Ten Easy Green Things I Did Today!

Courtesy of:  ChasingGreen.org

It isn’t enough to simply write about going green, I have to actually follow my own advice in order to make a real impact. I know from experience that revising one’s routine and accommodating for an environmental conscience takes work. And just like any new habit, going green takes cultivation to become second nature. To help you get started, I’m sharing some of the green things I did today. Keep reading to see just how quick and easy going green can be.

6:30 am – I used to bring a new plastic water bottle to the gym each day, but this morning I filled up a reusable bottle with filtered tap water instead. As a bonus it’s cheaper to do this then to buy a 12 pack of single use water bottles each two weeks.

7:40 am – Before I left the house for work, I banished vampire energy by unplugging my cell phone charger, coffee pot, toaster, and stereo. I also quickly switched off the power-strip that’s connected to my TV and DVD player. Light Switch

7:45 am – Listening to my father’s voice in my head, I turned off all the lights in the house before leaving.

7: 50 am – My car is not fuel-efficient by any means, so I left the gas guzzler behind and walked the short distance to work.

10:52 am – When I needed to print something off the computer at work, I reduced paper waste by using both sides.

12:47 pm – I was getting sick of receiving my Macy’s statement in the mail each month even though I pay my bill and manage my account online. So I called them on my lunch break and signed up for paperless statements that will be sent to my email account. Reusable Shopping Bags

5:56 pm – Before going to the grocery store, I stopped by my house to pick up my reusable shopping bags that I store in the kitchen pantry.

6:12 pm – At the grocery store, I bought local fruits and vegetables to support the farmers in my community. Not only are they fresher the produce doesn’t have to be shipped across the country to get to my neighborhood store.

7:42 pm – After dinner I saved water and energy by not running the not-quite-full load of dishes in the dishwasher. I’ll do it tomorrow after breakfast even though I’ll have to use the miss-matched spoon for my cereal in the morning since it’s the only one left that’s clean.

8:23 pm – I chose to do my laundry in cold water and hung everything up on an indoor drying rack.

A Green Post from GreenLivingZone.com by Karen Ann Teeters

Natural Weed Control

One of my Favorite recycled Earth Talk Question and Answer Columns
as seen in E Environmental magazine, reprinted with Permission from E.

You could pull those dandelions out and have them in a salad or here are a few natural weed control techniques from the Earth Talk experts! – Karen

Dear EarthTalk: I pruned back an overgrown bush in my back yard last fall and now the soil around it is covered in dandelions and other weeds. Is there any way to get rid of these weeds without resorting to RoundUp and other chemical herbicides?

– Max S., Seattle, WA

Weeds are nothing if not opportunistic. While you may not have bargained for getting one form of eyesore (weeds) by clearing another (an overgrown bush), dandelions and other fast-growing, quickly spreading plants know no bounds when some new territory opens up. They will colonize and spread out given the slightest opening—after all, that‘s what defines them as weeds.

Of course, conventional herbicides such as Monsanto‘s RoundUp will take down the weeds in a jiffy, but the negative effects on people, animals and the environment may be both profound and long-lasting. Independent studies of RoundUp have implicated its primary ingredient, glyphosphate, as well as some of its “inert” ingredients, in liver damage, reproductive disorders and Non-Hodgkin‘s Lymphoma, as well as in cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, nerve and respiratory damage.

California‘s Department of Pesticide Regulation reports that, year after year, RoundUp is the number one cause of pesticide/herbicide-induced illness and injury around that state. RoundUp is also blamed for poisoning groundwater across the U.S. and beyond, as well as for contributing to a 70 percent decrease in amphibian biodiversity and a 90 percent decrease in tadpole numbers in regions where it is used heavily.

No doubt, the most eco-friendly way to get rid of weeds is to yank them out without the aid of poisons.

Yank them out of the ground!

Given that you‘ll have to manually remove dead weeds from your yard after applying RoundUp (or any other “post-emergent” herbicide), why not just pull them up by hand in the first place? No doubt, the most eco-friendly way to get rid of weeds is to yank them out without the aid of poisons. Unfortunately, many weeds have long deep roots which need to be pulled completely if you don’t want them to grow back; if need be, use a metal weed puller with a hooked end or a mechanical grabber—available at any local garden supply or hardware store—if you don’t want to have to pull those very same weeds next year.

Garden expert Dean Novosat of the Garden Doctor website suggests giving the weed beds a good watering the night before you pull weeds. “…the soil will be softened and will yield the entire weed plant, root and all,” he says. Another way to kill weeds, he says, is by pouring boiling hot water over them.

Of course, once you’ve killed or pulled up all those weeds—and make sure you‘re thorough or else it‘s waste of time—you‘ll want to make sure new ones don‘t start showing up in their place. Planting some regionally appropriate and ideally native plants in place of the removed weeds would be a good first step—check with a local nursery about what some good choices might be for your neck of the woods.

Once the area is cleared (and replanted), cover it with three to six inches of mulch. Mulch forms a barrier between the soil and the sun, depriving any new germinating weeds of the sunlight they need to photosynthesize. Mulch is composed of large chunky material such as wood chips and bark nuggets, and works well for weed control also because it is low in nutrients and thus won‘t fertilize plant starts below.

CONTACTS: California Department of Pesticide Regulation; The Garden Doctor.

Photo: © Lastonien, courtesy Flickr

Have an opinion or weed  control technique you would like to share?

Passion for Earth Day, Everyday

This Earth Day Weekend, I will not be going to an Earth Day”event”. Instead I will be going to a car show with my husband Scott because that is part of our business. He is so totally passionate about cars and that is part of what I love about him. I love that he is passionate about cars, about the planet, about good health. And me, well I’ll be learning more about cars at the show but I will be beaming because we will be sharing our new car website that I created. I am passionate about websites and what they can do for people’s passions.

So what has all this to do about Earth day you say? While I am  very devoted to being green and making wise earth choices, I think as individuals when we pursue our passions, really good things happen for our relationships, for our planet. You can call me a love and peace hippy guru, you can call me a new age freak, but I prefer to think of myself as someone who can see the potential. When you can see the potential in yourself  you start flying with your passions,  and  then you can more easily see the potential and passion in everyone!

Maybe with everyone’s passions flying we will manifest  earth day every day. What are you doing this Earth Day weekend and every day thereafter?  Make it  happen with passion!

Passion for Nature

Karen Teeters is a devoted blogger  and website designer. If you you like this  little bit of opinion, feel free to share it and just link back to http:/www.greenlivingzone.com. To enjoy more of Karen’s work go to http://www.fivestarsitemakers.com and check out the portfolio page. Namaste.

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Earth Day

By Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day

Courtesy of:

http://earthday.wilderness.org/

Get a List of the Local Earth Day Events in Your Area Here:

http://earthday.envirolink.org/

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political “limelight” once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation’s political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.

In Our Hands

After President Kennedy’s tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called “teach-ins,” had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me – why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air – and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:

“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….”

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Green Living

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

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Particpate in your community’s local Earth Day events this year and bring the kids. You’ll enjoy the great outdoors  and your kids will have fun too!

Get a List of the Local Earth Day Events in Your Area Here:

http://earthday.envirolink.org/

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Green Tips for your Green World

Here are Ten Green, Simple, Healthy Ideas to remember and use  from day to day as you strive to stay on your ‘Stepping Lightly” and “Living Simply” path. So whether you are on a trip to the grocery store or writing a things to do list, keep these ideas  in mind or posted on your board.

List – Courtesy of GreenIdeasToday.com

Vinegar

1. Vinegar – Refined processed vinegar is usually a dilution of acetic acid. It works as a great cleaning product and can replace glass cleaners (that contain ammonia) for most practical cleaning applications.

Natural vinegar, like apple cider vinegar has been around for centuries and is a source of vitamins and a natural health remedy.

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Baking Soda

2. Baking Soda – A natural abrasive all-purpose cleaner, baking soda can be used to brush your teeth and soothe minor skin irritations.

It is also an effective odor remover and can be used to keep fridges smelling fresh. This will replace cleaners that contain calcium hypochlorite that can react to release chlorine gas.

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lemons

3. Lemons – Possess a wonderful, natural flavor and smell that can’t be reproduced artificially. In addition to traditional use in cooking; lemons are also a natural cleaner and ares anti-bacterial due to  high acid content.

Lemons are also used in home remedies.

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hemp

4. Hemp – Seeds contain all the necessary amino acids and fatty acids necessary to maintain human life. Hemp seed oil can be used for a variety of purposes such as a nutritious food additive and as an ingredient in skin creams.

Hemp fibers are used in rope, paper and for various construction products. Hemp can also be used to produce plastic as an alternative to petrochemical based plastics.

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clothesline

5. Clothes Lines – It is estimated that 5% of residential energy use goes toward clothes dryers. Hanging your clothes to dry will save energy and will provide the addedd benefit of making your clothes smell nice and fresh.

Dryers can be dangerous and start fires if their vents aren’t cleaned. They are also a source of dust in the home.

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water

6. Water – Nothing refreshes or quenches thirst like water. Water is basically free and municipal water that is filtered is a cheap, healthy alternative to bottled water.

Bottled water tends to catch a lot of flack from environmentalists, but, for my money soda pop is  worse. All of the problems of bottled water plus a whole lot of sugar, artificial flavours and chemicals. Water, the drink that refreshes.

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Bicycling

7. Bicycles – A practical low-carbon footprint transportation mechanism and good form of exercise. Riding a bike burns around 400-500 calories/hour.

Remember, when  you are riding to wear  a helmet and bright clothes to make sure you can be seen.

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beans

8. Beans – A high source of protein, dietary fiber, low in fat and complex carbohydrates. Many beans need to be cooked to make them edible (soybeans, kidney beans); when raw they contain toxins.

Much of the developing world rely on beans as a key source of dietary protein.

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bamboo

9. Bamboo –More and more products are made from bamboo. Although, not a local product bamboo is a renewable resource and is actually a grass rather than a tree.

Bamboo is a source of food and used as a fiber in clothes. Its wood is used in construction and flooring, and in kitchen utensils. Clothing made from bamboo is is hypoallergenic and wicks away moisture.

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Herbs

10. Fresh Herbs – Can easily be grown in your backyard or even on a window sill. Some  favorites include: basil, cilantro, dill, organo, parsley and rosemary.

Herbs are a source of natural flavour (instead of MSG).

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Images Courtesy of

Simon Gray http://www.sxc.hu,

kasey albano http://www.sxc.hu

Zsuzsanna Kilian http://www.sxc.hu

oscar dollas http://www.sxc.hu

melanie kuipers http://www.sxc.hu

Zsuzsanna Kilian http://www.sxc.hu

Blazej Pieczynski http://www.sxc.hu

Mats Heyman http://www.sxc.hu

Zsuzsanna Kilian http://www.sxc.hu

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No Impact Man – a green movie review by Karen A Teeters

No Impact Man on DVD

Colin Beavan, author of the book and blog of the same name had an inspired idea for a project, for a book, but he never imagined his and his family’s wild year of radical low consumption would be made into a documentary. And may I add a very entertaining, light, fun, inspirational and even educational documentary movie at that!

In the beginning of the film Colin expresses this thought,”Is it possible to have a good life without wasting so much?” And sometimes when he introduced some really austere and strict ideas that were met with a bit of resistance and maybe second guessing even on his part, you know he was wondering what the answer would actually be  at the outcome of this experiment of his.

So Colin’s idea of foregoing electricity, coffee, processed foods, paper goods, restaurant eating and buying used items, getting rid of TV and more to see how one family’s commitment would impact the rest of the inhabitants on the planet was filmed for the world to see.

His wife and his sweet toddler daughter had no idea what they were getting into when they agreed.  Michelle Conlin was a good sport even when she admitted on camera her temptation to cheat because of her admitted coffee/caffeine  addiction. So seeing  her at the corner Starbucks succumbing with  an all too recognizable cup in hand and hearing  her all too human rationalizations helped the other half of the more skeptical  and less virtuous viewers relate. What is a woman to do for the love of a good hearted husband? You could see she worked hard and deserved a cup of Starbucks caffeine from time to time!

So we followed this family from day to day, seeing Colin’s new plans and efforts to change daily habits come to fruition sometimes smoothly and sometimes with a big surprised frown (usually Michelle’s but she eventually came around-this made for some good comedy).

It was curious to see this family’s  experiment take place in such a large urban city such as New York City. Colin’s ongoing plans such as having a compost bin in the living room, buying locally grown food from a local farmers market, gardening in a communal garden park and even vacationing in a suburban New York natural farm for a week brought the family closer and instilled the feeling that they were really connected to mother earth. In the heart of New York City that is a feat!

Colin and Family

By the end of the movie you really got a true sense that this year of zaniness with its  sometimes second guessing the decision – but sticking with it, really paid off. Michelle softened to many of the changes when she experienced the benefits of being healthier, of being more connected to friends and family.

Things got simpler and there was plenty of time to be together. And all this while New Yorkers and the nation went crazy wanting to interview Colin and the family. They became celebrity figures. Sometimes for cynical New Yorker critics questioning the couples’ sincerity in the beginning and other times because people were finally starting to get it, the importance of the experiment.

At the end of the film, you heard Michelle evaluating what she was willing to continue to be committed to. She chose to keep the majority of the changes although it was great to see them put the electricity back on. I think Colin realized he went way more austere than many committed environmentalists would.

And to see Colin educate himself and become a true environmental activist involved in community groups was very inspiring. It was a very well done documentary with Colin and his family being seen on the hero’s path, not taken out of the everyday environment for an adventure but taken out of the everyday comfort zone. And they came back from their year’s adventure transformed! Is it possible to have a good life without wasting so much? The No Impact Man and his family say yes!

I saw the movie at home on watch it now Netflix, truly a good low carbon way to enjoy a green flick! Five green stars!

Links:

No Impact Man : a blog by Colin Beavan

No Impact Project

The book: No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process

Did you see the movie or read the book or do you follow the blog? What do you think? Has a lasting, meaningful movement been created? Have you lowered your consumption? How?

Each person’s effort to live sustainably, peacefully, simply on this planet earth will be expressed in a unique manner. We are interdependent of each other and I believe to survive on this planet and to survive as a race that the majority of us need to make a different choice. Saving Gaia, our sumptuous green planet Earth is the biggest benefit of going green,stepping lightly and living simply. It is time to scale the consumption back. Get out of the rat race and become a human being. You can read articles about how our individual actions effect the earth. But now it’s time for each of us to take action and in our own unique ways, be kinder to ourselves, live healthier and go green. I invite you to comment on my posts as I review books, products, services and resources and  as I share a few of my own insights to help us all create a greener, simpler path.

Keeping it green and simple,

Karen Ann Teeters

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A Green Post from GreenLivingZone.com by Karen Ann Teeters

How can kids go green? Get them off the couch and into nature.

One of my favorite recycled Earth Talk Question and Answer Columns as seen in E Environmental magazine, reprinted with Permission from E.

Dear EarthTalk: What are some things that children and families can do to be greener (and to provide life lessons for the kids in the process)?

– Cynthia Mosher, via email

There are many ways to be green around the family that are sure to rub off on the littler ones in your midst—if they don’t beat you to it, that is.

With environmental awareness so widespread among younger people in our society, most kids have learned more about being green from their school teachers and camp counselors than we adults might have gleaned in a lifetime. For one, the environmental “Three R’s”—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle—are followed at many schools nowadays. But just because your kids might hear about it at school doesn’t mean that it is sinking in, and that’s where you come in. By reinforcing such messages at home and on outings—and leading by example—you can be certain that today’s ‘tweens will be tomorrow’s greens.

If you don’t know where to start, look for the metaphorical low-hanging fruit: recycling. Learn what types of items your city or town accepts for recycling and sort accordingly. Teach your kids what goes into the recycling bin, and put them in charge. In many locales, residents must pay for trash hauling but not for recyclables, so diverting more of your waste stream to recycling will also leave more money in your wallet for those outings to the ice cream truck and toy store. Also, raid your recycling bin when the kids want to make arts and crafts; reusing materials for creative endeavors is about as green as you can get.

Another way to teach kids about being green is by talking about the foods we eat, where they come from, and the environmental impact our food choices have. No one wants to cause pollution or eat chemicals, kids included, so sourcing your food from local and organic sources when possible—and explaining why to your children—will benefit not only their development but the health of the Earth as well. Many vegetarians have chosen to avoid meat for environmental reasons, and should make sure their kids know why so they can make informed choices for their own diets accordingly when it’s their turn to decide.

Exploring the outdoors near or far with the family is also a great way to teach kids about appreciating and respecting nature and its wild plant and animal inhabitants. Any tidbits of knowledge you might have about the natural history of the place you’re visiting will be eagerly absorbed and remembered by the kids.

Richard Louv underscores the importance of fostering a connection between children and nature in his book, Last Child in the Woods. In it, Louv traces the evolution of a phenomenon he calls “nature deficit disorder,” whereby kids raised on a steady diet of video games and junk food may not turn into the great stewards of the outdoors we might hope for. His solution? Get them off the couch and into nature, where they will surely be wowed by what they encounter.

Last Child in the Woods has inspired dozens of “Leave No Child Inside” initiatives around the U.S. since its 2005 publication, and Louv has gone on to found the Children & Nature Network, which works with upwards of 50 regional groups across the U.S. that offer programs connecting children and nature. Parents can find events and activities near them via the group’s free online interactive “movement map.”

Most kids today learn more about being green from their school teachers and camp counselors than their parents learned in a lifetime. But it’s good to reinforce those lessons at home, and recycling is a good place to start. Teach your kids what goes into the recycling bin, and then put them in charge.

Reprint From: Week of 7/26/09

Amazon Book Picks for Green Kids.

Hold Down on Arrow to go back and forth.

Click on Pic for more details.

Links of interest:

Richard Louv’s Site

http://www.childrenandnature.org/

Emagazine:

http://www.emagazine.com/

Comments from Karen: We always say we are keeping the planet green for generations to to come. But aren’t we also responsible to make sure the next generation appreciates this gift we call planet earth?

Share with us:

What techniques have you used to help young kids

be more conscious of the importance of connecting

with nature and honoring our planet?

a green essay by Karen Ann Teeters

The change we need for environmental turnaround starts with you.

We have the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December 2009. There is already talk of diminished expectations and they have not even met! Trying to research the roles of corporations, governments, society, and individuals in the role of sustaining a healthy environment is like any major issue today – extremely challenging to come up with anything that is not polarizing.

There is a lot of empirical evidence to support capitalism’s favorite expression, “the bottom line and return on investments,” as more important than investing in environmental concerns. And of course there is an argument to support the eleventh hour concept from environmentalists, that it is almost too late for any human action to make a difference.

Here is an “imaginary scenario” to drive home the point. The tsunami of environmental destruction (the eleventh hour- the environmental “end” of life as we know it – no more breathing!) is arriving tomorrow at 2:00 PM eastern time and the business reaction is as usual, “No time for that, I have my list of responsibilities today to make sure my shareholders make a profit and I have to get back to work before my manager walks in.”

Then go ask any individual that is working for a large corporation or even a small company, in their “off business” hours, what his or her opinion is about what to do about the wracked up situation with the environment. You’ll probably get a very empathetic answer concerning issues like the importance of recycling, organic foods and electric cars. Maybe the task of environmental actions is too complicated for any one ordinary individual to understand. Building green, eating green, driving green, working green. We are buying books about every day green choices and watching movies about the seriousness of the oncoming urgency of the outcome if we do nothing. For many people, its a green blur!

We are trying to make a difference with our everyday actions but when we congregate into groups of businesses or corporations to make a living and feed our loved ones, we seem to  lose touch with the dark outcome of the actions of these large, unresponsive companies. They all have these wonderful voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility statements or CSR’s that present themselves as caring, green members of the community – but many read like well written press releases rather than longterm real world commitments to create change and contribute to the community. You’ve all seen these laughable commercials from oil and chemical companies (BP – Beyond Petroleum) of their green activities that don’t come across as genuine.

I once had a discussion with a business coach who had an amazing insight about how the ethics of businesses work. His theory was that when a company gets to be 200 employees or more, somehow people at management level tend to feel that their actions are anonymous or hidden. The idea of personal responsibility to the greater good seems to get lost, questionable activity easily becomes the norm, and concern with profits override every decision. We have seen this very thing happen with major corporate breakdowns such as Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson and others.

Should we try to pass a law that states no company will ever be larger than 200 people to overcome this tendency for businesses to become dishonest and sociopathic in behavior? Nah, the lobbyists would never let that happen and besides that would be more like fascism than capitalism.

I must say I enjoyed Michael Moore’s movie, Capitalism, A Love Story. One of the alternative explorations presented in the film was small sized worker cooperatives that are run democratically by the workers who actually own the companies and share equitably in the profits. One was a robotics company called Isthmus Engineering and the other was Alvarado Street Bakery. Here are the details from Moore’s website:

—The Isthmus Engineering website  describes the company’s “Seven Cooperative Principles”:

• Open membership – no gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination
• Democratic control – one member, one vote
• Equitable economic participation among members and distribution of profits based on patronage
• Autonomy and independence – controlled by members
• Education and training
• Cooperation among cooperatives
• Concern for community

The Alvarado Street Bakery website  describes cooperatives as “a business voluntarily owned and controlled by its member patrons and operated for them and by them on a nonprofit or cost basis. It is owned by the people who use it … based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity.” —

I like the last principle listed for Isthmus Engineering – Concern for community. I don’t think a company composed of all owners, managed by democratic control who live in a local community would do anything to harm its community or citizens. This is democracy in its purest form – one member – one vote. We don’t have that in any of the industrialized democratic nations on earth because most governments, such as the US, are setup as a “republic” – a representative democracy.

The old complaint is that our representatives seem to lose touch with what their constituents need. The concept and acceptance of “lobbyist” has hijacked our government. As the large corporations act as corporate gift givers to influence our elected officials, we wonder what has happened to the “republic” part of our government. Do corporations have more sway than individuals over what the representatives’ support? Any green bill or any bill for that matter, often gets locked in committee and has amendments added that seem to greatly alter original intent.
Corporations can not be trusted to self regulate when it comes to issues such as our air, our water, our trees, our climate, our health. The growing perception is that we are just “human resources” to them – like EverReady batteries. We are in our current financial mess precisely because of deregulation. Our government needs to pass bills to regulate the actions of corporations and all we get are bills with loopholes. In September and early October 2008 at the height of the initial financial meltdown, 98% of the calls to elected officials opposed the bank bailout! But Congress went ahead and passed the bank bailout bill anyway. Senator Feinstein said, “Main Street just doesn’t get it.” And now, word is out that the recent climate bill will probably be watered down by the time any votes are put to it.

You ask yourself, what can we do as individuals? I know what I have laid out here seems so doom and gloomy, yet we need to know the lay of the land, and what the odds are before we can take any action. Many of us are becoming active in green groups, buying green products, and educating ourselves the best we can so that we have an inhabitable planet to offer our future generations. Looking at the causes of unresponsive governments and large corporations often feels overwhelming.

Committing to expansive changes, such as responsible and responsive elected officials, more regulations in place, less lobbyist influence, more small worker cooperatives, countries working with other countries, taking personal responsibility by how we spend our green dollars and use energy on a daily basis, may seem like way too much. But, let me make this small suggestion. Just pick one thing. Just get started with “one thing,” then add another… and another. Go green in your home. Get involved in greening your community. That’s how eco-activist and actor, Ed Begley Jr. got started. Yes… small steps.

Only you as an individual can make that decision. Start your own group. Start blogging yourself. Check out all the green microbloggers on Twitter. And don’t stop, because there is hope.

Karen Ann Teeters is a green blogger and you may read more of her posts at www.greenlivingzone.com

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What are you thoughts about who we need to become to make a green difference before its too late? What green steps have you taken?