Five easy ways to reduce your environmental impact

When it comes to the environment, there seem to be two extremes in this country. The left extreme warns of the impending doom resulting from climate change caused by human activity. They might be right about that, but I doubt it. Their solution entails sweeping reforms intended to make the whole human race stop adding pollutants to the environment at all, preferably imposed by an international treaty.

That will never happen. World leaders came to some kind of basic agreement with the so-called Kyoto accords. The U.S. refused to ratify it, and no country that did ratify it has actually imposed those harsh regulations on their own people. All signatories seem to regard the treaty as binding primarily everyone else. It would have been just as futile if we had ratified it.

The right extreme insists that whatever climate change is actually happening has purely natural causes, changes that have happened before as part of a natural cycle that has been going on for eons. Therefore, they say, human activity plays no part in climate change. They might be right about that, but I doubt it. Their position seems to be that there is no problem and therefore nothing needs to be done at all. And whatever we do, raising any tax for any reason is completely unacceptable.

Even if they are right on climate change, reasons abound why we must take decisive action sooner rather than later. We buy oil from one set of enemies and adversaries by borrowing money from another set of enemies and adversaries. Polluted air, water, and ground has made many people sick, which, among other consequences, burdens our health care system. We accumulate tons of trash and garbage by the hour, rapidly filling up available landfills. But of course, no one wants to build any more nearby. And so it goes.

Now that extremists on both sides have gained excessive influence in our political process and can nominate their own people for political office at the expense of centrists who will actually identify and face our real problems, there is no point in waiting for Congress to pass any meaningful legislation. Likewise, we can't afford to wait for regulatory agencies to act either responsibly or consistently.

There are some simple things we as individuals can do in the mean time that will make a modest but real difference. Here are five:

1. Carry and use cloth bags for shopping--not just grocery shopping, but any shopping. That will keep plastic bags out of the landfills, reduce paper manufacture and the pollutions that comes with it, and all of the energy costs associated with transporting paper and plastic bags from factory to warehouses to stores to landfills.
2. Plan errands to do several on the same trip, making a more or less circular route. That is, avoid driving to one place, back home, and then someplace else. Also, avoid any other back-tracking as much as possible. If everyone or nearly everyone does so, it will keep us from buying quite as much foreign oil.
3. Stop using drive-through lanes, especially when the line is long and it might take five minutes or more to get your products. Park the car and go inside the store. That will not only save the gas you use while idling in the line, it will also reduce the exhaust fumes that everyone in line has to breathe. Plus you'll burn a few more calories standing in the store than sitting in the car.
4. Don't buy any more incandescent light bulbs. I know that CFLs take too long to get bright enough. I know that when they burn out, they become hazardous waste. But they're already much better than when they first came out. LEDs have hit the stores now. They're probably superior to CFLs in almost every way, except for the exorbitant price tag. The fact of the matter, however, is that before much longer, the manufacture of incandescent bulbs will be illegal. The more expensive CFLs and LEDs will quickly pay for themselves in savings on your electric bill.
5. Plug your television, sound system, computer and peripherals, and other electronics into a power strip and turn them off at the power strip. They use up quite a bit of electricity even after you turn them off.

These ideas may seem small and petty. If only a few people take these steps, it will make no overall difference. But there are hundreds of millions of people in this country. If sizable number of us all get into the habit of adopting these and/or other similar small steps, we can cumulatively make a very noticeable difference. Who knows? Perhaps we can even manage to call our politicians back to the center so they can do their jobs.