This Sustainable Life

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...

Mark is a physicist who went into business around the environment. There aren't many of us, so I think you'll hear a rapport we enjoyed that I think you'll enjoy too. We indulge in physicist talk. I contacted him because I found his reports on what solar and wind---what I don't see how we can call renewable, green, or clean energy sources---require in their manufacture, transportation, installatio...

Do you keep your screens by your bed? Do you find yourself running in circles like: Twitter to email to latest news to Facebook to Instagram to Twitter and repeating the cycle forever? John shares his results committing to turning off his screens no matter what at 8pm a couple nights a week. Do you imagine it would affects his relationship with his wife, with whom he watched shows and movies? Woul...

Don regularly reads my blog. We've emailed for years so after inviting to record episodes with other listeners, I invited him. We both find a systems perspective the most effective way to understand and act on our environmental problems. I enjoyed talking to him about systems. Many people see them as technical, to the extent they get the view at all, but you don't have to work with them that long...

I learned of Alan soon after learning of the Kogi (see below). He lived with and made films of them, among many other documentaries and films. He also works to help preserve their culture and spread their message to help us stop wrecking our environment and selves through the Tairona Heritage Trust , which you can support . His films about them--- From the Heart of the World - The Elder Brother's...

Mitzi just returned from the Ukraine War, invited by General Andriy Nebytov from the Kyiv Regional Police. He invited her after reading her piece Human Trafficking on Ukraine’s Border to see this trafficking in person. She saw abductions happening, powerless to act, as traffickers controlled the region. She describes what she saw. This episode isn't graphic, but sober. We'd prefer to live in a wor...

Continuing a long trend of guests sharing partially doing their commitments but not stopping, Stephen comes back for an episode 1.5, not yet his episode 2. Stephen committed to sharing his childhood family experiences hiking on a path near a family cabin (my description doesn't do justice to his description, so listen to his first episode, 622, to hear his description drawing on his life experienc...