Going Green

How many of us want to live a simpler life? How many of us know that we can do our part and not sacrifice our ability to to take a long journey in the family car and not have a gas bill that negates our happy time away. How many of us don't believe that going green is a new or revolutionary idea, but we are on board because we have always been on board. Am I right?
So what is going green for the average guy? It sure the heck isn't turning over our minds to some group-think-faith in how we can save mother earth by just following some guys getting rich and flying private jets telling others to live simply. It's not logical that we have an effect on the living organism called mother earth any more than we can stop the sun from shinning or change the shape of the universe. That would be truly egotistical.
So what does going green mean to most people I talk too, and they are an average group of people from the poorest in monetary terms to the high income but regular folk non the less. It means being responsible with recycling for one. That doesn't mean that buying only recycled goods is better, not at all. Many recyclables take 40% more energy to remake into useful items and that's not being responsible is it. But recycling is the way to keep the crap out of the land fill and that's a good thing.
Does being responsible mean giving up an internal combustion car? If your car is paid for that's a good thing too. We should not be expected to buy something new if the old one is still useful, economically it's senseless and it puts an even bigger strain on how to recycle millions of cars, good cars, into the system...that's stupid. A phase out would be the way to go but then where do we get the supply of juice for all the new electrical cars? Why not hydrogen, two years ago when gas prices were around $5 per gallon there were three different guys in Florida alone who had invented a means to convert your car to hydrogen. What happened to them? Not government sanctioned?  This is from a local Fox News a couple of years ago:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlHCOm4tLDU
Sweden's government  teamed up with Volvo and had come up with a way to make liquid methanol on a mass scale about 5-6 years ago. It was from the garbage that was dumped by her citizens and it was cheaper than gas at that time when gas was a mere$ 2.10 a gallon.  I know we are the largest garbage producing nation on earth per capita ( Latin for Per Head), why not have regional refineries right at a central dumps then transportation of the fuel isn't an issue because the gas stations are only a few miles away. I know  this  is all to easy and I'm sure the ideas running through your heads could help cut down on the garbage in our air, land and water as well as keep every on from going nuts about this subject!

But being a cyclist let me start with what I can do immediately...ride my bike to and from work a couple days a week. How about ride my bike to the store? Better yet, how many guys ride in the velo club? Make an effort to get to the city council or county board meeting and push for more bike lanes. That way more people, including kids, can ride bikes to the park or the store or whatever. If my kids wanted to go to the park now one of us would have to drive them because it's not safe on a bike...yet. What are some of your ideas on this subject?
If I pass you on the road stop at Peets, because your buying.