I’ve spoken to a lot of people about environmental action and inaction. While I haven’t done double-blind randomized controlled experiments, I have seen one broad trend: People who act on their environmental values do so for others. People who don’t act on their environmental values do so for themselves. Action Typical reasons people give for acting include: “I want to leave the world better than I found it,” “Other people[…] Keep reading →

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I took Amtrak to California instead of flying. But I’m concluding that one of the worst tortures humans could inflict on each other might be to force a Japanese train engineer or conductor to work for Amtrak. I can only imagine his or her suffering. Late Today, Amtrak canceled two trains without warning. On the way west from New York, we arrived in Chicago[…] Keep reading →

Michael is the executive director of one of the most inspirational organizations I can think of. I urge you to watch their videos – The Story of Stuff, The Story of Bottled Water, The Story of Solutions. There’s a whole series of them. They’re fun to watch, they’re quick to watch and they make a difference, at least to me. It’s refreshing for me to talk to someone who does[…] Keep reading →

Tim Smit is the co-founder and Vice Chairman of the Eden Project in Cornwall, in the southwest of England. He turned a lifeless, poisoned abandoned mine into a bountiful green world-class garden people love to visit. Eden has attracted millions of visitors and billions of pounds. Tim is a consummate doer—not complainer or blamer—and an environmental campaign and entrepreneur, Tim tells how he met challenges he couldn’t have foreseen. I[…] Keep reading →

Tim Smit is the co-founder and Vice Chairman of the Eden Project in Cornwall, in the southwest of England. He turned a lifeless, poisoned abandoned mine into a bountiful green world-class garden people love to visit. Eden has attracted millions of visitors and billions of pounds. Tim is a consummate doer—not complainer or blamer—and an environmental campaign and entrepreneur, Tim tells how he met challenges he couldn’t have foreseen. I[…] Keep reading →

If you’ve heard me talk about not flying in this podcast a lot and you think it’s impossible, allow this conversation to blow your mind. Evelina Utterdahl is a world traveler and writer who has chosen to stop flying. You’ll hear why. There are more of us all the time. You’ll get to hear us indulging and talking to someone who understands us. Nearly everyone I talked to says flying[…] Keep reading →

Handling Trigger Warnings, Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and Other Outrages Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s new book, The Coddling of the American Mind, takes on offense and outrage with calm resolve and effective insight Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, released today, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, coauthored by Greg Lukianoff, takes on one of the issues of our[…] Keep reading →