EP 40: Don't Discount Our Ocean

0:03My name's Larry Stafford and you're listening to Hell or High Water, the Finistead podcast exploring the depths of our oceans and the resilience of the human spirit.

0:14welcome back to the show where we dive into the stories that shape our connection to the sea and the communities built around it this time we're connecting with two powerhouses of ocean conservation bringing together the leaders of our neighbors over at surfers against sewage and their stateside counterparts surf rider foundation it's a landmark episode celebrating five years of our Blue Friday initiative, where every year we choose not to chase Black Friday discounts, instead making a donation for every order placed that goes towards improving ocean access and ocean health. Now many of you I'm sure will already be familiar with the work of Surfers Against Sewage and Surfrider, whether taking the fight for clean waterways from the beaches of Cornwall to the doors of Parliament, or fighting to preserve ocean ecosystems and protecting some of the world's best waves.

1:07We're lucky to be joined by their respective helmsman, Giles Bristow of Surfers Against Sewage and Chad Nelson of Surfrider Foundation, two surfers and ocean activists who have been at the forefront of this fight for decades. We spoke about the myriad climate solutions offered by a healthy ocean, dove into how to effectively mobilise people to your cause and whether we are indeed past the tipping point of being able to repair the damage we've done to our seas. So without further ado, here's episode 40 of Hella High Water with Giles Bristow and Chad Nelson. A Blue Friday special, don't discount our ocean.

1:48All right, well, listen, thanks for taking the time. And I think in getting you guys together and to talk about your your respective organizations the work you've done the work you do and the work ahead of you which is probably the more pressing of conversations that i'd like to dig deep into chad we've had the chance to sit down on a few occasions now recorded a podcast a number of years back and and talk through the campaigns that you're that are alive and happening and and all the work around surf rider both across the chapters in the u.s but also you know international reach and surf ride europe and and and everywhere else and then and then giles yeah through um surfs against sewage you know we're we're we're neighbors here at world kitty workshops and um we've we've been making good trouble with you guys or you know informed by you guys for the best part of 30 years well 30 years plus of sas and that's right 25 years almost to finish there so yeah it's quite a partnership isn't it it's really cool and it's so cool whenever we talk to anyone about being here, we share these Cornish walls, you know, you get a real sense of the DNA then.

2:54If people know Travordance, they know Aggie, and they go, oh yeah, Finistere and SAS up there. You know, it's a magnet. It's a cool thing. At this point, we need to knock down all the walls and just have one big office, I think. But, yeah, just for yourself, Chad, to kick things off. So, tell us a little bit about Surfrider, Surfrider Foundation, and your coming to be there. Yeah, I've been at Surfrider for 30 years of our 41, so quite a long part of our history. But, you know, we were founded in 1984 in Malibu, Surfrider Beach, that's the name. And, you know, back then surfers were frustrated because they weren't really being considered in the decision-making processes.

3:37They were discounted as the bums, the burnouts, the dropouts that nobody cared about. And, you know, over that 41 years, we've really evolved into a sort of coastal conservation powerhouse, certainly in the United States and beyond. So we're a grassroots coastal and ocean conservation group. We have 250 chapters and clubs across the U.S. You know, we fight for things that surfers care about, but also matter to the coastal environment. Clean water, beach access, healthy coastlines, ocean protection and plastic pollution. There you go. You mentioned that 30 years with Surfrider is a hell of an accomplishment.

4:20Yeah. But, you know, I see your energy in and around these places and it seems to be as palpable and as big as it ever was. And I think, obviously, the ocean and climate crisis means that this work is being done at a rate that's probably not before or with urgency and understanding that it hasn't had before. Um, yeah. What's, um, you'd have, you'd have campaigned for some stuff in your time. Yeah, a few. Um, yeah, you know, I think it's, it's, well, first of all, you know, I grew up at the beach. I love the ocean, lifelong surfer. Um, pretty much want to do anything whether on the ocean that, whether it's fishing, diving, pre-diving, sailing, you name it.

5:05Um, so I feel lucky to have had this life, uh, sort of, you know, right against the sea. And so I'm passionate about that generally. The opportunity to protect it, to work with other people who care as much as I do is, I think, a gift. I love the work as much today as I did on day one. I think it's interesting. The work evolves and arguably not in good ways. I think in the early days, we felt like we kept humans out of the way. Things would be pretty good. don't build too close don't litter the beach uh don't dump poison in the ocean um but now we recognize these problems aren't local they're global so now we have things like plastic pollution that's you know everywhere and uh climate change that's everywhere so i think you know we used to look at issues kind of right in front of us and now we recognize that we need these are issues we need to tackle sort of collectively and globally so and i guess that intersection between those things you just mentioned there climate and plastic or sewage and climate and my understanding in my layman's terms would be that there is a there's a those things are linked more than ever um in fact myself and giles were just chatting in the car park real quick about you know the connection between you know plastic and new oil and um everything that you guys campaign around drilling is killing to everything that that giles and surfskins sewage do around and plastic pollution so actually probably a nice thing there just to just to hand over to you Giles and um surfs against sewage yeah like we say 35 years this year 35 years yeah we had our uh we had the ball this year back on the cliffs in St Agnes very much back on the cliffs back on a bit of a hiatus that's right yeah it's been a few years been a good sort of decade since we had a ball but um yeah so that's not the waterman's ball no this is this is the different thing altogether We won't go down that rabbit hole, but what happens at the Waterman's Ball stays at the Waterman's Ball.

7:05Well, it's a bit like that. But yeah, no, we had 3 ,000 ocean activists get together to celebrate our 35th year anniversary. So a lot of the OG were there, so Chris Hines and the crew. And then all the young activists who just all came out, 3 ,000 of them. It was the one day in July where it rained, but we didn't care. We had an awesome time. Wicked party. So yeah, we are paddling out. We are protesting and we're partying. So it's still, you know, we're building the movement still. And you've got to know how to party together if you want to campaign. Because campaigning is hard, right? It's tough and it's like negative and it's like difficult.

7:41And you're up against big corporates and all this kind of stuff. And therefore, it's important to know that you've got this home in the movement and you can retreat with each other and just have a good time and then get out and do the serious hard work again. So yeah, 35 years, been amazing. And Chad, I couldn't agree more, man. It is the issues have gone from being understood locally to being we understand them now as systemic. So what all those issues that you mentioned have in common is it's about the relationship of people to the planet and the relationship of business to people and to nature.

8:15And all of them at the moment that we're tackling, the golden thread is the prioritization of profit over the restoration of nature. right so it's vital that we can unpick that a bit we can look at the levers and think about what we need to change and then yeah if we can bring people on a journey that's mindsets and it's hearts and it's you know energy uh to wanting to change these things whether it's tackling a broken water system here in the uk whether it's tackling global plastic whether it's tackling climate change all starts locally individual actions but knowing that that adds up and that can really add up and build that movement you've got a mandate and you've got to reach and you can go into government you can say not on my watch like you're not doing this we've got you know a couple hundred thousand people here with us you know who are saying this is just not good enough so yeah organizations like surf rider sas and others with support of great brands like finister who really get this agenda you know we're part of a big movement for change yeah well the um i i'd like to pull on a few threads there um obviously chad you mentioned surf rider through everything plastic reduction ocean ocean protection beach access coast and climate and clean water obviously there's so many so shared endeavors over with surf against sewage but i i would probably pin yours with the two of end sewage pollution yeah and and plastic pollution yeah that's right if you go on the surf against sewage website they are those two big things for your campaign day in day out year in you're out.

9:48That's right. I mean, look, we started in sewage, right? Literally, we started as a bunch of surfers down near St. Agnes, Port Town, you know, surfing in sewage, right? Literally, and people getting sick. But then the mission's grown. But it grew so big that recently we said, no, we've got to cut this back. So we cut it back to pollution, right? So what we mean by that is, it's where people like us get in the water. So that water, the watery environment is being destroyed and it has the possibility to affect our health so that venn diagram of human health the water users being damaged and the environment being damaged we operate at that middle bit because on the sad fact is like 20 of people are green like deep green and we'll do something about it move their money vote etc but 100 of people care about human health it's very rare you don't find something to that so it's a powerful campaigning position we're in the middle so So that's why we focus on pollution.

10:43The other thing is, as the evidence grows, pollution, be it sewage, chemical, or plastic, any of those three, it's undermining the resilience of these environments to bounce back and recover from climate change and to recover from biodiversity loss. So unless we get the pollution bit right, we are screwed for them all. So that's why we're going heavy on pollution. We also actually believe here in the UK, we've got a campaigning window of opportunity to win. So that's why, again, we're focusing on pollution, yeah. And I'm very aware that across both organizations, your governmental or political structure is different as well.

11:18Chad, I'm assuming here because you have state lines and a very different governmental structure. It's very different to what you do when you lobby and petition against government here. Maybe you could both just take turns and just shed light on exactly what that looks like from citizen science all the way up to delivering these messages to the people in power. Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting because I think at a macro level, it's probably very similar. But we operate obviously inside different government structures. So, you know, we both currently live in democracies, and hopefully it'll stay that way, because that's pretty fundamental to having the success we have.

11:59But, you know, the fundamental premise is we've got decision makers locally for us, the states and federally, you know, who are being influenced by these big companies and ultimately set the laws. You know, we know as good as the laws are on the books, if they're not held to account by the public, they're going to slip. The Clean Water Act is the federal law in the United States, you know, and it's supposed to make the coastal waters of the U.S. fishable and swimmable by. you know, sometime in the 1990s. So we're a little late on that. We're still not there yet. But yeah, so we operate locally, municipal town level government.

12:39And then, you know, we have obviously the states, which is a strong governmental entity. We can get a lot done at the state level, which is what we're focused on now, because our federal government is quite delinquent when it comes to these issues currently. And then we have the federal level. So depending on the uh law policy or decision making structure we can kind of operate any one of those three but our our sort of basic premise i think similar to sas is get locals involved make a difference there scale that up in our case to the states and then you know scale that up to the federal government you know and then just the the scale that we're operating you know california has as many people as the uk so you know we have we there's all you know over 300 million people in the United States.

13:26So, you know, we're, we're trying to operate at quite a large scale with, you know, varying levels of success. But at the end of the day, sort of as Giles said, everybody cares, but not enough people are taking that passion for these places and putting that into political action, which is what we need to hold decision makers accountable and combat all the money that's motivated to do the opposite. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that really resonates. So that is so similar to SAS. I mean, clearly our structures are different, but we start with the grassroots. So we see pollution as a million local tragedies.

14:08Plastic on your beach is on your beach. Sewage pouring into your water is in your water. And so that is there and to be campaigned on locally, and we hope to build that campaigning capability and capacity locally. But then we add that up. The role that SAS comes in to help doing that building and then add it up for those national moments. So we seek the systemic change. You know, we say, what are those levers that need to be pulled? What are the policy instruments? How can we transform to help put the pressure on to transform an industry? And so that's where we come in. And in the UK now, the environment is a devolved issue.

14:41So what that means is Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland have their own right to determine their environmental future, which makes our campaigning a little bit more difficult now. So we have to nuance it. But we still treat the UK as a whole. Water flows around the UK and down our rivers and onto our beaches and stuff. So we do it like that. But we're working more and more locally to really understand the nuance at a local level. And then next year is devolved nation elections. So we're going to be campaigning again around those elections. So helping to give local campaigners the tools they need to hold wannabe politicians to account, to make them make the promises and to make the ocean an electoral issue.

15:24But then the other thing we're trying to do is sort of thicken the democracy, if you like, a bit. So in relation to the water sector, we've been campaigning hard for regional governance that involves people, involves water users, surfers, swimmers, tourists, you know, the people who are out there using these environments. And so regional level governance and interposing that. So the water companies can't just do what they want. You know, they have to be accountable to regional boards. So, yeah, you know, I would really love to spend time with Chad, you know, learning about how that operates in the US.

15:56And because there will be lessons and things that we can translate over to here into the UK. There's always commonality. There's always those things of how do you engage people? How do you equip them? How do we mobilize them? How do we compel transformation? You know, so and, you know, and Chad, I'll be honest, I look across the pond at the moment. I think, wow, you know, you've got some macro tides flowing against you. And we have them similar here. But I think there's still more of a, at the moment, a kind of faith in how our institutions are working. Whereas in America, from this side of the pond, it feels like they're being deconstructed a bit.

16:32You know, so how you keep up your energy against that, I don't know. I mean, that's where, you know, I think, well, first of all, I think you're absolutely right. Because I think the back to sort of the grassroots organizing piece, you know, going to decision making hearings and giving testimony and reading reports, you know, let's not kid anyone is not fun. It's hard work. It's a slog. So you're only going to get people to be motivated about that if it's not abstract. So if they can see their surf spot polluted, their beach, if they can relate to this issue at a personal level and see them as a character in the story.

17:12I think that's fundamental to getting people motivated. And I think that's why grassroots activism is such a powerful tool, because it makes sense to them. And then it's your job, my job, and our organizations to help turn that local action into something that's bigger than local and create that systemic change. So I think we share that in common, whether it's your sort of governmental structure or ours. But, yeah, I mean, obviously the Trump administration here is an enemy to the environment, an enemy to our oceans. They are put in pro-industry people at every position of power in the government.

17:53So we're fighting against that. So, you know, currently we're basically playing defense at the federal level, trying to stop bad things from happening, which is too bad because we're at a time where we need to be making advancements, not just trying to hold the tide. But again, the state structure in the US has value because we're actually getting a lot of good things done at that level of government. And it's interesting because I think also the scale of government correlates with sort of being ideological. Local governments solve practical problems, right? People are coming to the meeting saying, fill the potholes in the street.

18:32So they're really trying to deal with issues that the public and their community care about. When you get up to the higher levels, it's easier for them to be more abstract about the issues. So it's another reason why you can get a lot done locally. Yeah. And before I was kind of ocean campaigning, I was very much in the climate space, like deep in the energy system. And I remember with the first Trump administration, there was this huge panic of like, oh my God, he's going to unwind all the progress. And American colleagues said to me, like, fear not. What's happening at a state level in terms of energy and climate is unstoppable.

19:06You know, the rollout of solar, you know, and just the direction of travel, like mines were closing and people were moving money into renewables. And so I did take a lot of comfort from that. And so I think that's still the macro. It's definitely still going in that direction. And President Trump can't unwind it all. It's not. That's not what's happen no i mean in california where i live is the fourth largest economy in the world yeah so um and i think uh you know almost two-thirds of our power now comes from renewables yeah so you have a essentially a nation state inside of the united states and got the population of la county which is just north of me all los angeles county has more people than 40 of the states in the united states yeah right so if they're like it's a valley county bans plastics it's the equivalent of banning plastics in louisiana or you know all these other small places so it's a sort of another view into uh making stuff happen regardless and you know fortunately a lot of these issues like renewables i think the trains left the station it's now the cheapest and fastest source of power so now the economic system is going to start working in the right way which is you know capitalism is going to drive renewables instead of campaigners.

20:24Yeah, that's right. And I think there's something about that kind of medium level of governance too. Like there's the opportunity to set up competition. You know, in Scotland, we have ambitions for zero waste economy. In Wales, we have the Future Generations Act, you know, and these put pressure on Westminster. You know, because we can point them and go, hang on a minute, Westminster, what are you doing? Look at what's happening over our internal borders, you know. So internal competition and ambition, you know, this does drive voting behaviors, you know. And when you've got powerful advocates, people like, you know, in the US and California, you've got Governor Gavin Newsom and people like that.

21:03They're just these inspirational guys, you know, and they can really push the narrative. And same way we're looking for those kind of people, you know, here in the UK. I would say we should focus less on the English football team and, you know, maybe follow So Wales and Scotland have perhaps a little less success there and see where we can have success on the environmental front instead perhaps. Of course you mentioned Trump there, Chad. And I'm just trying to, yeah, just for the listener out there, how's that relating for Surfrider and for the ocean and ocean alarm in general? And of course, you know, if we follow the UN guideline of oceans is now ocean.

21:42We've dropped the S a number of years ago, didn't we? So, you know, everything that happens overseas impacts us around the world. And I think that's a pretty real situation with regards to, you know, obviously the U.S. political system at the moment. But obviously, the Trump administration is to release a five-year offshore drilling plan proposal to which Surfrider, Oceana and a couple of other organizations have sued the Trump administration. and that was earlier this year to protect our ocean from offshore drilling. Obviously, in California, where you are in Laguna, you can see the structures out at sea that make this possible.

22:26But yeah, where are you guys at with that at the moment? What does that look like and what's next? Yeah, it's actually a pretty interesting story. So the rigs that you see off the California coast currently were put in in the 70s and early 1980s before there was a ban and they've been banned in california waters for for decades but our waters go up three miles which is pretty close beyond that it's federal waters um where the government has say not the states so those are those are remnants of an earlier time and one of them just spilled three years ago covered huntington beach with oil so we're learning the less than the hard way about the cost of offshore drilling all the time.

23:10We're being reminded of the consequences. But the first Trump administration tried to open the coast, all coasts of the United States to offshore drilling. That's right. A hundred percent of them. And we campaigned against that very vigorously. And essentially one, because it's hugely unpopular. The coastal recreation and tourism economy is 12 times the sides of the oil and gas economy. So if you own a restaurant or hotel or surf shop in a coastal community, these rigs are an existential threat to you. So they're unpopular. And that's true for both sides of our government, the Republicans and the Democrats.

23:53And in fact, in the last Trump administration, when he was running for president again, he tried to pull Florida and South Carolina off the map because it was so unpopular it was hurting him. But he's seemingly beholden to the oil industry. So he made announcements to open the coast to drilling again. And that's why we sued him. One of his executive orders in the first days of office was to undo some protections that Biden, the prior administration, had put in and tee up opening the coast to drilling again. And we've actually been waiting for that plan to drop. Every day we hear, oh, it might be this week.

24:34And about a month ago, the plan was leaked and had the East Coast of the United States, the Atlantic on it. There was such an uproar from the Republicans on the coast from his party in that part of the world, largely based on our campaigning, you know, seven or eight years ago, they're supposedly going to pull it off the map. So we're still waiting. It looks like it might be Gulf of Mexico, as we still call it. California and Alaska are what we're hearing rumored, but we haven't seen the plan yet. And so once again, the East Coast is off the map. That's a great thing. One less threat. And a real testament to campaigning eight years ago that was so effective.

25:21Drilling is still hugely unpopular politically on both sides of the aisle. So that's good news. Our lawsuit is up in Alaska. Courts in Alaska is still working its way through the system. So we'll see what that brings. And we'll be campaigning vigorously against any new drilling. And we're doing that for a couple of reasons, right? These are a threat to the coast. Oil spills are disastrous. It's a huge industrialization. So it's not just the rig. It's pipelines. It's ports. It's refineries. It's boats. It's every step of the way. Yep. Yeah, it pollutes every step of the way. And then third, arguably the most important is we need to stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere and using fossil fuels for power.

26:06So, you know, those rigs off California, should they be open to a threat to you guys on the in England? Because, like you said, it's one ocean. So which is going to be rising everywhere, which is, you know, a whole nother threat that we're facing. So we're really opposed to any new drilling off any coast. You know, we just we work in our areas, but it's just time to move past that and get to renewables. And silly question, perhaps, but can the Trump administration do this? Is it legal to turn over all these protections? That's the question that the courts are going to decide. We don't think so.

26:47there's been a series of other lawsuits that have fallen his way in recent months. So it's definitely not as clear cut as we thought it was in January. So we will wait and see. Okay. I mean, yeah, we will wait and see this side as well, of course. As I mentioned a second ago, the link between drilling for new oil and identifying new oil sites. We've campaigned with Surf's Against Sewage and with Oceana UK and with Friends of the Earth and Uplift UK around the Rosebank oil field up in the North Sea. And the new site or the site that has been proposed for new oil exploration up there. And it's an ongoing campaign and battle.

27:42But it highlights what goes on back here as well. But what I do want to highlight and just speak a bit more of is new oil means more plastic. We should be phasing off fossil fuels. We should be phasing out of plastic. We should be... Obviously, everything serves against sewage around and plastic pollution, all the way back to the incredible momentum it had off the back of the blue planet effect we talk about. And plastic was put in the mainstream as a real kind of disgusting, misused material. and I guess that's where there's the commonalities between the stuff you campaign around. But where we're at in the UK right now when it comes to plastic awareness, plastic pollution, bottle deposit, and cleaning up our act.

28:27Yeah, okay. I'll just start with the common thing though with Chad, which is, you know, you mentioned Rosebank. Rosebank's really interesting. So here we have the Climate Change Act, right? We're meant to be on a one-way street to renewables, one-way street to massive cuts in carbon emission. In fact, you know, sequesting and moving beyond that into kind of positive restoration. That's meant to be enshrined in the law, but we're seeing our government now like reigning back on those kind of commitments. So it's under attack everywhere. So the kind of work that both our organizations do is absolutely vital to keep the momentum up on the side of the angels, right?

29:04And say that now is not the time to be looking back to quite literally like a fossil industry and saying that's our future. It so isn't. The only reason we're sort of struggling now is because the narrative being used is one of cost and cost of living. But that's because of the system we are in. If we shift the system, renewables are cheap. It's the fastest form of energy and it's clean and it's literally fuel free. It's almost like the internet of the energy age, right? But what are the apps we can develop off the back of renewables? We're seeing electric cars and how digital and energy can come together.

29:42We're at the birth of a whole new era. And these governments are holding us back because they have a lack of imagination about the future. And so whether it's President Trump, whether it's the Labour government saying, hang on a minute, we're going to open up the question of new drilling in the North Sea. nobody wants it but they feel that they're on the you know they think that's the that's what they should be um promoting uh because somehow it harks back to an era they think it's part of populist agenda the truth is it's not it's really not we have to offer someone we have to offer the population a whole a positive future of where we're going now you mentioned plastic so the fossil fuel industry at large knows it's under attack it's a different narrative right when you go to the other big producers, they are diversifying their economies.