Leadership And The Environment

I've written about how people act like food coops don't work for people without resources like time and money or who have kids. It took me a long time to realize they didn't see food coops being started because the people starting them didn't have time or money and had kids. When my parents couldn't make ends meet, then after they divorced and struggled more to make ends meet, forming cooperative groups was their way out of poverty.Luckily nobody told them they couldn't do it! Likewise with the people behind Drew Gardens in the Bronx, Harlem Grown, my credit union, or countless other results of community organizing.I wrote about it in If you think food coops cost more or complain that some people don’t have access to them, you don’t know what you’re talking about and are exacerbating the problem, but my mom was there. In this episode we talk about how they helped organize a group of families to save money and time to buy higher quality food. Later that group folded into Weavers Way coop, which is one of my fa

Adam's book Bury the Chains inspired me to see British abolitionism as a role model movement for sustainability. The writing was simple and clear. The subject inspirational and relevant. We talked about it in our first episodes, which I recommend.At last I read his most renowned book, King Leopold's Ghost, which we talk about in this episode. I came to it after reading Heart of Darkness, which it complements. Regular readers know how much I've found imperialism, colonialism, and slavery. King Leopold's Ghost covers the case of Belgium's king pulling it off while cultivating a philanthropic reputation. It's shocking and more relevant than ever, given the continuing imperialism, colonialism, and slavery in Africa today, now for our cell phones and electric vehicles. They aren't clean, green, or renewable.Adam shares the highlights of the story. Again, the writing is simple and clear so I recommend the whole book. Start with our conversation. King Leopold's Ghost is as relevant to today as any book. If you'

Matt and I talk about his commitment and how it affected him. I talk about the Spodek Method in general and other leadership tools like creating role models. Matt talked about his hopes and expectations about technology.When I asked him if he could imagine a world where no one polluted, he shared that he hadn't thought about it, but find the idea almost beyond conception. Think about it: if someone can't imagine an outcome, how likely do you think that person can achieve it? How likely do you think they'll subconsciously sabotage attempts? Won't it seem scary?Can you imagine a world without pollution? Matt points out if we pollute, we violate Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You. That means people who can't imagine a world without pollution can't imagine a world restoring the Golden Rule.Listen for our conversation on this topic. Matt also talks about large changes he's incorporated in his life, already starting to avoid flying. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guy is a successful, well-known hedge fund founder. He's famous for paying a lot of money for one meal with Warren Buffet (hundreds of thousands of dollars), which he found worth it.He and I know each other partly through a guest also in finance I did several episodes with, Whitney Tilson, though we emailed before we found Whitney in common.Regular listeners know a strategy of this podcast is to bring leaders from all areas to sustainability, which lacks leadership. I also look for people in fields that people who call themselves environmentalists often call the enemy. They talk about finance people as just looking for profit, not caring whom they hurt. I think they're presuming someone's intent based on what they see. I think psychologists call that presumption the fundamental attribution error.I don't agree with them. I think everyone has deep, intrinsic motivations on stewardship, but you have to listen more than project onto them to learn it. When it comes out, if you enable them to act on it, they may fi

I was led to Kate's article Should I Stop Flying? It’s a Difficult Decision to Make. from a newsletter from Flight Free USA. I've read, heard, written, and said a lot about not flying. I found her article the most sensitive, comprehensive, and thoughtful on the internal, personal challenge and gut check of deciding to stop flying.I'll let you read the article to find where she lands on not flying. I expect you'll find she covers your angle and others.It's challenging. We know it pollutes. We know it's not necessary. We want to do it, so we convince ourselves that what we believe is wrong is right, that the plane was going to fly anyway, that we're powerless to choose otherwise, and various other rationalizations and justifications (I used to. Now I find it repugnant). Though eighty percent of people alive today will never fly, we who fly feel like everyone does. So we convince ourselves that flying is inevitable, benign, and does more good than harm. Yet for people who fly, it's often their greatest contribut

Since our last conversation, check out the reviews that have come in about Home on an Unruly Planet from past guests of this podcast:“With deep, compassionate reporting and elegant prose … Ostrander finds creativity, vital hope, and a sense of home that outlasts any address.”—Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction“As each new climate calamity obliterates, incinerates, or engulfs entire communities, we shudder to think our own could be next. Gently but purposefully, Ostrander guides us into places that have known this nightmare, not to shock but to show that the meaning of home is so powerful that people will make surprising, imaginative, even transcendent leaps to hold on to theirs. By her book’s end, you realize that maybe you could, too.” —Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us and Countdown“What does it mean to maintain a sense of place in an age of climate change? In At Home on an Unruly Planet, Madeline Ostrander explores this question with search

What's actually happening with our environmental problems? Scientists predict. Journalists in periodicals tend to write what gets attention and clicks, so we don't know how accurately they represent versus sensationalize. There's plenty to sensationalize after all.Madeline spent time with several communities to find out what problems they faced, how seriously, and what they were doing about it. The result is she sensitively portrayed them in her book At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth. The book reads at time like she's projecting doom, but she isn't. She's describing things as she sees them and the people there describe them. The second half of the book talks about what people are doing. It's sobering, but if we want to do anything, we have to know where we are and how fast we're changing.In our conversation, beyond describing highlights of the book, she gives backstories of how she picked them, what motivated her, her goals, and more.GOOD NEWS: the paperback comes out tomorrow. (I

Talking with Chris has made me more concerned about population projections that only show the possibility of collapse as error bars. I hope to bring him and past guest Wolfgang Lutz on the podcast together to help resolve their disparate views.I see some of humanity's effects on the environment that could affect our population beyond what the UN projections show not as low-probability high-impact events, but already happening. I mean things like depleting aquifers or fisheries that hundreds of millions of people rely on or plastic building up in the ocean. Several major rivers don't reach the ocean, including the Colorado, Tigris, and Euphrates. Solving these problems could be low-probability.They’re like driving by looking only in the rear-view mirror.Our relevant question is not, as the UN projections imply, “how do we feed ten billion?” It’s, “might human population collapse?” By implying we don’t have to worry about collapse, I see the UN discouraging acting on sustainability, in my view. Hosted on Acast.

Do you like my work because of my nearly unique background of a PhD in physics, having cofounded a couple companies, and having an MBA? You're in luck with Arnold, who has done the same. We got our MBAs together at Columbia so inevitably met. He was working on his solar startup then, Skyfuel, which was making news, though I wasn't working on sustainability yet the, still feeling like individual action wouldn't matter yet.We ran into each other and talked about his new company, YouSolar, comparing how much power, energy, and reliability he supplies his clients with my little portable battery and panels I have to carry to my roof.In today's conversation, after he shares his background, he shares YouSolar's grand goal, which is to change the grid, not just provide solutions to some clients. He's looking toward systemic change, filling in a power gap.Arnold's company, YouSolar Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You've heard me talk sustainability leadership on this podcast and probably others. Have you wondered what I sound like talking to friends unrecorded?A friend who also teaches leadership at NYU knew my background and had talked about climate with her students. She scheduled a call to talk sustainability leadership with me to help prepare. At the end of the call she told me she recorded it. I'm posting that recording: what I sound like when I haven't prepared and don't know I'm being recorded.In this case, I'm talking with someone I know who wanted to talk about sustainability, so it's not out of the blue with a stranger, but unrehearsed and raw. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recent guest Bob Litterman spoke highly of Greg and his work at the Climate Leadership Council, a rare bipartisan effort on climate. He put us in touch. In the meantime, I was curious about a climate group started by Secretaries of State James A. Baker and George P. Shultz along with Ted Halstead. But they and other prominent Republicans published The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends.Greg is CLC's CEO, leading that project on the ground working with politicians. If you're curious how it can work, he explains it in our conversation.You'll hear my long-standing concern that people and organizations who focus on climate and greenhouse gases end up increasing other problems. He sees in some areas that if you solve part of the problem you increase it in other areas, like squeezing a balloon, as he puts it, or whack-a-mole, as I do, but doesn't speak about that problem in focusing only on carbon.I also didn't get to ask him about the fourth pillar of the case: "significant regulatory simplification." Could it

Gernot and I go back a few years from meeting online over sustainability issues, finding out that we lived about a mile from each other, then meeting in person. Our first meeting, we got annoyed at each other, but our second we found we agreed on more controversial topics and had a grand old time. We also ran into each other at the conference where I met his longtime collaborator Bob Litterman, who was a recent podcast guest.Gernot combined economics with sustainability before others did and kept at it, putting him at the forefront of environmental economics. As regular listeners know, I value experience and living by one's values, not just talking about it. How else can you gain relevant experience, credibility, integrity, and character? How else do you know what you're talking about?Gernot has acted plenty. He talks about living more sustainably in his personal life along with his family. (As a side note, you wouldn't believe how many people tell me living sustainably with a family is impossible. It's not i

What does the world look like today with regard to our environmental situation? Not the latest news about a disaster we can write off as a one-time event, even if yet another once a once-in-a-century event now common, but what does it look like on the ground. We know there have been record-breaking fires, floods, and storms. What are they like?David travels the United States to record what he sees and reports it in Traveler's Guide to the End of the World. He comes from a literary background, so he puts it in the context of past nature writers. He also has a daughter so asks scientists what the world will be like when she is his age. The book is not always easy to read, but always engaging and fascinating.He represents nature. He declines to lead about it, which, if you know me, I see as the most important course we can take, but there's no denying the value of seeing the world as it has become.In our conversation, he shares his background, motivations, and the process of researching and writing.We talk about

With Peter Singer, I could have picked several topics relevant to sustainability leadership: veganism, vegetarianism, and charity come to mind, as does my post about him six months ago, Fixing Peter Singer’s drowning child analogy for sustainability. The day before recording, I saw him speak live and asked during the question-and-answer period at the end about not flying.He answered thoughtfully and reflectively, not with the usual reactivity and emotional intensity most people do, protecting their feelings of guilt and shame, as I see them (I wrote The reason you feel judged isn’t because environmentalists are judging you. It’s because you have a conscience.) Several audience members told me they appreciated my asking the question. So when we spoke after he finished his stage performance, I asked if he'd mind following up the question in our podcast conversation.So we spoke in more depth about flying versus not flying. I think I can safely say we both learned from each other, though I think he hasn't spoken

You won't hear many finance people promoting more taxes, though it's increasing. Bob talks beyond our conversation a few weeks before about a carbon tax, integrity, permanence, standards, measurement, and many different angles. He talks about responsibility and holding the companies creating the problems responsible. It just takes courage.Regular listeners know I find that when anyone focuses only on carbon, greenhouse emissions, and climate, they almost always miss our other environmental problems, like plastic, pollution, deforestation, and you know the rest, Bob agrees the tax incentive should apply to these other areas, though I'm not sure he acts on them. It's easy not to change the system, but to make it more efficient and accelerate it overall, even if you lower problems in one part of the system.But mostly I wanted to hear his views and strategies, not press, so I hope I listened more than challenge.He also shared his inside views of people in finance approaching a tipping point of realizing we have t

Matt shared last time about the redwoods I keep hearing about in California that I've never seen but find they transform people.His goal was to plant a tree. He ended up with a new tree, plus he planted other plants. Listen to hear the story. More than what he did, I recommend listening to his emotional experience. Did he have to do all the things he did? Could he do other things that are more mainstream but might pollute more if he wanted?We talked first about the problems with what most people mean when they talk about teaching children, helping poor people experience nature, and a few other tactics people promote without thinking them through, as I believe. They sound great. What are they missing?Matt has thought through such issues more than most and was patient enough to let me share some of my views. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I met Bob at a conference on climate at my old school, Columbia Business School. He knew another participant, Gernot Wagner, with whom I recorded an episode I'll post soon, and was a peer with past guest Mark Tercek. I didn't work in finance, but I understand Bob and Mark were like dieties there.Bob brings two huge new things to climate (he talks about climate almost exclusively among our environmental problems, though we touch on others briefly in the conversation). First, he knows risk management. Most of his career, he didn't think much about the environment, but when he learned about it, he identified that we have to manage risk, so he dove into the issue.Second, he connected with a group of conservative politicians promoting what he sees as the most effective solution: a carbon tax. That he's working with groups normally seen as resisting climate action could bring people together.Also, just after we recorded, the New York Times published a big piece on Bob: A Renowned Economist’s New Idea for Stopping C

Population modeling can be hard, as is figuring out a prediction's accuracy, therefore how much confidence to give your conclusions. Many people can't hear talk about population without hearing things like eugenics and racism even when they aren't there.But population is one of the most important factors in sustainability. Everything becomes easier when population isn't near or above what Earth can sustain and harder when it's above.I came to Chris from reading his paper on modeling population growth, Footprints to singularity, which showed a couple things. It clarified that UN and peer projections lacked feedback mechanisms so couldn't show population decline. If your model can't show a population decline, it will blind you to the possibility and therefore keep you from preventing or preparing for it. It also leads you to ask, "how do we feed ten billion people" instead of seeing that we can't without causing a steep drop in population soon after, a pattern called overshoot and collapse.Second, it showed a g

In what looks to me like one of the biggest overcommitments of guests on this podcast and participants in the Spodek Method, Dan shares that to free his mind for meditation, he ended up selling his motorcycle and Playstation.Then we spoke about coaching and leading people to reach their potentials, which he experienced on the receiving end in reaching the Olympics twice and does now with others, and he appreciates me doing in corporations and on sustainability. You'll hear we both admire each other and are learning from each other.A curious note: you'll hear me puzzled at his tone, which I couldn't place. It didn't convey the sense of accomplishment and freedom his words did. We're still getting to know each other.I also think he expects acting more sustainably to take more time and money, when I find it frees both. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you feel when you mean to do something but don't do it. Do you tell people about it? Do you hide it?Nearly no one is acting as much on sustainability as we need to to avoid disaster. Beyond not acting, we aren't facing our inaction.How do you think a globally recognized productivity guy would feel and if he didn't yet do what he said he would? I've talked to people who have loved Oliver's book and columns. I think many would both be surprised if he didn't do something he said he would and would feel bad if they didn't do something they said they would.I love his writing. I consider his views on time and values new and valuable. Others share my views. But he's human, like all of us.I think the sustainability movement would benefit from more up front acknowledging our fallibility but not give up or rationalize and justify inaction. We benefit from learning from out mistakes and keeping going.In this episode, we'll hear how Oliver handles not doing a commitment but not hiding it, complaining, rationalizin