Searching for Paradise  🔗 **Source:** [Searching for Paradise](https://share.snipd.com/episode/a955f54a-fcda-4524-857b-117d3174b06b) ## Highlights - **Couple Survives Paradise Megafire And Chooses To Rebuild** - Richard Gore and Zeta Gore evacuated Paradise, California, when a small electrical-line fire exploded into a megafire that destroyed their town in 2018. - They hiked over a dozen miles, returned a week later to burned remains, and eventually chose to rebuild under new codes and warning systems, finding stronger community ties. Transcript: Richard Gore & Zeta Gore Enjoyed the small town, lots of trees and fresh air up above the valley. Speaker 8 We loved the house we had just picked out. Manoush Zomorodi We remodeled a few things on it and it had just become the house of our dreams. Paradise is Paradise, California, a town that at the time had about 26,000 people, surrounded by dense, forest-covered canyon in the Sierra Nevada foothills. And with a name like Paradise. Richard Gore & Zeta Gore There's a lot of jokes about it. You're now asc into Paradise. And when we go to our sons, we tell them we're now descending out of Paradise to come down to the valley. Manoush Zomorodi But then in November 2018, just seven months after the Gores moved into town, they got a phone call. We'll never forget. Richard Gore & Zeta Gore To this day, I remember looking out the window of our bedroom and noticing that it looked kind of overcast. And I said, that's strange. I don't recall it, you know, being any clouds, but I didn't pay any attention. And then at about 7.45, our son called and said, did you know your town is on fire? Manoush Zomorodi Just west, a faulty electrical line had started a small fire. That, combined with the bone-dry brush from California's ongoing drought, coaxed that small fire into a massive blaze that quickly descended on paradise. But of course, the Gores didn't know any of this at the time. We saw the sky. We saw the ashes. We were told that we should leave. But we didn't think it was urgent because we didn't see any flames at that time. Richard Gore & Zeta Gore And we said, OK, we need to evacuate, but we'll be coming back. Our home will be fine. Manoush Zomorodi Zeta and Richard packed up a few clothes and drove off. But they quickly hit gridlock and things got serious. Richard Gore & Zeta Gore Yeah, then the wind started kicking up. That's when ashes are flying around and embers, hard to breathe. Explosions are happening all every minute or two. Manoush Zomorodi And then people were saying, there's a house on fire just up the road. And we're then hitting us. Wow, this is going to be bad. Richard Gore & Zeta Gore In a matter of a few hours, the entire town was inundated. And it was absolutely that feeling in our guts. We absolutely thought we were going to die. And we're both praying. And I said, look, we're not going to die sitting in our car in the road. Manoush Zomorodi They pulled over and hiked down into a canyon. They ended up walking over a dozen miles to another town where their son could finally come and pick them up. Richard and Zeta were exhausted, but fine. Their house, however, was not. Richard Gore & Zeta Gore Nothing, no feeling compares to the feeling about a week later when the sheriff escorted us up there to our property and we pulled up and got out of the cars and stood there at our burned Out remains. Manoush Zomorodi Couldn't hold back the tears. Richard Gore & Zeta Gore Yeah, that was very emotional. ([Time 0:01:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9b4fa7ec-78f2-495f-a813-f7663af4a9fb)) - **Layered Steps To Make Communities Resilient To Wildfire** - George Whitesides recommends practical, layered wildfire defenses: harden homes, manage surrounding vegetation, and invest in rapid-response resources. - Examples include clearing 5–10 feet of brush, installing metal eave screens, using fire-resistant roofing, prescribed burns, and Chinook helicopter QRFs that refill six times an hour. Transcript: George Whitesides So two years ago, I closed a chapter of my life in aerospace, and I started a new journey to see if I could understand the wildfire crisis better and what could be done about it. I started working with leaders from firefighting, entrepreneurship, science, tribal communities, and together we co-founded an organization called Megafire Action, whose sole Purpose is to solve the megafire crisis. The Path Forward has three solutions. The first is fire-adapted communities. The second is resilient landscapes. And the third is innovative fire management. Manoush Zomorodi I mean, we've seen these really dramatic scenes of wildfire just ravaging towns. But you say that the first steps people need to take to protect their homes, it's actually pretty straightforward. George Whitesides Yeah, sure. In fact, it could be as simple as individual homeowners doing the work that is required to make their home more resilient to wildfire. So like on the cheaper side, you know, everyone can clear out the five or 10 feet immediately around their home from brush and shrubs and plants, basically. That makes a big difference. Everyone can put metal screens in their eaves and vents around their home so that when a big fire comes through and embers start blowing at high speed, they don't blow through into your Attic and burn your home down from the inside out. Other things are more expensive. It's really great if you can have a roof that is made of something that's fire resistant. Those make a huge difference. Arguably up to 50% of your risk is what those materials are. And we have a huge interest to having everybody in that community take these steps, particularly those around the perimeter, because if you can protect some of those outer boundaries, Then you have a way of reducing the risk that that fire penetrates deeply into the city. The second solution is resilient landscapes. And if you take one lesson from this talk, it's this. In order to solve the megafire crisis, we need to bring our Western landscapes back into a healthy balance by reducing the overgrown brush and trees in the wildlands and the forest. Here, we're finally starting to take to heart the wisdom of the indigenous peoples of the Americas who knew that fire was a natural part of the landscape and who introduced low-intensity Fire, good fire, on a regular basis at the right times. When this is done well, as around the communities of South Lake Tahoe, then it can actually divert a megafire as bad as the one that they experienced in 2021. Manoush Zomorodi I mean, there might be some indigenous people who hear you say that and think, yeah, no kidding that you need to be having prescribed burns, I think is what they call it, right? Like this is something that some populations have been doing for centuries. George Whitesides Yeah, thousands of years. And there are now, you know, many places that are working on this stuff. And, you know, great example is the area immediately around South Lake Tahoe, you know, which spent on the order of over a hundred million dollars on forest treatments. That's a hopeful example of a situation with the Caldor fire where you had this terrible, huge mega fire bearing down on South Lake Tahoe. But those forest treatments were credited by some as sort of giving the firefighters enough pause, bringing the fire intensity down enough, they were able to keep it from tearing through South Lake Tahoe. You know, where you don't do that work, and actually as part of that same fire, some of those treatments weren't done. And actually, there were communities that were lost in that fire, tragically. What we need is innovation and technology that can rapidly detect and assess fire, and then quickly put it out when it gets bad. Here, we need to look at the example of the quick reaction force of Southern California, which is really designed in some ways for these toughest days. The QRF is a public-private partnership, which now has three Chinook helicopters. These are the big ones with the two rotors on the top. And each of them can drop up to 3,000 gallons of water on a fire day or night, and they can do it very precisely. They can also refill up to six times an hour, so they can bring a lot of mass to the problem. Over the course of two years of demonstrations, the QRF has demonstrated that this model has great potential, that in fact, if you can bring a lot of fire management resource to a fire Very quickly, you can get on top of fires before they get big and unmanageable. We can build a world in which communities are resilient to wildfire and in which forests are brought back into a healthy balance. ([Time 0:06:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/73da5b26-dfb4-42af-b7b6-f07c1692e6f0)) - **Good Fire And Forest Treatments Change Fire Behavior** - Restoring indigenous fire practices and proactive forest treatments can change a megafire's behavior and protect towns. - South Lake Tahoe's hundred-million-dollar treatments and prescribed burns helped firefighters keep the Caldor fire from tearing through the community. Transcript: George Whitesides In order to solve the megafire crisis, we need to bring our Western landscapes back into a healthy balance by reducing the overgrown brush and trees in the wildlands and the forest. Here, we're finally starting to take to heart the wisdom of the indigenous peoples of the Americas who knew that fire was a natural part of the landscape and who introduced low-intensity Fire, good fire, on a regular basis at the right times. When this is done well, as around the communities of South Lake Tahoe, then it can actually divert a megafire as bad as the one that they experienced in 2021. Manoush Zomorodi I mean, there might be some indigenous people who hear you say that and think, yeah, no kidding that you need to be having prescribed burns, I think is what they call it, right? Like this is something that some populations have been doing for centuries. George Whitesides Yeah, thousands of years. And there are now, you know, many places that are working on this stuff. And, you know, great example is the area immediately around South Lake Tahoe, you know, which spent on the order of over a hundred million dollars on forest treatments. That's a hopeful example of a situation with the Caldor fire where you had this terrible, huge mega fire bearing down on South Lake Tahoe. But those forest treatments were credited by some as sort of giving the firefighters enough pause, bringing the fire intensity down enough, they were able to keep it from tearing through South Lake Tahoe. You know, where you don't do that work, and actually as part of that same fire, some of those treatments weren't done. And actually, there were communities that were lost in that fire, tragically. What we need is innovation and technology that can rapidly detect and assess fire, and then quickly put it out when it gets bad. Here, we need to look at the example of the quick reaction force of Southern California, which is really designed in some ways for these toughest days. The QRF is a public-private partnership, which now has three Chinook helicopters. These are the big ones with the two rotors on the top. And each of them can drop up to 3,000 gallons of water on a fire day or night, and they can do it very precisely. They can also refill up to six times an hour, so they can bring a lot of mass to the problem. ([Time 0:08:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/19d859a2-7eba-4a59-8d62-d54b33f5a724)) - **Varanasi Shows Paradise Amid Mess And Mortality** - Varanasi shows that holiness and filth can coexist: the Ganges is both polluted and central to spiritual liberation practices. - Iyer observes that the city's mix of death, joy, and ritual intensity reveals paradise as vivid engagement with life and sorrow. Transcript: Manoush Zomorodi Writes that one feels this especially in Varanasi, which is one of the oldest cities in the world and also among the most sacred. Pico Iyer Varanasi is India to the max as the holy center of Hinduism. And as you walk along the holy river, Ganges, that flows through Varanasi, night and day there are these great fires burning to the north and burning to the south that are reducing dead Bodies to ash. And as you walk through the narrow alleyways of the old city, people are constantly surging past, carrying their loved ones on stretches as dead bodies to be committed to the flames Or the holy waters. And one of the things that's so striking is that, of course, it's a city of death, but it's also a city of joy. The people who are racing past you are not mourning. They're not in grief. They're so grateful that they can come to the holy place and, I think, ensure moksha, liberation, for the loved one who has just passed. So it's a confounding place that really overturns all your simple ideas about the world. Manoush Zomorodi You describe the river there being absolutely filthy, and yet people drinking from it as though it was wine. You talk about men and children covered in ash, people carrying corpses around with them, fire being everywhere. And to me, it almost felt like there was this porousness to it, that this was the river Styx, the road to the afterlife here on earth. Is that how you think people see it? Pico Iyer Yes, that's perfect. And I can't speak for a devout Hindu who'd probably put it differently, but I felt just as you. There aren't many places on the planet that have this kind of mythic intensity where you feel that one's walking along next to the river of life and on the far side of the river is whatever Unknown awaits us all. And just as you said perfectly, the fact that the Holy River, according to the WHO, contains 3,000 times the amount of bacteria deemed safe for consumption and that people are bathing In it and even drinking in it, for me, was a very tonic and liberating idea that the holiest place doesn't have to be the purest place. That at some level, most of us can probably never find an immaculate place, a place that's absolutely pure, because we're human beings. I think one of the memorable moments that comes to mind as we talk about it is that there was this whole cacophony. And even though I'm Indian, I was really freaked out by it. And I suddenly heard two people call my name. And I turned around and were two Tibetan Buddhists I know from New York City. And my friend came up to me and he surveyed the scene of absolute chaos and intensity. And he said, isn't this glorious? This is the whole human pageant. This is life and death and everything in between. Basically, I think he was saying this is the only paradise we can ever hope to find and to make our lives in. The paradises that our minds create are never going to come to fruition in real life. But here is real life to the hilt. And this is the place where we have to live and where we have to find our comfort and delight and warmth. ([Time 0:27:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ac2f280a-9099-43ba-965f-11045f47c098)) - **Uruguay's Fast Transition To Nearly 100% Renewable Power** - Ramon Mendez-Galain, a physics professor turned national energy director, led Uruguay's rapid shift to 98% renewable electricity within five years after an energy crisis. - He coordinated policy, planning, and new dispatch software; wind now supplies up to 40% and biomass 15–20% of Uruguay's electricity. Transcript: Ramon Mendez-Galain Our economy was growing too fast, and the demand was growing very fast. Manoush Zomorodi Here's Ramon Mendez-Galain on the TED stage. Speaker 6 15 years ago, the Uruguayan energy sector was going to a deep crisis. Economy was growing at unprecedented rates, and poverty was decreasing. It was so great, of course, but at the same time, energy demand was growing rapidly, which was not so great. Uruguay has no proven reserve for fossil fuels. We have already used our large rivers to install hydropower plants. And our two main neighbors were having their own difficulties to supply internal demand. So it was not easy for them to help us. In dry years, when you have to import much more fossil fuels or we're forced to import electricity from our neighbors at extraordinary prices, cost of our hands could be as high as $1 Billion. And for a small economy like Uruguay, this is 2% of its GDP. And we're still, we're beginning to have blackouts. We're living the perfect storm. But crisis is also opportunity. Manoush Zomorodi Can we go back to 15 years ago? The reality at the time was energy costs were soaring, there were blackouts, and you didn't see a way forward for the country. Ramon Mendez-Galain Yeah. Manoush Zomorodi And what was your idea to change it to? Take me through what you thought needed to change. Ramon Mendez-Galain So I dramatically changed my work and I began to be involved in the energy issue. This is what I did. After writing my thoughts in the paper, I ended up with a comprehensive proposal for what my country could do in order to be aware of these difficulties. And the surprise was that these proposals had reached my president of my country. One day, me as a simple university professor, I received a phone call inviting me to be the political responsible of our energy agency. And, well, I did something crazy. I accepted. Manoush Zomorodi That is a little crazy. You get a call from the president and you became the country's national director of energy. And you made a plan to shift Uruguay from fossil fuels to renewables. How did you explain it to people? Ramon Mendez-Galain Absolutely. So renewables are the best option, not only for the global climate issue, but also at the national level, because it reduces costs, it stabilizes costs, it has the most sovereignty For your country. It creates a lot of jobs. So it's overall the best solution. So what I try to do is just to fix a new national narrative. This is crucial. This is not just to fight against climate change. This is because it's the best solution. The most difficult point was not to convince that this was the best, but to make it work. This was a more difficult point. And you know what? Many, many colleagues from the governments at that time, they were still saying, to be honest, Ramon, we never believed what we were saying. We let you go because we didn't have any other options. So, okay, why not? Let's try it. Why not? But I knew that it was possible. Manoush Zomorodi Do you remember the first time you went to visit a solar field and saw it for yourself actually collecting energy? Ramon Mendez-Galain Yes, of course. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. The very first one was a very small solar farm of only two hectares. This means it was only about one megawatt, almost nothing. It's very close to the largest hydropower plant in the country. And it has a very beautiful park surrounding the dams. And I thought it was a very symbolic thing to have because hydropower is the best of our country and the future is solar. Speaker 6 In just five years, we went to an almost completely decarbonized one that already in 2017 was 98% renewable. What makes Uruguayan case unique is that almost half of that electricity is obtained from non-traditional renewable sources, wind, solar, and sustainable biomass. Wind alone can produce up to 40% of the total electricity consumed in the country in a year, a percentage comparable to the other world wind champion, Denmark. But also 15% or even 20% of our electricity is obtained with sustainable biomass. Of course, none of this was easy. We have to innovate. We have to understand that such a power system requires the planning and operation quite different than the traditional one. Our academics worked for years to design a groundbreaking software to handle energy dispatch, specifically designed to manage intermittent sources, such as wind and solar, but Also how to use water. This allows us, for example, to have a prediction of the amount of wind electricity and solar electricity that we're going to have in the grid with a week in advance. And this also allows us to know how and when we have to use water from the dams. Manoush Zomorodi You are not in government anymore. No. But you have kind of taken your message and what you've learned on the road. You're on the international stage talking to all kinds of people. And they must ask you, what do you wish you knew? What do we need to know if we want to take some of the lessons from Uruguay and apply them to our own countries? What do you tell them? Ramon Mendez-Galain Well, the message is very simple. The message is, first, there is a solution right now, which is the best solution at our national level. There is a solution which creates jobs, which reduces costs, which makes you independent of the fluctuation of the prices of energy commodities. And the second message is, it works. All our power systems had been designed, having in mind fossil power plants. And this is not a problem. I mean, this is just history. This is what we have developed over the world. So if we want to run a system which is driven by renewable sources, but intermittent sources, planning is absolutely crucial. Public policies are crucial. But we prove in Uruguay that it's the best solution and it works. That's it. Nothing more than that. So what does the future look like for you? It's not just having renewable electricity. It's much more than that. It's to ask ourselves every day, why am I buying ([Time 0:36:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/700b08cf-3959-49db-be7d-7f74aa6a1fac)) - **Make Renewables Work With Planning And Policy** - Ramon advises policymakers that renewables are a practical national solution that lowers and stabilizes costs, creates jobs, and increases sovereignty. - He emphasizes planning, public policy, and tailored grid software to manage intermittent wind and solar effectively. Transcript: Ramon Mendez-Galain The message is very simple. The message is, first, there is a solution right now, which is the best solution at our national level. There is a solution which creates jobs, which reduces costs, which makes you independent of the fluctuation of the prices of energy commodities. And the second message is, it works. All our power systems had been designed, having in mind fossil power plants. And this is not a problem. I mean, this is just history. This is what we have developed over the world. So if we want to run a system which is driven by renewable sources, but intermittent sources, planning is absolutely crucial. Public policies are crucial. But we prove in Uruguay that it's the best solution and it works. That's it. Nothing more than that. ([Time 0:42:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8fbf7646-bdb5-4f81-b4d2-c6be7cbf987f)) - **Senior Home Crowdsources Radical Rehab And Recovery** - Ramona Pearson survived a near-fatal accident and recovered in a senior home where residents crowdsourced her rehabilitation, teaching daily living skills and funding a guide dog. - The seniors pooled furniture, skills, and funding, enabling her to relearn walking, speaking, and eventually return to college and regain sight years later. Transcript: Ramona Pearson I was 22 years old, I came home from work, put a leash on my dog, went for my usual run. While I was preparing my dog for the run, a man was finishing drinking at a bar, picked up his car keys, got into a car and headed south or wherever he was. I was running across the street and the only thing that I actually remember is feeling like a grenade went off in my head. What had happened is he ran a red light and hit me, my dog. She ended up underneath the car. I flew out in front of the car, and then he ran over my legs. I had no idea what was going on, but strangers intervened, kept my heart moving, beating. I say moving because it was quivering, and they were trying to put a beat back into it. Somebody was smart and put a big pin in my neck to open up my airway so that I could get some air in there. And somehow I ended up at the hospital. I was wrapped in ice and then eventually put into a drug-induced coma. 18 months later, I woke up. I was blind. I couldn't speak and I couldn't walk. I was 64 pounds. I had more than 50 surgeries, but who's counting? Eventually, hospital decided it was time for me to go. They needed to open up space for somebody else they thought could come back from whatever they were going through. Everybody lost faith in me being able to recover. So they basically put a map up on the wall, threw a dart, and it landed at a senior home here in Colorado. And I know all of you are scratching your head, a senior citizen's home, what in the world are you going to do there? But if you think about all of the skills and talent that are in this room right now, that's what a senior home has. The one advantage that they had over most of you is wisdom, because they had a long life. And I needed that wisdom at that moment in my life. But imagine what it was like for them when I showed up at their doorstep. At that point, I had gained four pounds, so I was 68 pounds. I was bald, wearing hospital scrubs, and I had a white cane in one hand and a suitcase full of medical records in another hand, and the senior citizens realized that they needed to have An emergency meeting. So they pulled back, and they were looking at each other, and they were going, okay, what skills do we have in this room? This kid needs a lot of work. They eventually started matching their talents and skills to all of my needs. But one of the first things they needed to do was assess what I needed right away, which I needed to figure out how to eat like a normal human being since I'd been eating through a tube in My chest and then through my veins. And then they had to figure out, well, she needs furniture. So they went to their storage lockers and all gathered their extra furniture, gave me pots and pans, blankets, everything. The next thing that I needed was a makeover. So out went the green scrubs and in came the polyester and floral prints. We're not going to talk about the hairstyles that they tried to force on me once my hair grew back, but I did say no to the blue hair. So eventually they decided that, well, I need to learn to speak And I had to learn how to coordinate my new throat with my tongue and my new teeth and my lips. And I was an adult and it was embarrassing, so I acted like a two-year and refused to work. But the men, they were going to make it fun for me. So they were teaching me cuss word scrapple at night. And then secretly how to swear like a sailor. So I'm going to just leave it to your imagination as to what my first words were. And a former teacher who happened to have Alzheimer's took on the task of teaching me to write. The redundancy was actually good for me, so we'll just keep moving on. One of the pivotal times for me was actually learning to cross the street again as a blind person. So there were two obstacles I had to get through. One was post-traumatic stress disorder. Every time I approached the curb, I would panic. And the second one was actually trying to figure out how to cross that street. So one of the seniors just came up to me and she pushed me up to the corner and she said, when you think it's time to go, just stick the cane out there. If it's hit, don't cross the street. Made perfect sense. But by the third cane that went whizzing across the road, they realized that they needed to put their resources together, and they raised funds so that I could gain the skills to be a blind Person and also to go get a guide dog, who transformed my life. And I was able to return to college because of the senior citizens who invested in me and also the guide dog and the skills that I had gained. Ten years later, I gained my sight back, not magically, and I opted in for three surgeries, and one of them was experimental. The biggest change for me was looking down at my hands and seeing that I'd lost 10 years of my life. I thought that time had stood still for some reason and moved on for family and friends, but when I looked down, I realized that time marched on for me too. We didn't have words like crowdsourcing and radical collaboration when I had my accident, but the concept held true. People working with people to rebuild me, people working with people to re-educate me. I wouldn't be standing here today if it wasn't for extreme radical collaboration. ([Time 0:45:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ef5c0c04-fe47-419f-9f94-df5101ddac17))