This Sustainable Life

Sustainability has become a polarized partisan political issue, despite everyone wanting clean air, land, water, and food. In the US, neither the Democrats nor Republicans have a vision of or plan to sustainability. Both rely on purported solutions that exacerbate and accelerate our current results. Since we reach the general through the specific, I focus on US political opportunities. I believe those outside the US will see clearly how to apply the spirit of this video to their homes.They're like two tired boxers who get stuck toward the end of a fight in an embrace, holding each other up, acting like they're punching but not. On the contrary, they've evolved into a mutually supportive dance, pandering to their bases, pointing at each other, not taking responsibility.Yet there are political paths toward sustainability, which is why I work in sustainability leadership, as opposed to sustainability itself. We need leadership, not performances designed to look like leadership but are the opposite.This video shows conservative, libertarian, and liberal approaches to sustainability from each tradition's principles, including limited government, free market approaches and anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial approaches. All are based in the opposite of coercion, convincing, cajoling, or manipulation.They lead to what appears the only solution that works, an APPLE PIE amendment. While it will work, it's as hard for people as dependent on pollution and depletion as we are to envision as the Thirteenth Amendment must have looked to plantation owners. Yet the Thirteenth passed, replacing the most divisive issue in America's history with a source of unity.Passing the APPLE PIE amendment will unify us. Future generations will wonder why we took so long.To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The solution in video 3---the Spodek Method---creates a new, more effective situation than anything I know of in sustainability.People act on their own motivation that they felt before I met them. Instead of me motivating them, it was more like I unleashed and inspired them. That's the difference in acting on intrinsic motivation instead of extrinsic.Every other sustainability effort I'd ever come across convinced, cajoled, coerced, lectured, manipulated. It might get compliance, but squashed motivation.When someone wants to do something but doesn't know how to achieve it, and you know they'll thank you for helping them do it, that's a business opportunity.This video explores the potential to revolutionize leading people and cultures, even global, toward acting more sustainable. It covers just leading yourself to live more by your values, to working with our team, to starting a project or venture yourself, up to creating a culture-changing project creating a legacy to last centuries and beyond.I'm not saying you can just start these projects tomorrow. Our culture has poisoned the market so much that nearly everyone associates living more sustainably with making their lives and cultures worse. The Workshop will lead you to know otherwise from hands-on practical experience, but it will take time to build the market.Then we'll see demand from billions of people.To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Now that we understand our environmental problems as cultural, proposals based in technology, market incentives, and legislation don't address the problem. They generally won't achieve the desired outcome and will often achieve the opposite.I share my path toward discovering a solution that works, now called the Spodek Method. Changing culture requires many things, and leadership is one. The Spodek Method is an experiential leadership technique that prompts people to share and act on their values---that is, based on intrinsic motivations. I describe how it works and what it achieves, in yourself and others.So you don't have to take my word for it, I share the experiences of people who have learned the technique, some renowned. Some took my Workshop, others were guests on the podcast. Once you get the Spodek Method and a sense of how it prompts you to transform, I share the vision, mission, and strategies it enables in my mission of changing global culture through a path that is intrinsically rewarding for everyone who tries it.To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you think our environmental problems are rooted in greenhouse gas levels or emissions? Or biodiversity loss? Or any of what makes the headlines?They are symptoms. They all result from our behavior, which results from our beliefs, stories, role models, images, and what makes up our culture.If we magically fixed all of the environmental conditions making the headlines, but didn't change our culture, we would recreate them.Every time you say, "individual action doesn't matter," blame someone else or BP, or anything that keeps you polluting, depleting, living unsustainably, you contribute to that culture, even if you really wish you weren't. You fund the lobbyists creating the political forces accelerating more polluting and depleting.Only by understanding the actual problem can we avoid distractions and solve it.The video goes into more depth and detail. It sets up all the later videos.You'll never see the world the same again. To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many people see whatever part of what I do, think that's everything, and conclude I'm just doing some personal action or other form of spitting into the wind.I don't like wasting my time any more than anyone else does, nor do I want to see people continuing toLower earth's ability to sustain lifeDestroy others' life, liberty, or property without the consentDeplete from nature to where there is not enough as good in common for othersI'm partly insulted that they think I'm wasting my time or that I haven't developed a comprehensive plan that stops all those things that works at every stage, mainly by working on people's existing motivations. It's based on the Spodek Method and other effective leadership techniques.I posted a series of videos I call A Short Course in Sustainability Leadership that outlines the plan. I designed it for people who want to act and lead, not abdicate and capitulate like nearly everyone else. I recommend watching the videos, which are on this page, but I'm posting the audio here.To follow up: The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our third conversation matches the first two in intrigue and quality. We talk about the things that came up for Dr. Bob that got in the way of his commitment. These issues come up for nearly everyone (implying they aren't personal, but cultural beliefs): politics (including reacting to Trump), family, and race.This conversation was one of my first engaging on race unscripted. It's tempting to see some issues as immediate and conclude we have to address them first. This view misses that unsustainability causes them, including racism, tyranny, and corruption. I'm not saying sustainability alone will solve them, but as long as we live unsustainably, we keep causing them.You'll hear a lot more in the conversation. This conversation exemplifies what our culture needs more of. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tina is one of the central characters in that group that everyone knows (another is Kevin Fucillo, also a podcast guest). We go back a few years. She was born in the south in 1933, so you can do the math, but you'd never guess. She's at times a firecracker, full of life, ready to handle anyone. She's friendly to all, but ready to police anyone overstepping bounds. She's always caring about the community as a whole and each person in it. She goes out of her way to help people beyond just delivering food. The community wouldn't be the same without her.We talk about volunteering, homelessness, slavery, Africa, the South, and more. She worked at the Lone Star Cafe, which was a famous club in the 1970s and 80s, so shared some big names of people she hung out with, like Willie Nelson, James Brown, Courtney Cox (we couldn't remember her name), Bruce Springsteen, and more.We recorded in the lobby of her building, so you can hear people coming through and some sound issues. She spoke more softly than her usual self when I turned the microphone on, so I urge you to watch this video to see her energy outdoors. It was taken by a TV crew doing a story on me but they didn't use it.She asked me not to share her picture, so I'm only showing her side picture here, during a winter delivery, but she's okay with my sharing the video that still came from. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our second conversation, Giora reveals more about his developing as a leader. If you listen for it, you can hear the vision he had for himself and his profession, but also the development he needed to realize it.This podcast is about sustainability leadership. You probably envision a sustainable world, or at least trying with everything you can to help achieve it. Maybe you've adopted my vision and mission. Developing leadership skills and experience as Giora have is essential. We can learn from him.Beyond his leadership skills and experience, his doing the reps earned him credibility and developed integrity, essential elements for effective leadership. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I found Alex when listeners sent me an opinion piece in the New York Times he wrote, The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a Lie.Getting to where I take years to fill a load of trash means I've researched waste a lot, so based on the headline, I thought, "yeah, I've read this story before. I'll skim it so I can say I read it and then move on to important things." Instead, I was fascinated and found plenty new. I had to read his book, Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash, which came out last month. I can't recommend it enough.Whatever you know about waste and pollution, the book shares more and it's relevant to your life if you value liberty, freedom, justice, not killing people for profit, and not destroying your own health, safety, and security. Our system of waste forces us to act in opposition to those values.We don't have to. We can change the system. Understanding it helps. Listen to this episode, read Alex's book, and read his opinion piece. Here are its opening paragraphs:In the closing years of the Cold War, something strange started to happen.Much of the West’s trash stopped heading to the nearest landfill and instead started crossing national borders and traversing oceans. The stuff people tossed away and probably never thought about again — dirty yogurt cups, old Coke bottles — became some of the most redistributed objects on the planet, typically winding up thousands of miles away. It was a bewildering process, one that began with the export of toxic industrial waste. By the late 1980s, thousands of tons of hazardous chemicals had left the United States and Europe for the ravines of Africa, the beaches of the Caribbean and the swamps of Latin America.In return for this cascade of toxins, developing countries were offered large sums of cash or promised hospitals and schools. The result everywhere was much the same. Many countries that had broken from Western imperialism in the 1960s found that they were being turned into graveyards for Western industrialization in the 1980s, an injustice that Daniel arap Moi, then the president of Kenya, referred to as “garbage imperialism.” Outraged, dozens of developing nations banded together to end waste export. The resulting treaty — the Basel Convention, entered into force in 1992 and ratified by nearly every nation in the world but not the United States — made it illegal to export toxic waste from developed to developing countries.The NY Times opinion piece Alexander wrote that led me to him: The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a LieWaste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash at Hachette  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Silvia created the course Sustainable Marketing at Columbia. It's an elective and has become the class at the business school with the most students from other schools at the university.In looking for a guest speaker on sustainable consumerism, she found the New York Times profile on me. She decided to invite me before realizing I'd gotten my MBA where she teaches. Only when we spoke did she learn I focus beyond just living sustainably to creating a leadership program with a mission to change global culture.When I spoke to hear class, I spoke about changing culture, which in some ways conflicted with the marketing goal of selling more products. It also resonated with many of her students' interests in creating a more sustainable world. I got a lot of attention after class. We recorded this episode before I guest-spoke at another section of her course.We talk in this episode about how that class went from her perspective as well as differences between sustainability leadership and marketing. We did the first part of the Spodek Method. You can hear that as a business educator, she analyzed it, so we talked about that analysis.Silvia's page at Columbia Business School Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.