All This Environmental Talk and Then Some

Okay, so lately, I've been talking to a lot of people about the environment, and how to mitigate our effects on it.  It's a little funny how my inspiration for doing my part comes from being a boy scout.  Yes.  I was a boy scout.  Don't judge me!  Moving on.  The thing that I always try to remember is "leave no trace."  It's pretty much pack out what you pack in.  Other than poop, haha.  I'm not saying I poop outside then cover my hole with dirt and a stick, but I have been trying to be all green and such.  I did a few cheap, but highly cost effective things to lower my impact (and my bills even reflect this!).  I replaced all the incandescent lights in our house with some custom-made LED bulbs (created by me with some soldering advice from fellow engineering students).  I also filled up a glass vodka bottle (yay for drinking a ton in college!) with sand and water and put it into my toilet tank.  My roomie and I have started a recycling program--we sort paper, aluminum, and plastic with colorful bins (gotta make it easy on the eyes!).  We also set our air conditioner to 76.  Yes, it's not 78, but we live in Texas, get off me about it!  Finally, we have been using our power strips' switches prodigiously.  Seriously, we pretty much haven't spent any money, but have saved a lot.  It also makes me feel better that we are doing little things that when added up really make an impact.  I even started walking everywhere and making use of the horrendous Texas A&M bus system.  Now, I will say that I'm going to blow it all to hell when I fly to CO for Thanksgiving, but I'll make up for it sooner or later, right?  Heh.  I'm not doing/saying all these things that I've done for the feeling of smugness, but more because when I think of 10 years from now, it scares me.  I'm scared to think of what our planet will be like.  We aren't doing enough and it's not happening fast enough.  You know, gradual changes now are better than a huge change when fossil fuels run out.  They ARE finite and we are close to peak already.

I've been thinking about oil and gas very often as of late.  I can thank several blogs and Planet Green for that. What I want to know, is why so many people are content with just going on like normal and ignoring that all these things are happening.  Hello, Texas just had a mini-monsoon season in the fall.  It doesn't typically rain like it has been raining.  At least not here.  I'm happy though because just before our "mini-monsoon" we were in a drought.  Imagine that.  Texas with wacko weather.  Just like 2005 being the biggest hurricane season on record and then 2006 having none make landfall.  It just seems like there's a new "storm of the century" or "greatest natural disaster in 50 years" every few months.  Obviously something is up, and Mother Nature is not happy with us.

Oh, and then there's Planet Green.  Man, sometimes I wish I was some giant world-influencing policy-maker *cough* Obama Llama *cough* so that I could actually force things to happen faster.  If you haven't watched Split Estate on Planet Green, you should.  It's awesome and infuriating.  Freaking oil and gas is excluded from every major environmental policy in the US: the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, Resource Conservation & Recovery Act, Superfund Act, and the Planning & Community Right-to-Know Act.  Holy eff.  Remember when the meat packing industry was as seemingly untouchable?  Then books like The Jungle came out.  People started questioning all the health effects of living in meat packing districts.  Things like Love Canal happened, and finally America reacted and created all these checks and balances for several polluting industries.  I'm not saying we have a comprehensive system that addresses all industries, but it seems to do well for the ones it actually regulates.  Why have the oil and gas industries stayed immune for so long?  I think it's because they're so wealthy.  They do supply a large amount of American Taxes, but it's not like we can't regulate it more.  Maybe use some turbines on those giant smoke stacks to generate electricity?  Just a random thought.  In fact, we are definitely addicted to fossil fuels.  We should put some wind turbines on the coast like by Corpus Christi (since they don't get very many crazy storms).  According to Discovery, there's enough wind power on the coasts to power the world 10 times over.  Nice.  Silver lining to living in Texas?  We are the largest producer of green power AND were're on our own power grid!!!  Take that America!  Hahaha, I always love telling people how Texas really could be it's own country (but that's a different story!).  We also have deserts that someone should figure out how to put solar collectors in.  There's also a lot of tidal estuaries that could be used for tidal hydroelectric power.  Too bad most of Texas doesn't have enough of a terrain difference to justify hydroelectric power.  I like the fact that water can be used in so many ways.  Why can't we use huge rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri to drive water wheels like back in the day?  Or use all those dang locks we have to drive some turbines?  I dunno.  I could go on forEVER about all this schtuff, but I'm hungry.  And I wanna eat some non-organic fatty foods, haha.

Hey, I have to have SOME pleasures in life!!!  I think I'll have some fried rice, mmmmmmmm.