So what's greenish here?

Apart from the text colour, that is! Well, I've become aware more and more in the last year or so of the increasingly urgent need to save the planet. I've been partially aware for some time: I did an Adult Ed. course at Newcastle University some years ago called 'put your money where your mouth is', which was about practical ways in which to have a lighter footprint on the Earth. It was quite an eye-opener: some things most people think are being green simply move the problem one step further up a chain, for example. But it didn't affect my behaviour a lot: I was already recycling bottles and cans and newspapers, long before we had recycling bins, and I wasn't a profligate car user - though I did go to my green classes as one person in a Vauxhall Cavalier, which was rather defeating the object! Now I'm much more aware of what is possible, and I started this blog on June 6th which was World Environment Day - I'd signed the pledge the day before, at the Farmers Market (there you go, buying local produce, mostly organic, very expensive but better tasting and better for the planet) to say the things I'd do or already did. I was doing most of them - showering of necessity, because six weeks after having an abcess on my back lanced it still needs dressings on it, and using low energy light bulbs. And since they made both metro (we have this great local rail system in Newcastle and I live about 300 metres from a station) and bus travel free for ancients like me, I've been using both a lot more and the car much less for local journeys. I even put the statutory brick in the loo cistern, and it's a relatively small cistern anyway: if I was staying here I'd have the bathroom and loo both redone, with a dual flush system.

But: I know I'm rather half-hearted. Like the meat-eating when so many of my friends feel it right to be veggie but I just don't want to give up rump steak, there are other things I don't want to stop. I want to travel abroad, as soon as I can afford it (my pension muddle will be sorted very soon and I'll have some back pay!): one of my ambitions is to go to the opera in Sydney, and I don't take too kindly to being tutted at by people who have already been to the Antipodes. But maybe I will give something to an environmental charity to compensate for the emissions of my flight - for I've neither the time nor money for a boat. I looked at crossing the Atlantic on a ship and it's about five times the cost of flying, or similar to going club. And sometimes, like when I go to visit my aged parents, a car is pretty essential: I can't do as much for them on foot, I've tried going by train and it has serious disadvantages. There's no bus, not now, to their little complex: there was a lovely electric tram (how green can you get!) but they took it off.

I do try. I go to my Quaker Meeting now by metro, even though it means getting up earlier in order to get the train. I've even been to committee meetings by metro, though I don't like standing alone at night on Jesmond station waiting for a train: as a woman on your own, you do feel rather vulnerable. I drink organic milk, though it's not local - it might be better to drink local milk but then I'd have to drive to get it! So there are always going to be compromises. What I'd be interested in is any comments with new and different suggestions for a greener lifestyle, beyond the obvious ones that I either follow already or simply aren't willing or able to follow. I want my great grandchidren to survive: after watching the second David Dimbleby programme last week I began to wonder if it was even worth trying. The political will, particularly amongst the middle-of-the-road Americans, seems to be totally lacking, and without the USA on board the planet is doomed anyway. When they have a president who's seen the effects of Katrina but still isn't convinced that climate change is a reality now, let alone in the future, then really do we have any hope, at least till he's gone. I curse the way they ran that election in Florida, for Gore won there without a shadow of doubt: and we might have had a planet left with him. But then, when a sizeable proportion of a nation's population believe in creationism, you do wonder quite how backward that nation is.

I don't want to end on such a pessimistic note, however. I do think that if enough of us do enough to make it clear to our political leaders that yes, we do want to save the Earth and yes, we will pay more to do so, then there is hope and the Americans might just follow where we lead. If Britain is top nation for environmental care, the US will surely want to beat us: and then we may just be in time to save not only the Polar Bear but also the whole Earth.