Thank you, Noah Wyle

We were sitting on the couch in the air conditioned home of my girlfriend's family, watching CMT, Country Music Television, when I saw him- a kind, concerned expression on his adorable baby face. Noah Wyle, of TV's ER, was pleading the case for polar bears in a public service announcement for the World Wildlife Federation(WWF). It made me a little queasy.

Nature conservation is WWF's mission, and ripping my heart out is one way they are accomplishing it. Their video of a polar bear balancing its weight on one small slip of Arctic ice was the tipping point in my decision not to buy another car. The world is talking about global warming, carbon emissions and offsets, and all things environmental this week as the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) meets in Copenhagen, Denmark. While polar bears need someone else to speak up for their livelihood in the face of global warming, many people are speaking out for their own climate justice during the two weeks of the summit. I have been listening to their stories on Democracy Now!.

Their stories are our stories- if not now, then soon. Our US government has been slow to warm up to fully acknowledging how carbon emissions from fossil fuels effect the climate, and to effectively act on the threat that global warming presents to animals, all people, our health and the economy- both here and worldwide. Maybe they think that Americans can't or won't deal with changing the status quo, like the corporations and industries that lobby Congress daily.

All of this made me think about my own carbon footprint. According to carbonfootprint.com, our carbon footprint is "a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc."

You can calculate your share on their site. Mine is 7 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. That is for the year, taking into account that I drove for more than half of this year, flew across the country round trip once, am mostly vegan, and sometimes try to buy things with the least amount of packaging. It's smaller than the national average, according to the footprint graphic on the site, but much larger than the worldwide sustainability goal.

How much do I owe the world for my energy consumption? How do I justify creating more than my fair share of carbon dioxide, now officially recognized as a dangerous gas, according to the EPA , when the people most burdened by its effects are responsible for so much less of its production? How do I look a polar bear in the eye?