We put off buying Isabella’s first toddler bed as long as we could. One reason is that there isn’t a whole hell of a lot of room in our one-bedroom apartment for an actual bed (if only reports of our being multi-millionaires were true!). Another reason is, to be honest, that I like the containment aspect of the crib. […]
Environment
Living in the gray
We have this great picture of Isabella that Michelle had blown up on poster board some time back. Strictly speaking, of course, the poster is not in the No Impact project’s non-consumption rules. I bit my tongue. Then, we had to mount the poster. Michelle came home with some of that sticky putty, which was, again, new and not […]
Update on No Impact land
Union Square Cabbage season has ended! We spent the winter eating it boiled, steamed, fried and baked. No more. Spring has finally brought kale, chard, sweet peas, broccoli rabe and all sorts of other yummies to the farmers’ market. Yippee! We’re still waiting for in-season tomatoes and a lot of other goodies, but who’d have thought six months ago […]
Why I make environmental action personal…
…partly because news items like these make me worry that making it governmental will be too long in coming. From Dana Milbank’s “As the World Warms, The White House Aspires,” commenting on the President’s new global warming (so-called) initiative in the Washington Post on June 1: “…the plan the White House outlined yesterday listed no concrete targets or dates, […]
Why bother?
Someone who nicknames herself Nightingale emailed me a question that, in part, went like this: “We seem to be a pretty tenacious lot, we humans, and wouldn’t it be best to realize that we can’t save everybody, that some of us will survive the lack of ozone, and just let the chips fall where they may?” Some other […]
Plastic in the food chain
One of the things we’ve been avoiding in the No Impact project is plastic. No plastic bags, bottles, tubs, wrappings, toys, gadgets, clothes, buttons, pipes, plates, cups, forks, spoons, knives, toothpaste tubes, shampoo bottles, dish soap bottles. In other words, just about everything. I’m old enough to remember a time before plastic became so ubiquitous, when people avoided plastic […]
The truth about happiness
Everyone thinks that the No Impact regime causes some sort of deprivation, but the fact is that I was more deprived before than I am now. Here’s why: happiness is simply not based on how much stuff you have. It’s based on how you live. Science shows it. Happiness, the research confirms, is derived from strong relationships, using your […]
A way forward for capitalism?
“…it is in this space of influencing life style choices that conservation and resource management is a great leveler among societies at different ends of the energy spectrum: an Indian who consumes 600 kWh/annum and an American who consumes over 15,000 kWh/annum have much to learn from one another. Because if one really thinks about it, the energy each consumes […]