So a while back I met this artist/engineer/satellite designer and otherwise genius professor from New York University, and I instantly started arguing with her. Natalie Jeremijenko (who you can read about on Salon) was talking about technological approaches to climate change, and I just started on my rant about how we can’t wait for new […]
Activism and Social Change
Remember how I visited my Congressman? Your turn!
You may remember that, as the No Impact Man project proceeded, my definition of individual action on climate and the environment came to include not only lifestyle change but civic participation. I ultimately realized that there was a limit to how much less harm I could do alone, but that the good we could do […]
Social obstacles to change
A couple of days back, I posted a couple of pictures–one of a big TV and one of my little girl flying a kite. I posed a question. Which is more life fulfilling, the time spent working to pay for and watching the TV or the time spent in the less resource-intensive activity with my […]
Conservation versus innovation
There were seven stages to the No Impact project: no trash, no carbon-producing transportation, sustainable eating, no buying anything new, no fossil-fueled electricity, careful water use and giving back. The first six stages were all about conservation. About limiting. About doing less harm. There were incredibly discoveries to be made about the truth of where […]
Saving resources, improving lives, securing your corporation’s future
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote: “If the need for a product has to be created by the manufacturer, if aggressive marketing is required to convince people to buy the product, can the product, no matter how renewable its materials, really be called sustainable? Because isn’t using resources to make things we don’t even need the definition […]
The planet’s most important number stars in a two-minute cartoon
May Boeve of 350.org, the organization that is trying to let the entire planet’s population know that atmospheric carbon dioxide needs to be stabilized at no more than 350 parts per million (ppm), wrote to me today. She wrote: “The video is live… Feel free to send it out. The cat is out of the […]
Why your business needs to listen to me…
… because a new report out from the major PR firm Porter Novelli on the market influence of deep green folks says so. Well, not just that you should listen to me, but people like me. And like the readers and commenters on this blog. We’re the people who are willing to change our lives […]
Saving myself by saving the world
In my my last post, I suggested that readers, as a personal experiment, try getting actively involved in our democracy by calling their Congressional representative just to see how it felt. The results were amazing and I’m not talking numbers of people who made the call. What I’m talking about is how, pretty much to […]