I was reading Newsweek and saw an article called, "How Green are You?" The article mentioned threen different websites you can go to to measure the amount of carbon dioxide your lifestyle generates. I did this once on a website that Al Gore recommended; I don't recall doing that well, mainly because our electricity source is coal in this region of the country. The sites listed in the article are: terrapass.com, gocarbonzero.com and nativeenergy.com. The latter is the site listed in the Gaiam catalogue, a company that makes eco-friendly products. I ordered quite a few things from Gaiam for the holidays and one thing I think is great, is that the company allows you to negate the carbon created by shipping the products. You can pay about $5.00 extra to cover a tree being planted to help combat the carbon dioxide released from the modes of transportation that will deliver all of the holiday packages. You can buy one tree or several. Other ways to combat carbon dioxide emissions are opportunities to contribute to wind projects. The Gaiam catalogue talks about this as well, which is then discussed in more depth on the nativeenergy.com website. It seems that once the holidays hit, many of us forget the wastefulness of all of the gift packaging, shipping and throwing away of countless boxes and wrapping paper. If we take a moment to contribute to projects like the tree planting or the wind farm support, we are at least making some effort to neutralize some of this damage. For those really interested in alternative energy and the environment, planting a tree in his or her name or helping a wind farm in his or her name, could be a gift in and of itself.