It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to decide to go against the cultural flow in the way that one lives and even more if you decide to advertise the fact. But I’m thinking that, of the many ways to assess which environmental lifestyle measures make the biggest difference, one way is to decide which […]
Blog
America’s love affair with the car more of a forced marriage?
From a post by Harvey Wasserman on CommonDreams.org: In a 1922 memo that will live in infamy, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit aimed at dumping electrified mass transit in favor of gas-burning cars, trucks and buses. Just one American family in 10 then owned an automobile. Instead, we loved our 44,000 miles of passenger rail […]
The cultural barriers to environmental change
Here’s an alternative title for this post: nasty neighbors and mean people you meet in the street. But that would just be bile and silliness and bitterness and not addressing myself to the real obstacles to social and environmental change which are at play, which are important to understand. Because what’s happened is that a […]
Day off for me
See you Monday!
Whales versus submarines–which do you prefer?
Photo of melon-headed whales stranded off Kauai Does this tear the hear out of anybody’s chest but mine? [Environmental] groups say that sonar can be as loud as 2,000 jet engines, causing marine mammals to suffer lasting physical trauma, strandings and changes in breeding and migration patterns. They contend that courts are perfectly capable of […]
Open Discussion: Consumption–The elephant in the living room
Bringing this conversation back up to the top for those of you who didn’t yet have the chance to comment or read the comments of others. It’s worth wading in… None of the politicians seem to want to discuss the fact that consumption is at the root of our environmental problems. I’d love to hear […]
The beat of a quieter drummer
From a journal entry I wrote during the No Impact project: A couple of months ago, it started to pour with rain while Isabellarode my shoulders in a backpack-like contraption. There were, surprisingly, plenty of available taxis that day on 6th Avenue, but No Impact means no taxis, so I did my best in a wind-torn wrestling […]
Al Gore’s good news on climate change
In case you missed Al Gore’s OpEd in yesterday’s New York Times: … Here is the good news: the bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis. Economists across the spectrum — including Martin […]