This Sustainable Life

We've seen suggestions to defund the police. Many on the left consider it an obvious step. Many on the right think it's loony and will lead to society falling apart.I propose a way forward, building on my civilian service academy idea from a past episode, putting responsibility to act first on those proposing the idea. It would be hard, but if people seriously believe other agencies can do some things better than police, they can show it.EDIT: I found a story of people doing what I described. They found a place where non-police responses work more effectively than police and are implementing it. Here's the story: The Cycle of Punitive Justice Starts in Schools. Eric Butler Is Showing Kids and Teachers How to Break It. Teaching restorative justice, one hallway fight at a time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following up my conversations on sex, drugs, and rock & roll with Dov, previous podcast guest Dan McPherson of Leaders Must Lead and I talk about race.We start be reviewing our relationship and why we chose to record a conversation on race.We then talk about risks for white people talking publicly about race, even innocent topics everybody would value being covered. Frankly, I feel vulnerable and scared talking about my personal experience in our current climate.Then how when I hear whites describe their experiences regarding race, they sound foreign. Often the stories of people of color sound like mine. Once in my life did I hear a white person's situation sound familiar to mine, a couple months ago.We talk about why the term fragility doesn't seem to apply.Then we mostly flow about talking about our experiences regarding race. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Tercek stands tall in environmental action. He was president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy for 11 years.From Wikipedia: "Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members, and has protected more than 119,000,000 acres of land and thousands of miles of rivers worldwide. The largest environmental nonprofit by assets and revenue in the Americas, The Nature Conservancy ranks as one of the most trusted national organizations in Harris Interactive polls every year since 2005. Forbes magazine rated The Nature Conservancy's fundraising efficiency at 88 percent in its 2005 survey of the largest U.S. charities. The Conservancy received a three-star rating from Charity Navigator in 2016 (three-star in 2015)."Before then he was a partner at Goldman Sachs. Curious how someone goes from investment banking with Hank Paulson to the Nature Conservancy? He describes that calling.We also enjoy that we both are reaching new audiences---I share about Magamedia and he about talking about global warming in Alabama.As much as the content he shared, I loved his emotion of, as I read it, enthusiasm and expectation of success, knowing the challenges andthe likelihood of catastrophe, whatever progress he makes.Green Is Good, The New Yorker profile of Mark Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rip committed to avoid waste through coffee, which he describes as harder than he thought.Wait a minute. A three-star Marine Corps general is describing not using coffee cartridges as hard? In the Millennium Challenge we talked about in our first conversation he led a team taking on the best of the entire US war machine and won. How hard can coffee be?That's the point of this podcast. Personal change doesn't depend on calories burned, monetary costs, and so on. It depends on our hearts and minds, which depend on our stories, beliefs, images, and so on. It's as easy or hard as we believe.Another main point of this podcast is to empower you to change our beliefs, stories, and images. While a belief may make something as materially simple as changing how you make coffee seem impossibly difficult, recognizing that our belief is the issue puts resolving theproblem under our control. We don't have to accept that belief. We can change it.That's why I value Viktor Frankl and people like him so much. He turned living in Auschwitz into including experiencing love and bliss. What he can do, we can.Rip shares how he saw the situation before starting, how it ended up harder than expected, then he got to work on himself and his views, and you'll hear the results, as I heard more positive than he would have predicted.Systemic change begins with personal transformation. If you think the change will end with a few coffee cartridges, you're missing how systemic change happens. Among other things, now there's a Marine Corps three-star General who concerns himself with household waste and sees it as something to enjoy and look forward to. He presents it as decreasing feelings of guilt, taking responsibility, enjoying results. You'll hear that talking about responsibility and personal growth leads naturally to personal and professional growth at the highest levels of the military, about policy, strategy, campaigns, operations, and tactics.He shared preparing reading Von Clausewitz's On War. I almost can't believe the wisdom and experience I got to hear. This conversation helped prompt me reading the strategy works he described as well as valuing writing about sustainability. Beyond my blog, I'm working on my book and seeing how it reveals the core, as he described. I remember watching a video biography of President John Adams. After he was President a scene showing him fixing shingles on his roof. I thought of how human we all are, whatever our status, whatever importance we give ourselves. As JFK said, in the end we are all mortal. We share the same air, land, and water.We can view changes as obligations, chores, sacrifice, and burden---hardships for us. Focusing inwardly on ourselves characterizes depression. By contrast, we can view stewardship of nature as connecting us to others. Little improves how we feel more than acting in service of others. That's leadership. Even if we want to get ahead and think we have to do for ourselves, acting in service of others responsibly is leadership. If I want to get ahead it works. If I want more happiness itworks. If you prefer seeing stewardship as a burden keeping you from your career, that's your choice.Rip shared otherwise, as I heard it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eric Orts is a tenured professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also exploring a potential race for the U.S. Senate: the seat from which two-term Senator Patrick Toomey has announced he will retire in 2022.On this broadcast he promises, as an expression of his values, not to fly for the next year. He pledges further, if he decides to run for office, not to fly during his campaign.To join or contribute to Orts for Pennsylvania: friendsofericorts.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My goal in this podcast is to bring leaders from many fields and share what made them effective. I believe sustainability and stewardship would benefit from learning more effective leadership. A goal with each guest is to feature them. Everyone is unique. Everyone brings something we can learn from.Sometimes I don't achieve my goal. Sometimes a guest and I end up talking at cross purposes, which I think happened this time, meaning I didn't do justice to the guest. This time I started off exploring Margaret's views and experiences but part way through misunderstanding arose and I don't think I gave Margaret the chance to shine that she deserved. I apologize to her. I hope I didn't distract from her work. You'll hear at the beginning how her book led me to reflect, introspect, and act so I recommend it.If I messed up, I welcome constructive criticism. I hope she looks all the better for the conversation even if I don't. I hope you, the listener, enjoy hearing the conversation and get value from each of our perspectives. I think I captured the two purposes at the end---that I had trouble seeing her view that getting distracted from political change would not achieve the effects we need to turn things around and that she didn't see my view that personal action augments the political, not distracts.I hope each of us surprises the other by succeeding more in ways the other couldn't have conceived of, illuminating the other's world and expanding the other's view to where each of us becomes more effective than we would have otherwise. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The rest of my story riding 100 miles a week and a half ago, where I gave up on myself, having lost faith in myself, but then getting lucky to force myself to finish. Only finishing strong showed I could do it.I've since fallen into the easy path of sharing my pride in finishing, but not the shame, guilt, and disappointment in myself at giving up. Finishing strong only reinforced my giving into the sweet lies I told myself to justify giving up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're in for a treat. Joe and I start talking business so you'll hear things happening while we're talking. We start by talking about his exercising while we talk, then my plans to swim across the Hudson about 48 hours from the recording (and the guy I swam with holding out on the video footage I describe in another episode). We talk about his picking up beach trash, but really about doing things, not just talking.Then we start doing. He starts planning during the call to transform Spartan Race's food and garbage plans. He puts me in touch with a food friend and starts the process to schedule a presentation to Spartan Race's leadership team to kick the process off. I tell him about podcast guest Marina McCoy for helping organize foodSince this recording, I can't give details, but the business has continued. I visited that weekend in Vermont, appeared on his podcast, and started working on sustainability. His team and mine are continuing to meet to continue the collaboration started in this conversation.You heard it hear first! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jaime and my second conversation is enjoyable and challenging. It was different than usual because for whatever reason we're talking about views on environment, personal action, education, and so on, but I didn't get to the personal challenge I like to.It was enjoyable because we're both into it for exchange, education, and understanding. Challenging because we have to figure out where the other is coming from. We start this conversation where we ended the last one, which is each putting forward his view. Getting and understanding another's view takes time, especially while trying to make yours available for the other to get and understand. Probably a third party will get and understand both faster and easier than either party.We end up at what will be a starting point for a third conversation. Reaching there, I suspect we'll say things that you've heard before---I'm sure he and I have both heard most of the other's view but not talked it through.Most of the conversation I felt he was asking what people were doing to point out its futility. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but at the close I thought he was actually asking.As I said, I think there are scales of disaster and we can avoid the worst. Actually, I think everything we do can decrease suffering forothers.Anyway, I think we'll start next time with talking strategy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People criticize environmentalists as doomsayers while celebrating futurists. This episode shares key examples where the doomsayers were the ones saying acting sustainably would ruin us. On the contrary, in these cases and many others, doomsayers said changing our polluting behavior would undermine our way of life. Yet acting on sustainability improved our situation in these cases.I also share, by contrast, cases where people projected new technologies would only improve our situations, and they may have in limited areas, but they deteriorated them in others.We can learn skepticism of those saying stopping polluting will deprive us of income, well-being, or liberty. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.