But what can I *do*?

So I just saw An Inconvenient Truth. I thought the movie was good, albeit depressing; it was a pretty well-constructed documentary and answered questions and raised points pretty clearly. I do urge you to see it if you have any inclination to whatsoever; it's worth the money. Or save it to your Netflix queue if you don't want to see it in a theater.

But more important, for me, is the question that movies like this often leave me with: but what can I do? The movie website has a carbon calculator (there are others out there too) that lets you calculate your environmental impact in some ways. I idly headed over there to fill it out and see how bad the news was for me. One question it asks is: What percentage of your energy is from clean, renewable sources?

I didn't know the answer. I figured that meant it was probably zero. But I decided to check on it and see. And I found out that my power company offers the option to buy alternative energy in increments of 10%, 50%, or 100% of your bill. Switching to 100% green energy increases our bill by about $0.03 per kwh, which will probably add about $18 to our energy bill every month.

That is totally worth it. I didn't know that I even had the option to make that choice, but it was really easy. Why don't you go check? People in Minnesota, Xcel offers a windsource option you can buy at least 400 kwh a month, if you want to.