Sean Meriwether's Blog: The Green Economist, page 11

You’ve Got Me Going In Circles

Barbapapa’s Ark, a children’s book that depicted our industrialized world’s negative impact on animals. Barbapapa and his family built a rocket version of Noah’s Ark to save the animals from our pollution. They would not return to earth until we learned how to live in tandem with nature. This sparked action and humans planted trees, cleaned the water, moved to electric vehicles, and installed solar panels. The book was ...

Sliding Doors

NY Dispatch Day 134: On the four hour drive home from Ithaca I intentionally took Route 17, a scenic drive that cuts diagonally across New York State. It was the same path I had taken on a high school drive to Canada with my best friend. As the radio signal from Binghamton gave way to WNYC, and with few cars on the road, I had time to ruminate.

One thought was that during the long spring and summer car drives of my youth the swarms of insects that would unintentionally kamikaze into the windscre...

Ithaca is Gorges!

NY Dispatch Day 133: Greetings from Ithaca, land of gorges. I was invited to join some friends who had rented a house near Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York; they needed a break from their apartment in the city. Prior to confirmation I performed an informal contact tracing on myself, listing the handful of people I had interacted with over the previous few weeks, as well as precautions taken like mask wearing, social distancing, and outdoor meetings. Being indoors with a potenti...

Rites & Rituals

NY Dispatch Day 131: Yesterday my mother and I traveled to south Jersey to attend the wake of my paternal aunt, Patricia Ireland, who passed away on Sunday. We were surprised that they were able to hold an indoor service during the pandemic, when there have been reports of multiple cases being traced back to earlier memorial services. Although the funeral home had tried to postpone the gathering, my cousin wanted to ensure that her mother’s wishes were fulfilled and pushed ahead. Everyone wore f...

The President Goes to War with US

 

NY Dispatch Day 130: Every time we think the US President can’t sink any lower he finds a way to outdo himself. He has been running his administration like a reality TV show and knows how to goose the ratings. Each new outrageous scandal is eclipsed by the next episode. With almost all polls showing him falling behind former VP Joe Biden, 45 is staging his season finale. In his inaugural speech he painted a dark portrait of the United States in chaos and has spent the last 3 and a half years e...

The World Without Us?

NY Dispatch Day 129: And now for something completely different. Good news.

You may ask yourself… say what?! We are all stuck at home because of a pandemic, living through an unprecedented economic and environmental crisis, and facing the dire consequences of inept leadership. What could be good about the news?

Whales.

As our oceans have grown warmer and louder whales have been forced to adapt. They have shifted their ancient migration patterns to venture further north to access colder waters, a...

A Deafening Silence

NY Dispatch Day 128: Here in the US we have been doomscrolling our way through the pandemic, economic fallout, protests against police brutality, and the collapse of the republic under the current president. It is hard to look away from our phones and give attention to events that have been unfolding outside of our personal space. We have enough on our plates, we think, without worrying about something that is happening on the other side of the world, but the stakes have been raised above our ab...

Congressional COVID Countdown

NY Dispatch Day 127: Congress reconvened today before they return to their home states for their respective reelection campaigns. First up on the agenda is drafting the next installment of a federal aid package to help individuals and businesses survive the shutdown imposed by the public health crisis. At the end of July the additional money to the tens of millions of unemployed will dry up at the same time that the ban on evictions will end. All the other federal money to manage the economic fa...

We Are COVID Destroyers

NY Dispatch Day 126: The northeast is navigating our first heatwave with temperatures in the mid-90s and humidity to match. Consolidated Edison, our energy provider, sent out text alerts about potential power outages due to increased air conditioner use. With most of my social bubble friends away, I made plans to travel to the beach with people I had not seen since January, back in the days before the world turned inside-out. This was not without risk. One of them had recovered from COVID-19 bac...

The Power of Books

NY Dispatch Day 125: Imagine a world in which people are so disconnected from one another that they find it easier to maintain imagined relationships with television actors. Where easily obtainable prescription drugs can help you escape the ennui of life and overworked medical crews are on standby to help revive those who overdose. A society where thinking is discouraged because it leads to radical ideas. Where reading books, which might introduce concepts that some might find depressing, is not...