Carbon is life, not the enemy. And in this wide-ranging conversation with the legend that is Paul Hawken, we get into all of it. Paul is an activist, entrepreneur with Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration and prolific writer who started a natural food brand back in the 1970s. We trace his journey through writing Drawdown, Regeneration, and Carbon: The Book of Life and why people loved Drawdown so much even though that was never really the point. Regeneration got closer to the core. And Carbon is chuck-full of nuggets of wisdom about the magical, magnificent role carbon plays in our lives. Yes, there’s too much of it in the atmosphere, but there are also many places it can go, quickly and safely.

We talk about his work with large food companies, and the pure joy of bringing top executives to real regenerative farms and watching the lightbulbs go off, followed immediately by the panic of realising just how far their current supply chains are from anything like that. We get into food as medicine, and how furious Paul was with the healthcare and food system after he cured his lifelong asthma at 18 simply by changing what he ate. He had never taken a full breath of air until that moment. And we talk about his genuine excitement about the new generation of scientists coming up.

One advice: just go outside for as long as possible, and listen to this episode somewhere beautiful and alive.

 This podcast is part of the Carbon Series supported by the OGCR project, with aims to create a trusted open source framework and make sure the benefits of carbon are shared across generations.

CARBON AS LIFE, NOT THE ENEMY

Carbon has become a symbol people love to fight, measure, remove, and monetise. That might be the biggest mistake we can make. This reductionist view is part of the same fragmented mindset that created our ecological crises, and that we must instead understand carbon as the fundamental building block of life. We need rebuild the story from the ground up: carbon is not the enemy, carbon is life, and the real challenge is getting it back into living systems safely and fast.

“And, to me, that’s emblematic; it’s representative of the mindset that’s caused the problem, which is to separate and make distinctions that aren’t true.” — Paul Hawken

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE IS ABOUT SOIL, NOT PLANTS

Hawken draws a critical distinction between industrial agriculture and a regenerative approach. He explains that true regeneration requires a fundamental shift in focus to cultivating the complex, living ecosystem of the soil itself.

“And so, regeneration is just a figure-ground shift, which is, it’s all about the soil. All about the soil, and to understand the soil as an ecosystem, as complex as anything we know of on earth, that literally all life comes from the soil.” — Paul Hawken

THE NEED FOR FARMER-TO-FARMER EDUCATION

Paul shares what he is seeing in science right now: sharper observation, deeper humility, and a growing bridge between rigorous research and Indigenous knowledge. He also pushes back on “hope” as a climate posture, arguing that fearlessness and courage matter more when the work is hard, messy, and public.

Highlighting the limitations of conventional agricultural education and corporate influence, Hawken advocates for peer-to-peer learning models. The most effective way to spread regenerative practices is by enabling farmers to learn directly from other farmers who have successfully navigated the transition.

“There’s just one bucket, really, which is to create modalities of education in countries all over the world so farmers could get a stipend to come and stay for a week or whatever and listen to other farmers doing exactly what I’m doing, which is: people learn from their peers”. — Paul Hawken

FOOD AS MEDICINE AND PERSONAL HEALTH

We unpack why modern industrial farming feeds plants instead of soil, why “regenerative” is being diluted into a marketing term, and why carbon credits, insetting, and carbon removal can turn absurd when they ignore biology. Paul explains the soil-canopy relationship, the carbon cycle as movement rather than storage, and why the water cycle and hydrosphere above land may be the most underused lever for climate resilience.

We also go downstream into nutrient density, food as medicine, and the health costs of a broken food system. Drawing from his personal health journey, Hawken connects the quality of our food directly to our wellbeing. He posits that much modern illness stems from what we consume and that vibrant health is often achieved not by seeking a perfect diet, but by eliminating harmful, industrial foods from our plates.

“I said, the reason isn’t because of what I eat. It’s because of what I don’t eat. I’m healthy because of what I don’t eat. The fact is that most illness and sickness and pathologies in the world come from what people are eating and imbibing or drinking or breathing in many cases too.” — Paul Hawken

OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED

Koen and Paul also talked about:

• Critique of regeneration greenwashing
• Hope versus courage and action
• Limits of technocratic climate solutions

LINKS:

• Project Drawdown
• Project Regeneration
• Carbon – The book of Life
• The Story of Earth’s Hidden Wisdom & The Intelligence Beneath Our Feet | Paul Hawken interview by Rich Roll

LINKED INTERVIEWS:

• Toby Kiers, the Jane Goodall of fungi and mycorrhizal networks on being an underground astronaut
• Herb Young – After 36 years at Bayer, growing regen citrus with 8x the nutrients
• Anne Biklé and David R Montgomery – After studying more than 1000 papers the definitive answer, we are what our food ate
• Josh and Rebecca Tickell – If you like sick people and climate chaos keep investing in chemical agriculture
• Louis De Jaeger – Eat More Trees: a Masterclass with thé storyteller of the Regen Space

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.