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I agree with everything that's been said on the topic of being green 
on this list so far.  I live pretty green -- one reason for my 
staying in Germany longer than the original planned one or two years 
(it's been 17 now, total) is the fact that it's much easier to leave 
a much smaller environmental footprint in this particular 
society.  But that's not my main point at the moment.

Another aspect of this problem, and one well worth examining in an 
informal education setting, is the dependence of much of the world's 
economies on our (US and Europeans) consumption habits.

It's not just a simple issue of not buying what you don't need, it's 
also an issue of finding ways of raising the standards of living in 
the developing world without resorting to producing short-lived goods.

And not just that!  What are we going to do with the folks who run 
the stores that sell us the goods?  The folks who are building and 
maintaining the shopping malls?

Yeah, OK.  We finally DO rebuild the railroads.  What do we do once 
the railroads are finished?  I can think of any number of public 
works projects -- there are enough "bad" neighborhoods to fix up and 
certainly other messes to clean -- but these would be more or less 
all government sponsored or government initiated projects (that's ok 
with ME, I'm a Commie (well, kind of rosy pink), but not with the most of us).

I think that presenting the intricacies of the global environmental 
issues and the global economic issues would make for a  pretty 
interesting -- pretty darn complicated!! -- undertaking.

In the meantime, let us, in fact, DO consume less -- there are still 
enough people out there who "NEED" another electronic toy to feed 
quite a few workers of the world.

Natasha Aristov
PH Ludwigsburg
Germany

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