The values and goals of a system determine how a technology serves it. Technology isn’t good or bad. People have values, not technology. Technology augments the values of the people using it (as does legislation). Changing technology alone will not help with the environment. It will augment the values of people using it. It will accelerate what we’re already doing, in particular, it will lead to more pollution. People often[…] Keep reading →

I haven’t written out the vision for the future that seems so clear to me in how preferable all will consider it compared to today, yet unimaginable to nearly everyone addicted to the comfort and convenience pollution allows. Of eight billion, nearly no one even wants to try. Towering over all other aspects of life after we stop polluting will be the horror we look back on the cruelty of[…] Keep reading →

I started my experiment about two weeks off my electric billing cycle, so about two weeks into my sixth month, I think this bill marks my fifth in a row with zero kilowatt-hours: Every month from the first until this one, I’ve thought I couldn’t go on much longer and expected to give up. But I keep thinking of people displaced from their land for fuel and minerals I don’t[…] Keep reading →

TIME magazine is an icon of American journalism. In a few months, it turns one hundred years old. I grew up reading it. Its covers help define our culture. Today it printed its first story from me: I’ve Been Living Off-Grid In Manhattan for Half-a-Year. Click to read the story. Here’s a screen shot of the top of the story: Click to read the rest: I’ve Been Living Off-Grid In[…] Keep reading →

Ela Bhatt passed yesterday. She knew me when I was a baby and I had lunch with her a couple years ago when she visited her family in New Haven. My parents knew her in Ahmedabad, India before I was born. My father remained very close friends with her until she passed, meaning over half a century. She acknowledges him in her book Anubandh: Building Hundred-Mile Communities. The Times of[…] Keep reading →

Elections are coming up. They happen about once a year. People fly all the time. We buy takeout and bottled water all the time. We buy cars all year round and fill up our gas tanks daily. Which of your actions impacts the world more: voting once a year or two or spending thousands of dollars every year on polluting industries that grow from our purchases, infiltrate government, control legislation,[…] Keep reading →

Context: People consistently push back on the suggestion of them acting more sustainably, especially environmentalists and liberals, claiming that individual action doesn’t achieve meaningful results, as if acting sustainably was a burden or chore. Since when did acting in harmony with nature become so onerous? Why pretend to care about the environment if you don’t like it so much? New view: How about any action at all? Nearly no American[…] Keep reading →

Today begins my sixth month disconnected from the electric grid. I didn’t think I would make it more then a couple days when I started. Instead, I’ve found the experience liberating and joyful. Not hurting other people eases the conscience. In fact, connecting with them through taking more personal responsibility for how I affect them, including you, mitigated through the environment. It’s a sustainability leadership exercise first and foremost. More[…] Keep reading →

What did Abraham Lincoln mean when he said “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”? Doesn’t everyone recognize him as one of the nation’s and history’s great leaders? Doesn’t that mean he was a great man and figured out what to do? You might think coming up with the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment required great genius. On the contrary, he couldn’t[…] Keep reading →