Pollution destroys life, liberty, and property. Depletion violates the principle of leaving enough as good in common for others. Basic principles of how people can live together include protecting life, liberty, and property and leaving enough as good in common for others are among the most basic and necessary.

The language looks like it comes from Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, and their Enlightenment peers. I would say their Enlightendigenous peers to include the new world people who brought hands-on practical experience with democracy to the old world ones, who didn’t.

I knew some about them before starting to lead in sustainability, but now I’m learning more. I love learning about people who worked for liberty and freedom, including overcoming slavery, Apartheid, Nazism, caste systems, and so on. I wish I weren’t living in a time with problems causing greater, much greater, cruelty and suffering, knowingly funded by nearly everyone alive, certainly anyone who pays for gas, plastic, and other things that pollute.

I do live in such a time. We could use liberation and freedom from a system that makes it hard just to eat breakfast without hurting people.

I’m going to liberate and free us from that system. We will wish it happened earlier, just as we wish slavery had been made illegal earlier. Learning histories of what worked is some of my greatest tools. I love learning that history. I didn’t love history in school, but I love learning it now. It means learning about America’s founders, Gandhi, Lincoln, Mandela, and their peers.

I hope you’ll join and find that love too.

• ← Not hurting innocent people a “purity test”? I think your ignorance or internal conflict is showing.
• Today, 1988: Global Warming on front page of NY Times. Today, 2025: Americans pollute and deplete more than ever. Where’s the love? →