This Sustainable Life

A retired General doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to. What he does, he's going to do for his reasons, not for trends or as a dilettante.Kip committed to a challenge many consider unreasonable and impossible (I know because they tell me): avoiding flying. As a General, he's held the fates of a nation and hundreds of thousands of troops in his hands. When he speaks about his experience, I hear him speaking at a life level.He spoke about his many opportunities to fly for business and pleasure, but not taking them. He could have. Besides his choice based on his motivation, he could have flown.He didn't. Yet he shares the opposite of complaints or feeling left out. How is that possible?He describes handling the commitment with his wife, his conferences, what he learned from the pandemic, how it connected to his legacy with the future, and how he made it work.ServiceHe speaks about service and helping your team and teammates achieving more than they would. Is helping our communities not what we want to do regarding our shared environment?If we do our best and enable our peers to outperform their best, isn't that our best way to achieve the best results we can? We can't change the past, but we can do our best and help others do their best.Systemic change begins with personal transformation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan and I continue practicing how to lead oneself and others to love acting in stewardship. Everyone thinks sustainability means deprivation and sacrifice.We started this conversation for him to review how his first time doing The Spodek Method with his kids. You'll hear that he did it slightly differently and didn't get the results. Very educational! Few people master challenging things the first time.We switched to restarting The Spodek Method with him and the value of practicing by the book before improvising.This episode will teach you how to lead someone to love and enjoy acting in stewardship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everyone treat changing corporate culture like a horror show, but John did it. How? Through making it fun.The way most people talk about it, only dictators can change cultures, I'll trust his experience over their speculation. This episode begins with his reviewing some of how he implemented that change. My biggest takeaway was his focus on people before technology, what they want, and what makes them tick. The result is their engaged participation.He also shares the result of his commitment. As usual with experienced leaders, if things don't go perfectly, they don't pretend. They share what didn't work too, I believe from experience finding that exposing vulnerabilities doesn't make them weak. It connects people.If you want to change yourself and your organization, you'll learn from John how to achieve more by having fun, listening, and caring over analyzing forever, coercion, and such. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when populations age?Can you envision a world with a sustainable population, well below Earth's capacity, therefore living resiliently in abundance per person? I can.Governments and media are petrified at populations shrinking and aging. It turns out they are motivated by reasons that sound plausible.Jane looked at the numbers and found the fears unfounded. She also found industries seeding and promoting the fears, making them scams. Allowing the scams to affect us exacerbates the risk of a collapse in Earth's ability to sustain life and society.She treats more unfounded fears about population size that lead people to baselessly fear what seems to me one of the top elements of retaining Earth's ability to sustain life---lowering our birth rate through the peaceful, voluntary, and fun methods that worked in Thailand, Costa Rica, and many other nations.Listen to Jane's conversation and read her paper to feel more confident in promoting smaller families. The evidence I see suggests Earth can support about two billion people living at Western European polluting levels, which means Americans will have to reduce consumption and every culture will have to reduce birth rates.The paper that led me to Jane: Silver tsunami or silver lining? Why we should not fear an ageing population Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here is the article prompting this episode: Majority of Florida condo board quit in 2019 as squabbling residents dragged out plans for repairsHere are the notes I read from:Read article about collapse and will read some parts.Everyone has long viewed Titanic as metaphor for man’s hubris over nature. But long enough ago we dismiss. Scale is off. We believe we’re passed those problems from another age.Listen to these quotes.Opening: “The president of the board of the Florida condominium that collapsed last week resigned in 2019, partly in frustration over what she saw as the sluggish response to an engineer’s report that identified major structural damage the previous year.”“Despite increasingly dire warnings from the board, many condo owners balked at paying for the extensive improvements, which ballooned in price from about $9 million to more than $15 million over the past three years as the building continued to deteriorate”Imagine someone had said lives were at stake. People would have rolled their eyes at the blatant attempt to overdramatize.People miss from the story of the boy who cried wolf that the wolf came. In our case, imagine the wolf came every time yet the townspeople ignored its damage. The response to pandemics fueled by our overpopulation, overtraveling, factory farming, and encroaching on wildlife territory in cases like ebola with returning to normal—that is, the culture that created it. Articles on record temperatures in Canada aren’t followed up by stopping what everyone knows is causing the problem.“The engineer, Frank P. Morabito, found “major structural damage” to a concrete slab below the pool deck, caused by a flaw that limited water drainage, according to the 2018 review”“A resident told The Post that minutes before Champlain Towers South came down, she noticed that a section of the pool deck and a street-level parking area had collapsed into the parking garage below. Experts have said the collapse appeared to involve a failure at the lowest levels of the building or in the parking garage beneath it.”As recently as April, residents appeared divided over the repairs — with dozens signing a letter that questioned the details of the proposed spending and asked the board to consider a lower assessment. “We cannot afford an assessment that doubles the amount of the maintenance dues currently being paid,”“But what may have looked to Prieto like a running start soon became a slow walk.”““A lot of this work could have been done or planned for in years gone by. But this is where we are now,” current board president Joan Wodnicki told condo owners in a letter on April 9, 2021, which warned damage to the structure's concrete support system was accelerating.”“Her warnings to homeowners about the urgent need for repairs had gone on for months. “I want you to know that the numbers we are hearing so far are much higher than the original Morabito estimate,” she wrote on Oct. 23, 2020. “However, the project is also much larger . . . The concrete damage is more extensive than it was when first looked at in 2018, and prices have gone up.””“The pandemic appeared to exacerbate tensions in the building. A March 2020 note to homeowners said the board had adopted a new rule: “No Owner, resident or guest may be verbally or physically abusive or otherwise engage in conduct that is offensive, threatening or harassing to any other Owner, resident or guest.””Beyond metaphor. Clear problem, well-understood, easily resolved. Expensive, yes, but not compared to destruction and loss of large fraction of population. Instead of acting, squabbling.Maybe you believe, in the face of temperatures breaking records every year, plastic choking oceans, and you’ve read the headlines, that our behavior isn’t responsible. In that case, via con dios. There’s no point in our talking.But if you have the slightest inkling that our behavior, driven by our role models, beliefs, stories, images, systems, and so on, our culture has to change to avert collapse including the deaths of a large part of our population, like billions of people, which will affect you and people you care about, do the parallels with this collapse and death of a large fraction of the population suggest that your resistance to acting with everything you’ve got may be slowing things more than you think?I don’t say act individually and then stop. Act and then use what you learn to lead others.Their building problem is like our environment problem. The science is clear. We lack leadership. Leaders act, not point fingers. Only by acting themselves can they lead others.“in a September 2019 resignation letter. “This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths. I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish.”” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I met Joe when we spoke together on an online panel hosted by Magamedia.org. I knew he was running for office and anticipated conservative politics, but on the panel, I couldn't tell, despite the conservative context. I was curious so looked him up more and found an intriguing background and passion.Joe emerged from youth involving gangs to join the Navy, now running for office. He considers the incumbent insensitive to his district's needs, but he grew up there. He knows its problems. You'll hear in our conversation a passion as great as his frustration with the situation he wants to change.Environment factors in some to his campaign and platform, but not its top priority. Still, he shares his caring with us and takes on a challenge to act on those values. He's conservative, which many associate with insensitivity or denial of our environmental problems, but I hear him caring as much as anyone. Listen to hear his values and commitment to act on them.Joe's campaign page: JOE COLLINS FOR CONGRESS!The video I referred to in our conversation, Joe Collins - Mansion MaxineThe follow-up video: Joe Collins is Back at Maxine's Mansion Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I contacted Scott after reading a profile of his work in The Guardian, ‘Within minutes I was weeping’: the US pastor using scripture to mobilize climate action. The story spoke of someone leading by creating meaning and purpose:He’s not alone: across the US, there is a growing movement of religious leaders who are trying to deploy faith as a vehicle for climate action. And Hardin-Nieri’s own journey toward climate activism began when he lived in Monteverde, Costa Rica, and witnessed how different faith communities – from Catholics to Quakers – came together to fight climate change.“It wasn’t a Republican or Democrat issue,” he says. “It was a life issue.”Longtime readers know I'm increasingly working with evangelicals, conservatives, and Trump supporters. Go far enough back and the impetus comes from reading former guest Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind. I recommend it for understanding and collaborating with people with different values.Most environmentalists seem to view them as the enemy. I don't. We all vote. We all buy stuff and pollute. Believing you're right and they're wrong undermines your ability to influence them.I'm no Dalai Lama, but I've learned that the more I disagree with someone, the more I can learn from them. Over the years, I've learned they care about the environment as much as anyone. I've also learned liberals and many environmentalists don't pollute less than conservatives. They insist on passing laws against what they do in personal behavior.So I wanted to learn from a guy acting and practicing. I imagine he's succeeded. And quotes like this one suggest he's faced challenges.Hardin-Nieri says he is “still learning” about how to best talk to conservatives about climate change, but he remains hopeful.“Climate change is a symptom of a larger moral problem of greed,” he says. “Faith communities, at their best, can address those things in a way that a solar panel industry cannot.”You'll hear that we learned from each other. I think you'll learn from the conversation too.‘Within minutes I was weeping’: the US pastor using scripture to mobilize climate action Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Martin is a legend. How many people craft phrases that become part of everyday language like “The Ultimate Driving Machine," "The Antidote For Civilization,” and “The Tightest Ship In The Shipping Business”? He comes from a different time in advertising and communication, as he describes in our conversation.I met him nearly twenty years ago. He was considering investing in the company I cofounded, Submedia, based on the medium I invented. He didn't invest, but he came to my first solo gallery show in Manhattan. We lost touch.Then I saw him speak recently. I confess a slight disposition to expect corporate writers not to engage in depth, which I recognize as a flaw in myself. He spoke about creativity, what it can be, how much we've lost it today, and the consequences of losing it. He spoke with a love of an America in hibernation now, what caused it to sleep, and how to bring it back.We talk about creativity, culture, passion, and more.Interview in Spirit Flesh magazineInsights from Leaders: A Big Idea, by Martin PurisInsights from Leaders: My Definition of a Big Idea, by Martin Puris Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most of you probably know Forrest for his television shows. He combines the most intriguing parts of being a biologist, an adventurer, and a television star. His passion for each is infectious. Most of all, he loves wildlife. I learned from him first through his new book, Still Alive: A Wild Life of Rediscovery, which gives depth and origins to that passion and love. I can imagine seeing him on TV without knowing that background, you'd wonder where it all came from.You know me. Even with the background, I'm curious about the story behind the story behind the story, which Forrest shares in our conversation.He also shared a meaningful moment of new reflection when I asked what the environment meant to him. Despite working with nature being his life, no one had asked what it meant to him. Listen to find out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I consider Mechai Viravaidya my top role model for sustainability leadership. As I described in a recent episode, We Can Dance Around Environmental Problems All We Want. We Eventually Reach Overpopulation and Overconsumption. Before learning of Mechai Viravaidya, I knew only of China's One Child Policy and eugenics. I couldn't talk about population when I thought the cure was worse than the disease.Learning of Mechai changed everything. As his biography's back cover, states.In Thailand, a condom is called a "Mechai". Mechai Viravaidya, Thailand's condom King, has used this most anatomically suggestive contraceptive device to turn the conventional family planning establishment on its head. First came condom-blowing contests, then T-shirts with condom shrouded anthropomorphic penises. Then condom key rings followed by a Cabbages and Condoms restaurant, When it comes to condoms, no one has been more creative than the Condom King.To equate Mechai with condoms or family planning alone underestimates the man and fails to capture his essence. Mechai Viravaidya is engaged in a relentless pursuit to improve the well-being of the poor by giving them the tools to lead a fruitful and productive life. His achievements in family planning, AIDS prevention, and rural development are a means to an end - the alleviation of poverty in Thailand.Mechai's journey From Condoms To Cabbages - from his roots in family planning to his goal of poverty alleviation - has spanned 34 years. Along the way, he has been labeled a visionary iconoclast and cheerful revolutionary. He is also an ordinary man from modest origins.He made the cure more fun than the disease, along with peers in other nations, including Costa Rica, South Korea, Iran, Mexico, and other nations.You may hear my tongue-tied in this conversation because of the reverence I hold for him. I cover him at length in the manuscript for my next book. When I host Oprah, I expect I'll do fine in comparison.I could write more about him, but I recommend learning more of him from all the resources below.The Mechai Viravaidya FoundationMechai Viravaidya's TEDx talkHis biographyHis Wikipedia pageHis NGO, Population and Community Development Association's Wikipedia pageThe Leadership and the Environment episode that mentioned himMechai’s team sent me these links too:Education“All Hail the Condom King”, written by Bill Gates about Mechai ViravaidyaPBS News hour: Combating Hardship in Rural Thailand (2012)PBS News Hour – Mechai Bamboo School: How this Thai Educational Movement Empowers Rural Students (2019)Comprehensive presentation describing the Mechai Bamboo School and the Partnership Schools ProjectNHK Direct Talk: Take No as a Question – Mechai Viravaidya (2017)Thai documentary about the Bamboo School with English Subtitles (2017) รายการกาวเกนิ พอ เริ ิ องโรงเริ ยนมิ ชยพฒนาFamily PlanningThe Cheerful Revolution (1979)A documentary on our early efforts at family planning in Thailand, “Two is Enough”: Part 1 and Part 2HIV and AIDSA documentary narrated by Brad Pitt for PBS on our campaign to combat HIV/AIDS: “Rx for Survival“Social EnterprisePBS: Social Entrepreneur – Mechai Viravaidya (2012)Development ProjectsThe Village Development PartnershipWall Street Journal: Slumping Fertility Rates in Developing Countries Spark Labor WorriesMoreI learned of Mechai through podcast guest Alan Weisman‘s book Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?, which profiles him. I highly recommend the book.Search the web for more on Mechai and you’ll find it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.