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COLIN BEAVAN, PhD

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Society

What makes a life good for a) The planet and b) Ourselves

December 31, 2008 by Colin Beavan Leave a Comment

So I’m having breakfast with a friend of mine who is having kind of a midlife crisis and he tells me that when he was young, he had the choice between going into finance and one of the arts and he chose finance. He felt, in a lot ways, like this was contrary to the […]

Filed Under: Environment, Happiness and Life Satisfaction, No Impact Man, Society

Take out tubs, individual action and changing minds

December 9, 2008 by Colin Beavan Leave a Comment

Yesterday I posted about the trash I’d generated through eating takeout when I got too busy to cook for myself. Someone commented that eating takeout–in itself–is no problem. Cooking at scale may save energy. The problem is the plastic or cardboard containers that get generated. Commenters left two suggestions behind for ways to get take-out […]

Filed Under: Consumerism and Materialism, Environment, No Impact Man, Society

The cultural barriers to environmental change

November 17, 2008 by Colin Beavan Leave a Comment

Here’s an alternative title for this post: nasty neighbors and mean people you meet in the street. But that would just be bile and silliness and bitterness and not addressing myself to the real obstacles to social and environmental change which are at play, which are important to understand. Because what’s happened is that a […]

Filed Under: Activism and Social Change, Environment, No Impact Man, Society Tagged With: automobiles, bicycle parking, bicycles, bike parking, climate change, climate crisis, global warming

The problem with happiness

October 31, 2008 by Colin Beavan

Well, what I mean is that there is a problem with happiness as a measure of whether limited planetary resources should be used. I talk about this a lot, right? I talk a lot about how if we only choose to use the resources that actually make people happy and cut out the things that […]

Filed Under: Consumerism and Materialism, Environment, Happiness and Life Satisfaction, No Impact Man, Society Tagged With: children, Enrique Penalosa, happiness, sustainability, urban planning

The ridiculousness of relying on “market indicators” to run our planet

October 28, 2008 by Colin Beavan

We’ve all heard talk of the efficiency of the free market. You know, as the idea goes, companies will only do what customer-citizens want them to do, because if they don’t, customers will sanction the companies by not buying from them. There are all sorts of reasons why this doesn’t work, of course, including the […]

Filed Under: Best of No Impact Man, Career and Work Life, Consumerism and Materialism, Environment, Happiness and Life Satisfaction, No Impact Man, Purpose and Meaning, Society Tagged With: coal mines, drinking water, externalities, Free market economics, global warming, market failures, throwaway society

The complexities of human nature and saving our habitat

October 20, 2008 by Colin Beavan

  There is a love poem by Pablo Neruda, the late Chilean activist, poet and Nobel laureate. It’s called “I do not love you except because I love you.” Maybe it’s not a love poem. Maybe it’s a truth poem. It’s a poem about the truth of human nature. It’s a poem written by a […]

Filed Under: Environment, No Impact Man, Society Tagged With: beef production, climate change, environmentalism, Pablo Neruda

A great visit with NY State Senator Klein–thanks to you

October 15, 2008 by Colin Beavan

If you’ve been reading the blog you’ll remember that I had a near death experience with a black Mercedes Benz on my bike. The driver said some angry swear words at me, and then I discovered he was a New York state senator. Poor guy. I called him to task for it on the blog […]

Filed Under: Activism and Social Change, Environment, No Impact Man, Society Tagged With: biking, Senator Jeff Klein, Transportation Alterntives, transportation policy, walking

How do I want my little girl to spend her time

September 30, 2008 by Colin Beavan

Shopping is America’s second favorite pastime. According to Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff, we spend three to four times more time shopping than the average European. Only TV viewing racks up a larger portion of our leisure. Why do we spend so much time shopping? Is it partly that the culture doesn’t provide that much […]

Filed Under: Consumerism and Materialism, Environment, No Impact Man, Society

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