I get depressed about the state of the world, no doubt. That some people don’t have water and some people don’t have food and the Antarctic ice shelf is about to break off (thanks, Dad, for the link). Plus, my kind readers email me just about every piece of bad news the internet can muster […]
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I agree with George W. Bush
I can’t help it. Once in a while you have to say or write something just because you know it’s going to upset your parents. To wit, the headline of this post. Hi Mom! Hi Dad! But credit where credit is due, and I try to discuss policy not politics, and besides, kudos to George […]
Conspicuous UNconsumption
If you’ve been following the story of the No Impact project at all, you’ll know that my little family did not start out as Birkenstock-wearing, reusable-bag-toting environmentalists. In fact, Michelle and I made a habit of crying for the polar bears while blasting the air conditioners. I, in particular, was a liberal shlub who had […]
Lady Liberty ditches her automobile boyfriend
The other week, I had lunch with Transportation Alternatives (TA) Executive Director Paul Steely White and I told him about my recent blog posts discussing how both the planet and the people could be happier if we built villages instead of suburbs and public transportation networks instead of highways. I mentioned that there had been […]
How FDR got us to carpool
Apropos of our recent conversations about individual versus regulatory and societal action here on the No Impact Man blog: Would this kind of persuasion, updated to reflect the times, work today? Thanks to Katherine for sending an image of this poster to me.
Like falling off a log
I hadn’t heard this before, but Story of Stuff’s Annie Leonard, who I had dinner with the other night, told me that Paul Hawken said that living sustainably should be as easy as falling off a log. In other words, it should be the easiest, normalist, most natural thing to do. But it’s not. This […]
Sustainability and the meaning of life
Cartoon by Eric Lewis courtesy of Cartoon Bank .
An end to the musical chairs
Yesterday I posted an interview with Van Jones, who reminds us that the way things are for the poor in America makes environmentalism their last concern. Then, Anne, from Not So Big Blog, left behind a comment suggesting that the way things are for the middle class in America isn’t so great either. Compared to […]