Living more sustainably isn’t hard. Our human ancestors did it for 250,000 years. Our non-human ancestors did it for billions. Most life forms do, maybe all except we modern humans.

Living more sustainably in a culture that for whatever lip service it falsely pays to sustainability rewards the opposite is hard. Then the problem is people—that is, social and emotional, not technical. After all, it costs less, requires less time, is more convenient, and helps poor people.

The social problem is people who, like all addicts, confuse the need to feed their addiction with actual life needs. They believe living more sustainably costs more, takes more time, is less convenient, and hurts poor people. In my book I describe why addicts get it precisely wrong.

I make these points because Evelyn and I are tired of mainstream myths and lies. When we talk about living more sustainably, we talk about our actual experience:

• Fun
• Health
• Freedom
• Liberation
• Saving time and money
• Helping the poor
• Spending time off screens
• Spending more time with children
• Volunteering

and so on.

Sustainability could use role models of people living more sustainably, unlike every environmentalist or person promoting sustainability I know of. So we’re stepping up and taking on the leadership mantle.

We’re live streaming our conversations about living more sustainably. It took us a while to get the technology working. We’re making our first few episodes ourselves, but soon we’ll take questions from live viewers.

I won’t lie: we started off tentative. Future episodes will be funnier. We have a series of topics for each episode. But this episode starts the series with meaning. We each describe our understanding of the other’s origin story and deepest motivations relevant to the natural environment and sustainability.

After each guesses at the other’s origin story and motivations, the one guessed at shares their personal answer. So however unpolished this first episode, it makes it up in genuineness and authenticity.

Enjoy the recording and let us know topics you’d like us to cover or questions you’d like answered.

• ← “I can’t do sustainability because my [spouse or kids] won’t go for it.”
• Corollaries to my recent post: Replacing “sustainability” with “not hurting people” and “polluting” with “hurting people” →