This Sustainable Life

After I shared episodes on the hazards of solar and wind, as well as my experiment disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid in Manhattan (in month 8 as I type these words), a listener pointed me to Mark Jacobs. I can't believe I hadn't found him yet.

I dove into Mark's prolific research and writing. He makes plenty free on his site. As a professor of engineering at Stanford with great passion, he researches what he's talking about and makes it all available. He's not just talking or hoping for the best.

His research helps form the Green New Deal. He contributed to the IPCC work that won the Nobel Prize. Coincidentally, he criticized podcast guest Mark P. Mills article I linked to in More Hopeful Calculations for the Energy Transition.

We talked about his roadmaps for transitioning the world, countries, states, cities, and towns to 100% clean, renewable wind, water, and sunlight in all energy sectors and his books, 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything (2020) and No Miracles Needed (2023).

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I almost couldn't believe someone could write a book like Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge: Our History of Addiction. It tells the histories of addiction in human society since antiquity and of him, addicted, including in medical school, jail, and recovery. I don't know how many people could have shared such vulnerability or connected his experience to the reader's so we feel empathy.

Regular listeners and readers of my blog have witnessed my increasing focus on addiction. We live in a culture of addiction. We see it in alcohol, cigarettes, doof, social media, binge TV, gambling, drugs, and so on. We also see it in what pollution brings, I believe: comfort, convenience, and travel, for instance. Medical professionals may not yet recognize these latter addictions in their literature, but it seems clear to me they will.

Solving our environmental problems requires each of billions of people overcoming their addictions. Carl shared some of what recovery takes, and it's not just talk or plans. It takes listening, empathy, and support, among other things.

You'll hear me in this episode realize I haven't yet figured out how to extend compassion to addicted people, the people I want to help most, as there are billions of us and our addicted behavior is lowering Earth's ability to sustain life.

• Carl's home page, linking to his bio, book, podcast, and more

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The more I learn about electronic waste, the more disgusted I feel at how huge the problem is that we are exacerbating, often in the name of increasing efficiency or reducing waste. I've watched many documentaries, but here's a short video showing the problem in just one place in Ghana. Look at the land in the background that was once verdant and lush, now poisonous. Or read The Dark Side of Congo's Cobalt Rush in the New Yorker.

If your comfort and convenience come at the price of others' suffering, wouldn't you rather know than hurt people in ignorance? The way out of that internal conflict is through action. Read Brian Merchant's The One Device the secret history of the invention that changed everything-and became the most profitable product in the world, which tells the story of what goes into our devices, focusing on the iPhone, though it applies to our laptops, Teslas, and so on. In our conversation, he gives his back story to his book.

At the very least, you'll find reasons to hold on to your phone for a few years longer than you would have otherwise. You'll save money, but the greater effect will be improving your quality of life, especially your mindset, helping resolve that inner conflict.

• Brian's home page

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In this episode, I answer a question a listener emailed:

• Can you share more details on what exactly prompted you to make the switch to acting more sustainably and if it was abrupt or gradual. And perhaps more practical ideas on what to do if you have kids, especially picky eaters, or if your schedule is just too busy to prepare meals 100% of the time.

If you have questions on leadership, sustainability, sustainability leadership, doof, a guest, or anything I cover on the podcast, email me.

Episodes with guests I mentioned, who are inspirational

• Bea Johnson
• Joshua Becker

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Regular listeners know I'm thinking about applying Abraham's Lincoln solution: a constitutional amendment banning pollution. Here's an earlier episode on it: 613: Our Next Constitutional Amendment.

It sounds crazy, but we'd be crazy not to consider it and learn from the idea. Even if the United States takes a long time to do it, other countries would likely do it first. It turns out others are organizing for a similar amendment, for the right to a clean environment.

Michael's expertise in constitutional law and environmental law make him perfect to give context in those two areas.

One day even the U.S. will show overwhelming support for an amendment making pollution illegal, a modern version of the Thirteenth Amendment. Future generations will lament how we took so long to conceive and pass it. It begins with conversations like this one.

• Michael's Home Page

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Kris created and runs what I consider one of the top sites online. It has influenced my behavior and expectations to enjoy living more sustainably, including unplugging my fridge, which led to unplugging my apartment, and start seeing that solar and wind aren't sustainable any more, though we could make them more so.

I've looked forward to connecting with Kris for years. In our conversation, he shares his transition from reporting on new technologies for others for pay to reporting on technology from the view of improving life and how we keep losing the purpose of technology helping us.

He also shares how he lives by the values he writes about, or writes about the values he lives, showing integrity and credibility lacking in most people working on sustainability or technology, also understanding from hands-on experience the systemic effects that Silicon Valley and political types misunderstand nearly every time.

• Low Tech Magazine: Low-tech Magazine underscores the potential of past and often forgotten technologies and how they can inform sustainable energy practices.
• Some articles that influenced me or I enjoyed:
• Vietnam's Low-tech Food System Takes Advantage of Decay (this article led me to unplug my fridge, which led me to unplug my apartment)
• How Much Energy Do We Need?
• Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s
• Urban Fish Ponds: Low-tech Sewage Treatment for Towns and Cities
• Many more
• No Tech Magazine: We believe in progress and technology

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I see our environmental problems and lack of effective solutions as a failure of imagination, as regular listeners of this podcast and readers of my blog know. If we can't imagine a world without pollution, we won't try. We'll resist and push back, which we do. Would-be leaders pollute as much as nearly anyone alive, more than nearly anyone who has ever lived, then say government should force them to change.

Role models would help. Part of why I unplug my apartment from the electric grid and continue my process of continual improvement is to show people what's possible since nearly no one else is.

Then imagine my pleasant surprise on reading an article in the New York Times, What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay, that describes a whole nation moving ahead of the rest, led by a President also moving ahead of the rest. Role models!

Noah Gallagher Shannon wrote the piece, met with the President and others in government as well as many people there. I recommend reading the article.

Noah and I got so caught up in the conversation, I split it into two pieces. This one starts covering Noah, his profession, what he writes about, and writing this piece. He also talks about his personal motivation in his quest to live more sustainably and the challenge of finding effective leadership. Then we talk about Uruguayan life and culture, the difference between theirs and ours, and how shocked they are about ours.

• The New York Times article that led me to Noah and learning about Uruguay, their work, and their leadership: What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay: No greater challenge faces humanity than reducing emissions without backsliding into preindustrial poverty. One tiny country is leading the way.

The second part is episode 651.

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Suggest to people in our culture that we consider not growing the GDP nonstop and most react with fear at what they see as the inevitability of recession leading to depression leading to the tax base declining, infrastructure crumbling, hospitals closing, mothers dying in childbirth, thirty become old age, and reverting to the Stone Age.

Yet there remain many cultures that don't buy into our culture at all. Despite our culture invading their lands, what many of us consider the pinnacle of human culture, they choose theirs, and not out of ignorance. They know our culture.

If our culture is so great, with electric vehicles, fruit flown overnight around the world, and iPhones, why do they resist it?

If we believe we have so much, why do we keep taking their land?

Hamilton lived among the Matsés in the Peruvian Amazon for 4.5 years. He shares how he arrived there, how they took him in and trained him to be a shaman, and what differences and similarities he saw there compared to here. We talked a bit about ayahuasca, but as I see one of our greatest challenges is to learn to live sustainably, and electric vehicles move don't help, I was more interested in what I and we can learn from people who still leave things better than they found them.

Hamilton shares about how they live and the interface with a westerner who lived with them not as a tourist. I found his experience and education fascinating and accessible. Expect more episodes with Hamilton to come.

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In our second conversation, Janet reveals that she did part of her commitment, but found traveling not by car took longer than she expected and didn't do it often.

At one point in this conversation, she shares she felt she had to reduce pollution. I point out I didn't say she had to reduce pollution. I invited her to manifest emotions she liked.

Our society burdens us with thinking we have to ACT BIG! SCALE! SOLVE GLOBAL PROBLEMS!, which create obstacles to starting and prime us to expect it takes work and sacrifice. Environmentalists create that burden as much as anyone. Yet nature is a joy!

The Spodek Method aims at first at the modest effect of leading someone to act on intrinsic motivation, which makes acting meaningful and purposeful. I contend the fastest, most effective way to act big, scale, and solve global problems is to start where you can, engage intrinsically, and keep going.

After the Spodek Method's mindset shift comes the process of continual improvement, which I distinguish from lots of people doing small things. It's leading to where you enjoy it so you want to keep improving so you do big things because doing them improves your life, so you do more. Big things that spread out of joy, fun, and freedom scale.

You'll hear Janet reset her feelings of obligation---extrinsic motivation---in favor of intrinsic motivation to continue joyfully.

She also asked me many questions about what I'm doing and following up many episodes she's listened to.

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