The environmental advocate should strive to be the social justice advocate’s identical twin. That is not to say that they should be the same entity, but that environmentalism should proceed as though they come from the same egg. Social justice and environmentalism are born together. They have the same DNA. At best, the environmentalist shares […]
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An argument for a zero impact culture
Alex Steffen, of WorldChanging, writes: “The idea of zero impact ought to be non-controversial. It is simple common sense that practices which are unsustainable cannot continue, and we know that it is true that propping up unsustainable practices with non-renewable resources has even more dramatic consequences. And we are currently growing rapidly less sustainable, and using more and more non-renewable […]
Greening my city makes me happier to live in it
Part of the No Impact project is to have a positive impact to offset the unavoidable negative impact of, well, being alive, and part of that has been to the work of environmental organizations. As a result of that, Wednesday night was a mega-proud night for me because I got invited to be a member […]
Little old me
A few weeks ago, at NYU, I was asked to give a short talk in response to a talk by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute (you may remember that Michael and I had an email debate here on the blog a few weeks ago). You can watch my little talk by […]
Demand better
I’ve been thinking about how to say this all night, and finally, I realized that I’d already said it close to the way I meant to (but I added the emphasis in bold tonight): I am not realistic. I never want to be realistic. God save us all from realism, especially if it means we have […]
Bottled water isn’t the answer
On Monday, the Associated Press released a report on the discovery of trace amounts of various types of pharmaceuticals in drinking water around the country. I got invited to discuss the subject on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show (go here if you’d like to listen). The conversation quickly turned to bottled water as a possible solution, […]
Forced to face the big questions
For the longest time, for me, it was easy to live by default. To go along living like everyone else. Not to question. But the reason I started the No Impact project was because the crisis in human safety, security and health as it relates to the grave problems of our planetary habitat forced me […]
What would Jesus drive?
As I’ve worked my way through the No Impact project, I’ve forged connections with “conservatives” and orthodox religious types in whose company a “secular liberal” like me might not normally be welcome. But what has interested me is that, when we drop the labels, we find we share so many values in common. I’ve written […]