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So I tried to copy one article completely, but I wasn’t able to cut and paste the illustrations. Still, here is the start to his thoughts about consumption, overpopulation, and the planet. There’s a link at the end of the excerpt right to his page.

A fairly common belief among western environmental activists is that “overpopulation is causing our ecological overshoot”. It’s a simple idea to present, as it just requires people to accept that more people cause more environmental damage.

Unfortunately this simple idea has a number of problems.  The main one is the old conundrum of who bears the responsibility for bringing the situation back into balance.  Should rich countries whose population growth is already slowing cut their consumption, or should poor countries that are not overconsuming cut their populations?

I used to believe that population was “the” ecological problem of the world.  I’ve recently changed my mind, as the result of a variety of investigations into the Ecological Footprint.

I’m currently using the EF as my standard for measuring relative amounts of ecological damage both nationally and globally.  According to The Footprint Network the world has about 1.8 Global hectares (Gha) of biocapacity per person, and we use, on average, over 2.6 Gha of biocapacity per person.  The difference is called the ecological debt.  It measures overshoot – the rate at which we are drawing down the earth’s natural resources to support our population in the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed.

I’m not totally satisfied with this method of calculating overshoot. I think it misses some important ecological factors such as ocean acidification and the loss of biodiversity through species extinctions.  It’s also a steady state model, and can’t take into account the effects of hitting tipping points in areas like ice loss or methane production from melting hydrates and permafrost.  Such effects would have to be incorporated into the model by estimating their impact on biocapacity, which is an error-prone exercise.  Still, it’s the best we have right now, and given the amount of work being done with Ecological Footprints it makes sense to examine our situation using this tool.

The first thing I discovered was that a country’s Ecological Footprint correlates much better to its GDP than it does to its population density:   Read the rest of the article and see the charts here.

This article came from: Approaching the Limits to Growth: The Footprints of Consumption at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

Susana Valadez is an anthropologist who went to the Huichol region to do fieldwork. She ended up falling in love with one of the Huichol men she met. They married in 1978 and have three children.

As Susana discovered over time, the traditional ways were being encroached on. A fiesty, energetic, deeply caring woman, Susana founded the Huichol Center — that link takes you to its website. It is devoted to cultural preservation in many ways, but Susana also explores integrating non-traditional culture into the Huichol life as appropriate. For example, she has introduced the making of soymilk as an eco-friendly source of badly needed protein.

On her website is really well-made program about the Center. It runs about 12 minutes. You will enjoy it the most if you press play, then pause and wait two minutes. This will allow the video to load and be played without any breaks or buffering.

We had time to chat a bit. I told her about the earthbag building that my husband Kelly and other local Americans and Canadians are doing at a school right near where we live, where a number of Huichol students are in residence. I also told her that I got a BA in Anthropology from Stanford and started my PhD at Berkeley, also in Anthropology, before the 60s overcame me and I said goodbye to academia.

Talking with her was kind of like talking with someone I could have become. I could imagine my life taking her path!

A funny thing about this blog post: I meant to write it for my blog on living in Mexico but had it almost finished here before I noticed where I was. (Both blogs are on the Wordpress platform and look virtually identical to work in. That’s my excuse.) Anyway, since that was such an out-of-character “error” for me to make, I am going ahead and putting it up here. Maybe someone is going to find it here who doesn’t go to my other blog.

This project of hers does an incredible amount on not that much money. On Susana’s beautifully done website, there is a Paypal button. I clicked and made a small donation, and I encourage you to do the same. (Or a large donation!)

This article came from: A Huichol Encounter at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

GreenAnswers.com is a new social question and answer site dedicated to environmental issues.

The impetus for GreenAnswers was the realization that a lack of widespread knowledge about environmental issues is one of the greatest hurdles to positive action.

We created GreenAnswers to provide a forum where people could debate and discuss these important issues, thereby helping to educate and inform the public about the environment. Since we are a user-generated site, the quality of the answers depends on getting smart and passionate people to participate.

So I’ve been exploring the site. It was easy to register, and I do always like it when I can put up a link to this site. I saw a number of questions that I could answer, and did answer one.

Questions at GreenAnswers.com

The homepage automatically shows the questions most recently asked. Here were the first ones when I was there:

Answers at GreenAnswers.com

Members

This article came from: Green Answers: Website Review at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

So I lost myself in all that for a while.  I always love reading simple living tips from other people… I get more ideas that way. Think I will finally give away some of the cotton-polyester clothing in my closet that I wear about once a year, since I really prefer natural fibers.

Back to Zen Habits… There is so much there, that I was delighted to find Start Here on Leo Babauta’sminimalist Zen- style menu… that link takes you to the Beginner’s Guide to Zen Habits – A Guided Tour.  Here is part of it:

The All-Time Most Popular Posts on Zen Habits

1. 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It
2. 20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out in Life
3. Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life
4. The Cheapskate Guide: 50 Tips for Frugal Living
5. A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home
6. 10 Tasty, Easy and Healthy Breakfast Ideas
7. 50 Ways to Be Romantic on the Cheap
8. 30 Things to Do to Keep From Getting Bored Out of Your Skull at Work
9. Get Off Your Butt: 16 Ways to Get Motivated When You’re in a Slump
10. Top 42 Exercise Hacks

Well, have fun! And don’t be surprised if some of his pages turn up sometime on this website… people are welcome to copy his writings if they want to. Very cool.

This article came from: Zen Habits: Website Review at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

• Food
• Garden
• Interiors
• DIY
• Household
• Fashion

and they also have tabs for stories, events, resources, and a forum.

You can sign up to be a member and if you do, you get a useful free ebook on how to remove stains from everything. (Wish I’d had that quite a few times in my life!)

The site is run by four energetic women. How do I know that, since I haven’t met them? Well one them, Clare Flynn, is described this way:  For Clare the glass is neither half empty nor half full, instead it’s an opportunity to see what happens if you turn the glass upside down, trap the milk inside, whack a candle on top and turn it into a combined lighting system and yoghurt maker. I quote that to give you an idea of the out-of-box quality of the site!

I chose the gardening topic first — here are the articles under that category when I was there. I got lucky when I cut and pasted the titles that the links came along too. The article on starting plants in little pots made from toilet paper rolls made me go “Of course!” but I’ve never done it. Maybe next spring…

• Create a restorative garden
• Dig for victory
• Get creative with containers
• How to get green mold off the grouting in your flagstone patio
• How to grow your own strawberries
• How to keep squirrels and moles at bay
• How to make a herb planter from an old grate
• How to use colour in the garden
• Make your own compost – the ultimate in recycling
• Making garden candle holders
• My first efforts at growing from seed
• Plant pots from toilet rolls
• Recycle the rain
• The rise of the allotment
• The Small Garden – an oldie but goldie!

This is not just a gardening site, though. The fashion section gave me several ideas, though I don’t need the article about how to sew on a button. I looked at their article on updating old footwear, curious to see if my husband’s regular use of silicon caulk would be mentioned. It wasn’t — this was mainly about things like fabric pens and spray paints. Hmm, gives me some ideas!

Don’t go to this site unless you are prepared to get some fun ideas yourself. Maybe they should market the site as an antidote for depression… It’s certainly an antidote for excess consumerism! Highly recommended.

Oh, and I should mention that guest bloggers are welcome… see the bottom of any article on their site for details.

This article came from: Make It and Mend It: Website Review at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.

First, what is it? It tells you on the homepage that it’s an online community space connecting people, nonprofits and businesses working toward a just and sustainable world.

They explain on the FAQ page that the goal is to encourage collaboration, provide people with the tools and resources they need, and thus also help reduce duplication of efforts, with the overall purpose of increasing the effectiveness of people working for sustainability and justice.

This made me think of a quote that I saw recently:

The world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible.

This is a quote from the Berkana Institute, which I saw over at the US Transitions website. So I wasn’t surprised when the Berkana Institute was featured on the home page of Wiser Earth.

It’s active worldwide, as this interactive map from the site shows:

Over 100,000 organizations, over 20,000 people, and over 5,000 resources (websites, books, RSS feeds, etc., over a thousand groups, and hundreds of events are listed, with descriptions. Like other networking sites, you can add people as friends and create your own profile page. You can join groups and communicate with others

It’s a not-for profit site, no ads, which gives it a refreshingly clean interface. To take part in discussions, you need to join, which is free: here’s the tutorial for joining Wiser Earth.

This article came from: Wiser Earth: A Review of a Website for Connecting at Simple Living, Sustainable Living.