"We May Be Slow, But We Aren't Stupid"

I love the headline to this post, which is the last quote in the New York Times column by Thomas Friedman linked to here, about global growth and the need to reinvent the world economy to be more sustainable.  I know in my personal life, it is hard to imagine how I have accumulated so much stuff.  After reading the column, I realize I need to think more about how I use resources, and to take personal responsibility for some of my choices.  If the whole country took resources into consideration, I'm sure we could do a better job of conservation and recycling, as well as making improvements in quality of life, as the expert quoted in the article suggests.  I threw away so much plastic today just in making a sandwich -- plastic on the produce, plastic on the cheese, plastic on the meat, and two sets of plastic on the bread -- that I actually felt bad about it, even before I read the article.  Plastic is made from oil refinery byproducts, and it is part of the lifeblood of our economy.  But it is a wasteful use of oil and one that we could live without quite so much of.  Still, is it really better to buy a cloth reusable bag made by someone in Indonesia or China, then forget that I have it, than to simply use the plastic bag at the cash register?  With the rash of tornadoes and multiple heat waves back East, it may be time to acknowledge that global warming poses a real threat to the country and the world.  I'm going to start by avoiding plastic bags wherever possible.  Things like Earth Day and Earth Hour seem to make sense to raise awareness of environmental issues, but it really comes down to day-to-day decisions -- how willing are we to drive less, make real changes in our routines, etc. to help benefit the Earth?