This Sustainable Life

"Your story is truly inspirational": feedback from an attendee.

The government advisory Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board invited me to speak on sustainability leadership Wednesday. I spoke on what led to my experiment going off-grid in Manhattan, two-and-a-half weeks at the time. Here's the video of the presentation, which includes the slides I refer to, though here is the Venn diagram and here is the footprint chart.

Here's the audio for that presentation. It starts a bit slow, but stresses one of my main discoveries, that my method goes beyond shifting your mindset. It leads to a cycle of continual improvement. Looking back, I see the pattern. My challenge to avoid buying packaged food for a week gave me the humility and curiosity to question sacred cows like that flying is good and expect that experimenting will yield results that idle speculation won't.

I describe the difference between living by my values and leading others. I don't think you can lead people to do what you're doing the opposite of. Living by your values is necessary to lead others. Otherwise you don't know what you're talking about.

Then I describe what I did after learning to live without a fridge for most of the year: buying a battery, buying solar panels, testing them, and using them.

Then I describe my results: physical, emotional, skills, my evolving connection to nature, and so on.

Finally I answer audience questions.

My two earlier episodes on going off-grid:

• 584: Freedom, continual improvement, fun, and curiosity: day three only solar in Manhattan
• 586: My Kitty Hawk moment, on the way to a Moon Shot

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

Including their greatest proponents, nearly everyone thinks of and uses solar, wind, and other so-called renewables wrong if their goal is to reach sustainability or to stop reducing Earth's ability to sustain life. They all pollute in manufacture, transportation, installation, maintenance, recycling end materials, and disposal.

I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't use them. I'm saying using them as we do is exacerbating more problems than we're solving.

Their shortcomings don't come from a lack of insight, innovation, or ingenuity but physics. I'd love to hear of any evidence giving hope around the need for pollution to create, use, and handle at their ends of lives renewable technologies. In the meantime, we don't need them to pollute less, including dropping fossil fuel use over 90 percent in a few years.

Here are the myth-debunking posts I refer to at the end of this episode:

• Health and longevity of other cultures
• Our culture destroyed theirs, but which had better health, mental health, meaning, and purpose?

Recent news about carbon emissions still increasing, despite decades and billions developing and installing solar, but little attempt to reduce fossil fuels:

• Climate scientists warn of increased climate change events as carbon emissions fail to drop
• Global CO2 emissions rebounded to their highest level in history in 2021

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

Whitney's background and accomplishments are incredible and we start with them. He shares his beliefs and mindsets that lead to his high performance in business, philanthropy, fitness, family, and more.

Then we share a fun part of how I invited him to this podcast. After he, in a friendly, helpful way, cursed at some of his newsletter readers in criticizing their behavior during the pandemic, I cursed at him in the same friendly, helpful way. The email got his attention. It led to us meeting in person to pick up litter in Washington Square Park (where he saw his first drug deal in the corner with the syringe drug users), then to recording in person at my apartment.

When we spoke on the environment, I heard a common mix: he connected deeply with it, including majestic experiences at some of Earth's most extreme environments, and he also felt about its problems that he couldn't do anything meaningful.

My favorite part of my conversation with Whitney was how he put up nearly every form of delay, resistance, and obstacle any other guest has responded to my invitation to act on his environmental values. I believe we were both patient, listened, spoke to be understood. After he found something to act on, you'll hear the change in his perspective on acting on intrinsic motivation versus what sounded to me like trying to save the world, or feeling you have to, but disconnected from intrinsic motivation.

• Whitney's book, The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind

Edit: Read my emails cursing at Whitney Tilson that brought him to my podcast

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

We started from Ash's TEDx talks, which cover vulnerability, intimacy, and support. You can listen to our conversation on its own, but it won't hurt to watch them first.

She could easily say, "As a lesbian, I have it so difficult," but she speaks more universally. Everyone has something difficult to share, hides parts of their identity, has been made fun of, has felt judged, shamed, or the like. She shares about opening up. She takes no high ground, nor victimhood. She reflects and shares insight mixed with plenty of humor and humility.

I hide my share of things and welcomed her role modeling to open up more. I suspect you'll want to too.

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

The start of this episode's text:

Regular listeners know I’ve been living with my apartment off the electric grid for two weeks, in Manhattan, not off in the woods.

Most of the benefits are about connecting more with nature, being humble to it, not dominating it. I’m waking up earlier, for example, to work and read by daylight, so I don’t have to drain the solar-powered battery. Direct sunlight is free. Likewise, during a spell of three overcast days, I had to pay attention to my power use and take advantage of what sunlight I could to charge the battery.

Speaking of reading by daylight, the great benefit prompting today’s post is nearly finishing a biography, Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald. I’m on page 507 of 600, not counting the over hundred pages of footnotes. Past the Gettysburg Address, he’s just been nominated for his second candidacy. Talk of amending the constitution is starting to appear. The war appears mostly won, though deaths mount, Confederate wins still happen, and no one knows how to plan for or handle reconstruction.

I talk a lot about slavery relating to pollution. I’ve for years taken inspiration from British abolitionists around 1800 who looked across oceans to see people suffering for their culture’s indulgences. For the first time in history, according to podcast guest and author of Bury the Chains, Adam Hochschild, one group worked for another group’s freedom. Every argument you’ve heard to avoid giving up polluting, their peers used to avoid giving up slavery (what I do doesn’t matter, only government and corporations can make a difference, if we don’t others will, it’s not that bad, it will work out, etc), but they refused to accept the cruelty, injustice, and inhumanity. Through their work, and others’, without a civil war, England made illegal the slave trade and then slavery. I look across oceans and see people suffering and dying, displaced from their land or poisoned and killed on it because we fund companies and governments to do it by buying their packaging, fossil fuels, and so on.

People commonly describe America as a racist nation, especially white Americans, especially white Americans who don’t act against racism. A Constitution permitting slavery and a three-fifths clause certainly back up that view. What do we make of all the people born into that system who did nothing to create it and who worked against it? Besides Lincoln, consider William Lloyd Garrison, Thadeus Stevens, Emerson, Thoreau, and everyone who opposed slavery from before the Constitution to today? What about the hundreds of thousands of men who fought for the Union, many volunteers, maybe not all fighting specifically to end slavery but many for just that reason?

One could argue they should have done more. When they take down statues of Thomas Jefferson, who opposed slavery they point out he owned slaves. You can’t argue he created the system he was born into. How much could he do to change that system within his lifetime? Can you blame him for not ending slavery? Say you blame him for owning slaves, would his freeing his slaves changed the system? Alone, clearly not, but you could argue he should have acted his conscience and done what he knew was right, whether it significantly changed the system or not. Everyone knows everyone prefers being free to being enslaved.

What could a free person, benefiting from living in a system of slavery or not, have done? How would they make a difference? Lincoln took a lifetime to reach a position where he could do things like issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which didn’t end slavery, and along the way embraced many crazy notions, like shipping blacks to Africa.

See the rest here.

• Conversations with Lincoln author David Herbert Donald on C-Span

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

We start with one of the great cases of a corporation choosing to act with integrity in the face of pressure and incentive not to. Mark was part of the team that chose for CVS drug stores in rebranding to stop selling cigarettes. The choice was superficially difficult in that cigarettes made them billions of dollars in profit and their competitors could gain market share. But it was easy in that if they wanted to identify with health, there was no question.

Mark shares inside views of that story, then connects with leadership and integrity. We look at comparable cases, like New York banning cigarettes in the work place, people projecting losing business to New Jersey.

Mark focuses on what changes behavior. He asked what someone can do. I suggested intrinsic versus extrinsic, which led to doing the Spodek/AIM Method. He participated and deconstructed it as we did it. You'll hear his enthusiasm for doing The Spodek/AIM Method, his commitment, and building on the technique. It seems inevitable that we'll collaborate beyond this one commitment.

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

Regular listeners know I love talking with professional athletes. They open themselves to failure every time they compete. They often make incredible feats look so simple and natural, we forget the years of dedication and effort that made it possible. Whether you want to play professional sports or not, you can adopt from them to reach your potential, which is one of my definitions of competition.

I love talking to them because they share what happened behind the scenes. Almost always, as with Josh Martin, it means hard work for a long time, but that view is too simple. What enabled working so hard? They aren't gluttons for punishment, nor automatons. What's their mindset? What's their physical attitude?

Josh shares these things from behind the scenes: how he started not playing football and not doing well in school to playing at Columbia, then the NFL. It wasn't easy. He failed over and over, didn't fit in, struggled academically, and struggled athletically. Listen to hear what carried him through.

Since he lives in Brooklyn, we recorded in person, one of my first since the pandemic, which makes the conversation more friendly (my apartment looks a lot smaller with an NFL linebacker in it).

Today he's an entrepreneur, which we reach at the end, and you can learn more at his home page.

• Josh's home page

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

More continual improvement: the more sustainably I live, the easier each next step. Business people know about continual improvement, also knows as kaizen, the Toyota Way.

How do you go from the Wright brothers' airplane to a 747? Not in one jump. Continual improvement, part of the process I have to convey more.

I share observations on my week without using the electric grid: about food, climbing stairs, timing sleep to use more sunlight, and more.

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

When a man who founded a restaurant that uses no trash cans meets a guy who doesn't fly and hasn't filled a load of trash since 2019, we start by expressing mutual appreciation. Anyone can do these things. It's a matter of doing it.

Doing it leads to experiencing similar challenges and overcoming them, facing similar resistance from people saying it's impossible, and enjoying similar feelings of reward at living by our values.

Doug shares stories we can learn from of. One that I love is on fermentation. I'd started doing it and loving how simple it is, but hadn't heard the glory Doug shares of making it a major part of the kitchen. I'm fermenting more all the time.

Also mycelium, fungus, which they make furniture out of, made from old grain. Yes, they grow furniture from fungus!

Listen for more ways to avoid creating trash and rampant, soul-destroying consumerism.

1. Paul Stamets' TEDx talk

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

I share thoughts after two days using only solar power in Manhattan. After recording I turned off the circuit to the whole apartment. I'm on the roof now, charging the battery.

The recording shares more. The main themes: freedom and continual improvement.

Also fun and curiosity.

• Caption for the cartoon, which I refer to in the recording: "Look at that glassy stare, those vacuous eyes... He's been domesticated I tell you!"
• Link to a cspan video of Sebastian Junger, author of Tribe, which I refer to in the recording too.

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