Re: The point of his entry was to show that, in general, people are not and most importantly will not be aware of their ecological impact without someone telling them, and even then, it will not be well received – hence, “preaching”. Let’s be realistic - how many people take time to acknowledge the effects of energy consumption and waste production on the environment? Suppose they do recycle and conserve, and we assume that this is somewhat of a sign of their awareness. What are their reasons for doing so, aside from money? Because it’s a good thing to do? How far does their motivation beyond a guilty conscience extend? Probably not much more than “I was taught it was bad to waste food and litter, so I won’t.” Beyond that, they are not really aware, as they cannot appreciate the magnitude of the consequences of human impact on the environment. The obvious solution here is to tell them about it, but again, who will listen without interpreting it as “preaching”? And can someone fully realize the extent of energy consumption and waste production simply by example alone?

Any person can hear what another person is saying, but it takes an open mind to actually listen.

Re: AJ. If you think this is bad, then I would suggest you stay away from politics.

What personally worries me is China and India - especially China because they are being very aggressive with modernizing…they are trying to do it the exact same way we did. Can the world support 1/3rd of the world’s population (Ie- China + India) living the exact same way we do? For some cities -like chongqing to be full with highways that makes LA look like child’s play? I’m thinking not (unless we go to war and someone loses - I used to talk about how primitive people were when we went to war for resources…then again I didn’t realize what we’v been doing all alone) - of course at the same time they can say “you live like that, how can you deny us that life style you hippocrit!”…I would hope we have to make changes ourselves.

I remember when the seg way first came out - the inventor lukemarly said “yeah we could make a billion dollars sellign to the post office”
but then he later continued to show how he was interested in changing this world and thought (obviously paraphrasing him) “what if china instead adopoted a policy not that of urban sprawl, but that of planned urban planning where people would use seg ways as the basic means of transportation instead of cars…how much would we save!”
Considering how Beijing average highway traffic goes at 9mph (although that is still better than the 91…) and they are rushing to build more and more cars, I’ll take a stab in the dark and say that his idea was not very convincing to their government.

I would say try to avoid “preaching” at all , and try to lead by example as it is probably the most effective over the long run. If i see a friend doing something I had not considered in the past that I knew was ultimately a better choice- I’m much more likely to emulate it than if they talked to me all day long about what I should be doing.