global warming is real, people. But you knew that already… January 20, 2012

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2011-temps.html

Posted by No Impact Man himself, Colin Beavan. A reminder that global warming is real. Neat video and graph are download-able.

Our lives will definitely be changing, along with the climate. What are you doing to ease the transition? I’d love to hear about it. (See Mr. Bevan’s website, No Impact Man, for ideas if you need a jump start).

What am I doing about it, you ask of me? Well, I’m working on my book, which will offer readers a way to connect their actions to their values, with the assumption that most of us have values that can be inclusive of the environment (compassion, respect, fairness, etc.). It just may come as a surprise that we have to consciously choose to apply those values, and it may involve changing those habits that have allowed us to move through life on autopilot. Visit my website for more on this.

Looking for an agent now; manuscript should be more or less complete in a couple of months. If no agent bites, I plan on self-publishing. EcoSoul could be available as early as mid-year. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted. It will be my first book, and I’m very excited about it.

Stay cool…

30 second habit January 9, 2012

I just heard a great piece on the radio this morning, about habits. I’m all about habits – those little individual, innocuous behaviors that we all have, that are wasteful of increasingly precious resources.

Stanford professor Dr. BJ Fogg is working from the theory that habits are unconscious (duh!) and in order to change them, you need to start with baby steps. And, this is the real reason why so many people fail at their new year’s resolutions – as the professor describes it, resolutions are abstract ideas, not tied to a single behavior. But, to make that resolution reachable, all you have to do is break it down into 30 second increments to eliminate decision-making from the sequence. If you have to decide (am I going to the gym today?), you’ve left yourself open to talking yourself out of it.

So what habit could you green? You probably don’t make a decision to leave the water running while you’re brushing your teeth, or to grab 20 napkins from the to-go counter, or to leave the lights on all over the house. To change unconscious behaviors like these, make one decision now (turn the water off; take 1 napkin; hit the light switch every time you go through a doorway) and work at it until this little action becomes a habit.