—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Noah is an award-winning writer based in Colorado. His journalism and essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Oxford American, and many others.
Noah Gallagher Shannon grew up in northern Colorado and holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Runner’s World, and elsewhere.
He is currently working on a book for Random House about track and field, 1970s West Texas and a group of young athletes from East Africa who changed the sports world.
The second part of my conversation with Noah, going into more detail about Uruguay and sustainability. The first part was episode 646.
I see our environmental problems and lack of effective solutions as a failure of imagination, as regular listeners of this podcast and readers of my blog know. If we can't imagine a world without pollution, we won't try. We'll resist and push back, which we do. Would-be leaders pollute as much as nearly anyone alive, more than nearly anyone who has ever lived, then say government should force them to change. Role models would help. Part of why I unplug my apartment from the electric grid and continue my process of continual improvement is to show people what's possible since nearly no one else is. Then imagine my pleasant surprise on reading an article in the New York Times, What Does Sustainable Living Look Like? Maybe Like Uruguay, that describes a whole nation moving ahead of the rest, led by a President also moving ahead of the rest. Role models! Noah Gallagher Shannon wrote the piece, met with the President and others in government as well as many people there. I recommend reading the article. Noah and I got so caught up in the conversation, I split it into two pieces. This one starts covering Noah, his profession, what he writes about, and writing this piece. He also talks about his personal motivation in his quest to live more sustainably and the challenge of finding effective leadership. Then we talk about Uruguayan life and culture, the difference between theirs and ours, and how shocked they are about ours.