Regular readers know I first called my podcast Leadership and the Environment because I saw our response to the environment lacking leadership. As a leadership coach, I'm in touch with many leadership coaches, including some of the most renowned who have been guests on the podcast. Leaders and leadership coaches could play the most important role addressing our environmental problems. Instead, nearly none act. Those who act to so ineffectively, hindered by not trying to act sustainably themselves, so not knowing what changing a lifestyle to sustainability takes or means. To leaders and leadership coaches,Our environmental problems are dominating the…

Part of why I act and try to lead is to develop more effective ways to communicate and motivate. People have developed tremendous skills to dance around sustainability issues. They'll ask for ideas of what they can do. Then they'll respond, "but systems have to change." Then when you talk systemic change, they ask, "But what do I do?". In practice, they dance around five or ten issues where their answers bounce around, dodging answers more than leading to action. "But individual actions don't make a difference . . ." One of the most common topics people dodge personal responsibility…

It's become fashionable, it seems, for old people to say their delight and confidence that the next generation will fix the problems we created. I see them trying to pass the buck to people who can't speak back. I've written before that they're just saying "no me, not now, someone else, some other time." Old people can vote, hold assets, be elected, drive, and so on. Young people can't. Waiting for them to acquire tools of power and use them while we don't will take too long. We can fix the problems we created. Not wait for them. If we…

First, I support people who choose to work through government to stop our degrading Earth's ability to sustain life. I believe they can achieve a lot. I want to get them votes. But I see other ways to lead that others aren't doing where I can affect more. When I concluded the most important missing action on sustainability was leadership about a decade ago, I considered running for office. We often call our elected officials leaders, though few lead by my definition. My role models who changed cultures, like Mandela, King, Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, Laozi, and their peers, started outside…

Isn't a refrigerator essential? Isn't life with them better? I thought so. I'll quote my mom from my podcast to illustrate where I came from: I grew up where it was easily ninety degrees every single day. In fact, where I worked, the store if it got ninety degrees outside we got to close the store and go home because it was that unsafe. To me, air conditioning was wonderful. And to my mom and my grandmother, not having to use ice box refrigerators was great. I really appreciate all of that today and I understand that we've gone overboard…

Environmentalists today like to try to enlist conservatives and republicans by pointing out how Richard Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency and other environmental initiatives. As summer begins, I propose citing him to enlist environmentalists to take personal responsibility---a necessity to lead others. Would you like to influence others? Air conditioning It's not yet summer. Have you turned on your air conditioner? I can hear them all over my neighborhood. How much do you plan to use the air conditioner this summer? Richard Nixon said How many of you can remember when it was very unusual to have a home…

Imagine yourself back in the 1950s and 60s during the civil rights movement. People traveled across the country to sit at lunch counters with people of different skin colors, walk for a year to avoid segregated buses, and so on. Most people didn't do anything. They must have talked about it since it made the news, but most people watched from the outside without acting. Not everyone can do anything. Different people value things differently. Many people did important unrelated things. But many people knew, had time and resources to act, but didn't. I wonder how it feels to look…

"But what I do doesn't matter" "Only governments and corporations can make a difference." These excuses are the top Addictions Speaking people use to lie to themselves to abdicate responsibility for acting on their environmental values. Well, note this timeline: 1955: Private citizens organize Montgomery Bus Boycott1956: Court rules segregated buses unconstitutional and bus company changes1964: Civil Rights Act of 1964 Does anybody think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would have happened without individual citizens acting well beyond just voting? Do you think India could have attained independence and then had a Great Salt March? I could have picked…

I posted the other day Bill Gates and environmental leadership on how he is undermining his own attempts at leadership in the environment that anyone would see as blatant if he acted similarly around the pandemic. We excuse his pollution and overconsuming because we want what he gets for them, like travel and mansions. A friend quoted a relevant passage from his book. I'll post my thoughts on reading the passage, then the passage. My thoughts on Gates's passage I see Martin Luther King paying others to go to jail in civil disobedience extra to offset his doing what he…

Did you see Bill Gates's TED talk on pandemics from 2015, years before Covid? He foretold what scientists had predicted for decades and we came to see unfold around us. From the pandemic's start, he spoke on the news on the importance of wearing a mask. Imagine if after speaking about masks, he held a party for hundreds of people in close quarters, none of them wearing a mask. From a numerical standpoint, one person's actions or even hundreds', even Bill Gates and his friends, hardly matter out of 7.8 billion. Only governments and corporations could change things at that…

Where Is the World Going, Mr. Stiglitz? I saw a dvd at the library called Where Is the World Going To, Mr. Stiglitz and recognized the name and face of, Joseph Stiglitz, honoree of the economics Nobel and professor at Columbia Business School, where I got my MBA and friends took his course so I felt connected. Libraries lend for free, so I borrowed it, not knowing what to expect. I loved it---amazingly, because it was over six hours of an economist just talking to the camera. I normally don't enjoy economics, but I loved how he presented things---simply, directly,…

"What really has to happen is governments and corporations have to change." People say it all the time. Do they think they're helping? Duh! Of course. We knew that already. Everyone knows that. That's the goal. When they change, we only have to implement---a big challenge, but swimming downstream, not upstream. It's as pointless as to say What really has to happen is we have to score more points than the other team. or . . . we have to create a better product and market it better than the competition. Thanks for stating the obvious, smartypants! They're implying and…

"Our environmental problems are so big, individual actions don't matter. Only governments and corporations can make a difference." I've come to see this view as backward. Governments and corporations are causing the problems. They are what we have to change. If we wait for them to act, we will lose. When you recognize that we have to motivate them to act, you realize they are the problem. I include universities too. I hope this message helps change the situation. Eventually government, corporations, and universities will become a part of the solution so I believe we as individuals have to work…

Eugene Bible of the Verdant Growth videocast and soon host of a This Sustainable Life podcast offshoot hosted me on sustainability leadership. (Stay tuned for his podcast launch). Speaking communicates differently than writing, so you'll hear me express things I can't hear, plus I cover many things I haven't covered here at all. It's interactive so not just me talking. I recommend checking it out. It's one conversation split into four parts. We cover environmental stewardship from several perspectives, beyond what any book or video I know of does. I hope more accessible since we don't just talk more science…

People said they looked forward to 2020 ending. They wanted to return to normalcy. They didn't like 2020 because they compared it to 2019. I compare 2020 to 2021 and beyond. I expect the trend will continue and we'll miss 2020's relative calm. Politically, I expect more unity and less strife, as I can't imagine Biden exacerbating division as Trump did. I see the pandemic as an environmental problem. People have said "when, not if" for decades. We know how pathogens mutate and jump to humans---encroaching on wildlife territory, environments like wet markets, and factory farming. Nearly none of our…

Did you know the phrase "Don't mess with Texas" arose from a campaign to stop litter? Neither did I. Check out these videos showing celebrities acting against litter, even picking it up. Now you can join us in picking up litter, even daily, as I've done for years, making it TV for it twice and counting. Note, however, that picking up litter only moves it around. It doesn't reduce the amount of waste. Not buying it in the first place reduces. Many waste producers like to suggest managing waste after manufacture can resolve our waste problems. Not even close. Only…

This graphic tempts you to think having fewer children is the best you can do, dwarfing not flying or going vegetarian, but I'll describe below how you can do a lot more. More than personal actions Everyone gets that one person's actions round to zero on a global scale. I agree. I act consistent with my values as a matter of integrity. Making a difference on a global scale comes from leading others. Leading people You can't reduce your number of children below how many you have now, but you can influence others to smaller families. Learning and practicing leadership…

Here is how what we call leadership in the area of sustainability would look in another area. Imagine you attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. One person stands up in front and says, “I've read all about what alcohol does to the liver. I'm an expert. Here's what you should do.” This person continues lecturing on the science of alcohol and the liver and what everyone should do. This person also has a bottle of gin in hand, regularly taking a swig saying, “Don't be distracted by what I do. What one person does doesn't matter. We have to get governments…