Your grandmother has a point. But since when have we come to accept that we should only act with integrity if famous people are acting with integrity? If we used the actions of those in the limelight to justify our own behaviors, where would we be?

Yes, they are acting hypocritically. We “normal people” can use that as an excuse, or we can use it as further incentive to step up as leaders on these issues.

However, the visible leaders of the sustainability movement shame me in front of my family and friends every day.

For example, both Al Gore and John Travolta (so-called public eco-leaders) live personal lives with respect to energy use footprints that are obscene.

Al’s Tennessee home heating and cooling bill alone for 2008 exceeded $30,000.

Travolta’s five jets use more energy in a month than my grandmother used in her lifetime.

What I am saying is that when Gore speaks at Copenhagen, and I attempt to pass his message on, I come from people who look to behavior first to judge sincerity. The rest is just money.

So, my grandmother said to me that she would limit her energy expenditure to 80% of Al Gore’s or 70% of John Travolta’s, and just like these “phonies” claim the title of FRIEND OF THE EARTH.

What do I say to my grandmother?

She has a valid point. When people worth over 100 million dollars ask my grandmother to sweat in the summer and freeze in the winter, they don’t seem to have any shame at all in terms of their own behavior.

Don’t they “get it?”

After all that preaching, last week, Travolta with his jet plane being fueled in the background said, “Well, we gave it a good try, but it is now too late to save Mother Earth.”

Geez, where do people like this come from?

The talks must only go on until we find a set of adequate means by which we can make our nation more sustainable. Once those means are determined, all talk must cease and action must prevail. We don’t need to figure everything out first; as long as we are moving down the road, we can worry about the potholes as they come.