Here is the greatest sign of addiction I commonly see, a disposable plastic cup from Starbucks, being thrown away, sweat still forming on the plastic from the ice not yet melted. Someone paid for oil to be extracted and ice formed in 90F (32.5C) weather just to throw it all away. Below are more addicts, although these ones are mostly only hurting themselves. Starbucks customers hurt humanity (and wildlife) more,[…] Keep reading →

Litter isn’t a result of too little sanitation. It’s too much production and people still buying it. I’ve meant to post these pictures since I took them in the spring. I took them on a regular day. If you think cities mean more garbage, our per-capita environmental impact is less than Americans who live outside cities. If you think this garbage and treatment of public property is disgusting, as I[…] Keep reading →

Maybe you’ve heard me share how from when I had my own kitchen, I always had ice cream in my freezer and pretzels and Doritos in my cupboard. I struggled to pace my consuming them, but nearly always ate more than I meant to, but kept buying more. Now I say there isn’t enough money in the world for me to eat that stuff. I also talk about my relationship[…] Keep reading →

I admit since I haven’t had ice cream in five or ten years, I’m no expert on it, but I see a lot of ice cream disposable cups left on the street, plus dropped cones like the one pictured below. It was a hot day. I’d say hot enough to melt butter. Yet, I don’t know if you can tell, but the ice cream partly melted but mostly retains near[…] Keep reading →

Sometimes I feel like I’m responding to someone who fell on the subway tracks. No one else acts. I jump down onto the tracks to help the person to safety, but the person is morbidly obese and struggles just to lift themselves from the ground. They’ve decided to stop trying. “It’s too hard. It’s not worth it.” They resign themselves to the train hitting them. “As long as I can’t[…] Keep reading →

Last week I posted about Why many litterers are entitled and one way the most entitled justify littering. People, including poor and homeless people, justify littering and try to stop me from cleaning up litter. They say other people are paid to do it, so it’s okay and right to leave plastic cups and food containers on the ground, then walk way. The result: on pleasant days, my neighborhood looks[…] Keep reading →

I start by describing how podcast guest Carl Erik Fisher, author of bestseller The Urge, reviewed my upcoming book Sustainability Simplified as a subject matter expert on addiction. Carl mentioned how my book suffered from what Bruce describes as the demon drug myth. He pointed to Bruce’s work as seminal, so I started reading it. I’d heard of Rat Park and later remembered Johan Hari mentioning Bruce in his TED talk[…] Keep reading →