265: I was wrong

Here are the notes I read from for this episode:

Ways I was wrong

I usually start my story about acting more sustainably with my personal challenge to buy no packaged food for a week. In my second TEDx talk I describe how that challenge emerged from stopping eating meat, then hydrogenated oil, corn syrup, and foods where fiber had been removed, which was my proxy for overly processed food.

I talk about my love for the beauty of nature, which I describe when people ask me what I ask guests, "What I think about when I think about the environment."

But I hadn't shared some longstanding thoughts that didn't fit the narrative.

Not that I hid them, I had just grown out of them.

I rewatched a movie called The Doctor, starring William Hurt, about a doctor who remained so aloof from his patients that, however brilliant, charming, and funny, his bedside manner made being his patient miserable

The movie recounts how his sickness leads to seeing the lack of caring and vulnerability in the hospital system

As my tears streamed down my face watching the movie, I saw vulnerabilities I protected.

• Efficiency, just living in cities
• I thought technology would arise that would solve our environmental problems
• For example, fusion seemed an obvious solution.
• Young enough widening or building more roads seemed a solution to traffic jams, at least while I sat in them.
• As I learned what city planners learned, I discovered that roads often create congestion, after a brief period of relieving traffic.
• Carbon sequestration
• Birth rate reduction and China only example
• That I wouldn't like unpackaged food or not flying
• One person couldn't make a difference
• People wouldn't like it

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