Can One Guy with a Great Blog Have 'No Impact?'

New York-based writer Colin Beavan has launched a marvelous blog about how he, his wife and two-year-old are striving to have "no impact" on the current warming of our planet. His blog (which already has a great archive of posts) is called "No Impact Man."

And you've got to read the whole subhead, since the blog will closely chronicle how "A Guilty Liberal Finally Snaps, Swears Off Plastic, Goes Organic, Becomes a Bicycle Nazi, Turns Off His Power, Composts His Poop and, While Living in New York City, Generally Turns into a Tree Hugging Lunatic Who Tries to Save the Polar Bears and the Rest of the Planet from Environmental Catastrophe While Dragging His Baby Daughter and Prada-Wearing, Four Seasons-Loving Wife Along for the Ride."

Beavan is under contract with Farrar, Straus, Giroux, and yes, there might be a film about his year of witty eco-obsessiveness too.

"Stage one was figuring out how to live without making garbage: no disposable products, no packaging, etc," he writes. "Stage two was figuring out how to cause the least environmental impact with our food choices. Stage three is figuring out how to reduce our consumption to only what is necessary and how to do that sustainably. The whole thing gets harder and harder as we add each stage.

"What will the future stages be? Who knows? I am no eco-expert. I am just a liberal schlub who got sick of not putting my money where my mouth was. In a way, the whole project is a protest against my highly-principled, lowly-actioned former self. I’m fumbling through, trying to do my best and doing the research as I go along. This blog is my attempt to tell you how it’s going."

On another page, he writes: "None of the practical questions about no impact living would be relevant if my wife Michelle, my daughter Isabella, our dog Frankie and I intended to approach the challenge by becoming ascetics. Until now, we have been your typical convenience-addicted, New York City take-out slaves. Asceticism is not a realistic way forward, not for my family and not for the world.

"Saving this planet depends on finding a middle path that is neither unconsciously consumerist nor self-consciously anti-materialist. The idea for No Impact Man is not to be anorexic but to be abundant, not to be eco-efficient but 'eco-effective,' in the words of the environmental scientists William McDonough and Michael Braungart."

Sounds wonderful, don't you agree? I'll be following this one closely!