大象传媒

I鈥檝e been doing a daily video club to keep my kids sane. Or perhaps to keep myself sane. (!) #Doing is a bit of an exaggeration. I basically just made a spreadsheet and a crowd of beautiful humans jumped in to share all sorts of amazing games, knowledge, and creativity (I made the above watercolor wash during a lesson given by my friend鈥檚 daughter, Lila, age 12). Yesterday, my city councillor did a Q&A from his backyard, calming parents and kids alike with some helpful guidelines about going outside. In talking about all the things our city has done thus far, he said something that aligned with what I鈥檝e been thinking: 鈥淭here are things that are possible that we didn鈥檛 think possible before.鈥�

Councillor Mike Layton was speaking to the fact that Toronto has opened free, 24-hour child care centers for essential workers and leased entire hotels to provide housing for the city鈥檚 homeless population. Why the heck couldn鈥檛 we have done this before? Why the heck can鈥檛 it last? From : 

Moreover, if our society can act, finally, to manufacture a million ventilators and a billion protective masks, surely we can within a few years act on a far grander scale to erect, say, a million wind turbines, insulate and solarize a hundred million buildings, carve ribbons of bicycle paths throughout our cities and suburbs, and so on. With the pandemic enforcing a brutal but necessary reset, the NIMBYism that has impeded this kind of progress practically everywhere might be swept into the dustbin for good.

All it took was a pandemic! After decades of discussion, virtual healthcare is having a moment. Let's make the change permanent, by + via

— Andr茅 Picard (@picardonhealth)

I get that we wouldn鈥檛 necessarily want things to proceed at warp speed in regular life. When you move fast and break things, you end up with . But at the same time, so many of these quickly realized solutions are things we鈥檝e been working towards for years, decades even. So many of these efforts have been stymied by unnecessary hurdles, fear, paperwork, apathy.

In one fell swoop, we seem to have gotten rid of what the world鈥檚 most hilarious behavioral scientist, Richard Thaler, calls sludge. Sludge is the bureaucratic nonsense that impedes progress, hampers good decision-making, and, at its worst, manipulates and misleads. While randomized vaccine trials aren鈥檛 sludge, the finicky red tape of overly prescriptive process that surrounds so much of modern life very much is sludge. Thaler and another fantastic scientist, Sendhil Mullainathan, wrote about  for The New York Times a few weeks ago. (, which is the worst!) 

In some ways it seems we are, all of us, undergoing individualized desludgification. Overly formal work documents…sludge! Fussy recipes…sludge! Pants…absolute sludge! Despite my love of the word rococo, I have even less patience for the needlessly adorned, the wasteful, or the gratuitous right now. Which may explain my pivot to overalls.

While there鈥檚 some evidence that COVID has caused an uptick in envirosludge (generally unscientific impromptu rules around reusables), I鈥檇 wager that, on the whole, we鈥檝e reduced some of the bureaucracy that impedes strong environmental action. Want to garden? Just do it. Want to dig for a geothermal heating system on your front lawn? Bylaw officers are otherwise occupied. Just do it.

While I鈥檓 not building an unpermitted earth house in my backyard, I have been taking pleasure in the small again, too. As green infrastructure projects jockey for all of our governments鈥� attention, I鈥檓 nursing my own green infrastructure by growing green onions. I鈥檓 just kind of making things, figuring out stuff as I go.

The cartoon column I write for Yes! Magazine is called Small Works. It鈥檚 all about the importance of doing little things (they catalyze bigger things, they empower us, they help us break larger challenges into discrete pieces, they鈥檙e everything!). And yet I need to remind myself of the importance of small, time and time again. I鈥檇 never grown anything from seed, because I had neither time nor ability. I usually just buy plants. But that鈥檚 not an option right now. And my wonderful friend . So I got some. And they鈥檙e working. When I saw the little green shoots burst forth from the soil, reader, I cried like I was two glasses of red wine into a screening of The Notebook. Like I said, little green things ftw.

BUMP THIS

Pushing for green development standards? We have a rare opportunity to rethink how we apply development monies.  may help your municipality.

350.org wants Canadians to , not the powerful.

Take back the streets! ()

THIS WEEK: Sludge

What sludge have you gotten rid of/chosen to ignore? Let me know!

LAST WEEK(S): Discounts and #Doingthings and The Quiet

The estimable Bruce Lourie  about acting too slowly, too weakly, too late. We discount, and we pay the price.

The quiet

Writes Janet: 

I鈥檓 old. I鈥檓 sad to see what we hippies, who were supposed to save the earth, have done to this planet. I have always lived the life of what I refer to as a 鈥渧oluntary peasant.鈥�

Life moves so quickly today. Everything is advertising. Money is worshipped. I belong to a group that held classes in life skills like gardening, canning, cheese making, knitting and bike repair. We quit about 5 years ago because few people showed up.

Writes Dan: 

I鈥檝e learned to live with doing less (or nothing) since moving to Iowa 4 years ago. It鈥檚 not new to me. It鈥檚 just Executive Function dysfunction..ha ha.

Your weekly edition of cute families dancing:

https://twitter.com/tanyachen/status/1247668238374354949?s=20

If you鈥檙e not Canadian, you may be like 鈥淲TF?鈥� but I can鈥檛 get enough of this catchy tune that makes our citizenry aware of 鈥渟peaking moistly.鈥�

馃幍馃幎Just when you thought the saga was over, someone creates an incredibly catchy autotune remix.

— Kamil Karamali (@KamilKaramali)

Thanks for reading. Hope you are safe and cozy.

Sarah

P.S. I鈥檓 always curious to know what you think. This is my newsletter for the week of April 9, 2020, published in partnership with 大象传媒 Media You can sign up to get Minimum Viable Planet newsletter emailed directly to you at .