This Sustainable Life

Since I don't use many apps and pick up litter already, I felt modest expectations of Jeff's Litterati, but I love it. It delivers the main things I look for: fun, community, connection, effectiveness, and free---the opposite of what many people connect with litter.As I'm writing, the app has recorded over 5 million pieces of litter picked up by over 150,000 people in over 165 countries. I think we can safely say the app led to a huge majority of those people connecting and picking up those pieces of litter. I hope those of you who haven't picked up litter are feeling the tug to try it out.My experience is that the more you pick up, the more acting on litter goes to the clean part of your brain, not the dirty part, if you know what I mean. I don't feel like I'm touching dirt, I feel like I'm cleaning my world. See where waste ends up motivates me to buy less stuff with packaging and other sources of litter, which lowers demands and can change systems.Jeff started all that. This episode covers Jeff's start and leads to his first environmental challenge.Those considering acting entrepreneurially to solve environmental (or any other) problems can learn a lot from Jeff's experience and success.Learn about LitteratiDownload from Android or Apple Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode puts together the most important and fundamental considerations about the environment:What worksThe basic cause contributing to all environmental problemsEarth's carrying capacityAn attainable bright futureA means to reach it that has worked on a smaller scaleIt feels to me like a solid TED talk.On Alan Weisman:250: Why talk about birthrate and population so much?248: Countdown, a book I recommend by Alan Weisman258: The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman251: Let’s make overpopulation only a finance issueMy conversation with AlanOn Mechai Viravaidya, the Thai man who transformed Thai's birth rate through fun, not coercionTED: How Mr. Condom Made Thailand a Better Place for Life and LoveMy episode 279: Role model and global leader Mechai Viravaidya294: Population: How Much Is Too Much? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roberta and I met last September. Our scheduled time to record came just after the covid-19 situation hit the US.We reflected on the change. The conversation is less scripted but of the moment.I decided to post it in the moment, foregoing editing (I hope you don't mind the sound quality [EDIT: Since posting, my editor worked his magic and improved the audio quality]), gaining poignancy.I don't have to say it, but we're living in a historical time. Everything is changing, but we don't know how or how much. It looks like big things will happen soon in this country. They already have around the world. We don't know what.Many of us are talking like this. I wanted to share Roberta's voice now.Earth's CallAim2FlourishLorna Davis on this podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous guest and retired dating coach guru Brad P suggested inviting Marni as a guest, his longtime friend and colleague. She coaches men on attraction, dating, and so on. Curious?She pioneered women coaching men in this area, as you'll hear in our conversation, helping transition the field in ways you'll hear her describe. Her fourteen years of experience led her to expertise, understanding, skills, insight, and fun. I don't know of her peer.She shares her expertise and experience. I predict you'll find her story fascinating, engaging, and fun.On a personal note, I'm continuing the opening up about my practicing and coaching dating, attraction, seduction, etc. so you'll get to hear more of my evolution in something important to me where I felt vulnerable. I was also a guest on her show, the Ask Women podcast, which listeners have given positive feedback on. She and her cohost Kristen Carney created an open, fun context where I could feel comfortable sharing my dating coach history.I don't know about you, but I felt like I got to see into a quasi-secret world or perspective that I knew about but hadn't actually heard from directly and openly. And we have mutual friends.And if you're a man looking to attract women, I recommend contacting Marni for coaching.Marni's page The Wing Girl MethodThe Ask Women podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People are criticizing politicians and others over handling Covid-19. I don't blame or criticize people for not knowing how to handle particulars of this situation, but we can respond more effectively.Some parts of the situation are unique to Covid-19. Some are endemic to crises. We can learn from how people handled past crises effectively and ineffectively.Today I talk about John Kennedy learning from the Bay of Pigs disaster to lead through the Cuban Missile Crisis.Important urgent tasks like sourcing ventilators are important, but if we miss learning the important non-urgent things to prepare for the next situation, which likely won't require ventilators, we'll find ourselves here again.Bay of Pigs invasion: Kennedy’s Cuban catastropheJFK’s Legacy and GroupthinkThirteen Days (film) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I chose to stay at my mom's outside the cityWhy?Read stories, saw difference between places with SARS and MERS experience versus notNY and US woefully underprepared govt, corps. People didn't get itNot worried about my health, but systemAdvice is distanceWhat could happenCloser to Italy than China or IranTalked to friend in medicineTalked to friend who had been following mostUS lacks central authorityWhy not?Mom is 76. Stepfather close. I could unknowingly bring diseaseSolution isn't possible for everyone. On the other hand, everyone who can slow spread shouldAt first felt privilegedBut hard to find preciselyHaving mom?Having mom still alive?Her living outside the city? Many other situations doesn't help.That I can afford to go somewhere else?Normally couldn't but situation demands it. Like many, I can't afford. My largest source of income last year was corporate speaking, which is all disappearingIn any case, able to relocate possibly for months results from work at pruning unnecessary, which anyone can doI don't have kids, which enables a lot, but a major factor in not having kids is not being able to afford them.Feels like the opposite of privilege, not being able to afford somethingStill, people have told me I'm privileged for it.Candidly, it feels that way, but I can't put my finger on it. My family isn't loaded. If middle class is privileged, I guess, but then everyone outside poverty is privileged.Back to CovidWhat made case for me was seeing scientific models that what we're seeing with minimal testing implies far more we haven't tested, which implies far more who can transmit but haven't shown symptoms, which could be you or meBiggest problem would be if we don't learn from it.Biggest lesson so far: can't not fly -> can not flyBecause however big Covid, scientists have predicted pandemics based on overpopulation and over travel for generationsThey've also predicted a lot more to come.Best course beyond this pandemic is to implement globally what Thai people did: lowering birth rate globally to around 1, 1.5 children per woman.In the immediate, follow expert advice, of courseThe two articles that influenced me most:Coronavirus: Why You Must Act NowHow Will Coronavirus Spread? Liz Specht Breaks Down Systemic Risk – by the Math – As 16 Million Are Quarantined in ItalyThe chart I described, from the first link above: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My notes that I read from for this episode:Greatest danger is not to learn from it.Starting story: Preparing to launch on 9/11. While nothing on scale of victims, first responders, and those who fought, but went from 8 digit to limbo. Within two years squeezed out. Gave up following Einstein and Newton to outdoor advertising that I didn't even like. Now no way forward, backward, or anything. Lost trust in people. Closer to mom and other entrepreneurs with similar disaster.We feel everything shutting down. Huge unknown. Will things restart? How many will suffer? How many will die? What will happen to health care system? Have I bought enough to eat? Will I become infected? If so, how badly? Will I accidentally infect others?Images of China, Italy, Korea show fuller shut down ahead.Other nation's results show divide in effectiveness with if they faced SARS, MERS, and related situations.Nothing compares with experience.We've seen in America back-to-back 500-year storms, fires, and floods. My home of New York City has seen a hurricane, not nearly the country's severest.We know more is to come.We lack relevant leadership experience.I don't see a silver lining to lower pollution if it comes through suffering and death.If any silver lining -- that given predictions for generations that neglecting our humility to the environment by dominating instead of stewarding it would lead to sea level rise, unbreathable air, famine, pestilence, and more, we can expect more -- and however bad this problem, it may give us training for future disasters.Our greatest danger in responding to covid is not to learn how to handle a population far beyond the Earth's ability to sustain or regenerate. Because we could learn what nations hit by SARS learned.We've been fortunate enough so far to face mostly localized disasters at different times. Here is one of our first global ones. The US could come together to help victims of Katrina, Paradise CA fires, and so on.We've helped foreign communities -- however imperfectly?What will happen when two or three disasters happen? Four?Today's answer is that we don't know and have no basis to answer.But we could learn now. Not a silver lining for people in Italy or Iran and probably the US who are turned away from hospital care.Nor did I know what I would do on September 12. The fallout had barely begun. My life is far better for what I learned over what comfort and convenience I lost.Learned leadership and how to teach it, over a decade now. Students and clients apply it from the West Bank, to Silicon Valley, to the nation's least advantaged communities.Five years ago began my journey to serious meaningful environmental action. It began simply, challenging myself to go a week buying no packaged food. Learned to cook from scratch, found delicious, faster, cheaper, more accessible (Saturday cooked in Bronx at invitation from single mom in food desert to show her community what I'd learned).Mindset shift to expect acting on environmental values to improve life. So when I learned flying NY-LA r/t warmed the globe a year of driving, I challenged myself to go a year without flying.March 23 begins my fifth year of what I expected deprivation, sacrifice, obligation, chore, but turned out joy, connection, and community.I threw out my garbage once in 2019, 2018, 2017. Pure life improvement amid 90% reduction according to online calculators.I've spoken to about 1,000 people on my podcast and life about not flying. About 998 said impossible.Suddenly many not flying. It's always been a matter of motivation and imagination.One flight brings you to distant loved one or job opportunity. Flying in general separates to where you have to fly. More flying means less time with family and less control over career and is a sign of privilege that letting go of improves life.My mom texted me she couldn't see me last week. We don't know if my niece's Bat Mitzvah later this month will happen. Our family is closer, not more distant, despite the physical distance.We can learn from this. It will get worse before it gets better. Maybe it will just be a worse flu season. It probably won't become like the 1918 flu coming off WWI or the Black Plague, but they danger isn't how sick you get, it's how society handles it.Let's learn as much as we can. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I view ecotourism skeptically at best. While I imagine someone could create tourism that increased the world's ability to sustain life and human society, every case I've seen at least doubly does the opposite. For one thing I've only seen ecotourism involving flying, which destroys what they pretend to help, perhaps dreaming that carbon offsets lower greenhouse concentrations while they more likely raise them. For another, they turn places into tourist traps that depend on outside money.Today's episode presents an opportunity for people to get most of what they look for in travel---adventure, different culture, cuisine, etc---without lowering the environment's ability to sustain life and human society. Visit decaying parts of the US or wherever you live.In the US, you could visit Flint, Camden, and so on. I bet visiting those places would check most or all the boxes of what most people claim they want from travel. They'd cost less, connect people to people and cultures they wouldn't otherwise. They'd bring money into depressed economies.It would develop some empathy and compassion from people claiming they want to help with those they pretend to help. Or it would expose the lie that most people claiming what they want from ecotourism really want other things, like to indulge, but to look good for it---what many people call greenwashing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People ask, "Josh, do you really think you can make a difference?" or comment that what I or anyone does won't matter.In the first part of this episode I describe how I think our environmental future will unfold---the outcome I consider most likely. It's not pretty. I foresee a lot of gloom and doom about nature, but however much problems in nature, I think human reactions will be more important, sooner, and more destructive.My main resources for this part are the Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells and Limits to Growth.In the second part, I share what I think could unfold if we get serious about addressing what's happening---what I'm working for.In the next part, I describe why I work at something that even I consider unlikely, drawing on Vince Lombardi.Finally, in a coda, I address why I don't expect technology to save us, or more likely to augment and accelerate our environmental problem.The Uninhabitable EarthLimits to GrowthThe Do the Math blogAbout Thailand's family planningNorman Borlaug's quote:The green revolution has won a temporary success in man's war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I met Nir Eyal at a podcast recording of Will Bachman, who long ago hosted me on his podcast (see links below).Nir recently publish a book, Indistractable, about how to keep focused. A lot of people ask me how I do so much. I don't feel I do, but if so, maybe I qualify as someone who achieves. Indistractable gave me tools to focus and achieve more with less distraction.In fact, I'm writing now and recorded then despite feeling like I wanted to surf the net but used a technique from the book to focus.I wanted to hear how his research and techniques on personal action would connect to environmental action, which we started to talk about (I liked to Will's episode so you can hear Nir at length about the book).Nir showed one of this podcast's more dramatic transitions from skeptical, abstract environmental discussion to enthusiastic action. I appreciate his openness to reconsider since I read him as starting with set environmental views, but let himself look at it from a new perspective, including acting. I read his thank you at the end as sincere and, I suspect, the start of something new.As a spoiler alert, he emailed me less than 24 hours after we recorded that he acted on his commitment. Listen to hear his commitment beyond most people's.Nir's conversation with Will BachmanMy conversation with Will was a few episodes earlierPale Blue Dot Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.