Today I found myself thinking a lot about the values that are embodied in sustainability. I think the definition of “sustainable” varies from person to person, and to some people, believing in sustainability means being naive or unrealistically optimistic – that we humans could never get to a world that is just, because we’re just too corrupted and selfish. But […]
Today I filled out an online pledge to “use things until I can’t” for one year. It was a super easy pledge for me to make, because that’s pretty much what I do already. The implication was that you should use things for as long as you can before buying a new one, because you maximize the use out of […]
3/8/25 Note: This week I was hit by some kind of stomach bug which made it really hard for me to get to my computer to write a blog post about my third pillar of sustainability, connection. So, I decided to interrupt my scheduled blog post for one that I wrote a week ago that I planned on posting at […]
Humans Lived Sustainably for Most of Human History 300,000 years. That is how long humankind lived sustainably – never taking more resources than the planet could replenish or causing irreparable damage. It was an time when we had a deep connection to nature and a profound understanding of our dependence on it. Activities such as tree cutting were carried out […]
When hosting the This Sustainable Life: Solve For Nature podcast, I’m frequently helping others try to find personal challenges in sustainability. The goal is always to find a challenge that aligns with my guest’s values. This means focusing on my guest’s experiences in nature and what they love to feel in those environments, and then help guide them towards a […]
I’m now getting prepared for one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced: becoming father to a newborn baby boy…And trying to be as sustainable as possible. Raising a baby is hard enough, but trying to do it in a way that is sustainable in a world where everything you need for babies is made to be “convenient” (i.e. “disposable”), […]
As far as sustainable drinks go, nothing beats water. It’s healthy, plentiful, doesn’t have to come packaged in plastic or even bottles. It just gets piped straight into our homes! But drinking nothing but water can get kind of dull, and trying to find other things to drink that don’t come in plastic can be tough. I drink soy milk […]
Capitalism Regardless of whether you think capitalism is a good economic system or not, there are certainly reasons to dislike capitalism. In the most fundamental form, it is a system based on the desire to maximize profit and hence greed, even at the expense of others. It incentivizes pollution, it widens the gap between the rich and the poor, and […]
We’ve been sailing aboard the fossil fuel energy ship to advance humanity for about 150 years now; that is, we invented machines that burn fossil fuel to create power and electricity, and it has brought us from horse and buggy to cars, airplanes, houses with electricity, and computers in our pockets so we can watch videos of cats wherever we […]
Want to find more happiness? Add more challenge to your life. There’s something that I’ve come to learn from my sustainability journey: challenge always appears hard, but the result is always more happiness. When you challenge yourself to do something, it’s likely to be something you aspire to; a change to take you a step closer to who you want […]