Leadership And The Environment

A friend introduced me to Hunter and I met her in person a day she was teaching in Bard's MBA program.We start with Limits to Growth, the 30-year update (the book, a synopsis), preparing to talk about her new book, A Finer Future, which follows its tradition.I felt the root of our conversation was responsibility. We know what to do. We don't need more technology.We lack political will -- leadership. I hear it over and over.We cover her history, experience working on sustainability, and the people she's worked with. She works with organizations, in contrast with many environmental groups, though she works to replace them, when appropriate.The big view that got me thinking was the inevitability of the energy transition she expects by 2030. I'm cautiously optimistic about it. You have to hear it in her terms.I recommend the videos she described Tony Seba (his Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES) talk and his World Affairs talk).First, wait until you hear what she says about the economic transition. See acast

I hear a lot of people's reasons for not flying, for using single-use plastic, for leaving the air conditioner on when they're not home. I know them not just because people told them to me. I know them because I'm human and we all think similarly. When I want something that pollutes, I feel my mind justifying why getting it should be okay.It took years of training my mind to resist that knee-jerk thinking and to consider not just what I get from, say, flying or using the air conditioner, but how my actions affect others—also known as the golden rule.We believe we use logic to come up with reasons for doing things. We don't. Our ancestors made choices before we evolved reason. We choose and then back-rationalize those choices to feel better.In other words, the "reasons" we claim to use to justify our behavior, to fly or own slaves knowing we're causing helpless, innocent people to suffer, aren't reasons. They're rationalizations. The motivation comes from I feel like it, usually to preserve ourselves from feel

James is fascinating and, I believe, fascinated. He interviewed me as much as I did him.The recording starts mid-conversation since we were just talking but his engineer started the recording. You'll hear a few minutes in when we found out we were being recorded. Since his engineer mixed live as we went, I'm giving you the conversation unfiltered. No removing ums even.We talked about initiative, education, how to learn social and emotional skills, my category of ASEEP fields and how I teach, cold showers, exploring nature, my podcast strategy, and why it brought me to him.James has written and spoken at length on taking initiative, alternatives to mainstream education. He seemed fascinated by my teaching style. I gave him a copy of my book Initiative that he started skimming while we spoke. As I read, with enthusiasm.Talking about nature and the environment comes in around 50 minutes.We shared our mutual disdain if that's the right word for following the overly-worn path, also the problems with parroting doom

Caspar leads a fulfilling life and helps people do the same.What's his expertise? How has he found purpose more than others? Why do corporations book him to help them with morale?He sailed around the world with his family. He lived a comfortable corporate life. He didn't have to do something out of the mainstream and independent.It forced them to figure out their narrative and purpose. Since most people don't challenge themselves that way, they don't learn about themselves so much. Were his choices easy? No, he had to figure it out by acting, no different than anyone else.His leaving the corporate world made him more valuable for the corporate world. Anyone can do it. Few do.It's like environmental leadership. Anyone can do it. Few do. The opportunities are global. Billions demand it.Caspar and his family show how much joy, community, personal growth, meaning, and purpose can come from acting on your values.Regular listeners may have picked up my trend toward sailing and sailors. My avoiding flying has led me

I've learned in leading that you can lead people best when you meet them where they are. That means speaking their language and understanding their perspective.Many people I talk to take their cues from the Bible, including guidance on how to act regarding the environment. Among them, the term stewardship plays a key role.A steward is one who manages another's property, finances, or other affairs. Everyone views and means things uniquely, but I understand them to mean the world and everything living on it, if we steward them, they aren't ours, but we steward them for both the true owner and future generations so they can enjoy and steward them for their future generations.This episode explores the source of stewardship as an environmental role as the interpretation of dominion, replacing dominance and ruling with responsibility.I then apply that result to another key area waiting for interpretation: being fruitful and multiplying. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Brandon loves negotiation and teaching it. He learned from the top in the field and practices it apparently 24/7. We start our conversation by covering negotiation as developed by an FBI hostage negotiator---Chris, his father.More than the family nature of their business or the FBI basis of his training and technique, I enjoyed his educational approach to negotiation. Brandon wants to help you improve. Keep in mind, his view of negotiation is not the mainstream view where you just use tricks to defeat your counterparty under high-stakes tension.Listeners who have read my books or taken my courses, or know and appreciate what I call Method Learning, will hear that Brandon's teaching technique is like mine: you learn from practicing the basics.The conversation sounds tactical at the beginning---things like what words to use and what goals to seek in a negotiation.As we continue, you'll hear him reveal strategy, and it's not just to win. It's closer to how to live and participate in relationships.I hope you get

Everybody talks about political polarization, the communication messes this nation and world are in, and how people who disagree can't talk to each other any more, so we can't resolve conflict.I do it too---that is, get into conversations where I shut down meaningful communication---though less than before, telling me that we can learn to communicate effectively. I've learned tremendously the times I've reversed that trend---that is, to listen to people I disagree with. I learn from them, probably more than I learn from people I disagree with.Today's episode covers an interaction within a community of people formed to increase dialog. Even in a community for that purpose, I find them not knowing what to do about it, even augmenting the problem.One of the problems, as I see it, is depriving students the experiences that teach the social and emotional skills to handle difficult social and emotional situations. Teaching more facts, knowledge, and abstract analysis don't help, yet schools at all levels pile on th

When I studied physics and spent time in universities, I met a lot of Nobel laureates. Physics is Nobel heavy so Columbia physics connected me to 3. Other science departments led me to another 1 or 2. The business school led me to another.Seth Shelden and ICAN---the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons---won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons"Their goal is a UN treaty like the one to ban land mines for nuclear weapons. After forming in 2007, about 2 years ago they achieved, with the help of many others, The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is adopted at the United Nations by a vote of 122-1. The Treaty, which prohibits nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices, will become law when ratified by 50 states.I wanted to bring someone on who is working on something many want but people d

People ask me if I worry or lose sleep from my environmental habits in a world where most people pollute profligately and unnecessarily.In this post I try to illustrate by analogy how it feels. How would you feel if you were magically transported to the 50s or 60s and most people smoked and drove cars with no safety equipment but they all considered it normal? Or to 1850 Alabama and someone offered you products made by slave labor?Here are the results to a search on "Mountain Dew teeth," to which I refer in the audio. This click is safe, it's just text search results, but you may want to prepare yourself before clicking from there to images or videos, except that you see equally unhealthy things in the litter, exhaust, and pollution around us all the time.To expand on parallels with living in an environment accepting slavery, here are episodes 098: Would You Free Your Slaves? and 040: Which is easier, freeing slaves or not using disposable bottles?. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Tom's Do The Math blog is one of the best site on internet. If you measure a site by how much it can improve a reader's life and human society, I challenge you to find one with greater potential. A couple peers include Low Tech magazine and Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, which is a book that you can download for free.Tom makes the physics behind the environment and our interaction with it simple and accessible. If you don't like math, well, it's the language of nature, so it's important to understand what's happening in nature. But even so, the point of collecting data and calculating results isn't for the sake of the math. It's to get past it to get to your values and to act on them.The point of the math is to get past the mathWhen W. Edwards Deming initially apparently contradictory statements make sense, you understand the point of taking data and calculating results. He said:“Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.”and"Management by num

From our first conversation you know Tim's history as a musician and founder of the Eden Project. This time you'll hear the passion of a man who loves restoring the Earth's ability to sustain life and human society.He talks about the spirituality of his work, connecting to the Earth, eating, and growing. For city dwellers like most of us, he shares the potential for that connection available to all of us. We have to take the steps, but the emotionally rewarding results are there.As you listen to this episode about food, plants, land, connection, community, and many things wholesome, I recommend contrasting Tim's world with, say, Facebook or Doritos. In my experience, they disperse community, make connections superficial, and plasticize nature to create craving for brief, regrettable alleviation from that craving. Are they worth it?Usually I prefer second episodes to cover the personal challenge a guest did. In Tim's case we didn't, though it's hard to miss that he lives a life of having done so for years. See

Laura and I go back a few years, from being on her podcast.We talk about her concept of emotional obesity: a parallel between physical health and emotional health. I find it a rich analogy on many levels. Characteristics of addiction to food that cause obesity resemble thoughts that cause emotional obesity.She describes her concept in more detail, but I find most helpful about it that it enables you to make yourself emotionally healthy in the ways you make yourself physically healthy. You'll note the parallels in problem and solution as she describes it.Think of thoughts you kick yourself with. If your friend said those things you'd leave that friend. Yet we keep doing it, unable to see that we can stop it.Dwelling in unproductive thoughts and blame doesn't help.We expand it to environmental obesity, where we look at addictive environmental behaviors, another approach that helps understand and solve behaviors we don't like. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mark and my second conversation it about happiness, pleasure, meaning, and purpose, though it sounds like it's about personal growth, food, and environment.In our first conversation, he didn't really connect on the environment at the start. This time you'll hear it resonates with him, largely through health and food.I see the pattern over and over: people protect themselves from saying the environment means much to them but when they talk about it, they care deeply. I think mainstream strategies to act on the environment---"try this one little thing," "if you don't, you're destroying the Earth," facts, figures, doom, and gloom . . . none of which do I call leadership---lead to people protect themselves from revealing how much they care.Making it moral, about facts, right, and wrong and other ways that motivate people to protect themselves motivate people to protect themselves.Change will come from the opposite tactics: opening up, allowing people make mistakes and learn, not feel compelled to comply or to imp

Outside the MBA world, not everyone knows McKinsey. Within it, and at the upper echelons of business and government, McKinsey advises some of the largest and most influential organizations, including governments and the world's largest companies.If a company wants useful advice, it has to share everything, which means McKinsey is privy to the secrets of the most influential people and companies.McKinsey is hierarchical. After business school people start as consultants, they move up in management to partners. Later directors. Eventually you end up at Global Managing Director.Today's guest, Dominic Barton, was the Firm's three-time Global Managing Director.Since effective leadership is fundamentally about influencing people's behavior, Dominic influenced the influencers of the most influential people and organizations, where the stakes were highest and repercussions greatest.High stakes and repercussions? Sounds relevant to the environment in 2019.One of this podcast's most important topics to me is our agreem

Nadya and I mostly talk about business and sustainability. She describes what she saw growing up in the dissolution of Kazakhstan, where she saw the opposite of sustainability.I can't describe what she saw, but you'll hear the craziness of collusion, economic collapse, political collapse, and so on.She talks about how business works best when sustainable. I tend to agree. Tangential to what Nadya and I covered, when companies influence government to distort a market -- say with subsidies for fossil fuels, paying for a military to maintain supply lines that everyone pays for, roads that I agree I benefit from but don't use nearly as much as others yet I pay for, and farm subsidies for meat, I could go on -- unsustainable companies can profit.So companies that pollute but the public pays to clean up, or for other reasons we don't accurately account for their costs, can sustain themselves profitably while not have a sustainable business model.As a matter of accurate accounting, a prerequisite for capitalism, I s

Proctor and Gamble produces a lot of plastic and waste, which makes them very interesting to me. An old me would protest. The leader me sees the opportunity to support change if they aren't changing and help motivate it if they are.Not just reduce waste---also to help increase the joy, meaning, and purpose in the process---what the "leadership" part of this podcast's title alludes to.Steve Sikra has worked there nearly 30 years. He knows their history and practices backward and forward. He's very enthusiastic.He talks about systemic change and overall reduction. I'm not sure it's P&G's main goal. Or rather, we see the relevant systems differently. One of my main discoveries in environmental action is the difference between raising efficiency and lowering overall waste. I cover this difference in episode 183: Reusing and recycling are tactical. Reducing is strategic, which I recorded after this conversation with Steve. Probably this conversation with Steve helped me get to episode 183.Working on efficiency

Mark seeks transitions---what most people avoid, certainly around leadership and the environment---and loves them. He shares them with the world. Listening to his podcast and reading his results, they're working.Change can make for a great life, as much as most people prefer to do what they always have. You'll hear him embracing challenges, learning, seeking understanding. He seeks action and people who act.He's just over 21, but I hear experience beyond those years, I think because of the challenges, and doing them publicly. Putting yourself out there forces accountability on you, which gets the job done. I recommend it.On personal change, he recognizes that emotion, not the outside world, is usually the biggest hurdle. This view, applied to environmental leadership, points to working on the beliefs and emotions driving our environmental problems for solutions.Too many of us look to others to act first or relying on technology---that is, not to where Mark looks. Our culture treats acting on your values as a

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of D-Day.This post is about being a part of something greater than yourself, than all of us, benefiting us all, and benefiting yourself -- one of the great feelings and experiences available to humans.I happened to read four documents around the same time that illuminated each other and our attitudes toward acting on the environment. Our complacency in the face of a danger threatening many times more lives than Hitler is all the more glaring when compared to the honor and service of the men who defended the free world storming Normandy.The documents were'I count myself lucky': D-day remembered on the 75th anniversary, a compilation of interviews of D-Day survivors in The GuardianThe Uninhabitable Earth, a book describing the consequences of global warming, to say nothing of plastics, mercury, extinctions, and other environmental consequencesIf Seeing the World Helps Ruin It, Should We Stay Home?, a silly account of selfish mental gymnastics for how to deny responsibility for c

As founder and CEO of iMiller Public Relations (iMPR), Ilissa Miller brings nearly two decades of experience in sales, marketing and product development to her clients in an effort to help them differentiate their messages and achieve notoriety within an ever expanding and evolving industry. With a wealth of experience and knowledge in the emerging global telecommunications and technology industries, her extensive expertise and practical skill set have allowed her to implement and spearhead and launch many companies as well as global product and marketing campaigns including that of international private line and networks, IP transit, peering, IPVPN, hosted PBX, cloud computing, Ethernet, managed services, colocation and data center products and solutions.She is a recognized leader in the global telecom and technology space where her knowledge and insights provide strategic guidance that enhance performance resulting in a remarkable reputation for effectiveness and client satisfaction.In addition to her afore

Sammy is a cofounder of Fitspot Wellness -- a fully managed solution for companies and properties, bringing on-site and digital workplace wellness programs and amenities to engage employees and tenants through community experiences.Sammy is an attention-to-detail aficionado who brings a blend of grit and imagination to the zillions of tasks that confront every startup. She has always thrived in operations, working as a production assistant in LA and managing operations in the fashion industry. Sammy wears many hats at Fitspot, doing everything from sketching app screens to managing the customer experience. Sammy has a B.F.A. from the University of Miami, and hails from Australia.Fitspot Wellness See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.