This Sustainable Life

Nakisa talks about her community in Charlotte, North Carolina, the environmental and social challenges it faces, the level of engagement, the biases in difficulties in engaging for people who work long or unusual hours, advantages to big businesses, and other challenges. She also talks about her work facing these challenges, organizing and enabling people to solve them.We talk about civic engagement beyond voting, acting beyond in election years, and running for office. In this episode, you'll hear from her experience and perspective what you face motivating and leading communities on the receiving end of polluting industries, historically locked out of politics, not knowing how to start, but needing to start if they hope to reverse those historical trends.You'll hear her enthusiasm, which I see increasing since her being discovered to attend the conference she described in her first episode.I think you'll like the commitment she chooses. I can't wait to hear her results.Hip Hop Caucus Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chef Douglas McMaster, creator of a restaurant with no trash cans, discusses the concept of living without waste and the transformative experience it brings. They explore the shift in values and the perception of extreme choices, as well as the pace of change and the impact of plastic waste. The speakers also discuss the challenges and motivations for living sustainably and the experience of eating and designing a restaurant.

We spend most of our time talking about Frances's latest book, Daring Democracy. I couldn't help sharing how, decades after reading Diet for a Small Planet, I realized it was the first source that started me on the path to embracing and loving sustainability. I started by describing that path and my gratitude.If you haven't read the book, if you wonder why I'm so impassioned and feel so much joy where others are bogged down in shame, guilt, helplessness, facts, burden, and such, I recommend reading Diet for a Small Planet's fiftieth anniversary edition. You will connect deliciousness with sustainability, and fun, freedom, community, and other rewarding emotions. Regular listeners will also understand my origins better.Then we speak about democracy, especially in the US, and restoring it. We talk about Milton Friedman, the Kochs, Donald Trump, their peers, and their motivations; polarization; what to do about our situation. Underlying the facts, economics, and history are her optimism based in knowledge and history. She promotes accountability, especially of concentrated power. We look from a systemic perspective.We laughed a lot. If you consider sustainability a burden, I think you'll find this episode refreshing. And delicious. We can't change the past, but we can improve our world, which we're doing.The Small Planet Institute Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scott went above and beyond acting on his sustainability commitment to run. He battled covid during training. Did the extra effort bring him down? On the contrary, since he did it for personal, intrinsic motivation based in his connection to the environment, he valued it more.I read curiosity on his part so shared my personal actions and systemic strategy different than the typical ones to switch from fossil fuels to so-called renewables. I say "so-called" because they require fossil fuels at every stage plus we have to handle their end-of-life pollution. As I see it, polluting less than the most polluting energy sources but still polluting isn't sustainable, it only buys us more time to become sustainable.He seemed genuinely interested in my experience improving my life in ways accessible to everyone, especially all Americans, by reducing my polluting behavior. This pattern shocks many so it requires leadership to stick. Listen for yourself, but I hear him considering that leadership role. Why not when it's based in authentic, intrinsic motivation? In his case, it comes from running outdoors. In your case it will be your rewarding experiences.You'll hear him seeing the effort to act more sustainably, but since he just found joy in the effort of running, I think he sees the potential to get that same extra reward from leading on sustainability, even in a company that profits from providing people with power. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Geoff's story of his commitment to act on his childhood memories of playing along the Missouri River in South Dakota starts off interesting, then turns exciting, thrilling, and ultimately life-changing. One of the things we most fear happened to him and he loved it.I think our conversation then grew more interesting. He's a storyteller and educator. He learned from the experience beyond what reading a book or reading a graph on carbon levels could reveal. We explored what nature brings to us, and what its absence deprives us of.Geoff is an experienced and brilliant thinker and speaker. He explores and shares the interplay between nature and humanity, its loss, and what that loss means to us.This episode will make you think. I bet it will make you want to go outside too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dan Barber is helping revitalize our food system. We start by going over his background, how fear drove him maybe most of all.Then we get into what drives food: farms and soil combined with creativity. His goal is supporting farming from the most basic level. He doesn't oppose people shopping farmers markets. He comes alive describing discovering what farmers who know the land learned to practice: diversity, rotation, and all what it takes to grow wheat, for starters. The whole ecosystem.I hear him sharing joy, passion, fun, curiosity, discovery, health, and deliciousness. It comes through community, practice, honoring nature and tradition.Prepare to be fascinated.Dan Barber's presentation, The Taste of WheatBlue Hill at Stone BarnsFamily Meal in Manhattan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you agree innovation and technology has its drawbacks, you may still worry: if we don't press onward, aren't we risking reverting to the stone age with thirty becoming old age and mothers and children dying in childbirth. Don't we store fat so well because our ancestors never knew when their next meal would come?I used to think that way. Learning about cultures that haven't adopted our technology-based culture relieved me of my ignorance. You've heard episodes with authors of books on Hawaiians before Captain Cook and the San bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. These cultures didn't barely eke out survival. They thrived. The San lived for hundreds of thousands of years. They show higher signs of resilience, health, longevity, abundance, equality, and stability than we do. Of course they do. You can't barely eke out 250,000 years.Bill Benenson produced a documentary (free online, click below) on the Hadza in modern Tanzania, who seem to have lived as they do now for about 50,000 years. Watch it to see how they are living just fine, or would be but for their territory being encroached on and traditional ways decimated. We could learn a lot from them. We could use some humility about our culture.Bill shares his journey learning of them, documenting them, and learning from them, including some behind-the-scenes stories of the scenes I found most fascinating.The Hadza: Last of the First, Bill's documentary on themBenenson Productions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People and nations are funding Russia's invading Ukraine, where tens of thousands have died and millions have become refugees. The laws of supply and demand dictate that any use drives up price, so any use helps fund Russia, being such a big supplier.Everyone acts like the only alternative to burning fossil fuels is burning different fossil fuels, as if humans haven't thrived for hundreds of thousands of years without them, generally showing higher signs of health, longevity, abundance, equality, and stability than recent times.In this episode, I view this bullshit view from the perspective of having improved my life by dropping my pollution over ninety percent in under three years in ways you can too (even if you believe you can), also improving your life.Here's the article I read and commented on: Germany is Dependent on Russian Gas, Oil and Coal: Here’s Why | Why Germany Can’t Just Pull the Plug on Russian Energy. Here's the graph I described:(If it doesn't show, click here) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Etienne starts by sharing how his government in England is beginning to increase how much it threatens punishment for people protesting, including what he does as an MBE working with Extinction Rebellion. He sees that reaction as showing they are making a difference. I hear it is similar to what is happening in my nation, the U.S.In our first conversation, Etienne was already acting and protesting. Sustainability is among his highest priorities. He isn't just talking about it. He's on of the most active people I've spoken to, by no means backing down. On the contrary, increasing his activities, as determined as ever.This episode features two people who have done what everyone can: making changing culture to increase human flourishing our top priorities, including leading others. For my part, I relished being able to talk about achieving the clean air, water, and land we all want without defensiveness. On the contrary, we explore each other's interests, actions, motivations, and results.We're talking about glory, if you ask me. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nakisa describes herself as naturally loving science, born into a hip hop world, combining these starting points. She starts by describing her journey growing up not learning that much about our environmental situation, seeing it as abstract and unrelated to her world, to being discovered for her ability to communicate, organize, and influence.The more she learned, the more she saw it as more than just affecting her life and community, it was critically damaging it. She saw the environmental problems as intertwined with social issues that were already priorities. The polluting cement factory in her neighborhood that fouled the air wasn't just an eyesore that illustrated a failure of democracy for being an eyesore never considered to be built in a rich neighborhood. It made people sick.She acted. She organized, and the more she got results, the more she committed.Nakisa's home pageNakisa at Hip Hop CaucusNakisa at Sol Nation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.