further thoughts on energy and the environment

The problem isn't just our unhealthy reliance on petroleum products and the insane gorging of oil we have as a society. Its about the psychology behind it; we all see the issue and its a smaller number each day that claims its a falsehood that we're too dependant on oil or that climates are indeed changing. The problem is that people don't think that anything they do will have any kind of impact on the issue.

When governments talk about the issue and even when scientists talk about the math involved, its always at a national or global scale. They present numbers that, to the vast majority of people, are too large to properly comprehend; people think that against a backdrop of such vast use of oil, what will their small contribution mean in the grand scheme of things? Its this intentional shrinking of personal impact that allows our society to forever expand its grasp on oil and increase the amount of energy wasted per year or even per day.
What needs to be done is to show the personal impact. We need to stop talking about it as a global issue because no one cares about something unless they think it directly affects them. So instead of all this well-intentioned but useless ranting about how billions of tons of CO2 is released by America each year, we need to talk about how each individual citizen releases THOUSANDS of tons of CO2 each year, and then people will see that "oh, I'm doing THAT much and causing THAT much of an issue?"

That change of mindset will make people more open to the ideas that we do infact need to embrace in order to save our planet. Things like a carbon tax (which I oppose on economic grounds), cap and trade policies and a marked shift to renewable energy can only be done once the population comprehends how much good can be done for such a little change in their personal finances and lifestyle. Look at the history of recycling; once people realized that they would infact be saving money by recycling, it became something everyone wanted to do instead of something that was forced upon the population by a vengeful government bent on psychotic control. Similar solutions have to be proposed in order to combat this environmental challenge; small changes that cumulatively can have a large effect on the environment.

Of course, that isn't to say that we should completely back off making major changes at a state/provincial/national/global level. Its pretty clear to anyone with sensory appendages that we are running out of oil, and that the climates of our respective homes have changed somewhat from even a decade ago. Something has to be done, but it should be in tandem with local projects and coordinated through a completely non-ideological organization.
Something I've proposed in the past (and is sadly incompatible with painting every roof white) is to have greenspace on the roof of each building. Not only does having a small garden upon each roof provide environmental benefits such as increased carbon dioxide capture by the plants and subsequent release of oxygen needed to not die, but these gardens can, if properly maintained, reduce the need for importation of food from outside sources and make the food we eat more local, which will reduce the cost of the food and provide economic benefits for those that work in that field.
Another thing I've proposed in the past is creating a "greenbelt" around each population area. This greenbelt would be one hundred meters (or about 100 yards for you yanks) deep and would completely surround each populated area, making exception for roads leading out of the city or town. The depth of the greebelt would increase by fifty meters for every one hundred thousand citizens, so a city with a population of one million would have a greenbelt of 600 meters, and so on. This greenbelt would be considered protected government property and could only be used in ways consistant with the governing principles of the national parks for that country. Naturally, the purpose of this greenbelt would be to capture carbon emissions from the city, preventing htem from entering the atmosphere and adding to the current climate change predicament.

**deep breath** Well, that's about all I've got, if any of you survived and read it all, kudos to you and please send feedback regarding my two proposals.