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"Going green" is a hot topic these days with global warming and gas prices on the rise, but it is often either misunderstood or not taken far enough. The point of going green is usually to reduce one's "carbon footprint," or in other words, reduce carbon emissions by driving less or reusing/recycling as much as possible. There are really two issues with this.

First, carbon dioxide itself has little to do with global warming directly: it is more of a symptom than a cause, and any changes must address the cause, not the symptom. In the past, the earth was covered with vast forests which required a large amount of carbon dioxide but also gave off large amounts of oxygen. Today, most of these forests are gone, cleared for cities or agriculture. The true problem is not the carbon dioxide, but the lack of trees to make good use of it and produce excess oxygen. Furthermore, truly going green as a method of improving one's own health and that of the earth requires much more than simply reducing carbon emissions or reusing standard items.

Since most people are familiar with the gas issue, that is the first, but not necessarily easiest way to start. Drive as little as possible. Ideally, don't drive at all, but walk or ride a bicycle. Avoid trains unless the only other choice is driving. Avoid flying for short flights. Airplanes require huge amounts of special fuel, usually more in volume than the combined normal fuel it would take for all of the passengers to drive the same distance in individual cars, as an estimate. For cross-country or international flights, usually driving is either infeasible or impossible.

Reducing gas usage alone will not make much of a difference, however. The largest difference can and must be made in diet, on a large scale. Some people might ask, "How can what I eat matter to the atmosphere?" It's a chain reaction, really. Not only does what you eat directly control your health, but it also depends on what you buy, which affects what is made and sold by food companies. It is a fact that raising animals for food requires much more agricultural food than it produces in food. To make the comparison a different way, planting crops on the land used for raising food animals would produce much more food than using those animals for food. In technical terms, this is the same effect as putting one unit of energy into a system and getting only a tenth of a unit back in another form. If your product can use either form of energy, it is incredibly wasteful

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