Going Green? Easy Doesn't Do It, what does?

It's been weird, the class I have the day before is Microeconomics. And everytime I hear the argument of free trade and consumption being better for everybody, and the environment being an externality. The "market" will save everything, but at the same time our own Professor pointing out that the I=PAT might not be exactly correct (the fact that it points any sort of progress will have a bad impact no matter what sounds like we weren't meant to expand with our knowledge) has left me really confused.

It makes sense that we can't do simple measures to save the environment, our system needs to be changed so my children won't think that there is no way no move around South Brunswick, NJ unless they have a car. So they can walk to places rather than be stuck at home playing video games all day or just be connected to the internet like us right now... rather than being connected with the web, I'd rather them be connected with the life around them.

Our mindset is like a web of communication, of intangible emotions searching out the distance in a globalized frenzies so we can find the distance market to our tastes. I don't know what the soil smells like, what it means to grow, I only know what it means to take and consume.

So what are changes we can take?

When my child is born, what must I do, besides just turn off my lights when no one is in the room? Do I cover her eyes when she sees an ad for a baby doll on the television so she doesn't want? I know I want to learn to garden for her, so she gets dirty in the ground, so she smiles the same way I do and my mother does when we both see sparrows flit around the ground, chirping without any real rhythem.

So, yes policy is important, but what can I do, as a grow up, to really make my own personal change and live a life environmentally friend and fufilling in a non consumer way?