Category Archives: Nature

Hear me on A Climate Change with Matt Matern

on February 14, 2025 in Audio, Nature

Matt and I have appeared on each other’s podcast before. He invited me back to talk about Sustainability Simplified. I recommend reading it. This episode will whet your appetite. Looking at Matt’s podcast page, the guest before me was Bill McKibben so I consider myself in esteemed company. Here at the liner notes:

Yet more cases where efficiency doesn’t help sustainability

on February 11, 2025 in Nature

If something destroys life, liberty, and property, making it more efficient leads it to destroy less life, liberty, and property, not zero. Stopping doing it would stop destroying life, liberty, and property. We know life doesn’t require pollution, despite our cultural beliefs. The quality of life of people who live sustainably doesn’t appear lower than ours and in many cases appears higher, also despite our cultural beliefs. Let’s look at[…] Keep reading →

Why complaining about “private profit and public cost” misses the boat.

on February 9, 2025 in Freedom, Nature

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[…] Keep reading →

The Spodek Method is like quitting smoking.

on February 5, 2025 in Addiction, Education, Nature

Some people in my workshops describe early times practicing the Spodek Method as causing them anxiety. From my experience with performance arts like acting or sports in front of a crowd or, in attraction, learning to approach women, I know performing where others can see you can cause people without experience anxiety. I also know that mastering that art can transform that anxiety into joy and glory. Everyone who became[…] Keep reading →

Plastic appears more poisonous than you think, especially to your brain. You’d rather know these findings than not.

on February 4, 2025 in Addiction, Doof, Nature

I try to avoid just quoting news. That’s for social media, which I avoid. But sometimes the news merits it. Quoting the Washington Post: Haven’t shown causation (yet) The original paper’s conclusion points out they’ve only shown correlation, not causation, though not showing it doesn’t mean it isn’t there: The present data suggest a trend of increasing MNP concentrations in the brain and liver. The majority of MNPs [microplastics and[…] Keep reading →

Why environmentalists fail and what environmentalism lacks: integrity, credibility, and experience

on January 26, 2025 in Leadership, Nature

I like Nate Hagens’s videos. We’ve hosted many of the same guests. A mutual friend put us in touch. I followed up, though he hasn’t responded. I’m only using him as an example of someone going beyond caring about the environment to acting. Beyond caring, he understands the issues beyond what most people do. If you scroll down, you can see the full video that I pulled this clip from.[…] Keep reading →

Is space travel possible for Abrahamic religions?

on January 20, 2025 in Nature

I was thinking about how some religions suggest people to pray facing east, Jerusalem, or Mecca. Quoting Wikipedia, “Prayer in a certain direction is characteristic of many world religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá’í Faith.” I couldn’t help pursue the question. What happens if you’re on Mars? How would you figure out the direction to one of these places from Mars? What if we achieved interstellar travel?[…] Keep reading →

Do you turn on the light when you wake up at night to go to the bathroom? Why it matters.

on January 18, 2025 in Art, Habits, Leadership, Nature

One of the more common line of questions people ask me when they learn I disconnected my apartment from the electric grid is what I do for light. Before I share what I share with them, if you’re curious, you can find out easily: don’t turn your lights on this evening. If you do the simple task of not dying, you’ll find an answer. I’m no do-it-yourselfer. If you just[…] Keep reading →

Asymptotically approaching a finite number isn’t approaching zero, so we can increase efficiency forever and still increase pollution forever too.

on January 16, 2025 in Nature

Increasing efficiency forever can’t reach zero waste for many physical processes, but I think people feel otherwise. Or fantasize. When you hear about airplanes being made more efficient, or electric vehicles, computers, or whatever, do you think that if we keep making them more efficient, they’ll eventually not pollute? In the graph below, where the green curve approaches the horizontal line, it will lower forever but never drop below a[…] Keep reading →

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