I hear young people furious at Boomers in particular, but old people in general, for causing a problem, then abdicating responsibility on acting, instead saying “I am encouraged by young people acting.” What jerks! Act yourself! Stop capitulating and continuing your insouciant damaging. You have more assets, connections, resources, and what it takes to accomplish things. Not acting personally but teaching young people just teaches them not to act and[…] Keep reading →

Talk about acting more sustainably and people act like it’s hard. When they say “you have to make it easy for people,” they mean you have to make it easy for them. They’re saying that they won’t change, but hiding their intent, acting like they’re just doing what everyone else does. And if all you do is make it easier, it will never be easy enough for them. If you’re[…] Keep reading →

You might remember from my conversation with podcast guest Tony Hiss a passage from his book, Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth, that inspired me for the bold story it told. I’m finally copying that passage here. I’ll put in bold the bold part that psyched me up, to ask for what we fucking need: Back in 1997, [Steve] Kallick was with the Pew Charitable[…] Keep reading →

Flying a private jet to a climate conference seems the height of being out of touch and acting counterproductively. If you feel that way, have you considered how much of your expenditures pays for extracting, polluting, and depleting? What fraction of your spending goes to filling your gas tank, flying, air conditioning, heating, industrial agriculture, buying things that require pollution to make like packaged food, takeout, houses, cars, nearly all[…] Keep reading →

My book talks about Abraham Lincoln a lot. I’m not sure how I’ll use the following information about his wrestling career when younger, but everyone should know he said ““I’m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns!” on the way to passing the Thirteenth Amendment. From Inside Abraham Lincoln’s Surprising Career As A National Wrestling Champ and[…] Keep reading →

Yet again I heard someone saying individual action won’t solve our environmental problems so we shouldn’t even look at it, and this was a major public speaker. He repeated the idiocy that, as he saw it, BP creating the personal carbon footprint was a coup for distracting us from them. I’d love to see all these people who oppose individual action in 1850, saying, “you can’t end slavery so don’t[…] Keep reading →

People suggest I teach people how to do what I’ve done—things like unplugging the fridge or avoiding packaged food. Isn’t that what leaders do? Shouldn’t I make some videos on how to live without a fridge, flying, or doof? It’s a great question. I could only answer after hosting author, TED speaker, and entrepreneur Derek Sivers on my podcast. He asked why I invited him since he doesn’t work in[…] Keep reading →