All About Change - Ed Begley Jr - How to Keep Your Planet and Pocketbook Healthy

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Ed Begley Jr. has been a known name in Hollywood since the 1960s, with recent credits in Young Sheldon, Better Call Saul, and the movie Amsterdam. He’s had a stellar career onscreen, but his commitment to living an environmentally friendly life is just as impressive. Ed’s love of biking, public transit, and electric cars comes up every award season, and his family home is LEED certified.   Ed sat down with host Jay Ruderman for a conversation spanning Ed’s career, overcoming his alcoholism, and what’s next in his environmental activism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When everybody thought it was out of my mind, nobody thought, wow, let me join Ed in this quest to save the environment. Hi, I'm Jay Ruderman and welcome to All About Change, a podcast showcasing individuals who leverage the hardships that have been thrown at them to better other people's lives. I say put mental health first because if you don't... This generation of America has already had enough. I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen. Ed Begley Jr. has been around Hollywood for years.

He got his start on TV shows in the 1960s and has had more recent acclaim from features in Young Sheldon, Betterta Carl Sahl, and the movie Amsterdam. Though he's played a wide range of roles, there's one thing he's been committed to throughout his career, his environmentalism. That hasn't always been in his favor. I did pay a price for that. A lot of people thought I was pretty wacky.

I thought I was out of my mind talking about things like climate change or ozone depletion. That was heresy back in the late 70s and early 80s and what have you, the Reagan era. That environmentalism got its start in an unlikely place, Ed's alcoholism. I always cared about the environment, but I didn't see what I was doing to my own ecosystem. Getting sober allowed Ed to get his career back on track and begin to truly live out his values. He credits his father with a big part of that shift. He said, Eddie, I know you're against the smog.

I don't like smog either, but what are you doing to make a difference? Do something positive. Don't just curse the darkness, light a candle and do something. Ed Begley Jr., thank you so much for being my guest on All About Change today. My pleasure, Jay. It's great to talk to you. So I figured we'd start at the very beginning. I know that your father was a huge role model

in your life in a number of formative ways. Can you talk a little bit about him? You know, many people ask me, you know, what was it like having an Academy Award winning father? And I always think compared to what, I just thought that was kind of normal to be hanging out with these other actors and things like that. And it was an impediment in a way, was ultimately a great, great gift and helped me get into the business. But I saw it as an impediment because my dad made it look so easy. I thought I can do that. You know, wake me when I'm famous. Get me a series dad. I want to be in wagon train. I want to be look so easy. I thought I can do that. You know, wake me when I'm famous. Get me a series, dad.

I want to be on wagon train. I want to be on Perry Mason. I want to be on Gunsmoke. Give me a part for God's sake. You can pick up the phone and just get me a job, right? I had no idea how the business worked. I didn't know that you had to train. I didn't really understand though.

He told me many times, I didn't understand that my father trained as a voice actor in radio and then trained in other ways or done stage in a movies and TV shows. And he worked hard to get there. I didn't see that my father trained as a voice actor in radio and then trained in other ways or done stage in a movies and TV shows. And he worked hard to get there. I didn't see that part of it. I of course never got any work. I went on interviews and didn't know what I was doing. So finally, when I started to train, then I began to work.

So did your dad encourage you to take acting classes and what role did he play in your decision to become an actor? You know, he did encourage me, but I kind of tuned that out. I thought he just wants to make it harder for me. You know, he didn't have to work. Why should I work? And though he made it clear what was involved, I thought I was special and different, and so I did need to do that.

So finally, just to shut him up or something to prove he was wrong, he signed me up for some classes. And right away, most importantly, I love the classes, you know, doing some form of acting, albeit for free in a class, was very exciting for me. And then I by no small coincidence, I quickly started to work. I got my first job in 1967 in a show called My Three Sons. I just one episode.

But my my day job was a paper route at that point. I left my makeup on and did my paper route, hoping that somebody would recognize me, Jay. That's how tragic my thinking was. I wanted all the trappings of it and didn't have much belly for putting in the work for quite a while. So how did that develop?

How did you develop the work ethic that you needed to become an actor? The way I developed most of my ethical standards, through pain and not having any success by doing it wrong. I got that first job on My Three Sons, I'm sitting by the phone like this, okay, here we go, stardom is coming my way. Cobwebs, crickets, the phone didn't ring.

I fought hard to do different parts in some like college theater at LA Valley College and tried to, you know, I got a bit of training doing that in spite of myself. And then, but I didn't work much as an actor at all. And so I started doing more camera work. I was trained as a camera technician. For some reason, I knew you had to put work in to do that.

You had to learn all the equipment, the Mitchell BNC camera, the Eclair NPR, the AirFlex 2C, the AirFlex S, all these different cameras. I can still work on them to this day because I put a lot of time, that 10,000 hours thing they talk about. I surely put in that amount of time in a few years on learning all about cameras and film and lights

and sound and all of it. And I loved it and I worked in that way. Then somehow tap, tap on the shoulder. What? Well, there's an episode of something called Room 222. And there's a part you might be good for. And I did that. And that was my acting class on camera. My acting class on stage was in these workshops that I did that my dad recommended. Then at Valley College, my training was on stage at the college in different plays,

but on film was on the show Room 222, and I finally got relaxed in front of the camera which presented a new problem. Do you think that your father's star power helped you get jobs in the beginning? Unquestionably. No question, but that had helped me. I didn't see it that way at all for years. I thought I'm not him.

I'm Ed Begley Jr. There's no mistaking it. I thought it was, there was something negative about it. I don't know why I really thought that, but I did. It just, I think young man wanted to be separate from his father, a very common theme. But I quickly realized somewhere in my late 20s or 30s, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm the son of Ed Begley. I go into a job interview the same way you get any kind of a job. You go into a job interview called a casting session. You go in there, number one, they're gonna remember your name. So when I finally opened my mind to it, my heart to it, it was clear that it was a big plus to be a Begley son in every way you can imagine.

And the winner is Ed Begley. It's sweet of yours. Well, you've had quite a career yourself over spending many, many decades. But I want to talk a little bit about something that you've talked about very openly about your struggle with alcoholism, especially like in the 70s. Do you think that your journey through alcoholism influenced your environmental activism? It probably influenced everything and certainly the toxic chemicals that I was trying to get us to stop using. Starting in 1970, the first birthday, I started to fight against toxicity.

And the irony doesn't escape me that the toxicity was not at some distant hazardous waste site, it was right in my body. I was drinking toxic amount of liquor and pills and everything else you can imagine that I did back in those years. And I didn't see the connection, but it was a challenge. I always cared about the environment, but I didn't see what I was doing to my own ecosystem. And finally I woke up to that and got better finally, at the end of the 70s, in 1979.

And how did that happen? I know you tell a famous story about John Belushi pulling you out of a bar in Mexico. Totally. He and Judy, his wife Judy, dragged me out of the El Presidente bar there in the lobby of the hotel. We were going south and I was too far gone for John. John was like, dude, dude, I like a drink or two myself, but this you've gone crazy, man. This is, you're going to kill yourself. He dragged me out of the hotel and he and Junie took me around the town. I'd been holed up in the bar. I hadn't seen any of Durango. We're down in beautiful Mexico and I hadn't seen any

of the sights. It was gorgeous. So John was a great influence on me in so many ways. He was a great comic. I know he had some difficult times there near the end, but I remember him as a great, great actor, a great comic, a great friend who made a lot of people laugh. And I was sure one of them. Right. So how did you finally get through the alcoholism? How'd you finally become sober? You got to, as they say, bottom out.

You don't want to deprive somebody of their bottom. You want them to, you know, often there are many people in my life who like, catch me before I fell and hit my head in different ways. Metaphorically, I'm speaking of course, they would, you know, save me in different ways and bail me out and do this and do that. That was all fine and I'm very grateful for them. But the people who were fed up with me certainly get a lot of points from me getting sober, perhaps to my majority share. There's one guy in particular, his name was Billy Boyle. I first started going to meetings, 12-step group meetings, back in 1976. I came in and out, in and out, each time with something new, injured, some part of the body injured, and some sort of damage.

I'd come in and crutch it, come in with an arm and a sling, each time. And finally the fourth time, this guy, Billy Boyle, saw me coming and said, and said hey Slim how you doing? What is this fifth time you come through these doors? He said yeah Billy I'm back I thought you'd be happy. He said yeah that's great you know you're never gonna get sober right? I went what did you just say? He said you're never gonna get sober. He said what a terrible thing to say Billy you're supposed to help me. He said no you're definitely not gonna get sober you know why? Aren't you working now? He said yeah I got a job in Battlestar Galactica. Got a nice apartment here. I said, yeah, a nice place in Hancock Park. You're still married to Gretchen?

Her name's Ingrid, but yeah, we're married. Got a kid, I got two kids, Billy. He said, oh, you're screwed. What are you talking about? That all sounds like good stuff to me. He said, no, you haven't lost anything. You still have a wife and a kid and a place to sleep and a job. Once you lose everything, and you will, then you'll get

sober. But apparently you're one of those guys who won't. And that really stuck with me. He said, here's a new deal, mister. And he's about a foot shorter than me, weighed about maybe 110 pounds. He said, you're going to call me before you drink, not after next time. You're not going to come into this room and say you drank again. You're going to call me beforehand. You understand? I got to come over there to that nice little apartment in Hancock Park and I got to kick your ass, you're going to call me beforehand. Do you understand? I got to come over there to that nice little apartment, Hancock Park, and I got to kick your ass. You're going to call me before, right, mister? Sure, Billy.

OK, don't kick my ass, Billy. Yeah, I'll call you before. So time goes by, and you know, something very negative can trigger an alcoholic to drink again. But sometimes it's something positive. And there I was about to embark on this wonderful project. I was in a movie with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin about to do the in-laws, but I'm there at the LAX airport bar. It's eight in the morning, but they've opened up the bar and starting to get set up. And I go in and I order Bloody Mary because I can't take the pressure of this very good

thing that's happening. I need to relax. So I order Bloody Mary. I'm just about to drink it. Oh yeah Billy Boyle promised I'd call him before. Okay so it's 1978 go to pay phone you know about just about 20 feet away from the bar. Hello Billy yeah who the hell's calling me at this hour? It's Ed Begley. Hey Ed you told me to call you before I drank so I'm about to drink so here I am this is me calling you. Oh okay well it sounds like you're at the airport. I am. Where you headed? I'm going to Coronavac. He said, oh here's nice air this time of year again. He's just like nothing's up Like i'm calling about travel plan Okay, and billy by the way, I look at my boarding pass Yeah, i'm in first class because the screen actors guild rules they had to put me in first

So i'll have all the drinks they can serve me on the plane too. I'm probably i'm gonna get good in slush He said no you give me a call when you get there buddy. He said, Billy, I'm gonna drink. He said, you're not gonna drink. I am gonna drink. You're not gonna drink. I said, Billy, why am I not gonna drink? And he said, because you called me. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. He was right. He said, if you didn't want to drink, you wouldn't have called me. If you didn't want to drink, you wouldn't have come into that first meeting I saw you at back in 1976.

You don't want to drink. It's what you haven't figured to drink, you wouldn't have come into that first meeting I saw you at back in 1976. You don't want to drink. It's what you haven't figured out yet, jerk. So once you land, like I said, give me a call. Have a nice time in Coronavacca. I did not have that drink in the bar. I did not have that drink in the plane. And Billy is the guy that did that. And that was it.

Yeah. And that was it. So I want to talk about your environmentalism. You've been involved for decades and decades. Tell me how it impacted your career early on. I can't imagine that it was always popular for you to be so out front as environmentalist, to ride your bike, to a premier. It was definitely crazy when I started in 1970, Jay. I had a little tailored down electric car. When I say car when I started in 1970. I had a little tailored

down electric car. When I say car, I mean quite grand. We're talking about a golf cart with a windshield wiper and a horn. You know, it had a top speed of about 22 miles per hour, maybe 25 if it was flat ground, you know, a range of maybe 20 miles. And I drove that around LA with little leather, like World War I, you know, pilot's helmet. I had this leather helmet on and I just drove around and everybody thought it was out of my mind. Nobody thought, wow, let me join Ed in this quest to save the environment.

There was some people, some hippie friends, what have you, that cared about it as much as I, a good many people, I shouldn't categorize, as many people who cared about the environment in 1970, many scholars and people in PhDs and lots of people did. But I did it because I knew there was a problem because I'd grown up in LA in that horrible smog. So I knew there was a problem and I knew we had to fix it.

So I set about fixing it and here's the good news, Jay, even though we have four times the cars in 1970, millions more people, we have a fraction of the small because everything we hope would work did work. But as you suggested a moment ago, I did pay a price for that. A lot of people thought I was pretty wacky. They thought I was out of my mind talking about things like climate change or ozone depletion. That was heresy back in the late 70s and early 80s and what have you, the Reagan era, people just kind of abandoned it for a while.

You bike everywhere? I ride my bike, I take my electric car around town and I have nine kilowatts of solar on the roof of the house, so that's enough to run the house. Did you bike here? I did not, I walked over here. And there's a lot of actors, celebrities, people who are famous who take on causes, but they don't live the causes the way that you've lived them. What caused you early on to

internalize it and in your own life become a very active environmentalist? I saw that there was a link between my actions and the very smog that I'm complaining about and I credit my dad with that. He was a conservative that liked to conserve. Even though I'm in the other side of the aisle, I love my dad and I really respected his opinions. And he said, you know, I'd be complaining again about the smog. He said, Eddie, I know you're against the smog. I don't like smog either, but what are you doing to make a difference? Get on your bike and ride your bike if you don't want to make smog. Take the bus if you don't want to make smog. Go get a friend

who's handy and make an electric car, you know, do something like that. Do something positive. Don't just curse the darkness. Light a candle and do something. So in 1970, my dad died within a few days of the first Earth Day and I loved him so much. I did whatever I could afford and I couldn't afford much. I was a broken, struggling actor. My dad had supported me and he was gone. So I did everything I could to honor him, if you will. I started recycling, I started composting, I became a vegetarian, rode my bike, weather and fitness permitted, and I did in Southern California a lot, took public transportation, but I even bought that 1970 electric car for $950. And it got me around

LA. So everything I did, I did to honor him as much as anything. Right. Well, that's beautiful. Your commitment that you had to him. But what do you think about your environmentalism made people nervous at the time? First of all, back in the seventies and early eighties, I think people thought it was just wacky, they didn't quite get it, but also a lot of people felt threatened, they thought I was going to get in their face going, you

shouldn't drive that SUV. What are you doing getting in the limo to go to these awards? You're a bad person. I never have ever once done that. You know, I don't, I want, I encourage people to join me, but I don't, you don't want to accomplish a lot by making people feel guilty and bad. I don't think, you know, it's more like this is what I'm doing. You want to join me here. Here's what I've figured out, see if it works for you. And, uh, so I had a lot of success with that, but I did give people the creeps. So I know, cause my manager said back in that time period, my agent manager both said it's costing you work.

People are afraid you're going to make trouble on the set cause they don't have a recycling bin, which, you know, I asked that they get one that if they don't get one, I'm not going to store them off the set. People were afraid of that kind of accusation and that kind of behavior. So in light of the fact that your agent was telling you, you know, this might be costing you work. What made you stick to your guns? Well, it was again, because of all the environmental things I had done, not

only were they good for the environment, they're good for another green thing. That thing in my pocket, my right hand pocket with a little money clip around it called Cass, it was much cheaper to live the way I was living. No electric bill to speak up because of the solar, no hot water bill to speak up because of the solar hot water. I grew a lot of my food, I made my own compost.

I had a bunch of fruit trees on the property, small little property, a small house. This was not a homestead somewhere in the country. This is right in the city of LA in Studio City, a little lot, 8,000 square foot lot with a 1,700 square foot house on it. So it was a modest house, but I did everything I could. I captured my rainwater coming off the roof. Everything that I did was good for the environment, but also good for my pocketbook.

So if they'd cool my heels for a while, I could make it through to the next job or the next spokesperson event I could get, whatever I could get. So Ed, how do you think public perception has evolved regarding environmentalism over the years? People have started to see that A, it should not be and it must not be a partisan issue. It's something we need together. People on both sides of the aisle want to breathe clean air and they want their kids and grandkids to breathe clean air.

I talk about my personal action making a change. That's one of three things that made the change. The other important thing is good legislation and corporate responsibility. Good legislation would include the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, both of them signed by an environmental radical by the name of Richard Nixon, bipartisan thing. He knew that we needed to have clean air. He vetoed the clean water bill at first, but he the second time signed it.

So that's the kind of thing we need today, something we have to do together. So it's good legislation and corporate responsibility. Finally, people started to build cleaner cars with catalytic converters, then truly different cars that ran on electricity and what have you, hybrid cars, and finally fully electric cars. So those are the three pillars that support any good change.

Personal action, which I was doing for years, corporate responsibility, and good legislation. That's how we clean up the air in LA, not by me riding my bike. We clean up because of that cudgel that we use, that weapon that we use, that tool that we use called the Clean Air Act, again, signed by Richard Nixon. So you, no matter your financial situation at the time, were committed to being environmentalists. Do you think that class plays a role in the environmental movement today? Yes, I think it was very much a problem back in the day. There was an ivory tower kind of mentality. People didn't know they were doing it.

They're kind of being very paternalistic with people in different parts of the different neighborhoods in LA and different parts of the country and different parts of the world coming in and trying to be the white knight to fix things for people who are having challenges, you know, in Asia and Africa. And so finally, after some bad missteps over the years,

people figured out you have to work with people and give them help that they want if they want it and give them a menu of choice into what might work for them and their culture and what have you in their history and not dictate anything. Go in there and put the shoulder to the wheel after they've decided which wheel they want to move in which direction.

So for a while we had it wrong. You know, we're going to go and show people how to do things right. We stopped doing that back in the 90s, thank God, and started to do things right. Here we are standing. If you want a bucket brigade, we'll start passing you buckets. You tell me where you want to get the water, where you want it to go to. And that's what all the environmental groups I work with now, that's what we've done for years. We don't get in there and meddle in things that people don't necessarily want that kind of help. Sure, sure. Can you talk about the balance between advocating for systematic change and someone altering their own living habits to live a more environmentally conscious life? It comes back to those three columns that have to be balanced. If you got one of the three columns that's half the size of the others, it's not going

to be a proper arch and structure. It's going to be lopsided. You go, who did that? It's got to be those three things of equal support and equal weight, corporate responsibility, people making the car. Now that there's a demand of people like me getting that first car EV1 that GM had, they got okay other car companies eventually went into that business and started making electric cars. Now every brand has like three models of pure electric vehicles. People wanted those light

bulbs. The first was compact fluorescent bulbs that we used. They were more efficient and finally got to be LEDs that are really efficient, last a lot longer, don't have mercury in them. So we found our way with companies trying to do the right thing in many cases, eventually getting to the point where they actually did it. And that good legislation and that personal action. For years, people thought it's all personal action. We can change it all the way Gandhi did.

We'll stop eating sugar, and we'll stop doing this and that. We'll overthrow the British Empire. Didn't quite work like that. There were many things at play and it's the same with the environmental movement. Has to be corporate responsibility, good legislation and personal action all together, because otherwise you lose one of the three. Nobody did any personal action. Go, why should I do that?

You talk about electric cars. Nobody's driving them. Right. I never met anybody that drove one. Why should we build electric cars? Yeah. People that are making, you know, like my first electric car in recent memory

in the more recent part of my life was a 73 Subaru converted to electric that I drove around LA. And there were many other people that had them, many being a few hundred back then in the state of California, if that. But that built to the GM EV1 because then they figured there'd be a few thousand people who

would want that car and they were correct, they did. And that car, they finally crushed them all, but there's a line in Shakespeare to condemn with faint praise. I think that's basically what they did. They talked about their new electric car, but nobody knew where to buy it. Nobody knew it was at a Saturn dealer. Moreover, when you go to try to get an EV1 electric car in the years that they offered them, the guy at the dealership would say, you don't want one of those cars. I heard they don't go so far. Come over here and look at this car. They would actually try to sell them another car when it went into the showroom.

This happened to people that I know. So there was that. And also, I think GM resented being forced to do it. They're forced to do it by the ZEV mandate. That's the Zero Emission Vehicle, ZEV mandate. So when you have to dictate by law that somebody do something, they can really dig in their heels and not want to do it.

That's why they lease the cars only and never sold them to me or Jay Leno or anybody. Bill Nye, none of us were allowed to keep our car because we didn't own it. It was lease only because they knew all along they're going to pull them back at some point. And when they asked Waggoner, that guy who was top guy at GM for years, what's your biggest

failure, he said, crushing the electric car. We had a good car, we shouldn't have done that. We should have stuck with it and got it just right. Made a four door so more people, families could buy them, we had the better mousetrap with the engine and the controller. We shouldn't have crushed the electric car. That's what he said was the biggest mistake. So what advice would you give to a listener who can't afford to put solar panels on their home

or can't afford an expensive electric vehicle? I would advise them to do it exactly the way I did it. My dad died in 1970. I didn't have a meal ticket anymore. I was waiting for the next acting job or camera assistant job to come my way. It was broke. So I had to do all the cheap stuff, broke guy, kind of cheap and easy stuff that I can afford.

Eating lower in the food chain, even if you don't want to become a vegetarian, just eating more plant food will be cheaper for you. Using vinegar and water to clean glass and baking soda is definitely cheap. Taking public transportation if it's available near you is definitely cheap. Riding a bike when weather and fitness permit cheap. Home gardening, home composting. Grow a little fruit or vegetable patch

in your front or backyard. If you live in an apartment, don't have a front or backyard, get part of the community garden. You don't have a community garden in your area, start one. There's always something to say yes to. I know I myself got hung up on no. I don't like smog, I'd say to my dad,

I said, I know what you're saying no to, but what do you say yes to? Maybe there's no public transportation near you, but can you ride a bike some of the year? Can you eat more plant food? Can you put an energy saving thermostat up? Can you afford that? Can you put up an energy efficient light bulb or two?

I would advise people who have few resources to do exactly that stuff that's cheap because you get a payback in some cases in the first month with your electric bill. But many utilities give away these LED lights now and they have for years. Since they were at CFL, the compact fluorescent bulbs have been giving them away

because that's cheaper to get them the light bulbs than it is to build a new power plant. So do that stuff that's going to lower your bills that's cheap and easy and pretty soon you'll have extra money in the pocket then you can move up to the kind of medium ticket items like a solar oven or a rain barrel to put under your downspout to collect rain water. Pretty soon one day you can do other things too. So save money and at the same time help the environment. Exactly. That's what I did for years before I had any success. I did exactly that. So I want to talk a little bit about a recent endeavor that you've been pursuing about producing environmentally conscious cleaning products. Why are cleaning products a place where you're putting your focus?

Because back in 1970 when I wanted to use cleaner products in the home to keep everything tidy, all that was available to me at first was vinegar and water and baking soda. And that can clean some things, but not everything. There's sometimes we need something more aggressive, cleaner to clean tile, or to clean your pet, to clean your different things, hand soaps and what have you. So I, for a while, bought these very clean products and green products and they're still out there. Again, I'm not that competitive with my competitors. By that I mean I support seventh generation totally. I support Eco's, these other people are making wonderful products.

Anybody that's out there at the hazardous waste site near their house, the worst hazardous waste site is not near your house, it's in your house under your sink. Get rid of that stuff and start buying somebody's green products. It could be mine, it could be theirs. They have great products, seventh generation and Eco's does it well and so does my line of products called Begley's Earth Responsible Products. We have them in Costco stores now and they have on Amazon too. If you want to look up where to get them, just type in in your search engine,

Begley Cleaning, it'll come right up and you'll see where the easiest place is to get it. I think they're in Target too. I'm pretty sure they are. And what makes a product better or worse for the environment? Well, the chemical makeup is what's important, you know, but it also has got to clean good. I pitched the vinegar and water and baking sort of thing for a while, and that's not going to do it for a lot of people.

They want a different level of clean than that can supply. So you got to get a good formula that's not going to harm your pets or harm your kids because kids and pets are always crawling around on the floor, putting their fingers and their toes in their mouth. And, you know, you can get sick from that of using something toxic with a lot of ammonia you know some other chemical that's not healthy. So I set out having something that would be clean and green but has to clean aggressively and clean very well and ours cleans very well and it's got a

clean clean formula made from plant-based materials and it really works good. I've been very impressed with it for years. So how do you stay current on the best techniques to lead a low environmental impact life? I rely on my friends. People have good resources to really study things. You know, the NRDC is a great group and they have a lot of great information about different things we can do environmentally, as does the Union of Concerned Scientists. More than half the living Nobel laureates are part of that great group. And so often when I've had a question about electric vehicle battery disposal, I thought that didn't sound right, it's going to be more toxic when the batteries are on the landfill.

Very few of those batteries are going into a landfill, very, very few, if any, because there's a way to recondition them and use them again and again and again. And ultimately, those different elements can be recycled in some facilities. There's a facility in Arkansas, I believe. No, I'm sorry, in Alabama that's recycling lithium ion batteries. But there's no toxic heap the way people are trying to represent it in landfills across the country where these old batteries are going. Very few of them wind up in a place like that.

Most of them are recycled because these are very precious metals and they can be recovered. So, Ed, I have to ask you, are you hopeful or are you pessimistic about where we are in the world? I'm hopeful because I know we have accomplished a lot. An area as big as the LA Air Basin, four times the cars, millions more people, but a fraction of the smog, that's a big win. The Cuyahoga River used to catch fire and so covered in toxic and sometimes flammable chemicals. That doesn't happen anymore.

Ozone depletion, the ozone hole is not bigger, it's not the same, it's smaller. These are global things that we've done. But again, having said all that good news, I'm not living in a dream world. We're going to lose a lot of plant and animal species we have already, and will it be enough for us to continue to survive ourselves in the way we have for many, many years? That's the question. You lose that much of the coral reefs that we all depend on. That's nature's nursery. It's not just something that's pretty to look at when you're scuba diving

or snorkeling. It's part of the ecosystem that we need. Paul Ehrlich said years ago, how many rivets can you lose from an airplane before it ceases to fly? How many rivets in nature can you lose before the airplane that we're all on ceases to fly, before we're successful as a species and have the web of life that we really need and require to keep things going? We need a lot of trees standing. Trees don't begin to have value when you make something out of them. Trees have value when you leave them alone, let them stand. Collecting rainwater, providing shade, providing recreational activities, taking in CO2, putting out oxygen. Trees do a lot for us. And so we have to stop seeing a hillside that has no structures on it, has nothing.

There's something going on there. There's a factory that we all get our check from, that beautiful hillside. So preserve as much of nature as we can. We've lost a lot. Minimize our losses and save what we can and try to survive. Well, Ed, I really want to thank you not only for the years of entertainment that you've given us and not only for being committed as an environmentalist, but for living the life and setting the example of how to live an environmentally conscious life. So thank you so much for being my guest on All About Change. I really enjoyed our discussion and may you go from strength to strength.

You too, Jay. Thank you. You're wonderful to talk to. I hope to see you again. Thanks, Ed. Appreciate it. ["The Greatest Showman"] Ed's commitment to living out his values is an inspiration at every turn. No matter his phase in life,

his dedication to building a better world shines through. That's it for today's episode. Join us two weeks from today for my talk with actor Brett Gellman. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Shasson, with story editing by Yochai Meytal and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website, allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on

your favorite podcasting app. We'd really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation in partnership with pod people. That's all for now. I'm Jay Ruderman and we'll see you next time on All About Change.