I started by sharing my experience giving after reading Peter’s book The Life You Can Save. I confess I only read it after our first conversation, but loved it. I feared reading a book by an academic philosopher arguing a point would…
Regular listeners know I see our relationships with many activities that are enabled by pollution as behavioral addictions like gambling or playing video games. Thus, I bring experts in addiction. Anna’s book Dopamine Nation is one of the most accessible I’ve read.…
Kimberly has, by dramatically reducing her flying, improved her life, living more deliberately and consistent with her values. I met her when she was a panelist at an event on promoting hurting people less by flying less. I invited her as someone…
People who fly think most people fly, but it’s more like a few percent. A small fraction of people fly, let alone across oceans or multiple times per year. If you fly, it’s probably your action that hurts people most through its…
“What I do doesn’t matter” may be the most poignant sentiment of our time. A similar rationalization not to act: “I have faith that younger people will solve our environmental problems. After all they will be affected more.” People say these things…
A blackout struck New York City and a large part of the U.S. northeast in 2003. It happened only two years after 9/11. How could we not first wonder if it was terrorism. I had been at work at the time. After…
Dave and I go back years, to when we both wrote columns at Inc. I’m surprised I didn’t bring him on before. He helps entrepreneurs, leaders, and aspiring leaders develop social and emotional skills, as well as college students aspiring to internships.…
I met Erica in a online meeting of academics who promote avoiding flying. A major perk for many academics is that universities pay for flying to academic conferences, for research, and for other academic reasons, of where there are many. In other…
Since recording this conversation, I’ve mentioned to a lot of people, “you wouldn’t believe the situation with dyes and poisons in our clothes.” The most common response has been something like, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard. It’s terrible.” Then I share some of…
I heard about Sven through the articles below about the cultural change at Northwell, a chain of hospitals around New York City. I recommend reading the Post article before listening to this episode. It may read overly positive about the food, but…
About fifteen minutes into this conversation, it hit me how powerfully Stephen’s commitment affected him. (Sorry I took so long to catch on, Stephen!) All he had to do was volunteer around a body of water. His experience shows the impact of…
Regular listeners and blog readers know I talk about litter and how much we wreck nature, especially my neighborhood’s back yard, Washington Square Park. Click the links below to see some of the worst litter you’ve seen, in a supposedly nice part…
I’m searching for role models including people who changed cultures and undid dominance hierarchies, particularly people who came from status. I can think of many who came from subjugated classes, but not many who could have declined to engage, but did instead.…
I have spoken and written at length how I see our relationship with polluting behavior as qualifying as addiction, a view that I think helps frame the challenge of sustainability. Overcoming addiction is harder than creating new technologies or taxing things. It…
Regular listeners and readers of my blog will know my sustainability leadership workshops and one of the participants of the first, Evelyn (she’s in the video on that link). After being the teaching assistant for a couple cohorts, she is leading this…
Regular listeners know how I look for role models in similar situations to ours regarding the environment. We know our polluting and depleting are bringing us toward collapse, but instead of acting, we procrastinate on acting. We rationalize and justify our inaction.…
If John’s specialty in deep history weren’t valuable enough to understand how our culture’s dominance hierarchy formed from the material conditions of the dawn of agriculture, he also specializes in American history, including slavery from before the Revolutionary War through to the…
You’ll hear Tony’s story of rolling up his sleeves and doing some hard labor. You’ll also hear the labor being just the start of the reward. He shares about the less tangible but not lesser results in community, emotional reward, enthusiasm to…
I was reading Harper’s magazine and Christopher’s story was on the cover: Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”! It begins In the summer of 2016, a fifty-seven-year-old Texan named Stephen McRae drove east out of the rainforests of Oregon and into the…
Greenhouse gas and ocean plastic levels don’t rise on their own. The cause of our environmental problems is our behavior, which results from our culture. The world’s dominant culture pollutes, depletes, addicts, and imperially takes over other cultures. Yet each person wants…