Getting religion when it comes to environmentalism is a little like getting religion in any other form, its great as long as you don't become inconvenienced and you can do keep to your habits most days. I am not a modern environmentalist, in fact, I don't want to any where near those people. They are one and all, well, to be honest : a LITTLE MAD. I don't buy end of the world scenarios when they are in scripture and I buy them even less when they become a form of entertainment - and don't ask me what I think Mr. Al Gore - I have a hard enough time being nice without trying to
edit those words. But I do take the environment seriously, and, yes, there is a chance that climate is in a state of flux - its not surprising - its often been a state of flux. Look at the Little Ice Age. Look at the dust bowl of my parent's generation ... I would rather it go into warm period, though, than a really cold one - the little ice age brought on such delights as the Plague and Witchcraft mania (i.e. The persecution of little old ladies and their cats.). A warm age could come with both good and bad results - not all bad. Cold - especially a real honest-to-goodness ice age scares me. I personally suspect - and this is because I was alive and reading the news magazines in the 1970's that this panic about a warming up of the climate is about as real as the ice age the scientists were warning us of back then. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do smart things that help save resources and lower the amount of wasted energy and natural resources... it means that we should have Both --- an advanced technological civilization and the work to improve it and our use of our planet's resources.
Above you see one of the simple things you, yourself, can do for the environment - just googled it and found an illustration - they are out there. Its a little thing and there are no government subsidies so don't look for them --- but it does help. Plastic shopping bags can be recycled but it takes a lot of energy do it and most of them go into the land fills. Cloth shopping bags are now available at many stores, they are extremely cheap - sometimes only 99 cents. I bought a rather nice one (of cheap fabric ) at Wal-Mart, black with bright green letters "
Plastic? Paper ? Neither!" this week and I have several from my local grocery store that I use every day - I've been using cloth bags my entire adult life and they last decades if treated correctly. I am discouraged about the ones I bought recently - the design is similar to that picture I found on the net but the cloth isn't going to last very long and already the grocery bags are wearing on on the bottom where I sometimes drag them walking home. Time to get out the sewing machine and some of my old fabrics. I think I will make the flat bottom bag after measuring the ones I have bought.
AS the bag says, Paper? Plastic? --- Neither !
and thank you very much. and Do it and don't worry - little drops of water can make a mighty ocean.
The truth is that the government isn't going to save the world - each person who does smart things in better ways will do the saving.
