Heaven forbid someone make you feel guilty.  Do you ever use paper towels when a rag would do?  Do you take your own sacks to the grocery store?  Do you always car pool when you can?  Do you drive a gas efficient car?  Do you take two minute showers?  Do you water your lawn?  Do you support golf courses (they are one of the worst offenders)?  Do you turn off the light when you leave the room?  Do you turn off the TV when not really watching it?  Do you reuse bags?  Do you reuse aluminum foil?  Do you reuse plastic cups?  Do you always use up left over food?  Do you keep the A/C set at 78 degrees or above in the summer?  Do you keep the temperature set at 68 degrees or cooler in the winter?  I could go on and on - you get the point

Nobody can MAKE you feel guilty regardless of what tactics they may use.  You either feel guilty or you don't.  It's your choice.

Even the green companies out there can be some of the most dishonest corporations out there.  They wouldn't be successful if they weren't profitable.  If guilt is working, than using that as a marketing tactic will be used until it doesn't and than the method changes.  Just keep those eyes and ears open.

Go on YouTube and search for "The Story of Stuff." One of the issues that Annie Leonard addresses is the fact that corporations have grown to be larger than government. Everyone should see this video. It would start a revolution. Remember, "Reduce" and "Reuse" are the first two words in the mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Corporation greed is no excuse for the citizen to act like a hog.  The citizen has a responsibility to others and that will never change. In this county we are lazy, greedy and grasping. It please us to have the children in other countries suffer and starve so we can have unreasonably cheap goods, TVs in every room, SUVs that guzzle fuel, too much food we don't eat, closets of clothes we don't wear, alcohol and drugs. We spit on every dime of tax we pay for the elderly and infirm and then vomit out our love for God. We create fake wars, slaughter innocents and continue to glut and whine, glut and whine, glut and whine.

This is what economists call market failure. Property rights are not well defined in the case of clean air and water, so someone else can usurp your clean air and water wihout paying for it. Coase's theorem, that voluntary bargaining (eg lawsuits) can lead to efficient outcome only works if transactions costs are small. But they are not. It is hard to sue, and even harder to prove that the corporation caused your cancer. It could have happened anyway. So corporations end up polluting for free. So there is a role for government having pollution laws to restrict this bad activity.

Your case for the inefficiency of public lands is much stronger, however. Private firms who use public lands have no incentive to keep it up or to conserve the resource. With private ownership, they have such an incentive.

For intersting reading try: Coase, Ronald "A Problem of Social Cost" Journal of Law and Economics (1960). I believe for an academic article, this is actually readable, and it addresses this debate. This is available at most university libraries.  

Speaking of suing, are you aware that your government dollars are being used to help the "big guys" (Big Pharma in particular) - in lawsuits against the drug companies where a teen killed himself and similar situations.  I never knew they could use our tax dollars that way.  What the heck are they doing involving themselves in our only remaining recourse to justice?  I know there is a campaign going under the guise of "get rid of nuisance or frivolous lawsuits" and unfortunately it seems to be very successful.  People aren't asking themselves nuisance by whose definition - a judge can already throw a case out if he deems it frivolous.  

Personally, I have been thinking we need a movement to get the manufacturers to stop using permanent materials (plastic) for items we only use a few minutes or a short while, like water bottles, hamburger boxes, even plastic bags.  They had me fooled for a long time that plastic bags took no more fuel to make than paper but they didn't mention (or know) that the ocean is filling up with plastic and killing birds and probably fish too.  That leeching we worry about with our food is leeching into the ocean in a big way along with the mercury, etc. We can each stop buying those items, but there is little or no alternative so most of us won't stop buying.  But if we contacted the companies en masse (one at a time), and then boycotted if necessary, then they would listen. If one company changed and they got the lion's share of business for being green - the others would soon follow.  I nominate Coca Cola for first company.

federal government is nothing, they report to black government which arent one of our kind it consist of aliens/cia/nsa entities so all your why federal gov does what it does make no use, there is coming alien invasion along with 2012 planet x dont get involved in riots over food or gas they are waiting for this so they can put you in guantanamo without lawer to gas you

Thanks Bryson -- that's a great article.  I loved "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and need to get my hands on a copy of "In Defense of Food."  (Right now I'm too busy reading "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" by Edward C. Smith, and getting very inspired!)