LATEST BLOG POSTS

Since our first episode, I’ve been talking about these mayors choosing to pick up garbage. I believe that a man never stands so tall as when he bends down to pick up another person’s garbage. How many U.S. politicians can you name who bend down to pick up other people’s garbage? Yet how many American streets, waterways, and beaches do you see covered with garbage? It wasn’t always this way.[…] Keep reading →

I just finished an eye-opening book, Countdown, by Alan Weisman. It covers population. Weisman traveled to and reported on about a dozen places’ views and practices on population and family planning. In this episode, I read a few passages that I found shocking. I barely scratch the book’s surface, but I believe you’ll find the sections equally noteworthy. I recommend reading the rest to understand this integral part of our[…] Keep reading →

People resist environmental projects to protect jobs, even to keep producing products that pollute. My absurd proposal to balance jobs with junk: put factories next to landfills. Despite it being absurd, the proposal would create a cleaner world. Instead of making junk as a pretense for some counterproductive welfare, let’s stop making it.

What emotions do you associate with environmental action? I find people associate shame and guilt with it. I find these emotions lead people to suppress the emotions and hide the behavior leading to it. I propose reacting to pollution and polluting behavior with disgust. If someone hands me a plastic bottle of water, I feel disgust. I propose replacing the terms they’ve come up in Sweden for flight shame with[…] Keep reading →

One of my main goals for this podcast is to bring people who love acting on one’s environmental values, seeing stewardship not as an obligation but as being a part of something greater than yourself, than any of us, benefiting everyone, and yourself. As you’ll hear, Tia’s roots precede the first Earth Day. Her father started it. Despite so many problems remaining — basically all of them — she’s the[…] Keep reading →

This month is the twenty year anniversary of the big month of November 1999. Long enough has passed that I may mis-remember, but in November 1999, I Defended my PhD thesis Bought the Greenwich Village apartment I still live in Secured, with my co-founder, my first company’s first investment of $200,000 In other words, I finished the top degree in one of the most challenging fields, severed my ties with[…] Keep reading →

As this phrase—if we don’t lower our birth rate nature will raise our death rate—came out of my mouth in conversation yesterday, I could tell it captured a lot in a few words. I expect I’ll start saying it more and promoting it. It gets to the heart of what we need to do. All research I know of says that we are over the planet’s carrying capacity, which means[…] Keep reading →

Abbey Road was the first album I listened to until the little orange plastic record player I played it on either destroyed the grooves or the record destroyed the needle. It was the 70s. I didn’t know music. My taste has since matured, but I never stopped loving the Beatles. The 2019 remix of Here Comes The Sun differs only slightly from the original but it brought tears to my[…] Keep reading →

Learning that humans only recently developed the concept of extinction. Much of the West, for example, believed in a Great Chain of Being, spontaneous generation, and a biblical flood. That perspective suggests that many past behaviors we consider unconscionable may have seemed even humane then, like walking up to a rhinoceros and shooting it in the head. If you can’t imagine it going extinct because new ones will form, how[…] Keep reading →