I love the idea of embracing your weirdness—and I’ve basically lived it since my teen years. But I want to add three corollaries:
Present your weirdness in ways that foster, rather than cut off, communication. So, in my case, living in a socially conservative farm community, I’ve chosen not to wear skirts even though I find them very comfortable—because I want my neighbors to understand that while I’m different from them in many ways, we still inhabit the same neighborhood and have more in common than they might think. I made different, more outrageous, choices in other places I lived in. Marrying and having kids, recognizing that my decisions impact other people, was another encouragement to dial it back. But I still publicly label myself as a “marketing heretic,” still post unpopular views in public places, still invite people of all viewpoints to engage with me (as long as they do so civilly). And I can proudly point to many examples where my activism has made the world a better place, both within the business community and in the wider world.
Listen and engage when your weirdness starts to set up barriers. Let people express their discomfort. Strive to uncover their deeper feelings. Find points of agreement and build the discussion out from there.
Bring your weirdness to the table but BE at the table! Participate actively in your community. I spent 9 years on my town’s Long-Range Plan Implementation Committee and have attended almost every Town Meeting for more than 25 years. In the 17 years before that, I was actively involved in the government and social infrastructure of the small city where I was living, both through board service and community organizing and through electoral work. I believe that service de-demonized the way several members of our town Planning Board perceived me. I went from newcomer/troublemaker who had organized the movement that blocked a big, totally inappropriate mountainside housing development to a person whose input was valued and seen as vested in keeping the character of the town.
How do you bring your nonconformity into your work, how do you make it a strength, and how do you engage with people who might feel threatened by it?
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Of all the eamples of greenwashing I know, none is more insidious than the way the nuclear power industry pretends to be green. In reality, it’s super-dangerous, with at least a dozen serious issues that threaten our liberty,our property, and our very lives. Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomical, and is not a solution to the climate crisis. My first book was about this, and when I updated it after Fukushima for a Japanese publlisher, I saw that it was still unviable, and still a threat.
If you live in the US, the Senate and House will be going to conference committee to workout their different versions. And this is our chance to stop this horrible bill from becoming law. Below is the letter I’m sending to my Senators, which contains a lot of information about the issue. If you are moved to take action, please copy or modify it and send it it to your own Senators and Representive. You can reach them easily by clicking the Senators button at http://senate.gov and then selecting your state. You also have my permission to share it widely, including with groups you’re involved with and with the media. Don’t forget to change the blankline to the recipient’s name. I usedthe subject line, “Please STOP the Price-Anderson Act renewal–our lives depend on it”
Here it is (note that I have removed the fronts of web addresses because at least some Senators block a submission that has many hyperlinks):
Dear Senator ________:
As your constituent, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to REMOVE the giveaways to the nuclear industry from the reconciliation package. If we examine the package closely, we discover that:
1. It RENEWS the grossly inadequate and highly taxpayer-subsidized insurance “protection” of the Price-Anderson Act for 40 (House version) or 20 (Senate version) years, leaving the public almost completely unprotected from financial loss in the event of an accident. This is one of the worst bills ever signed into law, capping insurance payouts for nuclear accidents at absurdly low levels. Price-Anderson originally capped the federal share at just $500 million per accident plus another $60 million from the utilities, according to the 1969 book Perils fo the Peaceful Atom by Richard Curtis and Elizabeth Hogan, pp. 194-195. The private utility coverage has since expanded through secondary coverage, with nuclear utilities retroactively assessed to cover up to $16.097 billion per accident, according to a January 2024 report to Congress by the Congressional Research Service, crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821. By contrast, actual dollar losses from the single 2011 disaster at Fukushima are estimated at $20 trillion—more than 1000 times as much (see ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253929/#:~:text=The%20total%20cost%20of%20the,Bottom%20nuclear%20plant%20in%20Pennsylvania ). Property owners and taxpayers are expected to make up the difference. And this doesn’t even count non-dollar or indirect costs such as injury and death, loss of land for generations, forced relocations, loss of agricultural revenue, and more. According to this Newsweek report, 14,000 people were forced to relocate after the Chernobyl accident closed a 1040 square-mile area back in 1986 (38 years ago)—and scientists don’t expect that area to be safe again for at least 3000 years. See newsweek.com/chernobyl-aftermath-how-long-will-exclusion-zone-uninhabitable-1751834 2. It REMOVES much of the licensing oversight from new nuclear power plants. These are crucial protections for civilians. The nuclear power industry has had a long history of not factoring in things like earthquake faults when siting n-plants.
It is also important to note that well beyond the three catastrophic accidents (Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island) we all know about, there have been at least 133 potentially serious accidents just in the brief span since the birth of the industry in the 1950s. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country. We have been extremely lucky that only three wreaked significant damage.
Finally, the claim that nuclear is necessary as a tool to fight climate change is false on three counts:
• Clean, renewable energy can do the job better, more reliably, and MUCH faster (see sciencealert.com/here-s-why-nuclear-won-t-cut-it-if-we-want-to-drop-carbon-as-quickly-as-possible , sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629618300598 , and https://clamshellalliance.com/statements/statement/ ) • Many parts of the nuclear power cycle other than feeding radioactive materials through a reactor have a big carbon cost (see nrc.gov/docs/ML1014/ML101400441.pdf , especially Page 2) • When something goes wrong, as noted above, the detriments far outweigh any potential benefit.
It is long past time to end the subsidies for this dangerous, economically unworkable, and poorly performing technology and turn our attention to the real solutions such as solar, wind, and geothermal—and energy conservation/efficiency, which are the low-hanging fruit (see eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/efficiency-and-conservation.php ). I urge you to not only support true green energy but to convince your colleagues to block this terrible initiative.
If you have a socially or environmentally conscious business…
If you are an activist on any issue…
If you work in any way to better the lives of disempowered people—whether the disempowerment is social, cultural, medical, geographical, or any other cause…
Please read this next paragraph VERY carefully. It’s from today’s Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson (emphasis added):
How religion and authoritarianism have come together in modern America was on display Thursday, when right-wing activist Jack Posobiec opened this weekend’s conference of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington, D.C., with the words: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” He held up a cross necklace and continued: “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.”
This is a major Washington conference of influencers. Take it seriously! That is one of many ways fascism rears its ugly and dangerous head. Trump actually quoting Hitler, repeatedly, without attributing him is another. A series of Supreme Court decisions and new repressive state laws add more heads to this horrible Hydra.
The good news is they can’t do this without our help. Staying home on Election Day helps the wannabe fascists. And since most parts of the US don’t have ranked-choice voting yet, so does voting for a third-party candidate in the general election. Oh, and showing up helps our cause and hurts theirs. Show up to lobby your Members of Congress and your state and local elected officials. Show up in the streets to participate in protests against harmful policies or support demonstrations for those you favor. And show up to vote!
If, as I do, you disagree enough with Biden’s policies that you have a hard time voting for him, show that in the primary. Show up to vote and don’t vote for him. Either leave the president line blank or vote for an alternate candidate. My Primary is March 4 and I will either vote for Dean Phillips, who is slightly left of Biden, or write in Green Party candidate Cornell West.
But I recognize that Biden, barring some major development like a major health crisis, will be the nominee. And even though I live in a reliably Blue state, I recognize that his likely opponent will contest the results if they are anything less than an overwhelming victory for Biden.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
And speak out! Speak out for the socialists, the trade unionists, and the Jews. Speak out for Arabs and Muslims, for immigrants from anywhere, for people in the LGBTQ community, for those with disabilities, for those who Trump has threatened with retribution that includes rounding up and detaining opponents.
Speak out. For democracy. For decency. Speak out, ultimately, for yourself.
I finally got around to watching Jon Stewart’s return monologue. Yuck! I was a fan of Jon Stewart but this is ageist crap! Yes, Biden is old. So is Trump, as Stewart admits. While I have plenty of bones to pick with Biden (and I’ve been in the streets protesting some of his policies, especially around immigration and the Gaza war), we don’t have ranked choice voting in US presidential elections. And that means that absent some deep and unpredicted shift in the political landscape, either Biden or Trump will be elected in November.
There are many reasons to vote for Biden over Trump. While flawed (as we all are), he’s a basically decent person who has mostly used his time in office to better the lives of ordinary USArians and to improve the condition of the world. And despite a completely dysfunctional Congress, he has still managed to:
Hire or nominate very competent people who broaden the diversity and visibility of non-white, non-hetero people within our government (three among many examples Black/Asian/female Vice-President Kamala Harris, openly gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Black female US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson)
Emotionally less mature than my 16-month-old grandson (I happen to know a psychiatrist who told me back in 2016 that Trump would be easy to diagnose with a mental illness, but professional ethics standards meant only a doctor who was actually treating him could do that).
Biden is not an existential threat to democracy. Biden was handed a government in complete chaos that had burned bridges with many of its allies and built back a functional government that honors its promises. Biden is about the good of the country, while Trump appears to be mostly concerned with leveraging his position for profit and inflating his already overweight ego. And Biden’s record of accomplishment after three years in office far outstrips Trump’s four years.
So please tell me why the media is constantly dissing Biden because of his age and a perceived lack of mental acuity that by any reasonable standard is in better shape than Trump’s. How is it, for example, that the Washington Post (a liberal newspaper that prides itself on good journalism) actually ran a chart comparing how old Biden would be at the END of a second term with Trump’s age at the BEGINNING of a second term.
Finally, let’s look at five among thousands of models for aging with power:
Grandma Moses had a 25-year career as a painter, BEGINNING AT AGE 76
Pete Seeger was still writing and recording songs well into his 90s
Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa at age 76
My friends Frances Crowe and Arky Markham were both still activists on their 100th birthdays
Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn and sexologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer were working on the sexuality of old people into their 80s (disclosure: I was a VISTA organizer for the Gray Panthers in 1979-80 and met Maggie once when she was 75)
You are never too old—or too young—to make a difference. Jon Stewart should know better, and so should we. Work to get ranked-choice voting and other reforms such as those outlined at https://www.americanprogress.org/article/its-time-to-talk-about-electoral-reform/ (scroll down to the section entitled “A range of possible electoral reforms”).
Guest post from Bob Burg—may it inspire your success in 2024. I first discovered Bob through a newsletter he used to do called Winning Without Intimidation, some time in the 1990s–which was all about getting your desired outcome through kindness, compassion, and empathy. I still use many of those teachings.
Bob Burg, speaker and author on success through kindness and compassion
He published this in his current newsletter, Daily Impact, on December 29. I just love the frame that only one partner has to think of an interaction as a collaboration to achieve dramatic success, even if the other party sees an adversary. What a wonderful abundance frame—and so applicable to entrepreneurs! You can subscribe at Burg.com (scroll down to just above the footer). Used with Bob’s permission.
—Shel
Use This Concept, Which Is So Much More Productive Than Competition…
By Bob Burg
It ranks right up there with my all-time favorite quotes:
“I never saw the opposing pitcher as my adversary, but rather as my ‘partner’ in hitting home runs.” ~Sadaharu Oh (868 Home Runs)
This statement is perhaps the ultimate in collaboration.
And the Japanese professional baseball legend knows what he’s talking about. He remains the all-time leading home run hitter in the world…ever!
“But,” you might ask, “certainly the pitcher isn’t wanting to collaborate on this. The pitcher wants to strike the batter out, right?”
Indeed! Which leads to a very important truth…
Key Point: There are times when both parties don’t even need to be in on the collaboration in order for it to occur.
As long as at least one of the parties involved — whether we’re talking about an interpersonal conflict, a business negotiation, or a home run — has the proper attitude, they will approach the situation from a frame of collaboration, which is really nothing less than a frame of love.
And love conquers all.
You could even say that…it’s the ultimate home run.
Today’s Exercise: Recall a time when you witnessed collaboration, even though only one person *at first* seemed to be “in on it.” Based on the attitude of the first person, did the second person seem to naturally become more involved?
Now think about how *you* can set a frame of collaboration, even when the other person isn’t quite in on it…yet.
He has supported Israel’s strategically idiotic and morally bankrupt wildly overreactive response in Gaza, resulting in the deaths of some 20,000 people (mostly civilians and including thousands of innocent children)—and the homelessness of millions; the US even vetoed a ceasefire resolution at the UN
And yet, assuming he’s the candidate in November, he will get my vote. I admit he might not if the US had adopted ranked-choice voting. But until it does, a vote for any third-party candidate is a vote for the main opponent of your preferred candidate. More importantly, I believe that the bad things Biden has done have been part of his own effort—sometimes accurate and sometimes off-base—to leave the world better than he found it. He is, fundamentally, a good person, And despite never having a majority in both houses of Congress, he’s done quite a bit of good as president:
Replacing skepticism with science on topics ranging from global climate change to the safety of COVID vaccines
Restoring US leadership on the world stage after it was torn to shreds by his predecessor
Supporting labor, the middle class, the poor, and the disenfranchised—and doing his best to hold big corporations and the super-rich accountable for dong their part
Championing the right to vote—and the right to have that vote properly counted
Please make sure you’re registered to vote. That your friends know why you will vote for Biden. And that the records of these two men while in office leave no choice.
An airline lobbyist testified at a federal hearing in March that changing the policy would create “confusion and frustration” and that there have been “very few complaints” about the extra costs for bags. The same lobbying group told the Department of Transportation that the government had no data to “demonstrate substantial harm” to passengers.
To put this quote in context, click the link above and scroll to the paragraph beginning “Falling prices for travel and for the foods usually on a Thanksgiving table are news the White House is celebrating.” Continue reading through “The authors say that the new organization will provide a conservative voice for democracy and that they hope to work with much more deeply established progressive voices.”
I can draw two opposing conclusions from this quote. Either…
This clueless lobbyist is completely oblivious to public opinion and has never been introduced to the concept of evidence-based research, or
This is a highly skilled strategic lobbyist attempting to deflect public anger and potential government regulation by pretending this massive problem doesn’t exist.
I have a clear sense of which I believe is true—but I’m not committing to it publicly because it might get me sued. You can draw your own inferences.
As it happened, I flew early Saturday morning from Boston to Minneapolis. And I observed that the airline officials were a bit panicky about getting all the carry-ons into the overhead bins. So much so that not only did we get offered a free upgrade to checked bag as we printed our boarding passes, they were making repeated announcements in the gate lobby and actually asking people as they boarded if they wanted one more chance to check their carry-on at no charge. And we were quite willing to take them up on it, sacrificing 15 minutes after the flight to avoid wheeling our bags all through the airport and lifting them above our heads to get them in and out of the overhead compartments.
I have seen this offer made repeatedly when I fly airlines that charge for stored baggage. What I draw from this is that plenty of people are angry about hidden charges and unwilling to pay the fees, so there are far more carry-on bags competing for space than in the days before baggage fees (especially since experienced travelers know that there will often be a free upgrade if the plane is crowded—and if it’s not crowded, there’s no problem using the overhead bin). Rather than expressing anger by not flying, customers simply boycott paid checked baggage—or, if their itinerary matches the traveler’s need, choose to fly airlines like Southwest and JetBlue that don’t charge for a checked bag or two. Millions of travelers are voting with their feet (or maybe their shoulder muscles).
My personal preference is to fly those carriers, but my higher priority is nonstop flights at reasonable times, so I sometimes fly the carriers that charge—and simply pack everything into my carry-on and leave home any items on the banned list. I once flew a no-frills airline that charged for everything they could to sit in its rock-hard, uncomfortable seats. As far as I’m concerned, a plane ticket should include such basics as getting a pre-assigned seat (except if nobody has one, as on Southwest). Flying that no-frills carrier felt like renting a car with no seat cushion and being charged extra for the steering wheel. I never flew them or any similar carrier again.
And years ago, in my own consulting and writing business, I switched from breaking out certain pieces that almost everyone wanted to including them.
As an example, I used to charge for keeping an electronic copy of certain client projects on my hard drive. Now, I email their documents to them AND maintain a copy on my system. And if a client loses the file, I don’t charge to resend it.
How do YOU feel about hidden charges? Please leave a note in the comments about whether you prefer to know the full price for what you need or whether you prefer different pieces added on separately.
PS: The O in the headline is not a typo. It’s a different word than “Oh” and is often used in formal or ancient texts (including the Bible and the Qu’ran) to draw the attention of the person being addressed.
Today, I spent two hours with my heartstrings tugged at a concert of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus—where Palestinian teens and 20-somethings from East Jerusalem sing—and compose—together with their Israeli Jewish counterparts from West Jerusalem. In June 2014 (a time of relative peace), I attended an equally moving concert in the Galilee (northern Israel) by Diwan Saz, a modern combo whose performers that night included a 10-year-old Bedouin boy (with a gorgeous voice) and a Chassidic rabbi, among others.
Those hopeful events seem far away an out of reach as we mourn the tragic and avoidable loss of over 4000 lives on both sides this month.
We have to somehow prevent even greater losses of life—and to reset!
Ultraorthodox Jews protest in London for Palestinian rights. Photo by Alisdare Hickson from Woolwich, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Let’s start with some points I hope everyone can agree on:
Innocent people have been killed and hurt for decades, and nothing will bring them back
The violence has not worked, no matter who commits it
Both Arabs and Jews have claims on the land going back thousands of years
They also claim common ancestry with both honoring a heritage that started with Abraham. They eat very similar foods, speak languages with many cognates, and have both had to adapt to the harsh desert that surrounds them.
It is long past time to find a workable solution
From that very rudimentary framework, could we perhaps evolve to:
We all are carrying deep hurts. An eye for an eye doesn’t just leave everyone blind, because it will eventually leap from eyes to other things. So an eye for an eye, ultimately, leaves no one standing. Can we accept not only that the past is filled with violence, cruelty, and the spewing of hatred/dehumanization—but that all sides would benefit from moving past this?
Can we look to the world for other examples of long-standing hostility and violence transforming into something better—such as the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa and Sierra Leone and the peace process in Northern Ireland?
Can we finally break the cycles of fear, hatred, and grief that seem to lock everyone into ever-deeper and more destructive cycles of violence?
Can the barriers—both physical and psychological—between the two cultures be removed so that Israelis and Palestinians who are kept apart by laws and physical barricades learn to work, play, and live together; there already are several small projects that are a great start, such as:
Combatants for Peace, which presents touring programs featuring one person who fought in the Israeli army and another who was involved in the Palestinian resistance, now working together for peace despite some of them experiencing injuries, imprisonment, and all of them mourning the loss of friends and family members in the conflict
It takes great courage to organize for peace when the leaders of both communities feed their population an unending diet of hatred for the other side. In the Middle East and around the world, many people have been killed for trying to make peace.
I have visited Israel and Palestine twice and have family and friends (both Palestinian and Israeli) in both Israel and Palestine (in the West Bank). I’ve stayed in the homes and hotels of Palestinians, with a Chassidic family, in a Druze village, a Transcendental Meditation village, a kibbutz, and an Israeli settler community on the West Bank. I’ve met with a blogger in Ramallah and with leaders of several Israeli peace organizations. I’ve also participated in Middle East peace groups in the US going back to the early 1980s. The vast majority I’ve talked to over the years, no matter what their ethnic or religious heritage, just want peace. The governments are not giving it to them. Surely there are better ways to solve things than yet another war in a long and brutal series of wars!
Multicultural contingent at a climate march. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Once again, research proves it’s cheaper to do the right thing. An analysis by Bloomberg shows just how expensive the climate crisis is. “…The combined expenses from property damages, power outages, government spending and construction-surge inflation” come in around $7 trillion USD. And that doesn’t even include significant costs such as lost wages and higher insurance premiums.
Of course, that $7 trillion is helping some sectors. If you run, for instance, a flood-damage restoration company, you’re probably having a very good few years.
But for the rest of us, we have to add that into all the other costs of building an overly centralized economy relying on toxic, eco-destructive fossil and uranium power sources, massive inputs of unnatural chemicals, and massive waste. I just finished reading a book that talked about some of that waste. Did you know that the amount of waste to produce a semiconductor chip is 600 times the actual product weight? (The Sustainability Scorecard, p. 63)
This makes no sense and is totally unnecessary. In nature, there is no waste. I’ve been talking about biomimicry–engineering and design that borrows solutions from nature–for more than 20 years. This opens up many deeper, more holistic solutions that don’t just move the problem around or disguise it, but actually move us forward. It’s time to embrace not just our knowledge but our imagination, and move–as Transition town founder Rob Hopkins puts it in the book I’m reading now, “From What Is to What If.”
Drop me a note if you’d like to discuss how to put these principles to work in your own business. The first 15 minutes are on me, and that can make a very nice start.
NASA photo tracking 2011 Superstorm Sandy. Attribution: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Tracking_a_Superstorm_(8970258657).png
A friend posted her fears that the extreme weather we’ve pretty much all been experiencing is only going to get worse…that coastal cities (which includes most of the world’s great centers) are going to be hammered by storms that will make Hurricane Sandy—which wreaked havoc in NYC and elsewhere—feel like a gentle rain…wildfires that consume vast acreage, depleted aquifers that cannot regenerate and can no longer supply our farming needs…
I agree with her that the current path will lead to multiple calamities. But I remain optimistic that the rapidly closing window to fix it is still open for now; we can still reverse the destruction. We know how: innovation has reached astounding levels in the last 20 or 30 years, and we humans have developed and piloted hundreds of cool technologies and processes that accomplish multiple good outcomes with zero-to-minimal harm.
But we are 50 years late in making meaningful progress and we can’t be wasting time debating whether human-caused climate change is real. Nearly unanimously, scientists who are not funded by polluters agree that humans have accelerated climate change significantly. And even if the climate change is nothing more than the earth making course corrections, we still need to address/reverse/prevent the effects if human civilization is going to continue in anything like the way we know it.
With light editing for context and to mask the identities of others who posted in the thread, this is my response:
My Response to the Gloom-and-Doom Post
One thing we can all do—homeowners, tenants, farmers, business owners—is STOP SQUANDERING CLEAN WATER! We waste far more than we actually consume, and this has serious consequences as aquifers dry up. I just read this morning in a book called The Sustainabiity Scorecard that certain prescription drug manufacturing processes generate up to 7700x the product weight in waste, most of it water. I’ve said for more than 20 years that while our descendants might forgive us for squandering oil (which has substitutes), they will NOT forgive us for squandering water, which is essential to life.
Like most pieces of climate change, we’ve known how to fix the problems for decades—but we can’t find the political will. We should be living in a circular economy by now, where waste is transformed into input. We should be powering that economy with clean and renewable power sources including not only the common ones like solar and wind but more advanced, less well-known technologies like harnessing light and natural electrochemical reactions (see Gunter Pauli, The Blue Economy 3.0). We have known how to do this since at least 2001, and we’ve known we need to do it since at least 1970. This is our last chance to get it done before the scenarios [the original poster] is worried about become everyday reality—and lead to constant civil unrest, widespread famine, and various other calamities that dwarf anything we’ve experienced. Science fiction writers like John Brunner have been describing that awful world for generations, because they could see the logical consequences of hiding our heads in the sand and pretending everything can go on as it has.
BTW *I* am actually an optimist on this. I believe we can still fix it, but we damn well better hurry up and commit society to solving these interrelated problems just as we committed ourselves globally to de-fanging COVID (with amazing success in a very short time)—but the longer we wait, the harder the task. The window is closing while we squander the 50-60 years we’ve had to get it done.
And thus I AGREE with [another commenter]’s paragraph about mitigation. Yes, engineers and designers can fix a lot of stuff—especially if they come in not attached to particular solutions but look holistically at how integrated solutions can not only address multiple problems at once (e.g., climate, waste disposal, water and food insufficiency, human comfort) but provide lots of jobs and community revitalization at the same time. But too many engineers have been trained in the existing, failing ways of thinking. We need to think circular and lifecycle impacts (including end-of-product-life disposal or repurposing), with closed loops, zero waste, net energy consumption, or pollution, etc.—and not linear thinking that only acknowledges processes production cost. Engineering as usually practiced has a tendency to externalize things like disposal costs onto the backs of us taxpayers and our progeny.
I also agree that we need to look at pollution, waste disposal, etc. in other industries including chemicals and battery manufacturing, and I don’t see electric cars or solar panels as panaceas.
But I totally disagree with most of his other points. The overwhelming scientific consensus, at least of scientists not funded by fossil companies or others who would have to drastically alter their processes (and temporarily lower their profitability) to fix the mess they helped create, is that human-caused climate change is real, and extremely dangerous.
[Original poster] brings up fusion, as she often does. Fusion sounds great in theory, but I’ve been hearing for my whole life that it’s just around the corner, and yet we never turn that corner. We can’t sit around waiting for fusion. The most optimistic predictions still put it pretty far down the pipe as a mainstream energy source. Yes, let’s keep the research going, but meanwhile, dig ourselves out of this deep hole of our own making.
I know [the original poster] is also a fan of small-scale nuclear fission, but I am not. [In her response to my comment, she corrected me and said she is not either.] If you want to know why, visit https://clamshellalliance.com/statements/statement/ (disclosure: I provided some minor help in writing this, particularly the section on accidents). I have some expertise here: my first of ten books was on why nuclear fission is a big mistake. It was written in the aftermath of Three Mile Island (as a revision/update of a much older book by my co-authors) and I updated it again—for a Japanese publisher—after Fukushima.
Several years ago, I brainstormed a list of 111 things the average person can do to reduce carbon and water footprints. It’s not comprehensive, it’s not necessarily the most important—it’s just one person’s brainstorm from around 2009. It retails for $9.95 but I’m giving it away. Just visit https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/#Freebies and click “Painless Green” (yes, you will need to provide your email and subscribe to my monthly newsletter—but you can unsub if you don’t like it).
