What?

It is tempting to reason that you, in your situation, cannot help change environmental problems. Or that your influence would not matter much.

But it is not very difficult to act more consciously about environmental issues, as this site loaded with ideas and backgrounds explains. It is often a matter of thinking over your daily routines once, and learn to do these things slightly different in the future. Not hard at all.

If you save 1 kWh of electricity, and millions of people act likewise, then all those people together save a million kWh. Even if not all of those others cooperate, then at least nobody can say that you were one of the people that caused this not to work.

People rarely take the time to think about their daily situation, usually because they are too occupied with these daily things. This however, is evading the problem, because it is just an easy excuse. A normal person is always busy, for example:

• as a kid: play, school and sports
• as a teenager: school, study, dating
• as a young adult: study or first job, building up a life
• as an adult: kids, job, family life
• as a parent: lots of responsibilities and local panics

And there you have it, the following generation picks up the same habits as the formgoing one; but as we already know these habits are not durable, so this pattern must be broken.

A common excuse for not taking action is that the government should take a stand. This is of course an approach to large-scale problems, but governments can only bounce the problems back to citizens. This is usually done with taxation and subsidies. So waiting for the government to act simply leads to unpleasant rulings, such as new forms of tax. It might be better to stay ahead of the government -- which is not hard, as governments tend to move slowly.

Why?

We all know that we should change our habits into more durable ones. The environment is changes in a negative way because we do not take it into account in our daily behaviour. THings must change, but we never seem to find the time.

Reality is that only things which we find important enough receive the attention that they deserve. If your situation does not enable you to consider environmental issues then you are basically saying that they do not matter much to you.

Western consumers have a strong tendency to buy the cheapest or the easiest products. Ease often means continuing in the same fashion as always before, without having to go through the process of weighing pros and cons of alternatives that would be better for the environment. Even though there are piles of websites helping you understand the issues at hand.

Many poeple face a hurdle that they need to take. A hurdle that asks for a one-time effort, and that leads to greener behaviour at about the same level of ease, sometimes even easier. Learn from others around you -- they ay have taken the hurdle and can give you good advice. Look for informative websites and start asking around what others know, think or have heard. There is much to learn, but the relative knowledge is widely spread.

If we do not take action ourselves, our governments will do it sooner or later. The problem with governments is that that they are not very good at motivating people to act differently from the heart. They usually talk through people's wallets. So expect more tax on diesel, expect the price of non-organic food to be upped with a nitrification-problem-tax, and expect CO₂ for transport and greenhouse-heating to be accounted in product prices, and so on.

It is rather Western to wait until our governments write up new laws, but at that time it will be too late to complain. If you look ahead and start switching to green alternatives now, you will note far less of the corrective measures that governments will lay upon their lesser-green citizens. be proactive, instead of a drone of your government.

How?

This site is filled with ideas for a greener life style. We take care that ease is not disturbed in a major way in these ideas. Mind you, we are talking about ease after having changed a habit -- the effort to find out what you can change in your situation remains work that every individual can do for themselves. This can actually be a very interesting process. Do not try to change everything at once, but keep making improvements one by one.

Where?

http://groengemak.nl -- a site full of green inspiration.