I wish I could write something poetic and inspirational that would make a difference in how our leaders think about the environment, but I don’t think I have that power or ability.  I do, however, have a voice, a blog and an ability to do little things every day that may make our stay on this little planet we call earth last a few years longer.  I know that if we don’t take action, if we don’t raise our voices, if we don’t do all we can each and every day, it will never change.  So tonight, I lend my voice to thousands of others as part of Blog Action Day – knowing that alone I can make a small difference and together we can make a big impact.

A few thoughts that have arisen today as I thought about this post:

• Carbon offsets are a great way to buy a cleaner conscience, but not a great way to reduce carbon emissions – while it is probably from some very well meaning people, I am afraid it has been exploited by marketing people to simply separate people from their money.  That said, it does raise awareness, so it has some really good impact, but I am unsure why everyone is so excited about it…
• I saw this artist Chris Jordan on the Colbert Report who does some amazing things helping people visualize the sheer size of our waste problem.  He creates art that demonstrates how much trash we really generate in a given period of time.  BIG ART.  His images actually include the real number of ‘things’ we use or throw away in a given period of time (such as a massive image with two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes).
• Forget the global warming or global cooling debate – let’s talk about the fact that the earth is a living system – an ecosystem, in some ways very much like our own bodies.  Plain common sense says that if we keep putting poisons into the system, or taking out huge numbers of natural resources, we are bound to be damaging it somehow.  So let’s just all be considerate of our mother earth as we go about our day, and be a little more conscious of how we treat her….