I got my second bill with zero kilowatt-hours: Everyone's response includes speculating how it's easier for me because I'm (take your pick): single, male, in New York, or privileged in some other way. Nobody speculates why it would be harder for me, like I don't get economies of scale that I would if someone else were involved. But let's grant every possible advantage. If you didn't hear of me doing it and someone asked if you thought someone could draw zero electrical power in his apartment for a month, let alone two, admit it, you'd likely guess it was impossible,…

What happens to a culture that doesn’t live by its values? It twists itself up, trying to rationalize what it considers wrong yet still does. In the case of slavery or denying women the right to vote, it creates stories that people who are equal really aren’t. Quoting the historian and former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Eric Williams, Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery. That is, people being unwilling or unable to let go of slavery created stories that the people they were hurting and killing weren’t equal or whatever nonsense…

People struggle to understand that unintended side effects that can become the major effects in systems. In particular, making elements of a polluting system like our economic system more efficient may lower pollution locally, but if you make a polluting system more efficient, you pollute more efficiently. I'm exploring a new way to explain it. Sorry if talking about child abuse is difficult for you, but polluting the environment hurts and kills people, it's not abstract. I write about it here all the time. There are many differences between parenting children and stewarding humanity and nature, but consider a parent…

I keep in touch with Olympic gold medalist, Extinction Rebellion activist and guest on my podcast, Etienne Stott MBE. I think I can say we're becoming friends despite not having met in person yet. England is a long way to sail and neither of us wants to pollute much. He shared some stories about his activism: BBC: Extinction Rebellion: Six arrested after Olympians scale oil tanker: "Six people have been arrested after climate change activists, including two Olympians, scaled an oil tanker."Team GB gold medallist says ‘life or death oil tanker protest felt like Olympics’: "A gold medal-winning canoeist said…

The situation: More people than ever are living healthy, happy lives yet Pollution and garbage are growing and acceleratingPredictions suggest our waste is going to cause nearly everyone on Earth to suffer including many dying and, here's the big confounding issue We can't stop ourselves. With rare exception, everyone I know and even know of knows they are polluting, hurting people by it, so potentially contributing to the greatest catastrophe ever, yet won't or can't stop. Why? How? What do we do about it? How is this conflict possible? I've been trying to figure it out. I've worked out a…