Cheyenne: Thank you for joining us for this episode of what the Finance. There are a few things we like to mention at the top of each episode.
Rachel: First, if you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at what_the_finance@protonmail.com or join the What the Finance discord server.
Cheyenne: Second, it would mean a lot to us if you could support our show through Patreon. Starting at $3 a month, you can get episode shoutouts access to topic polls, and get to listen to some pretty hilarious outtakes.
Rachel: And third, as we seek to be a more inclusive show, we want to acknowledge that colonialism is an ongoing process and capitalism, which we regularly decry, is part of this process. We are recording this episode on the ancestral land of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, and we recognize our sovereignty and express our gratitude of being here. Alright. Alright. So I've been really excited about this episode of What the Finance because I feel like it's a good follow up to, uh, the reparations episode that I did with Nevada and Brett while you were gone. We wanted to talk a little bit about basically how we're designing all of our infrastructure is bad for humans and bad for literally everybody else. It also lives on the planet. And how this came up for me was, and I have to look at the date on this article earlier this year, so 2022, I, uh, came across this article that was about, um, like that main highway that goes through Los Angeles. Uh, and now I don't remember the number of the highway, but it's the one that you always see in movies when you're seeing like, a highway in Los Angeles that has the bumper to bumper traffic. Uh, because a bunch of groups got together and raised a butt ton of money basically to build an animal safe overpass, over the highway. Uh, because two things were happening. Of course, mountain lions are native to California, and um, this highway split their habitat in a really unsafe way. And that was actually causing the mountain lions to, because of the length of time and their habitat has been split, uh, to suffer the effects of inbreeding. They didn't have like, a diverse enough gene pool to actually have like, a healthy, uh, mountain lion population. And that's not good. But also, like, on the human cost side of things, UC Davis did a study, um, over the course of two years, uh, and they calculated that, um, the cost of wildlife vehicle collisions totaled about a billion dollars in those two years. So, you know, in addition to the loss of life of both humans and animals, the financial cost is also pretty tremendous.
Cheyenne: Are you talking about the 405?
Rachel: Yes. Thank you.
Cheyenne: For those curious, I did not correctly remember it. I had to look it up and one of my former work friends would be very disappointed to know that I didn't remember off the Bat that it was the 405, because she grew up just outside of Los Angeles.
Rachel: I feel like I've wound up getting to know a lot of people who live in Los Angeles. But prior to being an adult, um, my parents lived near Los Angeles for a while and hated it. Hardly surprising that they feel so at home in northeastern Minnesota.
Cheyenne: Um, right.
Rachel: As an adult, I've also had to kind of attempt to overcome a lifetime of conditioning of the hatred of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. It's a challenge. Mhm, but like that article, it really got me thinking about and actually, I'm going to pause because I'm a little bit concerned that this is going to come across like I'm comparing wildlife to the indigenous people that live here, and that's not my adventure. And also, hopefully it doesn't come across in that way, but, um, really kind of at the same time as we're and we being like colonizing Europeans who are embracing a hyper capitalistic culture, are destroying the lands of the people that were native here. Um, and maybe we're nomadic and all this other stuff. We're also, um, doing the same thing with the animals that live here in the interest of efficiency, which turns out it's just super duper. Not actually that efficient at all.
Cheyenne: No. Ironically.
Rachel: Right. So then the more I thought about it, the more I started thinking about, like, the city aesthetic right now is all, uh, glass, right? Like, new buildings being built are all they're light and beautiful, so you can see outdoors while you're in your soul sucking job in the downtown metropolitan area. And one thing that it was in the news a bunch right after the system being built, but, um, US. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis had this exact problem, and this didn't sit super well with me, but all of the complaints that I saw from the building owners were about the aesthetics of having a bunch of dead birds around their stadium and literally no distress whatsoever over the death.
Cheyenne: Right.
Rachel: So, yeah, I don't know, I guess now I've just been rambling for ten minutes here. All this really does have me thinking about the actual cost of the version of capitalism that we've chosen to embrace here, uh, in the United States. It's not good.
Cheyenne: It's not I also don't like you have traveled out of the country more than I have, but in my experience, it's not just the United States that we're doing this. We're doing this across the globe. And that's even more concerning. Um, we definitely, as humans, are very good at picking the short term solution instead of thinking long term and what's going to be least harmful to the environment. And us, I mean, we seriously we're humans, we are surprisingly not, uh, focused on self preservation.
Rachel: Right.
Cheyenne: Because all of the stuff that we've been doing to the environment is killing the environment. And we're like it's probably going to be fine. And a bunch of times scientists are like, no it's not. And we're like, but are you sure? And they're like, no, for sure. Not going to be okay, right? We're like, yeah okay, I'm going to do this anyway. Summed up 20 years of science right there. For anybody that wasn't caught up, you're welcome.
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Rachel: And I think the thing that gets me too at the point that we're in right now is that I don't know if this is happening in other places but like in the United States we have this very uh, individual problems and individual solutions culture. And so then there's all this talk of like, you know, like individually, okay, well we're going to use metal straws and we're not going to use as many plastic bags and we'll try to limit our driving, all the things.
Cheyenne: I'm going to stop using K cups and use it reusable basket thing.
Rachel: Yeah, but like which are all good things, right? Like I'm not saying that, oh no, you should do those things. Those are not the things that are going to save the planet.
Cheyenne: Right.
Rachel: Right.
Cheyenne: Tells you that it is.
Rachel: Right? Because then you have to go and buy the metal straws and buy the reusable bags, buy the coffee, um, pod.
Cheyenne: And because giant corporations can't say like, we know that the manufacturing process that we're using to make all of these things is actually the thing that's killing the planet but we're not going to change our practices. But you as individual consumers are responsible for everything that's happened. Which is no, not how that works.
Rachel: But pretty much so yeah. Like it really is down to like us, ah, putting pressure on both corporations and the government. Mhm, right. Because we started talking about infrastructure at the beginning. They're the ones that are responsible for the infrastructure.
Cheyenne: Surprising to nobody that's been listening for any length of time. We brought it back to policy, right. In case you were curious where this was going.
Rachel: Sometimes it could be hard to tell.
Cheyenne: Maybe, I don't know.
Rachel: I don't know.
Cheyenne: I thought it was pretty clear from the beginning, but well, that's fair. I also see the board that tells us I feel like for people who.
Rachel: Aren't, uh, who are not super familiar with our style of speaking, they're like, where's this going? What are they talking about? Like mountain lions on the highway and dead birds? Like what!?
Cheyenne: And what does this have to do with finance? Holy crap.
Rachel: Like a lot of things that we talked about on what the finance saving the planet is something that you can do individually, just like budgeting. But you also have to be pressuring people to be making more responsible policy decisions, um, about how they're, uh, building roads and manufacturing goods. Why not?
Cheyenne: And designing roads, right. Designing all of our transportation infrastructure. And honestly, we're getting close to time. But one thing that I feel like we didn't talk about was that in the United States there is a focus on individuals having vehicles instead of focusing on having public transportation so that we have fewer vehicles, which would lead to fewer accidents and less emissions, just better public transportation.
Rachel: Um, but one thing that I was super excited to see, um, if you have also been listening to What the Finance for anyway the time you know that the Hanson family is a cruising family. Mhm um, and uh, we're going on one next year, but we're changing to a different and significantly more affordable cruise line and see how it goes. Royal Caribbean with they are building, uh, a new class of ship powered by nitrogen, which burns more efficiently, it's a greener ship. That's kind of excited about that. Yeah, I know that cruising is not for everybody. Uh, I feel like I listen to a lot of podcasts where people kind of shit on it. But in this post pandemic world that we live in, and I get it, I maybe just don't care as much as I ought to.
Cheyenne: Um, no, I think that if it makes sense and we haven't done a travel episode for a while, maybe we should throw that in before the holidays because there are going to be a ton of deals that pop up. So ah, yeah, I think that we should probably cover that again. Um, I think it makes sense when you have a family. I mean, even when you don't have a family, it's an affordable way to travel.
Rachel: Exactly.
Cheyenne: Definitely a good travel option for people who can handle being on the sea for a while. Honestly, that's our biggest barrier is my spouse, Bridget. She gets seasick, so she gets motion sickness. We can't do it right? Because otherwise we've talked about it. It would be great. It would be an amazing and if we could figure out a way to work around that, we would because it's a wonderful way to travel.
Rachel: But turns out do you think this is a real issue?
Cheyenne: Uh, bringing it around feels like forever since I've done that to us, or one of us has done it. It used to be the end of every single one. We would be like, oh, we've been here for 2 hours. We should probably wrap this up, I guess.
Rachel: It’d definitely bedtime.
Cheyenne: It was bedtime an hour ago. It was bed time when we started. Really?
Rachel: Um, yeah.
Cheyenne: So bringing it around when looking at the infrastructure and some of the changes that really could happen to make our country more animal friendly and sustainable, look at who is running in your area this year. Mhm, if this is something that resonates with you and vote for those people who are going to advocate for those types of policy changes and as much.
Rachel: As you can buy from companies that have sustainable practices, but we also recognize that that's not super affordable.
Cheyenne: Yes, I feel like we say it every single time because we're like, we get it right.
Rachel: Um, we're there too with you.
Cheyenne: It's true. With all of that said, uh, election Day, November 8 this year, don't forget to vote. We'll probably throw that out quite a few times between now and then. Because if you haven't noticed that to us it's a pretty big deal. So much so that two years ago we only recorded a five minute segment on voting. And I actually just thought about it. I was like, man, we should do that again for this year. So we might want to make some plans. Um, but join authentics, discord, Twitter, Instagram, facebook? Is that it? I feel like I always forget one.
Rachel: Tik tok.
Cheyenne: Tik Tok. Yes.
Rachel: If you want a sneak peek to our episodes before they come out on Thursdays, Tik Tok is where you want to be.
Cheyenne: TikTok is where I always want to be.
Rachel: Yes, that's true.
Cheyenne: Mhm, thank you. Mhm, thank you.
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