Their cause and motives are good but I think that the environmental extremists really give the whole green movement a bad reputation. I was even given advice not to include the word green in the URL of my blog because of the reputation the green movement historically has - but obviously I've chosen to keep it.

I am a realistic person, so when reading my blog you'll notice that I write about things that are easy for anybody to do.

I believe in water conservation, I believe in recycling, I believe in lessening our dependence on fossil fuels. But I also believe that human beings have to be comfortable in their environment.

Take this picture of the Huites Dam in Sinaloa, Mexico as an example. The dam was completed in 1995 and when flooded it changed 23,000 acres of land on the flooded side. But it also doubled the amount of arable land on the downstream side, created a storage basin for water for public use during the 9 months of the year when there is almost no rainfall and it also generates electricity for public consumption.

Conservation extremist would probably tell you this dam was a bad project simply by considering that land has been flooded. They'd likely mention that animals and other creatures have been displaced as well.

Northern Mexico struggles daily with water to sustain the population. From any perspective what can we realistically ask them to do? Water conservation is already a fact of life in northern Mexico and the public is constantly being reminded and educated about water conservation.

We can't realistically say to the people of northern Mexico not to build a dam like this and have the population dwindle from lack of water. This water is not only used in every day life but it's used for food production as well - some of this food ends up in the mouths of American citizens too.

We can't realistically say that tomorrow we're going to stop using fossil fuels and plastic, or that we're going to stop melting silica to make glass.

To be realistic we need to be educated about the world around us and how we interact with it. Every person needs to be educated and aware of the environmental impact of their existence. We should actually have a special subject about it in basic education schools - something similar to the 'home economics' classes that existed when I was in school.

It starts with us knowing things like how many kilowatt hours of electricity we use and what appliances in our homes are using the majority of the energy. Or how a well tuned vehicle with proper tire pressure will use less fuel.

It starts with us throwing away the throw away lifestyle and choosing to live a lifestyle that's more sustainable.