It was meeting a family with a mother working through typhoid fever to serve me breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday for two weeks that finally made me realize that the way we North Americans lead our unsustainable lives can not go on without doing unforgivable damage to the world and its people.

I was in Nepal, resting after an exhausting three-week trek through the mountains – part of a long adventure I took to see the world as I had never known it mid-career.

Having spent the previous 12 years managing public relations programs for Fortune 500 technology companies like Intel, IBM and Microsoft, I had quit my job and was in the midst of a trip that included eight months motorcycling across India, two months trekking through the Himalayas and a month each in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia. What struck me most during the 15 months I lived out of a backpack was seeing – not just reading about or conceptualizing, but actually seeing – the devastation that is being caused by those of us who are living so far outside the boundaries of sustainability.

I didn’t go looking for this lesson.

I wasn’t searching out sweat shops or tracking down child labor markets. I was just travelling. But I kept seeing signs that things were out of whack – especially that the world’s increasingly unpredictable climate was really taking a toll.