I wanted to let everyone know about a nationwide event my No Impact Project is undertaking with the Center for a New American Dream.

During the two-weeks of the historic UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (December 7th-18th), we’re bringing people together to talk about the impact of holiday spending on their lives and the environment.

Every year, growing numbers of us are unhappy with the shopping frenzy that surrounds the holidays but most of us don’t know how to get off the treadmill. What if we worked together to find another way to celebrate? 

The No Impact Project and Center for a New American Dream have partnered in organizing a nationwide program of community screenings of the documentary No Impact Man, together with post-screening discussions about how to simplify the holidays this year.

Thanks to @denadu8pbb for tweeting this old post of mine. When I reread it I thought it bears reposting. One thing about a single-payer health care system. People say that it will cause an unhealthy relationship between people and the government. But my question is this: Doesn't the fact that we currently depend on major international corporations for our health care mean that we already have an unhealthy relationship with the corporations, one that requires us to continue to consume if we want the providers of our health care to survive? Isn't there something backwards about this? That's what this post is about.

Back in July, I posted the above diagram under the title Exchange of Love. The point of the diagram is that economic policy in the modern world is generally about strengthening the bonds between corporations and individuals, rather than the other, potentially more meaningful, relationships.

Under the current paradigm, this is important because it is from corporations that we get our health care, our salaries, our retirement benefits.

The problem is, that when the economic tide goes out, the corporations shrink and--by a variety of mechanisms including layoffs and plunging stock prices--so do the benefits our relationships with them offer. Because the relationship between the corporation and the individual is entirely fiduciary, loyalty and longstanding relationships don't really factor.  A decision at far-away head office suddenly decimates an entire community.

Meanwhile, because we have invested so much in the relationships with  corporations, the other relationships are weakened, which means that they can't provide sustenance when the corporate bond breaks. Why would neighbors help neighbors when they barely even know each other?

So what if, instead of investing government money only in corporations to bolster that bond, President Obama also invested in strengthening local community and familial relationships? Suppose he invested in local farming and local business and general strengthening of bonds between people at the proximate level?

If he did that, when the crises came, and the corporations shrunk, wouldn't that mean that we might have the relationship with family, friends and local business that allowed us to rely on each other? Wouldn't that mean, too, that even if the boom money went away, we would still have the enduring satisfaction and support of a strong community?

And if we had those strong relationships, isn't there a chance that we wouldn't require so many planetary resources in form of "stuff" to have a good quality of life? In other words, if we could play more and rely more with and on each other, wouldn't we need fewer planetary resources and things to feel satisfied with our lives?

The Foundation teaches kids about the outdoors and environmental stewardship, but the problem was that they were getting all this trash washed up on their property on the banks of the Potomac River. So they started the Trash Free Potomac Watershed with the goal of making it trash free by 2013.

Anyway, at their trash summit, someone was talking about the big problem of finding bags full of cups and what not from the big chain restaurants that people just turfed out of their cars after chowing down a fast food meal from the drive through.

I thought: no one was complaining about the litter resulting from food that is actually good for you. Nobody was finding or complaining about the Potomac being choked up by heads of lettuce or apple cores or carrots--you know food that fortifies without making us fat.

And it suddenly occurred to me that only food that is bad for us has any trash associated with it. Only food that is bad for us needs packaging. So I've been thinking about a new healthy eating diet. All you have to do is never eat food that has packaging associated with it and you'll automatically end up healthy and skinny!

Healthier people, healthier planet. Yay! Because it turns out that what trashes the planet trashes ourselves.

PS Can you think of other examples of what trashes the planet trashes ourselves? Leave the thought behind here. Thanks!

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:

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.