In 2006, I became increasingly concerned both about climate change and the military action taken by the United States to secure its access to oil supplies in the Middle East. As a journalist and author, I wanted to find a way to make the case for a lower reliance on fossil fuels and other natural resources to the American and European publics. However, I did not believe a typical political discourse would do the trick. There had been many of such books already written that attempted such a discourse. Instead, I wanted to find a way to engage Americans who were not typically interested in politics. For this reason, I wanted to draw people in through the power of story instead of polemic.

The story I chose was one about my family–family is something people care about in the United States. Indeed, “family values” are often discussed by conservative Americans, many of whom oppose action on climate change. As the story goes, for one year, we lived, in the middle of [...]]]>

In 2006, I became increasingly concerned both about climate change and the military action taken by the United States to secure its access to oil supplies in the Middle East. As a journalist and author, I wanted to find a way to make the case for a lower reliance on fossil fuels and other natural resources to the American and European publics. However, I did not believe a typical political discourse would do the trick. There had been many of such books already written that attempted such a discourse. Instead, I wanted to find a way to engage Americans who were not typically interested in politics. For this reason, I wanted to draw people in through the power of story instead of polemic.

The story I chose was one about my family–family is something people care about in the United States. Indeed, “family values” are often discussed by conservative Americans, many of whom oppose action on climate change. As the story goes, for one year, we lived, in the middle of New York City, causing as little environmental impact as possible.  This meant, not making any trash, not using any fossil fuel transportation, buying local food, not purchasing anything new. Etc etc. This experiment in environmental lifestyle was discussed in my blog, my book, and a documentary movie, all by the title No Impact Man. My hope was that the story of, if you like, That Crazy Family in New York City would attract attention to our climate crisis.

It was successful beyond my wildest dreams. In 2007, the New York Times wrote a front page story on the No Impact Man project. It has been covered in major newspapers and television channels across the world. There have been over 3 million unique visitors to the blog. The book has been translated into some 15 languages and has sold more than 50,000 copies in the United States alone. The movie has been released in theaters in the United States and other countries around the world. In addition, there have been over 1,000 community screenings around the world to groups ranging in size from 20 to 500 people. I have been invited to discuss No Impact Man with college audiences totaling some 15,000 in number over the last three months.

Also, some 15,000 world citizens have participated in a program run by my non-profit, the No Impact Project. In this, participants try themselves to live with as low a carbon footprint as possible for a whole week. This is not 15,000 people turning out for a two hour protest. It is 15,000 people devote themselves to significant hardship for an entire week. I like to think that this shows that, when they understand the connection of climate to their own lives, people are willing to dedicate substantial effort. This is very heartening. But I have a caution.

A Google search for the phrase No Impact Man yields some 470,000 unique results. Meanwhile, a Google search for the phrase Cop 16 yields 500,000 unique results. In other words, about the same. Of course, I don’t cite these figures to suggest that No Impact Man compares in importance to Cop 16.  I say this to show that something as important as Cop 16, which I believe is part of a process of literally saving our species, does not get discussed by the public just because it is important. In fact, it’s importance gets dwarfed by “better stories.”

Just because you and I consider something vastly important doesn’t mean everyone else will. Especially if they don’t really understand it.

So how do we create “better stories”?

One method, I believe, is to find ways of creating real, human narratives that connect the life of the average global citizen to the complex and seemingly abstract problem of climate change. In other words, can we find a way to talk about climate that isn’t about climate? Instead, can we talk climate in a way that is about people? It is my thinking that the reason why my small project has received so much attention is because, through discussing lifestyle, people are able to understand the connection between their own lives and climate. Suddenly, they understand why it is relevant to them.

On the subject of engaging citizens in this discussion about climate change, I’d like to offer some conclusions I’ve drawn through my experience as No Impact Man. I don’t mean to imply that this is the way everyone should approach communicating on climate. Instead, it is a list of guidelines I have developed for myself as travel around and talk and write about climate to, I like to think, some success:

1. How to communicate about climate change is not a case of either/or but of and/also. Selling solutions to climates change is not like selling laundry soap. You can’t figure out one message for the center of the bell curve. The message must be segmented. We have to communicate with the tails of the bell curve. Don’t assume that everyone else will care for the same reasons you do.

2. No matter which community you are talking to, find a way to connect to their health, happiness and security. Mom’s in DC may well want the coal-fired power plant removed, but not because of climate change. Instead, they want to get rid of it because it gives their children asthma.

3. Break away from dry scientific stories and find sympathetic human stories that connect to people’s daily lives. In the United States, this is particularly important because Americans are ambivalent about politics. Our culture is one that concentrates more on individuals.

4. Don’t speak about the planet. Speak about the habitat that we depend upon for our health, happiness and security. The planet is something else. The habitat is the air we breathe and the food we eat. When speaking about species extinction, point out that if the habitat cannot support other species, that is a sign that it may soon not be able to support us, either.

5. For crying out loud, joke around. If we can’t laugh, is the planet even worth saving?

6. Break away from morality and guilt. Most people are moral, even if they don’t care about what we care about. Instead, figure out what your audience is concerned about and find a way to make climate change solutions appeal to their concerns.

7. Forget trying to frighten people. Frightening people about things they feel they can do nothing about just forces them to ignore you.

8. Avoid dissociating conservatives by cloying too closely to progressive language. We cannot “win” on climate change. A progressive government will soon lose to a conservative one. The culture must be transformed so that strengthening the habitat is a people concern, not just a progressive one.

9. Build coalitions around the solutions rather than the problems. There may be disagreement on climate change, but there is very little disagreement that reducing reliance on dwindling and unstable fossil fuel sources would be good. To many people, renewable energy is just plain “cool.” Use the Star Trek factor in your favor.

10. Talk about aspirations and ambitions rather than limitations. Climate may be a crisis but its solution provides many opportunities. Wouldn’t it be better not to have to live in a traffic jam of automobiles and instead have a healthy, enjoyable, and safe transportation system?

11. Listen and engage. Don’t lecture. Don’t talk down. People want to be engaged and have the opportunity to discuss. They don’t want to be trained or talked at. Find ways for people to take ownership of the issue by letting them be part of the solution.

12. At least in the developed economies, don’t talk about how a sustainable society would be just economically efficient but also talk about how it could bring a more meaningful life, one based more on community and social connection rather than consumption.

13. Tell people how to help. Don’t agitate people about something that they can’t act upon. That only turns them off. In the United States during World War II, scrap drives to help the war effort were hugely important to morale because people felt involved.

Photo credit: viking_79

Well, first, of course, I would praise God in thanks that we do not have this catastrophe to contend with. Then, since many of the measures needed to deal with climate change have a lot of positive benefits, I would think:

1. I am glad we created 5 million or more new jobs here in the United States in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable generation.

2. I am glad we created a culture that relies less on foreign oil, so that our children can live secure lives, knowing that the energy rug can’t be pulled out from under them.

3. I am glad we have found a way to save people and industry billions upon billions of dollars by making the use of energy [...]]]>
Every so often I get e-mails from people asking what I would say and feel if I was wrong about climate change. What would I say if, after dedicating years of my life to bringing attention to the problem, I found out there was no problem?

Well, first, of course, I would praise God in thanks that we do not have this catastrophe to contend with. Then, since many of the measures needed to deal with climate change have a lot of positive benefits, I would think:

1. I am glad we created 5 million or more new jobs here in the United States in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable generation.

2. I am glad we created a culture that relies less on foreign oil, so that our children can live secure lives, knowing that the energy rug can’t be pulled out from under them.

3. I am glad we have found a way to save people and industry billions upon billions of dollars by making the use of energy more efficient.

4. I am glad the millions of children who suffer from asthma can now breathe easier thanks to the fact that we aren’t pumping the air full of toxins from our exhaust pipes and smokestacks.

5. I am glad that, by no longer burning oil and coal, which releases gases into our air, we’ve put an end to acid rain and the devastation of our aquatic life.

6. I am glad that we created good, reliable, fun-to-use public transportation systems so that families no longer have to raid their budgets to pay for cars and gas.

7. I am glad we’ve stopped building suburbs, which are designed for cars, not people, and instead build villages where people can have strong community bonds that help make life fulfilling.

8. I am glad we now have fuel-efficient automobiles.

9. I am glad that we’ve learned as a culture to get off the work-more-to-spend-more treadmill that gobbles up resources and leaves us unfulfilled and instead turned to a way of life full of meaning and purpose.

10. I am glad we developed local, fresh food systems that care not just about filling bellies but what we put in those bellies.

11. I am glad that we have rejected the philosophies of survival of the fittest and competition for resources as driving philosophies and have instead embraced a philosophy of compassion and justice.

12. I am glad that we have come to understand that a sustainable society cannot work without supporting all of its people and that we looked for and found ways to improve the lives of everyone.

13. I am glad that we’ve come to see people rather than things as our most valuable resource and that, in embracing the respectful and loving principles of not wasting, we have learned not to waste youth in prisons but instead to get them help for their drug and alcohol addictions.

14. I am glad that, in realizing our resources are limited, we have come to use them to do what is important and to help each other rather than compete with each other.

15. I am glad that we have come to see education as the ultimate in sustainable industries.

16. I am glad that we have developed distributable, renewable energy technologies that allow kids in all parts of the world to have electric light; a resource which helps facilitate literacy.

17. The list goes on and on, but in short—I am glad that we have embraced the opportunities presented by the crisis of climate change in order to improve our society in ways we should have done anyway.

And now, to turn the question back on those who say that either there is no climate change or that it is not a serious problem:

What would they feel if we did nothing about climate change and they turned out to be wrong?

What would they feel if we buried our heads in the sand, ignored the problem, and then irreversibly damaged the planetary habitat that we depend upon for our health, happiness, and security?

Photo Credit: petter palander

By Colin Beavan

1. Stop eating beef. Worldwide, beef production contributes more substantially to climate change than the entire transportation sector. Plus, a diet with no or less beef is better for you anyway.

2. Give up bottled water. The production of plastic water bottles together with the privatization of our drinking water is an environmental and social catastrophe. Bottled water costs more per gallon than gasoline. Plus, the health consequences of drinking water from plastic are not clear.

3. Observe an eco-sabbath. For one day or afternoon or even hour a week, don’t buy anything, don’t use any machines, don’t switch on anything electric, don’t cook, don’t answer your phone, and, in general, don’t use any resources. In other words, for this regular period, give yourself and the planet a break. Keep your regular eco-sabbath for a month. You’ll find that the enforced downtime represents an improvement to your life.

4. Tithe a fixed percentage of your income. Currently, many of our societal health and welfare services, at home and abroad, are tied [...]]]>

By Colin Beavan

1. Stop eating beef. Worldwide, beef production contributes more substantially to climate change than the entire transportation sector. Plus, a diet with no or less beef is better for you anyway.

2. Give up bottled water. The production of plastic water bottles together with the privatization of our drinking water is an environmental and social catastrophe. Bottled water costs more per gallon than gasoline. Plus, the health consequences of drinking water from plastic are not clear.

3. Observe an eco-sabbath. For one day or afternoon or even hour a week, don’t buy anything, don’t use any machines, don’t switch on anything electric, don’t cook, don’t answer your phone, and, in general, don’t use any resources. In other words, for this regular period, give yourself and the planet a break. Keep your regular eco-sabbath for a month. You’ll find that the enforced downtime represents an improvement to your life.

4. Tithe a fixed percentage of your income. Currently, many of our societal health and welfare services, at home and abroad, are tied to consumer spending which, in turn, depends upon planetary resource use. But the idea of buying stuff to help people is crazy, especially when you consider that our consumption is harming the habitat that we depend upon for our health, happiness and security. If you want to help, don’t go shopping. Just help. Commit to tithing part of your income to the non-profits of your choice.

5. Get there under your own steam. Commit to getting around by bike or by foot a certain number of days a month. Not only does this mean using fewer fossil fuels and creating less greenhouse gasses, it means you’ll get good, healthy exercise and we’ll all breathe fewer fumes. A city with pedestrian and bike traffic is a lot more pleasant to live in than a city filled with vehicles.

6. Commit to not wasting. Wasting resources costs the planet and your wallet. Don’t overheat or overcool your home–a few degrees make a huge difference. Let your clothes hang dry instead of using the dryer. Take half the trips but stay twice as long. If your old cell phone works, consider not getting another. Repair instead of rebuy. The list goes on and on.

7. Build a community. Play charades. Have dinners with friends. Sing together. Enjoying each other costs the planet much less than enjoying its resources. Let’s relearn to joke around and play in ways that cost nothing to our pocketbooks or our planet.

8. Take your principles to work. The old adage “the cost of doing business” can no longer hold true. We must act as though we care about the world at work as much as we do at home. A company CEO or a product designer has the power to make a gigantic difference through their business, and so do the rest of us.

9. Dedicate a day’s worth of TV viewing to eco-service each week. The average American watches four and a half hours of TV a day. Take one day off from the tube each week and join with others to improve our planet. Voluntary eco-service is a great way to find community who support your values, and is also a great way to learn about environmental issues and quality of life issues that go along with them.

10. Believe with all your heart that how you live your life makes a difference to all of us. We are all interconnected. We make a difference to each other on many different levels. Every step towards living a conscious life where we consider the consequences of our actions provides support to everyone else—whether you know it or not—who is trying to do the same thing. We are the masters of our destinies. Let’s act as though it is so.

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.

And then I pause while they wait expectantly for more guidance.

“If you were to just start, without waiting for someone like me to come along, what would you do?” I ask finally.

Because, while I want to help and I want to support, I don’t want to put people back to sleep by giving them connect-the-dot directions that don’t require them to engage their spirits. I trust my listeners and my readers to figure things out for themselves way more than I trust myself to give them ideas that are appropriate to them.

After I ask what people would do if they didn’t wait for someone like me to come along, there is another pause.

Finally, I might say, “Look to yourself for guidance. What would [...]]]>

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.

And then I pause while they wait expectantly for more guidance.

“If you were to just start, without waiting for someone like me to come along, what would you do?” I ask finally.

Because, while I want to help and I want to support, I don’t want to put people back to sleep by giving them connect-the-dot directions that don’t require them to engage their spirits. I trust my listeners and my readers to figure things out for themselves way more than I trust myself to give them ideas that are appropriate to them.

After I ask what people would do if they didn’t wait for someone like me to come along, there is another pause.

Finally, I might say, “Look to yourself for guidance. What would you like to do?”

And then a person might say: “I’d like to start riding my bike to work” or “I’d like to campaign against bottled water” or “I’d like to start a compost pile in my building” or “I’d like to tell people we should love each other more.”

Then I laugh. “So why are you asking me what you can do? Just start.”

Most of us already know.

We know. You know.

Underneath the worry and the despair and the fear of doing the wrong thing, we are all imbued with a wonderful compassion and wisdom.

I love the word “inspire.” It has the same route as to respire, to breathe. To be inspired means to have the breath within in us. The breath of what? Some might say God. Some might say something else. But the breath is within us. The compassion and wisdom is there. We are all inspired, filled with the breath.

This is why I try not to give directions: I do not want to risk replacing someone else’s deep wisdom and compassion with my shallow ideas.

It could be said that, in many ways, the trouble we find ourselves in is actually caused by too many off us following directions. I don’t want to give more directions. There isn’t a shortage of directions.

One day, for example, a teacher raised her hand and said, “I want to teach second graders how to recycle. What should I do?”

But I am not a teacher. “You are the expert here, not me. You have much more of what is necessary to teach second graders about recycling than I do.”

What she needed, what we all need, is the ability to trust ourselves. That second grade teacher simply needed to trust that she was enough, that she had enough to start.

Each of us already has what we need to save the world inside of us. It’s a simply matter of trusting the impulse and putting one foot in front of the other without necessarily seeing where the path will ultimately lead.

A Buddhist might say, “Trust your True Self.” A Christian might say, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” There is no need for directions. We all have a True Self. We all have the Kingdom of Heaven within us.

So many of us have nascent ideas for what we can do to help our communities or our planet, but we don’t start because we are waiting for permission or directions from someone else. But we don’t need permission. We don’t need directions.

We can find our own paths.

We can take charge ourselves.

We can simply start.

You hear of one study saying that the energy used washing ceramic coffee cups is as damaging to the environment as the use of disposable plastic cups that won’t biodegrade for thousands of years. You hear of another that says destroying trees to make paper towels is no worse than using hot water and toxic detergent to wash cloth rags.

Everything, if you listen to conventional wisdom, is as bad as everything else. The spin merchants have got us believing that to try to make any difference is futile. You might as well give up. Throw away another plastic coffee [...]]]> Have you heard of Colin Beavan, the No Impact Man? Well, now he’s part of the CSL Blog Posse! Here’s an introduction to his work, written as he and his family were just getting started. Now that their year-long no impact journey has ended, there is a book, a film, and many more exciting  adventures to come.  Make sure to check out the trailer for his documentary film below!

You hear of one study saying that the energy used washing ceramic coffee cups is as damaging to the environment as the use of disposable plastic cups that won’t biodegrade for thousands of years. You hear of another that says destroying trees to make paper towels is no worse than using hot water and toxic detergent to wash cloth rags.

Everything, if you listen to conventional wisdom, is as bad as everything else. The spin merchants have got us believing that to try to make any difference is futile. You might as well give up. Throw away another plastic coffee cup. Don’t bother with the hybrid car. Go on, guzzle.

Meanwhile, I mention to a very liberal friend, a guy who used to be spokesman for a Democratic senator, that I’m trying to figure out how to live no impact here in New York. “Forget it. It’s impossible,” he says. It’s one thing to try it in the countryside, maybe in the woods, like Henry David Thoreau, or on a farm, where you grow your own food. But in New York City? No way.

The fact is that if city dwellers can’t learn to live without reducing their ecological footprint then we’re in deep trouble because most of the world’s population now lives in cities. Saving the world can’t be left to the country bumpkins. It’s an urban problem.

True, a city like New York does have the environmental advantage of economy of scale—people share transport, buildings and resources—but cities are also responsible for the production and concentration of pollutants in massive amounts. Thanks to car and truck exhaust alone, which makes for 90 percent of Manhattan’s air pollution, the island’s residents face the highest risk in the country of developing cancer from chemicals in the air.

Add to that the annual 9 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from New York’s electricity use, our 8 billion pounds of garbage and half a trillion gallons of sewage and you have a supersized serving of world-killing poisons. Energy efficient city though New York might be, we remain an ecological nightmare, which is why—in addition to the feeling that we just have to do something—my wife Michelle and I began talking about going off the grid for a year, unplugging from the matrix.

In specific terms, the challenge is to take a year to develop and live a no impact lifestyle. Our approach will be to research our ecological options and run down our damage in one area at a time—solid waste, transportation, energy, for example. Our aim, over the course of the year, is to do no net harm to the environment. We’ll wind down in stages.

But to cause no net impact is impossible to do merely by restricting consumption and waste output. Just participating in society makes us responsible for the negative environmental impacts of society’s functioning, even if our personal lifestyle does no harm. To offset our societal ecological debt, we also plan to take actions that will have positive environmental impact. For example, we’ll volunteer with the Nature Conservancy to clean up garbage off the beach. To help sop up our share of the year’s CO2, we will take part in a reforestation project to help plant trees.

Meanwhile, I’ll research and answer many of the niggling questions that have had us and everyone we know throwing our hands in the air when trying to do less harm to the environment. Do you do more harm by living in the country or the city? Is it better to drive a thousand miles or take an airplane? Is it really true that the tiniest moped, because of its lack of a catalytic converter, causes more pollution than an SUV? Could we all, by video conferencing, virtual collaboration and tele-commuting, cut down our travel enough to cause a worthwhile reduction in carbon emissions? What, exactly, comprises sufficient individual effort that, if taken by each of us, would save the planet?

During the course of the year, Michelle, Isabella and I will traverse the range of lifestyles from making a limited number of concessions to the environment to becoming eco-extremists. This means that when we’re done, we can reenter the world of normal consumerdom equipped to decide which parts of our no impact lifestyle we’re willing to keep and which ones we’re not. In other words, in addition to the no impact year, we’ll have figured out our way forward.