Good morning, John.

Thank you for your wonderful video on how to make a baby. So last week I told you how to make a website in four minutes. This week I discovered something scary: The internet, if it were a country, would have the fifth largest carbon footprint of all countries.

And for us, I feel like were kinda dual citizens; we are citizens of the USA and of the internet, and being in the top five twice is just troublesome. So in that spirit, on this Wednesday of 'How-to' week, I'm gonna talk about how to be green and not be a prick about it. Over to the wall!

Y'like how said that, like 'The Wall'! It's a thing that I do sometimes! No I don't.

So behind me right now is a pretty amazing thing. It's a thing that was made by a guy named David, and if y'wanna know more about it, then y'should check down here. In the-in the pants area down here.

It's called The Breathing Earth. It is a graphical representation of what is going on in the Earth, it was kind of a focus on the environment. Every time you see a little blue star pop up that means that someone in that country just got born, and every time you see a little black dot pop up, that means that someone in that country just died, and every time a country flashes red, that means that that country just emitted a thousand tons of carbon dioxide.

And you'll notice that since we started, India's little flashing 'a kid is getting born' thing has not stopped blinking. It blinks all the time. Also since we started, China and the USA have been blinking red quite rapidly, which is fairly frightening.

It's all in real time, so there is actually a baby popping out of a mother every time you see a little white star. Now, the reason I love this thing is because it helps me understand. It helps me understand the beauty and the awesome power of humanity.

It helps me take something that is by in large impossible to understand, and understand it, that we are able to keep that many people alive, many of them happily alive. It's really amazing, an it's also very inspiring. Of course, it also points out a lot of the problems that we have, and understanding these problems is the only way to help the environment.

Now, a lot of people, if you clicked on this video and you don't know who I am, you probably expect me to tell you a list of things that you can do, or a list of things that you can buy. I can stand here and tell you the importance of wearing sweaters indoors in winter, and tell you how much you really shouldn't drive so much. Go buy efficient appliances, and sign up for Green Power Generation with your power company.

All these things are important, but all of these things only help your impact, and as long as you're doing this because you're trying to alleviate your personal impact, your personal guilt about how you feel about the environment, that's never gonna help anybody. The solution is understanding. So if you don't understand the world, then there is nothing you can change besides yourself, and as important as changing yourself is, as you can see from this graphic, China is flashing faster than the United States.

Changing ourselves is not going to solve this problem. Real solutions don't get created without real understanding. This is a dramatically complicated problem, so if you ask me to tell you how to be green without being a prick, the only way to do it is to understand.

Understand that you cannot stop a guy from burning down a forest if it's going to help him feed his children. Understand that you, as a citizen of the developed world, have far more wealth and happiness and power than the vast majority of people in the world. Understand that every single star on the map behind me is a child being born, and to someone that child is just as precious as your child is.

Understand that there is not enough land on the Earth by a long shot for everyone to eat the way that Americans eat. And once you understand these problems, once you understand the actual complexity of this situation, then you can start to understand the solutions, because the real secret to being green is being educated and empowered enough not only to make good decisions for yourself, but also to help create the solutions that will allow the people of this world to prosper without destroying the natural systems that they rely upon. And that is not easy.

That is a long and complicated process. But we have to do it because without being dedicated and smart and informed, we are going to kill ourselves, and I am not kidding about that. John, I will see you on Friday.

And my phones ringin', so I'm going to answer it. Hello!