People who suggest individual action doesn’t matter on the scale we need to restore Earth’s ability to sustain life don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t mean that figuratively. What they’re saying is like telling someone there’s no point in playing scales on the piano to reach Carnegie Hall when no one goes there to see someone play scales and that, besides, you’ll just have to practice more anyway.[…] Keep reading →

People who suggest individual action doesn’t matter on the scale we need to restore Earth’s ability to sustain life don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t mean that figuratively. What they’re saying is like telling someone there’s no point in changing their baby’s diaper when it won’t solve infant mortality and that, besides, the baby will need its next diaper changed too. We change our baby’s diapers to help[…] Keep reading →

I see a strong sentiment, especially among youth, of capitalism being the source of our environmental problems. I’m not sure if everyone agrees on what capitalism means. On the scale of the myriad ways thousands of human cultures have lived over hundreds of thousands of years, communism and socialism are pretty close to capitalism, compared to say, how hunting and gathering societies lived. I think most Americans can’t imagine an[…] Keep reading →

Why do so many people lecture me on what it’s like to be a straight white male, and why is what they say invariably unlike my life? Do they tell other people what they should be like due to their sexuality, skin color, and sex? Why do they presume to know so much about me and what motivates them to tell me about my life? Why do they tell me[…] Keep reading →

It’s nice to think of how lovely flying and plastic are, so convenient and amazing, especially if you ignore the parts you don’t like. Both are recent inventions, along with countless others. Humans lived without them for hundreds of thousands of years. Why didn’t people develop them before? Because they weren’t smart enough? No, our ancestors’ brains a few hundred thousand years ago were like ours. We wouldn’t have them[…] Keep reading →

Can anyone imagine a sports or business team suggesting the way to success is to ignore teamwork and only focus on individual action? Here is what winning as a team looks like. You can imagine how it feels. When I hear someone say, “one person’s actions don’t matter”, “only governments and corporations can make a difference,” and the like, I want to let them in on how a come-from-behind victory[…] Keep reading →

Growth-based economics is so twisted, it acts as if degrowth is hard. Imagine the case of an island with enough resources to sustain, say, five thousand people with five thousand people living on it. Should they grow the population? Might deliberately choosing to limit birthrate to bring the population to, say, four thousand make them more resilient in case of a natural disaster that limited food production one year? If[…] Keep reading →

Can we grow enough forests and use enough regenerative agriculture to sequester enough carbon to undo global warming? To answer this question you have to understand the two carbon cycles. I’m simplifying, but you can think of two different cycles of carbon. One is the regular life cycle of carbon-based life forms. When something lives, it contains carbon, including trees, humans, and everything living in dirt and the oceans. When[…] Keep reading →

Recent New York Times stories, Harvard Victory Pushes Admissions Case Toward a More Conservative Supreme Court and Affirmative Action Cases May Reach Supreme Court Even Without Trump, both by Anemona Hartocollis, lay bare a national divide. [Note: You may notice the “recent” stories are from last year. I wrote this post soon after the articles but held back on posting it. I keep reading about well-meaning people apparently deliberately misunderstood[…] Keep reading →