I’ve said this a thousand times. There are incredible opportunities in our climate change/dependence on foreign oil/economic crisis. I hold this true on both the individual and cultural levels. In part, that’s because creativity loves constraints. If we are constrained by the need to use less fossil fuel, we have the chance to create an […]
Activism and Social Change
To escape city life, embrace it
Making cities excellent for living in, by the way, is a crucial step forward if we are to maintain the planetary habitat that people depend on for their health, happiness and security. Indeed, “smart growth” and compact living are central pillars in the energy policies of many environmental organizations. To make such policies successful, though, […]
New Yorkers, let’s please breathe easier
Apropos of today’s earlier post about the problems with cars, two easy steps you can take, if you’re interested, to help reduce car traffic and air pollution in New York City, and in making the City more livable. First, if you’re a New York State resident, click here to send a fax to State Assembly […]
What it’s like being me
Fun. Tiring. Exhilarating. Depressing. Interesting. Worrying. Way back when I started this whole No Impact thing, I felt so frustrated with the political process and so voiceless that the only thing I felt I could do about what I considered to be an international emergency was change the way I lived. I wanted to shout […]
Persuading the presidential candidates
Obama, Clinton and even McCain have decent proposals on climate change. The question is, what will it take to make climate change one of the defining issues of the next presidency? How can we convince both the presidential candidates and our congressional representatives to make this the most important item of the coming term? From […]
A balanced approach to climate change policy
OK. The title sounds over-grand, I’ll admit. But below you’ll find the last installment in my debate with Break Through author Michael Shellenberger, which I’ve just realized sums up my position on what we need as a culture. As you know, he has been arguing that reducing our cultural carbon footprint is not the way […]
Another installment in the environmental tiff
As you know if you read this blog, I’ve been involved in an email quasi-debate with Michael Shellenberger, co-author of Break Through: The Death of Environmentalism and the Politics of Possibility. Scan below to the non-italicized text, for the latest installment, Michael’s second email to me. You can read the first two installments here and […]
Pitting jobs against the environment
I’ve been reading Heather Rogers’ excellent book Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. In it, she points out that it has long been industry’s strategy to pit labor against what the industrialists say will be the negative economic consequences of reducing resource use to keep safe our planetary home. Rogers writes, “The common refrain–that […]