The Right Way to Flourish

Michael Pollan dropped a one-liner at the recent PopTech conference that took me by surprise. He said, “I hope I’ve driven home the point that our meat eating is one of the most important contributors we make to climate change. A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius!” So much of the chatter I read about greening has been focused on artifacts of one kind or another. Food kind of slips by unnoticed in the great green accounting system. I suppose that’s because we tend to think of food as an… Read More

Continue Reading

I came across an [article](http://www.alternet.org/story/144204/our_lives_are_filled_with_worthless_crap_that’s_destroying_the_earth:_here’s_what_you_can_do?page=entire) today on [Alternet](http://www.alternet.org/) touting durability as a potential partial solution to the energy drain. The summary says, “The way to lower the quantity of energy required to make and distribute short-lived consumer goods is to make them durable, repairable and upgradable.” This is a lot more genteel than its headline, which read, “Our Lives Are Filled With Worthless Crap That’s Destroying the Earth: Here’s What You Can Do.” In spite of the provocative headline, the article is well-done and draws on some excellent and authoritative sources. Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, the author, includes one of my favorite… Read More

Continue Reading

I’ve been back from my travels to Turkey for four whole days and am slowly becoming re-immersed in the culture I passionately believe has to change if we are to find sustainability. I think my generation’s (grandparents’) chances to see a world where this possibility looms large are somewhere between very small and nil. I see signs, small and large, everywhere that shout wake up, but without much effect. It took just this short time back to tune into the current news and find this conclusion inescapable. It shows up in little things, like trying to compensate for the serious… Read More

Continue Reading

I am just back from a fantastic trip through Turkey. First thanks to my son, Tom, who filled in for me while I was traveling. I have invited him to continue as a permanent guest. The pejorative sense of “turkey the bird” is absolutely not justified by any reference to Turkey the country. Admittedly short on the history of the region before I left, I was continually stunned by the richness of the civilizations that dwelled there over 6-7000 years or more. The first evidence of human habitation dates from around 20,000 BCE, and by 10,000 BCE settlements existing on… Read More

Continue Reading

How can we make consumption a more, not less, mindful experience? That’s the question that came to me at a gas station pump this weekend. It was Sunday evening and I had stopped at a service area on the Mass Pike after dropping my oldest daughter off at college. I was a bit tired (like many drivers on these long interstate highways I would assume) and didn’t think much about the annoying din on the gas station pump as I filled up. But then something about the moment sparked me—and I suddenly felt a crazy surge of anger and bewilderment… Read More

Continue Reading

Thanks Dad for entrusting me with this space. A quick post today on a recent New York Times op-ed that had nothing to do with sustainability, and yet, to me, had a lot to do with sustainability. In this terrific article lamenting the end of Gourment magazine, Cook’s Illustrated founder/editor Christopher Kimball worked his way up to the following conclusion about the role of media and opinion-leaders in our all-too-cluttered world: The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack… Read More

Continue Reading

I will be away from my computer for the next three weeks. My son, Tom, will be filling on for me occasionally during this period. My wife and I are going to Turkey with a group. We will visit the modern and ancient parts of the country. In preparation for the trip, I have been reading and listening to tape stories of the very long history of the region. Some of the longest periods of empire characterize the area–Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman–reaching from a few centuries after the start of the Common Era virtually to the time of my birth.… Read More

Continue Reading

I started reading an [article in the New Yorker](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/02/091102fa_fact_groopman?currentPage=all) about medical robots just before I went to bed last night and by the time I has finished it was way later than my usual time to turn off the light. I don’t normally remember my dreams in the morning, but I awoke to visions of robots like Wall-E, the central character in that wonderful movie about what happens when the Earth can’t support human life any more. The story told by Jerome Groopman, weaver of many wonderful tales about medicine, focuses on the current development of medical robots, but not… Read More

Continue Reading

[Environmental 360](http://www.e360.yale.edu/), Yale School of Forestry and Enviropnmental Studies online magazine, carried a [story](http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2203) with this headline, “Greenest Place in the U.S.? It’s Not Where You Think.” The gist of the article is that the urban density of New York creates a smaller ecological footprint than other apparently more pristine places. The author, David Owen, a staff writer for The New Yorker has recently published a book entitled, “Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability.” Hard to buy this line while looking at this iconic photograph of Times Square. His thesis is,… Read More

Continue Reading

This is the headline from an interesting [blog](http://www.citizenrenaissance.com/) from the UK that I have been following for some time. The [post](http://www.citizenrenaissance.com/2009/10/22/aspire-not-to-have-more-but-to-be-more/) echoes the theme of being, not having, central in my book to the critique of modern cultures and to the possibility of breaking out of that mode of living. The post, by Jules Peck, relates to the main theme of the blog, Citizen Renaissance, calling for a shift towards the responsibility column in the civic balance sheet and away from the rights half. **Having** could be seen as perhaps the basic in the free market liberal model of political… Read More

Continue Reading