"This is why i refuse to care, because folks sit there preaching and saying i'm wrong not to care, but when you look into their lives you see that they really only say they care, in practice their lives are causing more damage to the environment than me."
You know, earlier you were talking about judging, making snap or uninformed assumptions, and all that… you are certainly making some big assumptions with the above.
Here are some ways in which i try to contribute, bearing in mind, i know i could do more.
I bought a used vehicle that gets 40 highway and 34 or so city–non electric, i tend to drive it slower than speed limits on highway, and faster than slow speeds on streets, as i've heard the ideal speed range is somewhere around 45 to 55 or so. Because my car is manual, going down larger hills i turn the car off and coast in neutral (been doing this for years w/out incident, so no need for lecture about safety), or otherwise tend to drive pretty consciously often coasting in 5th gear, slow acceleration, keeping steady etc, and only use the AC when it's sweltering. Oh, i do occasionally speed (when running late), but it's rare.
I like to walk, and bike, and occasionally bike to work. If we had better public transportation around here, i certainly would use it, but it really sucks and is near non existent.
I eat a mostly vegetarian diet, fairly regularly going through periods of eating vegan, especially during the warmer months. Very occasionally i do have a little wild caught alaskan salmon or sardines, but that probably amounts to less than 10 lbs a year worth total.
We don't have any children–maybe someday, after the collapse, but not anytime soon.
For awhile, we raised our own chickens, which foraged a lot in our backyard though we did give them some feed. Would love to keep doing it, but they kept getting killed somehow. Had a garden going for awhile, but this year has been lax because we just don't get enough sun in our yard and past seasons were disappointing because of that.
For a long time, i only used a human powered rotating blade mower, but because our yard is so shaded and so full of weeds, i finally broke down and got a gas mower (bought used), which if things get over grown, i use that as a go over, then maintain with the human powered one.
Almost all of the food i eat is either from a local farmer market, or organic from Whole Foods and Trader Joes, with some organic stuff from Costco. I tend to eat less than the average American male.
I'm fairly perpetually broke, so i'm not much of a consumer compared to the average American. I try to live simply in a lot of ways, with gear being my major luxury expenditure, but lately i've really been trying to move in the more durable and not just light weight direction. Don't know if it helps or not, but i've also been doing a lot of myog stuff lately.
I buy most of my clothes used, most often from local thift stores–sometimes used on ebay and from here. I make some others. .Occasionally buy online new if i can't get it any other ways.
Our house is small, well shaded, and living in VA don't experience a lot of extremes except some heat and humidity. However, because the house is relatively small, well shaded, and one level, i don't use the AC that much, usually enough to take out some of the humidity. Our last electric bill was 60 dollars and that's with 4 adults that live here, and only two of which (my wife and i) who really try to conserve. As far as conserving, i often turn off the water when showering for soap up, don't flush pee much, pee in a jar for the garden or compost (less this year though), try to keep the heat down as much as i can (course, wife and housemates don't like it, and inevitably have to compromise). Course recycling and all that, reusing bags and all the standard stuff of CFL bulbs, rechargable batteries, constantly re use steel water bottles and use my own filtered well water most often, etc.
We use a super efficient wood stove sometimes for heat, often buy sawdust bricks. Normally wood stoves are bad source of pollution, but this one does a secondary burn and if done well, burns pretty dang clean, especially we often use dry, compressed sawdust.
Dunno, there are various other things i try to do. I could definitely do more. My wife is a travel whore, so we do occasionally fly when we have the money to–she does so more often than i because being a teacher she has more time and money than myself to do those things. We fly on average a round trip per year. Very occasionally two. Personally, i would like to cut that down.
Now, all the above isn't going to amount to much as one person alone. But if 51% of Americans did similar, as much, or more, and we re-vamped factories and other major polluters, then i suspect we could lower pollution output in a significant way.
Heck, even a strong move towards a more vegetarian, vegan, hunter or raising own, would help to clean up our rivers and streams a lot more.
Again, i'm not too concerned. I know stuff is going to happen, stuff that will force people to change. Might be sooner than later..
