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 →

The greenhouse effect was front page news in the 1980s and known long before. Plus plastic, mercury, deforestation, extinctions, and you’ve read the front page. You know the problems. We don’t just not act. We tell ourselves lies that we’ll solve the problem. We’ve told ourselves lie after lie, scam after scam, to keep from changing our behavior. The Scams The following are all scams that delay acting. None of[…] Keep reading →

If you choose to act on sustainability, you will face darkness. You will want to give up. You will feel alone, misunderstood. I don’t say so to dissuade, but to prepare to face a part of all of us. Nobody is polluting because they are monsters. We’re all human. What is the alternative to confronting this part of us? To give up? To try to ignore and forget and try[…] Keep reading →