kuniform

Recently, I’ve caught up with various people who’ve seen the post below about Al Gore and wondered. The problem is global, and that means it is, prima facie, beyond any single individual to change through direct action.

It’s what I tried to express in that post about the movie itself. At some point, jumping from Africa to Antarctica to Greenland to Tibet to Brazil and back, learning more information about each place and how they interrelate—it’s cognitive overload. You or I cannot individually walk about and clean up the world.

We can do many other things though, each of which has impact:

• Change our behavior. Here’s a carbon calculator, to understand where you use energy now. Wired magaine has one here as well. Even little things like recycling or eating less beef can help.


• Spend your money wisely. You are probably one of the richest people in the world. Investing a bit in insulation or weatherproofing can help the environment, and you. Eating locally grown or raised produce or animals means you pay a bit more to eat tastier food, there’s less environmental impact from shipping and storing meat and local farmers can keep farming. Everybody wins.


• Invest green. Green investments (or SRI, Socially Responsible Investments) reached $2.29 trillion (that’s with a ‘T’) in the US this year. Smart Money magazine had good things to say about it, as well. Namely, that you should do your homework on these funds, and all funds. Green funds have grown 260% since 1995, but the more that it grows and is considered a critical factor in a company’s role in society, the better. And that brings me to the last point…


• Spread the word. No one can do it alone, so each of us needs to make it a priority in our lives, the same way we did with things like cigarette smoking. People have told me this current administration will not do anything about it. That is not the point. They’re around for 3 more years. This problem is the challenge of our generation, and the generation after us. We have to transform our society, and our ways of thinking. No administration, Democrat or Republican, will make this a priority unless they see that it is a priority for their constituents. If Bush thought going green would help his party in the 2006 elections, he would be drinking chlorophyll right now.