I was talking to a friend who said that the problem for the general public with environmental living is that it is so complicated. How do you know what stores to go to? How do you know what products are okay for the environment? How do cut through the green spin machine that is roaring […]
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Greening the planet by making green profits and creating green jobs
One of the arguments against capping our greenhouse gas emissions is the effect it will have on the economy. Renewable resources cost more, hit the bottom line, mean less profit, and lower standards of living, the wrongheaded argument goes. Then there are the businesspeople who see the incredible opportunities in our crisis. It’s simply a […]
Happiness versus consumption
This graph (which will get bigger if you click on it) comes courtesy of the scientist in me (believe it or not, I have a PhD in engineering). The point is to show one of the things I learned from being No Impact Man–the relationship between quality of life and the consumption of our planetary […]
Forgive me if I sound too pious
I have a friend, a Zen teacher, who lost his daughter a decade or so ago. Years passed, and he asked his own teacher, “I have been meditating for many years, but underneath, I still feel an abiding sadness. Am I doing something wrong?” His teacher told him, “What you feel is Universal Sadness.” When […]
The curve i drew for steve and the things that help me
Why I won’t sleep tonight
I’m not one for delivering bad news here on the blog. I think it’s counterproductive. But I’m also not one for pretending to be happy when I’m not. And tonight, I’m not. It’s American behavior at the UN conference on climate change that’s getting me down. It looks like fairly certain that the governments around […]
Stop the climate wrecking at Bali
You probably know that the world’s governments have gathered in Bali for a UN conference to begin negotiating a global greenhouse gas emissions treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. You may also know that the United States, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol. […]
The garbage game
Here’s a little fun: “What did you throw in a trash can today? You probably did not give it much thought. But this week New Yorkers threw away 64,000 tons of garbage. That comes out to almost 7 billion pounds of garbage every year. Whisking off the detritus of our daily lives costs the city more than […]