I was feeling so smug the other morning.
Down in the basement, I was draping wet socks over a rack, hanging T-shirts from a line and flopping jeans over a bar.
The clothes dryer - that energy hog! - was empty. Except for laundry emergencies, it's been that way for months.
And, really, it hasn't been so bad, stiff towels notwithstanding.
But that night, when I got home, I paused at the top of the basement steps.
Ack! I'd left the lights on all day.
Since becoming The Inquirer's environment reporter two years ago, I've been trying to take it easy on the Earth, reduce my carbon footprint, lessen my impact.
Today, I'm beginning a new column to chronicle these adventures in green-land and write about other people's attempts to do the same thing. I'll be an eco-explorer, trying new technologies and techniques to figure out how a greener lifestyle works; indeed, whether it works. How big a difference can one person make? Is it worth it? At what point does it shift from ecologically correct to patently absurd?
The condition of our environment is the sum of millions of decisions made every day by governments, corporations and, yes, individuals.
Perhaps like no other time in history, our understanding of the planet is changing. Around even the family dinner table - not just the halls of science - we debate scary concepts such as climate change. We know that oil is finite.
Government treaties and emerging technologies aside, many people are taking matters into their own hands. They're not just changing light bulbs and carrying canvas bags to the grocery. They're wearing bamboo and buying plug-in hybrids that get 100 miles a gallon.
A recent survey by the international polling firm GlobeScan found that 76 percent of Americans say they are willing to make "significant" changes in the way they live to help prevent climate change.
I didn't need to consult GlobeScan. I just talked to my cousin Betsy.
She never struck me as an eco-activist, but one day recently as I was popping another of her panko-encrusted artichoke hearts into my mouth, she started talking about recycling.
Turns out she's kind of fanatic, crushing cereal boxes to put out with the newspapers, wadding up dry-cleaner bags to stick in the plastics bin at the grocery store.
