817: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 4: The Political Opportunities

This Sustainable Life

Sustainability has become a polarized partisan political issue, despite everyone wanting clean air, land, water, and food. In the US, neither the Democrats nor Republicans have a vision of or plan to sustainability. Both rely on purported solutions that exacerbate and accelerate our current results. Since we reach the general through the specific, I focus on US political opportunities. I believe those outside the US will see clearly how to apply the spirit of this video to their homes.

They're like two tired boxers who get stuck toward the end of a fight in an embrace, holding each other up, acting like they're punching but not. On the contrary, they've evolved into a mutually supportive dance, pandering to their bases, pointing at each other, not taking responsibility.

Yet there are political paths toward sustainability, which is why I work in sustainability leadership, as opposed to sustainability itself. We need leadership, not performances designed to look like leadership but are the opposite.

This video shows conservative, libertarian, and liberal approaches to sustainability from each tradition's principles, including limited government, free market approaches and anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial approaches. All are based in the opposite of coercion, convincing, cajoling, or manipulation.

They lead to what appears the only solution that works, an APPLE PIE amendment. While it will work, it's as hard for people as dependent on pollution and depletion as we are to envision as the Thirteenth Amendment must have looked to plantation owners. Yet the Thirteenth passed, replacing the most divisive issue in America's history with a source of unity.

Passing the APPLE PIE amendment will unify us. Future generations will wonder why we took so long.

To follow up:

• The videos of this course
• My book, Sustainability Simplified
• The Workshop and community

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