When Green is in.

Even neo-con NY Times Columnist Tom Friedman is beginning to sound more like a Green than like John McCain. Take this from his interview reported at Grist today.

... [B]ig energy companies? They're not on Facebook. They're not in your chat room. They're in the cloakroom, and they're in your face. So unless you get off of Facebook, unless you get out of the chat room into the cloakroom where the rules get made, you're not going to have an impact. So I'm all for the blogosphere; I love it. I love the fact that my column gets spread all over the world thanks to the internet, and that I can have this dialogue with so many people. And I love the blogosphere for all the wild, crazy ways it enriches the conversation.

But do not confuse that conversation with having an impact. At some point, the conversation has to stop and the lobbying and the arm-twisting has to start.

It makes me wonder why I keep writing this blog. I guess it is in the hope that some readers just might take the next step and start opening the door to the cloakroom, since the time for that has surely passed me by.

So, if your are reading this... stop... shut off the computer and go do something Green. Here are a few suggestions:

• Attend the next meeting of you local planning commission. That is where developers have their way with your future.
• Send a letter to your congress critter telling them that we don't want Federal Subsidies of Big Agriculture or of Bil Oil. The current farm bill and energy bill are embarrassments designed for short range, future be damned, political advantage.
  
• Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper supporting a Green Party Presidential Candidate: Johnson, McKinney, Mesplay or Swift.
  
• Plant a garden.
  
• Send a letter to the Chairman of Home Depot asking them to remove Monsanto's Roundup from their shelves. Here are some reasons why and here are some more.