How I spent my Earth Day

In this issue:

  • How I spent my Earth Day
  • Power Hour: Fact-checking the NYT on renewables, Iran sanctions, criminal climate protests, and more
  • The Human Flourishing Project: The search for truly great content (part 3)

How I spent my Earth Day

This Monday I recorded a new video for Prager University on The Green New Deal. It is expected to launch sometime in June. In the meantime, please check out and share these other PragerU videos I’ve done in the past–which have a combined total of over 10 million views across YouTube and Facebook.

Since I was focused on my Green New Deal video I didn’t do any specific commentary for Earth Day. But I want to share a commentary I wrote 7 years ago. 

An Unnatural Amount of Happiness
April, 2012

One of the great joys of life is those hours with loved ones that are so serene that time just seems to stop. A few weeks ago, I had that feeling during a long-overdue reunion with two of my dearest friends. We talked about everything and nothing, we made each other think and made each other laugh, but most of all we just enjoyed the gift of time with kindred spirits.

Such times are best savored in the moment, so I wasn’t in a particularly reflective mood, but given my obsession with human progress, one thought did strike me. While what I treasured about the time we spent together was spiritual, it was ultimately the product of man’s physical transformation of the Earth.

Throughout most of history, human beings have spent the overwhelming portion of their lives engaging in grueling physical labor just to keep their bodies going long enough to engage in the next day of grueling physical labor. To keep going, that is, if they could withstand the harsh environment of undeveloped nature–where clean water was hard to find, where the air was full of diseases they couldn’t cure and full of smoke from open fires they needed to huddle beside, where waste and filth were their inescapable neighbors. . . . 

You can read the entire piece here. 

Power Hour: Fact-checking the NYT on renewables, Iran sanctions, criminal climate protests, and more

On this week’s episode of Power Hour, Don, Steffen, and I cover eight topics:

Listen to the episode:

The Human Flourishing Project: The search for truly great content (part 3)

On the latest episode of The Human Flourishing Project I share some of the fascinating recommendations of truly great content I’ve gotten from listeners so far. You can gain access to all of the recommendations by filling out the survey.

Alex