environment Archives - William Powers, Author of Dispatches from the Sweet Life

Getting Away from It All… If That’s Still Possible

January 20, 2011 by William Powers Leave a Comment

Radio Eco-Shock interviewed William Powers this week; it airs on two dozen university and community radio stations this week in the U.S. and Canada. Enjoy!

Listen: William_Powers on Radio Ecoshock

About the interview: There is an emptiness that invites us all to escape. I did, for a while, living for 10 years without electricity in a self-built cabin in Northern Ontario, Canada.

William Powers did. And who is he? Google tells me about an American from Long Island, an international development and aid worker in poorer countries, a man concerned with the extinction of people, languages, and Nature.

“Mommy, I want something ‘wrapped in garbage, please”

December 27, 2010 by William Powers 9 Comments

Now we’re really stuck. The snow keeps dumping on my sister’s family dome on ten glorious white acres in Richmond, VT.

My sister lives in this dome in Richmond, Vermont

Flights are cancelled for the next days, and my parents, myself and everyone else here visiting for the holidays is stuck in Vermont.

And? My nephews—Leo (7), Huck (4), and Roy (2)— certainly don’t mind the blizzard. They dwell blissfully in the now, sledding down the hill toward the freezing creek and playing with legos by the wood burning stove. No TV for distraction here, just old-fashioned play and books and simple toys. Oh, and Another Culture.

December Thoughts on Gratitude

December 13, 2010 by William Powers Leave a Comment

On my Facebook page, I asked you to share “one thing for which you’re grateful.” I’m grateful for such a positive outflow of responses. They illuminated this rainy day. As promised, I randomly picked one out and that person–Jane Holbrook of Beaufort, North Carolina– has won a signed copy of Twelve by Twelve!

One woman writes: “I’m grateful to still be alive to watch my grandson grow up! I clinically died giving birth to my daughter 27 years ago. I am awed and amazed to still be here!” What a beautiful story.

Einstein and the Oil Spill: A Three-Step Response— See, Be, Do

June 28, 2010 by William Powers 1 Comment

After my talk here in Montpelier, Vermont, a discussion broke out on a very big question: What in the world are we to do?

One audience member talked about feeling powerless. Her activism, she said, felt in vain. The life was sucked out of her. Indeed, do-gooding, however outwardly noble, tends to bring the do-gooder into the blight: the same level of consciousness that creates problems like the global ecological crisis. Hence, the archetypes of the burnt-out aid or social worker, the jaded inner city teacher, and the compromised activist. In my new book Twelve by Twelve, the off-grid physician (Dr. Jackie Benton, a pseudonym) suggests that there is something absolutely essential beneath the doing — and it’s the most important part. It has to do with something both Einstein and Jung said in different ways: the world’s problems can’t be solved at the same level of consciousness at which they were created.

Treehouses

June 9, 2010 by William Powers 2 Comments

As I’ve been touring the country for Twelve by Twelve, I keep meeting other people doing fascinating things with eco-architecture.

One is treehouses. Yes, you heard right. One of my cousins lived in one for a long while out in Oregon. And they can be quite luxurious. Here are some photos of swanky treehouses from today’s Daily Green

If that doesn’t do it for you, how about floating homes? Or straw homes, shipping container homes, green modular homes, or floating houses. What about natural swimming pools that don’t a lot of rubber and chlorine? Or some awe inspiring new green homes? Check them out.

On the Road in Arizona

June 2, 2010 by William Powers 6 Comments

I’m on the road in Arizona this week, meeting with people to talk about Twelve by Twelve. But like everywhere else, we’re also talking about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The over half-million gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf each day is terrible, but not terribly surprising. After all, we’re also losing several thousand acres of rainforest every day, heating the climate by a fraction of a degree each day, and losing an indigenous culture every two weeks as jungle homelands become cattle clear-cuts.

What’s it like to live in a 12’ by 12’, off-the-grid house?

May 12, 2010 by William Powers 24 Comments

Three years ago, I returned to America after a decade of aid and conservation work in Africa and Latin America. Abroad, I’d seen, starkly, the grave impact the global economic system was having on our environment—Amazon rainforests clear-cut for fast-food cattle, African rivers poisoned by multinational mining—and began asking myself a daunting question: How could humanity transition to gentler, more responsible ways of living by replacing attachment to things with deeper relationships with people, nature, and self?

Fortunately, I stumbled upon someone with some clues: Dr. Jackie Benton (a psudonym, per her request). I met this slight, sixty-year-old physician, she was stroking a honey bee’s wings in front of her twelve-foot by twelve-foot, off-the-grid home in North Carolina.