Do you think our environmental problems are rooted in greenhouse gas levels or emissions? Or biodiversity loss? Or any of what makes the headlines?

They are symptoms. They all result from our behavior, which results from our beliefs, stories, role models, images, and what makes up our culture.

If we magically fixed all of the environmental conditions making the headlines, but didn't change our culture, we would recreate them.

Every time you say, "individual action doesn't matter," blame someone else or BP, or anything that keeps you polluting, depleting, living unsustainably, you contribute to that culture, even if you really wish you weren't. You fund the lobbyists creating the political forces accelerating more polluting and depleting.

Only by understanding the actual problem can we avoid distractions and solve it.

The video goes into more depth and detail. It sets up all the later videos.

You'll never see the world the same again.

To follow up:

• The videos of this course
• My book, Sustainability Simplified
• The Workshop and community

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Many people see whatever part of what I do, think that's everything, and conclude I'm just doing some personal action or other form of spitting into the wind.

I don't like wasting my time any more than anyone else does, nor do I want to see people continuing to

• Lower earth's ability to sustain life
• Destroy others' life, liberty, or property without the consent
• Deplete from nature to where there is not enough as good in common for others

I'm partly insulted that they think I'm wasting my time or that I haven't developed a comprehensive plan that stops all those things that works at every stage, mainly by working on people's existing motivations. It's based on the Spodek Method and other effective leadership techniques.

I posted a series of videos I call A Short Course in Sustainability Leadership that outlines the plan. I designed it for people who want to act and lead, not abdicate and capitulate like nearly everyone else. I recommend watching the videos, which are on this page, but I'm posting the audio here.

To follow up:

• The videos of this course
• My book, Sustainability Simplified
• The Workshop and community

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Our third conversation matches the first two in intrigue and quality. We talk about the things that came up for Dr. Bob that got in the way of his commitment. These issues come up for nearly everyone (implying they aren't personal, but cultural beliefs): politics (including reacting to Trump), family, and race.

This conversation was one of my first engaging on race unscripted. It's tempting to see some issues as immediate and conclude we have to address them first. This view misses that unsustainability causes them, including racism, tyranny, and corruption. I'm not saying sustainability alone will solve them, but as long as we live unsustainably, we keep causing them.

You'll hear a lot more in the conversation. This conversation exemplifies what our culture needs more of.

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Tina is one of the central characters in that group that everyone knows (another is Kevin Fucillo, also a podcast guest). We go back a few years. She was born in the south in 1933, so you can do the math, but you'd never guess. She's at times a firecracker, full of life, ready to handle anyone. She's friendly to all, but ready to police anyone overstepping bounds. She's always caring about the community as a whole and each person in it. She goes out of her way to help people beyond just delivering food. The community wouldn't be the same without her.

We talk about volunteering, homelessness, slavery, Africa, the South, and more. She worked at the Lone Star Cafe, which was a famous club in the 1970s and 80s, so shared some big names of people she hung out with, like Willie Nelson, James Brown, Courtney Cox (we couldn't remember her name), Bruce Springsteen, and more.

We recorded in the lobby of her building, so you can hear people coming through and some sound issues. She spoke more softly than her usual self when I turned the microphone on, so I urge you to watch this video to see her energy outdoors. It was taken by a TV crew doing a story on me but they didn't use it.

She asked me not to share her picture, so I'm only showing her side picture here, during a winter delivery, but she's okay with my sharing the video that still came from.

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In our second conversation, Giora reveals more about his developing as a leader. If you listen for it, you can hear the vision he had for himself and his profession, but also the development he needed to realize it.

This podcast is about sustainability leadership. You probably envision a sustainable world, or at least trying with everything you can to help achieve it. Maybe you've adopted my vision and mission. Developing leadership skills and experience as Giora have is essential. We can learn from him.

Beyond his leadership skills and experience, his doing the reps earned him credibility and developed integrity, essential elements for effective leadership.

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I found Alex when listeners sent me an opinion piece in the New York Times he wrote, The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a Lie.

Getting to where I take years to fill a load of trash means I've researched waste a lot, so based on the headline, I thought, "yeah, I've read this story before. I'll skim it so I can say I read it and then move on to important things." Instead, I was fascinated and found plenty new. I had to read his book, Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash, which came out last month. I can't recommend it enough.

Whatever you know about waste and pollution, the book shares more and it's relevant to your life if you value liberty, freedom, justice, not killing people for profit, and not destroying your own health, safety, and security. Our system of waste forces us to act in opposition to those values.

We don't have to. We can change the system. Understanding it helps. Listen to this episode, read Alex's book, and read his opinion piece. Here are its opening paragraphs:

• The NY Times opinion piece Alexander wrote that led me to him: The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a Lie
• Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash at Hachette

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Silvia created the course Sustainable Marketing at Columbia. It's an elective and has become the class at the business school with the most students from other schools at the university.

In looking for a guest speaker on sustainable consumerism, she found the New York Times profile on me. She decided to invite me before realizing I'd gotten my MBA where she teaches. Only when we spoke did she learn I focus beyond just living sustainably to creating a leadership program with a mission to change global culture.

When I spoke to hear class, I spoke about changing culture, which in some ways conflicted with the marketing goal of selling more products. It also resonated with many of her students' interests in creating a more sustainable world. I got a lot of attention after class. We recorded this episode before I guest-spoke at another section of her course.

We talk in this episode about how that class went from her perspective as well as differences between sustainability leadership and marketing. We did the first part of the Spodek Method. You can hear that as a business educator, she analyzed it, so we talked about that analysis.

• Silvia's page at Columbia Business School

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Are you reaching your potential, professionally or personally? Have you wondered what would happen if you got coaching?

Giora did. A friend of his who was a client of mine recommended he get coaching from me. We worked together for several years. People who think my podcast is primarily about sustainability may think it's off-topic, but those who know I focus primarily on leadership will see this conversation is exactly what I focus on and I think is most necessary and lacking from sustainability.

Recently he told me one of the most heartwarming things I'd ever heard. Despite that our coaching focused on his professional life, he told me that coaching improved his relationship with his daughter in ways he couldn't have imagined. That improvement was one of the greatest changes to his life.

Since I teach leadership to people who took my sustainability leadership workshop, I asked if he would share for this podcast his experience learning leadership through me. I believe his experience will tell people in the sustainability simplified community what to expect from learning leadership.

In this conversation, Giora and I focus on three points in our coaching relationship:

1. Before starting: his decision to get coaching
2. His reaching the c-suite and finding the culture there
3. His transformation with his family and daughter

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Dr. Bob shares more about his experience acting during the 1960s, as well as today on helping prisoners and more. I hope you can hear the electricity I felt listening. Two kinds of electricity: one for the stories, another for how they resonated with the community, teamwork, and passion I see in the team I'm working with creating sustainability leadership workshops to change culture. He describes how they saw abolitionism as a role model movement. I see how they and abolitionism are role model movements for us.

We did the Spodek Method. Since he works on engaging people to create mass change, you'll hear him both responding and evaluating the technique.

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I was pleasantly surprised in reading Osprey's book The Story is in Our Bones that she also sees the need to change culture, including elements like our stories, role models, images, and beliefs. Focusing on cultural elements doesn't mean ignoring or leaving out measurable things like greenhouse gas emissions or plastic waste. On the contrary, focusing on those things without addressing our stories tends to result in people complying at best, more often feeling despair at the lack of vision.

Regarding role models, she also looks to sustainable indigenous cultures, and not to give solar panels or western-style schools to, as if we know better, but to learn from with humility.

She uses different language, which I tried to learn from.

• Osprey's book: The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis
• An excerpt in Resilience.org

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