Cultivating global warming awareness will be a long haul.  Research and Education are the keys to turning our planet around, if it's not too late to do so already.  The public, including me to some extent, needs to be convinced.  Since we began environmental legislation about 40 years ago, we've made steady progress that the public can appreciate. Reducing toxic discharges from industrial and transportation sources has noticably improved our American air and water. Do not underestimate the value of these improvements, both ecologically and educationally for public awareness.

The issues surrounding global warming are cloudier, because there are meterological and geological cycles to which warming effects can be attributed. In any case, though, reductions in carbon emissions should be a high priority--a public goal--because of the working relationships between oxygen and carbon dioxide that exist, and have always existed, between plants and animals. 

Biodiversity is very important.  I feel that this is a principle that is palpable and obvious; the public can understand and act upon the need to cohabit with plants and animals in earth's biosphere.  Education dollars are better spent on biodiversity than on the vague (from a public standpoint), hard-to-pin-down ideas of what global warming is, and its effects in, say, the north and south poles. (Although I have stood in the flooded vestibule--a regular event--at the the church of San Marcos in Venice. There's definitely something going on with sea level changes.)

But the real key to turning this problem around is changing the way households operate.  Here's where environmentalism and consumerism (with help from education) can synthesize to produce beneficial changes in the way people live every day at home.  Venture capitalists who have a green agenda should establish and support companies that will research, develop and market small-tech energy-generating equipment such as solar collectors, wind turbines, fuel cells.  When mass production and increased consumer demand (through education) bring unit costs down, households can someday become net producers of power, instead of just consumers. You think I'm dreaming? Just watch and see what eco-capitalists can promote if the government doesn't nitpick and/or tax them to death.  This will make a big difference.

And of course we've got to get back to bicycling, composting, back- yard gardening, bartering, and other low-impact strategies. Governments should not interfere with the creative processes of individual households taking responsibility for their own waste and power. And entrepeneurs whose new products are facilitating eco-friendly changes should not be regulated out of existence.  New housing designs, new methods of generating electricity and new transportation methods are essential; they should not be regulated to death. 

These necessary developments are the functions of an educated, free public--not a controlling bureaucracy. "Green" entrepeneurs providing ecologically-responsible equipment and services to an informed public can promote sound environmental practices among the consumer populations, and they can accomplish this  while preserving the freedom of individuals and families to act in their own interest.  This is America; we can do this.  Let's get busy now. Inventors! Take a look at the horizon and see what is needed in each household to decrease dependence on destructive technologies. Let's get this solar and wind power-generation micro-technology out there for the public to buy in great numbers so we can get unit costs down.   Venture capitalists!  Look at the BIG picture (the world), not short-term speculative profits; in the long run you'll  be acting in our best interests as well as your own.  Let's leave a lovely, sustainable world for our children and grandchildren to inherit with sustainability and joy.

Carey Rowland, author of  Glass half-Full