Nature

Another reading from J. B. MacKinnon's Once and Future World -- a glimpse of North America before humans arrived. The book blows me away with how nature used to be. I hope you find it as inspirational as I do. Plus the 100-Mile Diet and Ela Bhatt's Anubandh. She's a longtime family friend who grew up nearly interacting with Gandhi, then achieved worldwide recognition for started groundbreaking organizations in India before working with Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, and other peers. I had lunch with her over the weekend and hope to bring her to the Leadership and the Environment podcast. https://youtu.be/U4NZdciDozI EDIT: I recorded before noticing Ela thanked my dad in the book. Here's his name, mingling with Ela, Nelson, Jimmy, Desmond, Gandhi,…

Today I comment on National Public Radio on Berkley, CA banning gas stoves and Mongolia's industrialization. https://youtu.be/vwDF9DVZcCs

Yesterday was Earth Overshoot Day, the day humans used up for 2019 the resources the Earth takes a year to regenerate. I consider the connotations of being in overshoot, in the language of people who study complex systems like our population. Here's Your Daily Environment, covering overshoot, collapse, aliens, and more. https://youtu.be/3F_V-UhHd8Y And here is the scene from Independence Day I mentioned. https://youtu.be/ZlawibQ_QKI

When I talk about reducing waste, people consistently ask me what I do about a few things more than anything else. Toothbrushes and toilet paper top the list. Why the fixation on them? I'm sure these people order tons of takeout, with its overuse of single-use packaging and containers, drive unnecessarily, eat more meat than nearly anyone in history, and pollute in plenty of other unnecessary ways that even they know they'd prefer. They know they're polluting tons, but they ask about comparative trivialities. Why don't they ask how to take the subway, bike, or take public transportation more? Why don't they ask about taking a stay-cation instead of a vacation? More importantly, they're holding themselves back from meaningful progress to live more harmoniously with…

Today I looked at the National Review. According to the site: "National Review was founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley Jr. as a magazine of conservative opinion. The magazine has since defined the modern conservative movement and enjoys the broadest allegiance among American conservatives." For some reason people associate environmental issues with liberals and the left. We all share the same air, land, and water and we all vote in the same elections, so I consider it imperative to converse with everyone. Near the top of the page I found a story on attitudes and beliefs on climate change from a conservative perspective, though I think the writer meant environmental issues in general, not just climate change. I agree panic will not help maintain…

Considering spraying snow on Antarctica, as Salon reports scientists considering, raises questions about the role of technology regarding our environmental issues. Here are my extemporaneous comments: https://youtu.be/PaZwahQdxIQ For more depth on my point about strategy and tactics, listen to my podcast episode 183: Reusing and recycling are tactical. Reducing is strategic.

Day 002 is on the environment as a moon shot. What is a moon shot? What does it mean for something besides going to the moon to be a moon shot? I talk about what everyone gets wrong about the environment and what we stand to gain by acting on our environmental values even if no one else does. https://youtu.be/fDllbsmHQ1U

We've seen pictures of heavy pollution like this in Beijing: We've seen similar images for New Delhi, Mexico City, and so on. When I talk to people about polluting less, many talk about situations like them and suggest the third world has to clean up more than we do. Concentrations of pollution as high as in the picture above result from geography, like being in a valley where pollution can't escape. What about total amount of pollution? This graph of energy use says it all: We North Americans aren't cleaner by emissions. We just have lucky geography. We don't have to look farther than ourselves to find the greatest sources of pollution. What we could have instead The missing message I'm sharing is the joy,…

Many people concerned about the environment call to overthrow capitalism. This view seems extreme. Others say capitalism is the answer to most problems, including the environment. This view seems equally extreme. In particular, everyone has long known of several problems inherent to a capitalist economic system. Where democracy -- a political system -- has regulated capitalism, societies seem to thrive. I don't see an absolute right, wrong, good, bad, or evil to the extent a society regulates capitalism. I support rules enacted through a democratic process that the people they affect consider fair enough to keep it going. To pick an extreme example, Wikipedia's description of a free market, "In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any…

People use the terms like belief, faith, and the supernatural interchangeably, but they mean different things. A belief, as I understand them, is a mental representation of something. Beliefs are necessary and inevitable. The universe is too large and complex for our minds to take it all in. Our minds take in only what they can. So we think about beliefs about things, not the things themselves, which don't fit in our minds. A mental representation necessarily throws out information and forms based on biases, so all representations are wrong in that they are biased and incomplete. Our minds didn't evolve to be right, but to help our ancestors live and reproduce more than their peers. Faith is a belief without evidence, as I see…