I figure most people have seen this quote before. It’s scary — particularly for how matter-of-fact it is. You get the idea he has no doubt of the effectiveness of his strategy, probably from years of trial and error. It’s scary not just for its historical roots, but for how well it seems to work in more mundane but still important contexts — particularly with national leaders. People as individuals[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written about Do The Math, the blog that takes a quantitative, scientific, and usually non-judgmental approach to understanding our impact on the environment. I posted on it today for the first time about some questions I’d been thinking about for a while but haven’t approached in that blog’s way. He has written about increasing his efficiency in using energy. I generally applaud that approach and do it myself, but[…] Keep reading →

Strategies and tactics based in convincing, cajoling, coercing, and seeking compliance that may sound nice, but step on the gas, thinking it’s the brake, wanting congratulations. That is, they exacerbate the problem. Compare this list with tomorrow’s list of emotions that emerge from the Spodek Method about nature that, when acted on, lead to people doing more than they said they would, expressing gratitude, and being happy to share. I[…] Keep reading →

I wrote recently in When changing fast is easier than slow about the growth in number of slaves in the United States based on a peer-reviewed paper From ‘20 and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States, by J. David Hacker in the journal Slavery & Abolition. That paper also reported the cumulative number of slaves in the United States. Before looking at[…] Keep reading →

Here are some projections for global warming based on various assumptions. Note the slow changes, which presumes people not changing our behaviors. The great historical example of changing global culture is abolitionism. It took off first in places without slavery in the territory, like Europe. One of the most challenging places to end the institution was the United States, which profited from it so much, though Europe was happy to[…] Keep reading →

Several bestselling authors on the environment suggest that people solve problems, so more people solve more problems. They conclude that we should keep growing the population. A century and a half ago people believed “rain follows the plow.” They created what looked like science proving that settlers moving west across North America creating farms would cause rain to fall more. To me, “more people solve more problems” looks like a[…] Keep reading →

People who fly think most people fly, but it’s more like a few percent. A small fraction of people fly, let alone across oceans or multiple times per year. If you fly, it’s probably your action that hurts people most through its environmental impact, but you probably rationalize and justify it. Unlike many other polluting activities, most of the money you spend on flying goes to polluting, displacing people and[…] Keep reading →