Nature

The UN’s three-pronged attack on sustainability

Models / Nature / Visualization

The UN’s three-pronged attack on sustainability

The United Nations may be delivering the most effective attack against sustainability of all. I can only see its three messages below leading people not to change or, if anything, to accelerate business as usual. Message 1: "CODE RED" The United Nations created the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). I see two predominant messages from the UN and IPCC. The first is DANGER DANGER DANGER, or in the words of António Guterres, UN Secretary-General: CODE RED and The evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions are choking our planet & placing billions of people in danger. Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.We must act decisively now to avert a climate catastrophe. and The era of global…

August 2, 2023

Only specify fixing climate and carbon if you want to wreck everything else (forests, biodiversity, rivers, etc) because that happens when you do.

Only specify fixing climate and carbon if you want to wreck everything else (forests, biodiversity, rivers, etc) because that happens when you do.

People talking about the environment focus on climate and carbon. Only talk about climate, carbon, and greenhouse emissions if you want to disregard all other environmental problems because doing so will augment them. The problems result from our behavior, which results from our culture. Don't change our culture and we'll keep lowering Earth's ability to sustain life. Focus only on one symptom and like whack-a-mole, or a stream flowing around a boulder, our culture's demand for energy and growth will degrade everything else if we fix climate change. Talking about climate only will increase the other problems more, and increase our total problems, with rare exception. I recommend only talking about fixing climate and carbon if you deliberately want to degrade everything else.

August 1, 2023

The electric company is texting me to use less electricity, but I’m using none. Stop wasting so much, people.

Addiction / Freedom / Nature

The electric company is texting me to use less electricity, but I’m using none. Stop wasting so much, people.

I closed my account with Con Ed since I wasn't using their power, but apparently Americans are too entitled and can't stop themselves. They're complaining and unhappy. I wish I could help them enjoy life more, but the technology they thought brought them comfort and convenience seems to have made them less resilient, happy, healthy, or safe and more addicted, dependent, and petulant. I prefer freedom to addiction, which I think in 2023 makes me un-American. Sad, I remember it being the other way. Here's the text Con Ed sent: ConEd Alert: We're preparing for the heatwave in your area. Please, limit your energy use between 2 pm and 10 pm to help keep service reliable. If you lose power, reply OUT to get updates.…

July 28, 2023

We’re replacing flowers and grass with plastic. It’s unhealthy and disgusting, not pretty, but apparently I’m the extreme one for having a problem with it.

Nature / Visualization

We’re replacing flowers and grass with plastic. It’s unhealthy and disgusting, not pretty, but apparently I’m the extreme one for having a problem with it.

Restaurants, stores, and playgrounds for kids around me put up plastic flowers and grass to make things look pretty, but plastic is the opposite of flowers and grass. If it hasn't hit you, take a moment to ponder what we've done. We're replacing lovely, healthy things with what kills them and us. We're accepting the opposite of life and nature in favor of kills nature because of the most superficial resemblance. How do we accept this travesty? It's like someone replaced your child with a Barbie doll or your pet with a Mr. Potato Head. Are we complete idiots? Who is the bigger idiot, the people manufacturing these things, the people buying and putting them up, or the people who fund it by patronizing the…

July 25, 2023

My last electric bill?

Leadership / Nature

My last electric bill?

I posted last week At last, I dropped my electrical utility account. They sent me this bill off-sequence for a smaller amount than usual. Might it be my last electric bill ever? I don't know how far I should extrapolate. I'm sure life will change in ways I can't predict, maybe necessitating reconnecting to the grid. For now, at least, I'm enjoying the freedom, fun, and discovery of keeping my apartment disconnected from the electric grid. I could have disconnected years, maybe decades ago, though I'm not sure when portable batteries and solar panels made it this easy. Well, they're here now so others can do it too.

July 21, 2023

Why we need a constitutional amendment on environmental sustainability

Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Why we need a constitutional amendment on environmental sustainability

The United States has a Bill of Rights in its Constitution guaranteeing several freedoms around religion, speech, the press, bearing arms, search and seizure, speedy trials, and a few others. Imagine you woke up to headlines that for some technicality no one had noticed for over two centuries, the Bill of Rights had been improperly processed and turned out it was invalid. That is, imagine the Bill of Rights didn't exist. The government could write laws limiting religion, speech, the press, bearing arms, and so on far more than before. People and corporations with power would see a sudden opportunity to gain power by encroaching on rights you thought you had. The government could take over the media and churches. It could stop you from…

July 19, 2023

A new record for plastic water bottles: Disgusting and totally unnecessary. Pure pollution, no benefit.

A new record for plastic water bottles: Disgusting and totally unnecessary. Pure pollution, no benefit.

In February I took pictures of a Fiji water bottle littered after a few sips drunk, despite water fountains within a few steps. Someone paid to extract oil, refine it into plastic, use it to ship water---WATER!---around the world, so they could drink a few sips and pollute our world with the plastic. That post was Disgusting and totally unnecessary. Pure pollution, no benefit. Check it out if you want to vomit. The other day, I found a new record. Another Fiji bottle, this time with not even a few sips taken. the bottle was smaller, but the amount drunk less. To clarify, in case you can't tell from the picture, the lid has been open and some water consumed. No one can drink the…

July 10, 2023

Nature surviving: the blue jay that visits my rooftop

Nature surviving: the blue jay that visits my rooftop

I mostly post about lost nature, but here's a post on its resilience: a blue jay that visits my rooftop. I'm not a bird watcher, but who doesn't love colorful birds? Growing up in Philadelphia, I saw blue jays all the time. Blue birds were less common and disappeared over the course of my childhood. In Manhattan, pigeons and house sparrows comprise nearly all bird species. Sometimes I'll see a starling, hawk, or gull. As human population and consumption keeps overshooting what Earth can sustain, other species suffer. This blue jay doesn't wait around for me to take its picture so I only have a few quick shots. I'll post more if they come. As much as I wrote this post to celebrate a part…

July 8, 2023

Another month, zero kilowatt-hours: June 2023

Another month, zero kilowatt-hours: June 2023

Sometimes I wonder if I should stop posting my zero kilowatt-hour electric bills, but if I had had a role model I would have done it earlier. Someday some people will join. It's hardly extreme to do what every human being who ever lived did until a century ago and may still do. It's extreme to think, "well we live healthier than they did" and other myths and not care about hurting others. We need more role models, not more excuses, rationalizations, and justifications.

July 8, 2023

Economists don’t know what they’re talking about needing growth but they won’t admit it.

Leadership / Nature

Economists don’t know what they’re talking about needing growth but they won’t admit it.

Bill McKibben wrote about economic growth yesterday in the New Yorker, asking "To Save the Planet, Should We Really Be Moving Slower? The degrowth movement makes a comeback." He referred to a 2020 New Yorker piece "Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?." The latter piece nearly exclusively looked at how economists looked at growth. Why should we listen to economists? Is it a science? Consider physics. In 1896, the renowned physicist William Thomson said about controlled heavier-than-air flight: I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. Thomson is better known today as Lord Kelvin for the title he held. If you've heard of the temperature…

July 6, 2023

A Role Model for Our Times: Aristides de Sousa Mendes, fired for saving thousands of refugees from Nazis

Freedom / Leadership / Models / Nature

A Role Model for Our Times: Aristides de Sousa Mendes, fired for saving thousands of refugees from Nazis

Failures of imagination and leadership in sustainability are the hallmarks of our time. They mean that when even sustainably-minded people try to imagine people with political or business authority acting for sustainability, they can't think past how to make sustainability profitable or get votes. I'm going to lead CEOs to see themselves as humans first, CEOs second---politicians, journalists, celebrities, and so on too. Oskar Schindler didn't save those Jews from the Nazis because it was good for business. Robert Carter III didn't free the most slaves in America before the Civil War "to do well by doing good." They weren't used by their businesses to do what the businesses wanted, like more profit by local practices of Nazism and slavery; they used their businesses to…

July 1, 2023

Speed reading bedtime stories to your kids: Some things don’t benefit from making more efficient

Freedom / Nature / Relationships

Speed reading bedtime stories to your kids: Some things don’t benefit from making more efficient

We thoughtlessly value efficiency and chase it places it doesn't make sense. I call it Speed reading bedtime stories to your kids. It makes sense: if you read your kids bedtime stories faster, you can move on to other things. Or rather, it obviously doesn't. Yet we do it with takeout food, doof, packaging, social media instead of spending time with people in person, flying around the world when there's infinite wonder, beauty, and diversity under our noses. Speed reading bedtime stories to your kids achieves the opposite goal we want. So do all the other things. The Opposite: Spending the Time the Relationship Takes With Those We Love If you think it's privileged to spend time with people you love, you don't understand how…

June 30, 2023

What it means to want to say to your kids “I did my best”

What it means to want to say to your kids “I did my best”

I've heard parents say about the environment "I want to be able to look my child in the eye and say 'I did my best.'" I think it means something darker than they mean, and that they know it, but won't acknowledge it consciously. I will. When do you say such a thing? Not when things are fine. If the problem is solved, you don't have to say something like this. So you say it when things are bad, but not just bad, as bad as they can get. If you think things will improve or aren't that bad, you don't have to say it. You say it when you, they, or both are at risk of dying. You say it when the aquifer or…

June 29, 2023

Another case where people see the problem as a solution, so keep stepping on the gas: Population Growth

Education / Nature

Another case where people see the problem as a solution, so keep stepping on the gas: Population Growth

Most times governments intervene in population, they push population growth. Why? Because they believe more people means more workers and consumers, which they believe will create jobs and help everyone. Podcast guest Jane O'Sullivan's 2017 paper "The contribution of reduced population growth rate to demographic dividend" concludes that population growth costs more than it benefits. It requires paying for infrastructure and more. She points out that lowering population growth were "not driven by economic advance but by voluntary family planning programs, and that these transitions generated enormous economic benefits for adopting countries." In other words, we shouldn't be pushing economic growth if we want to stabilize or lower population growth, but deliberate voluntary family planning programs. People did so in the 1970s, but stopped. By…

June 27, 2023

LGBTQ+ People’s Garbage and Leaving It Worse Than You Found It: The Pride and Queer Liberation Marches 2023

Nature / Visualization

LGBTQ+ People’s Garbage and Leaving It Worse Than You Found It: The Pride and Queer Liberation Marches 2023

Here's a preview of my annual pictures of Washington Square Park after the Pride March and Queer Liberation March. More pictures and commentary below. Also, pictures from last year: After the Pride and Queer Liberation Marches 2022: Washington Square Park wrecked again. I could cry. and the year before: “Pride Destroyed the Park”, Washington Square Park after a parade (Video). The camera can't capture the smell of urine and already-rotting garbage, but at least organic waste decomposes. The plastic takes centuries to. By the way, in case it isn't obvious, this post isn't about people's sexuality or preference. It's about equality, fairness, and love, not least to and for the people on the receiving end of the pollution and depletion in these pictures, as well…

June 26, 2023

35 Years Ago Today: Global Warming was front page news on the New York Times. Maybe Exxon knew. From then on, YOU DID TOO.

Awareness / Nature

35 Years Ago Today: Global Warming was front page news on the New York Times. Maybe Exxon knew. From then on, YOU DID TOO.

On June 24, 1988, the New York Times posted in its front page: Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate You can say corporations and governments hid the problem from us, but not after June 24, 1988. From then on, we had no excuse to say we didn't know. We already knew of habitat loss, deforestation, plastic pollution, and tons of other problems. I'm curious, though. What are your excuses for not acting, even though they don't hold water? Why still cling to them? You'll feel better when you stop buying packaged food, air conditioning all the time, living in a bigger home than you need, and so on.

June 24, 2023

What’s special about 436?

Freedom / Nature / Stories

What’s special about 436?

While reading ProPublica's story How a Grad Student Uncovered the Largest Known Slave Auction in the U.S., I came across these paragraphs about Lauren Davila finding a newspaper ad from 1835 announcing someone having sold 600 slaves in one auction: A sale of 600 people would mark a grim new record—by far. Until Davila’s discovery, the largest known slave auction in the U.S. was one that was held over two days in 1859 just outside Savannah, Georgia, roughly 100 miles down the Atlantic coast from Davila’s home. At a racetrack just outside the city, an indebted plantation heir sold hundreds of enslaved people. The horrors of that auction have been chronicled in books and articles, including The New York Times’ 1619 Project and “The Weeping…

June 24, 2023

Nonstop Rain Forecast. Avoiding Plugging In. Will I Make It a Week?

Habits / Nature

Nonstop Rain Forecast. Avoiding Plugging In. Will I Make It a Week?

I last plugged anything into an outlet, even at NYU, April 29, as I wrote in Plug in again or work less?. That day was my second time plugging in since March 13, as I wrote in One month without even my “cheat” of plugging in at work. Then both batteries died. Today, one battery is dead, at the manufacturer to be fixed. I want to keep my streak of not even plugging in at work alive, but I'm facing my first forecast with no sunny days in a while. What will I do? Forecasts can be wrong, so maybe one day will turn sunny, but I can't rely on hope. It's summer, which means delicious vegetables that don't need cooking, so I won't use…

June 22, 2023

Tragic News About Flying

Addiction / Habits / Nature

Tragic News About Flying

Three recent headlines on flying, all tragic: Boeing sees $8 trillion jet market as climate reshapes travel Airbus Predicts Asia to Lead Air Traffic Boom in Coming Decades Will travelling by plane ever be carbon neutral? Researchers have their doubts You don't need to read the articles. The headlines tell you all you need to know, especially when you know that when a headline asks a question, the answer is no. In this case, the third article recounts research clarifying that flying will never be carbon neutral. My comments, responding to that question: Not only is there no sign it will be carbon neutral, its greatest problems are beyond carbon. What cars have done to cities, planes do to nations. They tear communities and families…

June 21, 2023

The simple, obvious solution

Leadership / Nature

The simple, obvious solution

You've read things like "Rich Countries Must Help Global South Transition to Post-Fossil-Fuel Future" with claims that "they see how we live, they know we got here by polluting, they have every right to want to live like us, and we have no right to deny them." People commonly frame the problem as needing to help them create energy systems that are clean, leapfrogging us like a country that never had many landlines going straight to cell phones. They'll go straight to solar and wind, which they wrongly call renewable and wrongly believe can sustain a nation's economy. Well, if you know the limitations of those power sources and how much they pollute, you know they can't replace fossil fuels and if we tried, we'd…

June 15, 2023

I want to give up every day. That’s the value of acting in service of innocent people suffering. What motivates more?

Leadership / Nature / Relationships

I want to give up every day. That’s the value of acting in service of innocent people suffering. What motivates more?

A colleague wrote about how she used to act more but now feels like giving up. I responded What you wrote reminds me of how I feel nearly every day. I can't say I feel the same as you, but I know the numbers and projections. I see the overwhelming majority of humans not acting -- an even greater majority of Americans. Many revel in not trying. Many of those who try give up. Many of those who try adopt counterproductive strategies from innocent misunderstanding to outright greenwashing. Handling the feelings and responses from seeing these problems is why I stress the value of personal experience. Trying to live more sustainably in a culture that at best gives lip service to it but largely ignores…

June 14, 2023

The disaster that is Elon Musk

Leadership / Nature

The disaster that is Elon Musk

It's tempting to think because we feel we're acting, or that someone else is, that we're acting effectively. I'll share a post I responded to, then my response to it on a discussion board of people supporting degrowth. The other person's post I've been a nut case environmentalist before the first Earth Day and sported a ZPG sticker on my Supervan at the time. A couple months ago I would have agreed we're up shits creek. Tesla Master Plan 3 was unveiled showing a clear path to a fossil fuel free world using 1% of global GDP for 10 years. A white paper followed giving the plan in fine detail, it's a must read for anyone who wants to know what the real solutions need…

June 13, 2023

Teach THIS generation, not the next one

Education / Leadership / Nature

Teach THIS generation, not the next one

I constantly hear people saying teaching the next generation will solve our environmental problems. They're sloughing their problems onto others, abdicating responsibility. Nobody taught older generations today to wreck the environment. I learned to protect it so presume most others were taught so too. Most people continue wrecking the environment. It didn't work for us. Why should we think it will work for them? I learned "leave it better than you found it." I don't know a single adult who lives this way. If we ever say "leave it better than you found it" anymore, we don't practice it. If we tell, or lecture, children to do what we don't, we're just teaching them to learn "the environment is one of those things grown-ups tell…

June 10, 2023

Imagine a team where each teammate believed they would choke when it counted. That’s us with sustainability.

Leadership / Nature

Imagine a team where each teammate believed they would choke when it counted. That’s us with sustainability.

In sustainability, most people I talk to see living more sustainable as making their lives worse. That is, when I ask people if they can imagine a world where everyone lives sustainably, they can't. If I ask them to try, they think of dystopic or Stone Age wastelands. Many only see sustainability as not seeing family or exacerbating inequities (it does the opposite, polluting and depleting cause those things). If we think a path will lead to failure, we'll sabotage ourselves before failing. In sports, we call it choking. If everyone thinks they'll choke, the team will likely choke. Teammates will sabotage the team's success. That situation describes our culture today. A way out is for someone like a coach or leader to help people…

June 9, 2023

Another zero kilowatt-hour month: May 2023

Another zero kilowatt-hour month: May 2023

You can do it too. Have you tried?

June 8, 2023

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