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This Sustainable Life
293: Alan Weisman: My Greatest Source of Environmental Hope
Alan Weisman's book Countdown changed my strategy to the environment. It ranks among the top most influential works I've read, watched, or come across, up there with Limits to Growth.
Why? Because when you look at environmental issues enough, and it shouldn't take too long these days, population always rises to the top as one of the top issues. Many people today hear about projections that the population will level off around 10 billion. Actually, the ones I see project that the population will keep growing exponentially then, just slower than now.
If you only look at one issue---only climate, only deforestation, or only extinctions---they seem possibly solvable, but they're all linked. Solving several at once---say meeting power needs while the economy falls apart and food becomes scarce---looks impossible.
Also, since nothing deliberate limits population growth, we're lucky if it levels off. We aren't choosing where to level it off and 10 billion looks three to five times what the Earth can sustain. Cultural changes could promote more growth. Many populations are promoting maximum growth today---very powerful religions and autocratic rulers for example.
I don't want to rely on luck for our species' survival. Besides, my research into what Earth can sustain says that we're over the limit. If we're heading toward a cliff, simply maintaining our speed and not accelerating doesn't stop us. We have to decelerate.
Despite the convergence of all these issues, for years I held back from talking about population. People don't like others meddling in their personal lives. I don't want the government in my bedroom. People overwhelmingly associate population talk with China's one child policy, eugenics, and Nazis. I did too. I didn't see how I could improve a situation by suggesting to avoid misery later through misery now.
Still, I knew some cultures---island nations that lived centuries or longer, for example, or the bushmen in southern Africa whose archeological record went back hundreds of thousands of years---kept their populations level, so they must have developed some mechanism.
In some past episode of this podcast, with Jared Angaza, for example, I pondered aloud how to find out how they did it, though it may have come up when I was a guest on his podcast. I could only wonder what worked but couldn't promote what I didn't know.
Countdown changed all that. Alan found and reported on numerous examples in today's world of cultures lowering their birth rates without coercion, without top-down government authority, voluntarily, desired by all participants, leading to abundance, prosperity, peace, and stability, the opposite of where overpopulation takes us.
Countdown tells stories of 21 places, some promoting growth and results aren't pretty and some where they've lowered birth rates and they're remarkably pleasant, even prosperous and stable. He talks about the top ones in this episode.
We have tough times ahead of us. One change simplifies everything---a smaller population achieved voluntarily, peacefully, joyfully. Alan has researched firsthand more than almost anyone. He has more than enough reason to despair if he wanted to. If he's not, I conclude that everything he's found nets out to say we can do this.
Family planning, education, and contraception seem technologies and practices that can work more than carbon sequestration, solar planes, and everything else. They're cheap, they're available, they make sex more fun, they've overcome cultural resistance outside the gates of the Vatican!
Read his books and Limits to Growth.
I'll do my best to bring him back.
Past episodes I based on Alan's books
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860. 860: Christopher Ryan, part 1: Civilized to Death
01:34:27||Ep. 860The predominant responses to the idea of polluting and depleting less include fears of reverting to the Stone Age, losing civilization, being invaded by aggressive opponents, dying at 30, dying from small cuts, and reverting to a past viewed as worse than today.My upcoming book describes why we feel those fears and why what we fear losing is exactly what we can expect to get more of. A key part of that pattern is that all those fears are false, based on misunderstanding humanity's past.Christopher Ryan's latest book, Civilized to Death, is the clearest, most comprehensive single work describing the past accurately. I spent years researching, learning from countless sources. The results were conclusive, but difficult to communicate. What could I say, "Read these dozens of academic papers and books and watch all these documentaries"?Chris researched more and compiled it more clearly, concisely, and readably than I could have dreamed to. Now I can say, "Read Civilized to Death."I mean it: Read Civilized to Death.Our conversation covers the highlights. It will help you see why you believe legitimizing myths fear changes that when you do them you will only wish you had done them earlier. Things about yourself, humanity, culture, and life will make sense that never did before.Chris's home pageHis books, including Civilized to Death
859. 859: Jack El-Hai: The Nazi, the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg, and Why to Find Humanity in Those We Call Monsters
55:04||Ep. 859How do you make sense of an entire society or nation violating its values? Consider Germany in the 1930s, in which a whole nation seemed to embrace Nazism.It's tempting to say they're all monsters, but how could over 50 million people change in a few years? Not genetics. They must have been no more or less human in 1940 as 1920.It's tempting to say that monsters took over and changed them. Many people thought so. At the end of World War II, a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, was sent to evaluate the highest level Nazis who had been captured and were to be tried in the Nuremberg trials. He believed that these leaders must have differed from most people. He wanted to find that difference in order to help prevent people with whatever traits he found from repeating what they did. He was deeply troubled to find no meaningful difference between them and normal results on his tests.Jack El-Hai told Kelley's story in his book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, including interacting directly with Herman Göring, at one point the second highest ranking Nazi. In our conversation, Jack tells the highlights of his book. I discuss the relevance to polluting and depleting today, where everyone is contributing, violating our own values, but contributing to much more suffering and death than even the Holocaust.We also talk about the movie Nuremberg based on the book, including its stars, Russell Crowe and Rami Malek.Jack's home pageHis book page
858. 858: Beth Bailey, the great-grandmother influencer leading the cleaning of Mérida, Mexico
01:00:57||Ep. 858As a great-grandmother, Beth probably wouldn't describe herself as an influencer, but what else do you call it when videos of her go viral and prompt people to follow her?Longtime podcast listeners may remember episode 754: (Aunt) Trish Ellis and (Niece) Evelyn Wallace, part 1: Not Even Cancer Holds Her Back. We mentioned Beth, Evelyn’s mom and Trish’s sister. All three of them took the workshop. Beth and Evelyn also took my leadership and initiative courses that I offered to workshop alumni.Beth's initiative project was to pick up litter daily, but not just pick it up. She was inspired by an initiative she'd seen to restore pride in a community. For example, I pick up litter, but I just do it to clean where I walk. Her goal was bigger: to restore and inspire pride in where she lives, Mérida, Mexico. She planned things like a sign to invite favorable attention, what to wear, when to go out, how to talk to people.She's been picking up litter since. Then last month, at an alumni online lunch, she shared that someone secretly recorded her, posted the video, and by then the video had been seen over 1 million times. Plus, attention was leading to people joining her movement, opportunity to work with government, and more. I posted about it on my blog: Secret video of Beth picking up litter goes viral in Mexico.I invited her to share here. Listen for what happens when you persist.Beth's community page: Yo ❤ Mérida limpia. ¿Y tú?My post on her, linking to her videos and some media coverage: Secret video of Beth picking up litter goes viral in Mexico
857. 857: Kim Stanley Robinson: Science fiction writing and leadership
51:23||Ep. 857I met Stan in person at an event in Brooklyn. I had read Ministry for the Future a few years ago. He pointed out something I hadn't noticed since most people identify him as a science fiction writer. Ministry for the Future isn't exactly science fiction. He projects into the future, but he only includes plausible things---no flying cars or time travel.This practice invigorated my interest in his work. I also asked him how he handled water in New York 2140, since I knew it would have to be heavily polluted from sea level rise would flood landfills and cause their contents to disperse throughout the oceans. I enjoyed talking to him and invited him here.He has another identify besides as an author. He knows a lot about our environmental situation and attempts to address it. He's not an activist but more than an educator.I couldn't wait to engage with him on both identities. For him as an author, I found more to learn from him than I expected relevant to leadership, which I consider a performance art. As a writer, he has to create visions that readers accept and embrace. He has to express himself candidly but in a language the reader likes and feels engaged to continue. These points are relevant to leadership I asked him a bunch about the art and craft of writing from the perspective of someone wanting to improve his leadership.Naturally, we also talked about creativity regarding solutions.
856. 856: David Jenkins, President of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship
01:03:05||Ep. 856Most environmentalists that I know of consider themselves progressive or liberal. They propose solutions that increase regulation and grow government, often in the style of the New Deal. Their role models are generally also progressive and liberal. They present conservatives as opponents, even enemies, sometimes evil. They consider them interested in themselves and profit, not caring who suffers for it.Over and over, they say about conservatives, "They don't care." Meanwhile, they pollute as much as anyone. They fund future extraction, companies that extract and pollute, their politicians, and lobbyists promoting more.I don't think they actually talk to conservatives. They project their preconceptions onto them and treat them as straw men.David Jenkins helps lead a conservative group that promotes stewardship. I suspect many environmentalists would consider the combination impossible, wondering if it's a front group.What do you expect? Could conservative values promote decreasing pollution, depletion, plunder, and misappropriating nature?Listen and find out.Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship's web page
855. 855: Peter DeCarlo PhD: Shocking Cancer Alley research from the scientist who did it
01:05:37||Ep. 855That this country has a region called Cancer Alley is beyond tragic. We know we're causing it, not just the companies operating the polluting refineries and other industrial plants. All of us who buy their products are funding them.I wondered if it was fair to call the region Cancer Alley. Is the evidence clear enough, even if not for a court to award damages?Peter DeCarlo is a researcher at Johns Hopkins who did original research and answered definitively: Yes. In our conversation, he described what motivated him to this research, the research, interacting with residents of Cancer Alley, how it affects him, physically and emotionally, and why he keeps going. It turns out his motivation started long before the research.The conversation returns at the end to some parts of his life at the beginning. I hope it motivates some to act out of the potential for life fulfillment.Peter's faculty page at Johns HopkinsThe video of Peter produced by podcast guest Maya Lilly: Justice for Saint James
854. 854: John Perkins, part 2: New Book Preview: The Art of the Steal (and restoring American ideals)
44:06||Ep. 854John returns to describe his upcoming book The Art of the Steal: Trump and the Economic Hit Man Presidency, described as his best book of the Economic Hit Man series. I'm honored that he came to this podcast first.Longtime listeners and readers know how much of an impression Confessions of an Economic Hit Man made on me. Regular blog readers know from my descriptions of my upcoming book how much imperialism factors into it. John's book couldn't have come at a better time.Listen to this whole conversation. He starts by describing the new book, then puts it in context of how what he wrote about decades ago is happening more than ever, and by the US government on its own citizens. I think you'll feel as I do that I'd rather it weren't happening but since it is, I'd rather know than not know.I say to listen to the whole episode, especially if you're listening around the date I publish (July 3, 2026) because none of what he says or writes is complaining. He shares how everything he says and writes is to restore American ideals like liberty, freedom, equality, democracy, and national security. He states it better than I can.John's home pageHis page on his new book The Art of the Steal: Trump and the Economic Hit Man PresidencyHis blog
853. 853: Kate Williams: CEO, 1% for the Planet
01:20:54||Ep. 853I'd seen the "1% for the Planet" logo many times and figured it was an organization that helped, but I didn't think of how. The businessman in me wondered, shouldn't companies just lower prices 1% and let people donate what they want? Does one percent make much difference?Kate was passing through New York so we got to meet in person. In this recording, she answers these questions and more. She describes the organization more comprehensively, but briefly, 1% for the Planet organizes other organizations, some to donate, others to receive, and vets them.What interested me most was their long-term goal, which is cultural change, which fits with mine.Kate didn't found the organization, but as CEO has scaled the network to 110 countries and 65 industries, driving close to $1 billion in certified giving. She also shares her personal background that motivates her, which also interested me, since from the start of the conversation, her leadership experience and style emerge. Anyone who knows me knows I consider effective leadership one of the most important needs in reducing pollution and depletion.Kate's home page1% for the Planet
852. 852: Steven Pressfield, conversation 2: His new book, The Arcadian (and A Man at Arms)
58:17||Ep. 852It turns out Steven's readers split into two camps with little overlap. I figure most listeners belong to the War of Art camp. If you haven't read the book and want to live a better life, I recommend it, in the top few percent of recommendations. It's powerful, engaging, memorable, and short.The other camp reads his fiction books. His latest is The Arcadian, which stands alone but connects with his last book A Man at Arms. I read both and now belong to both camps, proudly. One goal of this conversation is to entice listeners to join both Pressfield camps too.This podcast is about leadership applied to sustainability, not just personal leadership and art. Just because I like his books doesn't mean his fiction is relevant to this podcast. I found one part delivered a powerful gut punch that I found relevant to our lives.Blog readers will have seen my post about that part after reading The Arcadian Wounded Warriors, by Steven Pressfield, and Ourselves. That part describes what happens to people when we are induced to violate our values. Steven and I talked about that section. He described it as the core of the book.The situation warriors face and must deal with is more concentrated than we do, but their ways of handling it are similar to how we do, despite our violations being more diffuse. We would help ourselves handle our lives by facing that we are violating our values, even if, like the warriors, society rewards us for it. Only by facing it can we resolve it. In our case, we can change our culture to stop corrupting us.We can learn a lot from Steven. Not many people sell millions of books. Many followers is a top sign of leadership.Steven's home pageHis booksHis weekly blogMy recent blog post about The Arcadian, about the section of the book we talked about it: Wounded Warriors, by Steven Pressfield, and Ourselves