Nature

Folks, I'm not looking for them. People are throwing so many trees before Christmas, what am I supposed to do, act like they aren't there? Am I supposed to accept that we chop down trees just to put them in our homes for a few days, not even connected to the holiday they aren't connected to? Doesn't this one look beautiful, wrapped in disgusting plastic? What a way to honor your lord and savior for bringing peace to the world. Are these three any less disgusting? There was one more, but taking pictures at night in the cold, the picture didn't come out and I didn't realize until I got home.

I guess people think we have too many trees, or maybe they have too much money. I'm not looking for trees people throw away before Christmas, but I can't miss them. I figure they're like roaches: if you see one, there are probably ten others you don't see. I saw these four last night: Sorry for the blur in the second one below. It was dark and cold.

Readers who have followed my blog over a year know that for the past few years I've taken pictures of the trees people throw out on the street. Since history shows that the tradition that Americans associate with Christmas came from paganism, and I'm concerned people who complain about "wars" on Christmas or Christians, I call them Christmas Pagan trees. That way if someone quotes me about how we can change this tradition without attacking Christians' faith, they can see I'm not waging war on Christianity, but on something borrowed from paganism. To clarify, I have no problem with paganism either. I do have a problem with people cutting down trees for reasons even they don't believe in. Everyone knows we have environmental problems. More…

The building with the clock tower in the picture below is my local public library. The iron fence behind the guy in the white hat encloses a park behind the library. It had two crab apple trees in it. As far as I could tell, nobody else knew it produced crab apples. The branches were higher than you could reach or even see the crab apples since they were the size of grapes. Still, the fruit would drop to the ground in the fall. Little yellow crab apples would cover the ground. I would collect them and eat them. I suspect most Americans wouldn't like them because of their tang, but I found them plenty sweet. A few months ago I noticed one of the…

This photograph shows a guy employed by a local "business improvement district" to pick up litter, the "BID" on the gray trash bag and his coat/uniform show. How do we reach this level of failure? In principle we shouldn't litter. For that matter, with all the talk about circular economies and reaching "net zero," shouldn't we not produce goods that could become litter? Doesn't New York City have a sanitation department? Let's look at the number of failures of people violating their values, policy, and so on that we reach a private organization picking up litter. People aren't using trash cans The sanitation department isn't cleaning litter. On the contrary, it motivates people creating waste since we paid for it to be cleaned The Business…

I see these plots a fair amount from people on the right. They come from Bjorn Lomborg. They're a straw man and a distraction. Global warming is a problem, but it's one of many. As I've written, I recommend Only specify fixing climate and carbon if you want to wreck everything else (forests, biodiversity, rivers, etc) because that happens when you do. There are other places where our behavior mediated through the environment is killing people by the tens of millions. For example, as I wrote in Why I work on sustainability leadership here and now despite other things I could do instead: The Lancet, one of the most respected medical journals, reports that nine million people have died per year from breathing polluted air…

In a decade of picking up litter daily I've seen about five other people picking up litter. I've seen many litter. Since buying packaged food supports what becomes litter, nearly everyone who buys packaged food or takeout, or shops online causes litter. In the park, I see tons of people bring packaged food then act as if it wasn't their fault when the wind blows their napkins away, they forget a cup or bottle when they leave, or some other way the cause litter. Despite nearly no one picking up litter, someone in my neighborhood took it upon themselves to collect leaves, which are healthy for the environment and life in general, from the sidewalk, wrap them in plastic bags that otherwise wouldn't have been…