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Alex Honnold Knows something about passion and challenges. Since his famous ropeless climb at Yosemite captain In “Free Solo”, the professional rock climber has worked on several projects around environmental protection and battling climate change.
on tuesday, rolex The first episode of the fifth season of the Planet Visionaries podcast was released in which Honnold, who hosts the show, provides a platform for scientists and innovators from around the world to be heard.
The podcast is one of several projects Honnold is involved in amid growing threats to public lands in the US, climate change denial and questioning of science.
Honnold said, “I interview guests who are very passionate about their work and very good at what they do, and I usually come away from the interviews feeling very excited, basically doing what I do, but doing it a little better.”
But still a climber at heart, Honnold is also training to climb Taiwan’s tallest skyscraper without ropes for a live Netflix program next year, a building he has been tracking for more than a decade, he said.
Honnold’s foray into environmental work began with a nonprofit he founded in 2012 to finance community solar energy projects around the world. He was climbing and living in a van, he said, and felt he should “do something useful for the world”.
“You can’t be a professional climber without caring about protecting nature,” Honnold said.
As he traveled to remote locations looking for different things to climb, he saw an urgent need for energy access, not only to reduce reliance on fossil fuels but also to give rural communities access to reliable energy for the first time.
,People Don’t care about nature unless their basic needs are met,” Honnold said. “They’ll even cut down the last tree in the entire area if it means boiling water for their family. So obviously you have to meet the basic needs of people before you can even try to preserve a place environmentally.
Honnold said the Honnold Foundation has supported about 120 projects around the world since its inception and will award nearly $3 million in grants this year.
According to their foundation website, a recent project is a solar project for a housing complex in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which reduced energy costs for 227 families, and provided installation and maintenance training for the women and youth there.
Although he now juggles being a climber, podcast host, philanthropist, husband and father, Honnold is ready for a change.
“The reality is I turned 40 this summer and I think I can still climb basically the same way as before, but I certainly won’t be able to for another 10 or 15 years,” Honnold said. “I’ve been working hard for so long, and I wouldn’t just live in a van for the rest of my life and just rock climb.”
These days, Honnold spends most of his time at home in Las Vegas with his wife and two girls, ages one and three. They take the kids on family outings every week, train in the garage for a few hours while the kids sleep, then play with them in the afternoon.
Being a climber, he said, has helped him tackle life’s biggest challenges, from starting a nonprofit to whatever happens next.
“Spending my whole life focusing on projecting things, like trying things that are too hard for me, has taught me a lot about taking on big projects,” Honnold said. “If you start now and start overcoming them… eventually, you can do it.”