S2 E2:

Caring & Winning with

Lily Cole

Dana Thomas: This is Dana Thomas, and you're listening to The Green Dream, a podcast about how to green up your life.

Climate change is bearing down on us like a mighty hurricane. And it's scary as hell, but it doesn't have to be. I'm Dana Thomas, a leading voice in the sustainable fashion movement. On The Green Dream, I welcome global experts, creators and change makers from politics, business, and the arts for dynamic conversations on how you can green up your life. The Green Dream is the podcast of hope.

This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

This episode is also sponsored by Skydiamond, the world’s first and only diamond made entirely from the sky. CO2 is taken from the atmosphere in a process powered by the wind and sun, and using captured rainwater. Skydiamond mines the sky for diamonds to protect the earth, and in doing so, turns a negative into a positive. To shop their jewelry collection, have an engagement ring handmade, or learn about Skydiamond, visit Skydiamond.com, or follow them on Instagram @Skymineddiamond.

Dana Thomas: My guest today on the Green Dream is Lily Cole, the British model-turned-environmentalist, and author of Who Cares Wins: How to Protect the Planet You Love, an eye-opening book about climate change, published by Penguin Life. Lily began modeling twenty years ago, at the age of 14, when she was discovered by an agent on a Soho, London street. With her moon-pale complexion, wide-set blue eyes, and wild red hair, Lily quickly caught the fashion industry’s attention, and was soon the star of major ad campaigns and fashion shows, including Alexander McQueen, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Jean Paul Gaultier. She landed her first Vogue cover, for the British edition, in 2003, and when she was 16, she was named “Model of the Year” at the 2004 British Fashion Awards. French Vogue listed Lily as one of the top 30 models of the 2000s. 

When Lily was 17, she modeled for a jewelry company that was

later accused of exploiting local Bushmen with its diamond mining

practices. Lily traveled to Botswana to understand the situation, and

she was so moved by what she saw, she helped the Bushmen

export their own jewelry and keep the profits. This was her first

campaign to help the planet and humanity, and it put her on the

path toward activism. 

Since then, she has woven together her modeling and climate awareness work. From 2009 to 2015, she had a knitwear company called The North Circular that used eco-friendly dyes, wool from rescued sheep, and mills in the UK. More recently, she has served as the face for Skydiamond, a British tech start-up that turns CO2 from the air into diamonds, and she has collaborated with Oyuna, the responsibly sourced Mongolian cashmere brand in London, to create a capsule collection called Nomad. 

Following the publication of her book, Lily launched a podcast of her own, also called Who Cares Wins. On it, she discusses climate solutions with guests such as Chelsea Clinton, David Attenborough, and Elon Musk.

I heard Lily speak at the TED Countdown Summit in Edinburgh last year, during a dinner she hosted at the botanical gardens for conference attendees, and was truly moved by her passion for climate reforms. I think you will be too.

I also welcome back to the Green Dream our regular contributor Hannah Elliott, luxury car writer for Bloomberg Pursuits, who will tell us about the new Rimac Nevera, a 1,914-horsepower electric supercar that retails for $2 million. As Hannah says in her review, “we can’t be expected to stay simple all the time.” 

One of the reasons we talk about EVs a lot on The Green Dream is because they are the future of transportation—we’re all going to be driving EVs one of these days, and in not too long. New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that the state will require all new vehicles sold there to be zero-emissions by 2035. New York is following California’s lead. Last month, the Golden State mandated 100 percent zero-emission and hybrid plug-in vehicle sales statewide by 2035. Expect other states to do the same. The second reason we talk a lot about top-drawer EVs here on The Green Dream is more personal: we love cool cars. 

But first, Lily Cole, from her home in Lisbon. She too has a passion for luxury EVs, as she will explain.

Lily Cole, thank you so much for joining us on The Green Dream. So let's talk about your early days of modeling and your early days of activism. You started modeling at 14, when you were discovered walking down a Soho Street one evening. You moved into ecoactivism a few years later. How did you pivot from fashion into environmental issues?

Lily Cole: In a funny way, fashion sort of led me on that path, which doesn't always seem obvious. I think I would've gone into the environmental work regardless, but it just so happens that I started modeling at 14, and because of that I had a very quick jolt into both the business world, by working with different businesses and advertising for different companies, and also into the philanthropy sector because a lot of different organizations were reaching out at that time, as I had a bit of a profile, asking me to support their work. And being quite a curious person, I was very curious to try and understand all the different issues that I was being approached about, either to do with the businesses I was advertising for or different charity initiatives.

Lily Cole: And I feel I did a process of research in that period as a teenager trying to better understand the issues that we have globally to deal with. Feeling some level of responsibility for the work I was doing and the brands I was advertising for, when at times they were being questioned. I mean, just a few instances of that happening. In a funny way, that's sort of what took me in that path. And once I started trying to understand what was going on and looking at some of the information that was very easily available — you know, this is nearly 20 years ago — it just became very clear to me that if we didn't pay attention to the environment, every other issue that I cared about, would be made worse. And it was just very fundamental and it was crazy to me that it wasn't something that more people and, of course, the environmentalists, but the mainstream, we're paying attention to because it is so fundamental. It felt like the rug underneath everything else.

Dana Thomas: Absolutely. Now you went to Africa when you were just a teenager to visit the San or the Bushmen of Botswana because you went to see how they were exploited by the jewelry industry. Now, what pulled you into that and what did you discover from that trip? You were what, 17?

Lily Cole: Yeah, I think I was 17 at the time. I had modeled for a jewelry company and then the jewelry company was caught up in a media storm because they were being accused of participating in a system in Botswana that had essentially pushed the indigenous communities, the Kalahari San, off of their indigenous territory in order to facilitate diamond mining. This is the charge that was being leveled at the diamond mining industry in general in Botswana, and at this company in particular. I was brought into the center of that because I was the face of the company at the moment, and I wasn't aware of it going into it, let's put it that way, and I found myself in the middle of this media storm and tried to get my head around how to respond and try and understand what actually was going on.

Lily Cole: And I met with an amazing anthropologist, who became friends of mine over the years, Dr. James Suzman, who had spent, at that time, several decades in that region working with the San communities. And I spent several hours talking to him about the issues, and, in the process, trying to get my head around the complexity of it. And he, I think, could see how interested I was, and at some point said, 'Well, why don't you just come and see for yourself?' At which point I was like, 'Yeah.' Because I actually–I grew up wanting to travel and I never left Europe, and, you know, jumped at the chance to travel. And I genuinely cared, and I wanted to understand how to respond to the situation. So I traveled there with him and we spent about 10 days traveling around Botswana, meeting different communities, NGOs, politicians, and trying to understand the complexity of the situation.

Lily Cole: And I think the biggest learning I write about in my book, "Who Cares Wins," was that experience was one of the pivotal experiences I think that started to open my mind to the fact that all of these different companies that you could either work for, in my case model for, buy the jewelries or buy the products of, and I'm not just talking about jewelry, I mean all companies, that this whole capitalist system has this huge, invisible, largely invisible network behind it of impact. And that that impact is social and its environmental and, in many times, it's a negative impact. And I think that experience alongside a few others really pivoted me to trying to look at business and economics as a way to think about social environmental change as opposed to philanthropy. Because if we don't systemically change things through supply chains and the way we're making products, then you know, we're going to keep systemically creating problems.

Lily Cole: And conversely, if you try and do something in a more positive way, you can use those trade systems to have a positive impact. So actually, on that trip, we met these women who were making these incredible pieces of jewelry, and they'd take ostrich eggshells, which I don't know if you've seen ostrich eggshells, but they're quite big.

Dana Thomas:  Yes, Like the size of a grapefruit.

Lily Cole: Yeah, even bigger, and they're very thick, the skin of the shell. So they would take ostrich egg shells and they would smash them into different shapes, and then file them into different shapes that would essentially become beads. And then they would blacken some with smoke and leave others white, and then sew together these incredibly ornate, beautiful pieces of jewelry. And then being in the middle of the bush in Botswana, you know, they'd be kind of like haggling them with the odd passing traveler for very, very small amounts of money. And so we set up a trade system, selling the jewelry at that time to Dover Street Market in the UK, in London, all the money from the sales going back to the community. 

Dana Thomas: Dover Street Market being a very posh, luxury boutique, not some outdoor street market.

Lily Cole: Exactly. For anyone not familiar, very, very posh market,  where they were selling then for hundreds of pounds and all the money was going back to the community. And that, in a way, was, I think, my first experience of trying to do a fair trade project, and I didn't even use the language of fair trade, or think about it in those terms. It was just a kind of instinctive response to the situation of how can we try and do something that's more positive. But that became a guiding ethic to the way I still understand things today, which is how do we pay people to make things in a way that's respectful and fair, so that the gift runs both ways, so that we get to benefit from other people's beautiful materials or work, and that they can benefit too.

Dana Thomas: You also started a company called The North Circular about this time, didn't you?

Dana Thomas: What was that exactly? Tell us about it because I think it's really fascinating. And you were again only 17 or 18 when you did this?

Lily Cole: Yeah, I did it with a friend of mine and it was inspired by very much the same thinking, which is how do we create more transparency around the stories behind products? Because I felt like the environment I'd grown up in in London, everything was so anonymous, this kind of like "Made in China"-mark that you'd see on everything, or Made in Italy. And, and I'd never really thought about it, as a kid growing up–like, there are people behind every product, that there is an environmental impact behind every product. All of that had been so anonymized, and as I was starting today, I opened my mind to the idea that there are so many people and so many different types of impacts behind different products. The North Circular was I think a first stab at trying to gently and in a maybe slightly provocative, funny way, indicate that idea. So what we did is we got mostly grandmas, I mean some younger people too, but it was mostly grandmas across the UK to handknit goods and on the label of the goods–so it was like beanies and socks and scarves and that type of accessories–and then on the label of the good, we would write the name of the knitter and a quote from them. And then sometimes create content around the knitters’ stories.

Dana Thomas: The wool was from local sheep?

Lily Cole: Oh my gosh, yeah, we tried, I mean what's that saying? Don't let perfect with the enemy of good. I mean we tried to be so perfect about it. The first collection was made with wool that came from rescued sheep that were rescued from a slaughterhouse and were being brought up in Yorkshire on a farm by Izzy Lane, who's a wonderful, wonderful woman. I think she still has her own brand and yes, they've been rescued from slaughterhouses and allowed to live out their lives and we were using their wool to begin. After that we kind of diversified, we were always using UK-based wool, it was always a local production, eco dyes. We tried to keep everything as environmental and local as possible, and then we tried to tell the stories of each product, and how it had come into being. So yeah, that was our first initiative and we both, me and my friend who set it up, we both had grandmas who knit. So that was also part of the inspiration.

Dana Thomas: And it carried on for a while. You had it running for what, seven, eight years? Even more no?

Lily Cole: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dana Thomas: But you wound up having to close it because...?

Lily Cole: Well, I think if it...

Dana Thomas: Capitalism did you in, right?

Lily Cole: Somewhat, yeah. I actually think if we launched it today, which I don't have the bandwidth for–I'm very not keen to set up new businesses now. But I think if we launch it today it might be much more successful. Because I think there is actually a lot more appetite for these types of initiatives and awareness of craft, and the humans, and the stories behind products that can be valued. Whereas I think maybe we were just a bit early.

Dana Thomas: You were ahead of the curve in fashion when it came to these...

Lily Cole: Yeah and I don't think there was enough...

Dana Thomas: The ideas of climate and the environmental impact and social impact. Nobody was really talking about this. At least not in mainstream fashion.

Lily Cole: Exactly.

Dana Thomas: In 2010, 2009. It was all luxury, luxury, luxury, logo, logo, logo. That's when my book "Deluxe" came out. Everyone was completely obsessed with logos. They weren't thinking about climate impact.

Lily Cole: And the thing is, if you do something like that, so if you create a product locally and you're paying local knitters and it's handmade, it is going to cost more to produce. That's just a fact. I mean even if handmade is always gonna be more expensive, of course, even if it wasn't handmade. If you're doing local production, it's more expensive because so many of the prices we used to today are predicated upon wage gaps between different countries. We're kind of exploiting, I would say a colonial legacy of some countries being poorer than others and therefore having much lower wages. And then in wealthier countries we can exploit that difference to create products much cheaper. And I think that that's created a very problematic idea of what things should cost. And I think the issue we had with The North Circular was largely—I would not say the only thing—but I think largely it was a pricing issue–that people just felt it was expensive. Why would you spend 50 pounds on a beanie when you can get one for five pounds? Whereas I think today there might, maybe I'm wrong, but my sense is that's shifted a bit and that there is a bigger market for people who want to pay more because they understand the they're paying into a different value system and that therefore...

Dana Thomas: And also getting better quality.

Lily Cole: Getting better quality. And we offered repairs for life. So also buying into something that should be something that can be loved and looked after for many years. I mean, I still have some of my products from the North Circular today, I have a blanket for example, that I love,  and I would never dream of throwing out, and if it hasn't got damaged, but if it got damaged I would mend it. And I think that shift in changing our relationship to loving things more and paying more for stories we want to celebrate and therefore keep in our lives. I hope it feels to me there's a bigger appetite for that today.

Dana Thomas: Now did you get any pushback from the fashion industry, or from fashion players, or fashion followers for this ethical stance so early in the conversation?

Lily Cole: It's always hard to know. Not directly to my face. American Vogue ran a story on The North Circular, and actually we got quite a lot of coverage. Another project I did around wild rubber, and how the world rubber trade can support local people in the Amazon to protect the rainforest, got a lot of support from fashion. So I've actually found at least my contacts and my network in fashion have been quite supportive to these different initiatives. I think my focus on positive examples has never caused me a problem.

Dana Thomas: This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

This episode is also sponsored by Phlox, a personal style consultancy and high fashion vintage retailer, where responsible fashion meets creativity, individuality, and beauty. Developing your own personal style and buying what's you, is the key to sustainability. Flox presents timeless, modern, vintage clothes with a heavy dose of glamour. To shop and learn about available services, visit Phlox, that's P H L O X.com or follow them on Instagram at Phlox Slow Fashion. 

If you are enjoying this episode of The Green Dream, check out my interview with Nancy Birtwhistle, who won The Great British Bake Off in 2014, with a plum loaf she proved in a microwave. She now writes books about how to live a more eco-responsible life, including her most recent, Green Living Made Easy, published by Pan Macmillan.

Now back to my guest Lily Cole, the British model turned environmentalist, and author of Who Cares Wins: How to Protect the Planet You Love, published by Penguin Life.

Dana Thomas: You wrote, "Who Cares Wins" two years ago and it's a big book covering everything from diet to energy. Why did you write it?

Lily Cole: I wrote it because I felt like I had been working in this space of environmental activism for want of a better phrase, for quite a few years at that point. And I felt like I'd learnt a lot, and researched a lot, and I was also seeing a lot of really positive trends and developments that I thought it might be helpful to try and communicate and synthesize, especially in an environment at that time, which as I said in 2016 where environmental awareness was still not super mainstream, at least mainstream in the way it's become, I'd say in the last four years, felt like there was a real need to communicate around it. And also when it was communicated at that time, it felt very much about doom and gloom.

Dana Thomas: Absolutely, eco-angst. Eco-anxiety. We try to do exactly the opposite on The Green Dream.

Lily Cole: And I felt genuine in my experience. At that point, so 2016, I'd been doing that work for 12 years at that point. And I felt like a lot of the areas I had been working in, whether it's stakeholder capitalism, conscious consumerism, the B Corp movement, the gift economy, the indigenous wisdom, felt like there had been so many positive changes and developments. Growing movements, growing awareness, new technologies, and rather than focusing on doom and gloom and the problem, which is, of course, really important, I wanted to also shine light on all of the different developments and solutions that we could pay attention to and also try and help to grow and succeed.

Dana Thomas: And you also started a podcast called "Who Cares Wins." Why did you decide to do that?

Lily Cole: I had done a loads of different interviews for the book and a lot of them I'd audio recorded and I looked back at some of the audio recordings, once I was publishing the book, and I realized that a lot of them were fairly decent quality. They hadn't been recorded with the purpose of making a podcast, most of them had been recorded on my iPhone, but were actually quite good and really interesting I thought. And so I thought it would be interesting to use that content and share it. So the first few episodes of the podcast, the first episode is with Mark Boyle, a man who lives without technology, and Elon Musk who probably needs no introduction. The second episode is on meat, and I had Paul McCartney, Alice Waters, the founder of Impossible Foods, Isabella Tree.

Lily Cole: So a lot of those earlier episodes are using audio that had already been recorded, and I thought it would be interesting to share that content, and also to set up the thesis of "Who Cares Wins" as a platform, which is trying to bring together different perspectives on these complex topics. So with that example of Elon Musk and Mark Boyle, you have two people who are really probably considered environmentalists in very different ways. One who's decided to live without technology, and lived without money for three years, as a very grassroots vision of what environmentalism means to him. And then Elon Musk symbolizes the green tech revolution possibility. In the meat example, we had voices that are against meat and trying to work towards the world without farming animals, and then also voices that look at regenerative agriculture and how animals could be part of certain types of environmentally friendly versions of farming.

Lily Cole: So I was trying to set up this idea that we've continued then throughout the podcast, of bringing together different perspectives and I wasn't sure if I would go beyond that first season, the first season to come out with the book. And then I sat on it for a while and thought it through and then I've come back to it and we relaunched a second season this year because I think it's just, it's such an evolving conversation and, I don't know if this is your experience with your work, Dana, but it's such an evolving landscape that it doesn't feel possible to just end the conversation. The book was written, the book came out, but the conversation doesn't end there. It's constantly moving and changing and the landscape's constantly evolving, and I personally want to continue to be part of that conversation, and to continue to learn and continue to listen to different voices. So I think the podcast has allowed me to continue that conversation going and hopefully take some of the audience on that journey with me.

Dana Thomas: It surely does. Now, you say in the book that environmental and social issues are deeply intertwined. How so do you think? I have my ideas, but I'd love to hear yours.

Lily Cole: I think all of our issues are intertwined. I think that one of the many problems we face is the siloing of problems. Where we think about environmentalism as something separate to animal welfare or poverty or human issues and actually I would say that there are systemic drivers to all of these issues that intersect.

Dana Thomas: It's all of a piece.

Lily Cole: It's all of a piece. Yeah. And it's also a consequence of the systems we have and the systems we have are interconnected and have multifaceted effects. If you take Covid as an example, people continue I think in the mainstream to think of Covid as a health issue. And it is, of course, a health issue, but it is also deeply connected to the same drivers that are driving the biodiversity crisis we have, and the climate crisis. There were several papers that came out the year of the pandemic that were exposing some of the science that had actually been around apparently for quite a while, that was being largely ignored, saying why we are having more and more pandemics, why there is a higher risk of zoonotic infections today than there was say a hundred years ago. And the drivers are so similar, eerily similar to the key drivers of the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis.

Dana Thomas: Such as?

Lily Cole: Such as the increasing demand for animal protein, intensive animal agriculture, loss of space for wildlife, the travel component of globalization. So the fact that animals are being forced into unnatural proximity to each other through intensive animal agriculture and through the loss of wild spaces, is creating more and more zoonotic diseases. Zoonotic being a disease that jumps from an animal to another animal to a human.

Dana Thomas: So interesting.

Lily Cole: Then of course travel has accelerated the ability of the virus to move quickly.So if we don't think about the systemic connections between these issues then I think we'll never actually be able to solve any of them. I was in Davos recently with Arctic Basecamp, and I moderated a panel on the connections between conflict, food security and energy. One of the youth activists was from Ukraine and spotlighting how the situation in the Ukraine has drawn attention to these intersecting global issues and how the energy crisis is connected to conflict, and how that conflict is now causing food security issues. Sure you're well aware of the knock-on effect of Ukraine. And I think for too long these different conversations are kind of siloed and separated from each other.

Dana Thomas: Compartmentalization, we're really good at it. It's a human reaction, isn't it?

Lily Cole: Yeah, so I think finding the connections, and realizing that in trying to solve one thing we may be able to solve many others too, is a helpful—complicated—but helpful way of trying to think about the changes that need to be made.

Dana Thomas: Yeah. Now, you've called the phrase "conscious consumerism," annoying. Why do you find it annoying?

Lily Cole: I love these little things you've pulled out the book. It is annoying isn't it? I don't know, something about it I find really irritating. I guess because consumerism is such a problematic idea in the first place. The idea that we are consumers before we are citizens. The idea that our economic system is driven by a model of...

Dana Thomas: Consuming.

Lily Cole: Yeah. A version of humanity that doesn't feel integral to human happiness. The idea that we have to consume more forever, and then to the idea that you would then take that concept of humans as consumers and try and make it conscious seems almost paradoxical, right? It's like conscious killing, or …

Dana Thomas: Exactly. How have you resolved this conflict within your own career? Because as a model you are pushing consumption by saying, here isn't this beautiful buy it.

Lily Cole: Of course.

Dana Thomas: So how do you reconcile that conflict?

Lily Cole: Well, I think it's not entirely reconcilable. I try to be very pragmatic, and pragmatically speaking, we live in a global capitalist economy that's based largely on consumption. And so if that is going to be the key driver of our economy, and of our environmental footprint, and our social footprint on the world, can we do that in a more conscious way? Because if we do that in a more conscious way, I think then we create systemic levers of change that can be much more positive. And, actually, with the example of maybe the ostrich eggshell jewelry from the San, that genuinely to me feels like a version of conscious consumption. Even if the terminology conscious consumption still irks me a bit. Because you are, you are celebrating the creativity of another community. You're celebrating the materials that they have in that community and you are rewarding them for that in a way that benefits them, and also getting to celebrate that in your own context in a beautiful way.

Lily Cole: And I think that those sort of fair trade initiatives do actually excite me and do make me think that trade can be a really positive force. And also conscious consumerism can be about circularity. So it can be about, like we were saying, fixing things, mending things, loving things for longer. So the terminology still bothers me, but I do think the essence of it is really true and important. I was actually looking at my cat this morning–I've got a lovely cat, and she was licking herself like cats do to clean herself. And I was thinking it's so funny isn't it, that we have all these products, even if it's organic or natural, we have all these soaps and products to, like, wash our bodies and wash our hair. Whereas cats don't need that . They got it figured out.

Lily Cole: And then I was just thinking materialism is so crazy, isn't it? I've got this whole—and I try and be fairly minimalist—but I still got this whole apartment full of stuff, like beautiful objects, little bits of art, trinkets from here, candles, plants, that's actually so unnecessary. Like a cat just does its thing and doesn't need clothes, and doesn't need ornaments, and art and stuff. It does need food, to be fair, if not, it will be out hunting.

And then I was thinking about Mark Boyle, the guy who lives with nothing and I was thinking that's sort of what he's done. He's sort of living a bit more like an animal where you're just self-sufficient in a very local way. And that probably is the much more authentic way of thinking about environmentalism. I do also have a penchant for nice things, and celebrating creativity, and culture, and innovation and of course I also like all the modern comforts, whether it's heating, or computers, et cetera. So I haven't gone down the Mark Boyle-path yet, and I don't know if I ever will.

Dana Thomas: So tell us about Mark Boyle–the thumbnail sketch of Mark Boyle.

Lily Cole: So Mark Boyle I met because he... 

Dana Thomas: Where does he live? 

Lily Cole: He lives in Ireland. I met him many years ago, when I was setting up an online project trying to encourage people to do things for each other for free. And he'd been working in that space for quite a long time,  what's called the gift economy. And he'd written a book called the "Moneyless manifesto" because he lived without money for three years. And so we connected over that and he's the sweetest man. We became good friends through that process.

Dana Thomas: He lived without money by choice?

Lily Cole: Yeah, yeah, yeah. By choice. Very much by choice and by design.

Dana Thomas: Not because he was homeless or unemployed?

Lily Cole: No, no, no, no. Very much by choice, by design. He wanted to see how it felt to live without money. And he said it felt amazing, because he became much more self-sufficient, and also much more connected to community, because he had to exist through gifts, and giving and receiving gifts with other people. And he wrote about that in a book called "The Moneyless Manifesto."

Dana Thomas: "The Moneyless Manifesto."

Lily Cole: He's absolutely lovely. So we became friends and then one year he wrote to me, this sweet little handwritten pencil letter, to let me know that he was now living at this point with money, not a lot of money, but he sold his book.

Dana Thomas: Well, because he sold his book.

Lily Cole: Totally, sold his book. .

Lily Cole: And he actually said he decided, he felt too rigid and too extreme in the not-having-any-money philosophy. I think he still lives with very little, and he tries to live mostly through the gift principle. But he'd sold his book, he bought a piece of land and, and now, his new kind of experiment was going to be living without any technology that's made after the industrial Revolution. And so he'd written me this letter to let me know that from now on I could visit him or I could contact him through letters through the post. But he didn't have a computer, didn't have electricity, he didn't have a phone. And I was sort of going back to the land and I did visit him. 

Dana Thomas: This is fantastic. 

Lily Cole: Yeah, it's amazing. And I visited…

Dana Thomas: It's actually a lot like the Amish. I grew up outside of Philadelphia, not far from Lancaster County where the Amish live more or less on the idea of living before the Industrial Revolution. They sew their own clothes. I think they do have sewing machines, but I'm not positive because, maybe they don't, maybe they have pedal ones but they don't have electricity, they don't have television, they don't have...I mean there are some who do of course, but there's some who are very conservative and and try to maintain this culture and approach to living that's very simple. And like in the movie "Witness," the old Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis movie.

Lily Cole: I haven't seen that one. Okay.

Dana Thomas: Oh, it's fantastic. And it's interesting because it's a different life and we used to go out and see them because if you needed carpentry work done, they would do beautiful carpentry work, because they were using old-style ways of doing things, and handcrafting. There were no nails, there was no glue. Really beautiful hand craftsmanship because they had continued to practice this pre-industrial revolution way of making things. It was beautiful.

Lily Cole: Yeah, I love that. Well, he said his reasoning for doing it was environmental. That he'd come to the conclusion that there is no version of post-industrial technology that feels sustainable to him, and not inherently violent to the natural world. Even solar panels, electric cars, et cetera. Green tech he thinks is systemically...

Dana Thomas: Is tweaking bad things.

Lily Cole: Yeah. And systemically very violent for different reasons he outlines in his book, and in the podcast with me, and I included a bit in my book, but he says in the process of making that choice that he's actually much, much happier. He said it's made him a lot happier because he feels much more connected to life.The comparison between him and Elon– there's a tech one of course and the tech philosophy, and they symbolize these different pathways in environmentalism, between what someone's called The Wizard and the Prophet. There's a book called "The Wizard and the Prophet" that speaks to this, by Charles Mann, where you've got environmentalists that believe that we can wizard our way out of the issues, and technology will save us. And then there are environmentalists who believe in the prophet vision that we have to simplify, go back, reduce, as a way forward. But they also symbolize this very different relationship to money, of course, with Elon being now one of the wealthiest men in the world and Mark choosing to live without money for three years. So I thought it was kind of interesting to have those two voices together.

Dana Thomas: Absolutely. Now, you have talked about being–we've joked about it– about being vaguean. This is one of my favorite new words, vaguean. Can you define vaguean for us?

Lily Cole: It was a bit of a joke. I've been oscillating between vegetarian, pescatarian, vegan, flexitarian since I was 10 and I finally made peace in the last few years with my position and I can best call it vaguean, or sometimes I call it paguean, cause I include fish sometimes. And basically that means I'm striving to be vegan but vaguely.

Dana Thomas: But sometimes you just want an ice cream cone, right?

Lily Cole: Do you know what, it's actually probably not the most appropriate word because it's actually not very vague in the sense that it's quite specific. I'm not a vegan, because there are certain things I will eat, but I'm quite specific about the things I will eat. So for example, I'll eat eggs if I trust where they're coming from somewhat, that they're organic, local, they're not some massive factory production. And I'll eat fish occasionally, especially if I'm in a coastal community and that feels like the right thing to do. What I'd really try and do is avoid industrial animal agriculture because I just think it's horrific on so many levels.

Dana Thomas: And then you've also subscribed to a local farm community vegetable subscription service, right? That's who was at your door earlier wasn't it?

Lily Cole: I came across this lovely farm that friends are involved with just outside, I live in Lisbon in Portugal.

Dana Thomas: Because you live in Lisbon now?

Lily Cole: I live in Lisbon, yeah. I mean, I was doing this even when I was in England, I was supporting local organic farms. But now I'm in Lisbon and there is an organic farm just south of Lisbon that does weekly deliveries into Lisbon. And so I've signed up to their veg box and also their flower delivery, which I'm very excited about. 

Dana Thomas: Why did you move to Lisbon?

Lily Cole: My daughter's dad is Portuguese and during the pandemic in 2020 we wanted to leave England, and we thought we'd just go to Portugal, to the region in the south where his family's from to wait out the pandemic, which we did. And then I just really loved it. It felt a bit too isolated in the south, so I suggested Lisbon as a compromise, where it's a much smaller city than London, but it still kind of has people and culture and community in a way that I hadn't found so easily in the countryside. And so I made this move last year.

Dana Thomas: And what other ways have you greened up your life? How else are you pivoted into a more green and sustainable way of living?

Lily Cole: I mean, whenever I'm asked this I always like to say before I list anything, that it's still far from perfect. And also I think there's a kind of weird tension when I look at this throughout my book, between the power and responsibility that we as individuals have and should take to try and improve our impact, and also the awareness that this shouldn't be resting on individuals to fix. And that is also part of the issue with things like conscious consumption. On one hand, I love it because it's a way for individuals to impact the system on a daily level through their purchasing choices or not, in a way that we have less opportunity to do politically, but it's also problematic because it's systemically putting so much onus on individuals and on consumerism to fix the problem, rather than what needs to happen which is a lot more, I think, policy and regulation and political action to push things in a better direction. 

With that massive caveat, I did have a Tesla before, and then I decided actually even more sustainable and a bit more fun is to get a secondhand car and convert it to electric. So I am later today going to go and pick up an old Porsche I bought, and I'm going to then have it converted into electric, which I'm really excited about. I've also got an electric bike here.

Dana Thomas: And you're going to be using second-hand batteries on top of it, aren't you?

Lily Cole: Yeah, exactly. I mean you have to, that's how the conversion process works right now for electric cars and I love that: second-hand car and second-hand batteries.

Dana Thomas: Is it going to cost an arm and a leg or is it somewhat affordable?

Lily Cole: It does cost a lot right now. When I bought the Tesla four years ago, it also cost a lot. . I'm happy stretching my budget to try and help be a kind of early adopter in that sense, because I'm hopeful that by doing that, it becomes then cheaper and easier for there to be a more mainstream shift in this direction, which has already happened with Teslas. Five years ago, it was much more expensive to buy into it, whereas now the pricing is cheaper and there are more and more car companies doing electric. And I'm hopeful in a similar way, right now it's quite expensive to get a secondhand car and convert it, although some people are doing it DIY, and more cheaply, but the more people who do that, then the cheaper it's going to become, and then, hopefully in a few years' time, that will be much more mainstream.  I went to Chile actually earlier in the year, I was working with the UNEC on a project they're doing. Whilst I was there I traveled up to the north to the Atacama desert to meet with the indigenous communities. I went to a region of the Atacama where they do lots of lithium mining. And I was meeting some of the indigenous communities who've been protesting against the lithium mining in that region, which is booming because of the push towards green technology and lithium iron batteries.

Dana Thomas: Batteries, batteries, batteries.

Lily Cole: Yeah. And it was a really sobering experience. It's one of the key reasons I decided I want to try and push for recycled batteries, because, similar to fashion, it's great if we can get more sustainable materials, it's great if we can get electric, more sustainable cars, but we also have to think about circularity, and the level of consumption and growth. Because if we just replicate the same model with better materials, we're still going to have very similar but slightly different problems. So I think that's a really key part of this conscious consumerism idea, whether it's in cars, or it's in clothes, is that it's not just about better materials, and it's not just about batteries as opposed to oil. We've also got to think about what some people might call degrowth, or different business models, or circular systems about how we just rethink the level of consumption so that we are needing less materials year on year, to be taken from the Earth.

Dana Thomas: And I think that that is the perfect way to end this conversation. We need to consume less, think about degrowth, meaning not always trying to have more, but dialing it back a bit. Circularity, which is about reusing, repairing, keeping things in circulation, as opposed to throwing them away, because away is actually a place. And just trying to adapt, each individually, even if we don't want to call it conscious consumerism, a more conscious way of consuming, and that all of this will add up to a movement, and maybe we'll even be able to fix some of these issues in the environment and in society today. 

Lily Cole:  I love that.

Dana Thomas:  I love the idea of coming together to do this as a community. Community's the most important part of it, isn't it?

Lily Cole: A hundred percent. Community is everything.

Dana Thomas: Community is everything. Thank you so much Lily Cole for being on The Green Dream. We look forward to seeing you more on stages at COP meetings, and at TED meetings, and at Davos, as well as in the pages of Vogue, where I am actually writing about you for British Vogue in the October issue. So if you want to know more about Lily, you can pick up Vogue and read it there. You can pick up her book, "Who Cares Wins." You can tune into her podcast. The World of Lily Cole, is a green world, like The Green Dream. Thank you so much for joining us.

Lily Cole: Thank you. A rainbow world with green in it.

Dana Thomas: A rainbow world with green in it. Thank you.

This episode is sponsored by Another Tomorrow, a women's fashion brand that redefines luxury with a commitment to ethics, sustainability, and transparency from farm to fabric to atelier. Find Another Tomorrow on its website, anothertomorrow.co, at its flagship boutique, 384 Bleecker Street in New York City, and at select stores.

This episode is also sponsored by Phlox, a personal style consultancy and high fashion vintage retailer, where responsible fashion meets creativity, individuality, and beauty. Developing your own personal style and buying what’s "you" is the key to sustainability. Phlox presents timeless, modern, and vintage clothes with a heavy dose of glamour. To shop and learn about available services, visit phlox.com, that’s p-h-l-o-x.com, or follow them on Instagram @phloxslowfashion.  

  And now it’s time to talk wheels, or specifically, electric supercars, the EV equivalent to the superyacht. Hannah Elliott, the luxury car writer for Bloomberg Pursuits, returns to The Green Dream with a review of the Rimac Nevera, a 1,914-horsepower EV that retails for $2 million. That’s right. $2 million. Here’s Hannah to tell you all about it.

Hannah Elliott: At the top of Malibu Canyon Road, right before the asphalt dipped back into hairpin turns, I caught a glimpse of the sapphire Pacific Ocean below. Suspended for a moment, I felt my shoulders relax. My jaw unclenched.

Ah, yes, the simple things, I thought to myself. Fresh air. The sun and sea. Just the basics. This is what it’s all about.

Then I pressed the accelerator in the 1,914-horsepower Rimac Nevera I was test-driving and blasted back to Los Angeles. Look, we can’t be expected to stay simple all the time.

The Nevera, which costs €2 million ($2.1 million), is the opposite of a basic necessity. The electric supercar can bolt from 0 to 60 mph in 1.85 seconds; top speed is 258 mph. Putting pedal to metal can momentarily suspend your sense of space and time—my eyes and ears felt as if they paused for a moment to gauge what had just happened.

It looks as stunning as its performance numbers suggest. The car is compact and curvy, with doors that swivel up and out like butterfly wings. A large air scoop sits in the center of its hood, and a glass roofline stretches from the door hinges to the spoiler. Its carbon-fiber wing on the back extends out like a picnic table, depending on how fast you’re going.

Along each side, air vents flow into the body in sinuous curves that nod, Rimac says, to the shape of a cravat—the proto-necktie worn by Croatian soldiers who fought in Napoleon’s army. Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires come standard. The company will paint the car in pretty much whatever color you want. Black and blue dominate early purchases, so if you really want to stand out, pick a hue in the other direction. (The one I drove was a pretty Callisto Green.)

Seating inside fits two people. A pair of cup holders can withstand G-forces, and they join conveniences such as phone chargers and seat warmers. A single round speaker angled vertically behind the seats monopolizes any space you may have hoped would hold a coat or handbag, but there’s enough headroom to accommodate a helmet should you decide to take it to the track.

Once there, you’ll eviscerate all comers. The Nevera runs on a four-motor, all-electric powertrain with 1,725 pound-feet of torque, able to be adjusted individually for each wheel. Six drive modes further optimize throttle response and suspension stiffness. Drift mode and launch control are particularly naughty.

Under the prime driving conditions that exist only in fantasy, the Nevera will get 300 miles per charge; 200 miles is more realistic. Gauges inside and light pods subtly placed outside the vehicle when it’s turned on indicate how much the battery has depleted. It will charge to 80% in 25 minutes on a 350 kW charger.

The only thing more surprising than the superlatives is how quickly it all happened. Some brands haven’t made anything this beautiful in 100 years of business; Mate Rimac founded his eponymous company in his garage in 2009.

The 34-year-old Croatian has been working on cars and experimenting with their technology since grade school. When he was 19, Rimac converted a BMW M3 into an electric car that broke several records at the time. He also developed an active rearview mirror that did away with blind spots, and by age 21 earned patents for inventing the iGlove, which aimed to replace the computer mouse and keyboard.

In January he formed Rimac Group, an umbrella company that owns 55% of Bugatti Rimac and 100% of Rimac Technology, a supplier of high-performance battery systems that employs 1,000 people on the outskirts of Zagreb. Much of the car was developed in-house from scratch, including the battery system, gearbox, infotainment, and all-wheel-torque vectoring. The 440-pound monocoque is a single piece of carbon fiber that the company says is the stiffest body shell in the industry.

Unlike most cars of this caliber, the Nevera rewards cruising, grand-touring style, along lonely back roads and wide residential byways. When I urged it forward during our Malibu date, the car responded instantly with no perceptible effort. One moment we were at 40 mph, then we were at 80 mph. And up from there. No drama. At the hottest point of the day in LA’s oppressive pressure cooker known as August, the car hummed and whirred its way through Topanga with ease.

It isn’t perfect. The brake-by-wire system clicks; the sun visors wobble over uneven pavement. A lone gray hazard button stands out on the dashboard like a pimple on prom night.

But it’s close. It goes faster than any other production car yet is engineered to handle like a friendly conversation. Its asphyxia-inducing good looks don’t compromise on comfort for daily driving. And it’s got exceptional build quality and craftsmanship among cadres of other electric vehicles that don’t.

With the elite price tag and production run limited to 150, the Rimac Nevera is going to be difficult to get. But if you’re lucky enough to get behind the wheel, everything else sure seems simple.

Dana Thomas:  New episodes of The Green Dream come out the first and third Tuesday of the month, so we’ll be back in two weeks with Natalie Chanin, founder of Alabama Chanin, a slow fashion company in Florence, Alabama, that proves that it is possible to make beautiful clothes with integrity, and with respect for humanity and the planet. She has a new book called Embroidery: Threads and Stories from Alabama Chanin and the School of Making, about sustainability, community, artisans and makers, and it’s published by Abrams. We hope you’ll join us.

Dana Thomas:  The Green Dream was written by Dana Thomas. From Talkbox Productions with executive producer Tavia Gilbert, with mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Music performed by Eric Brace of Red Beet Records in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m Dana Thomas, the European Sustainability Editor for British Vogue. You can read my monthly column in the magazine or online at Vogue.co.uk. You can follow me on Instagram and on Twitter where my handle for both is @DanaThomasParis. Thank you for listening.