You may remember that, as the No Impact Man project proceeded, my definition of individual action on climate and the environment came to include not only lifestyle change but civic participation. I ultimately realized that there was a limit to how much less harm I could do alone, but that the good we could do […]
Environment
Oil addiction
Remember that song that went something like “your foot bone is connected to your ankle bone?” Well here’s a cool video from Good Magazine that makes the same sort of connections all the way from dinosaurs to oil to high food prices. You could get the crazy idea that breaking our reliance on fossil fuels […]
Exchange of love
Click image to enlarge This is going to sound corny, but let’s assume that after basic needs are met, what we really want is love. Social scientists can dress up the word love as “social status” or what have you, but what status gets us in the end is love. Why am I harping on […]
Social obstacles to change
A couple of days back, I posted a couple of pictures–one of a big TV and one of my little girl flying a kite. I posed a question. Which is more life fulfilling, the time spent working to pay for and watching the TV or the time spent in the less resource-intensive activity with my […]
Economics, human motivations and solutions to climate change
One definition of economics is the study of the choices of individual and groups of humans make when faced with the fact of limited resources but unlimited needs and wants. At the heart of neoclassical economics is the “rational actor” model of human behavior. That is, according to the model, individuals, groups and nations will […]
A great life need not cost the earth
I could spend my time working to pay for and watching things like this: Or I could take that same time–as I did this weekend–and spend it with my three-year-old Isabella doing stuff instead of watching stuff: The politicians and so many others worry that using fewer planetary resources means deprivation and that deprivation won’t […]
The Carbon Age
There are a few reasons why a No Impact reader might care a whole lot about the fact that a writer named Eric Roston has just published his excellent book The Carbon Age. One reason might be that, with so much talk about carbon dioxide this and carbon dioxide that, no one, until now, has […]
Day off for me!
See you tomorrow!