Freedom

My book, Sustainability Simplified, approaches our environmental problems in several ways. One is from the view that government should stick to a few specific roles, one of which is to protect your life, liberty, and property from me taking or destroying it without your consent. A government that doesn't protect life, liberty, and property leads to a nation without hope for a better future, which leads to people retreating to what they can protect themselves. Other approaches include to see that imperialism resulted from unsustainability and led to colonialism, slavery, and racism. If we want to end the downstream effects of imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and racism, any solutions will only be temporary unless we stop the upstream causes. For this post, though, I'll focus on…

In this post I'm going to show how many accusations of environmentalists being anti-human would tar the accusers more. I'll build up to the point by describing the accusers first. Let me start by saying I love reading Steven Pinker's books and wrote about him and them in my upcoming book, especially Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), which Bill Gates described as “the most inspiring book I've ever read,” and Enlightenment Now (2018), which Gates described as “not only the best book Pinker’s ever written. It’s my new favorite book of all time.” Quoting from my book, Sustainability Simplified, In these books, he claimed that while wars and violence still happen, we live in the most peaceful time in history and that today’s peace…

Sustainability doesn't promise you'll live forever or that it will end all suffering. I don't want to shock you or hurt your feelings, but we will all die. People we love will die. We will conflict with neighbors forever. No matter what advances we make in medicine, at some point a doctor will be unable to prevent you from dying. Worse, for all the advances made in extending life, other advances will be made in doof, addiction, and weapons that sicken and decrease life. Indigenous people still exist not because they are ignorant of our culture but because they know about it. There is no appeal to mythology of the noble savage to say that they see that the sacrifice in freedom, equality, mutual support,…

Several responders my Ars Technica article from January 2023, I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan, commented things like "You mostly shifted a fair portion of your energy needs onto the surrounding city. Not all, but your electrical bill or lack thereof doesn't reflect your true energy usage. The city could not function at all if half the people did what you did." That is, they said I was using as much power but from other places. Somehow they missed the things I wasn't using any more, like a fridge and microwave, whose power and energy use eclipse what my phone and computer use, which is all I plugged in at NYU. Ars Technica Josh Spodek Disconnected In Manhattan At first I…

Germany and Japan seem wonderful cultures today. Not so much in 1944, when they were committing among the most grievous atrocities ever. Everyone else wanted to stop them. Nobody considered stopping them by making them more efficient, advancing their technologies, or promoting legislation within them passed by their people. No allied general or politician promoted changing them by offering new technologies or helping them innovate. Making them more efficient would have accelerated them, as would technology and home-grown legislation. First the culture had to change. Then---when pursuing something constructive like democracy, not destructive---then make them more efficient. Technology isn't good or bad. Like sharp knives and fire, technology augments the values of the people and culture using them. No, I'm not creating false equivalences. I'm…

Regular readers know I haven't filled a load of garbage since 2019. The most common reactions are surprise, asking me what's in my garbage, and calling it "extreme." Being five years into a habit, it doesn't feel the least bit extreme any more. On the contrary, since what motivates me is alleviating suffering in the people in whom I would increase it for my lifestyle, not acting to pollute much less seems extreme to me. The name for the emotion behind that motivation is love. I once read a book that suggested loving one's neighbor as oneself. I think it more than suggested it. I think it commanded it, but I guess people decided to let it slide or considered it unimportant. Or maybe they…