The way I see it, waiting for the senators and the CEOs to change the way we treat the world is taking too long. Polar bears are already drowning because the polar ice is melting. In fact, research shows it’s worse: they are so hungry, they are actually starting to eat each other. I can’t stand my so-called […]
Blog
The Year-Long Plan
You hear of one study saying that the energy used washing ceramic coffee cups is as damaging to the environment as the use of disposable plastic cups that won’t biodegrade for thousands of years. You hear of another that says destroying trees to make paper towels is no worse than using hot water and toxic detergent to wash cloth […]
The No Impact Philosophy
None of the practical questions about no impact living would be relevant if my wife Michelle, my daughter Isabella, our dog Frankie and I intended to approach the challenge by becoming ascetics. Until now, we have been your typical convenience-addicted, New York City take-out slaves. Asceticism is not a realistic way forward, not for my family and not for the […]
The Personal Impact of No Impact
My wife Michelle and I decided, before jumping in at the deep end of this year-long project, to try no impact living as an experiment for a week. No garbage. No greenhouse gasses. No toxins. No water pollution. No air pollution. No electricity. No produce shipped from distant lands. No impact. Or so we naively hoped. We started one […]
Want to Join In?
Here is the beginning of a list of green-living actions that you can take too. If you do join in to any aspect, please, please, please, let me know by posting a comment on the particular tip entry. Thanks! Help save the 100 million trees that end up as junk mail each year Stop plastic […]
About My Family and Me
Some background: I am 43 years old. Michelle is 39. Both of us are writers (you can read a little synopsis of my professional life here). We’ve been married four years, and the 2-year-old Isabella is our only child. Our four-year-old dog, Frankie, who was saved from a kill shelter in North Carolina when she was a tiny puppy, […]
There’s Going to Be a Book!
Okay, it’s true that we will profit from this experiment in a small way—much smaller than I’d like, believe me—because I’ve been contracted to write a book on our no impact experiences by the publishers Farrar, Straus, Giroux (and yeah, I’m totally psyched to be an FSG author). By profession I’m a writer and by temperament a megalomaniac (though […]
There’s Going to be a Movie!
My wife Michelle’s best high school friend—actually best friend, period—is this hot chick named Laura Gabbert (sorry, she already has a hot husband and two hot kids). Laura is an independent film maker whose credits include the documentary Sunset Story, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival and the Sundance […]