This Sustainable Life

My passion for the possibility of doing for pollution what abolitionists did to slavery: transform it from something normal, as if part of nature, to forever seen as wrong. The more I learn the difficulty of conceiving of the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery, let alone passing it, the more possible a parallel amendment on pollution seems.

Jim and I continue our conversation on abolition's history, mainly from the vantage point of his book Freedom National. I understand a lot more of the history of thirteen slave colonies becoming thirteen slave states then a nation of free and slave states, then with the Thirteenth Amendment, a free nation of thirty-six free states. Jim knows it backward and forward. He helps clarify that history for me and you.

Then we consider applying lessons from history to today. Jim also clarifies what a movement today would need.

I love finding history so relevant.

• Jim's book, Freedom National

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Bringing back Chris for first time since five years ago. Since then, his last book got big, as we briefly discussed.

We started talking about meditation and at a high level, framed the conversation to come on how the mind works, outside our control, though we don't notice. More framing: we talk about intention and action, meaning and purpose.

The topic of his new book How to Calm Your Mind is interesting to me because I see billions of people on autopilot, sleepwalking into polluting ourselves into oblivion. We spend most of our lives reacting, avoiding the feelings of powerlessness, anxiety, and often guilt and shame keeping us from facing that we are powerful, not powerless.

Chris shares a moment of anxiety, becoming burned out that prompted his research into calming down. That moment was performing on stage in front of an audience.

His research found that a book was missing and he wrote it. He describes how to calm your mind and to avoid losing our calm and our cultural imperative to achieve more, absent a measure of enough.

We share our experiences in our journeys. Calming one's mind and pulling back from "more" and chasing dopamine overlap with sustainability.

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Last night I had trouble falling asleep because before getting in bed, I noticed I had to record two podcast episodes first thing in the morning but I wanted to cook some stew, the forecast was for rain all day, and didn't think my battery had enough charge to pull everything off. Plus I had lots of computer work to do, which would use more energy from the battery. I could always rely on my "cheat" to charge my computer and phone at NYU, but I prefer not to. I'm trying to avoid polluting. I also didn't have enough time between calls and obligations to walk to NYU without possibly missing the beginnings of calls.

I found more and more ways to avoid needing battery energy. Toward the end of the day, I realized I not only would I achieve everything, I wouldn't need to go to NYU and use any grid power.

I happened to have a call just when some sun shone before sunset; not enough to charge from but enough to make me feel great. I commandeered the beginning of the call to share how I felt, recorded it, edited his parts out, and here it is.

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Do you want a job working in sustainability? If you want to wait for a job in the field, you're going to wait for a long time. Most businesses' models depend on growth, extraction, and exploiting resources. Many of the biggest and most profitable are built on exploiting people too. I hope I didn't surprise you with news you didn't know.

Most places with positions like Chief Sustainability Officers or groups like Sustainability Committees are greenwashing at best, judging by how we're extracting ever faster, nearly all ways places claim reductions are scams like carbon offsets or net zero claims that are the equivalent of creative accounting, and most targets are so far off as to be unaccountable.

Yet billions of people want leadership. They want to change. They want justified hope in a brighter future. Nothing says entrepreneurial opportunity like global unmet demand. To serve people wanting to live more sustainably looks like one of the greatest entrepreneurial opportunities ever. I'm working on meeting it and expect to break the market open. Maybe you'll beat me to it. I hope you do.

Jeff's latest book covers starting your project. Why would you do it? What will you expect? How does it feel?

We talk about the move to self-employment, what's in his book, his personal history, and more. If you want to help humanity reach sustainability, nearly the only path to you impacting us in a big way it self-employment, what Jeff focuses on.

• Jeff's home page

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What can we learn from Buddhism to understand and respond to our ecological crisis? This question is the heart of David's focus, as I understand it.

We started by describing his journey from a more mainstream American childhood to Zen Buddhism and forming the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center near Boulder, Colorado. Then we talk about humanity's disconnect from nature and his work to restore it, in the context of his Buddhist path. We also talk about reconnecting with nature, letting go of the cultural forces to disconnect.

He shares his work to help people handle these problems and their grief. We talked about how we handle what we humans are doing to our world and what we're doing about it, including from a Buddhist perspective, using Buddhist practice.

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Reading Christopher's story in the Pacific Standard, The Fallacy of Endless Economic Growth What economists around the world get wrong about the future, made me contact him. It was one of the only reviews of criticism of our culture's attempting to grow the economy and population forever that didn't prioritize growth dogma over understanding. The article centered on the book Limits to Growth, its analysis, and the unhinged criticism of it.

I had to look up his other work too. I recommend following up at his page, which links to his writing and Denatured, his journalism nonprofit.

From the moment he starts talking in this conversation, he lays down basic, common sense understanding of our culture's fundamental tenets, which he calls growthism. To my ears, it sounds like what we see in front of our noses all the time, yet few to no one with prominent voices will say it.

He talks about how we got this way, how things could be different, how he came to write for such prominent magazines, and more. He is at times serious, funny, calm, exasperated, and always authentic, genuine, and honest.

I hope you know people who understand things as Christopher does and is as outspoken with what they've learned. I believe everyone should hear messages like his periodically. Our culture tries to drown such voices out, but what he says is too clear and makes too much sense to remain silenced.

• Chris's journalism nonprofit: Denatured
• His site

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The only was I can see how we can avoid environmental disaster leading to human population collapse is by changing our culture---every unsustainable culture but America most, as the most polluting per capita large nation.

Can we do it in time? Humanity has changed on a global level within a few generations at least once before. Slavery was legal, normal, and seen as good around the globe since before written history. Then in the late 1700s, abolition increased until within a century people widely viewed it as wrong. Not long after, nations made it illegal nearly everywhere.

Jim Oakes is one of America's leading historians of America's abolition movement. I met him at his office, where we spoke about American abolition, Abraham Lincoln, the Thirteenth Amendment, and how it happened. The history is fascinating on its own, all the more since I didn't learn it enough growing up, and more so for seeing its application to sustainability.

I see a constitutional amendment as increasingly necessary, however inconceivable it seems to pass. The more I learn of the Thirteenth Amendment, the more it seemed impossible to pass, yet I doubt I've met anyone who would promote repealing it today.

This conversation was a pleasure; informative and inspirational for someone looking to learn from history to apply it today.

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Every step I take toward sustainability leads me to learn how much humans have figured out how to live sustainably. I'm far from living sustainably, though I've come a long way. We are wiping out the cultures living sustainably these cultures, now hanging on by threads. Besides practices and viewpoints, I'm learning humility. We don't have all the answers. Far from it. They may not either, but at least they can help us restore lost values of community we're jettisoning in favor of isolation and humility to nature we're jettisoning in favor of ignoring that our attempts to dominate nature are accumulating unintended side effects hurting us more than helping.

Such are my views. I haven't lived among indigenous cultures and don't expect to. Mark has, among several for long times. He can speak more knowledgeably, compassionately, and helpfully than many can.

In this conversation he shares his decades of learning from experience and research. He describes actual people and cultures, not projections or hopes. I share some views I've developed, which he helps me refine and extend based on that experience. We talk about how life benefits from learning from them, contrary to what our culture tells us, that without what fossil fuels and other tamed energy bring we would suffer.

On the contrary, on what means the most to us, we would thrive. And we'd stop wiping them out.

• Mark's home page
• Mark's TED talk: What the people of the Amazon know that you don’t
• Mark's podcast: The Plants of the Gods

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Tony turns out to live a few blocks from me. I met him at his home, where we recorded. He shared his experience knowing E. O. Wilson, who, as Tony described, conceived of the plan to protect half the Earth's land to protect biodiversity and more to sustain Earth's ability to sustain life.

I'd heard Wilson describe the plan many years ago and had seen some analysis that it could protect up to ninety percent of biodiversity if implemented effectively, whereas saving less land or implementing ineffectively might save markedly less, which could put humanity at risk, not to discount the value of other species' existence independent of humans (I confess to valuing humans more than others, but still value other life).

I hadn't heard the stories of people discovering the problems and finding solutions. His book, Rescuing the Planet, tells their stories and the project's history and chance for success. Some of the stories give remarkable hope. Our conversation tells the stories behind the stories of some of the people in the book as well as his motivations and history.

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Ethno-botonist Rodrigo Cámara-Leret first describes how podcast guest Alan Ereira chose him to live and work with the Kogi, who want to share, in my language, how to stop wrecking the biosphere.

He has visited them and seen behind what they show of themselves in the documentaries. Unlike typical scientific research, he will bring his family and learn beyond what they plant. The condition of their environment is the physical manifestation of their culture, as is ours to ours. They aren't living in the Stone Age or as noble savages. They are living appropriate to their environment, sophisticated in their understanding of nature.

Rodrigo and the organizations supporting him are approaching the Kogi with humility, as I understand, not trying to teach them or assimilate them. He shares some of the challenges to overcome as well as what he looks forward to.

We all can learn from cultures living sustainably, like how to restore the values we've jettisoned of Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You, Leave It Better Than You Found It, and Live and Let Live.

• The Tairona Heritage Trust
• To donate and support

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