Warming up to being green

If you have ever read my movie reviews, you know I am a fan of horror movies. I even put one of them, “Slither,” on my list of top 10 films of 2006. I started 2007 the way I ended 2006, by watching a movie, and I can honestly say that the most recent film I watched was one of the scariest I had seen in awhile.

My family and I sat down to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” on New Year’s Day. It is a film version of Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation on global warming, which is a variation on a presentation he has given for close to 30 years. The film wasn’t scary because it was 90 minutes of Gore, who once resembled a robot made of wood, but because it lays out a pretty convincing argument that global warming is occurring and at a faster rate than anyone could have predicted.

There is a lot to see in the film such as disappearing glaciers and parts of ice shelves in Antarctica breaking off. Gore shows the viewer lots of charts and graphs and asks some very interesting questions. It leaves you with the impression that humanity may be in for some very rough times unless we do something.

That may not be the case. If you go looking on the Internet, you can find sites stating that global warming is either fact or fiction. I’m sure a lot of people out there will discount the arguments in “An Inconvenient Truth” just because of who the messenger is.

As for me, I lean towards believing that something not great is going on and I am going to do everything that I can to make a difference. Even if global warming is hooey, the steps I can take to make a better environment for the community, both locally and globally, are not.

Though New Year’s Day was almost over when the credits began to roll, I decided to add, “Be more environmentally responsible,” to my list of New Year’s Resolutions.

I started to look for things that I could do and one of the first things that is recommended for people looking to be more eco-friendly is to recycle. Great, except our sanitation company doesn’t offer recycling.

I started to look for other local municipalities that would offer recycling drop off points and some only take yard waste or aluminum cans. Since I’ve given up soda as another resolution this year, I don’t really have any cans to recycle and as for yard waste, well, I’m not doing much in my yard right now and we have a compost pile. It may not be in a bin and it hasn’t been turned in a long time, but it is a pile, our pile, and we like it.

I continued my recycling search though and found that there may be another sanitation company that will offer recycling in my neighborhood and some area stores will serve as recycling spots for plastic bags, batteries and more.

The other two “R” words that get used frequently when talking about protecting the environment are “reduce” and “reuse.” Things to reduce are the amount of water we use, by letting the shower warm up for too long or letting the hose run when we wash our cars. We could also reduce the amount of energy we use by turning off unnecessary lights or electronic devices that we aren’t using.

As for reusing, we have already adopted the use of reusable bags for grocery shopping. It’s very big in Germany, which is where we have some relatives, and my wife is very into bags, so we bring cloth bags to the grocery store every two weeks and make the kid bagging groceries use them. The employees there tend to look at us as if we are aliens, but I was getting very tired of them using one plastic bag for a box of Hamburger Helper.

Of course the biggest thing that any of us could do to help the environment and the area’s terrible air quality is to drive less. This could mean car-pooling, using public transit, telecommuting, walking or biking. This isn’t easy to do, but it is very necessary.

It is also recommended that drivers keep their tires properly inflated and their air filters replaced regularly. Saving energy will also help reduce air pollution, so by turning off lights you aren’t using, insulating your water heater or installing low flow showerheads, you can help improve the air quality.

I found a lot of helpful information on Web sites like www.keepgeorgiabeautiful.org and earth911.org. Some of the things they suggest sound easy to do, but keeping up with their suggestions may be hard. I’m sure it will eventually begin to feel like a chore and the more you read on these sites, the more you realize all of the stuff that you haven’t been doing. The suggestions then begin to sound like nagging and, like a petulant child, you wonder why you should do these things if nobody else is.

There are some very good reasons and chances are you see them every day. There are young people that are counting on using this world to live their lives. I’d really like it if my son lived in a world without global flooding that could kill hundreds of thousands of people and would likely spread disease worldwide. Heck, I’d like him to grow up in a world with Florida.

Even if those are just worst-case scenarios, the situation may even be dire enough that if we don’t make changes, our quality of life can be affected. Forget global warming for a minute and just think of what summer around here is like.

Every day in the summer we get air quality warnings. It’s a normal, everyday occurrence but it shouldn’t just be accepted. If you like breathing and you’d like to do it easier, make some of these changes and encourage others to follow suit. You may not see improvement right away, but maybe your conscience will allow you to breathe easier when you know you are doing your part.

Wow, that sounded preachy.

Before you know it, I’ll be wearing hemp clothing and telling people that meat is murder.

Nah. I love bacon cheeseburgers too much for that to ever happen.