This is a very timely post for me, and I suppose it is, because after all, I'm perusing the green side of AT, so something's clicking.

No, I can't say I was ever an environmentalist, I'm a baby boomer, so that's a contradiction in itself. I seem to be ramping up all of a sudden, although it was my college age son who first told me and my husband a year or two ago in a matter of fact way that we ruined the planet for his generation, as he went about changing light bulbs to flourescent lights in our apt. We listened and increased our awareness. We saw the movie, which increased our awareness even more. I listened to various news reports, including how this summer was the fastest "meltdown" of the ice cap ever, by far, and far surpassed all expectations by all the scientists.

I also started shutting lights off and thinking about consumption. Now, I seem to be ramping up quickly, as a result of a green design seminar I just took last week, and am bringing this philosophy into my business in a bigger way, and will be working with green products. Can't get the subject off my mind and signed up for two more seminars in the next month.

I do feel as if I have SO much to learn, and feel as if I'm beginning to formulate ideas and opinions and questions about the enormous issue.

I was never particularly crunchy, and used to get annoyed as a teen when my mom wanted me to reuse plastic bags or turn down the AC. But last year we definitely had a major tipping point, when my boyfriend was working on an environmental science education video series. He came home majorly agitated about the environment, and spent the next two hours telling me about how we're in big trouble, and we all need to do a lot better! After that, our eco-consciousness ramped up quickly. I started working on the video series too, we started biking to work and composting, and the next thing you know we're building a green home!

Another major event for me was this New Year's Day, when my BF and I read Rolling Stone's expose on the horrors of Smithfield Farms' pig factory farms. As soon as I read that, I refused to eat meat again until I'd learned more about sustainable and humane livestock practices. Now I buy meat only from local farms who care for their animals, and resolve to cook vegetarian meals 3-4 times a week.

Neat question! My family has always been fairly eco-conscious; my sister is a geologist, so I grew up hearing about the peak-oil debate, and my father was a Depression baby, so he's all about not wasting anything. Lately it's become a lot easier, especially with government recycling and composting programs. But I don't think there was ever a moment for me. Eco-consciousness was always just part of life.

I would always have said that I was concerned about the environment, but I didn't do anything much about it. Then I read Douglas Adams' and Mark Carrwadine's Last Chance to See, quickly followed by Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers - both of these books drove home to me the urgency of the situation, and the idea that it's our everyday actions that lead to larger environmental issues. I'd definitely say they were a tipping point for me.

It wasn't untill I became sick that I began to really think about it. All the terrible things we do to our bodies, that we don't think about, or don't control - I consider to be worse than cigarettes. Someone smoking in the modern day knows exactly what they are doing to themselves. But when someone uses those chemical cleaners? These strange surficants and chemicals in the water, heavy metals in our fish? Its been covered up so well by companies that these things are horrible for you, that people don't know. So I went out searching for honest to god, good things for you. Its made me a healthier, happier person.

I've always been aware of the environment (though not on a huge scale) and the need for recycling, but it wasn't until this past May that I became aware of how much of a global problem the environment is, mostly due to a rather innocuous Jewish holiday display, which I described here: http://www.rappyamhappy.com/archives/000411.html

I've since attempted to make a more concerted effort at being "green" in numerous aspects of my life, a process made a little easier having moved to Munich recently, where being green isn't viewed upon as being alien.

I've been conscious about my environmental impact since high school when I helped run our environmental club. We spent hours collecting paper barrels and driving them to a recycling center since the school wouldn't support recycling. We needed to remove all of the staples by hand.

It started for me with a love of the outdoors, and has expanded as I realize how much of environmentalism is about protecting people. I seek organic produce not because I'm worried about my ingestion of pesticides on something like a banana, but because of all the people that will have to be exposed to those pesticides.

When making the green choice lines up with my yankee frugality, I find environmentalism easy (composting instead of buying fertilizer, reusing rags instead of buying lots of paper towels, fixing things instead of replacing them, conserving energy, buying a gas efficient vehicle).

I have to make much more of a conscious effort to do the environmental thing when it's more expensive. I've started by consciously trying to increase my food expenditure, so I got a farm share (CSA) for veggies. I've also started buying local milk, and tomorrow I pick up my first farmshare of meat! Little steps.

I think it started for me when I was cleaning out my dead father's house and came across something like 58 bars of soap. He lived alone. It started me thinking about consumption and its emotional implications.