No Impact Man

How to go No Impact

You may have heard that over 4,700 people went No Impact via the NoImpactProject.org's No Impact Week, hosted last week on the Huffington Post.

Missed it?

No worries. The NRDC's website Simple Steps is getting ready to host our week one more time, starting November 15, as period of non-consumptive mindfulness in the run up to the holidays. You can register here.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for a little motivation, read what a few folks said about the No Impact Week at Huff.

Or you can watch the video by one No Impact Week participant below:

The world acts as one

Last Saturday, citizens from 181 countries gathered in 5245 separate actions to demonstrate for a global agreement that called for no more than 350 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

When have so many people from so many countries ever agreed on anything?

Eco-conflict in an eco-marraige

From my favorite press piece on No Impact Man, an article by AP report Samantha Gross:

Toward the end of the experiment, Conlin would talk about how much she wanted a dishwasher again. But when they flipped the power switch, the machine stayed dead. There was no way to fix it, and an attempt to buy a used model flopped. So Conlin did her research and found a new one that seemed the most responsible purchase.

But when they got to Home Depot and saw it, she couldn’t stop thinking: All those shiny new parts. The huge box it would come in. All that packaging.

“I just couldn’t pull the trigger,” she says now, sitting in her apartment, all the lights turned off in favor of the afternoon sunlight wafting through the windows.

Still, she says, “I foresee myself at some point in my life having a dishwasher.”

Her husband looks at her in some surprise: “What has to happen before you can do that?”

“We’ve had so many arguments about the dishwasher,” he says, laughing. “So basically the subtext here is don’t let Colin for a minute think that he’s won this fight.”

“When I want one, I’ll get one,” she says with a smile.

My world favorite 350 messenger

When we went to the 350.org action in Times Square on Saturday, my four-year-old Bella insisted that "the lady" paint 350 on her face.

350 is the number of parts per million carbon dioxide we can afford to have in the atmosphere without the global warming tipping point occurring

I was honored with the chance to say a few words to the crowd. "What's the most important number in the world?" I shouted into the mike.

"350!" the crowd shouted back.

Later, when we got home, Bella's mom called on the phone.

"Mom," Bella said. "Do you know about 350?"

"What about it, hon?"

"It's the most important number in the world," my little girl said.

Photo credit: Nancy Kaszerman

Join your local 350 action on Saturday

This Saturday, October 24, more than 4,000 events in 170 countries will take place as part of 350's International Day of Climate Action -- all calling upon world leaders to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere to a safe level of 350 parts per million. 

It's the largest collective display of action to fight climate change the world has ever seen.

President Obama and the U.S. Senate must support strong climate action here at home -- and you can help us send that message loud and clear by attending the October 24 event in New York City. 

You can find out where your local action is by clicking here. 

For my part, I will be at the event in New York City's Times Square. Activists, scientists, political leaders and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben will take to New York City's Times Square and showcase events happening all over the world up on the big screens.

At exactly 3:50 pm, supporters will count down from 387 (the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere) to 350.

If you want to join us, please be at the corner of 33rd Street and Broadway by no later than 3:30.

Or joing one of the 4,000 other events around the world by clicking here.

One Life, One Cup

As you may know, Japan has lower per capita carbon emissions than any Western European country. For that reason, I asked my friend, Sean Saskamoto, who recently moved to Japan and who blogs at I'd Rather Be In Japan, to check in with us every so often. I thought we might be able to learn a little something about "happier planet, happlier people" lifestyles from Sean's experience there.

Here is Sean's latest dispatch:

Kawagishi-sensei is a Zen Buddhist monk, and he’s a teacher at the high school where I work. He teaches calligraphy, which is a traditional art in Japan. Like high schools in America, there are many clubs that students here can join.

In the calligraphy club, students practice the art of painting Japanese Kanji, the Chinese characters that make up part of the written language. Painting calligraphy is an old tradition in Japan, and the characters look lovely, even to my untrained eye.

Kawagishi-sensei has been teaching calligraphy for over 30 years. My Japanese isn’t good enough to speak much with him, but a couple of times a week we try to chat. I noticed that every day he drinks his tea in a special teacup on his desk. It’s a beautiful ceramic cup.  The rich, textured colors shine in the light, and I assumed it must be new because it’s so polished.

When I asked him about it, he told me that he’d bought it with his first paycheck as a teacher, thirty-five years ago. It was made in a famous Japanese style called Aritayaki. This cup of his has seen him through three and a half decades of his life. Every day he uses it, and it’s still a gorgeous cup.

What struck me was how much this cup must mean to him by now. It also seemed very kind to the environment to use just one cup in all that time. I know that if you took all the cups I’ve used over the past thirty years, they would probably need their own landfill. How many paper cups, Styrofoam coffees, coke bottles, water bottles...how much glass and plastic have I used and thrown away in the course of my days over the years? Too many to be sure.

Apart from the simplicity of using one cup is the fact that it’s made of clay. It was dug from the earth, molded by hand, glazed and fired in a kiln. It made me think that consumption itself isn’t necessarily bad. There are ways to own things that can be fun, and even meaningful, and also friendly to the environment. What if everything I owned was acquired to celebrate an occasion, and lasted a lifetime?

The biggest design question there is

Designer friends tell me that when they design a product or system, it's important to ask the right "design question."

Asking the right design question is perhaps most import when it comes to making sure that your product or system does the job.

So when it comes to designing cities or cultures or economies or societies, what should the design question be?

Simple:

What are people for?

Because cities and cultures and economies and societies should be about facilitating the true purpose of people.

And guess what?

If we design our systems that way--chances are--not only will we end up with happier people. We'll end up with a happier and safer planet too.

Join No Impact Week video discussions here!

Graham Hill, founder of Treehugger.com, is participating in No Impact week, starting October 18, and he wrote on the Huffington Post:

Instead of edicts - depriving you of your car or forbidding drinking your latte from a paper cup - the No-Impact week brought to you by Colin Beavan and Huff Po is instead the opportunity to try out lifestyle strategies that just may be more fun than you thought.

With the shape of the earth and our complex society, we need lots of people coming up with lots of approaches.

I look at No-Impact week as carbon-cleansing experiment in which I get to see which of my lifestyle choices actually contribute to my happiness.

He's right of course!  So join in!

Meanwhile, we'll be having online video conversations every night of the week starting on Sunday at 5 PM EST, so tune in below. Sunday's chat will be with Wood Turner of Climate's Count on the topic of consumption and Monday's (at 9PM EST) will be with Bill McKibben of 350 and Betsy Taylor of 1Sky on the topic of trash.

Hope to see you there.

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.

By the way, I choose the word "lead" deliberately, because to lead implies an aspiration, and ambition. And the aspiration and ambition embodied in attempting to live environmentally--on both and individual and a cultural level--is the possibility of a life that is better for the people as well as the planet.

Let me explain.

In my own case, back in 2007, I embarked with my little family on a yearlong quest to live as environmentally as possible. The central question was, How many of the resources used in our typically American, consumerist lifestyle actually contributed to our happiness? And where were we using resources--bad take out food in plastic tubs, more carbon-emitting business travel than we wanted, too much time working coupled with too little time with loved ones--that didn't improve our happiness?

In other words, since the average American's per capita emission of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is five times that of the average Chinese, were we, as typical Americans, really getting our happiness bang for our carbon buck? These questions are explored more deeply in my book No Impact Man and the documentary film by the same title, but suffice to say that the answer seemed to be no. In many ways, we lived just as happily and sometimes even more happily maintaining a lifestyle that weighed way less heavily on the planet. Good lives, in turns out, need not cost the earth.

What I didn't initially realize while exploring these themes was that thousands of other Americans had already begun experimenting with their own lifestyles. I had unwittingly joined a movement. These thousands of Americans were tired of waiting for the government to do something about the crisis in our climate and other environmental systems. They decided, rather than simply waiting for elected officials to catch up, to take matters into their own hands.

They decided, in other words, that they would make a difference. They decided, as I've said, to lead.

Those of you who have chosen to join them by participating in the No Impact Experiment this coming week have also decided to lead. For one week, you are going to experiment with your own lives in the hopes of enlarging the discussion about how we Americans might find a way to live that is both better for us and for the planet. We know we are in a climate crisis. And if we aren't getting that happiness bang for that climate buck, that means we are in a quality of life crisis, too. What can we do to change? This is a huge discussion that has been taking place in lofty halls of Congress. But it is a question that must be taken up in the cultural arena, too. Thank you for helping to start it!

To Sign Up For HuffPost's No Impact Week which starts October 18th, Click Here!

Making environmental behavior fun makes it popular

Here's a model: