Are you shocked? It's Tuesday and I'm posting my GREEN post! I'm shocked. But, I was determined to be on time this week. This topic is too vital. It deserves its rightful place...on Tuesdays, on time.

Our erstwhile leader (well, one of the women who is at the forefront of this movement, and who is so passionate about it she keeps the rest of us up to date on the latest and greatest), Mary Hunt, shared some valuable "green" information with the group recently, that I'd like to post here.

How many of you know that in 1800 the world population was 98 million? Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

Yet, if we jump to 1900, it goes up to 1.65 billion. Yep, I changed an important letter there: the M became a B - at the turn of the 20th century the earth was up to over a billion in population. In the year 2000, population was over the 6 Billion mark. We don't have accurate data for 2007, but a new census is on the horizon and I expect we will be in double digits, by then. And, heaving a big sigh, according to the University Exchange (where this pic came from), "The USA with under 300 million inhabitants out of a total of 6 billion, (about 5% presently), consumes 75% of the total annual world produce and energy and produces 20% of the world pollutants."

I could go on and on about over-population. I was once a proponent of zero-population growth, but then I had child #3, and several folks in my family were on child #5, so... I had to rethink zero-population. Now, I think population has a HUGE impact on the environment, but I also think more young people means more brainpower to focus on how to fix things.

Today, I'd like to ask you to think seriously about the idea of going green. And, here are the words that you should be focused on (naturally, thinking about what they mean and how you can contribute to their effectiveness):

• Climate
• Waste
• Products
• Recycling
• Transparency
• Sustainability

I'll talk more about each of these in next week's post. Meanwhile, are you going green? How so?