LATEST BLOG POSTS

The story Meet the NYC environmentalists going off the grid and eating discarded food begins: Joshua Spodek’s studio apartment in the West Village is an off-grid oasis. While other apartments in his 15-story co-op rely on electricity produced by fossil fuel-burning power plants, Spodek is disconnected from Con Edison and National Grid. The main circuit breaker in his apartment is turned off. Instead, he powers his few electric devices –[…] Keep reading →

Listen to this story about me on WNYC: The text introducing it says: As President Donald Trump pursues a deregulation agenda, New York’s ambitious clean energy goals appear further out of reach. So what’s a climate conscious New Yorker to do? WNYC’s Rosemary Misdary reports on some New York City residents taking an extreme approach to eliminating their carbon footprints. I won’t split hairs, but I would describe what I[…] Keep reading →

Do you think our environmental problems are rooted in greenhouse gas levels or emissions? Or biodiversity loss? Or any of what makes the headlines? They are symptoms. They all result from our behavior, which results from our beliefs, stories, role models, images, and what makes up our culture. If we magically fixed all of the environmental conditions making the headlines, but didn’t change our culture, we would recreate them. Every[…] Keep reading →

I wrote this letter to the editor of the New Yorker. It’s been long enough that I doubt they’ll print it, but I wanted to share my thoughts. Everyone knows our culture misunderstands women. I think men could use more compassion and that doing so won’t hurt any other group. To the editor, Andrew Marantz’s article The Battle for the Bros perpetuates a subtle but common double standard: when society[…] Keep reading →

Many people see whatever part of what I do, think that’s everything, and conclude I’m just doing some personal action or other form of spitting into the wind. I don’t like wasting my time any more than anyone else does, nor do I want to see people continuing to I’m partly insulted that they think I’m wasting my time or that I haven’t developed a comprehensive plan that stops all[…] Keep reading →

I hear consistently from parents, “Since you aren’t a parent you can’t understand the challenges of raising a child and how it makes doing what you do about sustainability impossible,” or words to that effect. They often imply or even imply, though not as bluntly: “You haven’t held a newborn you created and have to care for for its survival. You haven’t felt that love. You haven’t experienced as much[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea, by Robert Wald Sussman: Wow! What a fascinating book on the history of the concepts of race (by more than one definition of the term) and the practice of racism. Sussman was an anthropologist and academic, which are the lenses he mostly looks through. He defines what he means by race and racism, describes some[…] Keep reading →

People sometimes ask me my definition of sustainability. Usually I say something about maintaining earth’s ability to sustain life. Because we humans depend on other life, maintaining earth’s ability to sustain life means its ability to sustain human life too. I like lots of life, but I like human life especially. I’m testing a new definition of sustainability: To be able to live without taking or harming others’ life, liberty,[…] Keep reading →

I came across the idea that humans are more rationalizing than rational in a book on racism, where plenty of rationalizing happens that those rationalizing probably think is rational. I put it as a question in the title since I don’t know how we can quantify them for comparison, but I find the idea compelling that we rationalize more than reason. I hope you don’t mind the short post, but[…] Keep reading →