Live Earth

The global Live Earth concert -- aimed at raising awareness about environmental responsibility -- is now underway. It feels odd to be watching this inside -- the revolution will be televised? -- though I am waiting on a phone call from my hiking buddy.

I got into a conversation with another media professional about a month ago at a cocktail party. He asked how I choose my activism, since I've been involved in a number of causes. I think I was still in grade school when I got involved with Save the Whales and projects protecting other marine life. In high school, my focus turned to nuclear disarmament and human and reproductive rights. There was still an undercurrent of wildlife protection and rights of domesticated animals, which continued through college and beyond. At the turn of this century, I was the public relations contact for my local chapter of Amnesty International, and spent several years as the volunteer webmaster for the WITNESS human rights organization.

But through it all, there has always been a growing focus on the environment. I don't know how much this was influenced by external politics; this was at least in part a reaction to the increasing problem of sprawl, pollution, and the like that I saw around me every day. Natural areas were disappearing and those that still existed were being overrun by litter and air and water pollution from the encroaching cities. The more I traveled, the starker the problem I saw revealed.

So I told my new friend at the party that it was a no-brainer to put environmental concerns before all else. "If we don't have a place to live, if we destroy the planet, then all the other causes are pretty much irrelevant," I said. He added, rather astutely, that he viewed environmental protection as a basic human right.

Then he asked me the hard question: What can be done about global warming? Can anything be done?

He figured that since I write about sustainable living, I'm some kind of expert. Nope. I'm just a concerned global citizen.

Granted, there's a lot of science that is still in the works trying to answer these very questions. I do believe that we're on a slippery slope here. The floodgates are already open, and we're experiencing increasingly severe problems as time goes on. Like I've told my father -- who doesn't believe in global warming -- this isn't something that just started happening last Thursday. My view is that our lifestyles are exacerbating an already bad situation.

So, how to answer my friend's question?

It has to start at home. It must begin with individuals making the small choices. Let people get comfortable with choosing compact fluorescent lightbulbs and installing flow regulators in sinks and showers. Let recycling soda cans and newspapers become second-nature. Let people get into the unconscious habit of turning off lights as they leave the room. Before you know it, people will surprise themselves by choosing take-out restaurants based on what kind of food packaging is used. From there, people can start building toward larger choices -- like installing solar panels, switching to composting toilets, converting the car to biodiesel or giving up the car altogether.

Some choices -- while carrying a very positive and more immediate impact -- are just too big to realistically expect from most people right now. Good habits take just as long to build as do bad habits to break.

The mounting environmental crisis is not something that's going to be solved overnight. It's going to take a lot of work over a significant period of time -- more than a single lifetime. But the more we do, the more positive changes we'll see, and hopefully that will encourage us to do more.

Okay, back to the concert. There's an amazing drum troupe taking the stage in South Africa right now.