Michael Pollan, in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine’s green issue, had an excellent article called “Why Bother?“–about whether individual lifestyle change is worthwhile (there is also, by the way, a little snippet in the issue about yours truly). Pollan writes (with my emphasis): “It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker […]
consumption
Why Isabella still doesn’t watch TV
I’m still at the New Economics Foundation Conference that I mentioned yesterday and having the time of my life. We’ve been talking today a lot about how television and advertising promotes a set of values that–by definition–promote resource consumption and undermine sustainability. After a day of that, I can’t tell you how glad we haven’t […]
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.” […]
The “needle exchange” approach to planetary damage
There are two ways to reduce the harm to the planetary habitat we depend on for our health, happiness and security. One is to reduce the amount of resources we consume or degrade–air, forests, atmosphere, water, etc–and the other is to make the consumption of those resources less harmful. In other words: Resources Used x […]
Conspicuous UNconsumption
If you’ve been following the story of the No Impact project at all, you’ll know that my little family did not start out as Birkenstock-wearing, reusable-bag-toting environmentalists. In fact, Michelle and I made a habit of crying for the polar bears while blasting the air conditioners. I, in particular, was a liberal shlub who had […]
Economic progress?
Day three in bed with the flu, so I’m just offering you this one-minute video from Adbusters. If you can’t watch in your email or newsreader, watch it here.
The bottom-line problem with sustainability?
According to Heather Rogers’ Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, 80 percent of products sold in the United States are designed to be used once and then thrown away. Now, this is a leap of logic, but for the sake of a thought experiment, let’s assume that 80 percent of the energy and raw […]
Sustainable consumption’s “double dividend”
[First off, let me say sorry about yesterday’s post of a revamped version of the national anthem. Like so many people commented, I couldn’t hear the lyrics. I thought that only the melody had been adapted. I would never have posted it if I had realized that the lyrics had been changed. But onwards…] One […]