408: Nancy Reagan and the Environment

Here are my notes I read from for this episode:

Just say no

drugs winning

Try telling smoker that cigarettes cause lung cancer and see if it stops.

Doesn't. It takes work but rewarding

Try giving more and more facts. They heard already.

Now imagine Nancy Reagan was a smoker or cocaine user while saying just say no

Imagine she smoked or did drugs while saying not to.

That's Al Gore, DiCaprio, everyone!

The problem isn't hypocrisy. I can't stand people making environment into moral issue. I'm not good for not polluting. You live by your values as much as I live by mine. If you don't value stewardship I'm not good by your values. If you value it as much as I do, then fix your problem.

The point is effectiveness. It doesn't work to lead Alcoholics Anonymous sessions with a fifth of gin half finished in your hand or weight watchers full of doof.

DiCaprio, flying your whole film crew around the world when you lack snow because of global warming, can you see how you're leading AA while drunk? With your notoriety, you should have a legacy to last millennia. Instead, you undermine it. Al Gore and all the rest, same thing.

Muhammad Ali as a conscientious objector. Now there's a man who acted with integrity, transcended sport, and become one of the greatest not athletes but humans of all time. We can learn from him. He knew standing tall meant getting on your knees, not flying first class and hiding it.

I know, most don't want to change the world. You just want your 401k to clear. I didn't ask for back-to-back 500-year hurricanes. You didn't ask the science to predict 2 billion climate refugees this century and more. But those are our times.

I didn't ask that we can do something about it, or decline, but we can.

More smokers telling us not to smoke won't help, nor more alcoholics telling us to stop drinking, or polluters telling us to stop polluting.

If you want to stand tall, you have to get on your knees. If you want to reach the mountain top, you have to climb, which means getting your knees dirty, meaning dropping the addiction to polluting.

Because only from the mountain top can you see the promised land, a world I've seen where stewardship of nature and other people trumps self-serving excuses that you have no choice or baseless accusations that someone who acts has more time, money, resources, or privilege than you. Look deep and you'll see you have all the means you need, as does any addict to overcome their habits.

I'm calling on you to lead yourself, not manage like Nancy Reagan. To lead, to find it within yourself, to dig deep, to see that how you lead others will be your greatest legacy.

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