Regeneration Starts When We Stop Settling For Net Zero with David Gottfried

The planet can feel like a weight right now, not because people do not care, but because the scale is overwhelming. We are good at naming what is broken, yet still hungry for a map that makes hope actionable. That is where regeneration comes in, and it is why we sat down with David Gottfried, founder of the US Green Building Council and the World Green Building Council, to talk about healing systems instead of simply managing damage.

We get specific about what most people miss: sustainability often aims to stop the harm, maybe reach net zero, and then hold steady. Regeneration starts where that ends. David explains why “steady state” is not enough when aquifers are drained and ecosystems are already hurting, using a vivid metaphor of a bathtub that has overflowed into the whole house. From there, we unpack his “operating system” for a regenerative Earth, including value rings that put life at the center, and a practical equation that forces us to list inputs and waste, from energy and water to pollution, social equity costs, and even intellectual waste inside organisations.

The conversation also turns inward. We explore how technology and AI are evolving fast while human maturity often lags, and what it looks like to choose a more humane path in daily life. David shares tangible starting points in our own spheres of influence, plus a grounding way to measure progress beyond net worth: self-worth and soul worth. We end with a simple journal question, “What have I forgotten?”, and a challenge to take one small act of regeneration this week, driven by hope rather than guilt.

If this resonates, subscribe to Mind Meets Machine, share the episode with someone who feels eco-fatigued, and leave a review so more listeners can find it. What is one real thing you will regenerate in your corner of the world this week?

Transcript

From Eco Fatigue To Hope

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Dear listeners, there is a kind of tiredness in the air right now when it comes to the planet. Like people care deeply, but they are also overwhelmed. The problem feels too big, the headlines are too heavy, and the quiet voice scripts in that say is that what difference could I possibly make? So we have gotten very uh I mean very good at the at naming what's broken, right? And what we are starving for is a kind of sense that something could actually be built, and that hope is not knife. That healing the world is not a kind of fantasy, I would say. But it's a kind of system we could learn to run, right? So today we are into this with someone who has spent his life building exactly that thing. Yeah. So hey day listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host, Avik, and today's conversation is I would say bigger than what to say, it's bigger than usual. And I think we all need it. So we are talking about regeneration, not just sustaining what we have, but actively healing it and what it takes, obviously, in our systems, our business, and ourselves to move from despair towards the genuine hope. If the weight of the world has felt like too much lately, so then stay with us. And we have a very lovely guest with us who's a true pioneer. Please welcome our guest, David Gottfried. So welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Thank you, Abek. It's very great to be here. I like your topic of mine meets machine.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Thank you. Thank you so much, David, for joining us today. And dear listeners, like before we get deep into the discussion today, I'd quickly love to introduce you to David. So David founded the US Green Building Council and the World Green Building Council, which is a movement now spanning 85 countries and over a trillion dollars of economy, economic kind of activity. So a Stanford trained engineer, four times author, the global keynote speaker, and his mission is something I'd say he calls hope. Yes, I mean H O P E hope, like health on planet Earth. That's interesting, right? And his next book, which lays out the operating system for the regenerative Earth. Right. So I'll not take much of your time, dear listeners. There are a lot of things to discuss today. So uh let's get started and looking forward

What Regeneration Really Means

SPEAKER_00 2:36

to this. So, David, like I definitely want to start with the word, right? That's the center of your book, which is, I believe, uh, and I think that it's definitely sometimes widely misunderstood. Also, uh regeneration. Like most people hear it and assume that it's just a kind of fancy words for sustainability, right? For doing less harm. But you mean something which is quite different and far more hopeful, definitely. So, what do people most get wrong about it, about what regeneration is? So if you can share.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Sure, thank you. When we think about sustainability and its definition, it's to stop the harm. Maybe at best get to net zero and then stop that the water you collect is the same as the water you use, or to just stop your waste. But we've gone too far already here on Earth, and our ecosystems are hurting everywhere, and those the water in the aquifers has been dried down, and we don't want to sustain a dried-down aquifer, we want to refill it. We have climate change, we can't just get to a steady state because we've already done too much. It's like the bathtub and it's overflowed and it's all over, you know, but it's still overflowing. And so you're just going to stop the overflow, but it's already wet everywhere. We got to go get the water from the bedrooms and leaking downstairs and replenish. We need to get into the positive in the energy generation, in the water, in the waste, and even in the health. And this is about not just doing less harm or being incremental. This is about moving into the positive and putting real points on the scoreboard of Earth.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

So when we say there's like when that clicks for someone, that is it about healing and not just kind of uh, I'd say, slowing the damage. What shifts in like how they feed the whole challenge, or maybe how they see the challenge?

Getting To Root Causes

SPEAKER_01 5:04

It's much more than just healing, it's going even deeper than just put the band-aid on. It's trying to get to the root cause of the bleeding. The band-aids aren't enough, it's not working. We have lots of band-aids going on on earth, and I'm proud of them because they are maybe stopping the bleeding, but they're not getting to the root cause of why we're bleeding. And they're not getting to the cure, the deeper cure. And that's what we need. So we need to get to the underlying operating logic here as a civilization, not just put solar panels on an inefficient building. If that building or home has single-pane windows and no insulation and lousy lights and poor mechanical systems, you're running hot, but you're generating clean power. But if you super insulated and did passive solar design and good windows, you wouldn't need all that extra solar cells, although those would be good, but you're wasteful and then trying to be clean. So it's a the solar is fantastic and can get you into the positive, but tighten the body, tighten the body of ourselves. Look at the inputs and the intakes and get it clean.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

I mean, definitely. I mean, there is something that in what you just said is like I I definitely hold for a second. Like what you said is the entire goal, like from do less harm to actively make things more alive. And that's not just a kind of technical uh distinction. I mean, it changes the emotional weight of it. So sustainability can feel like damage control, obviously. And when I mean when you're saying uh it actually sounds like it's it's like a hope, right? And I think definitely a lot of people needed that

Value Rings And The Full Equation

SPEAKER_00 7:18

today. So if you just go a bit underneath, so at the same time, we tend to treat the planet's problem as a kind of collection of separate crises, like uh climate here, health there, economy somewhere else. But yeah, what you think in systems, like you have built in a whole operating system around this idea. So, what is the deeper pattern that most people miss about how all of this actually connected?

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yeah, it's and I I I love what we're doing, certainly in Green Building and our rating systems. And we have it in India, we have the India Green Building Council, we have the US one. That's going great. And we have healthy rating systems for buildings. But what about our bodies? What about our families? What about our neighborhoods, our communities, countries, and planet? So you need to look at it, it's actually a very simple hierarchy, but we're getting the equations wrong. I call it the impartial equation. The left side does not equal the right because we don't have all the variables in the equation. So the math is wrong. And there are two simple things in my new book, Region 360, that are for orientation. And we have a chapter on orientation. What is your map and compass? What direction are you going? But as you orient, what are those values that orient you? If you're using a comp, you don't have a compass, you can orient or even with the compass off of mountains, and they help guide you. But if you think of a bullseye target in the center is life, I call it V1. Value ring one is life. It's the bullseye. And then here's the bullseye. The next ring, V2, is life sustaining. We want to live. What do you need to live? Fresh air, water, food, safety, soil to grow. A sun would be good.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Great. Well, first is life and then life sustaining. The next ring is once you have life and life sustaining, what do you build as a society? Well, you build a community, a tribe, you help each other, you create agriculture, systems, energy, utilities, maybe even civil society government, laws and codes to guide it. Go a few more rings out, value ring five. David has a snowbore, his blue road bike, but you don't want the snowboard and how you made it to hurt life and life sustaining. It can't be snowboard at all costs, but it hurt people in the labor. It created landfill waste. It created CO2 high energy. So it needs to respect that hierarchy in what I call the full equation. The resultant of the equation, the thing you want to make, the snowboard, equals the product is the snowboard minus I minus U. I is inputs, you waste. And I want I's and W's to go to zero, so R equals P. But if high pollution, high waste, high social equity cost, high capital, high energy, those are inputs of waste. Those go high, it ruins the product.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

So that means you're saying like we have to always balance that. Like I calls to W or calls to zero. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

And you need to list them. What are all the I's in what you're doing? I'm raising a kid. What are the inputs? There's a lot of inputs into a kid: food, money, water, love, energy, commuting them to school and soccer clothing. What's waste in making a kid? The stuff that goes to the landfill. But also if you hurt your kid, that creates pain. Pain creates damage. PTSD. There's intellectual waste when we're not getting the most out of our workers. If you can make designs and products with zero inputs and waste, we want you to do it. But the way we hire you, we don't even ask you about the I's and the W's. Or there are some I's and W's, not all. But the greatest is intellectual waste, because we have greatness in us for great invention, and we're not hired that way. We're not driven that way. We're not fueled that way. We're not rewarded that way.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

That's quite interesting. And so if I if I also may ask, like, when did you first start seeing this as kind of one connected system rather than all those are separate?

Human Evolution In An AI Age

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Well, I I've worked in Green Building 35 years, and I'm very proud of our legacy. I love the rating systems we've created. Whether it's lead came out of USGBC and India even licensed it, Canada, many countries, but other countries have beautiful tools like Green Star in Australia, BREAM in England, Greenmark in Singapore, Three Star in China. We're all trying. We're doing a great job. But yet the slope of climate change is staying very steep. Almost no countries are meeting their Paris commitments. And yet we're dropping bombs on heads, including my country, which I don't feel great about. We're killing each other, we're killing ourselves. We have all these addictions, and we have phenomenal evolution in technology, the machines. I love machines, I love innovation. I always have to have the latest. AI has been my partner for two and a half years. Yeah, exactly. But there's a cost for all of that. But how is the human evolution versus technological evolution? And we as a species are not evolving fast enough. Our amygdalas are still running hot. The survival wiring that helped us outrun the tiger is now killing us. And we need to move over to the prefrontal cortex, the logic of the brain, and think things through better. And so I realized the underlying logic of society was wrong. And it wasn't serving a faster evolution of humans to put the E at the end of that word to become humane. And I call that the E-revolution. So, how do you use machines and technology to help accelerate human evolution instead of being human, to be frail, to be weak, to cultivate nature, to use Earth as a shopping mall, to become a humane species with empathy, gratitude, appreciation, love for all.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

That's quite interesting. Yeah. I mean, that idea that the health of the planet and the health of people on it are not kind of separate problems for sure. But the same one is very important because I think that CP's most conversations get because we have been trained to slice the world into uh kind of specialities, right? And seeing the whole thing as connected together in a way, the beginning of actually being able to heal it, right? So and you know, like I genuinely uh curious about the everyday part, I mean, in our daily day-to-day life, like human version of this, because my Meets Machine listeners are people who are living

Daily Practice For Regen Agents

SPEAKER_00 16:20

the ordinary day-to-day lives. So for someone who cares about like feels small against problems, this enormous where I mean, what do you think? I mean, where does this actually show up in their daily life? Like, where might they be quietly understanding their own part in that system?

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, and I I want to say this isn't just ideas and emotions. This is the future of wealth. This is telling, this is wealth based on true value is life. The future of growth is fine, but it's growth in lessening our ecological footprint. And we all can play. This isn't too big for us, this isn't every single thing you do every day. This is starting with your spheres of influence, and your first sphere is self, your body and your mind. How do you fuel your body? How do you move your body? And how do you feed and use your mind so it can regenerate lesson I's and w's, value life first and life-sustaining. You can eat better things, you can drink better things, you can stretch, meditate, breathe, sleep. You can work on good things in your work, the products and services, even the raising of your family. You can teach your kid about climate change, recycling, composting, electric vehicles, batteries, energy. You can teach them that this is our future. And yes, we got video games and TikTok and AI, but those can be your agent of accelerating evolution for humans. And this is a future path of wealth. And it's a deeper path of contentment and a life well lived. We have net worth we like to measure, our assets minus liabilities, high net worth, your God, self-worth, how our ego feels about how we occupy earth and our bodies. Fine. Important. The third worth, I named soul worth. Net worth, self-worth, soul worth. What's your soul worth? And what's that calculation of the good you put into the world? The gratitude, the appreciation, the care, and being of service, listening, having real dialogue and conversation. You're here because you care about your audience. You're here asking me questions to serve them. You are of service. You're putting points on the scoreboard of your soul, and it's radiating care and good and service into this world. When you die, you don't take your money with you, but hopefully you feel contented. You had a life of purpose and legacy and passion and mission.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

So here I would definitely want to ask you one thing. Like you have spent your life building the structures that let the regeneration scale across the business, buildings, whole countries. So, for someone who is listening, whether they lead an organization or just want to live more aligned with this, then what is the way of thinking that you would point them toward?

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Well, one, get outside of your own struggles. There's a bigger world here. And we are a collective. You are my brothers and sisters. I don't care where you live, I don't care your country, your culture, your race. I mean, I respect it. But we breathe the same air. We swim in the same water. We are interconnected. And so if I help you, I'm helping myself. So think about doing good. If you are of service and care and gratitude, you feel better personally. And how do you roll all that into your existence so that by you here occupying space on earth, you're radiating out contributions? It's so important. And I know we need our money to pay the rent, buy the house, get the car, put the kid in college. I have pursued this path for 35 years. And it was harder than you have. I had to help build a movement to get paid. I didn't just become a computer programmer or lawyer doctor in the established field. I started in Green Building in 1991. They're like, what's that? And, you know, no one wanted to even engage. But we made it work because it started with those value rings and it it stood on solid ground. And so you can bring this home in everything you do, you can go through. Uh, I have 15 categories and do inventory. You can goal set, you can take little steps and get in touch with your health, how you raise your kids, the products and services you make, your messaging, your inputs and ways could be listed in everything you do. And there's a chapter called What Have We Forgotten? No matter what you're doing today, and you think you nailed it, or you ran around like crazy and didn't, sit down

The Busy Trap And Finding Purpose

SPEAKER_01 22:35

with a journal or your phone and take that topic of the thing you're doing and write on the top, what have I forgotten? And start thinking it through. I forgot to say thank you to my spouse for breakfast. I forgot to breathe. I forgot to think of three things I'm grateful for. I forgot to make my bed. I forgot to walk instead of drive. I forgot to take out the recycling. I didn't calculate the carbon footprint on the thing I'm making. I ran my team too hard in the old culture. And I need to repair and apologize and say, I'm sorry. I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Thank you. That's very amazing. And here in this context, I definitely want to ask you about so listeners who are listening right now, maybe they'll be listening later. Because why I'm saying is because I can totally relate with you, because I've been into also real estate where I understand about the taking lead, the taking certifications about it, taking and house sustainability is much more important uh when it also comes for the uh the the buildings which where tenants we host, right? So that is much more important. So so from that perspective, if you have to give one advice to all the realistic people or the normal human beings, what one advice we'll give?

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Wake up. There's another earth here.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

And maybe the way you've been going isn't the right path. Maybe you're orienting towards old societal goals that are growth, growth at all costs. Growth, growth, growth, all costs, energy, water, waste, more eyes, more d's, and your own soul and spirit is exhausted. We're all what's the first thing you see a friend you haven't seen. How are you? Busy, busy. What the hell does that mean? Busy. I'm successful. I'm so busy making billions, I'm conquering the world, I'm important. Well, how are you really? I'm tired, I'm lonely, I'm hurting. I don't like what I'm doing. I'm wearing a suit and I can't breathe another second. That tie is sucking the oxygen out of my life. I'm a creative. What the hell am I doing? I wanted to paint my whole life. Instead, I was an engineer in real estate development. Well, behind is my painting, although the AI is following me. I gotta turn that off. But if you look at that painting, it's it's radiant. That's my energy. I painted into the world. It took till I was 50 years old on my birthday. I went to the art store, I bought the whole damn store, set up the easel, and just started to let it fly. And I painted for 10 years, five of them half time, not self-trained, just started. And I ended up in two galleries, I had 10 art shows, I have paintings all over the world, up to 12 feet. It just poured out of me. I wanted to write. I started writing at 40, and I've now in my fourth book. I like to teach through story. You can do it. Take those first steps to honor yourself. Not who you were told to be, but where's your divine greatness? We all have it. And if you can find that, you can put that harmony, that music, that light into this world and contribute and increase your soul work. I have a website.

Regen Circles And Closing Challenge

SPEAKER_01 27:09

It's www.regen360.net, R-E-G-E-N-3Net. And you can find my 80 podcasts, my four books, some of my ideas and inventions. When my book, my book's available now. You can get the links for pre-order. And I'll have something there called regen circles in October for the book launch. You could read about how to start a regen circle near you. I want this to go viral where we create little circles of support and accountability for regen agents, not change agents, but regen agents. And I think if you're listening to this, it could be you. And get a group together to support you as a base camp to go up the mountain. Because we're all need to go up the mountain. And once we've climbed one, start looking for the next. That's what I've been doing for 35 years. And I couldn't do it alone. We need each other.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Exactly. Definitely we need each other. And with this, thank you so much, David. I mean, uh, like it's it's really great uh knowing from you and also about your approach of hope. So to hear someone who has built movements at the scale will definitely speak with this much hope. So that's exactly what people needed this today. So uh people who are listening right now, maybe you'll be listening later as well. If the weight of the walls problem has felt like it's too much lately, right? So here's what I'll definitely leave you with is like you don't have to carry it all. You don't have to carry everything, right? You you were never meant to, but you do have a place in the system. So just pick one this week, one small, maybe real act of regeneration in your own corner of the world, and do it not from guilt, but from the hope. That is, that is where it begins. So with this hope, this is your host, Avik, and this is Mind Means Machine. I'll see you the next one. Thank you so much. Thank you.