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"Going green's" popularity reaches the heart of what it means to be American. The challenge comes in how to actually "go green". Many possibilities are open to any family wishing to move in a greener direction. It can be as simple or as complex as you choose. The most prominent measure, and not a small one, has come to national attention as a result of Mr. Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. Changing light bulbs to more energy efficient models is easy and fairly inexpensive. Certainly, this is gathering momentum in society, along with an increase in awareness of global warming.

One way to go green is, perhaps even simpler and, in an age of the Internet, less expensive. Discuss what it means to live green around the family dinner table. Make a game of it so that the kids try and bring up one idea per day or once a week, whatever you, and they, are comfortable with. Don't cheat, but come up with ideas yourself. It does not take long. A quick glance at any of a hundred local, state, and federal websites related to the environment can help you learn what the issues are from your back yard to the world oil movements. It seems there is little chance we will fix the many faceted environmental threats built out of our own societal excesses without a little time taken to educate ourselves and our families. The United States has 4% of the population of the world and yet we use 25% of the resources extracted from within the world.

The methods by which we energize homes are monumental challenges facing the future environmental health of the nation and the planet. It is unlikely that the United States' citizens will wean themselves away from fossil fuels within the lifetimes of anyone breathing today. So, what to do? Reduce consumption to manageable levels that will allow a continuance of a standard of living that is more than comfortable while slowing the strain on the nation's, and the world's environment.

The United States has hundreds of year's worth of coal reserves. It is really a question of whether we wish to leave polluted, carbon soaked skies for the children of the future, and whether or not we care about mountain top mining and other earth threatening mining practices that give us coal. There is talk of clean coal, but the action taken to procure scrubbers and other means by which to succeed at this have been slow and grudging by the decision makers in the industry and their contacts in the White House.

Find out where the energy used in your home comes from. Write

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