The story Meet the NYC environmentalists going off the grid and eating discarded food begins: Joshua Spodek’s studio apartment in the West Village is an off-grid oasis. While other apartments in his 15-story co-op rely on electricity produced by fossil fuel-burning power plants, Spodek is disconnected from Con Edison and National Grid. The main circuit breaker in his apartment is turned off. Instead, he powers his few electric devices –[…] Keep reading →

A brief political history of sustainability [If you’ve watched my Short Course on Sustainability Leadership, you’ll recognize the following from my session on the political opportunities. I’m putting only the main points here. I’ll develop it more in a future post. I wanted to start writing. If you haven’t watched the course, I think you’ll find it one of the most important resources on our culture, the environment, sustainability, and[…] Keep reading →

I’ve been working for months on what to show on SpodekMethod.com. My book Sustainability Simplified refers to the page so it has to help people who want to learn and to more. It’s pained me for it not to be ready for so many months after the book has been on sale and the New York Times profiled me with a two-page story starting on the front page of the[…] 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 →

I confess I haven’t read Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, but I’m working so much on opposing coercion and tyranny, I keep coming across him. I’m trying to learn more about the conditions that led to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Learning history is one thing. Getting inside the hearts and minds of the people acting is another. What values were they acting on or not? If you[…] Keep reading →

I like finding patterns and making mnemonics. I like making acronyms like sidcha, which I use here a lot, and PAID culture, which I use in my book, for concepts I use a lot but that don’t have words for. I create the term doof, which I find life-changing. I write a lot about values that as far as I know approach universal in human cultures, though I’m not an[…] Keep reading →

Abraham Lincoln talked about a house divided being unable to stand. A Constitution that protected freedom in one place and slavery in another contradicted itself. You can protect freedom only. You can protect slavery only. If you try to do both, that divided house cannot stand. Likewise, you can have a Constitution that protects your life, liberty, and property from me taking or destroying it without your consent. You can[…] Keep reading →

I wrote in my post a couple days ago, Racist jokes, polluting, depleting, and integrity, I lamented how environmentalists missed the greatest point of acting by your values: credibility and integrity. Sadly, sustainability lacks both. I wrote: Does anyone believe that not polluting or depleting once or twice will end our environmental problems? Of course not. The point of not living sustainably is not to solve all our environmental problems.[…] Keep reading →

One of the most common rationalizations/justifications/excuses I hear for not trying to live more sustainably is saying someone’s spouse or kids make it impossible. Never mind that humans lived sustainably as healthy, safe, and secure as today for 250,000 years. One person told me “sustainability is nice until it runs into a six year old.” Another: “my wife shops for food. She gets what she gets. If it’s packaged, it’s[…] Keep reading →