Pollution and Depletion Archives - Page 4 of 4

Two months of Christmas pagan trees, hundreds of trees, thrown away

Here is a video showing a bunch of trees people bought to celebrate the birth of their lord and savior, in a tradition unrelated to that birth, borrowed from paganism. Instead of celebrating birth, they are actual death. Apparently people believe we have too many trees and forests. I love tradition. We don't keep alive every tradition ever. People used to practice infanticide. Should we keep practicing it for tradition? We can create new traditions or, for that matter, restore ones from before Christians borrowed pagan ones. They mulched all those trees before a second load formed. Here's what it looked like between. Here's a second load: Those trees were just the ones people took the time and effort to be mulched. Here are about…

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February 6, 2026

Nature / Pollution and Depletion

Criticism of Lomborg: The Lomborg Deception and other challenges

I finished a few papers, books, and videos by Bjorn Lomborg lately, as well as books that refer to or rely on his work, like Superabundance and The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. I follow up most books and movies I finish and find meaningful by reading and watching reviews, commentaries, criticisms (positive, negative, and other), and more. My criticism of Lomborg's work stands independent of the accuracy of his claims. That is, even if everything he writes is accurate, I think it misunderstands the problem. My upcoming book presents my view. Sorry to make you wait for it (initial responses from readers are positive, but they're friends and colleagues so may be biased, though since I'm asking for what I should fix, they know…

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January 29, 2026

Addiction / Doof / Habits / Pollution and Depletion / SIDCHAs

Another time garbage nearly brought me to tears

Two days ago I posted My first time since starting not finding litter in Washington Square Park, because over six inches of snow covered it. Since I committed to picking up at least three pieces per day until three days pass when I can't find three pieces to pick up, I wondered if the snow would make it possible. I also offered to take any bets that people would litter. Nearly everyone is addicted to doof. Few Americans can eat breakfast without depriving others of life, liberty, and property based on plastic, shipping, etc that pollute and deplete. Then yesterday I happened to go early in the morning. It was still snowing and I saw no litter again. Two days. Maybe I shouldn't have offered…

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January 27, 2026

Addiction / Doof / Habits / Pollution and Depletion / SIDCHAs

My first time since starting not finding litter in Washington Square Park, because over six inches of snow covered it.

I've committed to picking up at least three pieces of litter from the northwest corner of Washington Square Park since it became overrun with fentanyl, meth, and all that results from it during the pandemic. I decided I'd keep up the sidcha until three days passed in which I couldn't trivially find three pieces of litter, as I wrote three years ago in On when I should stop picking up litter in Washington Square Park. I wish I could believe that outcome should be easy. No litter is necessary. Yet in about five years, I've never been unable to find three pieces trivially. We should collectively cry. Today, over six inches of snow have fallen, covering the ground and making the benches not places anyone…

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January 25, 2026

Hands on Practical Experience / Nature / Pollution and Depletion

The Coldest Day of the Year

The choice to avoid depriving others of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, even though our government is not enforcing our Constitution, means choosing to pollute and deplete less, which means being more connected to nature and its rhythms. Winter is colder and darker than the rest of the year. The earth's tilt makes it straightforward to know the darkest day of the year: the solstice, December 21. The coldest day of the year comes later. I found a couple reports that it's around now. The map on this page from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Interactive map: Coldest day of the year across the United States, shows that for Central Park, the coldest day of the year was yesterday,…

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January 25, 2026

Pollution and Depletion

Heating the outdoors, pure deadweight loss

I learned the concept of deadweight loss in economics class in business school. From Wikipedia: In economics, deadweight loss is the loss of societal economic welfare due to production/consumption of a good at a quantity where marginal benefit (to society) does not equal marginal cost (to society). Here is a picture of the outside of a bar like probably hundreds of bars and restaurants in New York City and likely thousands across the country. Note what look like glowing red lights. They aren't lights. They're heat lamps. Now note the empty tables beneath them. These lamps are heating the outdoors where nobody is. They are simply burning fossil fuels, polluting and depleting, for no benefit to anyone. As far as I can tell, nobody seems…

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January 24, 2026

Awareness / Hands on Practical Experience / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Perception / Pollution and Depletion

Sustainability basics almost everyone gets backward, twisting them up inside.

Things I've learned from experience: Apples taste sweeter than Ben and Jerry's, though not at first. Broccoli tastes better than Doritos, though not at first. Exercise feels better than heroin, though not at first. Not flying connects you with family more than flying, though not at first. Eating only local foods in season gives you more variety and connects you to more cuisines than foods flown in from anywhere, though not at first. Not flying teaches you more about other cultures and connects you with them than flying, though not at first. More electric cars pollute more than fewer cars, though not at first. More solar, wind, nuclear, and fusion doesn't mean less fossil fuels burned. Making a polluting system more efficient makes it pollute…

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January 18, 2022

Models / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Pollution and Depletion / Visualization

Know the 2 carbon cycles and don’t confuse them.

Can we grow enough forests and use enough regenerative agriculture to sequester enough carbon to undo global warming? To answer this question you have to understand the two carbon cycles. I'm simplifying, but you can think of two different cycles of carbon. One is the regular life cycle of carbon-based life forms. When something lives, it contains carbon, including trees, humans, and everything living in dirt and the oceans. When a plant or animal dies, it decomposes and its carbon returns to the rest of the environment. If you've read about the Amazon rain forest becoming a source of atmospheric carbon, that result illustrates this effect. The other is the Earth's pressure pushing life underground and turning it to oil. I'll illustrate the two cycles.…

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July 25, 2021

My Favorite Posts / Nature / Pollution and Depletion / Visualization

“Pride Destroyed the Park”, Washington Square Park after a parade (Video)

Following up my last video on what American culture is doing to what could be one of its jewels, here is a shorter, punchier view of Washington Square Park today. The quote, "Pride Destroyed the Park," comes from a woman who stopped me while I was taking pictures to tell me the park had 10 times more garbage a few hours earlier. Several people told me so. You can see teams of people cleaning it, around 9:30am. It is not a sanitation issue. It is not just a parade issue. It doesn't matter who was in the parade. You can make a difference. You need never buy bottled water, soda, takeout, or nearly any packaged food again in your life, starting this moment. https://youtu.be/-P0VcMekbO4 EDIT:…

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June 28, 2021

My Favorite Posts / Nature / Pollution and Depletion

It’s Time to Ban Single-Use Packaging: The Village Sun published my op-ed piece

My city is covered with trash. There's no mystery nearly all of it comes from packaging. We used to eat three meals a day and not while we walked. Today, at anyone's slightest whim, we buy doof whose fleeting pleasure we'll forget in moments if we even notice but whose packaging will endure millennia. I said my city, but I could have said my world. The difference between scenes like this picture and the mountains covering the Philippines, Indonesia, and India is only a few years. Unless we start seeing packaging not just for its utility but also for its poison. Leaded gas, asbestos, and marketing cigarettes to children had their benefits too, but they killed people so we legislated them. Future generations will recoil…

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June 14, 2021

Art / Awareness / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Pollution and Depletion / Visualization

Is the best book on pollution and depletion a picture book you can finish in a sitting?

I've read a lot of books on nature. Most focus on facts, figures, and information that don't help. To the extent they provoke emotion, they do so heavyhandedly, lacking genuineness or authenticity. If you're explaining, you're losing, as a former U. S. President said, and most books on nature explain. I just finished a book, Over, which you can review online in its entirety for free. It's mostly a book of photographs. By aesthetic standards like composition, color, line, and form, the photographs are beautiful. Like many great works of art, it says something I knew but in a way I didn't know it could be said. It illuminates my understanding of myself, what human means, nature, beauty, and purpose-level parts of life. By measures…

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February 3, 2021

My Favorite Posts / Nature / Perception / Pollution and Depletion

The cause of our environmental problems, aka “the addiction speaking”

We were born into a world with systems and practices that pollute. I don't see how we can blame past generations for decisions they couldn't have expected to result in our world. Who could have believed when coal first boiled water to steam and that steam created mechanical motion that we could choke the sky with fossil fuel smoke and heat the whole damned planet? Who could have imagined when cars cleared the roads of horse manure that lead in the gasoline powering them would lower your intelligence and mine? Who could have imagined when plastic replaced cruel ivory for making billiard balls that we would fill the whole Pacific Ocean with it, replacing the fish to where they couldn't replace themselves? Yet they did.…

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November 16, 2020

Doof / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Pollution and Depletion

Avoiding food packaging

In the fall of 2014, I noticed a lot of my garbage came from food packaging. I don't like when people pollute my world, so I try to avoid polluting theirs. I thought of an experiment: to try to go one week without buying any food where I'd have to throw away food packaging. For six months I planned and thought about doing it until one day I realized all the planning and thinking wasn't getting me anywhere. I decided to start the week then and there. I knew I wouldn't die. It turns out you succeed more when you act instead of planning for six months. You just go to the store, buy food without packaging, and don't buy food with packaging. You have…

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August 21, 2019

Technology won’t solve environmental issues and you know it

A Watt Steam Engine

Leadership / Models / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Podcast / Pollution and Depletion

Technology won’t solve environmental issues and you know it

EDIT: I recorded a podcast version of this post (episode 63) that covered same views beyond this post: If anything marked the beginning of the industrial revolution, it was James Watt's steam engine. It wasn't the first steam engine, but was more efficient than any before. More efficient means using less energy and less pollution, right? Wrong. Each engine, yes, but more people used engines, so Watt engines used more energy and polluted more than anything. They drained mines, which helped collect more coal, which fed more engines. The direct result is today's polluted world. If you fantasize that technological improvements will, after centuries since the industrial revolution increasing pollution and demand for natural resources somehow, magically, in your lifetime change their effects, you're dreaming.…

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July 13, 2018

More than a year since I emptied my garbage

Me holding a year of garbage

Hands on Practical Experience / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Pollution and Depletion

More than a year since I emptied my garbage

More delicious, more convenient, more social, more food, more satisfaction, less money, less preparation time, more joy. How? Avoiding packaging. Avoiding packing by at least 90% has reduced my garbage to where I empty it less than once per year. Think you can't do it? I'm not special. Anyone can do the same. It took a while to transition---going from emptying garbage weekly to biweekly, to monthly, and so on to annually. It was hard, not impossible, and it improved my life at every step, same as it will with you. I'm aiming for biannually next time. I empty recycling 2 or 3 times per year, since it pollutes too, nearly as much as landfill garbage. Reducing consumption reduces pollution a lot more. And it…

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June 14, 2018