People always ask what we still do from our no impact year, and one thing is that we got rid of both our air conditioners. There are seven or eight nights in the summer where it’s really hot in New York City, but we keep a tub of cold water ready to hop into and […]
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About the new No Impact Project
You may recall that we are looking for an associate director for the new No Impact Project (click here to read it). I had promised to offer some explanation about what the No Impact Project will be. PS The Fledgling Fund, mentioned at the end of the clip, is the generous founding funder of the […]
One barrier to change
I was talking to one student at Phillips Academy today. She said that she tries not to care. She said it hurts too much to worry about things that seem so much bigger than you–“like the whole planet.” So she tries not to care. How do we get people not to try not to care?
I’m so green I even recycle my blog posts!
I took the train up to Andover to give a talk at Phillips Academy and so won’t have time to write a new blog post tonight. But if you haven’t checked out the discussion by commenters on yesterday’s post about whether happiness is really the aim of life, you should (click here). What a great […]
Open Discussion: “You are here to be happy.” True or false?
Obviously I’ve been in the mood for introspection these last couple of days. And I think that introspection is important in the environmental realm, because we must prioritize the use of resources. We must decide what our limited resources are best used for. That requires introspection. Because to know what our resources should be used […]
Does life have meaning?
In Tolstoy’s A Confession (the autobiographical account of his crisis of meaning I wrote about the other day), he argues that, if what we seek to achieve does not endure after our death, then our life itself has no meaning. As Tolstoy’s reasoning goes, since everything he strived for in life–riches, fame, pleasure–would ultimately disappear […]
What is true progress?
Because of my stance on consumption, I get accused sometimes of being anti-progress. This is interesting to me, because I am very pro-progress. I want so much progress. It’s just that I’m not sure that the societally accepted definition of progress is correct. Heading in the same direction we’ve been heading for the past 100 […]
The difference between hell and heaven
My dentist Gary is one of my best friends, and I visited his office today. I joked with him, “Why do you have to make your living by tearing my mouth apart?” Actually, he’s great at his job, but that’s another story (email me if you’re looking for a great New York dentist). The point […]