Take recycling for instance. Just trying to recycle a CFL is not easy without expending an effort. Most people are just not going to take the time. So,what happens? They throw them in the trash, mercury and all. Although I believe using CFLs are better than not despite the mercury issue, the businesses who sell them could step up to the plate as well.

However, my view is everything you do better like walking, which you mentioned, is just one more thing to help the Earth. My motto is try the best you can. As you continue to green your life, it will become habit and not change. Sometimes you have to crawl before you can walk.

Happy new years and may it bring lots of growth for Talk Climate Change.

Nice post as always, Mark. anna http://www.green-talk.com

Mark it seems you and I lead parallel lives. I too took 2 long haul vacations (Canada to Europe) + 1 Cruise to Mexico. I flew once a month, each trip over 2,500km each way, for work. I started my website/personal blog as well.

I bought CFLs, but with a good/bad rate of 50% (First six pack all the bulbs were broken, second pack 3 did not work). Then I found out about the mercury, and that I had no safe way to dispose of them so I stopped buying them. So, not to be a deterred, I installed some traditional tube flourescent lights in my home office and kitchen ( this is because the lights are on in these rooms almost constantly and I got tired of changing bulbs). I bought an AC unit, which was energy star and used less power than the fans I has before.

I ride mass transit everyday for 80% of my needs, I walk obviously much more as a result. My car battery keeps dying because I drive so little these days. I car pool for shopping with my sister who lives 10 minutes from me.

I also live in a province with almost no CO2 emissions from electrical power generation. Yet I conserve and my power use (including my “always on” computers (5) and AV/Game center and my home office, which is my primary workplace as I closed my downtown office to save the expense), is about 400Kwh/month ( about half of most homes in Canada ) on average.

Yet I do not believe that the current climate is unusual, nor it it a harbinger of catastrophe.

I learned this year so much more than I thought possible about climate science, the state of the scientific community, global politics, human psychology and the UN.

My New Years resolution is to keep up with the science, but concentrate on the economics, and keep the debate going anywhere I can, like here on this excellent site.

Happy New Year to you, and best wishes for your blog. I am adding it to my blogroll by the way.

marguerite