Longtime listeners and readers of my books and podcast know I draw the analogy to learning and mastering a skill to learning to play piano or a sport. You start by playing scales or practicing groundstrokes. Likewise with leadership or taking initiative, acting entrepreneurially, both performance arts you can master. Also acting in stewardship. People don’t get that learning to cook without producing tons of garbage took training from when[…] Keep reading →

I learned of John’s work through his statement at Macmillan’s Sustainability page while researching Ray Anderson: In 2009, after reading Ray Anderson’s “Confessions of a Radical Industrialist,” I decided it was Macmillan’s responsibility to lessen our impact on the earth, and in particular, to lower our carbon emissions. We created a senior position in the company and spent well over a year measuring our carbon footprint. We then set ourselves[…] Keep reading →

About six months ago the parallels started forming for me between our global economic system today that creates great suffering on the scale of hundreds of millions of people with nightmarish cruelty, but also people benefiting from it looking the other way or saying “what I do doesn’t matter” or “the youth will solve it”. . . And the systems of slavery. Also looking for role models who changed systems[…] Keep reading →

I wrote about Eugene launching This Sustainable Life: Solve for Nature with me as his first guest. As the guest on his podcast, he led me to commit to an environmental activity based on my environmental values. I committed to planting some edible plants in my windowsill. Listen to hear my results, how Joe DeSena and Spartan Race get involved, and more. Click here to listen at Eugene’s site and[…] Keep reading →

Here are the notes I read from for this episode How to fix Texas Just got off conference call a Texas attendee couldn’t attend because her power was out. There are helpless people suffering. I empathize with them and feel compassion. I support helping them. If we want to prevent future suffering, we have to look at systems. That’s not ignoring present pain or loss. It’s preventing future pain and[…] Keep reading →

When they hear I take two years to fill a load of trash, people ask how I do it, what’s in my trash. In this episode I share a couple stories from last week of facing things entering my life that would result in my having to take responsibility for trash—acquiring a new cell phone and acquiring bagged food. I’ve done things like these processes enough to know that they[…] Keep reading →

No matter what you think we should do, everyone gets that there is some connection between population and sustainability. Everyone knows our population is increasing. We’re consuming more than ever. How do we talk about this issue? I think most people shy away from it. I know I did, until recently feeling “what’s the point in talking about something we can’t do anything about?” I saw problems with overpopulation but[…] Keep reading →