We all live in the same (earth) village
My nine-year-old neighbor pulled and tugged his little

TERRIE GONZALEZ

sister's red wagon across the acre of land that separated our two houses. The stake-style side rails provided additional height for cargo, but the little boy had stacked his load higher still.

Huffing, puffing and red-faced, he finally dragged his cargo into my garage: it was a load of newspapers that were delivered daily to his home.

"I want to recycle our newspapers, too, Mrs. Gonzalez," he said.

"That's great," I said as I congratulated him for thinking green. "Let's add your newspapers to my pile."

And together we off-loaded his wagon and talked about how good it felt to keep 50-70 pounds of newspapers out of the landfill and to know they had a second life.

That little boy is now 28 years old with a bachelor's degree in business entrepreneurship. And true to his convictions from childhood, he is trying to make the world a better place by building and remodeling homes the "green way."

I could not be prouder of my neighbor if he was my own son. It really does take a village.

Recycling discarded waste is something I started doing in the mid-70s while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. Gasoline cost about 40-cents per gallon back then, but we could see the handwriting on the wall about the nation's dependency on foreign oil. Oil embargoes have a way of getting everyone's attention.

The city of Austin enforced mandatory brownouts in the downtown area after nightfall and required skyscrapers to turn off their office lights when no one was working. The big pink dome of the capitol looked like a giant astronomy observatory silhouetted against the night sky.

The United States is entering a new age. Our fossil fuel supplies are running out at an alarming rate. The Oscarwinning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," asserts that humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb, and we may have less than 10 years to take action.

The vast majority of the world's scientists say that the planet may slip into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves that surpasses anything we have ever experienced.

Just last week President George W. Bush announced goals that he called "realistic" to curb global warming emissions. His idea is to stop the growth of emissions by 2025.

Scientists say that we must cut emissions by at least 15-20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 to avert catastrophe.

For the last seven years President Bush has blocked state and federal action on global warming and has refused to support the Kyoto Accords Treaty.

Environmental groups were quick to call President Bush's goals inadequate.

Sierra Club President Carl Pope said, "The president is throwing a Hail Mary to polluters in a last-ditch effort to stave off any meaningful action on global warming. Under the president's plan we'll need a real miracle to save us from global warming."

Do we have the collective will to meet global warming head on and make tough decisions?

Technology exists today to reverse the effects of global warming and clean up the planet. As a positive side effect, green technology will create new business sectors and new jobs.

If you haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth," it is on DVD and can be rented or purchased. Visit this website (www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction) and take a test on your personal impact on the environment.

And finally, read the 10 simple tips on the website that you can do to become carbon neutral. Perhaps recycling will be a practice you can adopt.

Most rural cities in East Texas do not make it easy to think green and recycle materials. There is no curbside pickup for citywide recyling.

I have a section of my garage dedicated for recycling, and about five or six times a year, I carry newspapers, cardboard, plastics 1 and 2, steel cans, aluminum cans and plastic bags to DeJamco Recycling in Jacksonville, (903) 586-4218.

Earth Day was yesterday, April 22. Make every day Earth Day and use it to observe, explore, celebrate and most importantly to resolve.

We all live in the same village.