Sustainable Living Audio Book – Learn From Looking – Chapter 4: Part 3

GREENandSAVE Staff

Posted on Saturday 25th July 2020
Sustainable Living Audio Book – Learn From Looking – Chapter 4: Part 3

Sustainable Living Audio Book – Learn From Looking – Chapter 4: Part 3

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The author of Learn from Looking, Charlie Szoradi, has given us authorization to share the written content and drawings from his book with our readers. This is one of many segments that focuses on the overall theme of sustainable design and overall sustainable living.

Book Topic: Sustainable Living

Learn from Looking is about critical thinking and reaching a sustainable future more cost-effectively than ever imagined. The book's subtitle "How Observation Inspires Innovation" speaks to the core aspect of the content, given that the author, Charlie Szoradi, is an architect and inventor who has traveled extensively around the world over multiple decades and built businesses that range from energy saving lighting to indoor agriculture systems. Mr. Szoradi shares insights on "green" clean-technology that are increasingly key for sustainability, profitable businesses, healthy living, and raising intellectually curious children in a pre and post Covid-19 world. We give Learn from Looking five out of five green stars! Note that the audio book comes with the E-book for only $15 together. Click here to Order the Audio Book on Sustainable Living

Sample content from Learn from Looking: 

 

Conservative Perspective

About four years after writing the ten pillars for Clean Tech for America, I saw an interview with conservative thought leader William J. Bennett. Over the early fall of 2015, he was promoting his new book, America the Strong: Conservative Ideas to Spark the Next GenerationMr. Bennett is the former secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan and director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H. W. Bush. He cofounded K12, a publicly traded online education company in 2000, and as of 2016, he hosts the syndicated radio program “Morning in America.” Mr. Bennett is a highly respected conservative and the author of twenty-four books, including the number-one New York Times best sellers The Book of Virtues and The Death of Outrage.

Mr. Bennett and his coauthor, Mr. John T. E. Cribb, write in America the Strong about the need to balance incentives for economic prosperity with environmental and energy consumption considerations. They describe that conservatives do not want to live on a polluted planet and that conservation and conservatismare offspring of the Latin root conservare, which is about preservation and ensuring safety. They also acknowledge that environmentalism has had positive impacts and certain laws are required to reduce negative environmental impact.

Mr. Bennett and Mr. Cribb are spot-on that certain laws are key to success. Unsensible laws have surprising negative impacts. Some examples of negative impacts were highly informative. In 2014, coauthors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner released their book Think Like a Freak, and it became another one of their New York Times best sellers. Mr. Levitt is the professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and Mr. Dubner is an award-winning author, journalist, and radio and TV personality. Their prior best-selling books, Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, have earned them popular and critical acclaim, as well as inspiring this author. Among the many data points and thought-provoking stories in Think Like a Freak, the book includes examples of environmental laws that backfired. In Mexico City, single-passenger car drivers had to leave their vehicles at home one day a week to help reduce pollution. Mr. Levitt and Mr. Dubner describe how the law did not work as intended to increase public transportation, because many people dodged the license-plate tracking process by purchasing a second car. The second cars were often lower-cost used cars with even worse emissions than their primary vehicles. 

In the drawings and insights on sustainable design in this book, I address urban traffic at several points. The overall theme is about providing better pedestrian access and public transit as a “carrot” incentive versus a regulatory “stick” penalty.

When it comes to human impact, in America the Strong, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Cribb describe that many conservatives think that human behavior is not necessarily creating a negative impact on the earth. Here is an example that may provide some perspective. If we put rising sea level and storm surge debates aside, we have reduced the world’s marine vertebrate fish population by an alarming 49 percent since the 1970s. This report from the World Wildlife Fund was analyzed by the Zoological Society of London. The local and commercial fish populations have been nearly cut in half due to habitat depletion and the increased global population, which has doubled since 1970. 

Human activity is outpacing and impacting natural wildlife reproduction. It is not statistically strange that twice the number of people would eat twice as many fish, create pollutants that increase ocean acidity levels, or deposit 250,000 metric tons of plastic in the ocean. I share this example because the planet is unemotional, and what we do as humans is more likely “bad” for us than it is “bad for the planet.” I like to eat fish as well as just about every other type of food. Fewer fish will increase food costs through the time-tested laws of supply and demand. In the part 3 “Commercial Impact” section of this book, I preview a recent innovation to produce fish intelligently through advanced aquaponics, lighting, and renewable energy technology. We can start solving big problems if we first accept that the problems exist. Big problems are often complicated, so we can start by identifying and solving the subset smaller problems first.

In the Freak books, Mr. Levitt and Mr. Dubner challenge preconceptions, and Think Like a Freakincludes key insights into why we should “Think Small.” They write about how many interrelated small challenges often make up the larger problems. Given the complexity of large-scale problems, they recommend focusing on solving the smaller ones first. As I have drafted and illustrated this book on sustainable design, I have focused on numerous small problems and small solutions while also taking a critical look at how those micro-moves can influence larger solutions.

 

Conclusion: Embracing clean technology can solve economic and environmental challenges. Conservatives and liberals may have more in common than appears on the political stage. Tackling small problems is a cost-effective strategy to solve for larger issues. We just need to shed some of the “green” bias to roll up our sleeves and find which programs and policies will have the most cost-effective impact.

 

 

 

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