Want to know what living more sustainably feels like? Our culture is so dependent and addicted to things like takeout, cars, and flying that pollution and depletion enable, we forget that using them destroys life, liberty, and property. We don’t notice that our government benefits and grows in money and power from licensing and promoting one of its few core responsibilities nearly everyone agrees on. We don’t notice that they[…] Keep reading →

Regular readers know what a sidcha is and that my second daily habit that both became a sidcha and helped me conceive of the concept began with doing ten burpees a day. I think I started my burpee habit in early 2012. In time, that habit evolved into a twice-daily set of calisthenics. I agree that discipline equals freedom, so more than the sizeable gains of saving money, saving time,[…] Keep reading →

Everybody acts like sustainability is someone else’s job. Sure, they’ll avoid straws or get triple pane windows on their third home, the one in Tuscany that they fly to a couple times a year (I sat next to someone at a dinner recently who was doing so), but actually changing culture? That’s too much to ask of anyone. Everyone acts like it’s not their job. Whatever their job is, they[…] Keep reading →

For those who haven’t read Sustainability Simplified, one of the main things it builds to is something that I thought crazy when I first thought it. The idea is a constitutional amendment in the style of the thirteenth, but instead of banning slavery, two main clauses, both traditional, both Enlightendigenous. One protects life, liberty, and property when the threat to them came through the environment. The other disallowing making property[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

I don’t know your views on guns, but I value both exploring different cultures and not polluting, which destroys life, liberty, and property. When my friend invites me to go to target practice at his shooting range outside the city, I’m happy to explore a culture as different from Greenwich Village, NYU, and Columbia as most places on earth. Unlike nearly anyone I know, I find cultures as diverse as[…] Keep reading →

That something in poppy can be extracted into something that addicts (opiates), that fruit and grains can be fermented into something that addicts (alcohol), or smoking tobacco can addict, or that gambling addicts are all chance results from nature. People may have found ways to capitalize on and profit from that addiction, but no one created the effect. Evolution did. By contrast, we now know how to addict people to[…] 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 →

People seem to want to defer to “experts” in sustainability and sustainability leadership. Many people know about science, technology, economics, legislation, and places where we might apply sustainability, but nearly no one knows anything about leading people or cultures to enjoy living more sustainably. Telling people facts or what to do or cajoling or coercing them isn’t leading them, yet it’s what nearly everyone does. It doesn’t work. It frustrates[…] Keep reading →