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I try to be an EcoOptimist, and normally I succeed, but the last few days, things have been looking kind of gloomy.

I’ve been reading No Impact Man, and have been quite inspired to make some serious changes. I mean, if he can do it in New York, surely I can do it in the middle of the Prairies.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been cultivating a list of actions that I can take to make my footprint even lighter, and also documenting the changes that I’ve already made. When I wrote it down, I was actually quite impressed the length of the “been there, done that” list. I’ve got a low-flow toilet (which I rigged up myself). I compost everything. I recycle, even though I live in the only major North-American city that still doesn’t offer curb-side pick-up. I use cloth bags as often as I can and reuse the plastic bags I do have a dozen times over. My fiancé and I rarely eat beef, opting instead for an occasional cut of venison hunted by family members to satisfy our red meat urges. I’m even phasing out the cleaning chemicals in my house and replacing them with borax and vinegar.

On the “to-do” list, I put everything from canning my own vegetables to switching to reusable feminine products. I was pretty proud of myself. And feeling quite up-beat about the future of our species.

Then I started looking around me. I see people at work put one-sided paper (or worse, naked paper with a bent corner) into the recycling bin, rather than the reuse bin 3.5 inches away. I watched my sister fill a garbage bag with pop bottles, walk right past the recycling bin and put it in the dumpster. I even discovered that she leaves her computer running every minute of every day of the year, and when I calculated that it costs her $7 per month to do so, she didn’t think that was very much.

I took the opportunity of having sushi for dinner the other night, since I’m in Vancouver, and halfway through I looked at my plate and wondered how these different species are harvested. So I visited the Vancouver aquarium website and discovered that most of my dinner was trolled, and that we’re down to the last 10% of our tuna stocks. I’m at a conference this week where everything edible is presented in handy, single-serving disposable packages – right down to the honey in individual glass jars.

On the policy front, we’ve got George W. telling us that the global rise in food prices has nothing to do with putting food in our gas tanks, it is in fact due to those pesky Chinese wanting to eat more than a subsistence diet including - if you can believe the audacity - meat every week! So he’s continuing with his plan to run 15% of American cars on ethanol in the next 10 years. I haven’t heard of Harper addressing the issue specifically, but no matter, as his answers typically consist of “Whatever Bush said”.

The icing on the cake was when I found out yesterday, that evidence is starting to suggest that wind turbines are killing huge numbers of migrating bats. Bats scarf down their body-weight in insects daily; insects that make people and crops sick. Without them we’ll need more pesticides and more pharmaceuticals, and my wind offsets are contributing to that.

My EcoConsciousness is being over run with panic and EcoGuilt.

I know that when I get home and I see the last of my bleach supply, the last of my plastic bags, the first of my (hopefully) delicious, homemade pickles I’ll feel better again. I’ll feel like the human race isn’t so spoiled and lazy that it won’t save itself. But the question will still be there: does it matter what I do if I’m (almost) the only one doing it?

If anyone can offer a pep-talk, I would very much appreciate it.