spodek

Building on the success of my podcast, This Sustainable Life, where I've led globally renowned people (you'll know many: https://joshuaspodek.com/leadership-and-the-environment-top-...)

1. Keep building the podcast

2. Publish my next book, on sustainability leadership (in conversations with big publishers already)

3. Continue my mission: to help change American (and global) culture on sustainability and stewardship from expecting deprivation, sacrifice, burden, and chore to expecting rewarding emotions and lifestyles, as I see happen with everyone I lead to act for their intrinsic motivations.

In my case the emotions have been joy, fun, freedom, connection, meaning, and purpose.

Role models!

Everyone should watch the channel Not Just Bikes https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A, by a guy who moved to Holland and learned what makes those transformations possible, in my opinion.

The videos are short, informative, engaging, and thought-provoking. Hopefully action-provoking too, since my country, the USA, can use a lot of that change. People here act like it's impossible, but they thought so there too. It's possible and role models help.

> People choose platforms because of their functionality, not because of their code licensing status

I choose software based on the freedom behind their licenses and always will. I value my relationships with others over mere technical differences.

I hope you at least learn something of our existence, besides that without people who think and act this way, there'd be no Wikipedia, Linux, Wordpress, or alternative to Windows.

> Life is teeming nearly everywhere in the oceans

Historically, this was true but no longer. There is a fraction of the life that the ocean used to support. A great source is the book Once and Future World, which describes captains' logs before steamship. They reported that ships at sea would be stopped in the middle of the ocean, far from land, by schools of fish that densely packed. Today, people are happy to see a whale if they visit the coast. Not long ago, people could see whales as far as the eye could see all day long some times of year.

Also, to call the waters "oxygen-starved" in response to climate change misses the cause and effect. Specifically, human behavior is causing these things. They aren't just happening. If we change our behavior, we can change the results.

Clarifying the cause and effect helps clarify what to do about it besides passively watch it happen.

Also the difference between outdoors a generation ago and outdoors now. Depending on where you are, the decrease in birdcalls is huge, but happens so slowly that most people don't know what we're missing. That loss has been happening over longer than a generation or two.

Also, there are fewer places where you hear no car noises or planes at all.

We can do something about it, but it takes work.

Insecurity, lack of self-awareness, lack of support

I just got back from picking up litter, though I do it every other day too. People keep picking up the habit, so it's spreading. I've been on TV twice for plogging too.

Everyone thinks it will be dirty and ineffective, but then finds it oddly satisfying.

> Watching lecture videos is now a major part of many students’ university experience.

This sentence is the most important, describing a failure in education. Once I learned to teach through project-based learning, I'm never going back, largely because of student feedback, that they learn more and are more engaged.

I'm not saying we don't learn from lecture at all, but a lot less relative to other ways. Maybe some subjects or professors work with lecturing, but not subjects that I studied in college.

I can't believe people are downvoting your post. If they want to influence someone, understanding them is how to start. Saying "I'm right, you're wrong" provokes resistance. They want others to change to save lives but aren't willing to change themselves to save lives. Listening and making people feel understood goes a lot farther than facts, numbers, and orders.

First, no they don't. Look up successes in Thailand, Costa Rica, Iran, South Korea, and other nations that lowered their birth rates through noncoercive means that improved health, longevity, prosperity, equality, and stability.

Second, not lowering birth rates involved billions of people suffering and dying. There is no option where we keep living above sustainable levels without consequence.

Because the data keeps matching their Business as Usual model. I think there's more recent research, but here's a paper from 2014, showing 40 years of reasonable fit: http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/M.... If we keep matching their model, we'll soon see dramatic population declines.

Also, the patterns revealed in their models are useful for understanding patterns in nature and human interaction with it.

That money will trickle down isn't a myth. It's an outright lie or fraud. It's more clear to see when you take away the imagery and see it says: giving money to rich people is giving money to poor people.

Has anybody used the method to undo myopia at Getting Stronger: https://gettingstronger.org/2010/07/improve-eyesight-and-thr... ?

It suggests to read at an inch or two past comfortable for a few hours a day. At first it seemed too good to be true, but not completely implausible. I'm curious if anyone has tried or had luck with it.

Wow, I took a class from Paul Steinhardt when I was starting my PhD in physics at Penn.

I think it was in him in his class who asked us how planes flew. I raised my hand and said the Bernoulli principle. He showed how despite schools teaching it forever, it couldn't be right. Otherwise planes couldn't fly upside down but they do.

Elon Musk is today's Robert Moses. People associate him with helping the environment, but he's pushing for growth as his top-line strategy. He may lower emissions from tailpipes, but systemically, he's exacerbating the problems.

The only thing changing slower than expected is humans. We resist stopping digging and burning fossil fuels.

One thing we know reduces emissions and pollution: stop digging and burning fossil fuels. We're using every excuse not to. Everyone has their thing they want to do that delays capping the wells and closing the mines. Beyond overconsumption, we can't even talk about overpopulation without losing our shit (though a few people and nations have made great progress, see Mechai Viravaidya, for example).

To propose we go to Mars to protect the species is backward. People with the means want to go to Mars to show off or other personal reasons. Then they drum up some humanitarian-sounding reason for government and popular support.

If we could prove beyond shadow of a doubt that no dangerous asteroids would hit Earth for a million years and that pursuing Mars accelerated our environmental problems here, I don't doubt that the same people would come up with new justifications and keep going, even if counterproductive.

The bicycle wheel. I can't believe 16 hours and nobody mentioned it (that I found anyway). You will find few things that serve their functions so well with such a minimum of material.

The General Public License. The foundation of Linux, Wikipedia, and more. Every company and government agency that took it on lost. It uses the rules it wants to subvert to subvert them.

The United States Constitution. So far it has withstood onslaughts and survived. We may be seeing the end of it, but people have said that before. It's inspired many others. The United States may be young, as cultures go, but our Constitution is, I believe, the oldest.

Like the jobs the book Bullshit Jobs referred to, I'd bet most of the cargo in these trucks is bullshit products that will end up in landfills within six months.

The turkey that would have been mine is still alive.

When I stopped eating meat in 1990, people saw it as a burden on them. Over the years, more joined the bandwagon, not that I did anything that people haven't been doing for centuries. Now if anyone seems to need to explain, it seems the omnivores, though all families are unique.

Today is also Buy Nothing Day for those with different values.

Our mainstream culture generally says growing the GDP helps everyone, that "a rising tide lifts all boats." Some of us see the evidence pointing the other way and avoiding needless shopping helping people more.

If you think science has you stomach untenable ideas, it's got nothing on what a lack of science will stick you with.

Since you ask, I've reduced over 90 percent, which I've shared publicly, anticipating I may be like a Roger Bannister to some. Will you join?

Here is a graph: https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ReduceFo...

On my blog https://www.joshuaspodek.com I post my electric bills, that I pick up litter daily, that I haven't flown since 2016, haven't filled a load of garbage since 2019, and more. Most importantly, that each of these changes improves my life. Or watch my TEDx talks on sustainability leadership: https://joshuaspodek.com/tedx.

Leadership, not individual action is the point. Yet more important and magnifying my effect, I lead workshops in food deserts, coach executives and politicians, and host a podcast helping change American and global culture from the attitude I read in your post, that sustainability and stewardship are burdens, deprivation, or sacrifice, to expecting it will improve their lives, help the most vulnerable, and create stability and abundance.

1. Flying at a whim, large vehicles, a/c 24/7, and related profligate fossil fuel burning. Today we think we're living at the peak of progress so far and that people in any other time would wish they were us.

Future generations will look back at horror at how we chose temporary indulgence over what makes us most human: caring for each other, especially the helpless and vulnerable, and stewarding nature.

2. Plastic, at least single-use, forever chemicals, and similar chemicals. Soon we will see them like asbestos or marketing cigarettes to kids. Yes, they increase the GDP, but they kill.

Has anyone heard from the President a message to reduce consumption in the U.S.? We waste so much, there need be no hint of tightening belts or doing without things we like. Most Americans could drop our emissions and waste 50 percent just improving our lives. We live this huge lie that consumption correlates with quality of life, health, or happiness for most of us.

We could improve our lives by cutting out most of the useless, pointless junk instead of solving every problem by burning more fossil fuels.

I've heard positive reviews of Never Pay the First Bill: And Other Ways to Fight the Health Care System and Win https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/635536/never-pay-th.... I've only read as far as the free preview allows, but it looks good.

It teaches the system and how to fight back by a Propublica investigative journalist who had to fight the system himself.

However much life has returned, it's nothing compared to before the Industrial Revolution. The wonderful book The Once and Future World by JB MacKinnon changed my understanding of how much more wildlife there was, everywhere. The Thames, for example, had walruses. Captain's logs of ships before steam wrote of being stopped in the middle of the ocean because the sea was so dense with fish.

Today, visitors to Maine feel lucky and pleased if they see a whale. Ships used to see whales as far as the eye could see all day long.

I recorded a couple video essays of the book for a bit more:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLAvBiols2Y

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4NZdciDozI

> Proponents of efforts to make roads safer for cyclists have always gotten pushback from people who think that cycling is a niche hobby of rich lycra-clad yuppies.

Here in New York City, people delivering food, packages, etc are one of the major biking contingents, I guess invisible to the Hacker News community.

Sadly, here in New York City, kids can't ride bikes around for fun except once or twice a year when they close Park Avenue or if you get an open street. I don't see why kids riding casually shouldn't be a major interest of the population. If the streets aren't safe for them, maybe change the streets and disallow cars instead of depriving kids of that space.

The article applies to farmers markets too. By any measure, farmers markets are better than supermarkets and takeout. Cheaper, faster, more convenient (if there's one nearby), more friendly, cleaner, healthier, but talk about their benefits and prepare to be called privileged and lectured on single moms in food deserts who only have time for McDonald's.

Do they think people at farmers markets want to wall them off and keep poor people away? A moment's thought and they'd realize everyone involved is trying to fill in food deserts, reduce big agriculture subsidies, that McDonald's is causing poverty in time and money, but their defensiveness and I'm-so-smart-ness blinds them.

I came here to write about Tom's book. I consider it Mackay's successor and called it The Science Book of the Decade in my review of it. He wrote it for non-science undergraduates.

Here's the review: https://joshuaspodek.com/the-science-book-of-the-decade-ener...