Nature

What fraction of oil ultimately becomes pollution? Or of coal or gas? I'm curious if you can extract oil from the Earth without polluting. We may use the the materials for purposes we value, but what of the material itself? It came from plants originally, but I can almost only think of ways it becomes pollution, not benign. If we make it into plastic, eventually it becomes microplastic and harms us. Gas, jet fuel, and other parts used for fuel eventually become greenhouse gas, but how much? All of it? If not, what fraction? Some may be made into fertilizer. How much of what becomes fertilizer eventually becomes plants? That part sounds like maybe not pollution, though I understand much of the fertilizer spread on…

I've written how trees people buy for Christmas are a pagan tradition in You Don’t Need a “Christmas” Tree—a pagan tradition. A reminder of the waste you can avoid. For some reason, everyone in the world doesn't follow my suggestions to start healthier traditions for Christmas. Instead, they fund the practice of growing Christmas pagan trees to cut them down and send them to landfills or with giant fossil-fuel burning machines, cut them apart into mulch, claimed to be made available for lawns, but I'll be mostly ending up in landfills. I saw my first tree being thrown out this season, believe it or not, on December 24. Why wait for Christmas to throw away the tree? I saw a few more on Christmas and…

Tell most Americans that an airline is investing in "sustainable airplane fuel" and their ability to think critically flies out the window. They'll believe anything you say that will let them tell themselves they can fly sustainably. Likewise with offsets, anything labeled recyclable, recycled, or compostable: people will presume anything is possible if it lets them avoid stopping polluting and depleting. Yet a few things they consider impossible. However much they say value sustainability and denigrate others who don't act as not caring or deniers, the following issues lead them to stop thinking and shut down any more consideration of acting more sustainability. Environmentalists, in particular, don't challenge them, so don't act sustainably. Their resulting lack of integrity, credibility, or knowing what they're talking about…

The Ecomodernist Manifesto talks about "decoupling," meaning growing the economy and population without growing environmental impact. Techno-optimists talk about "green growth" and "closed loops." Just giving an idea a name doesn't make it possible. These concepts have been debunked like cold fusion and perpetual motion machines, yet people like to use them to rationalize and justify business as usual. But the people promoting decoupling, green growth, and closed loops don't believe themselves. If you believe you can grow the economy, population, or both without increasing environmental degradation, it follows that you believe we can decrease extraction without lowering GDP. So you shouldn't mind not extracting fossil fuels or uranium. After all, if they're decoupled or the loop is closed, the economy doesn't need them. Or…

I love people and I love technology. Nobody wants ten billion people enjoying all the technology they want as comfortably and conveniently as they want more than I do. If we do it, we must do it sustainably if we want to avoid collapse, and unfortunately, we are not on that path to do it. If such a future is possible, it’s tempting to keep living as we do and hope someone will make each unsustainable part sustainable. Many of us hope we’ll replace fossil fuels with solar and wind, plastic with something biodegradable, deforestation with vertical farms, and so on. Yet each of these substitutions instead leads to greater consumption—solar panels require more batteries; wind turbines require additional development; and on and on. What…