I'm really so happy to be here.

Everybody that speaks as this event continues and continues

and my heart swells because all beings, quality for all beings.

That means to me that I'm truly not the last speaker.

We have an opportunity, at the very end of this,

I'd ask you to hold your thoughts

because this not really me that I hope to present to you.

But all those beings that are out there, inseparable from ourselves,

really, inseparable from ourselves, they're speaking right now.

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a solar powered jukebox.

And the Earth is our music.

Thirty years ago, this sound transformed my life.

I was making a long drive from Seattle, Washington,

to the University of Wisconsin,

I had plans of becoming a plant pathologist.

I just pulled over to the side of the road,

get out of the car, walked into a field, lay down to rest.

The thunder roar of the valley, roared through me,

feeling parts that I had never known that even existed.

This was the first time that I truly listened.

And I asked myself,

"how can I be 27 years old and have never truly listened before?"

I felt like I was living life incredible wrong,

and if you're going to listen, you have to be willing to change and I did.

I dropped out of graduate school

and I became a bike messenger earning $1 per delivery

and I only had one goal, and that was to become a better listener.

Roughly 10,000 deliveries later

I found my one teacher, which is a binaural microphone system.

An excellent teacher, two ears, flash density head.

Replicates human hearing,

but the important thing is that it has no brain.

And that's the problem that I had.

Because I had a brain,

so my whole life I was making choices between

what was worth listening to and what wasn't worth listening to,

and that's not listening.

That's controlled impairment.

But every time I listened, through this teacher,

the master came more messages.

Can you hear?

Can you hear the joy in their voices?

I got to know these coyotes appear over the course of the summer,

I never heard them sing before or sense like that.

I want joy like that!

They have a message.

And even from something as insignificant

as snow melting in the sunshine comes another message.

I added it.

The more I listened the more I heard.

The more I listen...

And then these messages start up to adding up to something really big.

Earth is a solar powered jukebox.

It really is,

which basically means, more the sunlights strikes the surface of the Earth

the louder it plays,

all you need is those solar panels

that are there to harvest the sun's energy

and cycle them into the bio-acoustic system.

This is the Amazon, maximum solar energy, maximum loudness, very diverse.

Let's go further North.

This is Belize, a little less solar energy and you can hear already.

But still, a lot of activity.

So let's jump up a little bit further, this is the state of Georgia.

Plays a different tune.

but it is not as loud.

And finally, to my home state of Washington.

A western meadow art, the most poetic of space,

huge contrast with the Amazon.

Earth is a solar powered jukebox.

Which helps explain why noise pollution is such a global problem.

The brightly lit areas are the noisiest places on the planet

because their consumption of fossil fuel is really the consumption

and release of ancient sunlight.

And in the United States,

which you can see outlined quite clearly in its energy consumption,

there are only 12 places left

which have been identified where is possible

to have just the experiences of nature,

without noise pollution, for at least 15 minutes.

In an average national park is less than 5 minutes.

During the daylight hours.

This is the town of Colstrip, Montana,

and we're listening to it, right now.

This is a recording that I made in 2007,

those four large stacks in the background

which turns acoustic ecology

are large flutes jumping huge amounts of low frequency noise

into the atmosphere and, understand this,

that consumes more than a 1,000 square miles

because how far sound noise travels is more than a 1,000 square miles.

Otherwise be just the opportunity to listen to the messages from Earth.

Natural silence, the experience of places without noise pollution

was once as calm and as pure water and pure air,

has become an endangered species

that it may slip away to extinction

without us even becoming aware of it.

We do a lot of talking.

And pretty soon is going to be time

for all those other beings to talk to us,

and I certainly believe that that's possible.

Universal language.

As some people do so much talking

that we grow up talking then we think that our ears actually evolved

so that we could hear each other speak.

That makes total sense!

OK? Except if that's true

we would be the first species on planet Earth

to have evolved so isolated from the rest of nature.

So, let's look at here when hearing.

All we have here is basically the range of human hearing,

low frequencies on the left hand side,

and then we have high frequencies on the right hand side.

What's interesting going on across here is those are not straight lines,

these are equal loudness contours,

and that bottom line is our threshold of human hearing.

Our ears are tuned like instruments,

and that highlighted yellow area shows that we have a pick sensitivity,

a super sensitivity for everything between 2kHz and 5kHz.

Well, that's kind of odd,

because almost everything I'm saying right now,

except the "S" sounds, are way below that,

what in our environment nearly fits into 2 to 5 kHz, let's listen.

Bird song.

Bird song.

This is the willie wagtail singing on the Australian outback.

And willie sings for a mate and also sings to establish territory.

and let's listen to what willie has to tell us.

All the time is belting it out here.

Yeah, all the time is passionately belting it out.

Not only it's calling for a mate, establishing territory

but revealing its identity to all potential predators,

and I get a message from willie:

love and risk are inseparable.

Thank you willie.

There is a larger question:

what in our ancestor's past,

with any benefit be to listening to distant bird song,

have towards human survival?

OK?

Imagine yourself now, a member of a nomadic tribe.

There are twelve of us in the group, men, women, children.

The whole reason why we are moving on

is because we have ran low on provisions.

So, we've come to a mountain ridge,

and we have a choice between two valleys

and from one valley, this valley, we hear nothing,

there is no information coming in;

and from the other valley, we can barely make our bird song,

and if the birds are singing there's staking territory,

there's a natural resource space, there's food, water

and an extended sea of prosperity enough to raise young.

Everything whinny to survive.

Each one of us,

no matter what our age,

we are still our ancestors.

And we are still on that mountain ridge.

And we are still choosing between two future valleys.

Except the valleys have changed.

There's no longer that valley of silence,

all we have is the valley...

This is Seattle, Washington.

Well, this is a by-passenger.

This is a recording of Seattle.

The tremendous noise pollution that that area produces.

Alright?!

All we also know, cultural vitality, people we love;

and in the other valley, we have the music of nature.

This is Olympic National Park, near my home.

And our ears tell us again quite clearly

which is the healthier environment,

but the answer that we will choose is not really clear.

Not to me. I know that I am still evolving,

but I do know that

we can save our National Parks and National Areas from noise pollution,

so that we can receive the messages from nature

and bring them back, make them more natural,

more habitable.

And there is not one place on planet Earth

that has been set aside to be an acoustic sanctuary

free of all noise pollution.

Last message comes from planet Earth itself.

The largest being of them all.

And the Earth is speaking.

Yeah, actually the Earth is singing.

When the sun rises all of life raises its voice.

And it's called the "Dawn Chorus".

And just as the sun has continued to circle the planet,

the sun raise phenomenon, since the beginning of time,

so does this wave of Earth song,

as an endless planetary song that continues to evolve

and changing composition with the evolution of life itself.

And we are going to listen to one 24h-circle reduced to a little over a minute.

We begin on the Australian outback, past through Asia,

then Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

The Earth is music.

But before we come in to tune, or attempt to,

there is only one thing we need to do

before we start thinking about how it all happened,

and that is simply listen.

I ask that we be as quiet as we can right now.

Can we shut down the air conditioning?

Can we open the doors?

It's possible, thank you.

We've had such a busy time,

talking to each other,

all the time,

having ears that were meant to listen to somebody else,

all those other beings, and here we are,

and no sound at all.