On my Way to Granola Land

I live in a place where I am surrounded by environmentalists. Save the Bay! Protect the animals! Save the habitat! You chant it I know it.

I have to admit, never been much of a tree-hugger, granola environmentalists but have always been pro some degree of protection. For example, though I know some of you will disagree with me, I sort of admire what Tompkins is doing in Chile.

Yes I know he is preventing certain developments from going forward, but in the end the truly necessary developments - access roads for the hospital and electricity - will prevail. In the meantime, he has single handedly managed to preserve a lot of land in one of the most beautiful areas of Chile - its South - from being destroyed by uncontrolled development, which is usually the result of uncontrolled growth.

Back to the environment. There is a lot of buzz (or non buzz) about "An Inconvenient Truth" the global warming movie. One of my readers, in his newly minted blog Telling Stories, has today a great post not only about the movie but about all the controversy regarding whether there is or not global warming, and whether humans are or are not at fault. And it ties in nicely with two recent developments in my household and in our personalities.

This morning we went walking on the beach, and on our way back we found ourselves picking out of the water plastic bags and mylar balloons because of our concern of what this could do to the marine life. I even joked that we were getting granolized.

A month ago I got an offer in the mail from National Grid, my electricity provider. For 10% more a month, I could become environmentally conscious and switch to windmill power. That means I would not be using fuel for my electricity. My spouse sort of barked at the 10%, but then realized we would be taking a step towards not being oil dependent. So we went for it.

So you see, even a free market capitalist conservative Republican like me, can do this why is everyone else just focused on debating whether or not something is happening? Something is happening - the hole in the Ozone layer, the smog in Mexico City and in Santiago de Chile did not create themselves - and we can all take small steps towards helping in the meantime that scientists reach a consensus of what is going wrong and what to do about it.

Tags: Global Warming, Environment, Wind Mill Farms, An Inconvenient Truth

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