I was talking to a friend about how addictive products work so well for people who sell them. The products sell themselves. From the perspective of the buyer and society they don’t work so well. Regular readers know I’ve concluded that since polluting and depleting destroy life, liberty, and property, a government mandated to protect life, liberty, and property must prevent polluting and depleting, as surely as it has to[…] Keep reading →

Want to read something frustrating about living more sustainably? Want to read why, when people ask the hardest part about what I do, I say it’s the friction from people? I’m not saying I’m anything special, just that I’ve done things as experiments that work out. People say living more sustainably is impossible. When I tell them I’m already doing it, like that I dropped my impact ninety percent, they[…] Keep reading →

You’ve probably heard of movements to give rights to animals and bodies of water as ways of protecting them. When I first heard the idea, I found it far fetched. Then I remembered we extend rights to corporations, so why not other non-human and non-living things? I generally hear about giving rights to things we consider beautiful or sustaining, like animals and rivers. What about giving them to oil, coal,[…] Keep reading →

Tina is one of the central characters in that group that everyone knows (another is Kevin Fucillo, also a podcast guest). We go back a few years. She was born in the south in 1933, so you can do the math, but you’d never guess. She’s at times a firecracker, full of life, ready to handle anyone. She’s friendly to all, but ready to police anyone overstepping bounds. She’s always[…] Keep reading →

I’m posting today my podcast episode with Tina, who volunteers with me delivering food from stores that would throw perfectly good food away to a community fridge for anyone to take for free. She was more quiet and reserved when I turned the microphone on, but this video shows her more usual style and form. She’s a firecracker. This video came when we met on Fifth Avenue when I came[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Matewan: In college, a teammate on the ultimate Frisbee team was a graduate student in the film school and cited this movie as one of his favorites. I watched it a long time ago and re-watched it this week. I found it compelling as a movie. Having taken acting classes, I thought about how much fun an actor could have playing the bad guys since they[…] Keep reading →

I recently finished a book and a video course on sustainability leadership. Writing means editing. Any creative, expressive work means sketching ideas, composing, outlining, etc. Any creative, expressive work emerges from copious practice work—any painting, musical piece, novel, poem, etc. You’ve seen sketches by da Vinci, Michelangelo, and so on. I don’t keep a writer’s or artist’s notebook. I don’t start by writing on a computer. I start by writing[…] Keep reading →

If an adult wants to smoke in their home, that’s their business. If they give themselves lung cancer, that’s their choice, assuming their sickness doesn’t tax others who didn’t choose. Likewise, if people want to consume doof, that’s their business too. But if someone smokes where others who don’t or can’t consent to breathing that smoke, or if someone too young to know the long-term results of their choices smokes,[…] Keep reading →

Today we made SpodekMethod.com live. My book, Sustainability Simplified, mentions the page as a place for more resources and it came out last November, so it’s been almost painful for it not to be working. I couldn’t in good conscience promote the book on podcasts or elsewhere knowing it pointed to an incomplete page and therefore couldn’t enable someone to take the workshop. It’s ready now. I needed to make[…] Keep reading →