Freedom

Once, all garbage biodegraded. All garbage would turn into food for something within time scales relevant to human lives. Not today. Plastic can take centuries to degrade, during which time they kill wildlife and poison us. Plenty of residue from our culture poisons more, like pesticides and home cleaning products. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors could just drop the parts of the fruit, vegetable, or animal they didn't want to eat on the ground and between the benign content of that part and the accommodating population density, their disposal caused no problems. At some point after we formed cities, we shifted to having others haul our trash away to put in big holes in the ground. The stuff might take longer to degrade, but it was farther…

I'm starting to replace "sustainability" with "not hurting people," sometimes adding "and wildlife." I'm not doing it across the board, but increasingly. I'm seeing how people respond. Likewise, instead of describing an activity as "polluting," to describe it as "hurting innocent people." For example: Instead of "I'm trying to live more sustainably": "I'm trying to hurt innocent people less." Instead of "I value the environment": "I value not hurting people." Instead of "Flying is for most people who fly their most polluting activity": "Flying is for most people who fly how they hurt innocent people most." Terms like "environment" and "sustainability" can be abstract. I'm not trying to protect or conserve something abstract in trying to live more sustainably. I'm trying to avoid hurting people,…

The difference between an externality and coercion. An externality is a cost imposed on someone else. A cost is something that if you pay for it, you undo the cost or make them whole. An example might be if in doing my work, I undo some of yours and it takes you an hour to redo it. You could in principle consent to the work if I compensated you enough for it. If I cause a child to be born with a birth defect, no amount of money can make up for it. No one can consent to be born with a birth defect. To call causing birth defects is a category error. Nobody would call murder an externality. No amount of many makes up…

The following quotes are all relevant to sustainability. I used them all in my book, except the Adam Smith quotes, which came from a recent post. Milton Friedman “I’m not in favor of no government. You do need a government . . . There’s no other institution in my opinion that can provide us with protection of our life and liberty.” He knew that “the key insight of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight.” “Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn’t really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it, and…

"How long does it take to charge your battery?" asks nearly everyone who sees me charging my solar panels, such as the guy in this picture: After a few times answering what they asked, I realized people have no idea what the numbers mean. If I tell them in full sunlight the battery charges in four hours, they don't know what the battery can then charge. I didn't know before I started that toasters burn through energy like crazy, I can't power the microwave at all, and phones can't charge faster even if my big battery is full. No one else knows it either. You need practical, hands-on, personal experience. A PhD in physics doesn't help, nor does desire, or being a well-known environmentalist, except…

I've been remarking lately that every message I've heard on our environmental problems says that acting more sustainably means making my life worse for little chance of gain. I ask people if they know of counterexamples. If you do, please tell me, because no one has so far. Context Even ardent environmentalists suggest living more sustainably means giving up things I value for the possible benefit of someone else somewhere else at some other time, though it might not help. Also, some genius might fix the problem without me, superseding anything I did. In fact, someone has to supersede anything I or any individual could do in order to solve our problems fully, making my actions irrelevant. The rational response to a definite loss here…

The opposite of pollution is loving your neighbor as yourself. After all, do you keep your garbage in your house forever? No, you get rid of it. That means you have your neighbors deal with it, as you would not deal with it yourself. Does it matter that those neighbors aren't your next door neighbors but are poor and distant? How can you love your neighbor as yourself except not to create waste that you dump on them? Humans don't need to pollute or deplete for health, safety, or security. We do to maintain our culture, but we can change our culture. Do you have the exhaust of your car or plane go into the cabin with you? No, you blast it into the atmosphere…