The other day, I visited the Dharma Field Zen Center, here in Minneapolis, where I’m spending Christmas. I enjoyed Buddhism: It’s Not What You Think, by Steve Hagen, the head teacher there, so I thought it would be fun to drop in and taste the flavor of the temple. One Soto Zen tradition Steve showed […]
environmentalism
Where me and my No Impact Man blog go from here
One of the things I realized during my year of attempting to have no net environmental impact is that it really shouldn’t be so hard. By this I don’t mean to say that it was hard and miserable for me. If you’ve been a regular reader then you know that, for the most part, I […]
The human costs of consumption–a cool, new cartoon
Well, it’s not really a cartoon, but waste activist Annie Leonard‘s funny, hard-hitting and informative new animated short The Story of Stuff, about the effects of rampant consumption both on human health and the planet, does make you wonder if we’ve all gone Loony Tunes. Today’s No Impact Man homework is to watch the film […]
Why we enviros should be THE target market
People may not want to live the way we enviros live but they do want to buy the things we say it’s okay to buy. That is part of the power of the individual action of living environmentally many people underestimate. People want to associate with it. Enviro is in. We’re the cool ones. Companies that start […]
Triggering an environmental avalanche
Doing the right thing in a world that doesn’t can feel like shouting into an empty canyon. Some people feel helpless to change because they feel like all that effort spent swimming against the current will never change the current. Eliminating my annual 20 puny tons of carbon dioxide emissions won’t cause the ocean levels to rise one inch less. […]
The No Impact Dear Santa letter
Dear Santa, I was thinking about how much I love playing with my little girl Isabella and talking to my wife Michelle and joking around with my best friend Tanner. You know what I realized? There is nothing more fun than just laughing with the people I love. There isn’t a gadget or a game […]
An organization that wastes not, global warms not (and saves money, too)
If every car in the United States idled 5 minutes less a day we’d save 13 million tons of CO2. If “smart” power outlets stopped delivering current to electronics sucking up juice in standby mode, we’d save 10% of household electricity use. Okay, maybe reducing waste won’t solve the climate crisis, but it makes a […]
What our cities could be
I’ve written before about opportunities in the environmental crisis. Getting cars out of New York City and other communities that ought to put people before cars would not only cut down on greenhouse gases and improve air quality but would offer us the opportunity to have much nicer places to live. Imagine the city as […]