Nature

Do you consider acting on the environment hopeless? Even if you don't consciously, many people don't bother trying, feeling that if they change but industries don't or billions of other people don't then what's the point? Success stories Several other large social changes have happened in my lifetime that suggest that change of the scale in time frame that addressing various climate issues needs is possible. Remember that climate change, pollution, litter, ocean acidification, extinctions, resource depletion, overpopulation, and so on are different issues. I'll list a few examples that encourage me. Before you tell me how different the examples are, I know. No two cases are identical. Each takes different strategies, motivations, and so on. My point isn't to say these things are identical.…

I realized another delicious reason to join a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture, which means a deal where you pay a farm a flat annual fee in return for a delivery each week of that week's produce. I've written about the structure before and my CSA's farm, Stoneledge Farm. Visiting it is one of my summers' highlights. The benefit The farm succeeds when more people want to subscribe. Most people resubscribe. People resubscribe when the food is delicious, fresh, and varied, motivating the farmers to grow food that's Delicious, Fresh, and varied. Farms whose produce sells in supermarkets don't have that incentive. They're motivated to grow food that Can stand shipping, Looks colorful, and Lasts longer on shelves. CSA produce, in my experience,…

Some environmental reading led me to a web page---The Global Footprint Network---that calculates your ecological footprint from your answers to questions about how you live your life. Go to the page and calculate yours if you want. I don't know their assumptions or methods, so I can't speak to its accuracy. With neither shame nor pride, I present my results: I seem to use less than many---little enough to leave plenty of nature for everyone else, though not if the population keeps growing. When I calculate my ecological footprint including a few flights per year, which I'm not doing now but used to, it rises above 1.0 Earths per year. I find lowering my impact improved my life, though I didn't think it would at…

Anyone who has been stuck in a traffic jam has thought how an extra lane would open traffic and undo the jam. Anyone who has studied traffic knows that creating more lanes creates more traffic, not less. More efficient technology tends to increase consumption People think of technology as making things more efficient. More efficiency should lower power use, right? Sometimes it does, but in the long run in many cases it leads to increased overall use, as traffic does. In the case of efficiency, it's called Jevon's Paradox, after a guy who noticed in the 1860s that more efficient coal-based steam engines led to using more coal. You may think efficiency should solve problems, not increase them. Nice theory, but when observation and theory…

In my 20s and 30s, in Manhattan, I went to the latest gallery openings and clubs. I even showed my art there and hung out with world-famous DJs. I considered what I did sophisticated and valuable. Maybe because I'm older, maybe because I'm wiser, a main highlight of me summer these days is visiting the farm where my farm-share food comes from. I ate tons of tomatilloes and cherry tomatoes fresh from the stalk or vine. There was a potluck lunch where they served corn picked that morning. I brought one of my famous vegetable stews, made with vegetables from that farm. People somehow brought a lot of store-bought cookies, brownies, chips, and so on. How they decided to bring store-bought processed junk to a…