Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. To join me in the future, then, please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. That's S-E-E Change Happen dot CO dot UK. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going.

Today is episode 86 with the title "Voices Uniting For Our Planet" and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Nicola Peel. Nicola describes herself as a solutionist, environmentalist and a speaker. And when I asked Nicola to describe her superpower, she said, being an inspirational speaker also, she's told and getting shit done. So, Nicola, welcome to the show.

Hello, Joanne. It's nice to be here.

Nicola, voices uniting for our planet and getting shit done. I've got to hear more about this. Tell me more.

Well, it's exactly what we need right now. We need to see change happen. We need to get together and see our differences, not our. Sorry. See our similarities, not our differences, because we're really good at finding ways to divide us, this, us against them. And we see it so much in the environmental movement. And for me to even say that I'm an environmentalist, the first thing is, oh, what, you just stand there and protest, do you? It's like, no, I don't. I do a lot more.

And, yeah, and that's what I do. I get shit done. And that's real stuff with my hands, building infrastructures and helping people that most need it. So, yeah, that's really, I suppose, a little bit of an intro.

So you picked up on the stereotype, the image that people have in the head of an environmentalist, the hippie, the tree huggers that chained themselves to railings. That's the media trope. And media create these tropes to dehumanise, to disenfranchisE, to divert attention. So why is the media latching on to environmental concerns as a negative and creating these negative tropes, not amplifying them in a positive light? So I'm a big media hater, if you like. I like to bash the media because they influence everything we do. So why do you think environmentalists have this bad name, if you like?

Well, I suppose we have to like anything. Look behind who owns it, who has to benefit from it? I've got a good example, actually, with National Geographic. And I made a film, Blood of the Amazon, many years ago. I went from the headwaters in Ecuador, all the way down the Amazon river, and I made a film. And they were interested, but they said to me, yes, but you can't name any names. And the name was Chevron, Texaco. They were the ones that created this massive legacy in the Amazon. But they were interested only if I didn't name the.

You know, it never occurred to me. I thought, well, National Geographic, they're all about nature. They love nature. Of course they're going to be interested in the real story of what's happening in the Amazon. But then I picked up one day one of the magazines, and I'd never realised, I'd never really noticed it before. All the advertising from BP and from Shell and Big Oil who advertised in Nat Geo. And so it's like that with most media. If we look behind who owns it, where's the money? Follow the money.

And that's why, really, it comes down to the same old story, why they don't want to give us a voice.