This Sustainable Life

You'll hear Tony's story of rolling up his sleeves and doing some hard labor. You'll also hear the labor being just the start of the reward. He shares about the less tangible but not lesser results in community, emotional reward, enthusiasm to do more.Given his leadership role and experience, we talk about the Spodek Method. I took the liberty of pulling some what he said and formatting it. Listen to the conversation for context for the full meaning, but here's some:You opened some doors. The idea [to act] was there but I'd come up with excuses for why I couldn't engage now. If [I'm] honest I'll be a whole lot more effective right now . . . than I might be in fifteen years time. It makes a huge amount of sense to do right now so I thank you . . .because I don't know if I would have acted on it. Now that I've committed to it, I will.Very few have done what you've done: changing diet . . . stopping air travel. . .[Those] not doing it:Don't recognize what it takesDon't recognize the benefits of it, andCan't credibly convince others.There's no better way than trying it yourself. You can then speak with authority and awareness, as opposed to just saying oh we should do this but not really intending to.Sometimes [we] require some form of awakening that . . . gives intrinsic motivation to do something, something different . . . through that action of doing something differently, you can build momentum. The Spodek Method is one of those tools to enable that awakening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I was reading Harper's magazine and Christopher's story was on the cover: Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”! It beginsIn the summer of 2016, a fifty-seven-year-old Texan named Stephen McRae drove east out of the rainforests of Oregon and into the vast expanse of the Great Basin. His plan was to commit sabotage. First up was a coal-burning power plant near Carlin, Nevada, a 242-megawatt facility owned by the Newmont Corporation that existed to service two nearby gold mines, also owned by Newmont.McRae hated coal-burning power plants with a passion, but even more he hated gold mines. Gold represented most everything frivolous, wanton, and destructive. Love of gold was for McRae a form of civilizational degeneracy, because of the pollution associated with it, the catastrophic disruption of soil, the poisoning of water and air, and because it set people against one another.Gold mines needed to die, McRae told me years later, around a campfire in the wilderness, when he felt that he could finally share his story. “And the power plant too. I wanted it all to go down. But it was only that summer I got up the balls to finally do it.”We talked about his doing the story, speaking with McRae, developing a relationship with him that involved his girlfriend and other people he knew. What's it like to hear your voice in an FBI file? Also, the media's and public's taste for such stories.Whatever your views on how to respond, if you understand or support people like McRae or consider them counterproductive (he knows he's a criminal), you'll rarely find such inside relationships with such remarkable people elsewhere.Chris's cover story in Harper's: The Machine Breaker Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist"  (at archive.org) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Exploring deep history and how our culture formed, the podcast discusses the impact of agriculture, the formation of dominance hierarchies, and the role of bronze metallurgy. It also delves into the Enlightenment, slavery, abolitionism, and the importance of creating a culture of joy and connection around environmental values.

People complain they don't have time, money, or energy to live more sustainably, I think because marketers see the demand so come up with things to sell people to address the demand. Since neither buyer nor seller understand how nature or systems work, the offerings don't help sustainability. Meanwhile, high demand and low supply means high prices, so people associate costing time, money, and energy with sustainability when they should associate it with their gullibility and ignorance.Jacquie didn't complain about costs, but she did say she was too busy. She was even busy working on sustainability. I suggested in our first conversation that cause and effect might be the opposite of what she expected. That is, I suggested that her busy-ness wasn't keeping her from nature but that her disconnect from nature was distorting her values to where she did many low-value things that kept her from what she valued more.I based this prediction on seeing the pattern many times. I think of it mostly in people insisting they buy takeout food (really mostly doof) and coffee to save time because they're so busy, but the ones who switch to sit down for meals and coffee find it gives them more time, not less.In our second conversation, you'll hear many things, including this pattern play out in Jacquie acting on her intrinsic values and seeing where it leads.I recommend connecting more with nature to help restore your values and priorities, which will create more time and energy in your life, allowing you to save money too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I follow podcast guest Maya Van Rossum on her work on constitutional amendments protecting a clean environment. You may have heard of the legal victory in Montana, Held versus Montana, earlier this year (yay!), Montana being one of the three states with such an amendment.Maya appeared on a panel, Securing Climate Justice Through Green Amendments: The Held v. Montana Victory, that discussed that case. The more I learn, the more I realize that however impossible it may sound, we can't solve our environmental problems for good without amending the Constitution.On the panel with her was Michael Gerrard, professor at Columbia Law School, one of America's foremost environmental laws. In today's conversation we talk about the possibilities about a constitutional amendment banning unsustainability. Mark my words: we will make one happen. If you're like I was, you'll think of how impossible it sounds for a dozen reasons. How could it pass? How could it be enforced? How would we define sustainable? Would we return to the Stone Age. But the more you think about it, the more essential it will sound, which may take months of consideration, or did with me.Listen to learn more on constitutional law and the environment from a top practitioner and teacher.The panel Michael appeared on with Maya: Securing Climate Justice Through Green Amendments: The Held v. Montana Victory Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Regular listeners know I focus on understanding addiction. I see people in my neighborhood and in headlines nearly daily addicted to heroin, fentanyl, meth, and crack. Since our culture promotes craving and dependence as what many would call "good business," I see people on those drugs not as outliers or anomalies from culture. I see them as slightly more acute versions of mainstream America.I see addiction to doof as serious as addiction to illegal drugs. Increasingly medical professionals are recognizing what they would call ultra-processed foods as addictive. Plenty of other polluting things---fast fashion, cell phones, etc---are addictions our culture promotes. The product sells itself! What could be better for the GDP.Mattan cofounded Ophelia, which treats opiate addiction online. He shares the deaths he and people his community experienced that prompted him to start the company. You can see in his bio his entrepreneurial background.He brings a unique, healing, effective, passionate voice to addiction. You can tell the time and effort he's put into understanding the people he helps.Mattan's home pageOphelia: Online opioid addiction treatment that (actually) works Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Casey is a longtime friend. One day a few months ago he mentioned in a call he was choosing to lower his carbon footprint to a few tons of CO2 per year. I hadn't been trying to lead or persuade him, so I started asking him why, what prompted him, was it hard in Los Angeles where people drive everywhere and some people say they need air conditioning, and so on.Knowing me and my actions prompted him, but there was more to it. He faced challenges from his family and profession, but found parts easy too. He started biking to jazz gigs by electric bike. What jazz musician bikes to perform?!? . . . with his equipment in a bike trailer?!?I had to bring him here. If a jazz musician in Los Angeles can bike to work and enjoy it, a lot more people can than admit it. I think of jazz musicians as where cool originated. I see Casey raising sustainability's coolness for everyone.Casey's home page (he's done more than play jazz) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last month I read Hamas-Israel story from an angle few will touch, but is critical: overpopulation, which I wrote about in my post Overpopulation in Israel and Gaza. The population in Israel and Palestine have both more than quintupled since 1950. There are plenty of sources of problems there, but not many places can handle that kind of growth, especially when mostly desert.The article led me to read Alon's book The Land Is Full: Addressing Overpopulation in Israel. You can't understand the situation there without including population---including human violence and environmental degradation.Alon isn't only a professor. He also served in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. He's one of the few politicians to talk about overpopulation. In Israel it's impossible to miss, though many people still want to keep growing it.In our conversation, we talk about population, participating in politics, the meaning of his book title The Land Is Full, and Hamas.Alon's page at Tel Aviv University Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jacquie emailed me that this podcast is inspiring her. She wrote that she'd "always had a spark of interest in sustainability, but I mostly followed the herd mentality and went about my life not really making a conscious effort & just thinking about ways I could reduce my impacts. In the last couple of years, it’s like jet fuel has been added to that spark and it’s changed the trajectory of my career aspirations, and had a significant impact on my life as a whole. . . It’s comforting to know that there are people all around the world who feel similarly to me, and it’s been inspiring to hear other peoples’ stories. I find this especially helpful on the days where I feel helpless/hopeless or even on low energy days."She asked me for advice, we got to emailing, and I invited her to be a guest, following the lines of other impassioned listeners who contacted me. You wouldn't believe it from her sounding natural and confident in our conversation, but she hadn't been on a podcast before.In our emails, she talked about how busy she was, which I hear from everyone, especially businesspeople, who say: "I'd love to work on sustainability. It's very important to me. I just have to do this one thing first, then I'll get to it." If you've felt that way, you may learn a lot from Jacquie and our experience doing the Spodek Method.Working on a podcast may sound like me talking to guests a lot. There's a lot of solo work, so I can't help but quote her from her first email again, since I appreciate her validating all that solo work: "Again, I’m a hug fan of the show and yourself. You’re an inspiration and a wonderful reminder that individuals don’t have to fix the worlds problems overnight by themselves." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Living unsustainably means you need resources beyond your immediate environment. It requires you take from others. When done on a cultural level, it's known as imperialism. When we take their land too, it's colonialism. When we take their labor, it's slavery.All of these things are happening in the Congo. If you think solar and wind are sustainable or avoid human suffering, read Siddharth's book Cobalt Red. If you listened to my last conversation with Adam Hochschild on his book King Leopold's Ghost, you know about the west's cruelty in the Congo. It hasn't ended. Adam put me in touch with Siddharth.The book will change your views on what we call clean, green, and renewable. Siddharth doesn't outright say it, but it seems every rechargeable battery, therefore every phone, electric vehicle, laptop, and so on should be labelled: "Produced with slave labor."Cobalt RedReviews in the New York Times and L.A. Times Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.