A week or so ago, I reminded everyone that we’d be snapping off the main circuit breaker in the apartment and plunging ourselves into nighttime darkness. I asked for people to send in hints about how they handled chores with no electricity. A woman named Allie emailed me about how she did her laundry while working at a boarding […]
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Deeper sickness, better cure
“Environmentalists see the asphalting of the country as a sin against the world of nature, but we should also see in it a kind of damage that has been done to humans, for what precedes environmental degradation is the debasement of the human world. I would go so far as to say that there is no solution for environmental […]
My food mentor’s book is out!
You know I won’t be buying it—no purchases of anything new allowed for the No Impact family—but that doesn’t mean you can’t. As for me, I can borrow it from the library. Or persuade my friends who still buy things to get it. Or go to the book store with Michelle and hang out in the food section and […]
A product even No Impact Man would love to buy
If you’re a recent transplant to Manhattan, or if you’ve never been here at all, you may not realize that on the top of nearly every building stands what looks like a huge wooden rocket. On top of buildings of steel and glass, these wooden monoliths seem like gigantic anachronisms. It’s hard to believe that in 2007, these mega-kegs […]
How much planetary damage would you allow?
Sara Gottlieb, who blogs at Visualize Whirled Peas, raised the perennial eco-question in a recent post: what is the balance to be maintained between preserving our “way of life” and our efforts to keep the planet healthy? How healthy do we want the planet to be and what are we willing to sacrifice for it? This question […]
Bike ride!
When we first started the No Impact experiment, Michelle made it clear that, if I thought she would ride a bike in Manhattan—or even worse—let Isabella ride on the back of one, I was cracked. Then we went by train to my hometown in Massachusetts for Christmas—a concession we made to plans arranged long before the project began—rented bikes […]
On not getting too down about the world
Someone emailed me the other day and asked me something along the lines of, “how do you keep going forward without getting too depressed about the world and everything that is going on in it?” First let me say, I don’t think that my “going forward” is so particularly commendable. There are lots of people who have been […]
When the lights go out…Gulp!
As you probably know by now, the No Impact experiment works by our making our life changes in stages. So far we’ve worked through the self-propelled transportation, no trash, local and seasonal food, and sustainable purchasing stages. I’m hoping to begin the no electricity phase in about three weeks (sustainable water use comes after that). The bad news is, […]