This Sustainable Life

Why do I act on sustainability when everyone around me says there's no point?

Faith.

This episode shares a few words about faith. If you lack it, I think you'll prefer living with it, especially about things you care about.

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Mark Tercek stands tall in environmental action. He was president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy for 11 years.

From Wikipedia: "Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members, and has protected more than 119,000,000 acres of land and thousands of miles of rivers worldwide. The largest environmental nonprofit by assets and revenue in the Americas, The Nature Conservancy ranks as one of the most trusted national organizations in Harris Interactive polls every year since 2005. Forbes magazine rated The Nature Conservancy's fundraising efficiency at 88 percent in its 2005 survey of the largest U.S. charities. The Conservancy received a three-star rating from Charity Navigator in 2016 (three-star in 2015)."

Before then he was a partner at Goldman Sachs. Curious how someone goes from investment banking with Hank Paulson to the Nature Conservancy? He describes that calling.

We also enjoy that we both are reaching new audiences---I share about Magamedia and he about talking about global warming in Alabama.

As much as the content he shared, I loved his emotion of, as I read it, enthusiasm and expectation of success, knowing the challenges and

the likelihood of catastrophe, whatever progress he makes.

• Green Is Good, The New Yorker profile of Mark

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I speculate why environmentalists can be so annoying sometimes and why you'd still like to become like them, just not the annoying part.

This episode will help you.

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The not-flying-by-choice community is fairly small. About 80 percent of humans can't fly because they can't, but among people who can but choose not to, we're limited. Still, I can't believe I only found out about Maja recently. A few minutes into her TEDx talk, I knew I had to bring her on.

She's avoided flying about double how long I have. I could hear from her every sentence that she's had to face all the addiction speaking of people claiming what I did before I challenged myself to go that first year without flying---"I can't avoid it," "the plane was going to fly

anyway," and all that.

You know the feeling of understanding and support you get when you talk with someone who has shared a rare experience, nearly universally misunderstood? More than personal understanding, she revealed a situation I dreamed of and intellectually knew would happen, but hadn't heard of.

For ten years people in Sweden said what everyone here says about not flying being impossible and all that addiction speaking. Then in the past few years it changed. The logic behind not flying didn't change. The pandemic hadn't hit. Their values didn't change. People talk about how Sweden's culture differs, but this change happened within Sweden, not between Sweden and some other place.

She said that when they crossed a threshold of people who considered not flying, people started changing, I believe because their neighbors did. She described how a couple editorials from Swedish celebrities choosing to avoid flying influenced a lot. It sounded like my strategy for this podcast. I'm trying to reach a critical mass of people, focusing on influential people, to where people know someone who has acted.

I can't tell you how much our conversation warmed my heart for feeling understood on something I value and for which I felt vulnerable and enthusiastic for seeing a light at the end of a tunnel I've been in now in my fifth year. I can't wait for when culture changes and people treat flying like a rare occasion.

I was there. I looked the other way to avoid facing my pollution. There's a way out. We can shake the addiction. The main way out is spending more time with family and your community, gaining more control over your career. It feels impossible. When people around us change, we change. When we change first and others follow, that's leadership. You can help lead us out of this mess.

• Maja's TEDx talk
• We Stay on the Ground
• Flight Free 2020
• Flight Free 2020 USA

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Here are my notes that I read from for this episode:

• Play Thomas N. Todd recording
• Repeat it, explaining from ad campaign
• Context was civil rights---that is equal rights for blacks as for whites in the US. I don't know context but I think pointing out that blacks who could fight best---educated, could speak to whites best---instead of helping other blacks would rather be white and not fight for equality
• I'm going to approach this concept from three directions applying it to sustainability and stewardship.
• I've spoken to a lot of people about sustainability and led many through my podcast's 4-step process and have seen them from many backgrounds, levels of awareness, levels of greenness, how much they say people should act.
• I'm going to share an observation. Personal and casual, not rigorous, so I don't know what biases might influence it, but seems to me that those presenting themselves as the most green and aware don't act. They decline to do the process. If they do it, they don't come up with an activity.
• They often claim they're doing so much already.
• They often talk about it moralistically, like they don't want to act like a paragon of virtue or they're already virtuous enough.
• I don't think they realize they're implying they don't want to do it, that it's hard, that you should against resistance, that they really want to do other things but they have to.
• I never got so moral about it. I mean, stewardship felt right for me, but I presume everybody does what they consider right all the time. I'm not trying to impose my values on others. I'm trying to help others live by theirs.
• My main point is that acting in stewardship turns out more fun, easy, rewarding, inexpensive, joyful, connecting to family and community, and so on than our mainstream society implies. Much more, but only experience seems to lead people to understand and live.
• All these people preaching virtue but not acting set the actual changing of behavior backward. They lead people to want not to act by their word and deed.
• Actually, there's another group that consistently doesn't act---leadership writers and gurus. Consider Beth Comstock, a leader. She went for avoiding plastic. She failed. Instead of trying to hide it, she shared her experience. She allowed her vulnerability to show. I learned from her. Several leadership people declined to do the exercise, told me how much they are already doing, or told me they're already doing the most they can. These are well-off Americans, among the most polluting in all of human history, claiming they're paragons of virtue.
• So I'll approach not acting despite thinking you're helping from another standpoint, MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail.
• "over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
• I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality."
• I feel like MLK faced similar struggles. Moderates who said they agreed with him actually slowed him down.
• Michael Moss talking about trying to lower screen time for his challenge put it clearly and concisely. When he noticed himself justifying using his phone more, he said "Maybe that was the addiction talking." We like comfort and convenience. We like doing what we're used to, what we know will give us reward when and how we expect. Changing that pattern risks losing the reward we expect, leading us to justify our urge, our craving to resist change.
• That's the addiction talking.
• Finally the ...