Here are some answers to questions posted in comments by a reader named Jessy. I mention some difficulties. Please feel free to weigh in with solutions: What are you feeding your dog? Frankie is the weirdest eater you ever met. She’s skinny but only eats when she is famished. If you give a piece of food that is too […]
No Impact Man
The less oil we have, the more coal we’ll use—eek!
Eugene Linden, in his Op Ed in BusinessWeek, writes: “With global oil production virtually stalled in recent years, controversial predictions that the world is fast approaching maximum petroleum output are looking a bit less controversial…But climate change activists have nothing to cheer about. The U.S. is completely unprepared for peak oil, as it’s called, and the wrenching adjustments it would […]
Be kind to the planet by being kind to yourself
Before we get to the body of today’s post, I wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to remove the appeal for contributions to the running of the blog. My reasons for trying it were best summed up by a commenter calling herself Tiny Inkling who wrote: “I like to imagine he’s using [the contributions] to free himself […]
The original No Impact men
After my post about Kant and No Impact, an assistant professor of philosophy at Indiana State University, Brian Morton, wrote me a very long email telling me what he thought philosophers from Locke to Sartre would think of the No Impact Experiment. Fascinating! This post is my edited summary of what Brian had to say about the intersection of some […]
A green hipster’s PDA
I’m going to tell you about my new recycled index card-based personal organizer, but first let me give you the back-story about me and my relationship to my old electronic personal digital assistant (PDA)—may it rest in peace. Michelle complained that I loved my PDA more than her. Maybe even more than Isabella the two-year-old life guru (who thinks […]
Kant’s views on No Impact living
Now I am no expert on philosophy, but my friend Eden tells me that Kant considered the best test of morality to be the Formula of Universal Law. He wrote, “act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should be a universal law.” Or to translate, each of us should live […]
Getting concrete
One of the hard parts about the No Impact experiment is that it is not part of any tradition or culture. That is to say that because we are not part of any community, we have to make things up as we go along. That’s why I like this new project launched by Miranda at Simple Living and […]
Balancing a toddler bed on a rickshaw
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. […]