Shopping is an American social pastime, but the problem is that shopping from “want,” instead of from “need,” causes the use of planetary resources we can’t afford to burn. We talked about this a little here. Yesterday, I mentioned how much fun my daughter Isabella had running out to a farm field to harvest vegetables. […]
consumption
A sad observation I had on a mountain
See that picture? That’s where I stayed last week for some quick R & R in the countryside. An incredibly beautiful place. At lunch one day, I briefly met two women, sitting at the next table. While I was eating, I overheard one say to the other, “Do you think there will be enough shops […]
Consumerdom ain’t making women happy
We talk a lot here about whether our consumption-based economy and culture makes people happy. Because, since consumption of resources is the root cause our planet’s woes, it would be an awful shame if it turned out that we were wrecking the planet without even increasing human happiness. And it turns out, by the way, […]
Forget the stuff. Let’s just get happy.
A quote from a TED talk given by Dan Gilbert, the Harvard professor and author of Stumbling on Happiness: Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted. Synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted. In our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness […]
What is true progress?
Because of my stance on consumption, I get accused sometimes of being anti-progress. This is interesting to me, because I am very pro-progress. I want so much progress. It’s just that I’m not sure that the societally accepted definition of progress is correct. Heading in the same direction we’ve been heading for the past 100 […]
To participate in the real economy
This is a guest post by my friend Sean Sakamoto who writes the blog I’d Rather Be In Japan. You can read his previous post on No Impact Man here. “Thrift can take lasting hold of a consumer society, to disastrous effect.” —The New York Times I keep reading about how saving is the worst […]
Can a renewed presidency alone make a renewed planet?
Andy Revkin over at the New York Times DotEarth puts his fingers on the important climate questions related to the new presidency: Can President Obama push climate and energy legislation or an approach to a new climate treaty that the atmosphere will someday notice? Can his plans on either front pass muster with the big […]
How to cut out home heating oil–Japanese style
This is a guest post by my friend Sean Sakamoto, who blogs at www.idratherbe.tv/injapan. “It’s so weird that you heat your whole house,” my wife said one winter. She’s Japanese, and when we first got married, here in the United States, we got a lot of mileage out of the “I can’t believe you people […]