I was looking up indigenous cultures from New Guinea and stumbled on this video. It looks like it’s showing a lovely, diverse place to expand your horizons if you’re a wealthy American or European. Every bit of of it destroys the cultures and environment it purports to celebrate. It’s the insouciance I described in colonial cultures in Insouciance, colonialism, and sustainability. The travel the woman in the video presents is[…] Keep reading →

People keep misunderstanding carbon offsets. It’s simple when you see that there are two carbon cycles. Fuel we burn for jets comes from outside the biosphere. On any human timescale, it’s new carbon. It adds to CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases as well as ocean acidification and other environmental problems. Planting trees or anything short of putting carbon out of the biosphere for all human time scales just shuffles[…] Keep reading →

In preparation for recording a second podcast episode with Dr. Michael Greger of Nutritionfacts.org, I tracked what I ate for 24 hours. I didn’t plan or do anything differently. I still have no fridge or power from the electric grid, nor do I cook with gas. I do use the pressure cooker powered by my solar panels. The last time I tracked twenty-four hours of ingredients was February, for comparison.[…] Keep reading →

The title asks it all, but I’ll make it more poignant. Say I blow cigarette smoke in a baby’s face. Shocking, isn’t it? Horrible. Unconscionable. Probably criminal, like assault. But if I burn tons of jet fuel to visit the Amazon under the guise of ecotourism, people seem to view it as healthy. How is this difference possible? You could say because blowing smoke in someone’s face is directed. Still,[…] Keep reading →

Today is a regular day working on the my building’s roof, charging my battery. At this moment in the sky I count 5 helicopters, 4 planes, and zero birds. There are almost always more planes and helicopters in view than birds here. Should there be more birds or planes and helicopters? As for sound, I hear, as I always do, my building’s heater/chiller for its heating and air conditioning making[…] Keep reading →

When I talk about not flying, people talk about themselves and what they want, never about the people and wildlife displaced from their land for the minerals, fuel, and airports, nor the people and wildlife who suffer from the pollution. When I talk about drunk driving, they don’t talk about what the driver wants, they talk about people they might hurt. When I talk about smoking indoors, they don’t talk[…] Keep reading →

When I mention shopping at a food coop—a grocery store where the shoppers are the owners and workers—people kept saying not everyone had access to coops. I wondered why they suggested they were a privilege. I know there aren’t as many food coops as supermarkets and bodegas, but I didn’t understand why they acted like people without access were helpless. At last I realized people saying such things didn’t know[…] Keep reading →