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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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.[…] Keep reading →

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: 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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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.[…] Keep reading →