604: Whitney Tilson, part 2: Overcoming feeling uninformed about the environment to act on it

We start by my reading the emails where I invited Whitney to this podcast by cursing with a few f-bombs, showing how we started our interactions. Before recording our first episode we met in Washington Square Park and picked up litter together.

Read my emails cursing at Whitney Tilson that brought him to my podcast

Whitney shares how he created and maintains his following, speaking his mind, deliberately sharing provocative opinions. He shares how and why he engaged so much on the pandemic. I see that passion raising the potential for him to engage on sustainability, but we'll see. He became as knowledgeable as anyone I know and led a large number of people on it.

Then we talked about carbon offsets. I shared my Two Carbon Cycle Explanation, though I've since simplified it in The simple explanation why offsets don’t work.

We talked about flying. I since found some peer-reviewed numbers, which I posted in Some flying pollution numbers. In the week before recording, he flew round trip to Seattle, Miami, Bahamas, and in the next week Rwanda.

Then he shared his reasons for not engaging on the environment. You'll recognize them. Remember when he said he was uninformed? On the contrary, I'd say, he learned everything he needed to to justify feeling good about not changing his behavior. Even so, I respect and admire that he engaged in our conversation and started finding ways to act.

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