I don't want to be an environmentalist. They dress weird, cause economic trouble, have a superior attitude and a doomsday aura, and they hug trees. But as time goes on I realize I am an environmentalist. I don't want to eat foods grown with chemicals or that have been genetically engineered to travel well and look pretty on a shelf. I don't want my children to go through puberty early because the cows have been fed steroids. I want my meat to actually be meat only. I want to breathe deeply of clean, fresh air. I want my grandchildren to have a good, green Earth. I read a good article in the August 2006 National Geographic called "A Deeper Shade of Green". It is written by, YIKES!, an environmentalist. He talks about carbon fuels being what enables a country to grow economically, but also being what causes global warming and pollution. What if we were to rethink our ideals? What if we lived in smaller homes, drove less, and ate local foods? Environmentalism has to "transform itself into something so different that the old name really won't apply. It has to be about a new kind of culture, not a new kind of filter; it has to pay as much attention to preachers and sociologists as it does to scientists; it has to care as much about the carrot in the farmers market as it does about the caribou on the Arctic tundra. That's what the printouts on atmospheric concentrations tell us, and it's a message echoed by the researchers studying happiness and satisfaction. We don't need a slightly rejiggered version of the world we now inhabit; we need to start working on changes on the scale of the problems we face." So what am I doing about it? I am trying to grow food with compost. I recycle as much as possible and try to buy only what I need. I raise chickens. I hope to milk goats. I make my own bread. I try to reserve my driving for one day. I hang laundry on the line and only mow the grass when you can't walk through it anymore. I guess I have become an environmentalist, but I refuse to dress weird!