With environment conservation hogging the solar-powered spotlight so much lately, I’ve come to one conclusion: some people are born green, some achieve greenness, and some have greenness thrust upon them.

I am in the last group.

It’s not that I don’t care about our planet, but I admit that most of my most earth-friendly actions are done out of necessity rather than choice.

For instance, my rental house is what an environmentalist (or a real estate agent) might call a "back to the basics" model, with environmentally controlled heating and cooling. Translation: the house is so old it predates central heat, air condition, and standard insulation. What you get outside is what you get inside.

On the bright side, this keeps our electric bill nice and manageable, and I’m sure the carbon emission angels are smiling down on my little homestead. And it’s really not unbearable; in the cold months I just keep throw blankets and hoodies close at hand and, if the timing is right, use a snoozing dog as a furry footwarmer (they don’t complain about icy feet the way my husband does). That being said, central heating and air will not be negotiable next time we house hunt.

I’ve also unwittingly helped decrease landfill waste, since our city abruptly ended its trash service. Now, as I shop for a new provider, our garbage is sitting harmlessly in the carport instead of filling an ever-expanding dump. I’m pretty sure my trash has also provided a few extra meals for the local wildlife; something I’m pretty sure counterbalances my carbon footprint.

But I do enjoy my planet, and decided to try taking a few extra steps to help it out.

How much that help is needed is, of course, hotly debated.

"Unlike other critical issues, [global warming] requires that we take action, based on science, before we see much damage," wrote Sarah van Gelder, executive editor of YES! Magazine. "If we wait until the effects of long-term pollution are fully felt, climate scientists tell us, we will have passed critical thresholds that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to turn down the global thermostat."

On the other hand, Fox News and several other mainstream outlets have found e-mails from scientists implying that global warming and other environmental dangers may be exaggerated.

Personally, I still believe that climate change in itself is cyclical, but I was raised to be a good steward of our resources and decided to look for ways I could "go green."

The first step was easy. I got a couple of reusable shopping bags that I use for groceries, and once I started remembering to take them to the store with me, I felt pretty good about myself. I feel a little smug every time I leave the store with my plastic-free cart, and it’s been very liberating not having to worry about a gross weight of plastic bags fluttering around my kitchen.

For the second step, I decided to dive into eco-consciousness and calculate my carbon footprint.

This was harder than I thought it would be. Finding carbon calculators was easy; I found two Web sites that do this for you. I’m just not sure which one to believe.

Going into the first calculation, I felt pretty confident. I don’t have the greenest lifestyle choices possible, but I’m hardly spray-painting the ozone and clubbing baby seals in my spare time, either. All went well until I entered my car information: my rusty, trusty 4Runner weighed into the site’s calculator with about 170 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. Compare this to the average Georgian’s total footprint, which, according to the site, is 20 tons a year.

This brought my overall footprint to about 180 tons, a whopping 60 times greater than the average Georgia dweller.

I know something is wrong here, because I’ve lived in Georgia long enough to know I couldn’t possibly be more environmentally irresponsible than Joe and Jane Bulldog. Just to be sure, I checked the numbers in the second site.

For those who have never calculated your footprint, it’s fairly straightforward. You enter basic information such as the car you drive, how many flights you take every year, what type of food you eat, etc.

I entered all this in site number two, and received the much smaller result of 12.7 tons of CO2 (take that, you 20-ton Georgians!)

Both sites offered me the chance to pay for my footprint (to counterbalance the smaller result was well over $100). Needless to say, I declined. I’m sure an environmentalist could tell me how parting with my hard-earned money somehow erases the damage done by my love for boxed cereals, but I’m not buying it. It seems too much like racketeering, and besides, I need that money to put gas in the SUV. Other than walking to work every day (not happening,) I’m not really sure what else I can do to ease my footprint.

I guess I’m just not built to be completely green. For now, I’ll just stick with my reusable bags, and maybe put off finding that trash service for one more week.