LATEST BLOG POSTS

Increasing efficiency forever can’t reach zero waste for many physical processes, but I think people feel otherwise. Or fantasize. When you hear about airplanes being made more efficient, or electric vehicles, computers, or whatever, do you think that if we keep making them more efficient, they’ll eventually not pollute? In the graph below, where the green curve approaches the horizontal line, it will lower forever but never drop below a[…] Keep reading →

Jack Spencer has been a guest on my podcast three times. Now I’ve been on his, and I think you’ll agree it was a fun, engaging conversation. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from him. For one thing, when I started doing the Spodek Method with him on my podcast, I enjoyed his sharing about nature so much, I didn’t get past the first couple steps. I had[…] Keep reading →

Thomas Jefferson wrote some of the most inspiring words on freedom and liberty, yet kept his slaves. To this day, people say as a result: He didn’t mean all men are created equal or he wouldn’t have done what he did. He did, so he must have meant all white men are created equal. It’s difficult to impossible to lead without credibility or integrity. Jefferson undermined both by violating the[…] Keep reading →

I start by sharing how much value I get from participating in Lorraine’s weekly coaching group. Then she shares her path to coaching on sustainability. She worked in the heart of the corporate sustainability accounting and reporting. She saw it mostly did nothing and often exacerbated the situations it purported to solve. She has created a practice that exposes and helps fix these problems. I ended up coaching her back[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation, by podcast guest Jack Spencer. I also watched his presentation on the book and panel at Heritage and followed up with the film he recommended in that presentation, Powering America, by the Heritage Foundation, where Jack works. Through our conversations on my podcast, especially doing the Spodek Method, and (coming soon, just recorded) on his, plus all the interactions that[…] Keep reading →

We track and report greenhouse gas emissions as one of our top measures of our impact on the environment. I propose that that measure may be a distraction. I wrote about the importance to know the 2 carbon cycles and not to confuse them: burning wood affects the environment differently than extracting fossil fuels from underground and burning them. They weren’t in the biosphere so they affect it differently than[…] Keep reading →

A friend reminded me of a life lesson we could all use in facing our environmental symptoms. In her words: “I never had a more optimistic outlook than when things were going to shit.”

I was learning about the economist Ronald Coase and a topic he focused on: transaction costs. A person in a video described how businesses and technology help lower transaction costs. The person used Amazon.com as an example, pointing out it takes less time to search the marketplace and buy what someone wants. My experience is different. When I look up what people buy most on Amazon.com, a lot of it[…] Keep reading →

Meaningful interactions don’t have to be complex. Travis simply shares his experiences in nature in childhood and finds ways to recreate the emotional experience today. To me the most meaningful part is the result: he expects to spend more time with his children (and dog) doing something he’s meant to do a long time. It doesn’t cost money. It sounds like it will give him more time. The cleaning part,[…] Keep reading →