My Green Life

I have been doing some reflecting the past couple days in anticipation of Earth Day and apparently so have others as evidenced by the fact that the earthday.org website is experiencing heavy enough traffic that navigating their website is impossible.  I knew that Earth Day would be the perfect excuse to get another post written since I’ve been slacking a bit lately. In my excitement, I did some research and googling and I came across a quiz that is supposed to show what your eco-footprint is, or in other words, how much you like the planet. Now, I consider myself a pretty eco-conscious consumer who recycles, tries to minimize gas and water usage, enjoys camping and the outdoors, uses fabric bags at the grocery store, and generally is pretty aware of the Earth. However, after taking this quiz, I found out that if everyone on the Earth lived like I do, it would take 4.4 Earths to sustain the population. This shocked me, and initially I had no intention of revealing this unflattering statistic to the blog community. But, as I was thinking about it, and as a co-worker of mine took tons of magazines and dumped them right into the trash in front of me, I realized how far we have to go in becoming “environmentally aware enough.” My scolding comment was probably not enough to change that co-workers habits, but it’s a small step in raising SOME awareness in a small town where everyone who goes to the dump heads straight to the trash bin without a second thought about the recyclying bins just steps away. But these two incidents got me thinking how many “Earths” we actually would need to survive. I feel that, as a society, changes will come slowly. And although I think it is important for individuals to take responsibility, I think, ultimately, it will come down to scientific breakthroughs that will prevail. Finding algae that converts tons of CO2 to oxygen or solar cells cheap enough to provide all the energy necessary to sustain a home of business. These are the discoveries that will have to happen to really make the difference that is needed.

However, until those discoveries are revealed, I will continue trying to do what I can to protect the Earth. So, on this 40th anniversary of Earth Day, like New Years Eve resolutions, I would like to make an Earth Day resolution to become more aware of legislation being passed and to write my representatives urging them to vote with an environmental focus. My goal will be to write a minimum of one letter a week. I’ll be reporting back periodically on the success or failure of this mission…