Since Amanda and I have recently been attempting to live even more sustainably, I wanted to find out how I can continue with this lifestyle, OR become even more sustainable. Some things are quite obvious; New York has a terrific mass transit system, so our greenhouse gas emissions are bound to decrease. But there are some things that I wanted to know more about. Luckily, many of the books I have been reading lately have many potential applications to my new life in NY.
The first of these books is No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process by Colin Beavan. Beavan says that he always described himself as an environmentalist, but really didn't know how his actions were very different than anyone else's. With that in mind, he undertook a yearlong project to not only reduce his impact on the environment, but through various organizations and simple actions, leave a positive impact as well. Beavan lives in Manhattan, and during his year of no impact living, he gives up packaging, buying new things, all transportation with the exception of walking and biking, and eventually, electricity. While his eco-experiment may seem a little extreme (and it may well be), it teaches us some very important lessons about how our small individual actions can lead to large collective action. It inspired me to make several changes in my daily life which, hopefully, will inspire others to make subtle yet important changes in their actions which hopefully will inspire many, many others.
I strongly recommend No Impact Man (and Colin Beavan's blog) to anyone who cares about the future of our planet and how they can play a role in making that future as bright as possible.
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