Visualization

Posting yesterday that Eating something healthy doesn't offset something unhealthy suggested a parallel with polluting. People dream that if they do polluting things, they can do something nonpolluting to average it out, as if carbon offsets or recycling had negative pollution that averaged with flying's positive pollution to zero pollution. Offsets don't negative pollute. They're nice, but they don't put pollution we took from underground back underground permanently. You can't undo drilling fossil fuels from underground. Maybe one day we'll be able to sequester carbon permanently, but we have no such ability today. Potential ways of doing it are far from economical or able to work on the scale we need. I edited yesterday's graphic to illustrate and clarify. It doesn't work exactly as much…

"Everyone could fit in Texas with room to spare," people naively say, as if it was the relevant measure. Sadly, some who hear them don't realize that a person needs a lot more space than just their person. They need farmland to grow their food, water to process their waste, and so on. When you factor all those things in, we need more space than exists on Earth. One big need is for animals we eat. Look at how much more animals we use and therefore take up space with than before. We dominate the Earth. Factor in again that your use of animals almost certainly relied on factory farming, which, besides its cruelty, further erodes Earth's ability to sustain life. So don't listen to…

New York City's Washington Square Park has been in the news for its rampant drug use, partying, and cops alternating between doing nothing and clamping down like riot police. I live around the corner and have gone there daily without fail for over a year to pick up litter, forming relationships with some of the dealers and users. Mostly to perform what I consider a civic duty and what any member of a community would do. As best I can tell, I'm the only person who picks up litter, in contrast to the 75 percent at least who bring packaging that will become litter or contribute to overflowing trash cans whose contents spill out and become litter. I took pictures of my neighborhood and the…

Food started my path to finding that acting on my environmental values improves my life. Before trying, I expected stewardship to feel like a burden or chore. Eating from scratch relieved me of that misperception. Food is delicious so great place to start your journey. A new book came out in the Without the Hot Air Series that began with David J.C. MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, available by free download. I consider it one of the most valuable resources on learning and practicing sustainability. The new book is called Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air. The author, Sarah Bridle, also comes from an astronomy background. It continues the series' presenting the information usefully without sensationalizing it. UK readers can download…

I found this bookmark at my mom's house. She and my stepfather don't remember buying it so my mom figures someone gave it to them. Here's the front. Don't the flowers look pretty? When I was a kid we'd sometimes pick flowers or leaves and press them between pages of books, so making a bookmark of them makes sense. They aren't flowers, though. They're pictures of flowers, printed onto paper, laminated. Here's the back: Whoever printed this bookmark didn't have to print "50% recycled / 20% post consumer paper." I imagine they anticipated doing so would help sell bookmarks. They created something to look like nature that anyone could make themselves, promoting apparent non-waste, covered in plastic. It's total waste. Anyone could use a scrap…

When you avoid packaged food long enough, all the garbage and missing flavor becomes the food and doof's main identity. There's more packaging, advertising, and other non-food stuff that will fester in landfills for centuries or at best cost money and resources to decompose. These pictures are what Whole Foods and Trader Joe's look like when you avoid packaged food. In fact, these stores contribute to places like in these pictures. Some of the trash in the pictures may have passed through the stores. If you buy packaged food, you may have contributed a bottle or bag pictured. I point this out not to evoke emotions but to suggest alternatives---for example CSAs and farmers markets, which can save money and time and increase accessibility, especially…