Leadership And The Environment

If learning what it's like to watch your team win an Olympic gold medal from the sidelines isn't enough, and if learning what it's like to grow up in a family beset with poverty and addiction before reaching Olympic level competition isn't enough, and if learning what it's like after four more years to win an Olympic medal isn't enough, I'd say the best part of our conversation comes after all that. Then we talk about bringing out the best in others as a coach.How do you find out how to coach each person, athlete, executive, or otherwise?How to you lead a team to give to their potential?How do you keep everyone motivated?How do you keep yourself motivated?We both deeply appreciate each other's experience. You'll hear us trying to learn from each other. I want to learn how to shift sustainability, which everyone gives lip service to, from trying to avoid losing to winning by having fun, giving everything we've got, learning our deepest values, and acting on them. Dan does those things.Dan's home page Hosted o

Matt invited me to his podcast, A Climate Change. We stayed in touch after recording. He shared that he ran for President, including supporting sustainability. A goal of this podcast is to bring elected officials of all stripes. While he didn't get that many votes, he ran for several reasons, including to run as a Republican opposing Donald Trump. Listen to our conversation to learn more of his motivation.I wanted to bring him here not for the campaign alone but for his acting with integrity and character, even if not a huge campaign. How many pro-sustainability, anti-Trump Republicans do you know of? I saw determination arising from personal action.I also learned he's trying some things, like buying a hydrogen-powered car. My research shows the science and engineering showing hydrogen cars won't work for most of what we use cars for, nor trucks, planes, or container ships, but he's acting on his values, not just pointing fingers. He will learn from the experience. Matthew Matern for President 2020The S

Christopher may be the most direct, accurate reporter on sustainability. Our last conversation treated his helpful and accurate reporting on the book Limits to Growth. Today we start from his (in my opinion) excellent article The Green Growth Delusion, in which he reports on the futility and false promise of chasing growth. It's tempting, alluring, and seductive to believe technology, growth, or economic trickery will save us, but wanting to believe something doesn't make it true, even if you really want to believe it.As before, Christopher doesn't hold back, nor does he speak inaccurately. I recommend reading the article first, though you won't go wrong listening right now. Here's how it starts:In the annals of industrial civilization, the Green New Deal counts as one of the more ambitious projects. Its scale is vast, promising to reform every aspect of how we power our machines, light our homes and fuel our cars. At this late hour of ecological and climate crisis, the Green New Deal is also an act of desper

The spiciest parts of this conversation come at the end. It's possible listeners may think we were annoying each other, but I think I can speak for both of us that we enjoyed the repartee.Anyone who has talked to me about my work since I started watching and listening to Daniel's What Is Politics? videocast knows it's shaped how I view politics, meaning how groups make decisions. If we want to change culture, he covers much of the core. If we want to undo some people dominating others, it helps to know how dominance hierarchies form. The core is in anthropology, which shows how humans have related to each other going back hundreds of thousands to millions of years, and current material conditions.We talk about creating videos versus writing books. Daniel shares a lot of backstory to his creating What Is Politics?, including his goals and greatest hurdles.At the end things heat up as I share what I want to do, which he sees as impossible and a waste of time. Do you think he's right? . . . or that I should keep

I've been recommending Oliver's book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals a lot. When people ask about it, I have a hard time explaining what it says, only that it's valuable. He has a way of communicating important things about values, time, intent, decision, and related concepts that are hard to express otherwise. In this conversation he shares more.One thing I can express that I value: what he says about time parallels what I say about energy, specifically energy as physicists describe it, not emotional energy. We don't have infinite amounts of time or energy. If we see life as missing out on what we lack time or energy for, we'll crave what we lack. We'll be insecure. If instead, we recognize we don't have time or energy to do everything we'd enjoy, we can construct the lives we want, which will be abundant.Being an episode 1.5 means he only started doing the commitment from last time, but is gracious enough and a leader enough to share, regroup, and if we can find another way forward. I bring

This podcast and my mission are about changing culture. The Color of Law compiled our culture's practices that I can only see as cruel and unfair. As long as they're hidden, we can't do much about them. Listen to my episode with Richard and read that book if you aren't on top of America's history of cruel and unfair housing policy.Once you're outraged, then what? In this episode, Leah answers that question. She shares at a high level what people can do in their communities.You'll hear a couple extra notes of interest from me. One is to see what techniques in the culture she's changing can apply in changing our culture in sustainability. The other is that my episodes with my mom talking about the racially integrated neighborhood she and my father chose to raise us in, as well as the neighborhood itself, Mount Airy, Philadelphia, factored into her research.You'll also hear me recognizing a new element in how a cultural practice could start for one reason, say racism, then even after people in that system oppose

[Click to watch the video of this post.]Can Learning to Lead Sustainability be fun, inspiring, and effective?Yes!I just finished leading my first workshop in leading oneself and others effectively to act more sustainably: enduring systemic change and immediate personal change.Best of all: it was FUN! . . . both the workshop and the action it led to.Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the participants results.Today's post is the audio from a conversation with them on their experiences.Better yet, watch the video.You can learn to help change culture and restore a safe, clean, healthy world.We're organizing two summer 2023 cohorts. If you want to help fix our world, sign up at https://spodekleadership.com/workshop Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some context leading to my conversation with Maya:When I first thought of a constitutional amendment to protect us from pollution, I thought the idea was crazy, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. The more I did, the more it made sense.Since learning about the Thirteenth Amendment prompted me to think of it, I first spoke to previous guest James Oakes about it. Since it involved constitutional law, I spoke to previous guest (and Nobel Prize holder) Seth Shelden, who put me in touch with his constitutional law professor and previous guest Michael Herz. Besides my conversations with them one-on-one, I also spoke with Michael and Jim together. I recommend listening and watching those conversations for context.My conversation with Maya:Then I learned of Maya's work with "green amendments," as she calls them, at the state level as a foundation for the federal level. She has been working on it for years. She shares that history, including a major win in Pennsylvania and New York State's recently becoming the thi

See the video for this episode here.I speak about the concept of a constitutional amendment on the environment with former guests on the This Sustainable Life podcast:Michael Herz: Constitutional scholar and former lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund (Michael's podcast episodes)James Oakes: US historian, focusing on the Revolutionary War to Reconstruction (James's podcast episodes)We approach the concept from many perspectives, especially comparing it with the Thirteenth Amendment.This is my first conversation with two experts on a topic I'm just starting to learn about based on very detailed fields, including law, history, abolitionism, and politics. I have to start somewhere. We recorded this conversation months ago and I've learned tremendously since. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first part of our conversation, we start by reviewing Gautam's commitment to sailing, which seemed and still seems a good idea to him. but maybe too much for now. We revisit what motivated him and come up with a new commitment.The second part gets more exciting. Gautam expresses that we need to develop technology to help people who aren't living as well as us so we can help them. (I may not have summarized accurately; listen to his recorded words for his precise meaning.) This view is like waving a red flag to me since I used to think things like that but now see otherwise.We engage in different views on technology, progress, how humans used to live versus how we live today, values, and such.In other words, we openly talk about the underlying beliefs driving our culture and individual behavior we don't question or talk about, but that guide our decisions and behavior. If we can only imagine a world working a certain way, we can't change course. If that course leads to billions of people dying, being st

Chris returns to share his experience with the Spodek Method. He did something different than he committed to: he stopped using his smart phone---the latest Apple iPhone---in favor of a simple flip phone hearkening almost back to the nineties.What happens? Does his life fall apart? Does he find more calmness?Should you simplify your life by avoiding the call for the latest and greatest?He shares his experience and you can find out (I'm not sure he did it for this podcast, in that I think he was planning to do it anyway. Still, he shares his experience). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simon is a mining engineer who both researches the minerals and mining necessary if we were to try powering our culture with various sources. His work has brought him to work with government teams, especially economists and politicians around the world.He shares in our conversation that we will transition to a low-energy future, what it will take, and how little we have tried to figure out if we can do it. It's worrying to hear how poorly we understand the problem, how unprepared we are now, and how poorly we are preparing ourselves.What he shares is challenging to process considering the risk for catastrophe coming up. Situations like he describes is why I act so much. If you think scientists, engineers, politicians, or anyone understands the situation better than you and you can have faith people smarter than you will solve it, don't hold your breath.I don't understand how people don't take responsibility, prioritize solving these problems, and act.Simon's home pageLink to GTK videos: There Are Bottlenecks

The more I move toward living sustainably, the more I learn about cultures that haven't become as polluting, depleting, addicted, and imperialist as ours. I grew up thinking they were stuck in the Stone Age, but they aren't.Conversations with Alan help me learn about the Kogi, with whom he's lived in the mountains of Colombia and made two documentaries with the BBC. The relevant differences is that compared to us, they live sustainably, free, and in abundance.Alan shares more in our third conversation about what he's learned from them, including how they see us, which is sobering. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I've made it no secret that sustainability lacks leadership and leaders. If you want to help on sustainability, I suggest that the most valuable thing you can do is learn to lead. If you know how to lead, improve it. Nothing can change as much as leading cultural change.Gautam's passion is to learn how leadership works, how to teach it, learning more about it, writing about it, the military, most relevant to our conversation: conveying what he knows and that passion.The upshot: someone who knows as much as anyone about leadership, what works, what doesn't, learning more about it, how to teach it, and passionate to convey what he's learned. He also knows and has befriended some of today's most effective leaders, whom he mentions in our conversation. He calls General Stanley McChrystal "Stan."Let's see if we can bring Gautam's knowledge, experience, and connections to sustainability.Gautam's home pageGautam's page at Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy fo

Regular listeners know I've been asking people what the environment means to them as part of the Spodek Method. Many people respond with touching answers that I would call something close to life-altering. Maybe more like life-guiding, life-enhancing, or giving meaning and purpose.I've heard of increasing research into psychedelics recently. Reading reports of people who took psylocibin in clinical settings with guides for the experience, I was struck by how similar their effects to those of quintessential moments in the environment. Both talked about oneness, awe, humility, understanding, feeling understood, connectedness, and similar things, though, of course, each experience was unique. Many said that the effects of their experiences lasted sometimes years, potentially permanently. Many could stop addictions overnight without relapsing. Some improved relationships with loved ones.I hypothesized that some of the experience of psychedelics might have been a regular part of the lives of our ancestors who live

Wolfgang Lutz is one of the world's experts in projecting global population levels and demography. I contacted him to help understand the differences between projections based on demography like his and the United Nations' versus systemic ones like in Limits to Growth.He gave a comprehensive overview of who projects and how, at least as much as can be covered in under an hour. Some highlights:Who projects based on demography: the UN, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and the Wittgenstein Center, among others.He described what and how demographers project: Assumptions, methods, variables of age, sex, education, migration, fertility rate, mortality rate. He consistently repeated the importance of education.On Limits to Growth, he pointed out that systems analyses include feedback mechanisms, but their demographics tend to be less sophisticated, for example lacking age structure or effects of education. Demographers don't take them seriously because of their oversimplification.I asked

I was very curious to learn more about the Kogi and Alan's interactions with them.Alan is deeply involved with their joint project to learn to restore nature as they have shown they can. "Restoring nature" doesn't do justice for what they are doing. They are also sharing different ways of seeing and interacting with the world, which, as I understand from Alan, is not how they see the world.Alan starts with a couple descriptions of how the Kogis view things differently than Europeans, including in ways we wouldn't have suspected were different. How does a medieval castle look to someone who has never seen a stone building? If they see something a typical European sees daily, how much else are we misunderstanding? What are we missing?Their process for planting includes steps before planting of contemplation. What are they doing? What are we missing? Can we learn from them? Can we learn from them before we wreck them and ourselves?What else about nature are we missing? How common are their views to other culture

The International Society of Sustainability Professionals invited me to speak to their New York Chapter. Here is that recording. We "whooshed" out the participants' words, so it's just my speaking. Their mission is "ISSP empowers professionals to advance sustainability in organizations and communities around the globe."I described my work, my path to get here, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, how you can't lead others to live by values you live the opposite, and concepts relevant to sustainability leadership.I didn't take them to task as much as I could have for living unsustainably, undermining their credibility and trust. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roz could have stopped at rowing solo across oceans to world records, awards, and national honors.She didn't. She had done those things for a purpose: helping make our world more livable, less polluted. They gave her greater skills to appreciate her purpose and implement it better.As with most people, the challenges looked insurmountable to her. But unlike most people, she had once made a list to row across an ocean and, finding no impossible steps, she did it. Over and over. It's easy to look at her today and figure, "of course she could do it. She's an ocean rower. She was born that way," or something like that. But before she did it, she was a disgruntled employee and spouse looking for meaning and a way to improve her world, not a record-holding athletic champion.So also unlike most people, she looked at what sustainability would take, saw no impossible steps, and knew she could help achieve it. That's my read.I would have been happy to host her for the athletic achievements alone, but they were all stepp

One of the most famous supermodels, Paulina needs no introduction.She's here because mutual friends introduced us and her recent book, No Filter, that tells a different story than you'd expect of the once-most-highly-paid model. It deserves the positive reviews from the New York Times and elsewhere. As she describes in our conversation, she spent formative years behind the iron curtain, ingraining in her how to thrive with less, not more, which she caries with her until today. She also wasn't always considered beautiful. I'll leave you to read the book to learn about the toilet bowl incident we allude to in our conversation.In any case, you'll hear someone much more approachable, humble, and resilient that you'd expect.We recorded in the winter. She agreed to meet me in Washington Square Park to pick up litter together when the weather warmed up. Since models make great role models, the event could help change minds, behavior, and culture. I can't wait to tell you how it went. Hosted on Acast. See acast.