Aditi Sen

Let me make my mea culpa upfront. I am one of those armchair environmentalists – I want to be environmentally conscious but often lack the commitment to actually act on my noble intentions. Here’s an example – when I was pregnant , I proudly declared that I would buy cloth diapers but taking care of a newborn was harder than I thought it would be and I didn’t realize that such a tiny person could poop and pee so much. So I told myself and my husband that we would switch to cloth diapers after our son was six month old. A year later, I am still ordering pampers from Amazon.com.

It turns out that I am not alone. A growing body of research points to the gap between our behaviors and our intentions when it comes to the environment. In the same way that we often fail to act on positive intentions about dieting or exercise, we put off actions that help the environment.Because we tend to focus on the present, future goals seem less important, and we brush them aside to worry about another day. So this is a blog that chronicles the adventures of people like me – armchair environmentalist trying to make smarter decisions to align our intentions and our behaviors.