Well, what I mean is that there is a problem with happiness as a measure of whether limited planetary resources should be used. I talk about this a lot, right? I talk a lot about how if we only choose to use the resources that actually make people happy and cut out the things that […]
Consumerism and Materialism
Moving beyond boring, old sustainability
I’m excited to say that I’ve written the first of what will be a bi-weekly column at WorldChanging. Under a different title, my WorldChanging post begins: The task at hand — to create a new reality; a new way of living with fewer resources while providing a prosperous life for every member of our growing population — […]
The ridiculousness of relying on “market indicators” to run our planet
We’ve all heard talk of the efficiency of the free market. You know, as the idea goes, companies will only do what customer-citizens want them to do, because if they don’t, customers will sanction the companies by not buying from them. There are all sorts of reasons why this doesn’t work, of course, including the […]
If you eat fish, you eat plastic
On Tuesday night I had the great honor of introducing Markus Eriksen and Anna Cummins of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation when they gave a talk at NYU. Last summer, Markus and a colleague sailed a junk raft made from 15,000 plastic bottles from California to Honolulu in order to bring attention to the huge […]
Sharing a limited planet
Yesterday, for the purposes of provoking conversation, I posed the question of whether the earth would be better off without people. I, of course, don’t believe this at all. But I do think dealing with the question causes interesting conversation. I was particularly intrigued by the response of Ruchi, who writes the blog Arduous. She […]
Let’s go viral with this excellent action on bottled water
The Center for a New American Dream emailed me to ask for our help, so before I even start, let me ask you to email this post to everyone you know. Blog about it. Give it love on Digg, Reddit, all the other sites and send it to your grandma. Because we have a chance […]
How do I want my little girl to spend her time
Shopping is America’s second favorite pastime. According to Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff, we spend three to four times more time shopping than the average European. Only TV viewing racks up a larger portion of our leisure. Why do we spend so much time shopping? Is it partly that the culture doesn’t provide that much […]
On buying more than status
What follows is a passage from the draft of the book about my No Impact project. I thought you might enjoy a glimpse into my progress. The draft, by the way, is turned in and I await comments from my editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. This passage is about some experiences we had in […]