Just thought you might think this was cool: a gift registry where you can ask for non-material things. Administered by the Center for a New American Dream, AlternativeGiftRegistry.org functions like any other online gift registry except that you don’t have to encourage people to buy new stuff. Entries on sample registries at the site look […]
Activism and Social Change
How I made a clean energy difference in Washington
I used to wonder: What does it matter if I choose to use planetary resources more carefully? Can I really make a difference? I might also have asked: What does it matter if I choose to show up at a rally to advocate for clean energy and end to coal burning? I will be one […]
On not putting a kid with cancer in my gas tank
Today, I went to see director Joe Berlinger’s new documentary Crude, about the toxic mess left behind when Texaco withdrew from the Ecuadorian Amazon in the 1990s. I listened to a man talk about how his little boy died 24 hours after a Texaco oil spill tainted the water supply. I watched mothers crying about […]
Getting arrested in DC–or not
I wanted to put in one last plug for Monday, March 2nd’s Capital Climate Action, which begins at 1PM at Spirit Park of Justice (C St. SW and Capitol St SE, two blocks west of Capitol South Metro): Join thousands of people in a multi-generational act of civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant — a plant […]
Sustainable living on a community level
Streetfilms posted an interesting video today about Los Angeles Eco-Village, where people have come together to enjoy the benefits of sustainable and community living. “An ecovillage is a human scale neighborhood where people know their neighbors and care about them. People can live close to where they work and play and have access to other […]
Ostentatious individual action as a form of activism
Way back when I was first contemplating the possibility of the No Impact Man project, my main concern was with finding ways to bring attention to our environmental crises. I wanted everyone to change. As I thought of different ways to write about the crises, I began to worry that I would only be preaching […]
Local, ecologically-sound and economically stable
Yesterday, I posted about how investment in a network of local economies rather than one big central economy by the Obama Administration could provide not only a more sustainable paradigm but one that is more socially and economically stable. Think of the Internet. Instead of all our requests traveling through one gigantic central server, information […]
Beyond the rational?
We’ve had discussions about the the causal relationship between individual action and societal change here on the blog. Recently, we’ve had quite the debate about whether even collective action–in the form of protest–can cause changes in our society. But it occurs to me that the ripples of trying–whether it is in the individual sphere or […]