I have hugged a few trees in my time, but never with what I would consider genuine affection. Most of my hugging was as a kid when I shinnied up trees during games of hide and seek. I hugged a tree and shinnied up it when I was in the Forest Service and thought I was being chased by a bear. But as a tree-hugging environmentalist, that's the extent of my credentials.

I do contribute to some environmental causes, but, to be honest, they are self-serving, dealing with river protections to ensure the survival of my favorite pastime: fly-fishing. My wife is a committed and relentless recycler and I willingly go along. I don't litter, which often makes for a messy car, and I'm careful about the disposal of chemicals used at our home and in the garden.

There is another side of the ledger. I drive a big, gas-guzzling, air-polluting SUV for reasons most people would understand, but some might not agree. I occasionally pollute the air with a foul-smelling cigar. I haven't seen Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." I haven't taken a side on whether auto emissions are creating the greenhouse effect and are the direct cause of global warming, although I'm leaning in that direction.

Finally, I don't see an ounce of difference between ecoterrorists and any other kind of terrorist. The ends don't justify the means.

For all of my apparent ambivalence, I sense a profound personal change taking place. Regardless of how one feels about global warming and all the politics associated with it, it is an irrefutable fact that we are polluting our planet at an incredible rate. We don't have to agree on the extent of the damage being done by the pollution, or even the timeline for when we must take action, to realize we are harming the planet, ourselves and the future.

Last Sunday Earth Day I helped a friend clean up a vacant lot his family owns in Ojai. I didn't do it because it was Earth Day; I did it because my friend needed help, and I knew we would have a good time together. Besides, I didn't think it would be much of a job. Although the lot was fairly sizable and on a major thoroughfare, it was so open and obvious, I didn't think we would have much to clean up.

Two 30-gallon trash bags later and only about half the lot cleaned, I learned how wrong I was. From the ubiquitous plastic grocery bags to plastic water bottles to Styrofoam cups, we gathered the detritus of human carelessness. It was massive, so much so that we quickly realized we had to just pick up the big stuff or we would be there all day and need several more garbage bags.

As we plodded along picking up papers, fast-food wrappers and much more, our conversation turned from familiar subjects to trying to figure out why people would dump their trash so indiscriminately. My friend, who, for obvious reasons, took it personally, compared it to someone coming into another person's home and dropping their trash in the living room. It was rude and offensive, he said.

I agreed, but I also thought it was selfish. In a way, the rampant littering of this one vacant lot signified how many of us approach pollution in general. To be blunt, we do what we please and leave it up to others to do the cleanup work. The really heavy lifting we leave to the politicians. That's even scarier because, when you think about it, what kind of message do they get in terms of urgency and commitment when our actions scream otherwise?

We have imposed our will on the planet and shaped many of the forces of nature to our needs. Our accomplishments can't be denied, nor can the unintended consequences of our actions be ignored. That same will can be a formidable force to clean up our planet.

The exercise of that will doesn't take much effort either. The next time any of us has an urge to toss trash from the car or just drop it on the ground, the solution is simple: Don't. There are all sorts of little things each of us can do that can make a huge difference. We can walk when possible rather than taking the car. We can reuse shopping bags and plastic water bottles. When we see trash on the ground, we can pick it up.

More importantly, as we exercise our will, we send a powerful message to our politicians and leaders that failure to exercise their will or ignore our collective will is a guarantee of a short career.

The Earth is a wonderful gift. It has nurtured us and been our home. In appreciation, we don't have to hug trees, but we do need to embrace and protect it.

Joe R. Howry is editor of The Star. He can be reached by phone at 437-0200 or by e-mail at jhowry@VenturaCountyStar.com.