The biggest pushes I see among environmentalists and everyone trying to solve environmental problems are to promote Their hope in these efforts is to lower fossil fuel uses. I support their intent, though not their unintended consequences. Does anyone else see the problems? None of these tactics stop using or extracting fossil fuels. Making anything that uses fossil fuels more efficient doesn’t stop using them. It may use them less[…] Keep reading →

Several bestselling authors on the environment suggest that people solve problems, so more people solve more problems. They conclude that we should keep growing the population. A century and a half ago people believed “rain follows the plow.” They created what looked like science proving that settlers moving west across North America creating farms would cause rain to fall more. To me, “more people solve more problems” looks like a[…] Keep reading →

When I started graduate school in physics at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the faculty members in the department confused the students. He didn’t confuse us with complex science. He was a world leader in his subject, but the subject was tennis—the physics of tennis. I studied there in 1993-94. When the professor, Howard Brody, died, the New York Times published his obituary, Howard Brody, an Expert in the[…] Keep reading →

Everyone talks about our ancestors like they struggled for food. Many people believe we store fat well because our ancestors didn’t know when they’d next eat. Maybe they look at surviving hunting and gathering cultures and see less food than in their local supermarket. Look at nature, though. Animals and plants aren’t starving all the time. On the contrary, places that aren’t frozen, desert, or that we’ve paved over abound[…] Keep reading →

Environmentalists talk about the possibility of a future collapse. They talk about the harm happening far away. I don’t want to take away from those problems and risks, but they are missing what’s happening here and now with all of us. We can’t look our children in the eye and tell them they’ll live in a safer, healthier, more secure world. Since we can’t, we tell them what we do[…] Keep reading →

Since I’ve learned to love fresh vegetables and fruit, I’ve come to learn the restaurants hate them. Caterers do too. An ex-girlfriend once commented that she couldn’t go to restaurants with me because I complained too much that they covered everything in salt, sugar, and fat (more on that complaint below). I attended an event today that was catered. Everything was vegan, which a lot of people interpret to mean[…] Keep reading →

Regular readers know what most people call “Christmas trees” I call by the more accurate name “Christmas pagan trees” because they come from pagan tradition. I document how many people pay for chopping down trees to use for a few days or weeks, then throw away just before or after Christmas. Today, May 11, I saw another on the curb for trash collection—a testament to how many trees we kill[…] Keep reading →