This Sustainable Life

I can't tell you how valuable (and entertaining) I found Daniel's video series. Regular listeners and readers may know how important I find anthropology to solving our environmental problems. If we want to change our culture, we have to know why it is this way, how other structures have worked, and how we can change. I started realizing this importance when I noticed that I had read podcast guest...

Martha Nussbaum's new book, Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility , looks like it's about animals, but the more I read it, I found it about us, our values, and our behavior. Regular readers and listeners will see the similarity to how I approach the environment in general. Not having eaten meat since 1990 and no animal products at all about ten years, I don't find new materials on hum...

Part 2 of the introduction shares a few stories that illustrate the Spodek Method, a leadership technique to create mindset shifts and continual improvement on the environment. The optimism girds us for a more challenging next episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Watching environmental documentaries means having seen the Tickells' work, especially Fuel and Kiss the Ground , which they did with podcast guest Bill Benenson. Bill introduced us, though we scheduled this conversation to release the day before their new movie On Sacred Ground , on the Dakota pipeline. In this conversation, they share about the process of choosing the subject, the story and its r...

Part 1 of the introduction shares a few stories to frame how I approach sustainability, then describes the outcomes I designed it to bring about, mainly to enable you to lead yourself to a more sustainable future that you'll find preferable to any alternative. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Food touches nearly all environmental issues, as well as health, social, economic, political, and cultural. Cities like New York and their governance do too. Regular listeners know I talk about food waste, doof , packaging, and related issues. I celebrate her boss, Eric Adams 's dramatic change in his diet, which tells me his motivations to bring healthier food to New York are authentic and genuin...

Donald committed to seeking out seeing a wolf. He shares about his experience on this commitment. He shares his deep connection and commitment to nature and how the project affected it. Donald thinks and acts in systems. We know we are a part of nature, but not all of us behave as if we understand what that means. Donald shares what it means to him, given his background in systems based especially...

After I've read his recent book The Cloud Revolution, Mark and I continue our conversation on sustainability and what to do based on qualitative and quantitative understanding. I've also been listening to his podcast. I came to Mark for his thoughtful research on the problems with solar and wind power, which people call clean, green, and renewable but are none of the above. I mainly want to get hi...

After I shared episodes on the hazards of solar and wind, as well as my experiment disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid in Manhattan (in month 8 as I type these words), a listener pointed me to Mark Jacobs. I can't believe I hadn't found him yet. I dove into Mark's prolific research and writing. He makes plenty free on his site . As a professor of engineering at Stanford with great pa...

I almost couldn't believe someone could write a book like Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge: Our History of Addiction . It tells the histories of addiction in human society since antiquity and of him, addicted, including in medical school, jail, and recovery. I don't know how many people could have shared such vulnerability or connected his experience to the reader's so we feel empathy. Regular listener...

The second part of my conversation with Noah, going into more detail about Uruguay and sustainability. The first part was episode 646 . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The more I learn about electronic waste, the more disgusted I feel at how huge the problem is that we are exacerbating, often in the name of increasing efficiency or reducing waste. I've watched many documentaries, but here's a short video showing the problem in just one place in Ghana. Look at the land in the background that was once verdant and lush, now poisonous. Or read The Dark Side of Congo...

In this episode, I answer a question a listener emailed: Can you share more details on what exactly prompted you to make the switch to acting more sustainably and if it was abrupt or gradual. And perhaps more practical ideas on what to do if you have kids, especially picky eaters, or if your schedule is just too busy to prepare meals 100% of the time. If you have questions on leadership, sustainab...

Regular listeners know I'm thinking about applying Abraham's Lincoln solution: a constitutional amendment banning pollution. Here's an earlier episode on it: 613: Our Next Constitutional Amendment . It sounds crazy, but we'd be crazy not to consider it and learn from the idea. Even if the United States takes a long time to do it, other countries would likely do it first. It turns out others are or...

Kris created and runs what I consider one of the top sites online. It has influenced my behavior and expectations to enjoy living more sustainably, including unplugging my fridge, which led to unplugging my apartment, and start seeing that solar and wind aren't sustainable any more, though we could make them more so. I've looked forward to connecting with Kris for years. In our conversation, he sh...

I see our environmental problems and lack of effective solutions as a failure of imagination, as regular listeners of this podcast and readers of my blog know. If we can't imagine a world without pollution, we won't try. We'll resist and push back, which we do. Would-be leaders pollute as much as nearly anyone alive, more than nearly anyone who has ever lived, then say government should force them...

Suggest to people in our culture that we consider not growing the GDP nonstop and most react with fear at what they see as the inevitability of recession leading to depression leading to the tax base declining, infrastructure crumbling, hospitals closing, mothers dying in childbirth, thirty become old age, and reverting to the Stone Age. Yet there remain many cultures that don't buy into our cultu...

In our second conversation, Janet reveals that she did part of her commitment, but found traveling not by car took longer than she expected and didn't do it often. At one point in this conversation, she shares she felt she had to reduce pollution. I point out I didn't say she had to reduce pollution. I invited her to manifest emotions she liked. Our society burdens us with thinking we have to ACT...

At the end of our second conversation, Gaya was finishing her book, leaving KPMG, and soon starting at Schneider Electric. The book just came out, Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse: What a 50-Year-Old Model of the World Taught Me About a Way Forward for Us Today (a free download), and she's worked at Schneider a while. We talk about the book, how the world has tracked two of the Limits to...

In this episode I answer: Have you tried making home made yoghurt from plant milk and friendly bacteria. I guess you'd want non packaged options like make from almonds or coconut although home made soya milk is possible with some work. (Using my yoghurt maker is one way I've tried to reduce packaging). Likewise have you tried making vegan cheese? and If you didn't work at NYU what would be your dr...

Here is the listener's question this time: Where do you think your concern and consideration for others comes from? Is it mostly nature or nurture? (E.g. influence from up bringing). I'm thinking about your social conscience about how your pollution or lack of it has an impact on those you've never met. I like to think I care about others but the truth is I continue to do things like drive to mode...

Mark and I share more highly researched, thoughtful conversation on human welfare and the environment. We see things differently, but I consider our conversations the type we should have more of. This session we cover The book Limits to Growth as well as the concepts underlying limits to growth Earth's carrying capacity How much wealth is consumed by food and fuel, now and historically, and how mu...

I learned of Bruce and Milad's Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) report, The Carbon Capture Crux – Lessons Learned, with fascination since I held out for carbon capture to be one of the major potential solutions to climate change. Though climate is only one of the many environmental problems risking civilization, it's one of the big ones. I contacted them to learn what...

Longtime listeners know I spent some formative years in some rough neighborhoods in Philadelphia. In researching them for my upcoming book, I discovered the many-award-winning book Loving Day by Mat Johnson took place largely a block from where I lived. His Wikipedia page showed he went to grade school with my stepbrother and stepsister. I read and loved Loving Day , which not only described my ne...

I read Holly's book because I see us as a society and individuals addicted to what pollution brings. What can we learn from someone who overcame a different addiction? Holly's book is the opposite of a downer. It's spirited, researched, personal, and engaging. She reveals with infectious anger how society profited at wrecking her life, telling her poison was normal and good. Most of all, she share...