When it comes to the environment, I'm in the unfortunate position of not caring enough to inconvenience myself, but caring just enough to feel guilty about the things I'm not doing. This is the reason I don't haul my own recyclables to the recycling center, but instead pay the trash company $10 a month to take them away. There's no curbside recycling in our county and I finally caved after of year of Jack saying, "Why don't we recycle anymore? Recycling is good for the earth." (Darn those California schools.)
I'm not an activist or anything, but I care enough to turn out a light bulb when I leave the room (here is where my Dad and Greg both fall over laughing.) I try to remember to turn out the lights when I leave the room. And I try not to whine (too loudly) when Greg sets the nighttime thermostat at 62 degrees in the winter. Lately I've been telling Jack that when he leaves a light on it melts the polar ice caps and kills the earth. (This is an old trick from my high school debate days: Any plan to improve the economy leads to greenhouse gasses, leads to global warming, leads to polar ice caps melting and WE ALL DIE! )
There is one place where my laziness and my desire to be "green" coincide. The school bus. I love the school bus so much I could marry it. It picks the kids up outside my front door, transports them to school and back home again, and then deposits them right back outside my front door. I can stay in my pajamas! It couldn't be any more perfect. It's also green! I'm not driving my car 16 miles a day just to get the kids to school and back. And even better, I'm not sitting in the carpool line for an hour waiting to bring them home.
The carpool line amazes me. People arrive at 2:15pm and sit and wait for their kids to get out of school at 3:30pm. You used to have to come at 3:00pm to be the first in line, but these things always escalate. I sometimes cross in front of those people at the front of the line when I pick the kids up from school early for a dentist appointment. I want to shake those people and say, "If you didn't line up at 2:00, then no one would have to line up at 2:00!" Instead, parents come earlier and earlier in order to be first in line and then there are 30 cars sitting and idling for over an hour until school lets out. Drive the six miles home and then come back later, you'll use a lot less gas and pollute the air less. Idling your car puts twice as much pollution into the air as actually driving your car. Or simpler still, turn off your car. Also, why wait in line for an hour in order to avoid the 20 minute wait you'd have if you came at the proper time?
The school is having a silent auction next week and one of the things they are auctioning off is the chance to rename the carpool lane. They actually say "rename" as if it has a name besides "The Carpool Lane." I wasn't planning to attend the auction, but a chance to rename the carpool lane is pretty enticing. I'm sure they expect to get something cute like "Stalling Stallions" or "Pokey Pick-Up."
But I would love a chance to name it "The Polar Ice Cap Melting Lane" or the "Please Turn Off Your Escalade You're Killing My Children Lane" or "The Al Gore Memorial Car Pool Lane" (Al only lives an hour from here, you know.) But given the fact they're all driving huge SUVs, maybe they don't care so much about the environment and I should appeal to their lazy side. We could call it the "If Your Kid Rode The Bus You'd Be Home Right Now" lane.