To change people’s values, so the shrinks say, you change their behavior. You don’t barrage them with ideas and cause information overload. You don’t tell them their existing values are wrong and get their backs up. What you do is you get them to change their behavior and, once you’ve done that, you let their […]
global warming
Does high resource use make a great life?
This photo (sorry for the poor quality) shows one half of an empty basketball court that I’ve ridden past many times during my car-less vacation in Greenport. It’s in someone’s back yard. Never once have I ever seen anyone playing basketball on it. And I thought: some dad or mom might have worked so hard […]
If you’d like to ditch the car but worry about emergencies
Suppose you’d like to commit to leaving your car in the driveway or getting rid of it altogether and instead making your commute by foot, bike, carpool or public transit. You want to save the money, skip the traffic jams, get the exercise, cause fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and have less stress. It’s just that […]
A moment that reinforces my belief that we humans have the potential to see the light on global warming and so much else
What I mean is, if we can come from MLK’s time to an African-American taking center stage at the DNC as potential first lady, maybe we can change the way we treat the habitat and each other. What an amazing–and way too long in coming–moment in history. Personally, I wept when she spoke (and I’m […]
Drill here, drill now, get nothing but an opinion poll point or two
The Democrats are caving on offshore drilling. As reported by the Christian Science Monitor (emphasis added): “… In a shift on Saturday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the House will take up comprehensive energy legislation next month that includes partially lifting the 1981 ban on offshore drilling… “… On Friday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid said that […]
A bridge across the aisle on climate change
Recently, I received an email from a military officer who I happen to know because he is an expert on subversive warfare, which, in a way, was the subject of my last book. He is a Christian and, I’m pretty sure, a Republican. All the same, without invitation from me, he has become reader of […]
Oil addiction
Remember that song that went something like “your foot bone is connected to your ankle bone?” Well here’s a cool video from Good Magazine that makes the same sort of connections all the way from dinosaurs to oil to high food prices. You could get the crazy idea that breaking our reliance on fossil fuels […]
Economics, human motivations and solutions to climate change
One definition of economics is the study of the choices of individual and groups of humans make when faced with the fact of limited resources but unlimited needs and wants. At the heart of neoclassical economics is the “rational actor” model of human behavior. That is, according to the model, individuals, groups and nations will […]