Americans in the 1950s with their post-war optimism seem to epitomise a kind of blind and all-encompassing trust.

You know how that was, when all technology was good and jobs were never lost.

We’re talking about a time, in popular culture at least, when anything that threatened a positive world-view was pretty much just ignored by the masses.

Please understand, however, I’m not suggesting a return to this kind of blatant ignorance, only that we pick-up on the trusting part.

Here’s how this works: trust is an essence of hope which in turn is a basis of risk.

Without trust, we can’t afford to risk success.

When, at the Copenhagen Summit last year in ‘09 a cube of images and statistics was placed floating on the water as an installation, some media noted the way these lofty and dire predictions tend to desensitise us and make us less likely to act.

Put simply, fear begets more fear and ultimately leads to inaction and a brand of futility.

Hope however, which involves no small element of trust inherently, rarely leads to less hope.

By this rationale, if we trust in the future and trust in ourselves, things will naturally improve.

If we consider the environment to be like our primary relationship, we want to talk less about our insecurities and spend more time in bed with it.

Trust the change and the change will come as long as we’re willing to do whatever it takes.

It’s okay, it will still be there when you get back. Buy it a hot chocolate, give it a magazine and tell it you’ll be just be a moment.

There are a million and one blogs, articles, tv shows and books out there to tell us how to care for the environment. What many do not address is the fundamental shift in consciousness required before anyone cares to begin with.

Undeniably there is a groundswell in interest and attention on global change around environmental issues and living in a “green” or “eco” way. For this I am so grateful. What this means is that when I talk to the stranger at the cafe about my garden, or no longer using plastic bags or bottles, they don’t necessarily look at me like I’m a radical militant greenie. Great.

The thing that is often overlooked is the simple principle of love. We are what we love, not what loves us. This message comes clearly through so many life-altering films and books and parables. When someone close to us dies, we often remark about how we wished we’d said we loved them more often, spent more time, had more fun.

It’s the same with being green and caring for the environment. If we don’t love our garden, it literally will not bear fruit.

So today, for me, green means love (as it happens to also mean in many spiritual modalities and colour therapies).

I love my garden, I love trees and native animals and nice weather. It is out of that love that I can be bothered to read about how to care for the environment.

So my advice to anyone that asks would definitely be to get out there and get into it, find joy in your garden, your bushwalk, the tree outside your house and local birds, whatever tickles you pinky-green.

If we start to love the environment we live in, we will naturally want to take care of it – much as we take care of the people and things we already love in our lives.

Enough scaremongering and de-sensitising, let’s really feel the natural world and fall in love again.

Because we are what we love, tell the environment you love it, spend more time with it, and have more fun being green.

The temptation arises out of two conversations that happened yesterday.

The first, with a friend who lives in a part of the world that is not the city, and where much of the population lives in a ‘green’ way, or at least with some awareness of nature, was about who’s responsible for educating the masses and doing more about the environment, about the inherent dangers of relying on carbon trading to save us, and about boyfriends and how they don’t know how to recycle sometimes.

The main gyst of the conversation was lamenting how much opportunity is wasted in terms of public green-awareness out of an apparent lack of government funded education. This can be sticky and political, and anyone who knows me will tell you how little interest I have in politics.

So even though it’s true, I’ll just talk about my own approach – not to discount my friend’s opinion, which I believe to be absolutely pertinent.

My approach is to lead by example and convert the ignorant one conversation at a time. By composting, worm farming, growing vegetables and friendliness  I manage to help about one person a week (at this point in time) to be more aware.

I also spend less time re-educating older people than I do exposing kids to the realities of environmental care. It takes less to impress a six year old about worms than it does to argue with someone older and more set in their ways – plus a six year old has a greater chance of educating their parents than I do.

Sure, I still get frustrated. Another conversation I had yesterday with someone quite close to me was about how he loves to eat dead animals but he doesn’t want to see them being killed. Now, he’s a city kid, and has never had to kill anything to eat it, so his awareness is understandable… however I think its also a little dangerous. It speaks of what’s happened to us as a society in being so far away from the sources of our food that we don’t even want to know where it comes from or how it feels to get it ourselves.

I’m not judging him in any way for his opinion but it galvanises me to expose my young son to the experience of hunting before he gets too old so he will always know just how much goes into getting a steak from a beast to a table.

Without consciousness, the world could undoubtedly spin out of control but with just a little bit of awareness we can swiftly change our course. It doesn’t take much to have one less steak a week, grow one more vegetable or talk one more truth.

So keep those eyes at least squinting at the truth, even if you can’t stomach it all. You’d be amazed how much of a difference a wink at sustainability can make.

The picture is oddly prophetic. Today I spent the morning making a patch of soil for my local cafe ready for planting. I did what this picture here above is talking about and made a patch of land fertile around a tree so it can grow food for the local community – and I loved it.

Just like Michael Jackson, a lot of us peak early, then perhaps look around the world for a time only to find we had it all in us to begin with. Some of us get lost along the way – whether it be by the ‘paths’ we take through danger or addiction or destructive behaviour. Mr Jackson was an incredibly beautiful and talented child, his voice and lyrics sang the world into meaning for many people, including me. He was incredibly generous with his inherant gifts. It seems he was perhaps too sensitive and hearty and lost his way amongst money, fame, isolation and painkillers.  Maybe something in him gave up on love.

People are sharing their memories on his site put up by Sony Music so we can all grieve his passing together. When I think of all the wedding dancefloors, daggy nightclub DJs and house party mixes that have included a moment of “Don’t Blame ii on the Sunshine” or all the times I’ve felt overjoyed when I find “Rock With You” playing on an AM radio station in the country whilst on a roadtrip, I feel humbled and grateful. As a teen we would sing “PYT Pretty Young Thing” at the top of our voices on the back of the school bus. I was lucky to have been a teen when Thriller topped the charts for record time. It was truly thrilling back then.

So my hope for everyone reading this is that we remember our innermost passions and stay with them, and never, ever give up on them no matter what. If we find ourselves in an innoportune place to live our loves, know that whatever got us to where we are today can get us out of it.

Today, green means love to me. I love Michael Jackson and his music, and I love the fact that despite his addictions and his madness much of the world is celebrating his life and his gifts. Rest in PEACE Mr Jackson, let’s hope you find your love and your meaning somewhere, somehow. Your mission, reader, should you choose to accept it, is to make a decision to be the love, and do it now.

These are all really simple things. If you’d like more information about any of them leave a comment here and I’ll personally get back to you with information. It’s so easy. And any time you’re spending focusing on these simple things, is time spent literally saving the world.

If you like officialdom, here’s what the Australian Govt has to say about sustainability tips.

Now, sure some of you think this is SO obvious, but others of you clearly have no clue about it. So this post is a little ode to the simple ones of us, who despite being intelligent in every other area of their lives, have not quite yet changed their basic habits.

‘Nuff said. Go hero now and start ticking of that list above.