Choosing/Decision-Making

You've heard "the people most affected by our environmental problems are causing it the least, and those causing it the most are the least affected by it." It sounds unfair. People who say that sentiment seem then to suggest we should help those hurt the most---the disadvantaged. They sure do try to explain to me that if I don't focus on them, I'm out of touch. No one wants to help them more than I do, but look at the statement. If the people affected most aren't causing the problems, focusing on them means not solving the problem. You might feel good for helping helpless people, but you aren't solving the problem. To solve the problem, you have to change the people causing it. I…

Yesterday I shared how the only food among what I normally eat my doctor says I can eat for a week before my colonoscopy is tofu. Normally my coop sells tofu unpackaged that I can take home in containers I bring. It turns out they were out of stock, with the next shipment expected next Thursday. Chinatown wasn't far, so I walked there. Plenty of tofu for sale, but none of the half-dozen stores I checked carried it in bulk. I went back and forth on my options. One was to revert to water only for about a week, two days longer than I've gone with only water before. Another was to go back tomorrow and check other stores. Another was to check another neighborhood…

I was talking to a friend who considers herself more sustainable than most, someone who feels she cares. She said something many people say: "I want to be more sustainable, but I'm not ready to start yet." This statement illustrates the problem with nearly every approach to sustainability: they're based in book theory, not practical experience. Without practical experience, they don't know that acting more sustainably brings liberation, joy, and reward. People who change our actual practice, not just read the ideas of people who also lack practical experience, wish we had started earlier and don't want to go back. When you do it, you realize the only time most people are ready to change is after starting, not before. Before you start, you look…

We've had a lot of rain in New York City. My batteries are all near zero so I have to write this post quick. I gave myself a deadline to finish the first draft of my book this month, but I couldn't charge my computer. I also went a month without my "cheat" of plugging in at NYU last month. It turns out the battery problem that led me to plug in that time was easily fixed with an undocumented reset. The company told me about it after I plugged in at NYU or I could have gone longer. I plugged in yesterday, though, so that was my second time in six weeks. I'm finding myself an explorer at the frontier of sustainability since my…

I don't look for this stuff. It's impossible to miss. Where is the leadership in sustainability? Why is everyone so slippery? (I know the answer, of course. Lincoln said it best: "Nothing does more damage to you than to do something you believe is wrong." When you do, you will lie, cheat, deny, and suppress to avoid facing the internal conflict.) I start teaching this semester at NYU tomorrow. The classroom I'll teach in is in a new building so I went today to make sure the technology works and check for any idiosyncrasies. I saw this vending machine selling bottled doof. I suspect NYU isn't selling the products, but note the NYU logo on the machine, which looks like an endorsement to me. Now…