LATEST BLOG POSTS

The main places we learn about our environmental problems: scientists, educators, journalists, politicians, and activists. As a result, we look to them for solutions, along with engineers and entrepreneurs. I may be missing a field or two, but hope I got all. All play important roles, but none of those fields develop skills and experience to change behavior and culture. Culture is key because if we could magically transform all[…] Keep reading →

Sorry, today is a half-finished post. I’m not sure if anyone will read it all, but my main pursuit in it is the persistent myth people knee-jerk fall back on that if we don’t pursue technological progress and market growth then we risk reverting to the Stone Age. After reading Atlas Shrugged and trying to learn what her fans like about her philosophy so much, I found an essay she[…] Keep reading →

Please tell me there’s another way to see it: The way we as a culture consume doof and chase comfort and convenience over meaning and purpose, people using heroin, fentanyl, and other serious drugs aren’t an aberration from our culture, they’re it’s future. They aren’t behaving qualitatively different than, say, someone who buys from McDonald’s, Trader Joe’s, or other doof place. They differ only quantitatively. I don’t blame any of[…] Keep reading →

Since my TEDx talk in which I begin by talking about growing up near the best sledding hill in the world, each time I visit Philadelphia, I make a point of visiting it and taking pictures of it during different seasons. Maybe it just looks like any other park to everyone else, but it’s incredibly beautiful to me. Near my mom’s house in the “ghetto,” as a neighbor described it,[…] Keep reading →

This week I read to and watched: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond: An incredible book that won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction among other awards. Desmond lived among poor people getting evicted left and right in Milwaukee as well as landlords evicting them. He lived with them enough for them to open up. Eviction has grown as a practice in the past few[…] Keep reading →

People act like humans managing our population is some new idea. People have been able to manage our population as long as we’ve been human. When there’s more energy and resources, people have bigger families. America’s westward expansion followed by its extracting and burning fossil fuels created the material conditions for fast growth. In westward expansion, arable land was a proxy for energy since plants converted sunlight into energy people[…] Keep reading →

I posted pictures of food (and doof) I delivered as part of my volunteering yesterday. I visited Philadelphia recently, including the food coop that I grew up with my family shopping at, Weaver’s Way, in Mount Airy. I see the place as an institution. It certainly helped form my views on food, community, and community-owned-and-operated businesses, though I only came to realize its value as I moved to fresh, local[…] Keep reading →