Graham Zimmerman is an alpinist, filmmaker, and climate activist who, over the past few years, has watched his home in Bend, Oregon be consumed by smoke over and over again. As someone who loves the outdoors and encourages "imperfect activism," he wondered what he could do to help.
Over the past few years, alpinist, filmmaker, and climate activist Graham Zimmerman has watched his home in Bend, Oregon get consumed by smoke over and over again. As someone who loves spending time outside, Graham wondered what exactly he could do to help. He created the podcast Wildfire to dig deep and investigate the raging infernos that threaten our homes on planet Earth.
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Many people across the country, especially in the Western United States have been dealing with a new season recently, smoke season. Starting in late summer and going into fall, they have to monitor air quality levels and hunker down when it's not safe to go outside. For those needing to be outside, it can be a massive shock, it can feel stifling, your eyes can burn, it can be hard to breathe and the sunlight is filtered with this apocalyptic red glow. Over the past few years alpinist, filmmaker and climate activist, Graham Zimmerman has watched his home in Bend, Oregon get consumed by smoke over and over again. As someone who loves spending time outside, Graham wondered what exactly he could do to help. He decided to dig deep and investigate. Why are there so many destructive wildfires at this point in history? How are they related to climate change? And what can we do about them? I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Graham Zimmerman, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Graham Zimmerman:
I am honored to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.
Shelby Stanger:
Where are you now? Are you in the Pacific Northwest?
Graham Zimmerman:
So I'm at my home in Bend Oregon, this is where I live with my wife, Shannon and our dog, Pebble. And let's see, we've been here for I think seven or eight years now. And it's been a really great little hideout for me, for all of us. It's in the Pacific Northwest, but it's on the dry side of the mountains. So we get great mountain biking, great climbing, great skiing.
Shelby Stanger:
You're quite the outdoor athlete. Have you always been in the outdoors? How did you get into it since you were a kid? I mean, you do a lot of things, especially mountaineering at a very high level.
Graham Zimmerman:
So I work as a professional climbing athlete, that's something I've done for gosh, like 15 or 20 years now. And I've done a lot of stuff over the years professionally. I've always maintained work outside of climbing, but climbing is really the thread that's woven its way through my entire life. And there's this really interesting kind of mental switch that I found myself switching at some point where I realized that I really liked going up. And that resulted in me kind of exploring rock climbing, me exploring ice climbing and eventually seeing this pathway through which I could go and get into mountain climbing. And I kind of figured that out probably when I was 16 years old. And it's been a thread that I've been pulling on ever since. It's been great.
Shelby Stanger:
What did your parents think of that? You were 16, you're like, "Mom, I'm going to be a mountain climber."
Graham Zimmerman:
They were totally freaked out when their 16 year old kid was becoming hell bent on mountain climbing. As folks from Kansas I think it was pretty outside of the box for them and to their credit they didn't say, "You can't do this." They said, "Let's figure this out and how we can make sure that you survive." And so they actually signed me up for a couple of courses and things like that where I was able to learn the kind of hard skills needed to stay safe in the mountains. And it's been a really important component to how I've stayed safe in the mountains for the last 20 years.
Shelby Stanger:
So you became a professional climber after school.
Graham Zimmerman:
Well, it's not that simple. So I finished school, I wanted to go climbing. I spent a number of years kind of working odd jobs that was high income, hard labor jobs and it was great. It was awesome. And that paid for expeditions. It was the American West dirt bag climber dream. And I spent a while working in Yosemite on the Yosemite Search and Rescue team, which is really powerful. But what I actually ended up doing professionally for a number of years and it was parallel pathed with kind of developing a career as a professional alpinist. But I actually ended up working in geophysics for a long time, mostly looking for rare earth minerals. And it was this amazing job for having to sit alongside being a pro climber. And it really allowed me to do two things. One is to develop a professional skill set outside of climbing, which is really helpful.
And it also allowed me to take on climbing sponsorship really on my own terms. I was never beholden to sponsors to pay the rent. I had that taken care of. And at the same time, I was going into wild areas of the world, spent a lot of time in East Africa, looking for silver and gold out there. And it was super cool, but also I had to really face down some kind of social equity problems out there because I was working for multinational companies, looking for rare earth, mineral resources in underprivileged parts of the world. And it was something that as I kind of matured became more and more apparent, was eventually the reason I actually got out of geophysics, was because I just realized that it was a space in which I was gaining a lot personally, but was having essentially a negative impact on the globe.
And that was something that I wasn't willing to continue pursuing. So I actually quit that work and at that time, was starting to do more and more storytelling work and was able to pivot that into launching a film company and really digging into storytelling. And I ran that company for six years and it was really successful. And it was a really cool pivot to be able to take all these kind of project management skills from the geophysics space, bring them into the creative space and then utilize them to, instead of driving forward mining and global inequity, we were able to tell stories that hopefully point us towards the world that we want to live in.
Shelby Stanger:
Graham started Bedrock Film Works in 2016 with his co-founder Jim Aikman. Then in 2019, Graham and Jim launched a critically acclaimed podcast called Wildfire. The first season of the show was an investigation of the 2017 Eagle Creek fire in the Columbia River Gorge, right outside of Portland, Oregon. The day this fire started 150 hikers were trapped on nearby trails and it didn't just last a few days. This manmade fire burned for three months. In the podcast, Graham and Jim dug into the story behind the Eagle Creek fire, how it started, what it was like for firefighters on the ground and why it lasted so long. They found that the fire wasn't just a fluke. According to Graham, it was a consequence of 200 years of forestry and environmental policy decisions.
The way I met you was because you have this podcast on REI Co-op Studios, Wildfire, which is really good. So how did you get into wanting to study into a podcast on wildfires?
Graham Zimmerman:
When we're looking at different subjects that we really need to dig into, wildfire is a really important subject, particularly in the American West. And it's complicated, in the place where I live, in Central Oregon, we have a fifth season now, which is smoke season. And it's really heinous. But our increase in wildfire frequency and severity is directly associated with climate change.
Shelby Stanger:
So the Wildfire podcast you've come out with two seasons. Tell me about the show.
Graham Zimmerman:
Yeah. First season is all about the Eagle Creek fire, which was a massive fire that took place in the Columbia River Gorge in 2017. It burned through a bunch of communities out there and it was all actually started by a young man playing with fireworks.
On September 2nd 2017, in the rugged wilderness above the town of Cascade Locks Oregon, 150 hikers were trapped by one very bad decision. One that would lead to immense fear and loss.
news person:
Breaking news tonight, a wildfire burning in the Columbia River Gorge...
news person 2:
And it really is even just hard to find the words to describe this.
Graham Zimmerman:
Over the last 100 years in the United States, we have demonized wildfire and sought to control it. But this is not a binary phenomenon. It cannot be understood without looking closely at the nuances that swirl and mutate just as much as the fires themselves.
And so it was kind of this whole really interesting story of understanding our relationship to these spaces and what we do within them. And then also this really catastrophic fire story. So it really gave us this really powerful platform from which we could dig into what is going on with forestry practices and how we can do a better job with them.
Shelby Stanger:
So season two came out in 2021. What was the second season about?
Graham Zimmerman:
The second season is all about the Amazon and right around the time that we were finishing the first season of the show, we were starting to see all these reports about the satellite imagery that was showing all this burning in the Amazon and how burning in the Amazon was way up. And there were these huge plumes of smoke coming off of the rainforest. And it was like this framework where I was like, "I don't know what this is. It's a tropical rainforest, it's super wet, why is it burning down there?" So we started researching that and there was a book that I pretty quickly stumbled on by, I think Andrew Revkin called The Burning Season. And it was a book written in, I think the early nineties, that's basically all about a man named Chico Mendes, who during the 1980s was one of the strongest advocates for protecting the rainforest.
And he was a rubber tapper saying he's not indigenous himself, but he was a part of a forest community down there. And so it was about his story of advocacy and activism and then he was subsequently murdered in the late eighties by evil ranchers basically. And I was just totally befuddled by the fact that I'd never heard of this guy. He is clearly one of the major defenders of the rainforest, and I'd never heard of him. If I don't know this story, then there are a lot of people who don't that should. And then also kind of update on where we're at now with protecting the Amazon rainforest. Because in the last 10 years, a lot has changed. There was a major regime changed down in Brazil with Bolsonaro and he's really opened the floodgate of utilizing the Amazon as an economic resource, which is primarily shown up as mining and agriculture, both of which result in a lot of deforestation.
And so we started researching that and ended up doing a whole story on basically a conservation of the rainforest and the fact that all those fires were actually manmade down there. And it's a tool that's being used to clear the forest for agriculture. And so we went down there and we did a bunch of research on it in terms of what's going on currently, we went to his hometown, talked to folks about him. Had a really interesting conversations with a bunch of folks who were there and then really spent a lot of time looking at the rainforest today and how we can preserve it. And spoiler alert, indigenous knowledge is a super important component to that same deal. We ended up going and hanging out with the Busurui tribe down in Southwestern Brazil, I guess, kind of Western Brazil.
And we're hanging out talking with them about what they're doing to preserve their forest and how they're creating a model through which other tribes and other communities can do that as well. And it was really powerful. It's in many ways, a challenging subject but also we found a lot of optimism down there. Which was really cool.
Shelby Stanger:
The Amazon is sometimes called the lungs of the world. As the largest rainforest on earth, the Amazon plays an essential role in our climate. The trees absorb a lot of carbon dioxide created by human life. Here in the United States, the fires in the Amazon may have felt really far away, but the warming of our planet is a global issue. Fires like this, anywhere in the world have an impact on all of us and the air we breathe. While it can feel overwhelming, Grahams says that saving the planet starts right at home in our local communities. When we come back, Graham talks about his biggest takeaways from making wildfire and what it means to be an imperfect activist.
Environmental advocate, professional Mountaineer and storyteller Graham Zimmerman, is co-host of the podcast Wildfire. During the making of the show, he met a lot of fascinating people, historians, hikers, scientists, firefighters, indigenous leaders and residents of wildfire territory. Graham has learned a lot while researching and making the podcast. And each season gives him more insight into this complicated topic. What did you learn from making the first season of the podcast?
Graham Zimmerman:
So I think the biggest things that we should know about when it comes to wildfire particularly in the Western United States, are that A, wildfires are an important part of this ecosystem. The trees literally rely on wildfire in order to open their seed pods so that they can reproduce. Fire is not something that is unnatural here. It is in fact, a very important part of what happens in these forests. And what that means, is that the strategy that we've taken to deal with wildfire in the United States over the last couple hundred years, which has primarily been full suppression of wildfire, has not been the correct strategy. And so when we think about solutions for forestry management, which is really what we're talking about here, we're not talking about no smoke, we're not talking about no fires. We're talking about consistent, smaller fires, some smoke which is part of the deal, but not these massive events.
And so, as we think about how we kind move into that space, we have this really, really cool resource that is oftentimes forgotten about, which is indigenous knowledge. Because these are forests that were beautifully managed by indigenous populations before white folks showed up out here. And so as we look towards how we manage these spaces, how we live within them, it turns into this whole really important conversation around respect for indigenous knowledge. I feel like a lot of our community is now making land acknowledgements, but then it kind of stops there. And we have to recognize that these are communities that have been so heavily disenfranchised for so long, let alone dealing with genocide and some really awful stuff when we look at not that long ago. And so for us to say, "Okay, now we want to be friends and now we want your knowledge," it's something that's going to take a lot of work.
And there are a few things that I feel like I could advise in terms of how to think about that. And one is to always have your eye out for opportunity. If there's an event going on a local reservation or in your community, that is a place where you are invited to come gather and learn, always take advantage of it. Just show up, don't say anything, be there and listen. And if you do that enough, then you will start to build community, you'll start to build relationships. And the other thing that I think is really important is this concept of nothing about us without us. And that's something that kind of comes from some of the indigenous folks who I've worked with. And it's that we can't take these ideas and act like, "Oh, now we have this indigenous knowledge and we'll just use it." We have to not only just pay credit, but we have to involve those communities.
Shelby Stanger:
What did you learn from making season two?
Graham Zimmerman:
I will keep hammering on it that the power of indigenous knowledge is just this thing that is totally unleveraged by our current society. And I think that also the thing that this is really probably the most important thing is, is we look for solutions to wildfire, both in the Western United States and globally. We have to understand that a lot of the things that we're managing are the needs of different people. We can't just swing super hard one way or the other. If we just go ahead and protect the entire rainforest and say, "Nobody can utilize this land for anything, except for these couple of things. There are a lot of people that will be really hosed by that. And we sometimes focus on the major ag companies or the major beef companies that are the kind of overlords, but there are a lot of people who are disenfranchised and living a life of poverty on the front lines of burning down the rainforest.
And the reason that they are actually burning the rainforest down is because they don't have any other option. And so when we look at the solutions, we need to understand the impacts that protection will have on others, so that we make sure that nobody's left behind and same deal. When we look at the forests of the American West. We essentially said no fires, we're just going to put out all the fires. And that's something we did for 200 years. And it's like putting this in this really bad spot. We actually needed to find a place of balance between letting the forest burn when needed, but in a safe and oftentimes prescribed way. And then also putting out some fires and having the tools in place to make sure they were keeping communities safe. Oftentimes we look at these things as like, we have to stop fires, we have to stop climate change. But you really need to look at a more broader perspective and then consider all the parties involved and how it can bring everybody forward into the future.
Shelby Stanger:
What really surprised you about fires that maybe you didn't know about before?
Graham Zimmerman:
The whole indigenous solutions thing was something that I wish didn't surprise me, but was a big eye opener. Like, hey, we don't need to do tons and tons of research. A lot of the answers are actually here. We just need to adapt them properly to our current world. That's just really important thing to broadcast instead of reservations being a place of needing charity, turns it into this, engaging with those communities as an opportunity to really fix some of the major problems that we have, which is pretty badass.
Shelby Stanger:
It's clear that Graham cares deeply about our planet and its future. Recently, Graham decided to leave Bedrock Film Works to pursue environmental activism full time with the organization to protect our winters. There Graham mentors other professional athletes, as they advocate for climate change policy. The word activism can be intimidating, conjuring up beliefs having to be zero waste or never eating meat. Graham has a different perspective. He's adopted a concept called imperfect advocacy.
How did all this lead you? I mean, I kind of been getting this, how it led you to activism, but I've heard you talk about this idea of imperfect advocacy. It's one thing for us to want to get into activism and another thing for us to actually be activists. So tell me about how all this kind of led you to where you are today and what imperfect advocacy even means.
Graham Zimmerman:
That is one of my favorite things to talk about. So, like I mentioned, I had this background in glacier hydrology. And I spend a ton of my time in the big mountains of the world. But I felt totally shut down by the perceived hypocrisy around being a professional athlete who spent a lot of time on airplanes. And I really saw that as something that made it so that I couldn't communicate on climate. And that was pivoted for me by an organization called Protector Winners. And I started working with them and I think it was 2016 and it was this conversation that really just kicked off. I was in Carbondale Colorado at the 5Point Film Festival, we were screening a film there. And one of the executives from Protector Winners was there and I got introduced to her and she was like, "Why aren't you advocating on climate?"
And I was like, "Well, because I fly a lot and it seems inappropriate." And she's like, "Nope, bad answer. You need to be a climate advocate. You are perfect for this." And I was like, "Okay, well then tell me how." And subsequently they got me engaged with this concept of what we were referring to as imperfect advocacy. And it's really this idea that we all need to be communicating on climate. And under the current energy regime that we have right now, we are all imperfect advocates. Anybody like us advocating on climate right now, we're using all sorts of power to run this podcast, for me to have AC running in my home, so I'm not getting destroyed by hay fever. This is all stuff that's run with power and where I am in Central Oregon, a lot of it is coming from fossil fuels. And that means that to be an advocate at all, under our current energy system, is to be imperfect.
And if we let that shut us down, then we will never get anything done. The second thing is that we kind of have this narrative problem when it comes to how we talk about climate. And for years and years we've been sold the idea that personal change is how we fix climate. We stop eating meat, we stop flying, we stop driving, we stop heating our homes. And that leads us down this pathway towards how do we fix climate? We fix climate by staying at home and living off of carrots in the backyard and giving up on all of these things that we love. Global travel, engaging with global culture, engaging with all these outdoor rack activities that are the things that totally fill our cup. And all of the onus is taken off of the energy companies. All of the onus is taken off of corporations and it's all placed on us.
And there's a different narrative that we can follow that is far more productive and is also much more attainable, which is looking at systemic change. Understanding that we have all the technology needed to decarbonize air travel, to decarbonize road travel, to decarbonize how we heat our homes, how we cook our food, how we transport electricity across the country, all those kinds of things. And if we push for that systemic change, if we advocate for it as imperfect advocates, then we have the ability to instead of our narrative being like you have to choose between all these things that you love and progress of society, we can instead say, "We need to progress forward in terms of how we get energy. And if we progress towards a green energy economy, then we can do all these things that we love and we can do so in a way that is decarbonized and basically has a better relationship with our earth."
The most important component to all of that, I think to live a decarbonized lifestyle and make that personal change right now, requires buying an EV, buying solar panels, updating your appliances in your home, being able to work remotely. And that stuff all is deeply associated with a high socioeconomic status. And that means to decarbonize your lifestyle, there's a huge equity problem. And if you're somebody who is operating near the poverty line, you don't have the ability to buy an EV. You can't buy an induction stove or put solar panels in. And if we look at systemic solutions, then we're able to change the way that everybody gets power and we're able to decarbonize everybody's lives and therefore deal not only with climate, but also take a look at social equity as well, which is super important because those things are really closely intertwined.
Shelby Stanger:
That's like a pretty deep answer Graham, which I appreciate. So what are you doing on the day to day for climate change? And then what do you think is the best thing that we can all do?
Graham Zimmerman:
Well, there's a really easy answer and that is vote. Most of the listeners are in the United States, voting is this thing that is pretty dang easy to do. As American citizens we're pretty lousy with voting and as outdoor recreationalists, I think we're particularly lousy with voting. As we look at our ability to impact locally versus federally in the federal playing field, me as an individual I'm very small. But if I look at my ability to impact what we're doing in Bend Oregon, the place where I live, it actually gets pretty big, because it's really small pond and it's my community, it's people that I speak to. As we look at how policy around these kinds of things builds lots of times, it starts in the local space, it moves to the state and then it goes federal. That's a really well proven pathways. And we need to look at that same kind of formula for climate. When we look at climate solutions, they're very regional in terms of what resources are available. It's something that getting involved locally and understanding what's available locally and how you can get at it is really important.
Shelby Stanger:
As a human being, living on planet earth, we have a responsibility to take care of our environment. But that doesn't mean you're personally responsible for climate change. Sometimes fighting this battle on a systemic level is more important than being a "perfect environmentalist". Graham believes that if vote, if we call our representatives and if we focus on enriching our own communities, then our net impact will always be positive. Graham Zimmerman, thank you so much for coming on Wild Ideas Worth Living. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with me and with our listeners. Wildfire is such a well done podcast. It truly feels like watching a movie. If you haven't listened to Wildfire, go binge listen to it now. You can follow Graham in his activism and adventures on his own website, grahamzimmerman.com and also on Instagram @grahamzimmerman. That's G-R-A-H-A-M Z-I-M-M-E-R-M-A-N.
Wild Ideas Worth living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Andy Fasler and Sylvia Thomas of puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Chelsea Davis and our associate producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Palo Motula and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, when you rate it, when you take time to write a review wherever you listen. And remember some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.