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Green 101

An extended essay on green issues

Introduction

For the past 28 years I have been travelling fitfully towards a greener lifestyle. My first, tentative steps were taken with the encouragement of Undercurrents, a radical British magazine. My progress has been haltingly slow, sometimes even moving in reverse: in 1993 I started undertaking long-haul flights, and at some point my family graduated to two cars and three microwave ovens. However, my lifestyle is much greener now than it would have been had I not taken those first steps nearly 30 years ago.

The purpose of this website is to lay out as comprehensively as I am able the full range of green issues as far as I am aware. I wish to connect theory/received wisdom, current affairs, my own experience and my own conclusions. The material is intended to be thought-provoking, motivating, and sometimes challenging: I present contradictions, doubts, weaknesses and alternative opinions. I guess that I am in effect writing my own edition of Undercurrents.

The original material on which this extended essay is based was developed in postings on one of my weblogs: Digitation. I had hoped, in vain it transpired, to receive feedback from which the text might be strengthened. In consolation, I discovered that there remains merit in placing material in the public domain even if the readership is limited to lonely electronic mice living on server farms while dreaming of Laika-inspired adventures to geostationary communications satellites.