— a quiet roadmap to a lighter life, est. earth

Slay waste.
Save heaven.

By Ashley Miami · www.ashleymiami.music · Venmo @Tom-Mayell · thank you

Most of what we’re told to do for the planet barely moves the needle. This is what actually works — ranked honestly, by the tonnes of carbon you spare and the silence you leave behind.

Walk the path

Nine steps. From the most consequential thing you can do, to the smallest tender gesture.

— the nine The path, at a glance.

  1. 1Have one fewer child — or none
  2. 2Live without a car
  3. 3Don’t fly. Or fly rarely.
  4. 4Eat plants.
  5. 5Run your house on sun.
  6. 6Own fewer things, longer
  7. 7Throw away almost nothing
  8. 8Tend a piece of nature
  9. 9Move money and votes

— a few honest words

The earth doesn’t need your recycling.
It needs you to want less.

Polls show most people believe recycling is the most powerful thing they can do. It is not even close. The actions that actually shrink a life’s footprint are bigger, quieter, and often invisible: not having a car, not boarding a plane, not eating an animal, not bringing another consumer into a system already past its limits.

None of this is about purity. It’s about leverage — choosing the few choices that do almost all the work, and letting the small ones be small.

01 — the roadmap

Ranked by impact,
not by comfort.

Annual or lifetime tonnes of CO₂e saved, per person, in a wealthy country. Sources: Wynes & Nicholas (Lund, 2017), Project Drawdown, WRI, Our World in Data.

iFirst

Have one fewer child — or none.

The single most consequential thing a person in a wealthy country can do. A child inherits not only your love but your continent’s consumption — every flight, every commute, every kilowatt — multiplied across a lifetime and the lifetimes that follow.

how: Honor the family you already have. Be the favorite aunt, the chosen uncle, the godparent. Adopt. Foster. Mentor. Build a life where love is not measured in offspring produced.

Monumental
58.6tonnes / year of descendant emissions
iiSecond

Live without a car.

The car is the single most polluting object most people will ever own — and it shapes the city around it, demanding pavement where there could be gardens, distance where there could be neighbors. Going car-free is the cleanest cut you can make in a lifestyle.

how: Move closer to the things you do. Walk the short trips. Bike the medium ones. Train and bus the longer ones. If you must keep a car, share it, and let it be electric and small.

Major
2.4tonnes / year
iiiThird

Don’t fly. Or fly rarely.

A single transatlantic flight can erase a year of careful living. Aviation is the most carbon-dense thing a private person can do — concentrated, instant, hard to undo. The good news: it is also the easiest to simply not do.

how: Choose the train for anything under twelve hours. Take fewer, longer trips instead of many short ones. Vacation closer. Visit slowly. Refuse the long-weekend long-haul.

Major
1.6tonnes / long-haul flight avoided
ivFourth

Eat plants.

A meat-heavy Western diet emits roughly 7 kg of CO₂e a day. A plant-based one closer to 3. Beef alone uses 15,000 liters of water per kilogram. You don’t have to be perfect — most of the win comes from leaving red meat and dairy behind.

how: Build meals around grains, legumes, vegetables, nuts. Treat meat as occasional, not central. If you can’t go fully plant-based, go red-meat-free — the biggest reductions come from cutting beef and lamb.

Major
1.5–2.1tonnes / year (vegan)
vFifth

Make your house run on sun.

Switching your home to renewable electricity — through your utility’s green tariff, community solar, or your own roof — decarbonizes everything that plugs in, from the kettle to the heat pump to whatever comes next.

how: Call your utility and ask for the renewable plan. Electrify what you can — induction stove, heat pump, EV if you must drive. Insulate. The greenest kilowatt is the one you don’t need.

Strong
1.5tonnes / year
viSixth

Own fewer things, and own them longer.

Nearly every object in your home has a carbon shadow stretching back to a mine, a forest, a factory. The cheapest, cleanest version of an item is the one that already exists. Buy secondhand. Repair. Refuse.

how: Before you buy: ask if you can borrow, mend, or wait. Keep clothes for a decade. Treat phones, laptops, and appliances as things to repair, not replace. Notice when an “upgrade” is really an ad working on you.

Strong
~1.0tonnes / year, household
viiSeventh

Throw away almost nothing.

Roughly 40% of food produced is wasted. Textiles take centuries to decompose. Compost turns scraps into soil; repair turns “trash” back into things. A waste-light life is mostly about planning — and refusing what you didn’t need anyway.

how: Meal-plan. Freeze leftovers. Compost. Carry a bottle, cup, and bag. Mend the tear. Donate before you discard. Decline single-use anything.

Meaningful
0.4–0.8tonnes / year
viiiEighth

Tend a piece of nature.

Nature stores carbon better than any machine humans have built. You will not save a rainforest from your kitchen, but you can refuse to drain one — and you can let the patch you steward become wilder, denser, more alive.

how: Plant native, not ornamental. Let part of the yard go feral. Avoid palm oil and beef linked to deforestation. Support land trusts and Indigenous-led conservation. Pick up litter on a walk you would’ve taken anyway.

Meaningful
~0.5tonnes / year, indirect
ixNinth

Move money and votes.

Your bank may be lending your savings to oil. Your pension may be buying pipelines. Your vote and your voice change which industries are subsidized. The leverage of one well-placed political or financial decision dwarfs most lifestyle changes combined.

how: Move money to a bank that doesn’t finance fossil fuels. Check your pension. Vote at every level. Tell elected officials, loudly, what you want. Bring one other person along.

Compounding
∞leverage beyond yourself
The most powerful actions are the ones we’ve been quietly told not to talk about — having fewer children, flying less, going car-free, eating plants. Everything else is a footnote.
— synthesizing Wynes & Nicholas, Lund University, 2017

02 — daily practice

Small, gentle habits.

i — kitchen

Cook the thing that’s about to go.

Build meals around what’s wilting. Freeze the rest. Compost what truly can’t be saved. The fridge is a small economy; treat it like one.

ii — water

Carry a bottle. Take a shorter shower.

Single-use plastic and heated water are both quietly enormous. A reusable bottle and a five-minute shower are nearly invisible until you multiply them by a lifetime.

iii — closet

Buy half as much. Keep it twice as long.

Fast fashion is among the dirtiest industries on earth. Choose well, mend often, wash cold, hang dry. Thrift the rest. A small wardrobe, beautifully kept, beats any haul.

iv — home

Seal the drafts. Lower the thermostat.

Insulation is unglamorous and one of the highest-leverage things you can do to a house. A sweater is cheaper than a furnace and warmer than a guilty conscience.

v — paper

Unsubscribe from the flood.

A typical household throws out 13,000 pieces of paper a year, mostly mail no one read. Get off the lists. Refuse the catalogs. Choose digital, then close the tab.

vi — voice

Talk about it. Out loud.

Climate silence is its own pollutant. Tell one person what you’re doing this week and why. Norms shift through conversation more than headlines.

03 — elsewhere on the internet

Other works by Ashley Miami.

A small constellation of websites, parodies, and projects — sincere, satirical, and frequently both at once.

livelonger.live
On longevity, attention, and what it actually means to lengthen a life.
departmentofwarcrimes.org
A reckoning, dressed as a department. Political and unsparing.
sponsordanny.com
A campaign for the campaign-able. Sponsor Danny, whoever Danny is to you.
sexdiet.org
A wellness regime of dubious origin and unimpeachable name.
tooth.social
A parody social network. Or perhaps just a tooth, socializing.
ashleymiami.music
The mothership. 2,500+ songs across many projects. Rapper, comedian, absurd human, but from Boston.