Do you know anyone living sustainably? I don’t. A few hundred thousand, maybe a few million, in indigenous cultures may still be living sustainably, as nearly everyone did before a couple centuries ago or so. They’re a rounding error, sadly. You can say individual action doesn’t matter, but 1) it does and 2) all of us have to start living sustainably. Why do people think everyone can live unsustainably and[…] Keep reading →

I read and watched this week: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: Regular readers know my interest in understanding imperialism, colonialism, and slavery to understand our situation with the environment. Somehow I made it over five decades before reading Heart of Darkness, or listening to it since it’s in the public domain, so I downloaded a free version from Librivox. My first time through, I felt it overly descriptive and wondered[…] Keep reading →

Wolfgang Lutz is the Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, a cooperation between the University of Vienna (where he is Professor at the Department of Demography), IIASA (where he is a Senior Advisor in the Population and Just Societies Program), and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (where he is a Director of the Vienna Institute of Demography). He holds a PhD in Demography from[…] Keep reading →

Consider two cultures, one living sustainably, one unsustainably. Does the following sound familiar? The sustainable one must be living within its means. In fact, it must have some abundance to withstand an occasional flood or drought. Many cultures have survived and thrived for tens to hundreds of thousands of years. The unsustainable one is living beyond its means, decreasing what resources it needs to survive. In most cases, it can[…] Keep reading →

Remember that when you depend on something to the point of addiction You tell me what you fear losing and I’ll tell you what you’ll gain. Suggest stopping gambling to gambling addict and they’ll fear losing winning. But outside rare jolts of winning, they mostly lose. Stopping gambling will bring them more winning and less losing. Social media addict fear losing connection, but social media isolates. Stopping social media will[…] Keep reading →

For a full bio, check out Derek’s about page. The top highlight: Me in 10 seconds: I’ve been a musician, producer, circus performer, entrepreneur, TED speaker, and book publisher. Monomaniac, introvert, slow thinker, and love finding a different point of view. California native, I now live in New Zealand. Time line for context: 1969: born in California 1976: started playing piano, viola, and clarinet 1979: got a TRS-80 computer and[…] Keep reading →

My friend visited a place of his childhood near his grandmother’s home. Where once there was a forest, all remained were vast tracts of stumps. I could cry at these images. The most recent damage came from beetles. Winter cold would limit their eating, but global warming prevented that cold, so they just kept eating. The fallen trees were hazards for fires and other problems, plus people could use the[…] Keep reading →