This site is for folks who probably don't believe in global warming (if for no other reason than they can't stand Al Gore, the science of it all be damned!), think that the plight of the polar bears and the whales is too bad, but not enough of a tragedy to do anything about it, and that as long as you can somehow afford to buy gas you'll buy a new SUV every few years.

Except for the SUV part (sorry guys, I drive a Toyota convertible), that's pretty much been me most of my adult life. Despite having been raised by parents who were very much into the environmental scene, I never really took much of a shine to all that stuff - it just never seemed relevant. And besides, who wants to do what their parents say is "good" to do?

But then some interesting things happened. We decided that my wife would give up her job and work from home, not because I was making a fortune, but because it made the most sense from a work-life balance standpoint. But that meant we were making a lot less money, and we started to work a lot harder on saving where we could.

Then, recently, I read a book that really switched on a light bulb (a compact fluorescent bulb, no less!) in my head: Plan B 2.0 by Lester Brown. If you haven't read it, I strongly urge you to do so. This isn't a book about problems we can't solve: sure, it lays out the problems (a lot of which I'll bet you have no inkling of!), but - more importantly - it lays out a roadmap toward solving those problems. I'm not saying it's nirvana, but this stuff made such a huge amount of sense to me that I started up this web site to help spread the word.

But more than than, it struck me that what Plan B 2.0 was trying to get across was also a sense of relevance. I think a lot of folks have resisted or ignored the "environmental message" because they didn't see how it was relevant to their lives, or that a big part of the message they received (regardless of what the senders intended) was that they were bad and irresponsible. Granted, some folks are. But I think a lot of folks just don't see what a lot of this environmental stuff means in their world: where's the relevance?

And that's my angle with SavingCivilization.org: to get you to see that these things do have relevance in your life, that there are all kinds of things you can do - great and small, easy and hard - to improve the world for yourself, your family, and your country. And that you can save money while doing it!

See, one thing I've come away with is a belief that "being green" doesn't only mean being environmentally friendly, it's being economically friendly, too: saving you money, saving money on our taxes, and helping to keep our dollars here instead of pumping them into the Middle East.

Let's take an awesome example: the compact fluorescent light bulb ("CFL"). On the environmental side, if every American replaced just ONE of their existing incandescents with a CFL, it would have the same effect in reducing pollution as - ZOT! - taking one million cars off the road. Wow! But get this: if you replace your incandescents with compact fluorescents, you will save some serious bucks: I figure I'm saving over $300 per year now, just by switching over to CFLs!

And that's just a light bulb. Just imagine if we made the national decision to tell OPEC to take a flying leap: the technology is here, TODAY, to make 100% electric cars that don't need oil, along with hybrids with plug-in charging capability that can use alternative, sustainable fuels. But most of our driving can run off of the electricity provided by wind, wave, solar, and geothermal energy. These sources of energy aren't a hoax or back-yard tinkerer's dream, folks: they're here and growing!

The point is that all of us can do lots of things - great and small - to help ourselves do good things for our civilization and to save some money in the process. But the key to saving civilization is that you have to GET INVOLVED! Even if it's only changing your incandescent lights to CFLs, do something, and encourage others to get involved, too. And save some bucks in the process!

Michael Hicks
SavingCivilization.org

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