saving the world?

so i'm taking an environmental policy class right now. and it's FASCINATING. not so much "let's save mother earth" hippie stuff, but "everything is interconnected and is affected by everything else and our very society is on a downhill slope due to anthropogenic climate change unless we start making some drastic changes". it's a little overwhelming at first. but it's becoming clearer that even the tiniest changes will have an impact and be able to spur a chain reaction.

it did however instantly spur an intense desire to get out of my current surburbian location and move somewhere where i don't need a car and can ride a bike/(good) public transportation. (a more in depth post about that later). since moving isn't an option at the moment, i want my next car (the first one i'll buy myself) to be some sort of hybrid. heck, i'm even embracing the smartcars that we all made fun of in europe. biodiesel reduces our dependence on fossil fuels...BUT it still pollutes and with so much corn/grain going toward fuel now instead of food it's causing other economic problems.

it gets better. apparently the US government was one of the only main countries that didn't join the kyoto protocol in 1992. it was because china wasn't joining and they thought it would hurt trade or something lame like that. we're at least one step behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to legislature concerning environmental regulations. which is weird, because the people and celebrity culture are totally on top of the "green fad". there was a great article in the Guardian yesterday about regulating the fashion industry because of "trendy" and "throwaway" fashion is contributing huge amounts of waste to landfills. England has its own "Minister of Sustainability" in parliament. I'm pretty sure we don't have anything like that here.

for once the bandwagon is doing something right for humanity, jump on it America!

recommended reading:
Plan B 3.0, Mobilizing to Save Civilization. By Lester R. Brown.