Adam Torres and Mark Bernstein discuss climate change.
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Show Notes:
Earthshot is using positive messaging and incorporating cleantech into storytelling and video games to inspire climate action. In this episode, Adam Torres and Mark Bernstein, Co-founder and President at Earthshot, explore the evolution of Earthshot and future plans.
About Mark Bernstein
Mark is an innovative leader in value-based sustainability, a sustainability executive and management consultant. I influence strategic partnerships and shape responsible leadership for scalable change through leveraging issues in management, economics, policy and technology.
About Earthshot
Earthshot is a non-profit focusing on showcasing cool clean technologies in innovative ways. They are incorporating cleantech in games and graphic novels among others. Look for the first chapter of their graphic novel Supercharged! It’s a car chase adventure with heroes and villains, a love story and a showcase on all the cool stuff electric vehicles can really do. Earthshot also crafting immersive Fortnite experiences. They are transforming the Fortnite universe into a dynamic platform for showcasing and promoting clean technologies and sustainable practices, all while keeping the game’s intrinsic appeal intact. They also combine the thrill of Fortnite with cleantech, maintaining its high-octane fun while highlighting the importance of a green future.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Mark Bernstein and he’s co founder and president over at Earthshot.
Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me today. All right. So this is a great topic. So inspiring climate action through positive messaging in video games. I guess I just have to start off with with how did you get this idea? It’s such a great idea. Well, thanks so much. I’ve been in the climate game for 30 years and then really annoyed at how we’ve messaged it for 30 years because telling people.
Things are really bad, and we’re all gonna die, and there’s not much we can do, doesn’t exactly get people to want to do anything. And so we decided we need to shift the narrative to give people some hope and inspiration.
okay, so you’ve been in the game for 30 years, I don’t, so Earthshot I don’t believe has been around for 30 years, am I off on that? No, yeah. Correct. We’ve only been around for a couple of years. No, we’ve only been around for a couple of years. To, how did that idea come about? where was that shift?
Take me back to that shift of like when that epiphany happened or the lead up or whatever to Earthshot. Like, how did that piece happen? That happened when I was talking to my co founder, who is a colleague and friend an environmental lawyer for 40 years. And we were, Lamenting how bad the messaging is and we were, you know, how we’re losing the messaging battle.
And we said, well, what can we do about it? And over the last decade, I’ve worked with clean tech startups in the climate space, young entrepreneurs, diverse entrepreneurs with great ideas. There are all these cool technologies out there. And what we need to do is get people to see them. So we need to change the message, say, you know, there is stuff we can do and all this stuff is really cool.
Whether you’re care about climate or not. Fact is, this technology is better, and if we give that to people in a way they can understand, we can get particularly young people inspired to take it I love this, like giving people the tools, giving them the message of the education as well to be able to do something and gamifying it, Yeah so we asked ourselves, okay, if we want to give people these positive climate tech messaging, where can we do? We can’t just tell people, right? Because they’re not going to listen. So, where are young people? Young people are on social media, young people read graphic novels, and young people are on games.
And so let’s. Build clean tech into the places they are not creating a clean tech game or clean tech fortnight island, but putting it into the gameplay, putting it into the narrative. So it just becomes part of the background. It’s almost like product placement. Right? And we’re placing these things into the play so that people can see them engage with it.
You know what it kind of reminds me of? Well, this is an advance from that original, when I think about this, I think about like Captain Planet when I was a kid watching it. Like, what an effect that had to me. Like, do you remember the old cartoon Captain Planet? Yep, exactly. And it’s kind of, We were thinking about that when we were talking about this.
And so this is like the next evolution of it. Cause that’s so, and I’m not saying that, you know, launch it, don’t launch it. I’m not, I’m not talking about that piece, but that to me, I can think about like what an effect that had to me as a kid, like thinking about like messaging and thinking about like, obviously I wasn’t using that word when I was a kid.
It was just something that entertained me, but it also educated me and it taught me. And it met me where I was at watching my little Saturday in the morning cartoons or whatever I was watching. Right. That’s so business. You’re doing it through what somebody’s already doing. They’re playing a video game, they’re doing something else.
And this can have a real effect on how they even make purchasing decisions, right? Like going forward. Exactly. We want people to see this stuff as better and engage it with them. and a little bit different than captain planet is, We’re not going to create sort of environmental islands or environmental games, because the only people who play them will be people who care.
We’re going to build it into the gameplay, get people to want to play our games and engage with it or read our graphic novel. And our first project is an island in fortnight, which will be out on June 5th. That’s exciting. How’d that come about the fortnight partnership? So, as we were thinking about how to.
Build this, video game from scratch is really expensive. It takes a long time, you know, 10 million bucks to play a video game. On the other hand, Epic games has Fortnite and has software package creator package that allows anybody to build Island gameplays. Hats will get approved by Epic games to be on the Epic game store.
But you know, it allows anybody to build interesting things into gameplay. So we said, well, that. We can do fast and that we can do affordably and build it into the existing 500 million players that are on fortnight. And so that’s what we’re doing where our first island will be out and we’re hoping to get people to engage with it play it.
Come understand what they’ve done on the island and build out a few more after that and a whole series of things. That’s exciting to see. how much engagement you can get or whatever your measure is of like, you know, ROI on the time spent and otherwise, because that’s gonna also help you test.
Right? Exactly. You know, we’re going to try to drive people both to the island to play. So we’ll know the number of players and how long they play. But also then drive them to our website through social media to actually learn about what it was that they saw in the island. And the first island is actually all about plugging oil wells and, old refrigerant canisters that pollute with a company that does these things.
And it’s just a fun. Race against the clock bow and arrow plugging things. It’s going to we’ve had some, young teenagers tested out and they love the island so far. So we’re hoping to get a lot of play in it.
Let’s jumping around here just a little bit. I want to go into some of the, like, let’s just say the overall issues some people are experiencing. So talking about this concept of just climate anxiety, like, this is a buzzword I’ve heard a bit, and especially with the next generation or with the, you know, with younger people.
Talk to me about like that and like that concept and how people sometimes feel maybe disenfranchised maybe like they can’t do something I mean talk to me about that. Yeah, so what we’ve seen is a significant rise in what we’re calling climate anxiety We know young people are anxious about a lot of things these days and one of them is climate and All they hear are negatives.
And so it just Induces more anxiety and depression, and there are 2 things that could happen with that. Either you get anxious and you actually do something about it, or you get anxious and you just feel helpless and and back away. And it’s the latter that we’re seeing more and more. There was this initial surge of activism.
Now, a decade ago, but that’s really disappeared. And we’re seeing more and more people go, well, you know, it’s hopeless. So why should I do anything? Or we don’t know what to do, or it’s, you know, too difficult. And we’re just losing that. battle for young people in that message, and they’re just feeling.
Because if all you hear is how bad things are, you’re just gonna feel like there’s not much you can do. And we’re just getting that apathy happen. People like, maybe not even sure that climate is human cause, you know, we’re just. The whole messaging battle is, being lost. And, you know, the way I like to think about it is if you’re selling a product and nobody’s buying it, you got to change your message, right?
And people just are not buying climate and what to do about it these days. So we got to change the message. Yeah, have to agree with that. And I think that our young people have quite a bit of different anxieties and different pressures and different things. And so this is one that circling back to overall your aim and your goal with Earthshot, like to meet people where they’re at and to kind of like, I think it’s a, it’s a great idea.
I think it’s smart and I think it’s gonna, excited to continue to watch it unfold. We’re all, big entrepreneur crowd that listened to this, what’s next? What’s your vision for this project and for this company?
Our vision, so are a non profit and our vision is to really be able to expand and grow our reach and our efforts. We also have a first chapter of our graphic novel coming out next month as well. It’s an adventure, chase, race game, love story bad guys, good guys racing across the country to solve electric vehicle issues.
What we want to do is we want to get support is want to get people helping out want to get people who want to engage with young people in a different way. Not just young people too. I mean, we hope to get older people too, but really trying to reshape the dialogue and and looking to get.
Supporters, donors. We can even build some things in a for profit mode as well. And, and just sort of re engage and rethink and elevate the visibility of all these really cool technologies that are out there. Fantastic. Well, Mark, this has been great having you on the show today and also just, you know, getting to learn more about what you’re doing over at Earthshot.
If somebody’s listening to this and they want to follow up and they want to learn more, how do they do that? We are at earthshot. us is our website. Feel free to contact us. We’re on Instagram and TikTok these days as well. And look and check us out and, you know, feel free to be in contact. We’re looking for all the, you know, people.
People to help and support what we’re doing. Amazing. And for everybody listening, we’ll definitely put those links in the show notes and speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters this is a daily show each and every day, we’re putting out new episode, new content and new guests new thought leaders, different topics, if that sounds interesting to you, we welcome you hit that subscribe button again, daily show.
We don’t want you to miss any of the updates and Thank you so much again, Mark, for coming on the show. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me.