Leadership And The Environment

A retired General doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to. What he does, he's going to do for his reasons, not for trends or as a dilettante.Kip committed to a challenge many consider unreasonable and impossible (I know because they tell me): avoiding flying. As a General, he's held the fates of a nation and hundreds of thousands of troops in his hands. When he speaks about his experience, I hear him speaking at a life level.He spoke about his many opportunities to fly for business and pleasure, but not taking them. He could have. Besides his choice based on his motivation, he could have flown.He didn't. Yet he shares the opposite of complaints or feeling left out. How is that possible?He describes handling the commitment with his wife, his conferences, what he learned from the pandemic, how it connected to his legacy with the future, and how he made it work.ServiceHe speaks about service and helping your team and teammates achieving more than they would. Is helping our communities not what we want to

Jonathan and I continue practicing how to lead oneself and others to love acting in stewardship. Everyone thinks sustainability means deprivation and sacrifice.We started this conversation for him to review how his first time doing The Spodek Method with his kids. You'll hear that he did it slightly differently and didn't get the results. Very educational! Few people master challenging things the first time.We switched to restarting The Spodek Method with him and the value of practicing by the book before improvising.This episode will teach you how to lead someone to love and enjoy acting in stewardship. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Everyone treat changing corporate culture like a horror show, but John did it. How? Through making it fun.The way most people talk about it, only dictators can change cultures, I'll trust his experience over their speculation. This episode begins with his reviewing some of how he implemented that change. My biggest takeaway was his focus on people before technology, what they want, and what makes them tick. The result is their engaged participation.He also shares the result of his commitment. As usual with experienced leaders, if things don't go perfectly, they don't pretend. They share what didn't work too, I believe from experience finding that exposing vulnerabilities doesn't make them weak. It connects people.If you want to change yourself and your organization, you'll learn from John how to achieve more by having fun, listening, and caring over analyzing forever, coercion, and such. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What happens when populations age?Can you envision a world with a sustainable population, well below Earth's capacity, therefore living resiliently in abundance per person? I can.Governments and media are petrified at populations shrinking and aging. It turns out they are motivated by reasons that sound plausible.Jane looked at the numbers and found the fears unfounded. She also found industries seeding and promoting the fears, making them scams. Allowing the scams to affect us exacerbates the risk of a collapse in Earth's ability to sustain life and society.She treats more unfounded fears about population size that lead people to baselessly fear what seems to me one of the top elements of retaining Earth's ability to sustain life---lowering our birth rate through the peaceful, voluntary, and fun methods that worked in Thailand, Costa Rica, and many other nations.Listen to Jane's conversation and read her paper to feel more confident in promoting smaller families. The evidence I see suggests Earth can support

Here is the article prompting this episode: Majority of Florida condo board quit in 2019 as squabbling residents dragged out plans for repairsHere are the notes I read from:Read article about collapse and will read some parts.Everyone has long viewed Titanic as metaphor for man’s hubris over nature. But long enough ago we dismiss. Scale is off. We believe we’re passed those problems from another age.Listen to these quotes.Opening: “The president of the board of the Florida condominium that collapsed last week resigned in 2019, partly in frustration over what she saw as the sluggish response to an engineer’s report that identified major structural damage the previous year.”“Despite increasingly dire warnings from the board, many condo owners balked at paying for the extensive improvements, which ballooned in price from about $9 million to more than $15 million over the past three years as the building continued to deteriorate”Imagine someone had said lives were at stake. People would have rolled their eyes at

I met Joe when we spoke together on an online panel hosted by Magamedia.org. I knew he was running for office and anticipated conservative politics, but on the panel, I couldn't tell, despite the conservative context. I was curious so looked him up more and found an intriguing background and passion.Joe emerged from youth involving gangs to join the Navy, now running for office. He considers the incumbent insensitive to his district's needs, but he grew up there. He knows its problems. You'll hear in our conversation a passion as great as his frustration with the situation he wants to change.Environment factors in some to his campaign and platform, but not its top priority. Still, he shares his caring with us and takes on a challenge to act on those values. He's conservative, which many associate with insensitivity or denial of our environmental problems, but I hear him caring as much as anyone. Listen to hear his values and commitment to act on them.Joe's campaign page: JOE COLLINS FOR CONGRESS!The video I r

I contacted Scott after reading a profile of his work in The Guardian, ‘Within minutes I was weeping’: the US pastor using scripture to mobilize climate action. The story spoke of someone leading by creating meaning and purpose:He’s not alone: across the US, there is a growing movement of religious leaders who are trying to deploy faith as a vehicle for climate action. And Hardin-Nieri’s own journey toward climate activism began when he lived in Monteverde, Costa Rica, and witnessed how different faith communities – from Catholics to Quakers – came together to fight climate change.“It wasn’t a Republican or Democrat issue,” he says. “It was a life issue.”Longtime readers know I'm increasingly working with evangelicals, conservatives, and Trump supporters. Go far enough back and the impetus comes from reading former guest Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind. I recommend it for understanding and collaborating with people with different values.Most environmentalists seem to view them as the enemy. I don't. We al

Martin is a legend. How many people craft phrases that become part of everyday language like “The Ultimate Driving Machine," "The Antidote For Civilization,” and “The Tightest Ship In The Shipping Business”? He comes from a different time in advertising and communication, as he describes in our conversation.I met him nearly twenty years ago. He was considering investing in the company I cofounded, Submedia, based on the medium I invented. He didn't invest, but he came to my first solo gallery show in Manhattan. We lost touch.Then I saw him speak recently. I confess a slight disposition to expect corporate writers not to engage in depth, which I recognize as a flaw in myself. He spoke about creativity, what it can be, how much we've lost it today, and the consequences of losing it. He spoke with a love of an America in hibernation now, what caused it to sleep, and how to bring it back.We talk about creativity, culture, passion, and more.Interview in Spirit Flesh magazineInsights from Leaders: A Big Idea, by Ma

Most of you probably know Forrest for his television shows. He combines the most intriguing parts of being a biologist, an adventurer, and a television star. His passion for each is infectious. Most of all, he loves wildlife. I learned from him first through his new book, Still Alive: A Wild Life of Rediscovery, which gives depth and origins to that passion and love. I can imagine seeing him on TV without knowing that background, you'd wonder where it all came from.You know me. Even with the background, I'm curious about the story behind the story behind the story, which Forrest shares in our conversation.He also shared a meaningful moment of new reflection when I asked what the environment meant to him. Despite working with nature being his life, no one had asked what it meant to him. Listen to find out. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I consider Mechai Viravaidya my top role model for sustainability leadership. As I described in a recent episode, We Can Dance Around Environmental Problems All We Want. We Eventually Reach Overpopulation and Overconsumption. Before learning of Mechai Viravaidya, I knew only of China's One Child Policy and eugenics. I couldn't talk about population when I thought the cure was worse than the disease.Learning of Mechai changed everything. As his biography's back cover, states.In Thailand, a condom is called a "Mechai". Mechai Viravaidya, Thailand's condom King, has used this most anatomically suggestive contraceptive device to turn the conventional family planning establishment on its head. First came condom-blowing contests, then T-shirts with condom shrouded anthropomorphic penises. Then condom key rings followed by a Cabbages and Condoms restaurant, When it comes to condoms, no one has been more creative than the Condom King.To equate Mechai with condoms or family planning alone underestimates the man and fa

When I read Tom's book on sustainability, Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, I couldn't believe the book didn't exist already. I consider it the science book of the decade so invited him back. He shares about his motivation and goals in writing it. You might read my review of the book first, but you can jump into this conversation too.Here is an excerpt from my review:He taught a course to non-science undergraduates on the subject, called Energy and the Environment. He used the course to compile his posts, polish them, and make a self-contained comprehensive book. As far as I know, the only one like it, possibly because mathematics is the language of nature, so equations abound, but he explains them, so people who haven’t taken science or math classes since high school can follow.Showing the math means we don’t have to take his word for it. We can do the math too and think, judge, and act for ourselves. No matter our politics, age, industry, etc, we can access this book equally. The environment in

Have you ever tasted an heirloom tomato so delicious it was almost a religious experience? I used to think people who complained about supermarket tomatoes sounded full of themselves. How different can they taste?Then I tasted heirloom tomatoes with so much flavor, I couldn’t believe my taste buds. The next time I ate a mainstream tomato it felt like eating wet cotton.Do you know what they used to call heirloom tomatoes?They used to call heirloom tomatoes tomatoes. Our post-industrial values of growth, efficiency, externalizing costs, comfort, convenience, and extraction turned something divine into something available year-round at an affordable price but a fall from grace to say the least. In the way that my rare sips of scotch today give me more appreciation of spirits than the larger quantities I drank of beer in college despite drinking less alcohol, my net appreciation of tomatoes is greater now, despite spending less overall on them and only eating them in season.I mention this contrast for context.Eve

Frederick was a great sport in allowing me to explore working on a patterns that happens sometimes but that I had let slide before.We started talking about nature, then his commitment. About halfway through I noticed that his motivation to the commitment from his first episode didn't seem to come from inside, which I believe led to him doing the task for extrinsic, not intrinsic, reasons, resulting in him doing his task perfunctorily.Then came the part that may be uncomfortable to listen to---or may be intriguing or fun. I can't tell because I was in the conversation. I tried to find a new sledding hill of his to ground a new activity. From then on we had a cordial conversation, but at cross-purposes. I don't think he understood what I was getting at and I couldn't see how to explain my point any better.I'm grateful to Frederick for maintaining his interest. Those interested in starting a podcast may find a lot to learn since guests often disconnect from their sledding hill and feel they have to fix something

Longtime readers of my blog know how much James Suzman's first book influenced my thinking and views of possessions, community, ownership, modernity, and a range of similar topics. A top question I've asked anyone who might know is how populations that didn't grow despite sharing our biology that has grown exponentially for centuries.If knowing history is wise and knowing history farther back wiser, James's living with the San Bushmen of southern Africa gave him a few hundred thousand years to know. We can't know exactly how their lives today resemble their ancestors, but the overlap is greater than zero and suggests a huge alternative to the knee-jerk dichotomy people can't see past today of capitalism versus communism. Human beings lived for two hundred thousand years, maybe three, in ways that were neither.You can imagine the changes in climate, other species, terrain, and more in that time. Their stability endured a thousand times longer than the time since the Industrial Revolution led us to put our whol

Andrew co-hosted me on MAGAMedia with past guest Rob Harper, so we've spoken there several times, but this conversation is our first one-on-one.We start by talking about our meeting and how talking to each other means talking about issues we normally don't in our usual circles, but that we enjoy learning from each other, not getting angry despite different viewpoints. We both want to increase meaningful communication as opposed to the more prevalent mutual provocation and dismissal in American political conversation between people who vote differently, to the extent they communicate.Andrew shares his growing up in a Democratic household and what transitioned him to appreciating and supporting candidate and then President Trump, as well as meeting Rob, partnering, and starting their show together. I suspect most listeners to a podcast with the word 'sustainable' in the title don't talk to many Trump supporters. He also talked about division within parties and commonalities across parties. I wish I had more con

Isn’t a refrigerator essential? Isn’t life with them better?I thought so. I’ll quote my mom from my podcast to illustrate where I came from:I grew up where it was easily ninety degrees every single day. In fact, where I worked, the store if it got ninety degrees outside we got to close the store and go home because it was that unsafe. To me, air conditioning was wonderful. And to my mom and my grandmother, not having to use ice box refrigerators was great. I really appreciate all of that today and I understand that we’ve gone overboard with air conditioning. It’s really bad for the environment and one should learn how to get along with these temperatures.But Josh, it was really hot in South Dakota. Unless you had really, really good screens, when you opened the windows you were covered with mosquito bites. I don’t want to revisit that at all ever. I am willing to use fans and cut out a lot of air conditioning but to me it means giving up a lot that made my life a lot better.I didn’t have much but what I had w

The average American watches 5 hours of TV per day. Many fly or drive around for fun. If we want to pollute less, will we lose the ability to enjoy ourselves?I've written before how Vincent Stanley's commitment to turn off his computer Friday mornings and Nicola Pirulli's walking me through The Spodek Method led to me turning off all my electronics and practicing singing daily. Since starting, I've missed a couple days, but have loved the results.Until recently I only sang songs, nothing attempting to learn, just to enjoy. Now I'm moving to voice exercises. I resisted doing them partly because I need to use my computer to play the recordings so decided to relax that constraint the days I practice my exercises. I expect that doing them enough will improve my singing. For now, here is the "before" version of my practicing beginner voice exercises.When I listened after, I was mortified at my inexperienced voice. I have a long way to go. But I expect that practice will make perfect, or better, and it will be hard

I didn’t think of how small my building’s elevators were when I bought a sofa after moving into my current apartment. It didn’t fit. The deliverymen tried to bring it up the stairs too. They made the first landing, but couldn’t make the turn to go up the next flight.They had to take it back. I ended up paying a $300 restocking fee plus big tips for the deliverymen’s extra efforts. Plus I lost weeks with no sofa. Now I know my home’s limits. Living within them is no problem when I know them, only when I didn’t. A few minutes of measurement and geometry could have saved me that trouble and improved my life.Can homo sapiens’ elevator, also known as Earth, fit us all in? As with my sofa, maybe a bit of calculation is worth saving the trouble of finding out if our sofa can fit. We’re past the point of eyeballing it. Our sofa is civilization and billions of lives.I doubt even those who study sustainability most can answer Important questions likeCan fusion save us? Will it?What works between solar, wind, nuclear, g

Alexandra's commitment illustrates a result I keep finding. People who have acted to live sustainably the most already find new ways to act more than people who haven't. People who haven't done much, or acted for extrinsic reasons like an article suggested "one little thing you can do for the environment" instead of intrinsic, say they can't think of anything.I conclude that reducing polluting is skills you learn, not a target you reach. As with all skills, mastery brings joy, self-awareness, satisfaction, and expectation of more success through more practice. Alexandra has been mastering these skills for decades and shows mastery in this episode. How does mastery show in sustainability? In this case, I heard her having fun, connecting with people, learning, and enjoying the process.When last we heard from her, she shared how much she loved a particular hummus. She and her husband ate a container a day. A plastic container, that is, meaning a pile of plastic that would exist for centuries, maybe millennia, be

A topic making among the most headlines these days are digital mobs and their justice reacting to what people say. I've touched on it somewhat in this podcast and on my blog and I feel the risk teaching at NYU, which has kept me from expressing myself as openly as I could in the past. Another way of looking at this phenomenon is that we have become more vigilant about respecting groups that society hasn't stood up to before.We all see it. We all have opinions. Frederick approaches the phenomenon from a less partial, legal standpoint: what is going on? What risks are there? Who faces them? How can we respond? How should we respond for what reasons? How is technology changing our discourse?What do Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake have to do with it?What was appearing on Jon Stewart's Daily Show like?A reason I wanted to bring him on was to learn his views on my talking about abolition, a movement we can learn from, and attraction coaching, which informed my leadership practice. So I got to ask him his experi