This Sustainable Life ranked #1 Environmental Leadership podcast

This Sustainable Life appeared on the rankings of many lists, including #1 Environmental Leadership podcast, by Million Podcasts. #6 in Sustainability I couldn't fit the header and listing for This Sustainable Life in one screen shot, but This Sustainable Life ranked #6 for Sustainability overall, a bigger group than Environmental Leadership. #6 in Environmental Stewardship This Sustainable Life ranked #6 in Environmental Stewardship. #5 in Sustainable Leadership This Sustainable Life ranked #5 in Sustainable Leadership. #7 in Stewardship This Sustainable Life ranked #7 in Stewardship podcasts. #22 in Earth podcasts This Sustainable Life ranked #22 in Earth podcasts. #27 in Global Warming podcasts This Sustainable Life ranked #27 in Global Warming podcasts. Others too! This Sustainable Life ranked #54 in Environmental podcasts overall #69 in…

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Another problem people miss about artificial intelligence

I just read a series of articles in the Economist analyzing the effect they predict artificial intelligence will have on the environment. They started by calculating the costs to build the computers and train the algorithms. They calculated the costs to operate the computers, which was much greater. Then they started writing about how people would use AI to increase efficiencies in grids, factories, transportation, and so on. When people answer if they think AI will help or hurt, they almost always answer how they expect they would use it for their goals. This series of articles didn't look at what seems most likely the greatest impact: how people who pollute and deplete will use AI for their purposes. They aren't trying to pollute any…

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Signs you’re not traveling even if you go far

Travel used to mean something. You had to work to go somewhere. In many places you could find a different culture. Today, you just pay money and go from one airport to another. The concept that "it's the journey, not the destination" is over. For most people the journey is passive. Going across the world takes marginally more effort than going across town. I've written before that “Traveling” with roller suitcases isn’t what traveling used to be. Today, most places are just slightly different versions of the same global culture. Again, going across the world takes you to people little different than you can find across town, and I don't just mean in a place as diverse as New York City. Signs that your travel…

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Would you ask a plantation owner in 1855 for advice how to abolish slavery? Why ask polluters today how to stop pollution?

Would you expect a plantation owner to have any idea how to abolish slavery? They would be the last people to ask to make a strategy for ending the practice providing their livelihoods and wealth. To ask a plantation owner to end slavery is to ask them how to give up everything they feel they own. They'd risk vengeance from the people they freed. They'd have to acknowledge their actions that hurt others and violated their own values, then lied to themselves and others about it. I'll copy the above two paragraphs, changing the domain from slavery to polluting and depleting. See if the perspective illuminates not to listen to polluters about how to stop polluting. It may be tempting to avoid comparing something to…

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819: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 6: Our Brighter Future

This last recording in the series brings together the opportunities. We can't fix all the world's problems or to go back in time and change history. We can't change that people are already dying by the tens of millions annually from environmental problems, a number projected to increase by factors of ten or more. But we can do the best we can. The best we can is all we ever could do. Even if our culture weren't creating all these environmental problems, conflict would always exist. Restoring lost value to our culture that would restore stewardship would keep us from having to hurt innocent people, contributing to this suffering, just to live. Doing the best we can replaces despair, helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety, and all the…

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This week’s selected media, May 11, 2025: Racism, The Case for Reparations, Clamor

This week I finished: Racism: A Very Short Introduction, by Ali Rattansi: This book follows up last month's The Myth of Race. I've read a lot about slavery, abolitionism, Nazism, what people call race, and related topics but haven't read scholarly books about the history of racism. Racism seems just a part of human society, like marriage and school. In principle I knew it had to have started at some time, since our ancestors before leaving Africa likely didn't practice it. These two books trace it to Europe around the Inquisition. The two books overlapped enough that I believe I started to get a feel for the historical patterns they described. It's disheartening to see how involved some significant historical figures were. I knew about…

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The left denies science as much as anyone, just different science, but it denies enough to avoid facing that it promotes unsustainability.

The left denies "the science" as much as anyone. It attacks the right, calling them "climate deniers" and says "compassionate capitalism" is an oxymoron. But it promotes what it calls "clean," "green," and "renewable" energy and "energy transitions" and claims to protect BIPOC and indigenous. The science and technology are clear, though, that creating electric power from solar, wind, nuclear, or (if it were ever to work) fusion is not clean, green, or renewable. Humans have not yet had an energy transition, if transition means it stopped using an old form. When we start using new ones, we use them and the old ones, not instead of. The left doesn't want its initiatives to destroy indigenous communities but they do. It claims individual action doesn't…

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818: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 5: The Celebrity Opportunities

Look up "Greatest of All Time" on Wikipedia and you'll find Muhammad Ali. This lesson shares how he went from being just the heavyweight champion of the world to the greatest of all time, transcending sport to becoming a statesman. Business people say "culture eats strategy for breakfast," and our culture, while paying lip service to sustainability, promotes and rewards polluting, depleting behavior. Celebrities play a major role in setting culture. When I tell people, "Taylor Swift is probably in an airplane right now," they know what I mean. No one disputes because even if she isn't flying literally that moment, she flies plenty. Yet billions of people want leadership. They want to follow people living by their values. This lesson shares the potential legacy available…

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Watch me cooking my famous no-packaging vegan solar-powered stew at a workshop at Drew Gardens, Bronx NY

I just found a video of one of the workshops I led at Drew Gardens. I can't believe I thought I lost it. If you've wondered how I make my famous no-packaging vegan solar-powered stews, watch the workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeLiAAapjzM Some Reviews Read more reviews here, but some examples: When Josh first invited me over for stew, I didn’t jump at the opportunity. I recall thinking that a quickly prepared meal of some legumes and fresh vegetables heated in a pressure cooker would at best be bland. After decades of consuming processed and improperly cooked vegetables that needed seasoning with plenty of salt, spices and fats, I didn’t appreciate how much natural flavor could be found in the garden. Josh skillfully mixed lentils with fresh farm…

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817: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 4: The Political Opportunities

Sustainability has become a polarized partisan political issue, despite everyone wanting clean air, land, water, and food. In the US, neither the Democrats nor Republicans have a vision of or plan to sustainability. Both rely on purported solutions that exacerbate and accelerate our current results. Since we reach the general through the specific, I focus on US political opportunities. I believe those outside the US will see clearly how to apply the spirit of this video to their homes. They're like two tired boxers who get stuck toward the end of a fight in an embrace, holding each other up, acting like they're punching but not. On the contrary, they've evolved into a mutually supportive dance, pandering to their bases, pointing at each other, not…

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Why do liberals and progressives so strongly oppose actually acting on sustainability?

Working in sustainability leadership, I interact a lot with people working on sustainability. Most of them are politically liberal or progressive. I'm prompted to write this post after finishing This Changes Everything and What If We Get It Right, both books promoting those politics. They keep saying how individuals acting aren't the answer. They imply or say that suggesting so is harmful. They all keep falling back on BP and its industry distracting from themselves by promoting individual carbon footprints. They oppose not just any one individual acting. They tend to oppose any individual action at all. From a leadership perspective, doing what they say is a problem while telling others it's bad when others do it seems to sacrifice their credibility, integrity, and effectiveness.…

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816: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 3: Business/Entrepreneurial Opportunities

The solution in video 3---the Spodek Method---creates a new, more effective situation than anything I know of in sustainability. People act on their own motivation that they felt before I met them. Instead of me motivating them, it was more like I unleashed and inspired them. That's the difference in acting on intrinsic motivation instead of extrinsic. Every other sustainability effort I'd ever come across convinced, cajoled, coerced, lectured, manipulated. It might get compliance, but squashed motivation. When someone wants to do something but doesn't know how to achieve it, and you know they'll thank you for helping them do it, that's a business opportunity. This video explores the potential to revolutionize leading people and cultures, even global, toward acting more sustainable. It covers just…

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This week’s selected media, May 4, 2025: Pattern Breakers, The Shock Doctrine, What If We Get It Right

This week I finished: Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-ups Change the Future, by Mike Maples Jr and Peter Ziebelman: I borrowed this book after hearing Mike speak about it. In parts, I felt he spoke to me about my work: starting a company can revolutionize a field, but doesn't have to, even in Silicon Valley. Many ventures simply provide a service in a system it doesn't change. By contrast, some projects overturn industries. They're different. This book doesn't claim to say anything new in this regard. It's helping people who do such things feel comfortable in the face of everyone disbelieving and causing friction at every turn. They focus in for-profit ventures and mine is non-profit, so there was a cultural difference, but I've started…

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815: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 2: The Solution

Now that we understand our environmental problems as cultural, proposals based in technology, market incentives, and legislation don't address the problem. They generally won't achieve the desired outcome and will often achieve the opposite. I share my path toward discovering a solution that works, now called the Spodek Method. Changing culture requires many things, and leadership is one. The Spodek Method is an experiential leadership technique that prompts people to share and act on their values---that is, based on intrinsic motivations. I describe how it works and what it achieves, in yourself and others. So you don't have to take my word for it, I share the experiences of people who have learned the technique, some renowned. Some took my Workshop, others were guests on…

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Read about me in Gothamist: “Meet the NYC environmentalists going off the grid and eating discarded food”

The story Meet the NYC environmentalists going off the grid and eating discarded food begins: Joshua Spodek’s studio apartment in the West Village is an off-grid oasis. While other apartments in his 15-story co-op rely on electricity produced by fossil fuel-burning power plants, Spodek is disconnected from Con Edison and National Grid. The main circuit breaker in his apartment is turned off. Instead, he powers his few electric devices – phone, laptop, pressure cooker and a single light turned on only to read at night – with solar panels the size of an unfurled yoga mat that he charges weekly in Washington Square Park. He buys nothing in a package. The total garbage he’s accumulated over the last three years fits in a reusable shopping…

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Hear me on WNYC: “Meet the NYC environmentalists going off the grid and eating discarded food”

Listen to this story about me on WNYC: The text introducing it says: As President Donald Trump pursues a deregulation agenda, New York’s ambitious clean energy goals appear further out of reach. So what’s a climate conscious New Yorker to do? WNYC’s Rosemary Misdary reports on some New York City residents taking an extreme approach to eliminating their carbon footprints. I won't split hairs, but I would describe what I do as traditional and conservative, not extreme, since nobody connected to an electric grid or used plastic more than about a century ago. If you've read Sustainability Simplified, you know I consider many polluting and depleting activities as addictive, and from the perspective of, say, a heroin addict, using zero looks extreme, but it doesn't…

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814: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 1: The Actual Problem

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…

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My comment on the media pooh-poohing “bros”

I wrote this letter to the editor of the New Yorker. It's been long enough that I doubt they'll print it, but I wanted to share my thoughts. Everyone knows our culture misunderstands women. I think men could use more compassion and that doing so won't hurt any other group. To the editor, Andrew Marantz's article The Battle for the Bros perpetuates a subtle but common double standard: when society conflicts with men, there's something wrong with men and they need fixing, but society conflicting with women means there's something wrong with society and it needs fixing. It shows up more among liberals and overcoming it would help answer the article's question "Young men have gone MAGA. Can the left win them back?". It appears…

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813: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: Quick Introduction: Welcome to the Sustainability Simplified community

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.…

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Some insensitivity I perceive from parents

I hear consistently from parents, "Since you aren't a parent you can't understand the challenges of raising a child and how it makes doing what you do about sustainability impossible," or words to that effect. They often imply or even imply, though not as bluntly: "You haven't held a newborn you created and have to care for for its survival. You haven't felt that love. You haven't experienced as much as I have." No one has lived anyone else's life so no one can know or feel what it's like to live as someone else. I'm not them so I don't know exactly what they mean, but similar messages come from many sources, so I think I catch some of the pattern. I think they…

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This week’s selected media, April 27, 2025: The Myth of Race

This week I finished: The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea, by Robert Wald Sussman: Wow! What a fascinating book on the history of the concepts of race (by more than one definition of the term) and the practice of racism. Sussman was an anthropologist and academic, which are the lenses he mostly looks through. He defines what he means by race and racism, describes some of today's understandings, misunderstandings, and practices around these concepts and practices, then tells their appearance and development in history. He traces the start of the practice to the Inquisition in Spain: the first time people in power defined a group of people as lesser through intrinsic properties they could never change. In that case, the…

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A definition of sustainability I’m testing

People sometimes ask me my definition of sustainability. Usually I say something about maintaining earth's ability to sustain life. Because we humans depend on other life, maintaining earth's ability to sustain life means its ability to sustain human life too. I like lots of life, but I like human life especially. I'm testing a new definition of sustainability: To be able to live without taking or harming others' life, liberty, or property and when taking something from nature, you leave at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others. You can probably tell I'm drawing on established enlightendigenous values. The first part comes from the US Constitution, the second from John Locke's Second Treatise on Government. It seems like this…

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Are humans more rationalizing than rational?

I came across the idea that humans are more rationalizing than rational in a book on racism, where plenty of rationalizing happens that those rationalizing probably think is rational. I put it as a question in the title since I don't know how we can quantify them for comparison, but I find the idea compelling that we rationalize more than reason. I hope you don't mind the short post, but I think the title says it all. It's something to think about. I'll probably develop the idea in my philosophy and use it in conversation.

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A simple way to view the choice to live sustainably: Think of others more than yourself

People tell me how hard it looks to them to live sustainably. I recently wrote about people thinking it's hard: First they say it’s impossible, then easy, then easy for me but hard for them. Anything but acting or responsibility. Almost always, they talk about themselves: "Me, me, me. It's hard for me. I don't want to give up doing what I like." They never talk about the people that their actions necessarily hurt. They know the plastic, pollution, etc hurt others, but they only talk about themselves and what they want or feel entitled to. They don't say they feel entitled to whatever perk they get for being at the top of a dominance hierarchy. They just act entitled. How they can think about…

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Do conservatives oppose the practices of seeking diversity, equity, and inclusion or just those practices being mandated?

I understand that liberals/progressives support DEI programs and that conservatives attack them, but I haven't followed this culture war that closely. I think the battle affected the presidential election. I hope I don't make myself look too ignorant about an important issue, but it seems that there is a distinction between what is being attacked and what conservatives actually object to. I wonder if conservatives value practicing these things, though they may define them differently than liberals and progressives. Could it be that they just don't like making the programs mandatory? Speaking only for myself, I don't like being coerced, but I value diverse opinions and backgrounds, treating people equally when I can and being treated equally, and to include people. I think anyone who…

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