I have changed my lifestyle, trying to do my part, but every citizen of this country needs to get involved to stop what is actually happening. I got rid of my big Mercedes and bought what my 16 year old son calls the gayest thing in the world...a motorscooter. Getting close to 80 miles per gallon, it beats paying more than $100 a tank with my old car.
I have unplugged all electrical appliances when not in use, put a timer on the tv so my son won't continually run the damn thing as background noise, put in the energy saving light bulbs, etc.
The best thing I've done so far is to make wooden frames with heat-shrink plastic wrapped around both sides as window inserts. Unfortunately, I cannot afford new storm windows. but by measuring well, these inserts dramatically drop the heat loss within seconds of placement. On windows I do not use during the winter, I put 1 inch foam insulation over the windows in addition to the window insert and keep the heavy drapes closed (north facing walls).
The reason I do these things is not simply to save me money, although that is an additional benefit, but I do it as my part to save our way of life.
While global climate change is a major freaking problem, I am most concerned that the 1.2 to 1.5 trillion dollars a year we ship out of this country for oil is being used against us.
With our Bush-League president mentally unable to mind the store, those who are smart enough to do us harm are creating new ways to do us in...with our own money. China is lending its' way to enslave us. Chavez is giving 60% discounts in oil prices to his friends and he has about $250 million dollars a month in discretionary oil funds to give away and to sign for 35 billion dollars in new arms for the next five years. What is HE planning? Hint: it ain't no duck huntin' party.
Putin is amassing huge amounts of Western European money. And while America is spending billions if not trillions of dollars spinning its' construction and protection wheels in Iraq, Iraq is laughing all the way to its' own bank, knowing that the idiot little Bush will continue to throw money at them and they need to do nothing but spit on us in return.
The biggest problem we have an opportunity to correct, as I see it, is to stop letting unknown investors into our stock markets. Via the UK, investors can buy what they want in the US and no one has to know who they are. This cloaking is absurd. If Bin Laden had any sense about him, he would be investing in the oil futures market and using the huge profits against us. Knowing that this is even possible, and doing nothin as usual, our putative president and Congress are unnecessarily putting our way of life at risk.
The best of all things you can do is to contact your representatives, let them know you are watching and are exceptioanlly disappointed in their inability to get anything but whining done. The whining and dining Washington crowd needs to get a focus, or get a life.
