now we can swim any day in november

wow. it's rather nice outside today. in fact, i think it's been in the 70's in fresno for a large part of november. it is november, right? and we're half way through the month, right? today, i walked down the street in shorts, t-shirt, and flip flops. and it's not just that i'm a big guy. the mail carrier was wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt.

the forecast doesn't have us hitting the low 60's (daytime high) until the middle of next week. the forecast for thursday, thanksgiving, is also 60. 60. sheesh.

but i'm not complaining. i don't mind a mild fall season. i would appreciate a little more rain over the next month though. especially since i don't have to drive my motorcycle too much over the next 5 weeks.

what makes a difference?

sometimes we do things because we think it helps. and, in some way, a very small way, maybe it does. and this doesn't mean that we should stop doing them, but at least maybe we should stop thinking they're making such a big difference. for instance, i know several people that are no longer using plastic bags from the grocery store. the main reason behind this is that the bags are plastic. plastic comes from oil. all our oil use, bad for the environment. now, these are all true. but, really inconsequential. we import 20 million barrrels of oil a day. if we were to totally ban plastic bags, that would eliminate all of .16% of that oil consumption. less than 1% isn't really huge. let's see, 20 million x 365 days * .16% = 11,680,000 barrels of oil. if you add in the amount of oil that goes into making evil water bottles, that gets us up to .18%, or 13,140,000 barrels.*

these are two seemingly small things that we all would have to do to make this happen. but, we would be better served if we just didn't import oil for one day. i know that's not very realistic. so what are some other solutions?

i guess before we talk solutions, we should discuss the problem. what is the problem? is it just importing oil and foreign dependence? some would say yes. i'm not in that boat. to me, the problem is the environmental impact we're having through our oil usage. cars, factories, everything burning oil has an impact on the air we breathe and the climate we live in. i know, some doubt global warming, but even without buying into that you've got to see the poor air quality we now face.

are the solutions as easy as the old motto, "reduce, reuse, recycle?" i've heard that if we focus on the first two, we would be very well served. thoughts?

btw, i just saw that british protesters are camping outside of heathrow airport to protest against a proposed expansion because they feel it would add to global warming.



*i got my oil import numbers and such from here.