendment, I think there's all this dirty back and forth that you're talking about that has to go forth. And what happens when people have very different interpretations of, say, what the Second Amendment is about. You know, my husband's a gun guy, even though he's a Democrat. He used to be a conservative. I used to be a super conservative. And I am still very conservative in many ways. So I don't use that term politically, but in that case, I did.

[29:45] SPEAKER C: But.

[29:47] SUSAN BOLINGER: You know, the idea of social engineering and guns, I can honor my husband's desire to have guns and. And Target practice, which is what the only thing he really likes to do. He's a expert Marksman. I can appreciate that. At the same time, I can look at people who have been at a concert, say, in Las Vegas, and someone was able to go out and buy that. Semi-automatic or the I forget the bump stock. I think that's where bump stock came.

[30:27] SUSAN BOLINGER: To.

[30:29] SUSAN BOLINGER: Came into my knowledge. So someone went out and bought something. I think it was a bump stock that amended the gun that allowed the gunman to just shoot and kill all those people who were out just enjoying life, right? The pursuit of happiness. At what point in this Constitution do we have to I'll use your term social engineer that when does the individual's right to own a gun of any kind ARs, ghost guns, whatever they might be, when does that one individual's right to own a gun trump the idea.

[31:07] SPEAKER C: Of.

[31:09] SUSAN BOLINGER: Concert goers in you name the city, you name the school, whatever location it is, some not to go out and just shoot and kill a bunch of people. That's where it gets really thorny for me because I do think people should be able to, boy, am I treading on thin water here? Because I don't think everybody should be able to own a gun. Because I don't think all people are mentally stable enough to own guns. That's a whole different discussion. But to the social engineering and how do we move in a constitutional democracy through that messy process you're talking about, and I'm gonna use Roe v Wade versus, you know, taking that back, but I'm gonna apply it to guns 'cause I don't know all the different gun cases that have come and gone. But how do we get to something, what do we do when Congress won't vote or act on the will of the people? So such a great percentage of people believe there should be more common sense gun laws and yet Congress won't act.

[32:12] SUSAN BOLINGER: What do we do?

[32:14] SUSAN BOLINGER: These are rhetorical or otherwise questions. What do we do when kids, I think, deserve the right to be able to go to school without being shot? What do we do and what do we engineer in this very complex Society to bridge those two ideas? Individual gun ownership and the right of the masses to pursue life, liberty, and liberty and happiness?

[32:43] THOMAS LERCZAK: Yeah, that's a tough question. I don't know. Our government and constitution together, they're not perfect. And they're not, that's why we're always improving, trying to improve it. And it, you know, if you tried to do anything at all with the gun laws, there would be so many people on both sides of the issue arguing back and forth that nobody would get what they want. And then you'd have, it would further split the country. We have all kinds of, there are plenty of gun laws. But people still find ways to get around it. And the guns are out. I mean, Pandora, I almost said Pandora is out of the box, but that's not the right way to say it. But I mean, we're not going to disinvent the guns. They're out there. And even if we tried to eliminate all the guns in the United States, their guns in other countries where people would get their guns no matter what. I think maybe the solution is in the penalty for misusing a gun. But, you know, the people that, a lot of the people that do these mass shootings, they kill themselves before they're able to be caught. So you can't even impose the penalty on them.

[34:23] SPEAKER C: They're.

[34:25] THOMAS LERCZAK: Mentally unstable. You know, I worked for state government for over 30, for almost 30 years.

[34:39] SPEAKER C: And.

[34:41] THOMAS LERCZAK: When I mentioned that term, social engineering, you, you get a lot of that when you work for, for a government agency, because they, they the directors decide that everybody who's working for them is going to do this or that. And you're going to end your, your emails with a pronoun, his, her, them, they, all that. So you have to do that. And so that, that's what I kind of think more of social engineering. Another example is the way the previous administration was trying to force everybody to drive electric vehicles eventually by a certain date. Now, I'm not against electric vehicles. If you want one, go out and buy one. But I don't believe that the government should be trying to force people to do it by making it so difficult for the car manufacturers to.

[36:02] SPEAKER C: Produce.

[36:03] THOMAS LERCZAK: Gasoline-Powered vehicles, trying to make those so expensive so people won't want to buy them anymore. And picking and choosing winners and.

[36:18] SPEAKER C: By.

[36:18] THOMAS LERCZAK: Government regulations, trying to force solar and wind on the economy by government regulations rather than letting If people, if you want a solar panel on your house, go ahead and do it.

[36:44] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, those are such, those are really good examples and I appreciate that. I'm a kind of a systems thinker, so let me clarify because I want to make sure I'm understanding what you're saying. How to take what you're saying. I don't first, I don't disagree with anything that you just said, okay? But to play with it just a little bit to make sure I'm understanding. First, may I ask you, do you believe that the climate is changing and that it is significantly of man-made change?

[37:23] THOMAS LERCZAK: The climate is changing and the climate has always changed and it will continue to change no matter what we do.

[37:30] SPEAKER C: And.

[37:33] THOMAS LERCZAK: I've always been very much interested in that climate change, especially from an ecological point of view, looking back toward the ice ages and how plant communities had moved across the continent with the ice sheets. At one time in Illinois and Indiana, there was Arctic tundra. And then boreal forest and then deciduous forest. And so I've always been interested in that kind of thing. I don't believe that human activities are a significant factor in climate change. Certainly CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but there are other things at play. And I think that the emphasis on reducing CO2, especially by the government regulations, and that I think is misguided.

[38:39] SUSAN BOLINGER: Misguided in the ways that you mentioned before?

[38:42] THOMAS LERCZAK: Well, in the way that, yeah, in the way that you're trying to transform society completely into away from fossil fuels with the idea that we're going to prevent the climate from changing by reducing CO2. You know, it's a lot more complicated. It's not like a regulator on a wall turning up the heat on your house. Reduce CO2 by this much and that's going to have an immediate effect on the climate. It's not that simple. There are so many factors involved in the Earth's climate that I think even I'll call them climate alarmists, and I don't mean that in a derogatory term. I just mean that folks that are extremely concerned about it, even in their worst case scenarios, If we reduce CO2 as much as we possibly could, it would have very little effect 100 years from now. So that's why I say it's misguided.

[39:59] SPEAKER C: Because.

[40:02] THOMAS LERCZAK: The effects on society and the economy by these measures to reduce CO2 are immediate. And very negative in many cases. And the benefits from all of this are small and they're 100 years away, if that's even accurate. Phil, we can't even, you know, don't want to confuse weather and climate, but we can't predict the weather five years from now. Why do they think that they can predict what the climate of the earth is going to be like in a hundred years? The earth. And, you know, my, my career was in natural resources, and one of the, one of the things that I was heavily involved in was managing forests and prairies and. You write a management plan and you try to carry out your management plan to so the prairie, for example, will look a certain way and in the future and you have you do things like prescribe burns and controlling exotic species and things like that. But what it ends up being years later, five years later, 10 years later, is never what you wanted it to be because things are in ecology is so complicated. There are so many factors involved. And so I would think we can't even manage a 10 acre prairie and make it look like we want it to look in 10 years. How can we manage the entire planet by manipulating one thing? CO2.

[42:02] SUSAN BOLINGER: I hear you and I think those.

[42:04] SUSAN BOLINGER: Are all excellent, excellent points.

[42:09] SPEAKER C: And.

[42:11] SUSAN BOLINGER: Let'S see to dig in here. Oh gosh, there's so much there. I do, I fully recognize that where I'm standing right now or sitting was a glacier and there are probably dinosaur bones, mammoth, woolly mammoth, not too far from here. Bones that have yet to be discovered. I get that in Indiana and other places have gone from tropical to Arctic to whatever all the other systems. I fully appreciate that. I do trust some science that says man's inventions have added a whole different level of. I don't know what the word is right now, Thomas, but that perhaps we ought to dial back on some of what we deem to be the worst. Of man's worst side effects of man's inventions. And I don't know what the answers are to that because of the scale, the issue, and the timing for this cliff that in theory we might go off. The world changes whether man is here or not. I get that. And we're not only just impacted by the world, we're impacted by.

[43:43] SUSAN BOLINGER: Meteorites coming, right?

[43:45] SUSAN BOLINGER: That supposedly made, killed off the dinosaurs and made way for the rise of mammals. And, you know, this is, it's complex. And I have real questions with the push for EV cars. Where's all the electricity going to come from that's going to charge the batteries of all these EV cars? And is it, do we know that it's that? Is it even there? Is the grid ready for it? And how do we know that it's.

[44:13] SUSAN BOLINGER: Not gonna be dirtier than, right? So all of that. But I do feel that it's at least good for big players to.

[44:27] SPEAKER C: Be.

[44:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: Talking about these things and to be making strives. I do know that when there have.

[44:34] SUSAN BOLINGER: Been regulations, the EPA, whether it's for water or air, put into place that have made the smog in Denver or the smog in LA or wherever else it would be, or water outside of Three Mile Island or Upstate New York, when five minutes wind have been put in place. Ears cleaner, measurably, water's cleaner, measurably, certain instances of cancer and other things go down measurably. So I fully recognize the complexity and how big the systems are and that they can be out of our control. But it does feel like to me that there are times when, you know.

[45:25] SUSAN BOLINGER: Maybe the word is social engineering, but.

[45:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: For for instance, I always laugh when I read some product that's manufactured in California or it just has to carry the California warning that this product materials in this product are known to be carcinogenic. And it's only in California where that stamp has to come. Doesn't mean they're not carcinogenic potentially in other areas of the country. It's just, you know. To the original question of why we wanted to do a conversation like this through One Small Step, is I feel like if we stay in our camps and we don't talk to each other and find out more about like your prairie example, I'll carry your prairie example that if we can't engineer, I don't think that was your word, but if we can't have a 10, what was your size of your prairie turnout?

[46:21] SUSAN BOLINGER: 10 acres.

[46:22] THOMAS LERCZAK: 10 acres.

[46:22] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[46:22] SUSAN BOLINGER: If we, yeah, that's, that is something, Thomas, that's going into my pocket and my brain that I will quote to people for the rest of my life because that's a powerful example. But if we don't have conversations where we're talking to people who see the mountain differently because of their experiences than we do, we're never going to get anywhere in the democracy in terms of whether it's social engineering for what do we do about all the guns that we've let in or the air is getting dirty again or whatever it would be or how do we want to make this a more perfect union that we have to have these kinds of conversations just to even start to realize.

[47:06] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh people have very different and valid experiences than our own. How do we bring those together? Or we might splinter into 50 or 100 different or two. And I mean splinter as in not United States.

[47:21] THOMAS LERCZAK: Somewhere in the conversation, there might be the solution. And so that's why we have to have these conversations and exactly what you were saying that we need to look at other viewpoints. And what I've found with the climate change issue in particular is people who don't agree with me shut me down. And then start to view everything that I'm saying skeptically, thinking, well, if he doesn't believe in climate change, and I always say, well, don't use that word believe, because we're talking about science here. It's a fact or it isn't.

[48:10] SPEAKER C: And.

[48:12] THOMAS LERCZAK: I've been shut down in conversations with people who don't, and I'll say climate alarmists again. I don't mean that derogatory, but they don't want to hear the other side. And there is another side. In the media, you hear one side and over and over again. And they don't wanna hear the other side. They don't wanna hear the other arguments. So they don't want a conversation and the conversation is where the solution is.

[48:44] SUSAN BOLINGER: That's right. Well, we have one minute.

[48:47] THOMAS LERCZAK: You are very good. I just wanna say that you are excellent because you don't interrupt and you listen and I appreciate that very much.

[48:58] SUSAN BOLINGER: Same with you, Thomas, very much so. I really appreciate our conversation today. It looks like we have 52 seconds remaining. Is there anything, so one of the questions I love is, is there anything that I've said or done today that surprised you from coming in? And then I'll give you the same.

[49:17] THOMAS LERCZAK: Yeah, I'm surprised that we see eye to eye on so many things. I thought there was going to be a lot more difference, but we didn't hit on every topic. We hit on a lot of them.

[49:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: We could. Well, if you ever want to Circle back for another, you can. I think you are allowed to text me or chat through One Small Step. I think they're still allowing people to have secondary conversations. So if you would love to, I would love to.

[49:42] THOMAS LERCZAK: Yeah, I would.

[49:44] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay, good. All right, well, I think we can chat after this, and I think they'll let us set another up. I just appreciated what an excellent listener you are and that we're gonna really get cut off.

[49:55] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh. Goodbye Thomas.

[49:57] SUSAN BOLINGER: Wait, maybe they'll give us another minute or two. I appreciated your learned perspective from your work, but also just taking in the whole and the sum of things approach. You know, I liked your forests and the trees. You're talking about your 10 acres. And yet we know that history tells.

[50:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: Us the world has gone through so many, so many ecological giant shifts.

[50:37] SUSAN BOLINGER: So I just appreciate, I didn't know.

[50:39] SUSAN BOLINGER: What your background was going to be in terms of natural resources and history. I wasn't sure what you were going to say your background had been. So I'm thrilled to have this conversation. Okay, so I think they're gonna boot us off here any second, but let's.

[50:55] SUSAN BOLINGER: See if we can chat and maybe.

[50:56] SUSAN BOLINGER: They'Ll let us set up another another. And if not, I know that I can contact One Small Step and they will let us have one more chat to set up one more conversation or they used to be able to do that.

[51:10] SUSAN BOLINGER: So if not, I'll follow up with them.

[51:13] THOMAS LERCZAK: Okay. Great conversation.

[51:17] SUSAN BOLINGER: Back at you, Thomas. Really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

[51:23] THOMAS LERCZAK: I'm going to hit the stop recording button then.

[51:26] SUSAN BOLINGER: Me too. Thank you much. Bye.

[51:28] THOMAS LERCZAK: Thank you.

[51:33] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, well, hold on. Let's see what.