Leadership

The chart below on the left shows why America can't lead anyone on sustainability. People mistakenly believe America can influence others on sustainability. Why do they think so? Maybe because of our large GDP, military, or population, since they enable us to influence in other areas, but they don't help here. Note our average per capita emissions almost five times the world average, nearly ten times mine, and ten times India's. Remove the U.S. contribution to the world average and we probably pollute close to ten times the rest of the world's average. Among those other nations, many have higher marks for health, longevity, prosperity, equality, and stability with lower rates of addiction. We've stupidly confused consumption and pollution with quality of life, thinking lowering…

Regular readers know I first called my podcast Leadership and the Environment because I saw our response to the environment lacking leadership. As a leadership coach, I'm in touch with many leadership coaches, including some of the most renowned who have been guests on the podcast. Leaders and leadership coaches could play the most important role addressing our environmental problems. Instead, nearly none act. Those who act to so ineffectively, hindered by not trying to act sustainably themselves, so not knowing what changing a lifestyle to sustainability takes or means. To leaders and leadership coaches,Our environmental problems are dominating the front page and growing. We've all heard "We can solve these problems. The question is will we." That is, it's a matter of leadership. Yet…

Part of why I act and try to lead is to develop more effective ways to communicate and motivate. People have developed tremendous skills to dance around sustainability issues. They'll ask for ideas of what they can do. Then they'll respond, "but systems have to change." Then when you talk systemic change, they ask, "But what do I do?". In practice, they dance around five or ten issues where their answers bounce around, dodging answers more than leading to action. "But individual actions don't make a difference . . ." One of the most common topics people dodge personal responsibility with is to say individual actions don't make a difference. I'm sure they have many motivations to say it, but I think mainly because they…

It's become fashionable, it seems, for old people to say their delight and confidence that the next generation will fix the problems we created. I see them trying to pass the buck to people who can't speak back. I've written before that they're just saying "no me, not now, someone else, some other time." Old people can vote, hold assets, be elected, drive, and so on. Young people can't. Waiting for them to acquire tools of power and use them while we don't will take too long. We can fix the problems we created. Not wait for them. If we wait, we'll teach them to do what old people not acting today learned---to abandon their values amid claims of practicality. They'll claim then what old…

First, I support people who choose to work through government to stop our degrading Earth's ability to sustain life. I believe they can achieve a lot. I want to get them votes. But I see other ways to lead that others aren't doing where I can affect more. When I concluded the most important missing action on sustainability was leadership about a decade ago, I considered running for office. We often call our elected officials leaders, though few lead by my definition. My role models who changed cultures, like Mandela, King, Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, Laozi, and their peers, started outside government. This chart reinforces my conclusion not to try to act through government. I'm open to working with government after I start making a huge…

Isn't a refrigerator essential? Isn't life with them better? I thought so. I'll quote my mom from my podcast to illustrate where I came from: I grew up where it was easily ninety degrees every single day. In fact, where I worked, the store if it got ninety degrees outside we got to close the store and go home because it was that unsafe. To me, air conditioning was wonderful. And to my mom and my grandmother, not having to use ice box refrigerators was great. I really appreciate all of that today and I understand that we've gone overboard with air conditioning. It's really bad for the environment and one should learn how to get along with these temperatures.But Josh, it was really hot…

Environmentalists today like to try to enlist conservatives and republicans by pointing out how Richard Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency and other environmental initiatives. As summer begins, I propose citing him to enlist environmentalists to take personal responsibility---a necessity to lead others. Would you like to influence others? Air conditioning It's not yet summer. Have you turned on your air conditioner? I can hear them all over my neighborhood. How much do you plan to use the air conditioner this summer? Richard Nixon said How many of you can remember when it was very unusual to have a home air conditioned? And yet this is very common in almost all parts of the nation. As a result, the average American will consume as much…

Imagine yourself back in the 1950s and 60s during the civil rights movement. People traveled across the country to sit at lunch counters with people of different skin colors, walk for a year to avoid segregated buses, and so on. Most people didn't do anything. They must have talked about it since it made the news, but most people watched from the outside without acting. Not everyone can do anything. Different people value things differently. Many people did important unrelated things. But many people knew, had time and resources to act, but didn't. I wonder how it feels to look back at an important time and know you didn't participate. What about not acting today? I wonder how people who still haven't changed their behavior…

"But what I do doesn't matter" "Only governments and corporations can make a difference." These excuses are the top Addictions Speaking people use to lie to themselves to abdicate responsibility for acting on their environmental values. Well, note this timeline: 1955: Private citizens organize Montgomery Bus Boycott1956: Court rules segregated buses unconstitutional and bus company changes1964: Civil Rights Act of 1964 Does anybody think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would have happened without individual citizens acting well beyond just voting? Do you think India could have attained independence and then had a Great Salt March? I could have picked any social movement or cultural change. Systemic change begins with personal transformation, the route to action. If you believe the two statements at the top,…