LATEST BLOG POSTS

I’m starting to replace “sustainability” with “not hurting people,” sometimes adding “and wildlife.” I’m not doing it across the board, but increasingly. I’m seeing how people respond. Likewise, instead of describing an activity as “polluting,” to describe it as “hurting innocent people.” For example: Instead of “I’m trying to live more sustainably”: “I’m trying to hurt innocent people less.” Instead of “I value the environment”: “I value not hurting people.”[…] Keep reading →

Every year, I take pictures of how people trash their trees. I find the waste and death tragic and the images of something that was supposed to celebrate life become garbage. This season, I started seeing trees trashed before Christmas: Ten days before Christmas people are already throwing away their Christmas pagan trees. I call them “Christmas pagan trees” because, as I’ve written before, people in the U.S. celebrate Jesus’s[…] Keep reading →

Dr. Bob shares more about his experience acting during the 1960s, as well as today on helping prisoners and more. I hope you can hear the electricity I felt listening. Two kinds of electricity: one for the stories, another for how they resonated with the community, teamwork, and passion I see in the team I’m working with creating sustainability leadership workshops to change culture. He describes how they saw abolitionism[…] Keep reading →

A group called the Tearfund published a report in 2019 on plastic waste called No Time to Waste. It states “between 400,000 and 1 million people die each year in low- and middle-income countries because of diseases related to mismanaged waste.” I expect that number has risen since. I expect I’ll quote this finding as a measure of our culture. Consider this point: there was once no litter on earth.[…] Keep reading →

I was pleasantly surprised in reading Osprey’s book The Story is in Our Bones that she also sees the need to change culture, including elements like our stories, role models, images, and beliefs. Focusing on cultural elements doesn’t mean ignoring or leaving out measurable things like greenhouse gas emissions or plastic waste. On the contrary, focusing on those things without addressing our stories tends to result in people complying at[…] Keep reading →

People ask me if I can put my solar panels in the window. Generally I’ve said doing so doesn’t get nearly the power I’d need since for most of my time off grid the pressure cooker was my main use for electric power. I’d also think something like, “no shit, Sherlock. In what world would I not have thought of using the panels in my own apartment.” In fairness to[…] Keep reading →

People constantly cite BP’s promoting personal footprints as a distraction. Nearly everyone who cites it acts like a know-it-all so I find them annoying. The main reason I find them annoying is they use it to justify themselves buying more of what BP sells. I wish more people understood how their minds rationalize and justify, but I’ll write about that topic in another post. Today I want to point out[…] Keep reading →

I knew the article would cover food and not distinguish doof from food from its title: “Why Are So Many Young Adults Getting Cancer? New Columbia research looks at ultra-processed foods, sedentary lifestyles, and other possible explanations.” Sure enough, it didn’t. Imagine people didn’t distinguish heroin from poppy, if they thought shooting heroin was like eating a poppy-seed bagel. They’d miss that heroin affects the body and behavior a lot[…] Keep reading →

Matt and I have appeared on each other’s podcast before. He invited me back to talk about Sustainability Simplified. I recommend reading it. This episode will whet your appetite. Looking at Matt’s podcast page, the guest before me was Bill McKibben so I consider myself in esteemed company. Here at the liner notes: