Nature

You know Godwin's Law, right? It says: As an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1. It has a corollary that Whoever makes the comparison loses the debate. Well, I'm stating a similar law about discussions on the environment, Spodek's Law: In a discussion on the environment, anyone who bases their point on an economist is wrong. First things first: I'm not comparing economists to Hitler. That should appear obvious since it is, but I'm clarifying it anyway. I also concede that exceptions will exist, as in all laws, but fewer than you'd think. Also, I'm partly joking. The more I read and learn about economists' views on the environment, the…

One of my graduate school professors told us the following way to remember the natural logarithm/exponential number e to 20 decimal places, which I'll share with you what some scientists consider fun. I forget which professor told us, but I think I was at Penn, which means 1993-94. He only told us once. It stuck effortlessly, so I consider it effective. And fun. How to remember e to 20 decimal places Everyone remembers 2.7. Years you can chunk as a single number, so with the year 1828, you get the next eight digits because it repeats: 18281828. So remembering one number gives you: 2.718281828 Next remember 45, which gets you the next eight digits because you double it, then repeat it, then halve it: 45904523.…

Some parts of a world I predict we'll see as we grow more sustainable: We'll live closer to our close families. We'll feel less craving. Marketers won't try to sell us stuff all the time. Billboards will disappear. We'll play sports in person more than watching them on TV, without athletes flying all over. We'll write, paint, and participate in civic activities more. We'll eat to full every meal from going back to eating how our ancestors did, much more vegetables. They're delicious and low in calories. so we get to enjoy eating more. We'll know our farmers from buying from people closer to us. We'll bike a lot more. Now Americas say biking is hard and depends on the weather, but whatever weather we…

Look at these results from searching "young people don't want kids": 9 Brutally real reasons why millennials refuse to have kids11 brutally honest reasons millenials don't want kids17 Reasons People Never Want To Have ChildrenMillennials Aren't Having Kids. Here's Why That's A ...10 Reasons Why People Want Kids (and 10 Reasons They Don't ...Americans Are Having Fewer Babies. They Told Us Why. - The ... The list goes on. The articles list many reasons, but overpopulation, the environment, and degrading hopes for a better life rank highly. It wasn't always this way. I doubt it was ever this way except in war, and maybe even not then, or at least it changed when the war ended. The environment won't improve for thousands of years. How…

Headlines keep reporting how much more wind and solar power we're producing, how much batteries are improving, and how fast their costs are dropping. Providing new sources of energy is important, but history has shown that when we find new sources of energy, we use them and keep using the old ones. As great as the problem that fossil fuels will run out, burning them poisons our planet, lowering its ability to sustain life. So does turning them into plastics, artificial fertilizers, poisonous chemicals, and more. If we don't stop using them, they will kill us. Did that sound too blunt? Nearly ten million people die each year from breathing air. Fossil fuels kill us in other ways too, on top of global warming. In…

If you haven't heard of the book Bullshit Jobs, here's Wikipedia's description: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history. You probably know a lot of people with bullshit jobs. A while ago I saw a…

I wish marketers had more integrity. They can't let you be. They jam up your anxieties, fears, craving, and emotional intensity to override your thoughtful reflection. Not that it's new or the biggest problem in the world, but they try to call everything they can a superfood. You probably know the term has no definition. Blueberries and amla are nice, but they're just plants. Nothing super about them. The problem is food-like products at the other end of the spectrum. The problem The problem with calling regular foods superfoods is that it implies you're eating healthier than you are. It's like vanity sizing, where clothing companies call clothing a smaller size so people trying them on think they're more fit than they are. Blueberries are…

Regular readers know I work to communicate effectively with groups that don't know or act much on sustainability. My goal is to lead them to where they want to act for their own reasons, expecting success. I've succeeded with conservatives and evangelicals. Other groups are more challenging. Geeky communities like Slashdot and Hacker News tend to like nuclear, escaping to Mars, and other tech-based solutions. They seem to miss unintended side effects and systemic effects. They love efficiency but don't see that you can make part of a system more efficient, lower pollution in one part of the system, but increase it overall. They treat colonizing Mars as inevitable and easy, but lowering consumption as impossible. Space is paradise to them while fresh fruits and…

Asbestos, leaded gasoline, and marketing cigarettes to children made a lot of money. If you believe profitable sales mean a fair trade of money for products or services, therefore improving the world, they were good. Whatever their benefits, they also killed people. I don't know anyone who argues we should let markets alone regulate selling cigarettes to children. Nearly everyone agrees on laws regulating putting lead in gas. Your IQ is probably lower as a result of all the lead leaded gas put into the air. Today people say, "Plastic has its problems but its so useful we can't do without it." Future generations will recoil in horror at the time we're taking to ban at least the single-use stuff. We've effectively filled the ocean…

Hitler was vegetarian. If you want to work on sustainability, you will face people pointing out this history. They don't point out that he also promoted larger families, but many feel like it checkmates all cases for changing diet. Beyond diet, I've talked a lot about population since reading podcast guest Alan Weisman's Countdown and learning of guest Mechai Viravaidya's lowering Thailand's birth rate through purely voluntary, often fun, means. I knew human population affected all our environmental problems since reading Limits to Growth, but declined to talk about it because I thought controlling population could only result in One Child policy-like disasters. What about eugenics and ecofascism? I thought ecofascism was a slur at people who hug trees. It turns out many fascists and…