The Green Thing—what a crock.

This was sent to me by a couple of friends...how true it is!  We should all stop & think about our day-to-day activities; interesting:

The Green Thing

 In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today.  Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.  So they really were recycled.
But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day. 
Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind.  We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes.  Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.  
In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.  
When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.  

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power.  

We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.
We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.
We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.  And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then? 

Who Cares about Global Warming?

Oooh, to many people, those could be fighting words!  The problem with the fight over global warming right now is the debate itself:  Does the earth have natural heating up/cooling down phases (seems to)?  Is global warming caused by humans?  Did scientists exaggerate the facts?

Unless you are one of the aforementioned scientists on either side of the debate, there are many questions that we as "regular folk" will never be able to authoritatively answer.  But, our perspective here is this:  standing around arguing about how or who caused global warming is like arguing about who started the fire as you watch your house burn to the ground.  Clearly there are things we need to know and learn in order to fix them, but there are so many other things awry.  We much prefer the term "Global Quality".  There are a plethora of ways in which our industrialized world harms itself.  How we have "warmed" may be up for debate, but how we "are" is not.  Take a look at the Ganges:  polluted, with pockets of trash all over the place.  Madagascar's rainforest: 90% deforested.  Plastic bags littering the oceans and beaches covered in plastic pebbles. 

The above atrocities are preventable and reversible.  There is also a definite cause to all of the above: humans.  Perhaps we should concentrate more on the tangibles that we can see, focus on how to better those, while we debate the other.  Global warming is now so linked with the political machine, that it may be years before we make progress.  But, you can choose to stop using plastic  bags today.  We can choose to lessen our dependence on plastics today.  You can donate to an organization that is fighting to save the world's last remaining rain forests today
- and they are making headway in that fight.

We may not have all the answers, but we know we can chip in, lead the way and make a difference.