Today’s blog title is a quote from a recent post called Marketing Fear by the astute social thinker Seth Godin. The picture to the right comes from his blog as an illustration of how a convenience store used the fear of terrorism to market duct tape. Godin says: “Marketing with fear is a powerful tool. […]
Environment
Speaking of poo
On Thursday, I went with one of my heroes from the Lower East Side Ecology Center, Kate Zidar, to look at a “combined sewer overflow” (CSO). Now what I’m about to tell you is gross, so if you have a strong gag reflex… The CSO that Kate showed me, down on the East River, is […]
What’s green and what’s not?
From the New York Times article on Home Depot’s Eco Options Marketing campaign: …Plastic-handled paint brushes were touted as nature-friendly because they were not made of wood. Wood-handled paint brushes were promoted as better for the planet because they were not made of plastic. An electric chainsaw? Green, because it was not gas-powered. A bug […]
It takes all sorts
Umpteen people have written to me, because they would like me to go vegan. If I did, they say, I could eat raw, save the carbon produced by cooking on my natural gas stove (which I still haven’t figured out how to get around), and be kinder to animals. They tell me I could eat lots of nuts and […]
Biking as assertiveness training
I’m learning something about life from biking everywhere (an element of the no carbon-producing transportation part of the No Impact Man project). It used to be that when I rode around Manhattan, I would chastise myself for getting mad or shouting at drivers or pedestrians. I would think I was becoming one of those rude […]
Wondering how you can help?
If you’re reading this early enough and you want to tune in, you can catch me on Good Morning America around 8:30 this morning. Sorry not to let you all know earlier. There were schedule changes at the last minute. As for all the Good Morning America viewers who watched and are now dropping by, […]
The climate change action gamble
Thought you guys might be interested in this video sent to me by Ian of Brave New Traveler. It’s an apolitical, carefully reasoned argument which contends that the potential costs of doing something about climate change if it doesn’t exist are much less than the potential costs of not doing something if it does. PS Does anyone know […]
Can consumption-based capitalism survive environmentalism?
[This post was originally titled “Can capitalism survive environmentalism?” but I’ve since realized that the current title more accurately reflects what I meant to say. I’ve also made a couple of minor adjustments in the body text to reflect this change. NIM 6/23/09] A radio journalist called to talk to me about this question yesterday. I […]