Taking responsibility for preventing further oil spills

The New York Daily News asked me to write an OpEd about our individual responsibility for the oil spill. Unfortunately, they titled and subtitled the piece: "We are a nation of oiloholics: Instead of ranting at oil companies, pols, let's look in the mirror." I wish they had said "As well as ranting at oil companies... let's look in the mirror." Because I think we need to take both collective as well as individual responsibility. It's not either/or.

No Impact Man now out in paperback--An interview with Colin Beavan

Hey folks, I'm excited to report that No Impact Man is out in paperback this week (borrow it from your library or share with friends a copy from your local bookseller, Amazon, or BN.com). Anyway, I've been doing a new round of press interviews so I thought I'd let you in one email interview I just did.

Crowd-sourcing our way to a better world

"I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers"

--Howard Zinn

Thoughts I come back to when thinking about environmentalism 2.0

1. Happier planet = happier people.

2. You make a difference.

3. Our culture is broken.

4. The personal is political.

5. Economic growth ≠ Life satisfaction growth.

Trust the spark within and find your own path

Since the release of the No Impact Man book and film I have been privileged to be in conversation with many groups. And always, someone asks me with great earnestness, "What can I do?" Many times, in other words, people ask me for how-to-save-the-planet directions.

"Just start," I say.

Global warming or no, a renewable energy economy would bring a better world

Things are not going well there as you'll see by the video below. That's too bad for the American economy, for our prospects as world leader, and for our national security (even the US Army now believes that the geopolitical instability brought about by climate change will be one of the biggest threats to our security).

I make these points because some who read this blog don't believe in global warming. I do. But that's beside the point.

In search of a unifying theory of all our problems

When you look at the climate problem and the difficulties we have dealing with it and you combine that with a consumer culture that doesn't seem to be making people happy, you'd think we'd be able to find a solution. You'd think we'd be able to do better by ourselves.

But things are moving so slowly. What I want to know is why? What is the fundamental human flaw? What is the single underlying assumption about how we live or what we do that is causing us to damage ourselves and the habitat we depend upon for our health, happiness and security?

Figuring out how to live

Figuring out how to live. Isn't that what we're all trying to do? To that point, here is some correspondence from my Facebook page to do with someone trying to figure out how to live in their own special circumstances:

To Colin and friends:

How do I become No Impact with an Autistic son? He eats good but I buy a lot of mixes (lke bread, pancakes, rice flour..etc) all of these come in little plastic bags. He is on a gluten free, casien free, egg free and soy free diet. I make mostly everything from scratch, but being no impact is ...difficult. He is 5 and still no potty trained, so he is still in pull-ups. If there is anyone out there who can give me suggestions (I am trying to potty train, but he is non-verbal so it is a challange). Thank you--Kathy

No Impact Week: Taking the environment into our own hands

As you may have heard, thousands of people have now signed up to participate in the No Impact Project's week-long experiment in environmental living, which begins on October 18, hosted on the Huffington Post.

That so many people are willing to make such a deep commitment demonstrates to themselves, to their neighbors, and to their elected officials that the American people are concerned about our climate crisis and are willing to participate in solving it. I hope that the senators currently considering the climate bill might take note and consider the possibility of leading the world politically the way participants in the No Impact Experiment are willing to lead culturally.

Urban gardening and connecting to nature

There are all sorts of reasons to farm food in the cities--reduction of the heat island effect, local food production, keeping storm water out of the waterways. But something happened to me the other day as a result of growing vegetables in my new garden plot that I wasn't counting on.

It's been a dark winter and a pretty rainy spring. I've been waiting for the sun. And still the rain comes.