Solutions & sustainability – May 22

May 22, 2007

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


Why Working Less is Better for the Globe

Dara Colwell, AlterNet
Americans are working harder than ever before and at a greater cost to the environment. Research suggests that practicing a more simple lifestyle made people happier while using fewer resources.

Americans are working harder than ever before. The dogged pursuit of the paycheck coupled with a 24/7 economy has thrust many of us onto a never-ending treadmill. But of workaholism’s growing wounded, its greatest casualty has been practically ignored — the planet.

“We now seem more determined than ever to work harder and produce more stuff, which creates a bizarre paradox: We are proudly breaking our backs to decrease the carrying capacity of the planet,” says Conrad Schmidt, an internationally known social activist and founder of the Work Less Party, a Vancouver-based initiative aimed at moving to a 32-hour work week — a radical departure from the in early, out late cycle we’ve grown accustomed to. “Choosing to work less is the biggest environmental issue no one’s talking about.”

A backlash against overwork fatigue, the Work Less Party is one of a growing number of initiatives aimed at cutting work hours while tackling unemployment, environmentally unfriendly behavior and boosting leisure time. According to Schmidt, author of “Workers of the World RELAX,” which examines the economics of reduced industrial work, working less would allow us to produce less, consume less, pollute less and — no complaints here — live more.
(21 May 2007)


Having an Environmentally Friendly Day in Bed

Nitrozac & Snaggy, The Joy of Tech via Geek Culture

She: Are you still sleeping? It’s past noon!
He: I’m not sleeping! I’m having an environmentally friendly day.

(May 2007)
Humor, suggested by Big Gav.

Lectures on Advanced Energy Efficiency: Concepts and Practice
Amory Lovins’, Stanford University
Amory Lovins’ lecture series, Advanced Energy Efficiency: Concepts and Practice, is now available online. In March, Mr. Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and the fifth MAP/Ming Visiting Professor for Energy and the Environment at Stanford University conducted an evening lecture series at Stanford. The lectures are now available:

1. Downloadable video: iTunes (itunes.stanford.edu/).
– access Stanford iTunes website
– Under the category “What’s New” on the left, click on Advanced Energy Efficiency
From that page, choose a lecture to download
– Sit back and relax. It takes approximately 1/2 hour to download
– Or (when it is no longer new), click on “Science and Technology,” then “Engineering,” then “Video”

2. Downloadable audio: Center for Social Innovation, Stanford Graduate School of Business ( www.gsb.stanford.edu/csi )
Available soon

3. Streaming video: RMI ( www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid1260.php>
For more easy viewing, the slides from the lectures will also be available on the above URL

In the spirit of information exchange, we invite you to tell others about the lecture series. Be a part of preserving our environment for future generations.
(2 May 2007)
Email from Peggy Propp, Philanthropic Programs Manager at Stanford University


Tags: Consumption & Demand, Culture & Behavior, Education, Technology