consumerism
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Ask Umbra addresses environmental links to breast cancer
Breast Cancer Awareness Month may be over now, but that doesn't keep a reader from worrying that he's a boob for not knowing more about the connection between breast cancer and environmental factors. Ask Umbra gets a lot of useful information off her chest about what chemicals to avoid and how to take a stand for toxic chemicals reform. Read this and your cup of knowledge shall run over.
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U.S. home energy efficiency improved since 1970, so why are the bills the same?
A new study shows that despite our advances in technology, we still consume as much energy as we did in the early 1970s.
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How do you argue against the growth juggernaut?
I’ll be talking tomorrow to filmmaker Dave Gardner, who’s making a documentary called Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity. He wants to hear about my choice to be a GINK — green inclinations, no kids. And I’ll be offering thoughts about growth in general. Any suggestions about points to make or ideas to […]
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Ask Umbra’s Book Club: Are you a possum?
Dearest readers, Thank you all so much for joining me this week as we got down and dirty with our first book club selection, Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money, hitting all the hot buttons like leaving the rat race, eating meat, and bucking the education system. […]
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The future of farming and food at the Eco Farm Conference
Last week I went to California for the 2010 Eco Farm Conference — a three-day organic farming extravaganza featuring big names (and big influences of the organic agriculture movement) such as Wes Jackson, Frances Moore Lappé, Deputy Security of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan, and a ton of folks who are part of an ever-growing and expanding […]
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This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing — use nothing!
Courtesy AdbustersFor twenty years, the people behind Buy Nothing Day have been pleading with consumers to avoid the frenzy inherent in “Black Friday,” the no-holds-barred shop-o-rama that comes the day after Thanksgiving. This year, they’re ramping things up and calling for an all-out Wildcat Strike against the “capitalist consumption machine.” Socialists, you say? No, just […]
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Growing up green: How to shop for a green baby
Photo courtesy Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr I guess I’ve known all along that introducing a baby into the family meant introducing a whole slew of stuff into our lives — much of it bulky, expensive, and — often — plastic. But I’m fighting all the media and social cues to go on a shopping spree […]
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No Impact Man, Elizabeth Kolbert, and the civic sphere
Elizabeth Kolbert’s latest essay for The New Yorker is another triumph, a perfectly pitched marriage of style and substance. It’s about Colin Beavan’s blog-turned-book-turned-movie No Impact Man, Vanessa Farquharson’s Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days, and other recent experiments in (well-to-do, white, […]
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Throwing out the throwaway economy
Photo: Editor BThe stresses in our early twenty-first century civilization take many forms–social, economic, environmental, and political. One distinctly unhealthy and visible illustration of all four is the swelling flow of garbage associated with a throwaway economy. Throwaway products were first conceived following World War II as a convenience and as a way of creating […]
