This Sustainable Life

Christopher may be the most direct, accurate reporter on sustainability. Our last conversation treated his helpful and accurate reporting on the book Limits to Growth. Today we start from his (in my opinion) excellent article The Green Growth Delusion, in which he reports on the futility and false promise of chasing growth. It's tempting, alluring, and seductive to believe technology, growth, or economic trickery will save us, but wanting to believe something doesn't make it true, even if you really want to believe it.

As before, Christopher doesn't hold back, nor does he speak inaccurately. I recommend reading the article first, though you won't go wrong listening right now. Here's how it starts:

• Christopher's article this conversation is based on: The Green Growth Delusion
• Donate to Chris's nonprofit, Denatured (I did)
• Less Is More by Jason Hickel
• Small Is Beautiful

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The spiciest parts of this conversation come at the end. It's possible listeners may think we were annoying each other, but I think I can speak for both of us that we enjoyed the repartee.

Anyone who has talked to me about my work since I started watching and listening to Daniel's What Is Politics? videocast knows it's shaped how I view politics, meaning how groups make decisions. If we want to change culture, he covers much of the core. If we want to undo some people dominating others, it helps to know how dominance hierarchies form. The core is in anthropology, which shows how humans have related to each other going back hundreds of thousands to millions of years, and current material conditions.

We talk about creating videos versus writing books. Daniel shares a lot of backstory to his creating What Is Politics?, including his goals and greatest hurdles.

At the end things heat up as I share what I want to do, which he sees as impossible and a waste of time. Do you think he's right? . . . or that I should keep trying? I will be the first to say I lack experience explaining myself in this area. I just haven't had the chances, which is part of why I valued this conversation so much.

• The Do the Math blog
• Michael Albert's Wikipedia page and videos
• Jane O'Sullivan's World Population Day Presentation that debunks population myths
• My sustainability leadership workshop
• Robert Carter III, who freed 100 slaves starting in 1791
• The largest B corporation to date was led by Lorna Davis, a guest on this podcast. Here are her episodes.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I've been recommending Oliver's book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals a lot. When people ask about it, I have a hard time explaining what it says, only that it's valuable. He has a way of communicating important things about values, time, intent, decision, and related concepts that are hard to express otherwise. In this conversation he shares more.

One thing I can express that I value: what he says about time parallels what I say about energy, specifically energy as physicists describe it, not emotional energy. We don't have infinite amounts of time or energy. If we see life as missing out on what we lack time or energy for, we'll crave what we lack. We'll be insecure. If instead, we recognize we don't have time or energy to do everything we'd enjoy, we can construct the lives we want, which will be abundant.

Being an episode 1.5 means he only started doing the commitment from last time, but is gracious enough and a leader enough to share, regroup, and if we can find another way forward. I bring leaders to sustainability because they have learned not to hide vulnerabilities, at least not all of them.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast and my mission are about changing culture. The Color of Law compiled our culture's practices that I can only see as cruel and unfair. As long as they're hidden, we can't do much about them. Listen to my episode with Richard and read that book if you aren't on top of America's history of cruel and unfair housing policy.

Once you're outraged, then what? In this episode, Leah answers that question. She shares at a high level what people can do in their communities.

You'll hear a couple extra notes of interest from me. One is to see what techniques in the culture she's changing can apply in changing our culture in sustainability. The other is that my episodes with my mom talking about the racially integrated neighborhood she and my father chose to raise us in, as well as the neighborhood itself, Mount Airy, Philadelphia, factored into her research.

You'll also hear me recognizing a new element in how a cultural practice could start for one reason, say racism, then even after people in that system oppose racism, that system can continue and perpetuate the racism. At a certain level, I knew it already, but it hit me more viscerally when Leah explained it. You'll hear.

• The Just Action web page
• Just Action on Substack

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

[Click to watch the video of this post.]

Can Learning to Lead Sustainability be fun, inspiring, and effective?

Yes!

I just finished leading my first workshop in leading oneself and others effectively to act more sustainably: enduring systemic change and immediate personal change.

Best of all: it was FUN! . . . both the workshop and the action it led to.

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the participants results.

Today's post is the audio from a conversation with them on their experiences.

Better yet, watch the video.

You can learn to help change culture and restore a safe, clean, healthy world.

We're organizing two summer 2023 cohorts. If you want to help fix our world, sign up at https://spodekleadership.com/workshop

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some context leading to my conversation with Maya:

When I first thought of a constitutional amendment to protect us from pollution, I thought the idea was crazy, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. The more I did, the more it made sense.

Since learning about the Thirteenth Amendment prompted me to think of it, I first spoke to previous guest James Oakes about it. Since it involved constitutional law, I spoke to previous guest (and Nobel Prize holder) Seth Shelden, who put me in touch with his constitutional law professor and previous guest Michael Herz. Besides my conversations with them one-on-one, I also spoke with Michael and Jim together. I recommend listening and watching those conversations for context.

My conversation with Maya:

Then I learned of Maya's work with "green amendments," as she calls them, at the state level as a foundation for the federal level. She has been working on it for years. She shares that history, including a major win in Pennsylvania and New York State's recently becoming the third state with a green amendment.

She describes the value of an amendment over statutory law, how current legislation doesn't prohibit pollution it legalizes it, the state of the movement, and goals.

If you, as I did, considered environmental amendments interesting but far-fetched, you'll love this episode. Maya is achieving the seemingly impossible and showing it's beyond possible. It's happening.

• She is the Delaware Riverkeeper, leading the watershed based advocacy organization, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network
• Green Amendments for the Generations
• Her book: The Green Amendment: the People’s Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See the video for this episode here.

I speak about the concept of a constitutional amendment on the environment with former guests on the This Sustainable Life podcast:

• Michael Herz: Constitutional scholar and former lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund (Michael's podcast episodes)
• James Oakes: US historian, focusing on the Revolutionary War to Reconstruction (James's podcast episodes)

We approach the concept from many perspectives, especially comparing it with the Thirteenth Amendment.

This is my first conversation with two experts on a topic I'm just starting to learn about based on very detailed fields, including law, history, abolitionism, and politics. I have to start somewhere. We recorded this conversation months ago and I've learned tremendously since.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first part of our conversation, we start by reviewing Gautam's commitment to sailing, which seemed and still seems a good idea to him. but maybe too much for now. We revisit what motivated him and come up with a new commitment.

The second part gets more exciting. Gautam expresses that we need to develop technology to help people who aren't living as well as us so we can help them. (I may not have summarized accurately; listen to his recorded words for his precise meaning.) This view is like waving a red flag to me since I used to think things like that but now see otherwise.

We engage in different views on technology, progress, how humans used to live versus how we live today, values, and such.

In other words, we openly talk about the underlying beliefs driving our culture and individual behavior we don't question or talk about, but that guide our decisions and behavior. If we can only imagine a world working a certain way, we can't change course. If that course leads to billions of people dying, being stuck in beliefs is a problem.

I greatly appreciate a civil, productive conversation on topic that many find inflammatory.

The paper on human lifetimes: Longevity Among Hunter- Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination, by Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan. Michael Guvern was a guest on this podcast. Quoting from the paper:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris returns to share his experience with the Spodek Method. He did something different than he committed to: he stopped using his smart phone---the latest Apple iPhone---in favor of a simple flip phone hearkening almost back to the nineties.

What happens? Does his life fall apart? Does he find more calmness?

Should you simplify your life by avoiding the call for the latest and greatest?

He shares his experience and you can find out (I'm not sure he did it for this podcast, in that I think he was planning to do it anyway. Still, he shares his experience).

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simon is a mining engineer who both researches the minerals and mining necessary if we were to try powering our culture with various sources. His work has brought him to work with government teams, especially economists and politicians around the world.

He shares in our conversation that we will transition to a low-energy future, what it will take, and how little we have tried to figure out if we can do it. It's worrying to hear how poorly we understand the problem, how unprepared we are now, and how poorly we are preparing ourselves.

What he shares is challenging to process considering the risk for catastrophe coming up. Situations like he describes is why I act so much. If you think scientists, engineers, politicians, or anyone understands the situation better than you and you can have faith people smarter than you will solve it, don't hold your breath.

I don't understand how people don't take responsibility, prioritize solving these problems, and act.

• Simon's home page
• Link to GTK videos: There Are Bottlenecks in Raw Materials Supply Chain – A Glimpse of the Systemic Overview Is Here, Discussion and the Development of the Solutions Have Started
• Summary of report: Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels, which also links to videos

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.