The Washington Post, NPR, AP, and many others report today on the Center for Global Development’s launch of a brilliant new website: CARMA - Carbon Monitoring for Action.

CARMA is meant to inform and empower citizens to take action to reduce our reliance on dirty energy. That’s just smart. Why? You can’t effectively address global warming unless you know whose door to knock on to start demanding change. CARMA provides you not only with the addresses, but also the maps, the satellite photos, and a whole bunch of other fun facts.

Global warming is one of those funny issues, though - you can protest until you’re blue in the face (and bear in mind that you’re likely to get bluer quicker if you’re close to a coal power plant), but the power plants won’t change their ways unless you do your part at home. The United States is building 83 new coal-fired plants in the next decade. New power plants are an absolute necessity so long as our electricity demand continues spiraling out of control - if the energy industry doesn’t keep up with individuals’ energy use, it’ll get awfully dark during the frequent brown-outs.

What’s so silly about this is that so much of the spiraling demand isn’t energy we need to do what we want to do. We can still do almost everything we want to do while using far less energy. How is this possible? There have been tremendous advances in energy efficiency in recent years in some of the more mundane areas of life. Did you know that you can replace your light bulbs and shower heads with newer more efficient ones that actually cast the same light and actually improve your shower? You can also upgrade to a programmable thermostat or appliance timer to make sure your heating and cooling are only using energy when there’s someone around to benefit from a warmed or cooled room. After all, if a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody around to hear it, does it matter what the temperature in the room is? You get the idea. The point is that making a few small changes at home can make dramatic cuts in your energy waste while improving (far from sacrificing) your quality of life.

Big changes would be great. After all, we don’t want to end up like China - where they’re building 199 new coal-fired plants in the next decade. Beijing is hosting the Olympics in 2008 and, if it wasn’t bad enough that the Olympics have been given to a government lending support to genocide in Darfur among other abuses, there are serious concerns that the air pollution in Beijing is so bad that it will be infeasible for “Olympic athletes to run a marathon through streets where respiratory particulate levels average 3-4 times U.S. safety levels.”

So, big changes must be pursued. The good folks at CARMA and the League of Conservation Voters have some great suggestions as to where to get started on your advocacy to get others to make these necessary changes - but we humbly suggest that you make sure to pair your advocacy with action, such as by getting and installing your own Earth Aid Kit. (or by giving an Earth Aid Kit to a Habitat for Humanity family, if you have already upgraded your own energy efficiency.)

If all of us take some small steps to make a sizable individual and collective reduction in energy waste, the existing power plants can safely reduce their power production and we can render unnecessary the construction of new coal plants - we may even be able to keep energy demand in check to the extent that all new power plants built to replace older plants being decommissioned will be powered by renewable energy. Our site calculates for you how much emissions you’re reducing through the use of new energy efficient products, and reductions achieved through purchases on our site are added to the collective achievement of our Million Car Carbon Campaign - an initiative to produce an annually recurring reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking one million cars off the road.

Fighting global warming, dirty energy, and dependence on foreign sources of energy begins at home - and the big changes that we make on a national (or international) level may not be enough unless you do your part. Success - averting catastrophic climate change and just generally enjoying breathable air - depends on all of us simultaneously pursuing both advocacy and action.

As though averting catastrophic climate change and being able to breathe the air in your community weren’t already exciting enough, don’t forget that there’s some money in this for you. If you use less energy at home, you’re polluting less. So if you’re polluting less, you’re paying lower energy bills. So make the mundane changes today to start saving energy, to start saving on your energy bills, and to start making a dent in global warming and pollution. Our website will calculate for you approximately when you can expect your energy efficiency upgrades to pay for themselves. (usually within two or three months!)

When asked why a gentleman such as himself would spend time trying to make simple improvements to the efficiency of Philadelphia’s street lamps, Ben Franklin replied, Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding… [but remember that] human felicity is produced by little advantages that occur every day. We couldn’t agree more.

He said it, not us.