Visualization

You can't stop the global heroin trade if you're worried about your own supply. This post is about people who are addicted, perhaps without realizing it or in denial, to behavior causing others to suffer and die finding themselves impotent to change others. They haven't tried to change themselves so they don't know what change takes. Would you take piano lessons from someone who read a lot of books on music theory but never played a scale, let alone music? I wrote before about attending Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Training. I took these pictures to illustrate how (as best I can tell) most attendees weren't trying to live sustainably. Maybe it wasn't most people, but plenty of attendees flew in, including from other continents.…

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 similar belief. We should be careful if they are similar because "rain follows the plow" led to the Midwest becoming a dust bowl and many parts of Midwestern agriculture becoming, according to Cadillac Desert, "the country’s foremost examples of socialism for the rich." Regarding infinite population growth, in the words of the economist Julian Simon:…

I recently watched Richard Attenborough's Gandhi movie. I often pass the Gandhi statue around the corner from my home in Union Square. The other day I saw that someone honored Gandhi's legacy with an empty beer can at his feet. I'm sure Gandhi would have loved the tribute. Or maybe our culture could use reminding of its lost values of stewardship and personal responsibility that might restore meaning and purpose to our lives. I mean, I could be wrong: maybe throwing empty cans from beer drunk in a park at the foot of statues honoring historical figures who advanced freedom, equality, democracy, and compassion improves the world more than I imagine. Maybe I'm rushing to judgment. Maybe the empty can and the Staples store in…

I don't use Instagram so even though I took only a few pictures, I'm posting them here. I'm not claiming they're great pictures. I just snapped them in the morning. First, on a Friday at 6:45am, the sky was red. The camera seems to have adjusted it to less red, but you can mostly tell. It was redder a few minutes before. I noticed it while I was doing calisthenics. I usually try to avoid interrupting them, but the sky was returning to normal. A few days later, which is now a few days ago, I woke up to a some light snow. Sorry the window is dirty, but precipitation does that and it was too cold to open the window to clean it.

Just after my last post on the waste and disgust of Christmas Pagan trees being thrown away, I saw tons more. Look at how something to celebrate the birth of their lord, savior, and messiah they throw into the gutter. Stay classy, Christians! Want to bet if there will be enough more to come for a future post? More, each telling its own story of death, pollution, and garbage. The book I just finished, The Overstory, said that America's old-growth forests are down 95 to 98 percent. Monocultures can't replace them or how much they helped human and wild life.

Before I was born, the image of Earth from space changed not just a generation, but forever how humans saw the Earth and ourselves. It's hard for me to imagine how seeing that image affected people seeing it for the first time. Here's one: Here's another: Projected images after sea-level rise Can you imagine how we'll feel about the Earth and ourselves after more sea-level rise? I'm sure you've seen images like the ones below. If you're like me, you think about them in the abstract, wondering if that outcome is really possible. It's not just possible. It's likely. Try to imagine actually seeing maps change like this. Imagine future generations knowing there was once more Florida but we wouldn't stop ourselves indulging despite knowing…

I like free markets. I wish we had them, but as far as meat is concerned, we don't seem to. Here is a chart of Subsidies for Meat Production From Industrialized Countries (OECD Members), Estimates for 2012, in Billions of Dollars. Can we end this corporate welfare? And here are Current Worldwide Annual Meat Consumption per capita. I didn't realize the U.S. would stand out so much. I thought Brazil and Argentina ranked higher. I may not eat meat, but I don't see a problem with hunter gatherer cultures eating meat. We seem to be on a whole other scale, especially considering how much we factory farm.