Blog Action Day

Just heard about this neat idea, Blog Action Day, over at Ali Edwards' blog. Everyone who has a blog is uniting in a large scale internet discussion of one topic. This year it is the environment. I love what Ali talked about- her blog is typically about scrapbooking, so she wrote a whole post about how be a "green" scrapbooker". Since I like to scrapbook, I enjoyed her ideas (ranging from recycling your scraps to repurposing junk mail).

I have been thinking a lot about environmental issues recently. Al Gore and a team of scientists just won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in the field of Global Warming. My sister-in-law, Chelsea, told me about her school's compost pile and trip to a garbage dump. And it's an extremely hot-button topic in the campaign right now.

I have heard some really surprising biases that people have about being environmentally savvy. I think some people tend to think of the "green platform" as being very partisan (usually attributed to the Democratic party). I can see why this bias exists, considering that a lot of environmental policy issues are decided in the national political scene, in which you cannot survive unless affiliated with a political party. However, I truly believe this is an issue that people should try to approach without any partisan bias. Whether or not you believe that humans are the sole cause of global warming, no sane person can deny that humans can have a detrimental impact on the earth. Which leads me to the gist of this post- I believe we all have a responsibility to be more accountable, more proactive, and more thoughtful when it comes to our impact. Most of us strive to be mindful in our daily interactions- we care for our family, we call our friends, we feed the dog, we water the lawn, we vacuum the living room, we report to our boss- and now I challenge all of us (myself especially) to strive for that extra accountability in our effect on the world in which we live.