Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…If we did, if let’s just say some company organization or if enough people donated it, let’s just say we got that $30 million. That money would go directly into stopping logging roads, into creating a corridor, a biological corridor that connects the uncontacted indigenous reserves with other tribal lands, with Manu National Park, with the Tambopata, which establishes essentially the largest protected area in the Amazon rainforest. And what makes this groundbreaking is that we’re not doing this in the traditional way. We’re doing this, take it to the people. And that’s what’s been so exciting is that when he started this, when JJ started this 30 years ago, he had no idea. His father wanted him to be a logger. He didn’t have shoes until he was 13 years old. He grew up bathing in the river. He had no idea that a bunch of crazy foreigner scientists were going to show up and some guy in a James Bond suit was going to come down here with microphones. And that all of a sudden the world would know that he was on this quest to protect this incredible ecosystem. And all those little aliens. Well, that’s all the important thing to remember, that the people that are cutting down the forest, the loggers are also human beings. They’ve families, they’re basically trying to survive and they’re desperate and they’re doing the thing that will bring them money. And so they’re just human beings at the core of it. If they have other options, they will probably choose to give their life to saving the community, to first and foremost providing for their family, and after that, saving the community, helping the community flourish. And I think probably a lot of them love the rainforest. They grew up in the rainforest. Yeah. I mean, look at Pico.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.