Alex Honnold: Defying heights, changing the world | Generation Sport

foreign is perhaps the most famous rock climber in the world his climb of El Capitan in Yosemite California with no ropes or other protection what climbers call free solo was dubbed by the New York Times as one of the greatest athletic Feats of any kind ever I had to put a lot of preparation into freezing our cab just because the objective of El Cap was so daunting I mean it was hard for me it's big it's intimidating it was just a lot year the National Geographic documentary that followed his climb won an Oscar and millions got to know honold and his climbing the exposure also allowed Ronald to redouble his efforts for another one of his passions fighting the climate crisis through the honold foundation which carries out projects across the world providing renewable energy to communities from the Ecuadorian Amazon to Memphis Tennessee you lost a lot of friends through the climbing and just living here is kind of like free climb you never know when you're gonna make it back home so what's behind this drive to create a more sustainable world welcome to generation sport [Music] [Music] I'm Iman amrani and I've come here to Nevada to speak to world-renowned climber Alex Honnold I've come to speak to him about the work his foundation does around the world his philosophy and approach to life and how things have changed since he's become a father so the awesome documentary about your journey to free solo Yosemite is El Capitan came out five years ago and at the beginning of that documentary you're living in a van by yourself how has your life changed since well yeah it's changed a bit I mean now I'm moving a house and I have a daughter and my girlfriend in the film is not my wife but in a lot of ways it hasn't changed that much in the I'm still basically climbing full-time and still trying to do the same things you know I mean in general I'd say life is a little broader now with a wife and a daughter and and just more going on and you also have a foundation that does a lot of work and you sent me a book that sometimes it's difficult to speak about that work publicly because people often want to talk to you about climbing fear and death and not so much about that work why do you think it is so difficult to talk about that I think that most people are more curious about The Sensational things the rock climbing the risk like the big drama and nobody wants to talk about energy access in in the world and you know energy poverty energy Equity like solar projects or even just environmental issues in general you know I mean none of that's quite as exciting as risking your life on a big wall you've said somewhere that you think it's really important to live intentionally and that can mean lots of different things to different people what do you think it is that distracts people from living intentionally what are the things that you have to push away in order to prioritize I mean that's individual to anyone you know what do you care most about but in my case a lot of that is cutting away societal expectations and things where it's like how are you supposed to dress or look or what are you supposed to do and like are you supposed to live in a certain way and you're like oh you just live however you want because ultimately we're all just gonna die I might as well have a good time on the way and did you find it quite easy to push away all that stuff or is it something that you constantly had to at some point push back against I think for me it's always been relatively easy to live intentionally because I've always loved going climbing more than anything else and so it's been easy to shape my life in service of of climbing you know making whatever choices necessary to prior to maximize the amount of time that I can spend outside climbing I think that the challenge for people to live intentionally is if they don't know what they're living for necessarily you know if you don't know what you want to do most you know it's like you should get up and seize the day and people like well what am I seizing like what am I doing with my day and as a passionate climber you know I always know what I want to do that day which is either train climb or rest I think that's like a really big part of why your story and your journey resonates with so many people you finding what it is that you want to do and you then executing that and then pushing yourself in that it speaks to a lot of people and inspires them so having explained that I think is very powerful actually it is interesting because I think about this a lot more now as a parent because I feel like so much of parenting is just allowing your child to find the thing that they care about enough to get out of bed and try hard on you know it's like it seems like a real gift to find that and you know it's been a gift in my life to find that for myself and now I'm sort of like well I hope I can help my daughter find that at some point find something that she's passionate about enough to to keep her motivated for her whole life physically [Music] so the 2018 National Geographic documentary free solo won an Oscar and introduce both yourself and free solo climbing to a huge audience and when I watched the documentary I was struck by the amount of preparation and how you planned the finest detail the most difficult and intricate parts of El Capitan but when you've done other climbing like in Patagonia where you were doing several days and you're having to climb over Rock and ice it requires different skills and I wondered if you could explain a little bit about the balance between the psychological and the physical preparation for these different types of climbs I had to put a lot of preparation into free selling on cap just because the the objective of El Cap was so daunting I mean it was hard for me it's big it's intimidating uh it's just a lot but not all climate objectives require that degree of preparation and then the the other part of that question about psychological versus physical preparation I mean it's sort of interesting because climbing is a physical sport but free souling is so mental I mean basically there's always a little bit of both and so depending on what you're training for what you're trying to do you know sometimes the mental side is more important sometimes the physical side is more important it really depends on what you have and what you're aspiring towards they say that no man is an island but at the beginning of the documentary you are living in then you don't have many attachments to the external world and by the end of it and also where you are now you're married with a kid you have a house you have a foundation that does work all around the world and I wanted to know if that was something that you intentionally set out to do or if it organically grew around you I mean so I started the Hanover Nation years before the film free solo I mean it's over 10 years old now so you know I'd already been working on the foundation for maybe five years when when I first saw it all cap and I'd always aspire to have a family one day to have you know meaningful life partner things like that you know I mean I want to grow old be a grandparent and all that you know it's always been part of the plan but I've always wanted to rock climb quite a bit as well and so uh you know I've been doing things in the right order trying to one of the reasons I think the documentary is so popular is because people see it and they see that you're very self-sufficient and some sometimes out of necessity or circumstance it's easier to kind of control your life and what you have going on than it is to let in external variables that can affect things and I think it was like an interesting point in the documentary about how you introduce balancing out a new relationship with your rock climbing and and the world that you care about so passionately and then it meets this point where somebody who really cares about you wants you to maybe make decisions that you don't want to do and I think it's difficult to balance all of that stuff it's scary rock climbing but it's scary being in a relationship how did you feel about the kind of response to all of that stuff because it was something that I think touched a lot of people I think a lot of people see the film and they think that I'm quite callous which which is fair you know that I'm uncaring that I'm that uh you know I should have prioritized the relationship more and it's totally fair criticism but I think that when you look at it in the the bigger picture of the the whole Arc of my life it kind of makes sense that this climbing objective that I've been working towards for almost 10 years that I prioritize that over this relationship even though it's a great relationship but you know I'd only been dating this woman for six months or a year when we started filming when I started working on the climb and so even though she seemed incredible and she is incredible which is why we're not married and have a family but you know you're kind of like well this lifetime dream you know sort of outweighs this budding new relationship but I think a lot of people watch the film they're like wow that guy really is like prioritizing the wrong things you're kind of like well in the broader context of life you know you just have to choose the right things at the right times I've told my wife this now I'm like I'm so glad that I've reselled all cap when I did and didn't sit on it for a few more years until we were married and did have kids and did have you know other obligations in life because I think it would be much harder to take on a challenge like that you know as a father now um there was one part of your book that particularly struck me that I wanted to talk to you about and it was about when you went on a trip to Chad to film a documentary called towers of an Eddie and you wrote about how seeing the simple facts of Charity in life made me realize perhaps for the first time how easy my life was compared to those in less privileged societies that Insight would lead me a few years later to redirect my goals towards something more other than climbing it took a while to thinking but that was the epiphany can you explain what that Epiphany was exactly and what it was it led to I mean you know Epiphany might be too strong of a word but but uh I mean I guess it was the first time that I really examined my own life and where I'd come from and I grew up in Suburban California and everything's pretty easy you know pretty comfortable uh you know just middle class parents good education everything's everything's fine and then going to rural Chad which is the middle of nowhere I mean we drove for for days without road across the open desert and then you run into communities of people living you know as as they probably have for thousands of years like literally no infrastructure no no modern trappings of civilizations just like living in the sand and you know we spent several weeks there climbing versus on these big Sandstone towers and like these kids would come and watch I mean there was just a lot about it it just made me appreciate my own you know my own circumstances that I never really appreciated you know because it just seems normal when you grow up in the suburbs you're like yeah this is how everybody lives then you go to other parts of the world and you're like no no this is a lot harder and was that I guess the first time you you say it led to you doing other things was that what led to you wanting to start the honored Foundation yeah that was a big part of me wanting to start the hanoff foundation uh you know I mean the direct beginning of the harmful Nation came from a handful of other things part of which had to do with my own Rising media profile and sort of success I was sort of uncomfortable the fact that that I was suddenly making more than I needed and there's so many people in the world that have so much less than they need and I was like oh that's not really fair considering uh you know I've sort of fallen into a very lucky place in my life doing the thing that I love to do most and you know getting paid for you're like that's that's cool and when we're talking about something like foundational or the the Privileges you have and how different people live I wonder if you kind of grew up with the I guess moral awareness or if that was something that you developed through your climbing and the traveling that you did I think I was maybe a little bit primed for that kind of moral awareness because my family traveled the fair amount and my grandparents actually traveled quite broadly so I grew up seeing pictures of my grandma riding camels and things like that and you're sort of like oh you know so I grew up sort of with an appreciation of the broader world around me but then I think seeing it directly with my own eyes really made that sink in quite a bit more and yeah I mean to me the the sort of issues of basic fairness you know it's like and particularly you know it's a little cliche but when you see kids abroad you're sort of like it's just by the role of the dice that I was born in in Suburban California and some other kid is born in real Chad and it's like you're both just kids you're both just appearing in the world and like why does one child get to have a really easy life and another gets to have a very difficult life it's like there's no real fairness in that and part of starting the foundation was just my attempt at grappling with that inherent In fairness and in the human situation interesting because climbing it in itself can be quite a solitary thing to do it's in nature it's not around lots and lots of people so I find it interesting that you still manage to meet and interact with people whilst you were traveling and the fact that what you do and the work you do so climbing climbing seems like sort of a solitary sport in a way especially free swallowing but actually I think the climbing interacts probably more than almost any other sport you interact with normal people in normal places because the thing about climbing is you have to go to the rocks and rocks are typically in the most Rural and far-flung places on Earth and then you stay there for quite a long time while you work on climbing projects so you often wind up living in rural communities for weeks at a time and you're there to climb and you're doing these difficult climate objectives every day then you also see the kids just growing up in this Village you have partnered with the project Memphis rocks so that's been around since 2018 that is in Memphis and it combines climbing with one of your other passions which is solar power and I wanted to know why you got involved in that project specifically and how it works I mean Memphis rice is a good example of what I'm trying to do through the foundation which is help help people in a way that's good for the environment and so with Memphis rocks I mean Memphis rocks is technically a climbing gym but it's really a community Hub a community organization it's like a it does everything it's a food bank a clothing bank it it helps the local community in any way that people require and then uh the honol foundation put solar on the roof which basically just saves them their utility bill and that's just more money that they can put directly into the programs that help their local community and to me that's that's the sort of clear win-win where you're like oh you can help decarbonize the grid you know kind of help the environment in a general sense but mostly it helps this local community in a very specific way and you know I love win-win projects like that because you're like I don't want to see Memphis Rock spending a bunch of money sending money to their local utilities like the utility is doing just fine you know like they don't they don't need it like no nobody cares about it I mean the Memphis utility in general is pretty regressive and really not doing anyone any favors like you know it's like screw them yeah I project very very fascinating but do you go do you find that you have much time to go and visit these projects and how is the relationship with them ongoing and so in general I try not to visit all the projects that we're funding I mean at this point we've funded dozens of projects around the world and if I was trying to visit each one that's basically just sort of a weird touristy thing I mean the thing is we're we're supporting Community organizations around the world and we're trusting our partners to do what's best for their community in the way that in why it's good for the environment I have sort of misgivings to any kind of uh philanthropy that's based on on like me going to watch a thing happen so like I don't I don't need to see it you know it's nice to occasionally contribute to projects and I've you know volunteered at a few things and like actually tried to help and and occasionally you you visit to make a film or do something where you can highlight the work that they've done but in general I think the the guiding principle with entrepreneur has always been seeing the project like getting the projects done like as long as the work is actually happening and I know that you're very passionate about the Maya impact school in Guatemala could you explain a little bit to me about what that's about yeah so the association Maya runs the school for indigenous girls in Guatemala and it's one of my favorite projects just because it's such a clear win-win sort of situation where the hanoka nation helped finance solar panels on the school it saves them something like ten thousand dollars a year which in in rural Guatemala like that is you know probably another teaching position or whatever else I mean basically it's more money going into teaching indigenous girls which to me is is a perfect situation they're also doing an educational component around it where the girls learned about the panels and and they do a whole educational thing but the important thing for me is that the school has more money to educate kids that's you know it's like why waste money paying utility or whatever else when you could be putting it into the the project that you're there for which is educating children and where was it that this particular focus with soil energy came from for you was it something you've always cared about was it something that you learned about through some specific moment or I just wanted to support environmental projects that improve standard of living has sort of helped humans because I learned one thing through Expeditions was that nobody cares about the environment if their basic needs aren't met and so you know I care deeply about the environment I cared about climate change you know I'm worried about sort of our Global future but I realize that there are literally billions of people on Earth that don't care about that kind of thing because they're too busy meeting basic needs and that's totally understandable but I felt like there's no real point in protecting the environment in a broad sense if you're not also helping humans meet their needs because you know I mean someone will cut down the last tree on earth if it means boiling water for their family you know it's like if they need fuel like they'll take it where they need it and so you know I felt like if you're trying to protect the environment it starts by helping make sure that people have everything that they need so that's kind of where the 100 nation started and we just wound up consistently funding solar projects around the world because solar is so often an elegant win-win solution where people can meet their energy needs while doing so and uh environmentally you know relatively friendly way it's like kind of the best option in most places and so over the years we've just doubled down on supporting solar projects around the world I think about this quote that somebody said that there's a reason why the journey up a mountain is so long and the space at the top is so small when you achieve that Peak like you did when you uh free solared El Capitan you have a platform and I wonder if having that platform changes your Viewpoint from before in terms of what your legacy is yeah well so I actually started the Honda Foundation years before I achieved anything super meaningful in sport kind of knowing that if I was ever going to do anything big or mainstream like it you know I kind of knew that I knew that I wanted to do something useful in the world and so I wanted to start the Hano Foundation but I also knew that if I started it sort of a little bit early in a way you know like before I was fully ready for it that it would kind of naturally grow with me and that when the time came it would be able to really uh Blossom on its own and that's really worked out exactly how how I hope because now we're 10 or 11 years into the work that we've been doing through the foundation and certainly in the last few years it's really been taking off where we're supporting dozens of projects around the world we gave over 2 million grants last year which is small-scale organizations basically we're just giving so much more than I ever thought was possible and yet in the grand scheme of global philanthropy and certainly in global Finance like that's nothing you know and it barely even touches the problems that we face you know there's a lot of money going to large-scale climate philanthropy you know you have something like the Bezos Earth fund you know putting like a billion dollars into climate but most of that's going to like big bet technology sort of things like direct uh carbon capture from the air and and sort of like a Next Generation fission you know thinking of the bill in the London Gates Foundation and there's certainly a place for that kind of stuff in the world I mean like it's great that people are looking at the solutions for the future but when you think how much need there is on Earth right now and how how easy it is to meet those needs you know it's like some of the projects that we're funding it's like a 50 000 check to some Community organization and it can totally transform their way of life like having light for the first time having a refrigeration for the first time in some rural community it's like those are transformative to humans lives I'm kind of like it just seems morally I don't say morally questionable because you know I mean funding any kind of climate philanthropy I'm like yeah it's great but it's like when there's that much need that's unmet in the world I feel like you should start there obviously uh inequality and the climate crisis matters a lot to you but how do you prioritize all of that like how where does that come from for you is it just something that you see and you learn through meeting people and talking to them is there any philosophy that you feel like you subscribe to yeah I mean I've read a fair number of books about about things like this over the years but I think ultimately it just comes down to me doing what I feel comfortable with what you know what allows me to sleep well every night I do sleep well all the time but so I personally because I'm always tired from exercising but um but I mean I donate uh roughly a third of my income every year to to the Honda Foundation to environmental projects around the world and to me that feels like an appropriate start and you know I I wouldn't even be surprised if I start giving more than that in the future just uh but you know for now I'm like I don't know how to buy a house and have a family and support my child and stuff but at some point you know those obligations will be will be met you know like my personal obligations to family and my community will then I'm sort of like you know then you just give the rest of the way okay it's fascinating to hear that coming from outside of the United States I mean I'm from the UK and we have people buy things they don't need and consume things they don't need but it's interesting to hear you talking about that being in America and also living not that far from somewhere like Las Vegas consumption capital of the world like Charlie said yeah but I feel like you know that sort of vacuous consumption like people just buying they don't need you know everyone's like looking for something that they care about you know they're trying to buy things to fill a hole or to to make them feel better to have whatever you know I'm sort of lucky enough that I don't need to fill those holes because I go climbing all the time like I know what I love to do I I love what I do I'm happy with what I'm doing like I don't need to buy random stuff that I don't eat I will say actually I think if we're really going deep on this at a fundamental level I come from from a world view of sort of abundance like I think that there's more than enough for everybody to go around it's more about equitably Distributing what we have like we don't need to to make more things like there's so much you know it's like we just needed fewer Mega yachts and things like that we did say at the beginning that people often ask you about death because of the risks of for example free soloing specifically um but I wanted to ask you about it in a slightly different way because when you've done all the work that you've done and you are invested in something which has I guess a legacy and you have a daughter as well I want to know what it is that you really want to be known for leaving behind at this point in your life I mean I'm you know I'm pretty proud of the climbing that I've done because I put a ton of work into it and and and some of it it's pretty cool you know like it's it's it's hard that said I wouldn't be surprised if when I'm old and I'm more proud of uh you know my family or the work that I've done through my Foundation or who knows what else I might even start in the next 50 years of my life you know I mean I'm always going to be proud of the things that I've done as a rock climber but uh but I'm definitely open to the fact that that other things in my life will probably surpass them and I do want to kind of end specifically talking about your daughter and how that has changed your perspective looking at things like the climate crisis in the future do you think that having a child yourself has impacted on I guess that importance that you see in protecting the world that we live in so that you can pass that on no it's actually I mean it's a it's a natural question that I get asked a lot like do I care more about the environment because I have a daughter now and the answer is basically no because the reality is my daughter's going to grow up relatively comfortable her whole life regardless you know I mean the the worst effects of climate change are felt by the least privileged people on Earth you know it's like basically the the billion or two billion poorest people on Earth are the ones who are most affected by a change in climate and so you know my daughter is going to grow up in air conditioning like she's she's fine either way and that you know really that sort of highlights the unfairness of it all you know for most of us our kids are going to be just fine you know it's like there'll be higher sea walls around some of the major metropolitan areas there will be like you know different pumping systems they'll be like like for most of the developed world will adapt as we go but it's really in the developing world that that people are gonna be the most personally affected by a change in climate and that's you know I mean that's the same sort of issues of unfairness that helped me start the foundation you know 10 years ago thank you for coming and speaking to me about these things today I think it's really important to be able to platform the work you do with the foundation as well as the climbing so I appreciate that oh thank you oh it's a pleasure chatting foreign

Channel: Al Jazeera English

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Id: 9jbiTz5PPlo

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2023