We’re entering Christmas season, when Christians in the U.S. celebrate with a clearly pagan ritual of celebrating a birth in Bethlehem with chopping down fir trees. Presumably this tradition began in northern Europe, unrelated to the middle east. I propose instead of celebrating birth with death and mixing paganism in with Christianity, recognizing that cutting down trees was not likely ever appropriate, but not now. Look at this mess from[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

I hope I don’t embarrass my mom with this post. I’m not sure how she feels about me scavenging food from others, though I learned composting from her. When I drop off my food scraps for composting, I see from what’s in the bins that people waste tons of perfectly good food. The bins mostly contain scraps of inevitable parts of plants. As a non-coffee drinker, I’m always surprised at[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

Following up my last two posts, on my recent sailing lesson, we ended up in Newport, Rhode Island. The others wanted to go to a boat show held there that week. Our skipper/teacher had hosted a booth there for years, though not this year. I was open to going but didn’t want to do something big and commercial that much. One of the other crew members told me about Newport’s[…] Keep reading →

I don’t know who is making this graffiti with my name on it, but I’m not complaining about it. I wonder who King Joshua is: Apparently someone else wonders too: I also didn’t color it red, nor remember seeing concrete etchings filled in like that before. Others are keeping it simple, I guess someone born thirty-one years ago. I was in college in 1992. EDIT: Another sighting, this time on[…] Keep reading →

The United Nations may be delivering the most effective attack against sustainability of all. I can only see its three messages below leading people not to change or, if anything, to accelerate business as usual. Message 1: “CODE RED” The United Nations created the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). I see two predominant messages from the UN and IPCC. The first is DANGER DANGER DANGER, or in the words[…] Keep reading →