The deadline is fast approaching, but I’m still hoping for more emails of support for my meeting with Representative Nadler on Friday afternoon. As you know, I will be asking him to help steer the country towards meaningful climate policy. Click here for details and to see how you can help. Now, onwards… I had […]
Consumerism and Materialism
Designers: If it isn’t life-enhancing, can it really be sustainable?
Consider, first, that reduced resource use and sustainable lifestyles, on both the cultural and the individual level, need not mean deprivation. As an individual-level example, studies show that bicycle commuters are happier than car and transit commuters. As a cultural-level example, people who live in pedestrian-friendly areas like villages, where cars are used less frequently, […]
Who needs appliances anyway?
Yesterday, we talked about whether replacing old but perfectly good and working appliances with new, more energy-efficient models made sense (see here). We crunched numbers to do with the “embodied energy” and environmental impact of the manufacture of the new appliances versus the amount of energy potentially saved. [This just in: I majorly screwed up […]
When to turf out an old appliance for the energy efficient model–The New York Times is wrong [Except that I made a big mistake in my calculations so they may be right]
[This just in on May 13: I majorly screwed up yesterday’s calculations causing the embodied energies of the steel to be over-estimated by a factor of five and therefore throwing this whole post off. Ugh. So sorry. The argument is not as straightforward as I had hoped and I will have to look into it more for the […]
Bottlemania
An excellent new book tells the story of our drinking water crisis by focusing, in particular, on the bitter dispute that erupted between the townspeople of Fryeburg, Maine, and Nestle’s Poland Spring, which wanted to bottle their water. Bottlemania, by Garbage Land author Elizabeth Royte, will be out in bookstores in the coming weeks (you […]
Dear Clorox, Please reuse your Brita Filters
You probably didn’t know that Brita, America’s number one pour-through water filter, was owned by Clorox. Now, the great news about Clorox’s Brita filters is that they help make Americans feel good about tap water from our excellent municipal water systems, move off the throwaway plastic bottles (wanna try my ultra-cool reusable water bottle, by […]
Why Isabella still doesn’t watch TV
I’m still at the New Economics Foundation Conference that I mentioned yesterday and having the time of my life. We’ve been talking today a lot about how television and advertising promotes a set of values that–by definition–promote resource consumption and undermine sustainability. After a day of that, I can’t tell you how glad we haven’t […]
A reason to be optimistic
So the coolest thing in the world is happening to me, this week which is that I get to attend this conference of about 30 international thinkers on the questions of sustainability and consumption and cultural happiness (who let me in?). The title of the conference is “Do good lives have to cost the earth.” […]