I’ve said this before: it wouldn’t be so bad if, while wrecking the planet, we could at least say we were having one hell of a party. But I’m not sure we are. So many of us are working way more than we should, spending less time with those that we love than we want […]
Happiness and Life Satisfaction
Who says we need cars and planes for a good life?
Now that I’ve finished the draft of my book, we’re finally on holiday. What we used to do, before the No Impact project, was fly to France to stay with friends. But the long haul flight made enough carbon emissions to equal the average American’s entire year of driving, and we had to rent a […]
Business People: Forget the fallacy of the zero sum game
Zero sum game: A situation or interaction in which one participant’s gains result only from another’s equivalent losses. Sometimes, we imagine business works that way. But what a sad, sorry way to look at the world. And if we do look at the world that way, does it make us happy? Let me explain: The […]
“Why your happiness matters to the planet”
The headline is the title of an article in the Christian Science Monitor about how consuming fewer planetary resources may, instead of making us deprived, make us happier. We’ve discussed this so often here on No Impact Man. The article, by Moises Velasquez-Manoff, points to yet another study that shows that material consumption above […]
What our cities could be
I always go on about how the current crisis in the habitat we depend upon for our health, happiness and security is full of opportunities for an improved way of life. What’s good for the planet is often what is good for the people. This principle is illustrated in the simple example of home care […]
From work and spend to work and, well, more work
This little essay is a work in progress. It may is a little rough, but I’m letting you have it all the same. I guess, when it comes down to it, what I’m trying to say is that the cost of living and leisure time rewards of environmental living are harder to reap if you […]
Living in gratitude instead of desire
Click the image above for a larger version This could be totally wrong, but I’m guessing that the decline of religious life in our culture has brought with it a decline in gratitude. Not that I am laying some sort of a religious trip on everyone—I am the first to cop to not maintaining an attitude […]
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.” […]