Ah, mercy, mercy me,
Ah, things ain’t what they used to be, no, no, no.
Where did all the blue skies go?
Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east.

I got back into listening to Marvin Gaye after watching an episode of “American Masters” on PBS of which he was the focus.
“His father was a cross-dressing preacher,” I mentioned to a friend.
    “Screw Marvin,” she replied. “I wanna see the episode about his daddy.”
    Perhaps because he was reared by such a conflicted man, one who murdered his own son, Marvin was incredibly perceptive and sensitive ... a soul who was hip to the fact that the human race was destroying the Earth way before Wally Broecker coined the phrase “global warming.”
    “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” was released in June of 1971, and 27 years later, the lyrics couldn’t be more relevant. Long after listening to it, the last two lines stick with me: “What about this overcrowded land? How much more abuse from man can she stand?”
    Marvin was spot-on in his observation. In 1971, the population of Spaceship Earth was a mere 3.7 billion. By 2000, the human race numbered 6.1 billion, and by 2050 it is estimated that our numbers will have swollen to a whopping 9.35 billion. God, I hope that I am dead by then.
    Anyway, mankind’s numbers increase exponentially to the detriment of all other living things flora and fauna. And just because the human population continues to grow doesn’t mean we won’t one day find ourselves on the endangered species list. On the contrary, we will be responsible for our own demise unless we can collectively, as Earthlings, get a handle on the ways we are destroying our Mother, and take preventative measures to ensure we don’t become extinct before the rise of the next millennium.
    Some of those preventative measures definitely fall into the category of “easier said than done.” Eschewing the car for a bicycle or the bus? Easier said than done. Outfitting your home with solar collectors? Easier said than done.
    But we can all make small changes. Replacing incandescent light bulbs with those weird looking, curvy, florescent light tubes is easy. Replacing your petroleum-based dishwashing liquid with a vegetable based product is easy. And, according to the bottle I have, if every household in the United States replaced just one bottle, it would reduce our need for oil ... black gold ... Texas tea ... by 86,000 barrels. 
    This time of year, another way you can help is to turn up the thermostat. Ever since Gerald Ford told us to keep it set at 78 degrees in the summertime, you’d better believe mine has been. I just assumed everyone kept the thermostat at 78 degrees this time of year, but the results of an informal poll I took would suggest otherwise. Not one of the women I queried keeps her thermostat set at 78. The highest number I got was 73 degrees, with most respondents admitting to 70. On the low end, one woman told me that she keeps her thermostat set to 65 degrees during the day, “but I turn it down to 63 at night because I get so hot.” Here’s a news flash: throw off the covers, sleep in the nude, get on some hormone replacement therapy, do whatever you have to do, but please turn up the thermostat!
    The US Department of Energy has a dandy website — www.eere.energy.gov — that’s loaded with information about reducing energy consumption and costs. If saving a little money doesn’t incite you to turn up the thermostat, perhaps this anecdote will: Twenty plus years ago, an acquaintance of mine was tapped to ghostwrite James Brown’s autobiography, which he swore that The Godfather of Soul wanted to call James Brown: Humanitarian Capricorn. Only James was a Taurus. “Yeah, man,” he is rumored to have said, “but Humanitarian Taurus ain’t got the same ring to it.” When they touched on the subject of The King, James Brown supposedly said, “The only thing I will say is that air conditioning killed Elvis.” When I attempted to trace this quote for authentication, the closest I got was a mention on a hysterical fan site (don’t ask ... just google “Glaceland.”) that states: “Elvis kept the air conditioning in his bedroom on full blast and covered the windows with tin foil to help with his nocturnal existence.” If this is accurate, then I would say that Mr. Brown may have been right. Think about it: if your bladder is remotely full and you walk into a cold space, what’s the first thing you have to do? And where was Elvis found? Mercy me.