A burial practice that nourishes the planet | Caitlin Doughty

268,497 views ・ 2017-04-03

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When I die,
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I would like for my body to be laid out to be eaten by animals.
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Having your body laid out to be eaten by animals is not for everyone.
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(Laughter)
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Maybe you have already had the end-of-life talk with your family
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and decided on, I don't know, cremation.
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And in the interest of full disclosure,
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what I am proposing for my dead body is not strictly legal at the moment,
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but it's not without precedent.
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We've been laying out our dead for all of human history;
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it's call exposure burial.
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In fact, it's likely happening right now as we speak.
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In the mountainous regions of Tibet,
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they practice "sky burial,"
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a ritual where the body is left to be consumed by vultures.
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In Mumbai, in India, those who follow the Parsi religion
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put their dead in structures called "Towers of Silence."
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These are interesting cultural tidbits,
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but they just haven't really been that popular in the Western world --
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they're not what you'd expect.
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In America, our death traditions have come to be chemical embalming,
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followed by burial at your local cemetery,
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or, more recently, cremation.
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I myself, am a recent vegetarian,
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which means I spent the first 30 years or so of my life
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frantically inhaling animals --
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as many as I could get my hands on.
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Why, when I die, should they not have their turn with me?
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(Laughter)
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Am I not an animal?
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Biologically speaking, are we not all, in this room, animals?
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Accepting the fact that we are animals
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has some potentially terrifying consequences.
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It means accepting that we are doomed to decay and die,
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just like any other creature on earth.
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For the last nine years, I've worked in the funeral industry,
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first as a crematory operator,
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then as a mortician
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and most recently, as the owner of my own funeral home.
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And I have some good news:
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if you're looking to avoid the whole "doomed to decay and die" thing:
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you will have all the help in the world in that avoidance
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from the funeral industry.
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It's a multi-billion-dollar industry,
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and its economic model is based on the principle
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of protection, sanitation and beautification of the corpse.
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Whether they mean to or not,
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the funeral industry promotes this idea of human exceptionalism.
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It doesn't matter what it takes,
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how much it costs,
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how bad it is for the environment,
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we're going to do it because humans are worth it!
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It ignores the fact
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that death can be an emotionally messy and complex affair,
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and that there is beauty in decay --
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beauty in the natural return to the earth from whence we came.
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Now, I don't want you to get me wrong --
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I absolutely understand the importance of ritual,
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especially when it comes to the people that we love.
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But we have to be able to create and practice this ritual
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without harming the environment,
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which is why we need new options.
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So let's return to the idea of protection, sanitation and beautification.
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We'll start with a dead body.
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The funeral industry will protect your dead body
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by offering to sell your family a casket made of hardwood or metal
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with a rubber sealant.
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At the cemetery, on the day of burial, that casket will be lowered
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into a large concrete or metal vault.
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We're wasting all of these resources -- concretes, metal, hardwoods --
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hiding them in vast underground fortresses.
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When you choose burial at the cemetery,
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your dead body is not coming anywhere near the dirt that surrounds it.
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Food for worms
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you are not.
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Next, the industry will sanitize your body through embalming:
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the chemical preservation of the dead.
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This procedure drains your blood
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and replaces it with a toxic, cancer-causing formaldehyde.
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They say they do this for the public health
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because the dead body can be dangerous,
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but the doctors in this room will tell you
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that that claim would only apply
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if the person had died of some wildly infectious disease, like Ebola.
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Even human decomposition, which, let's be honest,
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is a little stinky and unpleasant,
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is perfectly safe.
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The bacteria that causes disease is not the same bacteria
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that causes decomposition.
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Finally, the industry will beautify the corpse.
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They'll tell you that the natural dead body of your mother or father
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is not good enough as it is.
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They'll put it in makeup.
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They'll put it in a suit.
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They'll inject dyes so the person looks a little more alive --
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just resting.
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Embalming is a cheat code,
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providing the illusion that death and then decay are not the natural end
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for all organic life on this planet.
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Now, if this system of beautification, sanitation, protection
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doesn't appeal to you,
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you are not alone.
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There is a whole wave of people --
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funeral directors, designers, environmentalists --
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trying to come up with a more eco-friendly way of death.
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For these people, death is not necessarily
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a pristine, makeup, powder-blue tuxedo kind of affair.
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There's no question
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that our current methods of death are not particularly sustainable,
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what with the waste of resources and our reliance on chemicals.
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Even cremation,
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which is usually considered the environmentally friendly option,
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uses, per cremation,
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the natural gas equivalent of a 500-mile car trip.
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So where do we go from here?
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Last summer, I was in the mountains of North Carolina,
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hauling buckets of wood chips in the summer sun.
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I was at Western Carolina University at their "Body Farm,"
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more accurately called a "human decomposition facility."
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Bodies donated to science are brought here,
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and their decay is studied to benefit the future of forensics.
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On this particular day,
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there were 12 bodies laid out in various stages of decomposition.
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Some were skeletonized,
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one was wearing purple pajamas,
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one still had blonde facial hair visible.
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The forensic aspect is really fascinating,
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but not actually why I was there.
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I was there because a colleague of mine named Katrina Spade
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is attempting to create a system, not of cremating the dead,
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but composting the dead.
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She calls the system "Recomposition,"
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and we've been doing it with cattle and other livestock for years.
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She imagines a facility
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where the family could come and lay their dead loved one
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in a nutrient-rich mixture that would, in four-to-six weeks,
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reduce the body -- bones and all -- to soil.
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In those four-to-six weeks,
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your molecules become other molecules;
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you literally transform.
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How would this fit in with the very recent desire
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a lot of people seem to have
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to be buried under a tree,
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or to become a tree when they die?
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In a traditional cremation, the ashes that are left over --
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inorganic bone fragments --
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form a thick, chalky layer
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that, unless distributed in the soil just right,
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can actually hurt or kill the tree.
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But if you're recomposed, if you actually become the soil,
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you can nourish the tree,
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and become the post-mortem contributor you've always wanted to be --
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that you deserve to be.
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So that's one option for the future of cremation.
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But what about the future of cemeteries?
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There are a lot of people who think we shouldn't even have cemeteries anymore
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because we're running out of land.
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But what if we reframed it,
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and the corpse wasn't the land's enemy,
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but its potential savior?
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I'm talking about conservation burial,
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where large swaths of land are purchased by a land trust.
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The beauty of this is that once you plant a few dead bodies in that land,
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it can't be touched, it can't be developed on --
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hence the term, "conservation burial."
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It's the equivalent of chaining yourself to a tree post-mortem --
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"Hell no, I won't go!
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No, really -- I can't. I'm decomposing under here."
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(Laughter)
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Any money that the family gives to the cemetery
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would go back into protecting and managing the land.
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There are no headstones and no graves in the typical sense.
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The graves are scattered about the property
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under elegant mounds,
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marked only by a rock or a small metal disk,
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or sometimes only locatable by GPS.
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There's no embalming,
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no heavy, metal caskets.
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My funeral home sells a few caskets
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made out of things like woven willow and bamboo,
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but honestly, most of our families just choose a simple shroud.
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There are none of the big vaults that most cemeteries require
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just because it makes it easier for them to landscape.
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Families can come here; they can luxuriate in nature;
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they can even plant a tree or a shrub,
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though only native plants to the area are allowed.
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The dead then blend seamlessly in with the landscape.
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There's hope in conservation cemeteries.
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They offer dedicated green space in both urban and rural areas.
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They offer a chance to reintroduce native plants and animals to a region.
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They offer public trails,
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places for spiritual practice,
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places for classes and events --
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places where nature and mourning meet.
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Most importantly, they offer us, once again,
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a chance to just decompose in a hole in the ground.
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The soil,
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let me tell you,
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has missed us.
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I think for a lot of people,
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they're starting to get the sense
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that our current funeral industry isn't really working for them.
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For many of us,
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being sanitized and beautified just doesn't reflect us.
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It doesn't reflect what we stood for during our lives.
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Will changing the way we bury our dead solve climate change?
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No.
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But it will make bold moves
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in how we see ourselves as citizens of this planet.
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If we can die in a way that is more humble and self-aware,
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I believe that we stand a chance.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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