So, it’s been a year. Twelve months ago, 52 weeks ago, 365 days ago, my little family–one wife, one toddler, one dog, one husband–embarked on a project to live with as low as possible an environmental impact for one year, smack bang in the middle of what some people think of as the most polluting […]
Activism and Social Change
Should I change or should they?
That’s one of the questions lying behind the perceived antagonism between individual and political environmental action. But I don’t perceive the antagonism. Which is better? To me, that’s like asking–apples or oranges–which are better? Change is either top-down nor bottom-up but every which way including sideways. I know there is an argument that one person changing […]
It pays to be charitable
Around the time I started the project, I became friends with a professor at Syracuse University named Arthur Brooks. Arthur had just come out with the book Who Really Cares, his study of charitable giving that showed, among other things, that people who give to charity end up wealthier. In other words, to generalize, it is in our best […]
Yeah, there’s global warming but I need a job
Yesterday, I said that convincing American’s to do something about global warming is the biggest marketing problem in history. Beloved readers emailed that they thought the problem is convincing the public that global warming exists. I disagree. Look at the numbers below from an Environmental and Energy Study Institute factsheet: According to an April 7, […]
Healthier planet, healthier people
One thing I go on about on this blog is how in many ways we benefit rather than sacrifice when we change our lifestyles and public policies in order to treat the planet more kindly (see here and here, for example). Because very often, making the planet more healthy makes the people more healthy, too. […]
Changing our behavior
During World War II, posters like this persuaded us to ration, save food, conserve gas, turn our electric lights off at night and not talk about where our soldier relatives were deployed. With a little leadership, we changed our behavior for the sake of the common good. We changed the social norms. So my question […]
A race to save the planet
When my friend Elizabeth drops her son off at school in Connecticut, the moms gather in the courtyard to chat. There is a cool new feature to their SUVs which allows them to lock the doors while leaving the engine on. They stand around, a bunch of them, having a nice chat, while their motors […]
A letter from Bill McKibben
Dear Friend– There are occasional moments in history when we desperately need leadership, and this is one of them. If we’re going to deal with global warming, then we need to go beyond politicians who say the right words and find champions who will actually do the tough work to transform our energy economy. And you could play a […]