Interviewers often ask “If you were a benevolent dictator, what would you do to solve our environmental problems?” They all frame sustainability as something you have to convince people to do or use coercive, authoritarian tools like passing laws that don’t yet have popular support. I identified a big fork in the path of people promoting sustainability. It comes if you’ve found, as I have, that the more you live[…] Keep reading →

Ali Horriyat and I have become friends since we started recording together. He hosts the Compassiviste Dialogues podcast. Friendship doesn’t mean always agreeing. On the contrary, I consider one of the roles of friendship—true friendship—is to disagree when appropriate and to confront a friend when you think they’re wrong, deserve criticism, or the like. People who aren’t friends may hold back from confrontation. That holding back may be polite, but[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and you can learn more about him from my podcast conversation with Martin Doblmeier, who directed a documentary about him, which I learned a lot from. I included Bonhoeffer in my upcoming book as a historic role model. He could have passed through WWII unscathed. Instead he chose to engage. In particular, he participated in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. On the face of it,[…] Keep reading →

I recovered from a week of events known as Climate Week 2024. It felt like 1776 Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home. Before reading why, I should tell you that I shared the views below with several attendees of several events and they all agreed. Climate Week brought bold pronouncements from CEOs, government representatives of cities, states, and nations, and cultural leaders. They said we could solve our environmental problems if[…] Keep reading →

Would you drive a car that sent its exhaust into where you sit? Would you fly in a plane that sent its exhaust into the cabin? Would you dispose of all your garbage by digging a hole in your yard and keeping it there forever? If you send the exhaust and garbage into the rest of the world, it doesn’t go away. You’ve made your problem your neighbors’ problem. If[…] Keep reading →

I recently hit on the following observations. I shared them with a few people with experience in the overlap of experience in leading, science, and living more sustainably. They understood the concepts after some explanation, but suggested they wouldn’t be accessible to many people outside that zone. I’m not sure how many people they’ll make sense to, but I consider them big discoveries. Some day I’ll write essays on each.[…] Keep reading →

Few things have made me so grateful to live in a time when the phrase “not even wrong” exists. I’ve read parts of White Fragility and skimmed more. I didn’t realize how impactful she had become. I’m commenting today on this video of her I just watched: “One plus one equals three” is, in mathematics, wrong. It might be nice in poetry and you can find ways to make it[…] Keep reading →

It’s natural to think of our environmental problems as issues of science, technology, or markets. We learned of them from scientists. Technologists and business people said they could solve them, but they’re social. The environment isn’t changing on its own. We’re changing it. Pollution destroys life, liberty, and property, mentioned throughout the US Constitution. We feel anxiety not from an effectively abstract “climate,” but because people can unilaterally destroy our[…] Keep reading →

I’ve been reading podcast guest Manisha Sinha’s book The Counterrevolution of Slavery, which recounts how slaveholders spoke and acted to justify and advance their institution of slavery. I know to expect it from having seen it before in podcast guest James Oakes’s The Ruling Race and Jenkins’ Proslavery Thought in the Old South, but I’m still shocked at how relevant their thinking is today. They treat a different institution, but[…] Keep reading →