At a certain stage during the No Impact project, we got rid of the television, which kept making use feel that spending less and using fewer resources made us losers compared to the people we saw on the screen. Duane Elgin, author of Voluntary Simplicity, said something that caught my eye (thanks for sending Rosa!) […]
Environment
Treating anxiety and depression could save the planet
Something a regular reader of this blog may have been able to guess about me: I suffer, at times, from anxiety and depression. I’m not talking about the worst kind of anxiety and depression. I’m talking about the kind that takes the edge off the gratitude I should be feeling for a good life. Not, […]
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 […]
Problems leaving comments?
A little blog housekeeping: a few people have emailed me recently that they have had trouble leaving comments on the blog. Are you having problems, too? First of all, you should know that you cannot leave a comment without filling out the name, email address and comment fields in the comment form. The publish but […]
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 […]
How could Obama permanently strenthen our economic well-being?
Back in July, I posted the above diagram under the title Exchange of Love. The point of the diagram is that economic policy in the modern world is generally about strengthening the bonds between corporations and individuals, rather than the other, potentially more meaningful, relationships. Under the current paradigm, this is important because it is […]
Can a renewed presidency alone make a renewed planet?
Andy Revkin over at the New York Times DotEarth puts his fingers on the important climate questions related to the new presidency: Can President Obama push climate and energy legislation or an approach to a new climate treaty that the atmosphere will someday notice? Can his plans on either front pass muster with the big […]